From Faktura to Factography Author(s): Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Reviewed work(s): Source: October, Vol. 30 (Autumn, 1984), pp.

82-119 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778300 . Accessed: 27/10/2012 21:59
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October.

http://www.jstor.org

From Faktura to Factography

BENJAMIN

H. D. BUCHLOH

directorof the Museum of Modern Art, AlfredBarr largely As the first thatwas to definethe framedeterminedthe goals and policy of the institution work of productionand receptionforthe American neo-avant-garde. In 1927, just prior to the foundingof the museum, Barr traveled to the Soviet Union. This was to have been a surveyjourney, like the one he had just completed in Weimar Germany, to explore currentavant-garde productionby artistsworking in the new revolutionarysociety. What he found there, however, was a situation of seeminglyunmanageable conflict. ofthe origiOn the one hand, he witnessedthe extraordinary productivity in termsof the number of its particinal modernistavant-garde (extraordinary pants, both men and women, and in termsof the varietyof modes of production: ranging fromMalevich's late suprematistwork throughthe Laboratory to the Lef Group and the emergingproductivist Period of the constructivists, well as as agitprop theaterand avant-garde filmsscreened formass program, the other On hand, therewas the general awareness among artists audiences). thattheywere participatingin a finaltransformation and culturaltheoreticians of the modernistvanguard aesthetic,as theyirrevocablychanged those conditions of art production and reception inheritedfrombourgeois societyand its institutions. Then, too, therewas the growingfearthat the process of that successful transformation might be aborted by the emergence of totalitarianrepression fromwithinthe very systemthat had generated the foundationfora new socialistcollectiveculture.And last of all, therewas Barr'sown professional dispositionto search forthe most advanced, modernistavant-gardeat precisely themomentwhen thatsocial group was about to dismantleitself and its specialized activitiesin order to assume a different role in the newlydefinedprocess of the social production of culture. elementsare clearlyreflected in the diary thatBarr kept These conflicting during his visit to the Soviet Union: S. went to see Rodchenko and his talented wife. . . . Rodchenko showed us an appalling variety of things--suprematistpaintings

El Lissitzky. Photomontagefor catalogue accompanying Soviet Pavilionat Pressa Exhibition, Cologne.1928.

NOT~
I-ol.;

s~i::i~iiiiiove

SAKI" a &4~""$~p~s~ ? A ril, i~~Imam~

~ ~

WIN

gW

41

MW.
z

84

OCTOBER

(preceded by the earliest geometricalthingsI have seen, 1915, done with compass)-woodcuts, linoleum cuts, posters, book designs, photographs,kino set, etc. etc. He has done no painting since 1922, devotinghimselfto the photographicarts of which he is a master. ... We leftafter 11 p.m. - an excellent evening, but I must findsome painters if possible.1 in his search forpaintingduring his visit But Barr was no more fortunate withEl Lissitzky:"He showed also books and photographs,many of themquite ingenious. . . . I asked whetherhe painted. He replied that he painted only when he had nothingelse to do, and as that was never, never."2 And, finally,in his encounterwith Sergei Tretyakov,it became clear that of Barr's expectations. For there was a historical reason for the frustration artists had these the enunciated adopted in the course of position Tretyakov to the in relation aesthetic their thinking emergingindustrializatransforming tion of the Soviet Union: the program of productivismand the new method of that accompanied it,factography. "Tretyakov," representation/production literary that did not Barr's diary tells us, "seemed to have lost all interestin everything of art. He had ideal conformto his objective, descriptive,self-styled journalistic in paintingsince it had become abstract. He no longerwritespoetry no interest but confineshimselfto reporting."3 This paradigm-changewithinmodernism,which Barr witnessedfromthe his first hour, did not make a strongenough impressionon him to affect very futureproject. He continued in his plan to lay the foundationsof an avantgarde art in the United States according to the model that had been developed in the first two decades of this centuryin westernEurope (primarilyin Paris). And it was this perseverance, as much as anythingelse, that prevented,until the late '60s, the programof productivismand the methodsof factographic production fromenteringthe general consciousness of American and European audiences. In 1936, when Barr's experiences in the Soviet Union were incorporated exhibitionCubism andAbstract in the extraordinary Art,his encounterwithproductivism was all but undocumented. This is particularlyastonishing since Barr seems to have undergone a conversiontowardsthe end ofhisjourney, one which is not recorded in his diary, but which he publicly expressed upon his returnin "The Lef and Soviet Art,"his essay for Transition published in the fall of 1928. Surprisingly, we read in thisarticle,illustrated withtwo photographs of for the in exhibition Pressa exhibition fol1928 the Lissitzky's design Cologne, lowing, ratherperspicacious appraisal of the ideas and goals of the Lef Group:
1. 2. 3. Alfred no. 7 (Winter1978), p. 21. Barr,"RussianDiary 1927-1928,"October, Ibid.,p. 19. Ibid., p. 14.

FromFaktura to Factography

85

The Lefis more than a symptom,more than an expressionof a fresh culture or of post-revolutionary man; it is a courageous attemptto give to art an importantsocial functionin a world where fromone point of view it has been prostitutedfor five centuries. The Lef is formedby men who are idealists of Materialism; who have a certain advantage over the Alexandrian cults of the West --the surrealiste wizards, the esotericwordjugglers and those nostalgicswho practice necromancyover the bones variouslyof Montezuma, Louis Philippe or St. Thomas Aquinas. The Lef is strongin the illusion that man can live by bread alone.4 But western European and American interestsin the modernist avantthe implicationsseen so clearlyby Barr. Instead, what garde refusedto confront at that moment, in the process of reception,was what had been dehappened scribedin 1926 by Boris Arvatov,who along withAlexei Gan, Sergei Tretyakov, and Nikolai Tarabukin made up the groupofproductivist theoreticians. Arvatov wrote about the painters who refused to join the productivists, "Those on the Right gave up theirpositionswithoutresistance. . . . Eithertheystopped painting altogetheror theyemigratedto the Western countries,in order to astonish Europe withhome-made Russian Cezannes or withpatriotic-folkloristic paintings of littleroosters."5 It is against thisbackgroundthat I want to pursue the following questions: Why did the Soviet avant-garde, afterhaving evolved a modernistpractice to its most radical stages in the postsynthetic cubist work of the suprematists, and Laboratory Period artists,apparently abandon the paraconstructivists, digm of modernism upon which its practice had been based? What paradigmatic changes occurred at that time, and which paradigm formationreplaced the previous one? For the sake of detail and specificity I will limitmyself in what followsto a discussion of only some aspects of the respectiveparadigms that generated the crucial concern for in the first the prifaktura period, and that made factography method in the second mary period of Russian avant-garde practice. was first definedin the Russian contextin David Burliuk'sfuturFaktura ist manifesto,"A Slap in the Face of Public Taste," of 1912, and in Mikhail Larionov's "Rayonnist Manifesto"of the same year. In the works of Malevich from1913-1919faktura was a major pictorialconcern, as it was at thattime for such as painters Lissitzky, Popova, and Rozanova, who had their origins in cubism and who had been profoundlyinfluencedby Malevich's susynthetic prematism. Further,it remained the central concept in the nonutilitarianob4. Alfred Barr, "The Lef and Soviet Art," Transition, no. 14 (Fall 1928), pp. 267-270. 5. Boris Arvatov, KunstundProduktion, Munich, Hanser Verlag, 1978, p. 43. All translations fromthe German, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

86

OCTOBER

jects produced by Rodchenko, Tatlin, and the Stenberg brothers,sometimes hecticperiod to as the Laboratoryconstructivists. referred During an extremely of approximatelyseven years (from 1913-1920) the essential qualities offaktura were acquired step by step and developed further by the individual membersof that avant-garde. By 1920 it seemed to them that theyhad broughtto theirlogical conclusion all the major issues that had been developed during the preceding fifty years of modernistpainting. Thereforethe central concern fora self-reflexive pictorial and sculptural production was abandoned after 1920- gradually at first,then abruptly- to be replaced by the new concern forfactographicand productivistpractices that are indicative of a more profound paradigmatic change. Faktura Attemptsare being made in the recentliteratureto constructa genealogy for the Russian vanguard's concern forfaktura, claiming that it originates in Russian icon painting. Vladimir Markov's 1914 text "Icon after Painting"-Burliuk and Larionov the third to address faktura explicitly-had established this specifically Russian source, arguing that"throughthe resonance of the colwe call the ors, the sound of the materials, the assemblage of textures(faktura) people to beauty, to religion,to God. . . . The real world is introducedintothe icon's creation only throughthe assemblage and incrustationof real tangible objects and this seems to produce a combat between two worlds, the innerand the outer. ..."6
6. Yve-Alain Bois, in his essay "Malevich, le carrd, le degre zero" (Macula, no. 1 [1976], pp. 28-49), gives an excellent survey of the original discussion of the question offaktura among the various factionsof the Russian avant-garde. More recentlyMargit Rowell has added references such as Markov's text, quoted here, that had not been mentioned by Bois. In any case, as Bois has argued, it is pointless to attempta chronologysince the many references to the phenomenon appear simultaneously and often independentlyof one another. As early as 1912 the question offaktura is discussed by Mikhail Larionov in his "Rayonnist Manifesto," where he calls it "the essence of painting," arguing that the "combination of colors, theirdensity,theirinteraction,theirdepth, and theirfaktura would interestthe trulyconcerned to the highestdegree." A year later, in his manifesto"Luchism" he argues that "everypainting consists of a colored surface, itsfaktura (that is, the condition of that colored surface, its timbre) and the sensation thatyou receive fromthese two aspects." Also in 1912 we findDavid Burliuk differentiatingbetween "a unifiedpictorial surfaceA and a differentiated pictorialsurfaceB. The structure of a pictorial surface can be I. Granular, II. Fibrous, and III. Lamellar.I have carefullyscrutinized Monet's Rouen Cathedral and I thought'fibrous vertical structure.' . . . One can say that Cezanne is typically lamellar."Burliuk's text is entitled "Faktura." Bois also quotes numerous referencesto the phenomenon offaktura in the writingsof Malevich, forexample, where he calls Cezanne the inventorof a "new fakturaof the pictorial surface,"or when he juxtaposes the linear with the textural in painting. The concern forfaktura seems stillto have been central in 1919, as is evident from Popova's statement that "the content of pictorial surfaces is faktura."Even writers who were not predominantlyconcerned with visual and plastic phenomena were engaged in a discussion offaktura, as is the case of Roman Jakobson in his essay "Futurism," identifying it as

