This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Exploding Tongues: Language, Art, and the Russian Avant-garde

Malevich, K. "Chernyi kvadrat" (Black Square), 1915

This page has annotations:

Contents of this annotation:
1. Malevich, K. "Chernyi kvadrat" (Black Square), 1915
Contents of this annotation:
1. Malevich, K. "Chernyi kvadrat" (Black Square), 1915

This page has tags:

Contents of this tag:

This page is referenced by:

BookENDS: A Working Theory of Textuality as Cultural Dominant, 1912-
Textuality and the Nullification of Dimension

This page marks both a beginning and an end. It is an introduction to the assignments, projects and resources contained in the project, as well as a summary of ideas that resulted from a semester's process of inquiry.

We began our course by considering two artifacts: Kazimir Malevich's "Black Square" (1915) and Aleksei Kruchenykh's first zaum ("transrational") poem "Dyr bul shchyl" (1913) Each is a well-recognized cultural monument in the history of modernism. The "Black Square," an unruly gesture in crudely simplified geometric form, redacts any referentiality with an overlay of thick, black, oil paint; "Dyr bul shchyl" (1913) upends language as such by substituting primordial sounds for poetry in lines scribbled hastily above a tangled thicket of an illustration. Malevich and Kruchenykh were friends and collaborators. The question was whether these two phenomena were parallel, loosely inspired by each other, or whether there was some more fundamental relationship between them, causal or otherwise.

Abstraction has been described as an idea. In a landmark 2012-13 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, "Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925," Curator Leah Dickerman assembled works representing a trans-Atlantic network of artists and theorists, whose collective efforts and social connections, more than any individual discoveries of feats of genius, were responsible for the emergent realization of abstraction as a defining feature of 20th Century visual arts. If one accepts Dickerman's reasonable presupposition, that abstraction was an idea, a shared thought that could transcend any material or formal instance, then making the connection between zaum poetry and Suprematist painting becomes quite easy: each cultural practitioner in his/her/their own way grasped the notion as it spread through their social networks, and sought in the materials, forms and processes of their own media to achieve its realization.

This course in its investigations seeks a different route between artists of different disciplines, bypassing the transmission of ideas. It is inspired by a metaphor less compelling than Dickerman's social network diagram, but one that is, perhaps, more germane to the period under investigation. The goal here is to understand how a few, focused efforts by a very small number of cultural practitioners could effect a wholesale collapse and regeneration of socio-cultural communication by strategically (though perhaps not consciously) targeting the nerve center, the most central nexus point through which the most diverse modalities of expression and communication could travel.

This approach to the general topic of modernity and abstraction has been greatly facilitated by another collection of artifacts, Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art (2016) a book publication by Curator Nancy Perloff of the Getty Research Institute, and accompanying interactive website and tagged materials in an online collection of Russian Futurist Books.

The scenario that emerges from inquiry is one of highly specific, almost accidental, contingencies of personal biography, idiosyncratic processes, and random found material that leverage, nevertheless, immense cultural processes to follow, because the changes occurred simultaneously on the orders of parole (speech) and langue (language). The efforts by the Russian Avant-garde to “emancipate” (words, sounds, meanings, objects, etc.) amounted to an explosion in meaning that reverberated indefinitely in emanating spherical waves in historical time and place, and impacted all things, however minutely, in its wake.

The metaphor of cultural explosion presents a much different set of tasks for researchers. Unlike a social network, which suggests a diffuse series of phenomena over time and space, the prospect of a singular moment or "big bang" event requires a reduction in time, scale, and scope, as well as material specificity as one approaches that occurrence. A period, such as 1910-1925, becomes less important than the compressed moments of late 1912 and early 1913. The global scale of cultural transmission, enabled by travel, publications, and new forms of communication, reduce to the effects of late-evening collaboration between a few people at a worktable creating irregular, limited-edition objects with their hands.
Thesis: The Codex as Language and Image
The conclusion of our collaborative work is that a strong case for significant causal connection between the verbal and visual languages of "Dyr bul shchyl" and "Black Square" is to be found in the particular materiality of the "artist books" of the 1910s, especially in the collaborative products issued by Kruchenykh himself, working with many prominent artists and writers who went on, like Malevich, to gain fame and notoriety for their respective investigations in "abstraction." The impact of this work upon the visual arts was to displace mimetic representation and the predominant understanding of a picture frame since the Renaissance as a "window on the world" with a different operative metaphor of a canvas as a page, with characters instead of images, unmarked paper instead of implied space, and margins to distinguish between significant and insignificant areas for meaning.

