ROSA LUXEMBURG AND KARL LIEBKNECHT:

-1

REVOLUTION, REMEMBRANCE,

REPRESENTATION
An exhibition devised by John A. Walker (text copyright 2009) held at the

Pentonville Gallery, 4 Whitfield, Street, London, from 10 October to 22 November

1986.

Director of the Gallery was Geoff Evans. The catalogue was designed by Ismail

Saray and Jenni Boswell-Jones of AND Association. Photography was by Stuart

Michaels. Funding was supplied by Greater London Arts and the London Borough

of Camden

Cover with woodcut images by Anton Raderscheidt - Rosa - and Franz Seiwart -
Karl.
Installation shot with paintings by Spadari.
FOREWORD

In 1961, while an art student, I visited the Young Contemporaries exhibition in

London. Included in that show was R. B. Kitaj's The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg.

The painting intrigued me because its narrative content and 'quotational' style was

so very different from my own abstract work. Since I had never heard of

Luxemburg, the picture also served to improve my education. I remember thinking

that one day I would study the painting and its subject matter in more detail. A little

later - twenty five years later to be precise - I kept the promise I had made myself -

hence the present exhibition and essay.

Although I was unaware of it in 1961, the conjunction of art and politics

represented by Kitaj's canvas was to become a central issue for me and many others
in subsequent years. This exhibition is intended as a modest contribution to that

issue.

It is fashionable in certain theoretical circles to deny that artistic signs have

referents (that is, refer to a reality outside of themselves). All the works featured in

this exhibition represent, or refer to, real people and real historical events. This fact

does not preclude intertextuality (that is, the images also refer to other images), nor

does it preclude striking variations in the kind of representations produced. A

materialist would say: there is only one reality, one truth, but there are many

different ways of depicting it; the images vary because the determinate means of

representation and the aims of the artists were different in each case, not because

there was more than one historical truth.

This exhibition is a historical exhibition - it includes works over sixty years old,

works concerning events which took place in 1919 - but it is not purely historical

because works by living artists, paintings produced in the 1980s, are also

included. In other words, the exhibition challenges the past/present distinction of

conventional history-writing, in which 'the past' is conceived .of as a realm of

academic or scholarly interest only, as a period utterly remote, utterly separate

from the concerns of today. What this exhibition demonstrates is that the past

informs the present, that it survives in the minds and hearts of the living. It shows

there is a continuity between then and now which purely historical art exhibitions

can obscure.

When works of art are exhibited in public and private galleries certain aspects

are stressed at the expense of others: the way in which a work is presented, the
company in which it is shown, inflects the viewer's response. In particular, the full

meaning and significance of a work's content can be lost or lessened if the

exhibition context invites art-historical, formal or aesthetic readings (that is, the

work is seen as 'an early Kitaj', 'a German print', 'a masterpiece of lithography',

etc). Part of the motivation behind this exhibition has been to restore the meaning

and significance of the artworks' human, political and historical content.

Kollwitz's woodcut of workers mourning Karl Liebknecht can certainly be

appreciated as an aesthetic object, as a great print or as a key example of German

art; its depiction of grief may also evoke a sympathetic response regardless of the

viewer's political persuasion, but the fact that the person being mourned was a real

historical figure, a communist revolutionary who was murdered for his political

convictions is surely of some importance. How do those on the right, one wonders,

reconcile their aesthetic response to such an image with their distaste for memorials

to Marxist revolutionaries? Can they fully share the grief represented if they do not

also grieve for the failure of the Spartacist revolution?

THE MURDERS

Berlin, January 1919. The city is under the control of counter-revolutionary troops

following an abortive revolutionary struggle by members of the Spartacus League.

On the evening of the 15th the hiding place of two Spartacus leaders Karl

Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg at Frau Markussohn's flat in the middle-class

district of Wilmersdorf is discovered by para-military forces. The two leaders are

arrested and taken separately to the Eden Hotel in the centre of Berlin then serving
as the headquarters of the Garde-Kavalierie-Schützen-Division. Following an

interrogation Liebknecht is taken out of the hotel by a side door. As he emerges one

of the guards - Private O. Runge - smashes his head with a rifle butt. The stunned

prisoner is then dragged into a car and driven to the Tiergarten (Berlin's Hyde

Park) where he is shot by Captain von Pflugk-Hartung 'while trying to escape'.

Later the corpse is delivered to a local mortuary as that of an unknown man.

When Luxemburg arrives at the hotel soldiers waiting in the lobby taunt her and

beat her up. She is then taken to the first floor to be interrogated by Captain

Waldemar Pabst. Despite her perilous situation Luxemburg gives stinging replies to

Pabst's questions. During the night Luxemburg is removed from the hotel by

soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Kurt Vogel. For the second time Runge

uses his rifle butt on a defenceless prisoner. Luxemburg's sufferings are short lived:

she is shot in the head by Vogel while in the car. Her body is then dumped into the

dirty waters of the Landweher canal where it remains undiscovered until 31 May;

her funeral takes place on 13 June 1919. (1)

Rosa Luxemburg, photo Henry Guttmann

Karl Liebknecht.