FromFaktura to Factography

87

Russian qualities offaktura But the specifically are nonethelesschallenged details of this For the other functionasproduction. religio-transcendental by Markov to the term is too close to the essential faktura just pursuitof signed by defined in 1914 for aesthetics as by, example, Georges Braque. Braque collage argued, "That was the greatadventure:color and shape operated simultaneously, but theywere completelyindependentofeach other."Similarly,Tatlin's request in 1913 that "the eye should be put under the controlof touch" is too close to Duchamp's famous statementthat he wanted to abolish the supremacy of the retinal principle in art. And, in the contemporaneous discussions of the term, any referencesto specificallyRussian or religious functionsare too rapidly jettisoned to maintain the credibilityof Markov's argument. Already in 1916 that would essentiallyremain valid for Tarabukin wrote a definition offaktura to follow."The formof a workof the entireperiod of Laboratory constructivism or meart," he declared, "derives fromtwo fundamentalpremises: the material dium (colors, sounds, words) and the construction, throughwhich the material is organized in a coherent whole, acquiring its artisticlogic and its profound meaning.'"7 What qualifies the concern for as a paradigmatic feature(differenfaktura it at the same time from concerns forfacturein the worksof the tiating previous in westernEurope) is the quasi-scientific, cubists and futurists mansystematic ner in which the constructivists now pursued theirinvestigation ofpictorialand sculpturalconstructs,as wellas the perceptual interactionwith the viewer they generate. The equation between colors, sounds, and words established by Tarabukin was no longer the neoromantic call for synaesthesia that one could still hear at this time fromKandinsky and Kupka. Running parallel with the formationof structurallinguistics in the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the the constructivists Opoyaz Group in Petersburgin 1915 and 1916 respectively, developed the firstsystematic phenomenological grammar of painting and
one of the many strategiesof the new poets and painters who were concerned with the "unveiling of the procedure: therefore the increased concern forfaktura; it no longer needs any justification, it becomes autonomous, it requires new methods of formationand new materials." in painting, where the masterfulfacture Quite unlike the traditionalidea offattura orfacture of a painter's hand spiritualizes the mere materialityof the pictorial production, and where the hand becomes at the same time the substituteor the totalization of the identifying signature (as the guarantee of authenticity,it justifies the painting's exchange value and maintains its comin the Soviet avant-garde emphasizes preciselythe modityexistence), the new concern forfaktura mechanical quality, the materiality,and the anonimityof the painterlyprocedure froma perspective of empirico-criticalpositivism. It demystifiesand devalidates not only the claims for the authenticityof the spiritual and the transcendental in the painterly execution but, as well, the authenticityof the exchange value of the work of art that is bestowed on it by the first. For the discussion of the Markov statementand a generally importantessay on the phenomenon offaktura,see also Margit Rowell, "Vladimir Tatlin: Form/Faktura," October, no. 7 (Winter 1978), pp. 94ff. 7. Nikolai Tarabukin, Le dernier tableau, Paris, Editions Le Champ Libre, 1972, p. 102, cited in Rowell, p. 91.

Alexander Oval HangingConstruction Rodchenko. (SurfacesReflecting Light). 1921. sculpture.They attemptedto definethe separate materialand proceduralqualities by which such constructsare constitutedwith the same analytic accuracy - what Saussure used to analyze the interrelationships of theirvarious functions would call the syntagmaticaxis - which are equally relevant for the constitution of a perceptual phenomenon. Furthermore, theyaddressed the apparatus of visual sign production,that is, productionproceduresas well as the tools of theseprocedures.It was preciselythesystematic nature of thisinvestigation that led Barr in 1927 to see "an appalling varietyof things"in Rodchenko's work. When, in 1920-21, Rodchenko arrivedmore or less simultaneouslyat his sculpturalseries HangingConstruction (a series subtitledSurfaces Reflecting Light) and at the triptych PureColors:Red, Yellow, Blue, he had developed to its logical conclusion that separation of color and line and that integration of shape and that the cubists had initiated with such excitement. With some justificaplane tion he declared, "This is the end of painting. These are the primarycolors. Every plane is a plane and therewill be no more representation."8
withMaiakovsky," 8. Alexander in exRodchenko, 1939, published "Working manuscript exhibition to Design, 1981, cerptsin From catalogue,Cologne, Galerie Gmurzynska, Painting pp. 190-191.

to Factography FromFaktura

89

Even at this point in Rodchenko's developmentfakturaalready meant more than a rigorous and programmaticseparation of line and drawing from painting and color, more than the congruence of planes with theiractual supofpictorial port surface,more than emphasizingthenecessaryself-referentiality with all other syntagmaticfunctions.It already and theircontiguity signifiers fromvirtualpictorial/sculptural meant, as well, more thanjust the object's shift space into actual space. We should not take the referenceto Surfaces Reflecting Lightas anythingless than an indication of the potential involvementof these artistswith materials and objects in actual space and the social processes that occur withinit. Fakturaalso meant at this point, and not forRodchenko alone, incorpointo the work itself and linkingthem ratingthe technicalmeans of construction withexistingstandards of the developmentof the means of productionin socithishappened on the seeminglybanal level of the tools and etyat large. At first materials that the painter employs- shiftsthat stillcaused considerable shock thirty years later with regard to Pollock's work. In 1917 Rodchenko explained his reasons forabandoning the traditionaltools of paintingand his sense of the need to mechanize its craft: Thenceforththe picture ceased being a picture and became a paintwithwhich ing or an object. The brushgave way to new instruments it was convenientand easy and more expedient to work the surface. The brush whichhad been so indispensable in paintingwhich transmittedthe object and its subtletiesbecame an inadequate and imprein the new non-objectivepainting and the press, the cise instrument roller, the drawing pen, the compass replaced it." The very same conviction about laboratory technology is concretized in Rodchenko's systematicexperimentation with pictorial surfacesas traces or immediate results of specific procedures and materials: metallic and reflective paint are juxtaposed with matte gouaches; varnishes and oil colors are combined with highlytexturedsurfaces. It is thistechno-logic of Rodchenko's experimentalapproach thatseems to have prevented aesthetic comprehensionforeven longer than did Duchamp's most advanced work of 1913, such as his Three Standard or his readyStoppages mades. With its emphasis on the material congruence of the sign withits signiand practice, on the causal relationshipbetween the sign and its referent, fying its focus on the indexical status of the sign, Rodchenko's work has defieda secondary level of meaning/reading.'1
9. Alexander Rodchenko, exhibition pamphlet at the exhibition of the LeftistFederation in Moscow, 1917, cited in German Karginov, Rodchenko, London, Thames and Hudson, 1975, p. 64. 10. The terminologicaldistinctionis of course that of C. S. Peirce as Rosalind Krauss has first

90

OCTOBER

of painting was linked to a Further, this emphasis on the process qualities serially organized configuration,a structurethat resulted as much from the commitmentto systematicinvestigationas fromthe aspiration toward science with which artistswanted to associate theirproduction. It is this nexus of relationshipsthattied theseessential featuresof the modernistparadigm eventually to the socially dominant modes of control and management of time and perceptual experience in the Soviet Union's rapidly acceleratingprocess of industrialization. is therefore Faktura the historically logical aestheticcorrelativeto the introduction of industrializationand social engineeringthat was imminentin the Soviet Union afterthe revolutionof 1917. For that reasonfaktura also became the necessary intermediarystep within the transformation of the modernist paradigm as we witness it around 1920. When in 1921 A. V. Babichev, the leader of the WorkingGroup forObjective Analysis (of which Rodchenko and of art production,his statementis Stepanova were members), gives a definition close to ideas of social strikingly Taylorism, engineering,and organized consumption,as theybecame operative at thattime in both westernEuropean and American society."Art,"he wrote,"is an informed analysis of the concretetasks which social life poses. . . . If art becomes public propertyit will organize the consciousness and psyche of the masses by organizing objects and ideas."" to theplacement of Finally, the notion offaktura already implied a reference the constructivist object and its interactionwith the spectator. To emphasize - as hintedin Rodchenko's reflection spatial and perceptualcontiguity by mirror whose reflective surfaceswould mirrortheirsurroundprojectforconstructions ings-means, once again, to reduce the process of representationto purely indexical withoutmesigns:12matterseeminglygeneratesitsown representation diation (the old positivist's dream, as it was, of course, thatof the early photographers). Contiguityis also incorporatedin the kinetic potentialof Rodchenko's since theirmovementby air currentsor touch literally inHangingConstructions, volves the viewer in an endless phenomenological loop made of his or her own movements in the time/spacecontinuum. In the discussions of the Group forObjective Analysis from1921, constructionwas definedas the organization of the kineticlife of objects and materials which would create new movement. As such it had been juxtaposed with the traditionalnotion of composition, as Varvara Stepanova definesit: Composition is the contemplativeapproach of the artistin his work. Technique and industryhave confrontedart with the problem of
nos. 3 and 4 (Summer applied it to Duchamp's work in her essay "Notes on the Index," October, and Fall 1977). 11. A. V. Babichev, cited in Hubertus Gassner, "Analytical Sequences," in Alexander Rodchenko, ed. David Elliott, Oxford, Museum of Modern Art, 1979, p. 110. 12. Krauss, "Notes," passim.