To grasp the significance of this narrower interpretation of the Russian branch of modernism, one must take into account a number of important scholarly contributions over the past several decades on the specificities of written and printed language, as well as the material form of the codex itself as a kind of language, since its widespread distribution and acceptance after Gutenberg.
All's Well That Starts Well, It Never Ends
Russian avant-garde was a genre that picked up the revolutionary energy of the late 19th century and early 20th century, continuing until the Soviet state grew strict in their preference of Socialist Realism in the 1930s. Kasimir Malevich heavily influenced many artists between 1912 and the 1920s. His genre of Suprematism was a key aspect of the Russian avant-garde. Known for its simple geometric shapes, Suprematism hoped to portray pure artistic feeling rather than depict actual objects. Zaum poetry hoped to do the same. By taking pure sound and abstracted words, the writers of Zaum discarded meaning for poetry based in feeling.

Nina Gurianova, in The Aesthetics of Anarchy, makes a clear distinction between early Soviet Avant-garde and Constructivism. She claims that the early avant-garde is an autonomous era with little connection to the Constructivism of the post-revolution era. This distinction is important, however, we cannot completely separate the two, even just for the reason that many key actors of both periods overlap. For example, many Constructivists were students of Malevich, and some Suprematists themselves evolved from Suprematism to Constructivism.

Circles are a shape that held prominence throughout the Russian avant-garde. Their appearance is seen in the early era mostly through Malevich and in the Constructivist era through artists such as Aleksandr Rodchenko, El Lissitizky, Gustav Klutsis, and more. However, what does the circle represent? Is it an abstract representation of an object? Or is it meant to merely represent an idea?

Anarchism, Counter-Hegemony, and the Early Russian Avant-garde 1912-1917

The Aesthetics of Anarchy, as described by Nina Gurianova, capture a mood of alogism. In other words, the early Russian avant-garde can be defined by their nihilistic lack of meaning. In this lack of meaning, they hoped to challenge the boundaries of what art can be. They had no desire to reinstate a program of rules surrounding art, rather they wanted to break away from any set of ideas of what their art should be. Gurianova, when writing about the subgenres of the early Russian avant-garde, states "There is only one feature that can be applied equally to all of them: an anti-teleological desire for freedom of artistic conscience, not limited by any pragmatic political, social, or aesthetic goals." Thus, the early avant-garde era was counter-hegemonic. Hegemony can be defined as an influence or dominance over a population. This dominance is maintained by asserting a set of ideologies which the population adheres to, making any resistance to societal norms counter-hegemonic.

An example of this early period is Victory over the Sun, an opera performed in 1913. It is said to be one of the main influences of Malevich's Suprematism, making it a key point of the early avant-garde era. The title refers to the authors' desire to overcome the artistic norms of the time, symbolized in taking over the sun. Malevich and Matiushin, two main contributors to the opera, were quoted saying:
“The meaning of the opera has to do with the overthrow of one of the great artistic values--in this particular case, the sun … The Futurists want to free themselves from this ordered quality of the world, from the connections thought to exist in it. They want to transform the world into chaos, to smash the established values to pieces and from those pieces create new values by making new generalizations and discovering new, unexpected, and invisible connections. Take the sun--this is a former value--it therefore constrains them, and they want to overthrow it.”
The circle, if it symbolizes the sun, represents something to be overthrown. The sun, an object which everything revolves around, must be taken over in order to free the world from hegemony. Thus, the circle is a representation of hegemony. However, their desire to take the pieces of the world and create new values illuminates the cyclical nature of counter-hegemony.

The set of Victory over the Sun helped to confuse the audience, thus furthering the agenda of disrupting cultural norms. Gurianova writes:
"Malevich and Kruchenykh’s intention was to manipulate spotlights from the stage projectors in order to make the backdrops look three-dimensional: ‘The ambiguity of the spatial relationship, especially in perception of depth, undoubtedly was increased by the ‘tunnel effect’ created by the receding centers of the backdrops’ … This metaphor of infinity in the opera embodies the quest to destroy the old for the sake of creating anew, which ‘inspired shock in some minds and liberated others’”

A spotlight, a tunnel, a black hole in which things fall into or out of, all of these are ways in which the circle can obscure dimensionality. The fourth dimension and the challenging of spatial relations were important to the Futurists, and the circle was one tool with which to do that. This can be seen not only in the set for Victory over the Sun but in Malevich's Suprematist paintings as well. Due to the fact that the circles in his paintings are not just circular lines, but actually filled in shapes, they provoke questions of dimension. Are you looking into a hole? Through a tunnel?

Victory over the Sun also helped inspire the abstraction of Suprematism. Gurianova writes, “The next step in the development of this painterly construction is the transformation of the ‘anatomical structures’ of things into abstract shapes.”