FromFakturato Factography

91

construction as an active process, and not a contemplativereflection. The "sanctity" of a work as a single entityis destroyed.The museum which was a treasury of this entity is now transformedinto an archive.13 If these lines sound familiartoday it is not because Stepanova's texthad considerable impact on the thinkingand practice of her peers, but ratherbecause, more than ten years later, preciselythe same historicalphenomenon is described and analyzed in a text that is by now rightfully considered one of the most importantcontributionsto twentieth-century aesthetic theory. I am speaking, of course, of Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," and the followingexcerpt might be compared with Stepanova's 1921 statement: What they[the dadaists] intended and achieved was a relentlessdestruction of the aura of theircreations,which theybranded as reproductions with the very means of production. ... In the decline of middle-class society,contemplationbecame a school forasocial beas a variant of social conduct. havior; it was counteredby distraction ... [Dada] hit the spectatorlike a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. ... (Thus the dada work restores the to the art of the presentday, a quality which is imquality of tactility portantto the art of all periods in theirstages of transformation.)14 The historicalobservationsby Stepanova and theirsubsequent theorization by Benjamin have another correlativein the work of Lissitzky fromthe for the Grosse Berliner period 1925-27. Already in 1923 in his Prounenraum Kunstausstellung, Lissitzky had transformedtactilityand perceptual move- into a full-scalearchiment- stilllatent in Rodchenko's HangingConstruction tectural reliefconstruction.For the first time, Lissitzky'searlier claim forhis to operate as transferstations from art to architecture,had Proun-Paintings, been fulfilled. It was, however,not until 1926, when he designedand installedin Dresden and Hannover what he called his Demonstration Rooms- room-sized cabinets for the display and installationof the nonrepresentational art of his time- thatone findsStepanova's analysis fullyconfirmedin Lissitzky'spractice. The vertical lattice relief-construction that covers the display surfaces of the cabinet and thatchanges value fromwhite,throughgray, to black according to the viewer's
13. Varvara Stepanova, quoted in Camilla Grey, The Russian Experiment, New York, Thames and Hudson, 1971, pp. 250-251. 14. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations,trans. Harry Zohn, New York, Schocken Books, 1969, p. 238. The last sentence of this quotation, set into parenthesis, is taken fromthe second version of Benjamin's essay (my translation).

92

OCTOBER

low

Art.Hannoversches CabinetofAbstract Hannover. 1926. Installation El Lissitzky. Landesmuseum, wallsandcorner cabinet with movable ondisplay shows aluminum view byLissitzky, relief panel.Works andMarcoussis. Schlemmer, position clearly engages the viewer in a phenomenologicalexercise that defies of the work of art. And the movetraditionalcontemplativebehavior in front able wall panels, carryingor coveringeasel panels on display, to be shifted by the viewers themselvesaccording to theirmomentaryneeds and interests,already incorporateinto the display systemof the museum the functionof the archive that Stepanova predictedas its social destiny.In the late '20s Lissitzky wrote a retrospective Rooms,and once again it is analysis of his Demonstration crucial to compare his ideas with those of both Stepanova and Benjamin in order to realize how developed and currentthese concerns actuallywere in the various contexts: the viewerwas lulled intopassivityby thepaintings ... traditionally shall make theman active. This on thewalls. Our construction/design of our room. . . . With each movementof the viewer is the function in space the perceptionof the wall changes; what was whitebecomes

to Factography FromFaktura

93

......1.

MONO_* P?:Il:I:

8I

in El Lissitzky's CabinetofAbstract Art. Thetwo El Lissitzky. Volume. 1919. Installed Floating white toblack onviewer's views indicate change from depending position. black, and vice versa. Thus, as a resultof human bodily motion, a perceptual dynamic is achieved. This play makes the viewer active. with the ob. The viewer is physicallyengaged in an interaction ? on display.15 ject workwas, of course, thatit The paradox and historicalironyof Lissitzky's had introduced a revolution of the perceptual apparatus into an otherwise one thatconstantly reaffirms both the contotallyunchanged social institution, rooted works of art. templativebehavior and the sanctityof historically thathad become apparent This paradox complementedthe contradiction severalyears earlierwhen Lissitzkyhad placed a suprematist painting,enlarged
in El Lissitzky, 15. El Lissitzky, ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers, "Demonstrationsraiume," Dresden,VEB-Verlagder Kunst, 1967,p. 362.

94

OCTOBER

of a factory entrancein Vitebsk. to the size of an agitational billboard, in front This utopian radicalism in the formal sphere--what the conservative Soviet criticslater would pejorativelyallude to as formalism- in its failureto communicate with and address the new audiences of industrializedurban society in the Soviet Union, became increasinglyproblematic in the eyes of the very of strategiesto expand the framework groups thathad developed constructivist modernism. It had become clear that the new society followingthe socialist revolution(in many respects a social organization that was comparable to the advanced industrialnations of western Europe and the United States at that which would time) required systemsof representation/production/distribution recognize the collective participation in the actual processes of production of social wealth, systems which, like architecturein the past or cinema in the In order to collective present,had established conditionsof simultaneous reception. make art "an informedanalysis of the concretetasks which social lifeposes," as Babichev had requested, and in order to "fill thegulfbetween artand themasses thatthe bourgeois traditions had established,"as Meyerhold had called for,ennew formsof audience address and distribution had to be considered. But tirely around 1920 even the most advanced works among the nonutilitarianobject- by Rodchenko, the Stenbergbrothers, constructions Tatlin, and Medunetsky - did not depart much further fromthe modernistframework ofbourgeois aestheticsthan thepoint ofestablishingmodels of epistemologicaland semioticcritique. No matterhow radical, these were at best no more than a negationof the been produced and received. perceptualconventions by whicharthad previously With sufficient historicaldistance it becomes clearer thatthisfundamental crisis within the modernistparadigm was not only a crisis of representation verification and (one that had reached its penultimate status of self-reflexive a crisisof audience relationepistemologicalcritique). It was also, importantly, of the avant-garde ships, a moment in which the historicalinstitutionalization had reached its peak of credibility, fromwhich legitimationwas only to be obtained by a redefinition of its relationshipwiththe new urban masses and their cultural demands. The Western avant-garde experienced the same crisis with the same intensity.It generally responded with entrenchmentin traditional models- the "Rappel 'a l'ordre"- and the subsequent alignmentof many of its artistswith the aestheticneeds of the fascistsin Italy and Germany. Or, other factionsof the Paris avant-garderesponded to the same crisiswithan increased affirmation of the unique status of a high-artavant-garde, trying to resolve the of theirpractice by reaffirming contradictions blatantlyobsolete conventionsof pictorial representation.In the early '20s the Soviet avant-garde (as well as some members of the de Stijl group, the Bauhaus, and Berlin dada) developed different strategiesto transcend the historicallimitationsof modernism. They could not be resolvedwithoutat the recognized that the crisisof representation same time addressing questions of distributionand audience. Architecture, utilitarian product design, and photographic factographywere some of the

to Factography FromFaktura

95

practices that the Soviet avant-garde considered capable of establishingthese new modes of simultaneouscollectivereception.16 Arvatov givesa vividaccount fromthe modernist of the gradual transition positionin the Russian avant-garde to the factographicand utilitarianaesthetic: The firstto retire were the expressionists,headed by Kandinsky, who could not endure extremistpressure. Then the suprematists, headed by Malevich, protestedagainst the murderof the sanctityof of art. art, since theywere convinced of the complete self-sufficiency They could not comprehend any other formof art production but thatof the easel. . . . In 1921 the InstituteforArtistic Culture, which had once united all the Left artists,broke up. Shortlythereafter the Institutestartedto work under the banner of productivism.Aftera the group of nonlong process of selection, afteran obstinate fight, representationalconstructivists crystallizedwithin the group of the Left (Tatlin, Rodchenko, and the Obmochu-Group), who based theirpractice on the investigationand treatment of real materials as a transitionto the constructiveactivityof the engineer. During one of themost important meetingsof theInchuk a resolutionwas passed to finish off withthe self-sufficient constructions and to unanimously take all measures necessaryin order to engage immediatelywith the industrialrevolution.17 Between Faktura and Factography Photomontage: The relatively late discovery of photocollage and montage techniques seems to have functionedas a transitionalphase, operating between the fully which one developed modernistcritique of the conventionsof representation, sees in constructivism, and an emerging awareness of the new need to constructiconicrepresentationsfor a new mass audience. Neither Lissitzky nor Rodchenko produced any photocollage work before 1922; and only as late as 1919- when these artistshad already pushed other aspects of postcubist pictorial and sculpturalproblems further than anyone else in Europe (except, of for did the course, Duchamp)collage technique proper entertheirworkat all. It seems credible that in fact Gustav Klucis, a disciple of Malevich and a collaborator withLissitzky,was the first artistto transcendthe purityof suprematistpaintingby introducingiconic photographicfragments into his suprematist

16. The problem of the creation of conditions of simultaneous collective reception is dealt with in an essay by Wolfgang Kemp, "Quantitditund Qualitfit: Formbestimmtheit und Format der zur Geschichte und Theorie derFotografie, Fotografie,"Foto-Essays Munich, Schirmer/Mosel, 1978, pp. 10Off. 17. Arvatov, Kunst, p. 43.

96

OCTOBER

work in 1919, the very date that Heartfieldand Grosz, Hausmann and H6ch have claimed as the moment of theirinventionof photomontage. Since by 1919 photomontagewas widespread and commonlyused in both advertisingand commercial photography,the question of who actually introduced the technique into the transformation of the modernistparadigm is un18What is farmore crucial is in what way the artists important. (who mightvery well have simultaneously"discovered" the technique for their own purposes of one another)relatedto the inherent quite independently potentialand conseof (photographic)iconic imageryat preciselythe quences of the reintroduction moment when mimetic representationhad seemingly been dismantled and abandoned. definitively Klucis also underlinesthe essentialdifAnnouncinghis claims to priority, ference between the Soviet typeofphotomontageand thatofthe Berlindadaists when he writesin 1931: There are two general tendenciesin the developmentof photomontage: one comes fromAmerican publicityand is exploited by the
18. The twoessaysthattracethehistory in thecontext ofphotomontage ofthehistory ofphoand thehistory ofemerging are RobertSobieszek, tography technology advertising "Composite and theOriginsofPhotomontage," PartI and II, Artforum, 1978, Imagery September/October theorigins in adofphotomontage pp. 58-65, and pp. 40-45. Much morespecifically addressing is Sally Stein'simportant vertising techniques essay,"The Composite Photographic Image and of ConsumerIdeology," theComposition Art Journal, Spring1981,pp. 39-45.

-~:i::::-:;::-:::-:::1:I::

ii::i::::' ::

Gustav Klucis. The Dynamic City. 1919.

Alexander Ticket No. 1. 1919. Rodchenko.

Out

AaM.

Alexander Rodchenko. Photomontage forPro Eto. 1923.

?iii-iiiiiiiii
iliii-iii iii?l

K,46I

iiiiiiii

CTAKAI

IWO,

Dadaists and Expressionists--theso called photomontageof form; the second tendency, that of militantand political photomontage, was createdon the soil of the Soviet Union. Photomontageappeared in the USSR under the banner of LEF when non-objectiveart was already finished.. . . Photomontage as a new method of art dates from1919 to 1920.19 The hybridsthatKlucis, Lissitzky,and Rodchenko createdwiththeirfirst of the paradigmatic attemptsat collage and photomontagereveal the difficulty that is inherentin thatprocedure,and the concomitantsearch, transformation in theperiod 1919-23, fora solutionto the crisisof representation. But beyond this,theysuggestwhere the answer to these questions would have to be found, and theydefinethe qualities and functions whichthe new proceduresthatlegitimize iconic representationwould have to offer.At the same time, it would seem that these artistsdid not want, on the one hand, to sacrificeany of the supreme modernistvirtuestheyhad achieved in theirpictorialand sculptural
19. GustavKlucis,Preface totheexhibition Berlin, 1931,citedin Dawn catalogue Fotomontage, London/New Ades, Photomontage, York,Pantheon,1976,p. 15.

98

OCTOBER

work: the transparency of construction of the procedures; the self-referentiality the reflexive and the devices; pictorial signifying spatial organization; general emphasis on the tactility,that is, the constructednature of their representations. But, on the other hand, photocollage and photomontage reintroduced - at a moment when its modernistself-reflexivity into the aesthetic construct had semioticallyreduced all formaland materialoperations to and purification of representation, purely indexical signs- unlimitedsources fora new iconicity - to a genone thatwas mechanicallyproduced and reproduced, and therefore eration of media utopians- the most reliable. Looking at the photomontage work of 1923, such as Rodchenko's series Pro Eto, or Hausmann's work, one might well wonder whether the exuberance, willfulness,and quantity of the juxtapositionswere not in part motivatedby photographicquotations and their theirauthors'reliefat having finally broken the modernistban on iconic representation.This, in extremecontrastto the Parisian vanguard's collage work,in which iconic representation ultimatelyreappeared, but which never made use of photographicor mechanically reproduced iconic images. But the rediscoveryof a need to constructiconic representations did not, of course, resultprimarilyfromthe need to overcome the strictures of modernism. Rather it was a necessary strategyto implement the transformation of audiences that the artistsof the Soviet avant-garde wanted to achieve at that time. "Photomontage," an anonymous text (attributed by some scholars to of Rodchenko) published in Lef in 1924, not only traces the historicaffiliation with the of photomontage'sconglomerate image strategies advertising,juxtaposing photomontage'stechnique and its iconic dimension with the traditional techniques of modernist representation,but also introduces the necessityof representationin order to reach the new mass audience: documentary By photomontage we understand the usage of the photographic prints as tools of representation.The combination of photographs replaces the composition of graphic representations.The reason for this substitution resides in the factthat the photographicprintis not the sketchof a visual fact,but its precise fixation.The precisionand the documentarycharactergive photographyan impact on the spectatorthatthe graphic representation can never claim to achieve. ... An advertisementwith a photographof the object that is being advertisedis more efficient than a drawing of the same subject.20 Unlike the Berlin dadaists who claimed to have invented photomontage, the author of this Lef textdoes not disavow the technique's intrinsicaffiliation (and competitive engagement) with the dominant practices of advertising.
20. Anonymous, Lef, no. 4 (1924), reprintedin ArtetPoisieRusses,Paris, Musee national d'art moderne, 1979, pp. 221ff(my translation).

to Factography FromFaktura

99

Quite the contrary,the author seems to invite that competitionby defining photomontagefromthe start as an agitational tool that addresses the Soviet of Union's urban masses. It is with this aspect in mind that the practitioners of the medium to the formsof photomontagecould not accept the confinement distribution theyhad inheritedfromcollage: formslimitedby the single, rectdetermined scale, and size ofeditionentirely angular sheetof paper, itsformat, by the most traditionalstudio notions of unique, auratic works of art. While (with the exception of the work ofJohn Heartfield) most western European photomontageremains on the level of the unique, fabricatedimage - paradoxically foldinginto the singularity of thisobject fragments of a multitude oftechnically reproducedphotographicimages frommass-culturalsources - the strategiesof the Soviet avant-garde seem ratherrapidly to have shifted away froma reenactmentof that historicalparadox. The productivistartists realized that in orderto address a new audience not only did the techniques of ofdistribution of and institutions productionhave to be changed, but the forms as well. The photomontage disseminationand receptionhad to be transformed potechnique, as an artisticprocedure that supposedly carries transformative tentialqua procedure, as the Berlin dadaists seem to have believed, therefore, in the workof Rodchenko and Lissitzky,becomes integrated as only oneamong several techniques- typography, advertising,propaganda- that attemptedto redefinethe representationalsystemsof the new society.

Ierr
I1RS
Carl o D. Oi

Aimi

?Aw -W,

-d::
El Lissitzky. accompanying forcatalogue Photomontage Pavilionat Pressa Exhibition, Cologne.1928. Soviet

KurtSchwitters. Untitled (Der Sturm). 1919.

100

OCTOBER

FromModernism toMass Culture In 1926 Lissitzkydeveloped a theoryof contemporary art productionthat not only associated aesthetic practice with the needs of audience and patron class as prime determinantsof the formsthat production would assume, but also linked standards of modernistpracticeto distribution developmentsoccurringin othercommunicationsmedia: books, graphicdesign, film.Althoughhis beliefswere buoyed by the same naive optimismtowardsthe enlightening power of technologyand the media that would ten years later limitthe ultimaterelevance of Walter Benjamin's essay, Lissitzky'sis not a mere "machine aesthetic." Rather, it is an attempt to establish an operative aesthetic frameworkthat could focus attentionsimultaneouslyon the existingneeds of mass audiences and on the available techniques and standards of the means of artisticproduction. Like Benjamin in his later essay, Lissitzkyconsiders aestheticformsand their procedures of production in the light of historyrather than in terms of universal categories. Yet unlike Benjamin, he perceives the ensuing transformations as a product of needs and functionsratherthan as a resultof technoforthe clarification of Lissitzky'smotivalogical changes. The textis important tion in the followingyears, as he decided to abandon almost all traditional formsof graphic and photographic,let alone painterlyor sculptural, production, and to concentrateexclusively on those practices that establish the new "monumentality"-the conditions of simultaneous collectivereception: to suppose that machines, i.e., the displacementof It is shortsighted manual by mechanical processes, are basic to the developmentofthe form and the figureof an artifact.In the firstplace it is the consumers' demand that determinesthe development, i.e., the demand of the social stratathat provide the "commissions."Today this is not a narrow circle anymore, a thin cream, but everybody,the masses. . .. What conclusions does this implyin our field?The most important thinghere is that the mode of productionof words and pictures is included in the same process: photography.. . . [In America] they in expositionin began to modifythe relationof word and illustration the directopposite of the European style.The highlydeveloped technique offacsimileelectrotype (half-tone blocks) was especiallyimportant forthis development; thus photomontagewas born. . . . With our workthe Revolution has achieved a colossal labor ofpropaganda and enlightenment.We ripped up the traditionalbook into single pages, magnifiedthese a hundred times, . . . and stuck them up as posters in the streets. . . . The innovation of easel painting made greatworksof art possible, but it has now lost itspower. The cinema and the illustratedweekly have succeeded it. . . . The book is the most monumentalart formtoday; no longer is it fondledby the delicate hands of a bibliophile,but seized by a hundred thousand hands.