Circles and Zaum

The aesthetics of anarchy are present in the alogism of zaum. Those that were writing zaum poetry wanted to escape from the communicative function of language and focus on its purely aesthetic values. Thus, this poetry consisted of sounds and made up words. Both accidental and deliberate errors could be seen throughout the art.

The connection between circles and zaum can be seen in the fact that zaum is an abstraction of language.
Shklovsky claims that "transrational language is a language of pre-inspiration, the rustling chaos of poetry, pre-book, pre-word chaos out of which everything is born and into which everything disappears.” This notion is reminiscent of the circle as a hole which distorts dimensionality, into which things are able to fall. Additionally, the chaos of being born and then disappearing is a cycle which can thus be represented by the circle.

“A Futurist book became a true paradox: a material form to capture chaotic flux, immediacy, spontaneity -- all the immaterial, ephemeral elements of life.” In other words, the Futurist book was a perfect way to express their desire for a counter-hegemonic art form.

Constructivism and Marxist Hegemony 1918-1925

Once the revolution happened there became a need to reinstate a new hegemony. In the art world, this began with Constructivism. As Gurianova puts it, "The anarchic nihilism of alogism yielded to a quest for the assertion of the universal.” Constructivism became a means to promote industrialization. For Rodchenko, this means that his circles were created with a mechanical tool, a compass. Unlike Malevich, his circles were not filled in. Rather, they were simple lines, as if part of a diagram. In fact, he did a drawing of a "perpetual motion machine" whose motion results in the shape of a circle. Another example of the utility of Constructivism is the fact that Rodchenko made several textile designs. In the propaganda art of Klutsis and Lissitzky, circles often appeared as the planet earth. This indicates the desire to spread Marxism internationally as a new hegemony that takes over the world.

Conclusion

Following the appearance of the circle from Malevich to Lissitzky and Klutsis, there seems to be significant meaning being placed in this shape. In Malevich's work, it may stand in as a symbol for the sun or be used to subvert dimensionality. While for Lissitzky or Klutsis, it may appear as a planet. For Rodchenko, it may be symbolic of the mechanical nature of Constructivism. In other places, it may merely be a circle. As a shape that may be turned infinitely without change, it is also a symbol of free rotation. The ability to rotate a shape 360 degrees challenges our linear, left to right, top to bottom process of viewing and reading. This challenging of a hegemonic process, mixed with the later use of the circle in propaganda, calls to question the counter-hegemonic aspects of the circle. While the notion of free rotation might suggest counter-hegemony, the usage of the circle to represent the entire planet in Soviet propaganda suggests a reinstatement of a new hegemony. A rapidly changing world, a world constantly in chaos and in flux, will never stay the same for long. What was once counter-hegemonic may rapidly transform into a new hegemony. The circle, not just a tool for subverting dimensionality or an example of the mechanical nature of Constructivism, is a symbol of the cyclical nature of the world we live in.
Dyr bul shchyl and the Dominant Debate over the importance of oral and handwritten components of poetry surfaced among art and literary scholars who examined the works of the Russian avant garde. Centered on the poetry included in handmade books such as Vzorval’ and Mirskontsa, scholars sought to establish a theory over a balance in the oral qualities of the poetry versus the handwritten visual design of the poems and books themselves. In terms of poetic language within these handmade books of the Russian avant garde, Gerald Janecek cites the handwriting and drawing as the important visual elements in the creation of the poems. On the other hand, Johanna Drucker’s insight into these works focuses on the qualities of the printed text instead. However, both authors evidently focus on the printed text of the poem, not its oral qualities. In order to understand the ruling force behind the creation of these works and the importance of their oral components, we can look to Yury Tynyanov’s theory of the Dominant to decipher this puzzle. Lastly, we will see that not only was the oral the preferred element, but various works also challenged our understanding of the visual in art.

As a vital component to Russian Formalist theory, the Dominant is the ruling force of an artistic work. According to Roman Jakobson's description of the Dominant, each type of work holds a system of values, which are organized into a hierarchy. The time period determines which of these values is at the top of the hierarchy, thus becoming the “dominant” feature of a work. Furthermore, one established dominant form that existed during the era of the Russian avant-garde was the textual, which began with the rise of the novel as a literary form during the Romantic period and through the poetry of Pushkin. Ultimately, the dominant can help uncover which is more important, vocal or written.

When asked to explain Anna Karenina, Tolstoy replied that he would have to re-write the whole book, exactly the same. This is to say, there is no reduction of the novel's textual form. The Romantic period created a cascade of literary styles that were focused on the individual as a subject experiencing the world. This experience through text established the dominant form of literature present in the early 20^th century and still today.

In terms of the Russian avant-garde, the works of Kruchenyk and Khlebnikov best exemplify the ambiguity between oral and visual elements of poetry. The poem “Akhmet” from Mirskontsa exemplifies the intertwining of these different values within their poems. The different qualities of the poetry, oral and visual, are at odds with each other when attempting to assign meaning to the works.

However, Kruchenyk's Dyr bul shchyl gives us insight into which of these competing poetic qualities is more important. The poem itself has at least three different textual forms created by the author, all quite different in their appearance. With this many inconsistent variants of the poem, it suggests that the textual aspect is not the dominant feature of the poem. Instead, sound has become the dominant feature of this first instance of Zaum poetry.

According to Jakobson, cultural change reflects itself through a re-ordering of values in artistic works, therefore asserting a new dominant. Pre-dating the Russian avant-garde was the so-called "Golden Age" of Russian literature. The 19th century saw the rise and acclaim of novelists and poets such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin, who remain as some of Russia's most celebrated writers. Their literary dominance, as well as the influence of the Romantic era in general, made the textual form the dominant aspect of the era.

However, the dominant form was changing amongst the Russian avant-garde. Starting in 1913, Alexei Kruchenyk authored at least three different versions of his Zaum poem Dyr bul shchyl. These three versions had varied textual presentations, sourced from the same author. The first appeared in his book Pomada in 1913. This version included an illustration of a nude woman by Mikhail Larionov, which aids to the poems’s “monosyllabic, primordial, and erotic sounds,” as described by Nancy Perloff. (Explodity, Getty Publications, 2016. pg. 75)

Furthermore, Kruchenyk asserts before the poem that Dyr bul shchyl is a work that is written “in its own language, the words have no other meaning.” However, the first word “Дыр” is actually a Russian word, being the genitive plural form of “holes.” The rest of the poem does not contain any known word forms from the Russian language, falling in line with Kruchenyk’s assertion of the poem containing its own language.

A second version was produced in the book Te li le, a written collaborative effort by Kruchenyk and Khlebnikov, illustrated by Olga Rozanova. This version of Dyr bul schul from 1914 is the richest of the three in color and is the only one to have a feminine creative influence, as Rozanova was deemed responsible for its creation. Some of the letters in this version are heavily faded on the page, which resulted in a different first reading for the class and myself. Despite this, the oral qualities of the original first printing of the work remain.

Lastly, in his 1913 essay The Word as Such (Слово как таковое), Kruchenyk printed yet another version of the poem to use as an example in the work. It is devoid of illustration and any handwritten creation, existing only in print on the page. The type in this version actually ends up further asserting the poem's oral qualities above all else.

Overall, the only things that are consistent between these three variations of Dyr bul shchyl are the authorship and the sounds of the recitation of the poem itself. The three printed versions of Kruchenyk's poem leave us unable to pin down a singular "stable" text, but maintain the same phonetic qualities in all three. This should lead us to acknowledge sound as the Dominant force of Kruchenyk's poem, rather than its textual, artistic, and physical elements.

Kruchenyk was not alone in his reorganization of traditional artistic values in the era of the Russian avant garde. Other artists of the same time period allowed their works to uphold a different dominant feature, and also contributed to undermining the concept of the visual in art. One example of this is Alexander Rodchenko’s photograph of his own apartment building.

While photography usually does not contain oral elements in its creation, Rodchenko is clearly toying with our expectations of normal visual understanding. The photo is tilted on a different axis, giving the viewer a radical perspective of an ordinary, familiar construction. Most photography is level with the eye, creating a representation similar to human vision. This leveled orientation, in my opinion, is the dominant hierarchical feature of photography in other works. It also serves in making us question the visual medium in all sources of art.

Similar to Rodchenko, Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square and its associated artistic movement, Suprematism, reflect a reordering into a new hierarchy of dominance. The painting, now cracked from age, attempts to represent the purest form of a geometric shape.

Such assertions about purity and perfection might be comparable to the still life or trompe l’oeil movements in art. Rather than depicting the real world, the Black Square reaches towards an abstract perfect form of the square. Since traditional depictions of perfection consisted of physical objects, Malevich’s painting causes his audience to reflect on the geometry and abstract shapes which make up our world.

Not only do the poems of the Russian avant garde mark the importance of the vocal, auditory qualities as dominant, but purely visual works challenge our sense of sight and our preconceived notions of art. Overall, there exists a reduction in the visual, textual form, that rules over most other artistic and literary movements. The significance of this move has primordial overtones. Before writing systems, geometry, and even language itself, there was only sound. Perhaps this is what the Russian avant garde hoped to achieve: humans envisioning a world without systematic human imposition on all things.