FromFakturato Factography S

101

We . shall be satisfiedif we can conceptualize the epic and the . lyricdevelopments of our times in our formof the book.21 The degree to which Lissitzkyfocused at that time on the question of audience as a determinantof form,and on the perspectiveof creatingconditions forsimultaneouscollectivereception,becomes even more obvious in theessay's at-first surprisingequation between the reading space of the printedpage and the space ofdramaticexperience in the theater.According to Lissitzkythepage (and its traditionallayout and typography)shares conventionsof confinement - the peep-show as he calls it- where the spectatoris separated withthe theater fromthe performers, and the spectator'sgaze is contained--as in traditional easel painting--in the centralperspectiveof the proscenium stage. The revoluof book design ran parallel in Lissitzky'swork to the tionary transformation revolutionof the theatricalspace, forexample, as he would produce it in 1929 forMeyerhold'stheaterand its central,open-stage construction.Already in his 1922 book Of Two Squares(reading lessons forchildren,as he called it), he said that "the action unrolls like a film"and the method of typographicalmontage of experiencingthe reader's movementthroughtime and generatesthe tactility space.22 This integration of the dramatic experienceof theatrical/cinematographic space and the perceptual experience of static signs of graphic/photographic is successfully achieved in 1928 in Lissitzky'sfirst mamontage and typography jor exhibitionprojectforthe InternationalPress Exhibition,Pressa,in Cologne. Not surprisingly, we findon the first page of the catalogue that Lissitzkycreated to accompany the design of the USSR Pavilion the announcement,"Here you see in a typographickino-show the passage of the contentsof the Soviet Pavilion."23 Rather than thinking of Lissitzky'sinvolvementwiththe design of exhibitions merely as a task-orientedactivitythat remains marginal to the central concernsof his work(as have most authorsconsideringtheseprojects), it seems more adequate to see them, along with Lissitzky's subsequent involvement with the propaganda journal USSR in Construction, as a logical next step in the of moddevelopmentof his own work, as well as in the radical transformation ernistaestheticsand art production as it had been occurringwithinthe Soviet avant-garde since 1921 and the rise of productivism. We have no reason to doubt the sincerityof one of the last texts Lissitzky wrote, shortlybefore his death in 1941, a table of autobiographical dates and activities,where the entry

El Lissitzky, "Unser Buch," in El Lissitzky, 21. pp. 357-360. Yve-Alain Bois, "El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons," October, 22. no. 11 (Winter 1979), pp. 77-96. 23. Lissitzky, Katalog des Sowjet Pavillons auf der Internationalen Presse-Ausstellung, Cologne, Dumont Verlag, 1928, p. 16.

102

OCTOBER

under the year 1926 reads, "In 1926 my most importantwork as an artistbegan: the design of exhibitions."24 In 1927 Lissitzkyhad been commissioned to install his first "commercial" exhibitiondesign in the Soviet Union, the exhibitionof the PolygraphicUnion, a relatively modest project in Moscow's GorkyPark. Unlike the 1926 design for in Dresden, or the cabinet design for ArtExhibition the International Contemporary the Hannover Landesmuseum in 1927, this project was conceived and produced as a set fora trade show ratherthan an exhibitionof contemporary art; it was the result of the collaboration of a group of artists. furthermore, of photomontage,Lissitzky'scolleague and disciple Klucis, the "inventor" fromVitebsk, where both had struggledto come to terms with the legacy of Malevich's suprematismin 1919-20, was one of the collaboratorsin the project, as was Salomon Telingater, later to emerge as one of the major figuresin the revolutionof Soviet typographicdesign. It is in the catalogue of this exhibition - a book design project that was jointly produced by Lissitzkyand Telingater - that we findLissitzky'sessay "The Artistin Production." This text is not only Lissitzky'sown productivistmanifesto(Rodchenko and Stepanova's text,officially entitled"Productivist Manifesto,"had appeared already in 1921, and Ossip Brik'smanifesto"Into Production"had appeared in Lef in 1923), but it is also the text in which Lissitzkydevelops most succinctly his ideas about the uses of photographyin general and the functionsof photomontage in particular: As a result of the social needs of our epoch and the factthat artists acquainted themselveswithnew techniques,photomontage emerged in the years followingthe Revolution and flourishedthereafter. Even thoughthistechnique had been used in America much earlierforadvertising,and the dadaists in Europe had used it to shake up official bourgeois art, it only served political goals in Germany. But only here, with us, photomontageacquired a clearly socially determined and aestheticform.Like all othergreat art, it created itsown laws of formation.The power of its expression made the workersand the Komsomol circles enthusiastic for the visual arts and it had great influence on the billboards and newspapers. Photomontage at its present stage of development uses finished,entire photographs as elements fromwhich it constructsa totality.25 Lissitzky's 1927 text not only traces an astonishinglyclear historyof the technique of photomontageand itsoriginsin advertisingtechnology,but it also of the technique within gives us a clear view of his awareness that the functions
24. 25. Lissitzky, Prounund Wolkenbiigel, Dresden, VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1977, p. 115. Lissitzky, "Der Kiinstler in der Produktion," Proun,pp. 113ff.

FromFakturato Factography

103

the historicalcontextof the Soviet avant-garde are entirelydifferent fromthat of the Berlin dadaists, that the technique is only valid if it is bound into the particularneeds of a social group. That is to say, he disavows photomontageas a new artisticstrategythat has value qua artisticoperation and innovational mode of representation/production. The nucleus of the inherentpotential of photomontage, that is, the production of iconic, documentary information, already addressed in the anonymous textfromLefof 1924, is fullydeveloped in of the functions of the technique in 1927: the morphology Lissitzky'sdefinition of the productsof thattechnique has changed substantially by comparisonwith its original manifestationsin 1919-23. Those features that the technique of photomontagehad inheritedfromits origins in collage and the cubist critique of representation were gradually abandoned. Also abandoned was the overlap of photomontagewiththe techniques of modern advertising.These techniques seemed to have generated, in the dada context,the extremeprocedures ofjuxtapositionand fragmentation by which the originsin advertisingwere inverted and where the constructedartificiality of the artifactdestroyed the mythical nature of the commodity.This shift became apparent in the gradual returnto the iconic functions of the photograph,deletingaltogetherthe indexical potential of the photograph(as stillvisible in Lissitzky'sphotogramsofthe '20s) as well as the actual indexical structureof the agglomerated fragments of the photomonwhere the networkof cuts and lines ofjutting edges and unmediated tage itself, transitionsfromfragment to fragment was as important,ifnot more so, as the actual iconic representationcontained withinthe fragmentitself. an essential featureof the modernistparadigm thatunderlay Thusfaktura, theproductionof the Soviet avant-gardeuntil 1923, was replaced by a new concern for thefactographic capacity of the photograph, supposedly renderingasor mediation. It was at thismoment pects of realityvisible withoutinterference - in 1924 - that Rodchenko decided to abandon photomontagealtogetherand to engage in single-frame stillphotography, whichtransforms montage through the explicitchoice of camera angle, the framingof vision, the determinantsof the filmicapparatus, and the camera's superiority over the conventionsof human perception. In Lissitzky's essay this change is clearly indicated in the phrase arguing that "photomontage in its present stage of development uses finishedentire photographs as elements fromwhich it constructsa totality." From this we see that homogeneityin the single printis favoredover fragmenof an absent referent is favoredover the indexical tation, iconic representation of the trace of a verifiable of the construction of inmateriality process, tactility coherentsurfacesand spatial references is exchanged forthe monumentality of the camera-angle's awesome visions and the technologicalmedia optimismthat it conveys. Yet while it is evident that at thismoment the premisesof the modernistparadigm were vacated, and that a programmaticcommitmentto new audiences entirelychanged the nature of artisticproduction,it seems no more appropriate to neglect or condemn as propaganda Lissitzky's or Rodchenko's

104

OCTOBER

work fromthis period (nor their subsequent involvementwith Stalin's State Publishing House in the 1930s) than it would be to condemn certain surrealist artists(those in particularwho developed what Max Ernst was to call the technique of the "painted collage") as being responsibleforprovidingadvertising's visual and textual strategies,operative to this very day. Between and Propaganda:The Pressa Photomontage successfulexhibitiondesign in Moscow Partially as a response to his first in 1927, a committeechaired by Anatoly Lunacharsky decided to ask Lissitzky (togetherwith Rabinowich, who later withdrewfromparticipation)to design the Soviet Pavilion at the forthcoming International Exhibition and ofNewspaper in Cologne, the first BookPublishing exhibitionof its kind. Since the decision of the committeewas made on December 23, 1927, and the exhibition was to week of May 1928, Lissitzky and his collaboratorshad four begin in the first months to plan and produce the design of the exhibition. Apparently just two days afterthe committeehad appointed him, Lissitzkysubmitteda first general outlinethatforesawtheformation of a "collective of creators"withhimselfas the memgeneral coordinatorof the design. Among the approximatelythirty-eight bers of thecollective,only a few,among themthe stage designerNaumova, had previouslyparticipatedin exhibitiondesign and the decorationofrevolutionary pageants.26The largestgroup withinthecollectiveconsistedof agitpropgraphic thereafter to become some of the most importantgraphic dedesigners,shortly of the Soviet signers avant-garde. The majorityof the 227 exhibitswere produced and assembled in the workshopsfor stage design in the Lenin Hills in Moscow. The other elements were designed in Moscow as well, but produced and assembled in Cologne under the supervisionof Lissitzkyand Sergei Senkin, who had traveledto the site of the exhibitionto supervise and installthe Soviet Pavilion. The centerpieceof the exhibitionwas in factthe large-scale photomontage that Lissitzkyhad designed with Senkin's assistance. This photofresco, as Senkin called it, measured approximatelyseventy-two eleven feet and by depicted, in constant alternationof camera angles, of close-ups and long-shots,the history and importanceof the publishingindustryin the Soviet Union since the Revolution and its role in the education of the illiteratemasses of the newly industrialized state. Thus the photofresco,The Task ofthePressIs theEducation ofthe Masses (its official title), functionedas the centerpieceof an exhibitionthatwas devoted to documentingthe achievementsof the Revolution in the educational fieldfora skeptical, if not hostile western European public.
For a detailed descriptionof the historyand the procedures of the work forthe Pressaexhi26. bition design, see Igor W. Rjasanzew, "El Lissitzkyund die Pressain K61n 1928," in El Lissitzky, exhibition catalogue, Halle (GDR), Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, 1982, pp. 72-81.

~-~?3 J~4'_i~ ;:1::::::::1;:i-:;-:r : -:: :: ::: .: :: ::: ::::::`::;: :::::--::-::::I: --:--::-r :;: :: ::);t:j ::-,,-;::ir :::a~_:--? ::.;:-:::: .-.?_::: ---:--::"-:::: _ :~:wS:::::?:__?: :ii:-::i :ii~i~iiii~iiii:i

:::i:: :..

-:: a? --: ii:ilii.:: :: i~ii-i ~~~ ~b~Faf~Q~~gi ?::: ::i~i-~P: :~s`-:'i-i: .~i?i"di~-~iiiii:-i i

-... ;~I~i ,~e

ie?.g~:~ ?4::-i:

:--::::: % ..... ~:~Fa~a-: %- rr-s~: ::: :-: ..

:::

i:-:: :;::: :, ,: s
:I

1 i&-f-$
;i:

withSergei El Lissitzky Senkin). (in collaboration in Pressa Exhibition. 1928. Photofresco

:::::?::
j-F-

: :-?E .:?: :.:

--?;: ::-::::-;_:_:::::: ::::::_::

ii_?ii ii-:ii iii:iiiiiI~i: iil. i-ii::i :ii-iii':?.ii:i:[ :i- i---:--i--i-ii) --: ..,i

:::::-:-:::?

.. :-:I:4 B "~*:1 -:,$IE~~i~: -~8%i~r~;-.:e;-:::: ,,B~w~ ~~a~:: :::i:::::::* ::,?::: :--::::

106

OCTOBER

of thephotofresco followedthe strategies thatLissitzky The actual structure exhibition had laid out in the essay that accompanied the catalogue of his first design in 1927. Large-scale photographicprintswere assembled in an irregular and the visual dynamic of the montage resultedfromthejuxtagrid formation positionof the various camera angles and positions,but no longer froma jagged linear networkof seams and edges of heterogeneousphotographicfragments. - it was installedon the wall While the scale and size of the photomontage - aligned the workwitha traditionofarchitectural decat a considerable height oration and mural painting, the sequencing of the images and theiremphatic dependence on camera technologyand movement related the work to the experience of cinematicviewing, such as thatof the newsreel. In theirmostlyenthusiasticreviews, many visitorsto the Pressaexhibitionactually discussed the theatricaland cinematic aspects of the photofresco.One criticreminiscesthat one went through"a drama thatunfoldedin timeand space. One went through Reviewing both the Dresden expositions,climaxes, retardations,and finales.""27 and the Exhibition Cologne Pressadesign, a less welldesign by Lissitzky Hygiene had admit still to the affiliation with the most advanced critic design's disposed formsof cinematic production: The first impressionis brilliant.Excellent thetechnique, thearrangethe ment, organization,the modernway it has been constructed ... Propaganda, propaganda, that is the keynoteof Soviet Russian exhibitions,whethertheybe in Cologne or in Dresden. And how well the Russians know how to achieve the visual effects theirfilmshave been showing us foryears!28 Even though Lissitzkydid not meet Dziga Vertov until 1929 (inaugurata thatlasted until Lissitzky'sdeath in 1941), it is verylikelythat ing friendship in 1927-28 he was drawing not only upon the collage and montage sources of but equally upon thecinematicmontage cubism, dadaism, and constructivism, films,and used still techniques that Vertov had used in the first Kino-Pravda more daringlyand systematically in his work after 1923. In his manifesto"We," published in kinofot in 1922 and illustratedby a compass and ruler drawing by Rodchenko from1915, Vertov had called film "an art of movement,its central aim being the organization of the movements of objects in space." Hubertus Gassner speculates that this manifestohad considerable influenceon Rodchenko, as well as the constructivists, and led him away fromdrawing and painting into the photographic montage production that Rodchenko published two issues later in the same journal.29 It seems, however, that Vertov only voiced a concern that, as we saw above in several
27. 28. 29. Rjasanzew, p. 78. Cited in Rjasanzew, p. 79. Hubertus Gassner, Rodchenko Munich, Schirmer/Mosel, 1982, p. 121. Fotografien,

to Factography FromFaktura

107

debate itself,to instances, was very much at the center of the constructivist and "montage" the procedures that would transform make "construction" the of modes that it was passive, contemplative seeing. Sophie Kiippers argues Vertov who learned the montage technique from Lissitzky's earliest experiments with the photogram and the photomontage, and that it was primarily Lissitzky'stransparencytechnique and the double exposure as photographic montage technique that lefta particularlystrongimpressionon Vertov's own work in the mid-1920s. Only in the later work produced by Lissitzky forthe can we recognize, according to Kiippers, the magazine USSR in Construction influenceof Vertov's Kino-Pravda. In spite of the obvious parallels between the cinematographic montage and the photomontage,and leaving aside the question of historicalpriority and that influence,it is importantto clarifyin this context the specificdifferences existed between the mural-sized photomontages and exhibition designs of Lissitzkyand the montage of Vertov's Kino-Pravda. Clearly the stillphotograph and the new photomontage, as Lissitzky defined it, offeredfeaturesthat the moving imageryof the filmlacked: aspects of the same subject could be comforextensive reading and viewing; pared and contrastedand could be offered could be anacomplicated processes of constructionand social transformation lyzed in detailed accounts that ran parallel with statisticsand other written and the same subject could, as Rodchenko argued, be represented information; "at different times and in different circumstances." This practice of "realistic constructivism" as the criticGus called Lissitzky'sexhibitiondesign, had in fact wrought a substantial change within collage and photomontage aesthetics. What in collage had been the strategyof contingency, by which material had been juxtaposed, emphasizing the divergence of the fragments, had now become the stringency of a conscious constructionof documentary factographic information. In an excellentrecentstudy of Russian constructivism, Christina Lodder has argued that it was the failureof the constructivists actually to implement theirproductivistprogram (due to shortage of materials, lack of access to industrial facilities, disinterest on the part of the engineersand administrators of the State manufacturingcompanies) that drove these artistsinto the field of typography, publication and posterdesign, agitational propaganda and exhibition design.30 The emergence of a strongantimodernism,backed by the Party as a resultof Lenin's New Economic Policy in 1921, required the returnto traditional values in art and laid the foundationsforthe rise of socialist realism. Lodder argues that it was as a result of these changes and as an attempt at competition with these reactionary forces that Lissitzky's and Rodchenko's workat thattime employediconic, photographicrepresentation and abandoned
30. Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism, New Haven and London, Yale UniversityPress, 1983.

108

OCTOBER

the radical syntax of the montage aesthetic. The problem with this criticism, however- as with all previous rejections of the later work of Rodchenko and Lissitzky-.is that criteria of judgment that were originallydeveloped within of modernism are now applied to a practice of representation the framework disassociated itselffromthat framethat had deliberatelyand systematically workin orderto lay the foundationsofan art productionthatwould correspond to the needs of a newly industrializedcollective society. Because, as we have seen, these conditions required radically different production procedures and modes of presentationand distribution,any historical critique or evaluation the actual intentionsand conditions will have to develop its criteriafromwithin at the origin of these practices. Lissitzky'sexhibitiondesign does overcome the traditionallimitationsof it withinthe necesthe avant-gardepractice of photomontageand reconstitutes sary conditions of simultaneous collective reception that were given in the cinema and in architecture.Further,in his new practice of montage, Lissitzky analytical sequence," as Tretyakovwas incorporatedthe method of"systematic afterwards.Tretyakovwrotein 1931 thatthe photographer/ to defineit shortly artist should move from the single-image aesthetic to the systematicphotographic sequence and the long-termobservation: If a more or less random snapshot is like an infinitely finescale that has been scratched from the surface of reality with the tip of the finger,then in comparison the photoseriesor the photomontagelets us experience the extended massiveness of reality, its authentic meaning. We build systematically.We must also photograph systematically. Sequence and long-termphotographic observation-that is the method.31 Modernism's Aftermath In spite of the fact that even the most conservative internationalnewspapers reported enthusiasticallyon Lissitzky's Pressadesign, and that he received a medal fromthe Soviet governmentin recognitionof the success of this project as well as having been named an honorary member of the Moscow town Soviet, he seems to have been personallydissatisfied withthe results.This is evident in a letterthat he wrote on December 26, 1928, to his Dutch friend, the de Stijl architect J. J. P. Oud. "It was a big success forus," he mused, "but there is aesthetically somethingof a poisoned satisfaction.The extremehurry

31. Sergei Tretyakov, "From the Photoseries to the Long-Term Photographic Observation," in Revolutionskunst Foto, IV (1931), 20, reprintedin German translation in Zwischen und Proletarskoje Sozialistischem Realismus,ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhart Gillen, Cologne, Dumont Verlag, 1979, pp. 222ff.

to Factography FromFaktura

109

and the shortage of time violated my intentionsand the necessary completion of the form- so it ended up being basically a theaterdecoration."32 We will, however, find in neitherLissitzky'slettersnor his diary entries any private or public disavowal of or signs of regretabout having abandoned the role of the modernistartistforthat of the producer of political propaganda in the service of the new Communist state. Quite the opposite: the letterswe know Lissitzkyto have written during the years of his subsequent involvement withboth the design of exhibitionsforthe governmentand his employmentby Stalin's State Publishing House on the magazine USSR in Construction clearly indicate that he was as enthusiasticallyat work in fashioningthe propaganda forStalin's regime as were Rodchenko and Stepanova, who were at that time involved in similar tasks. Clearly Lissitzky shared the naive utopianism that also characterizes Walter Benjamin's later essay, an optimism that Adorno criticizedin his response to the text, saying, Both the dialectic of the highest and the lowest [modernism and mass-culture]bear the stigmataof capitalism, both contain elements of change. . . . Both are tornhalves of an integralfreedom,to which however theydo not add up. It would be romanticto sacrificeone to the other,eitheras the bourgeois romanticismof the conservationof or as the anarchistic romanticismof personalityand all that stuff, blind confidencein the spontaneous power of the proletariatin the a productofbourgeois historicalprocess- a proletariatwhichis itself society.33 But it is also clear by now thatboth Lissitzky'sand Benjamin's media optimism preventedthemfromrecognizingthatthe attemptto create conditionsof a simultaneous collectivereceptionforthe new audiences of the industrialized state would very soon issue into the preparation of an arsenal of totalitarian, Stalinistpropaganda in the Soviet Union. What is worse, it would deliver the aestheticsand technologyofpropaganda to the Italian Fascist and German Nazi regimes. And only a littlelater we see theimmediateconsequences of Lissitzky's new montage techniques and photofrescoesin their successfuladaptation for the ideological needs of American politics and the campaigns forthe acceleration of capitalistdevelopment throughconsumption. Thus, what in Lissitzky's hands had been a tool of instruction,political education, and the raising of consciousness was rapidly transformed into an instrument forprescribingthe silence of conformity and obedience. The "consequent inrushof barbarism"of which Adorno speaks in the letterto Benjamin as one possible resultof the un-

32. Lissitzky, Proun,p. 135. 33. Theodor W. Adorno, Letter to Walter Benjamin, London, March 18, 1936, reprintedin Aesthetics and Politics,London, New Left Books, 1977, pp. 120ff.

Gustav Klucis. Photomontage poster (two versions). 1930.

::::i-

::::: : -: :: :i:::::-: ::,-::?

;-i::::::;,:::

-:?

-:-: :: -:::::i

::?::: .i::(: aiziii

:lj ON v,,Aft; _..kja~E-.~~

dialectical abandonment of modernismwas soon to become a historicalreality. As early as 1932 we see the immediate impact of the Pressaproject in its adapin Italy. Informedby tion forthe propaganda needs of the Fascist government in particularBardi the membersof theItalian League of Rational Architecture, and Paladini (who was an expert on the art of the Soviet avant-garde), the architectGiuseppe Terragni constructedan enormous mural-sizedphotomonIt would require a detailed tage for the Exposition of theFascist Revolution.34 the transformations that took place formaland structuralanalysis to identify within photomontage aesthetics once they were put to the service of Fascist politics. It may sufficehere to bring only one detail to the attentionof the reader, a detail in whichthatinversionof meaning under an apparent continuity of a formalprinciple becomes apparent, proving that it is by no means with a new being refurbished simply the case of an available formalstrategy content. and ideological political
ofcollagethatP. M. Bardi'sworkTavola in 1968in herhistory wrote 34. HertaWescher degli had been modeledupon Lissitzky's orrori montageworkpublishedin Western journals. For was even more directsince he had been born in Paladini, Wescherargues,the relationship in theSovietavant-garde. In rea strong interest and had developed MoscowofItalianparents a study oftheSovietPavilionat theVeniceBienalein 1924,he published sponsetotheexhibition Union Soviet Artin the Cologne,DumontVerlag, 1968,pp. 76ff. (1925). See Wescher,Collage,

ii

All fists have been clenched as one, JohnHeartfield. cover for specialissueagainst photomontage fascismof

Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung,vol.XIII, no. 40,

1934.

NDERNUMMER

?w-dft mJes 06val

ftn taw Ao~o&4ea

The detail in question is the representationof the masses in Terragni's photomural, where a crowd of people is contained in the outlines of a relief shaped like the propellerof a turbineor a ship. Clearly it was one of the most fornew mass audiences, not only difficult tasks,in constructing representations collective of simultaneous conditions to establish actually viewing,but further, of the masses to construct themselves,to depict the collectivity. representations One of the most prominentexamples ofthisnecessityis an earlyphotomontage poster by Klucis, which in fact seems to have been so successfulthat Klucis fortwo different used the same visual configuration purposes.35The subject of
the version of the photomontage poster in 1930 reads, "Let us fulfill 35. Gustav Klucis's first plan of the great projects," and it was an encouragement to participate in the five-yearplan of hand which in 1930. The second version of the poster is identical in its image of an outstretched hands and an even larger number of photographic itselfcontains a large number of outstretched portraits,but thistime the inscriptionexhortsthe women of the Soviet Union to participatein the election and decision-makingprocess of theirlocal soviets. This poster seems to have also had an influenceon John Heartfield, who transformed Klucis's outstretchedhand into an outstretched have arm witha fist,givingthe salute of the Communist Internationalunder the slogan, "All fists been clenched as one," on the cover of the AIZ, no. 40 (1934). Here, as well as in Klucis's and Terragni's work, the image of the masses is contained in the synecdochic representation. In Klucis's and Heartfield'sphotomontages it is, however, the synecdoche of the human body as a sign of active participation,whereas in the Terragni montage it is the synecdocheof the machine that subjugates the mass of individuals. The inscriptionin Terragni's photomontagemural reads

112

OCTOBER

of political participationin the the poster in both versions is the representation In Klucis's posterparticipaof the new Soviet State. decision-makingprocesses hand withinwhich hundreds of faces are tion is encouraged by an outstretched contained: thus the individuation resultingfromthe participationin political seem to decisions and subordinationunder the political needs of the collectivity be successfullyintegratedinto one image. In Terragni's photomural the same structurehas been deployed; this time, however, the overall formof the outhand of thevotingindividualis replaced by the outlinesof the machine stretched (the propeller, the turbine) which contains the image of the masses of people. And it is clear that the Fascist image means what it unknowingly conveys: that the subordinationof the masses under the state apparatus in the service of the continued dominance of the political and economic interestsof the industrial ruling class has to be masked behind the image of technologicalprogress and of those who are being mastery.Abstractedas it is, however, fromthe interests mastered, it appears as an image of anonymityand subjugation rather than one of individual participationin the constructionof a new collective. that the principlesof photomontageare completelyabanIt is significant doned once the technique of the photomural is employed forthe propaganda purposes of the German fascists.In the same manner that theyhad discovered Eisenstein's filmsas a model to be copied fortheirpurposes (Leni Riefenstahl forthepreparationofher own propaganda movies), studiedhis workthoroughly that the achievements of the Russian artistsin the had also recognized they fieldof exhibitiondesign could be employed to serve theirneeds to manipulate the urban and rural masses of Germany during the crisis of the post-Weimar period. When the German Werkbund, which had just been turned into a fascistorganization, put togethera popular photographyshow in 1933 called the organizersexplicitly TheCamera, compared theirexhibitiondesign withthat of the Russians (without, of course, mentioningLissitzky'sname): If you compare this exhibition with the propaganda rooms of the Russians that received so much attentionduring the last years, you will instantly become aware of the direct, unproblematic,and truly of realityin thisroom. These grandiose nature of the representation pictures address the spectator in a much more direct manner than the confusionof typography, photomontage,and drawings. . . . This hall of honor is so calm and grand thatone is almost embarrassed to talk any longer about propaganda in this context.36 To erase even thelast remnantofmodernist practicein photomontage,the seams and the margins where the constructednature of realitycould become
words of Mussolini attractthe people of Italy with the accordingly, "See how the inflammatory violent power of turbines and convert them to Fascism." 36. Kemp, Foto-Essays, p. 14.

....... ..

?m rg
OL

. ........

O?t

44-

it . . . ., . . ...... .... v??a a

mural Giuseppe Terragni. Photomontage for the of the Fascist Revolution. 1932. Exposition of Exposition

Photomural at theGerman Werkbund Die Exhibition 1933. Berlin. Kamera,

........

A 4t I

LAAM, as ?Wkl h "t 7mm AM, ................. ..........

114

OCTOBER

its potential forchange obvious - had now become a apparent- and therefore standard practice in totalitarianpropaganda, and construction was replaced by the awe-inspiring monumentality of the gigantic, single-image panorama. What had once been the visual and formal incorporationof dialectics in the structureof the montage--in its simultaneityof opposing views, its rapidly changing angles, its unmediated transitionsfrompart to whole--and had as such embodied the relationshipbetween individual and collectivity as one that is constantlyto be redefined,we now finddisplaced by the unifiedspatial perspective (often the bird's-eye-view)that travels over uninterruptedexpanses (land, fields,water, masses) and thus naturalizes the perspectiveof governance and control,of the surveillance of the rulers'omnipresenteye in the metaphor of nature as an image of a pacified social collectivewithouthistoryor conflict. It remains to be determinedat what point, historically as well as structurwithin this reversal takes the of ally, place practices photomontageduring the 1930s. Unificationof the image and its concomitantmonumentalizationwere - as we saw --already operative in Lissitzky'swork for the Pressaexhibition. These tendencies were of considerable importanceforthe success of his enterprise. And according to Stepanova's own text, Rodchenko abandoned photomontage principles as early as 1924, replacing them by single-frameimages and/or series of single-frameimages with highly informativedocumentary qualities. At what point these factographicdimensions turned into the sheer adulation of totalitarianpower, however, is a question that requires future investigation.That this point occurs within Rodchenko's work, if not also in is a problem that modernistart Lissitzky's,forthejournal USSR in Construction historianshave triedto avoid by stylingthese artistsas puristheroes and marto the spiritualrealm of abstractart tyrswho had to sacrificetheircommitment their enforced involvement with A revisionof thiscomforting the state. disby tortionof historyis long overdue. It is a distortion that deprives these artists ifnothingelse - of theiractual political identity commitment to the cause (their of Stalinist politics was enthusiasticand sincere and came unforced,as is evident fromthe fact that an artistsuch as Tatlin, who did not work forthe state agencies, continued to live his private, if economically miserable existence withoutharassment), as it deprives us of the understandingof one of the most inherentin modernism itself:that of the historicaldialectic profoundconflicts between individual autonomy and the representation of a collectivity through visual constructs.Clearly the historyof photomontageis one of the terrainsin which this dialectic was raised to the highestdegree of its contradictory forces. Thus it is not surprisingthat we find the firstsigns of a new authoritarian monumentalaestheticdefinedthroughthe veryrejectionof thelegacy ofphotomontage in favorof a new unifiedimagery. In 1928 Stepanova could stilltrace this terrain'sdevelopmentthroughan apparentlyneutral political terminology in characterizingthe climax of the productivistfactographicposition: Within its shortlife,photomontagehas passed throughmany phases

to Factography FromFaktura

115

of development. Its first stage was characterized by the integration of large numbers of photographs into a single composition, which helped bring into reliefindividual photo images. Contrasts in photographs of various sizes and, to a lesser extent, the graphic surface itself formedthe connectivemedium. One mightsay thatthiskind of montage had the character of a planar montage superimposed on whitepaper ground. The subsequent developmentof photomontage has confirmedthe possibilityof using photographsas such . . . the individual snapshots are not fragmented and have all the characteristicsof a real document. The artisthimselfmust take up photogracame to assume primary phy. . . . The value of the photographitself importance; the photograph is no longer raw material formontage or forsome kind of illustratedcomposition but has an independent and complete totality.37 But two years later, fromwithin the Soviet Russian reflection upon the of the technique of photomontageitselfwe witness the purposes and functions rise of that concern for the new monumentalityand heroic pathos that was the prime featureof the German fascistattack on the legacy of photomontage quoted above. In 1930, in his text"The Social Meaning of Photomontage,"the criticO. L. Kusakov writes, ... the solution to the problem of the proletarian,dynamic photoconnected to the simultaneous solution of the montage is inherently for a monumental ofthetasks question style,since the monumentality of the construction of socialism requires a heroic pathos forthe organization of the consciousness of the spectators. Only in a successful - in conjunctionwith the synthesisof dynamics and monumentality constitutionof a dialectical relationshipbetween the levels of lifecan photographyfulfill the functionsof an art that organizes and leads life.38 Thus it seems that Babichev's original, utopian quest and prognosis for the futurefunctions of a postmodernist art to become "an informed factographic analysis of the concretetasks which social lifeposes," one thatwill "organize the consciousness and psyche of the masses by organizing objects and ideas," had become truewithintenyears'time,althoughin a manner thatwas perhaps quite different fromwhat he had actually hoped for. Or we could say that the latent

37. Stepanova, "Photomontage" (1928), English translation in AlexanderRodenchenko, ed. Elliott, pp. 91ff. 38. 0. L. Kusakov, "Die soziale Bedeutung der Fotomontage," Sovetskoe Foto,Moscow, 1930, no. 5, p. 130. Quoted fromthe German translationin Zwischen Revolutionskunst undSozialistischem Realismus,pp. 230ff.

::-:-:::: ::!:

Alexander Rodchenko. Two pagesfromthemagazine USSR in Construction, no. 12, December 1933. (Special issueon theconstruction oftheStalin Canal.)

-i??

:::~::: ::-:::1:::::?.::

-i:ii iiiiiii::i::?:i~ :i:-i-iiiii iii_-: i--; _ _-:--: -i :..i:: : f---:~_?e__:_ :::r::-: ::: ::-: :---:::

:: .:::-: I~-?~rP~E~"""'"~i~-i~i"

?r. :;-::I::::: i::i(s;:i : :: P^~i ji~~, ~. i?e~;-i -r ~;?,~lii:~-;;r, ::::: :-:::::::~

-: :-:: -:-::-:::::::'-~--;_ ::::

:: :::i :::?::-i: :: :?::: :: :: :: .-: : :i: ::::::::-::'-?::-?:: -::::::: ::-::::--:::1-;:::::: --:i:.-:-i :-::?ic-:::-l-_-: _I,:,I:,-,:j.-: :: :: ::::'::::::;:--:;--; :;::?:::ii:::::?::~~ i~-~i~_: i~::~~: ~.-.-":~-----"~"*:8'"11"' ii~iii.li~i : - :-:::: :i :::::::.: .: :,--a--~: -i-,.?,~?R-:L-:':: -:::: -:::i: :: ----'::-::?:;

reads:In the course in photograph Overprinted caption of 20 monthsalmost 20,000 skilledworkmenwere trained in 40 trades. They were all ex-thieves, bandits, kulaks, wreckers,murderers.For the first time theybecame conscious of the poetryof labor, the romance of construction work. They workedto the music of their own orchestras.

-1::: ?t~l --:%-:-i-lii.i~-_*-i :ii:t-

ii-

_ :: ::

.. ii:iiiii-iii ii:iiiii

FromFakturato Factography

117

element of social engineering, inherentin the notion of social progress as a resultof technologicaldevelopmentwhich art could mediate, had finally caught up withmodernism'sorientationtoward science and technologyas its underlying paradigms fora cognitivelyand perceptuallyemancipatorypractice. This historical dialectic seems to have come full circle in Rodchenko's on the site of the construction career. In 1931 he worked as artist-in-residence of the White Sea Canal in order to document the heroic technologicalachievements of the Stalin governmentand to produce a volume of photographicrecords. But apparentlyin thefirst year alone ofhis staymore than 100,000 workers lost theirlives due to inhuman workingconditions. While it is unimaginable that Rodchenko would not have been aware of the conditions that he photographed foralmost two years, his subsequent publications on the subject only project a grandiose vision of nature harnassed by technologyand the criminal and hedonisticimpulses of the prerevolutionary and counterrevolutionary permastered the of in the forcedlabor camps reeducation sonality through process of the White Sea Canal.39 While it is undoubtedly clear that at this time Rodchenko did not have ofthe State Publishing House any otherchoice than to complywiththe interest if he wanted to maintain his role as an artistwho participated actively in the of the new Soviet society(and we have no reason to doubt thisto construction be his primarymotive), we have to say at least that by 1931 the goals of factography had clearly been abandoned. However, the contemptmeted out froma Western perspectiveat the fate of modernistphotomontageand factographic practice in the Soviet Union durinto totalitarianpropaganda in fascist ing the 1930s or at its transformation Italy and Germany seems historicallyinappropriate. For the technique was adapted to the specificallyAmerican needs of ideological deployment at the very same moment. Once again, the traditionof photomontageitselfhad first to be attacked in orderto clear theground forthenew needs of the monumental propaganda machines. Here is Edward Steichen's American variation on the theme of an antimodernistbacklash in favor of his version of a "productivist" integrationof art and commerce in 1931: The modern European photographerhas not liberated himselfas definitely [as the American commercial photographer].He stillimitated his friend,the painter, with the so-called photomontage. He
39. Gassner makes a first attemptat assessing these factswith regard to Rodchenko's career at large in his doctoral thesis on the artist, Rodchenko-Fotograjfen, especially pp. 104ff,and n. 475. The problem is, however, that he seems to base his information on the workingconditions at the White Sea Canal and the number of victimson the "testimony" of Alexander Solzhnytsyn'swritings, clearly a source that would have to be quoted with extreme caution in a historical study. The main work on Lissitzky's, Rodchenko's, and Stepanova's collaboration with Stalin's State Publishing House remains to be done.

118

OCTOBER

has merelychosen the modern painteras his prototype.We have gone well past the painful period of combining and trickingthe banal thatwe findmany commercial photograph. . . . It is logical therefore modern photographerslined up with architects and designers instead of with painters or photographicart salons.40 Ten years later Steichen staged his first projectat the Museum of Modern Once again its propagandistic success deArt, the exhibitionRoad to Victory. pended almost entirely,as ChristopherPhillips has shown, on a debased and version of Lissitzky'sexhibitiondesigns.41In this case it was Herbert falsified who provided American industryand ideology with what he thought Bayer ideas and practice had attemptedto achieve. Bayer was well suited Lissitzky's to this task, having already prepared an elaborate photomontagebrochure for the National Socialists' Deutschland of 1936, staged to coincide with Ausstellung the Berlin Olympics. When asked by ChristopherPhillips about his contribution to this project forthe Nazis, Bayer's only commentwas, "This is an interesting booklet insofaras it was done exclusivelywith photographyand photomontage, and was printedin a duotone technique."42Thus, at the cross-section of politically emancipatory productivistaesthetics and the transformation of modernistmontage aesthetics into an instrumentof mass education and eninto totalitarian lightenment,we find not only its imminent transformation propaganda, but also its successfuladaptation forthe needs of the ideological apparatus of the culture industryof Western capitalism.

40. Edward Steichen, "Commercial Photography,"AnnualofAmerican Design,New York, 1931, p. 159. 41. no. 22 (Fall 1982), Christopher Phillips, "The Judgment Seat of Photography," October, pp. 27ff,provides detailed informationon Steichen's historyand practice of exhibition design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Allan Sekula's essay, "The Trafficin Photographs" and Modernity, Halifax, The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and (reprinted in Modernism Design, 1983), gives us the best discussion of the FamilyofMan exhibition by Steichen and also touches upon the issues of exhibition design in general. 42. I am gratefulto Christopher Phillips for providing me with this informationand for his permission to quote fromhis private correspondence with Herbert Bayer, as well as forhis lend1936 was also published as an insertin the deing me the brochure itself.Deutschland Ausstellung sign magazine Gebrauchsgraphik, April 1936.

Herbert Bayer.Photomural for Edward Steichen's Road to Victory at theMuseumofModern exhibition Art,New York.1942.

1~r::?? ,:sh :~'.B~~'??i -' ;;-:'";~'~~P al,54*" 4 ?; C

~ ~ ~

'7e :::::--:::/ , :?::-:: :-'_'-ii .:.. '~iii.-:?---i'----::-i~-i~: ? '-:---~AV? Vm

~

_-::. --?-::::-::-:;-::::-:.:-?_-_~M.

:---:-_-

Ar~ ~a,
~

lip"
~

INM-ii--:_ Iff",iii'i &i~;4?i~~~~-~~~ak ~ W/M ~~s$.pa~a~~:_

Irha~ " q

:an j,

kf :-$; I(i)i~~~ ill~~;l Run M *'A! S1 rMVr

t Vag:li~~_~h~ 1.4

Herbert Bayer.Photomontage for brochure accompanying the exhibition Deutschland Ausstellung,Berlin.1936.