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 THE VICTIMS

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was a small, dark haired, dynamic woman who

devoted her whole life and energies to the struggle for socialism. She came from a

Jewish family in Poland but married a German in order to become a member of the

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), then the largest and most prestigious

socialist party in Europe. Most of her active political career was spent in the service

of the SPD though as time passed she grew increasingly disillusioned with the SPD's

reformism and lack of militancy. 'Red Rosa', as she became known, was a convinced

internationalist and revolutionary. Her brand of Marxism was humanitarian and

stressed democracy and mass action to achieve socialism. She was a comrade but

also a critic of Lenin; she opposed the use of terror by socialist governments.

Luxemburg made important contributions to the theory of Marxism in particular

on the topic of Imperialism. During the first world war Luxemburg was imprisoned

for long periods because of her anti-war polemics. With Liebknecht and others she

formed the Spartacus League, an alliance of left-wingers opposed to the war.

Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919) also devoted his life to the cause of socialism. In his

case it was a family tradition: he was the son of Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900)

one of the founding fathers of the SPD. Karl trained to be a lawyer and eventually

he became a deputy of the Prussian Diet and the Reichstag. In 1907 he was

sentenced for high treason for his book Militarism and Antimilitarism. Before the

first world war it was thought that the international solidarity of socialists would

prevent war from taking place but when the war came the SPD members of the
Reichstag acted like national patriots and voted for war credits. Liebknecht

achieved notoriety as the only SPD member to vote against war credits. Like Rosa,

he too spent a period in prison for his anti-war activities.

As the war dragged on opposition to it grew and in 1917 the SPD split. The

internationalist minority of the SPD founded a new party - the Independent Social

Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) - dedicated to achieving peace. In November

1918, following the military defeat of Germany, a 'revolution' took place as a result

of which a provisional government was formed by the SPD under the leadership of

Friedrich Ebert a moderate social democrat who favoured the setting up of a

constitutional monarchy. Liebknecht advocated the establishment of a republic and

that all power should be placed in the hands of Workers and Soldiers Councils.

Since the USPD proposed to collaborate with Ebert, the Spartacus League decided

to found a new revolutionary party - the German Communist Party (KPD). Its

founding conference took place on 30/31 December 1918 and 1 January 1919.

During the months of December and January, strikes, mass demonstrations,

occupations of public buildings and newspaper offices, and street fighting took place

as various factions tried to gain control of the state. Despite Luxemburg's doubts

that conditions favoured armed uprising, the younger radical Spartacists resorted to

force. However, counter-revolutionary troops proved to be stronger and better

organized. (2) To restore 'law and order' Ebert had encouraged the formation of

Freikorps (volunteer para-military units) under the command of Gustav Noske.

Thus it was that the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg took place under a

'socialist' government.
 THE ARTISTIC RESPONSE

Naturally, the brutal assassinations were a tremendous shock to Party members

and their sympathizers throughout the world. The loss of Luxemburg and

Liebknecht was especially damaging because the revolutionary forces in Germany

were deprived at a crucial time of two leaders who believed in democracy and mass

participation. German artists, poets and playwrights responded to the event by

creating works of art in a variety of media to honour the memory and courage of

the two martyrs. These artists included George Grosz, Käthe Kollwitz, Lovis

Corinth, Max Beckmann, Karl Jakob Hirsch, Karl Holz, Conrad Felixmüller,

Johannes Molzahn, Mies van der Rohe, Alfred Doblin, Bertold Brecht and Erwin

Piscator. In the more immediate past the American artists R. B. Kitaj and May

Stevens, the Italian artist Giangiacomo Spadari, and the English artists Sue Coe and

Margaret Harrison have also produced works in memory of Rosa and Karl. In 1986

the feature film Rosa Luxemburg, directed by the West German Margarethe von

Trotta, was released in Britain.

Film Still from Rosa Luxemburg, directed by Margarethe von Trotta, 1985.

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 Montage of images relating to Piscator’s Despite All! 1925.

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Piscator's 1925 theatrical review Despite All! presented in factographic style a

history of Germany from 1914 to the murders of the Spartacist leaders. The form

used - a montage of quotes from speeches, newspaper reports, and documentary

film extracts - proved highly effective and the review was enthusiastically received

by a mass, left-wing audience. In charge of the design of Despite All! was John

Heartfield.

Book cover.

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Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) was a doctor, a psychiatrist, and one of the major

German writers of the twentieth century. Today he is best known for his 1929 novel

Berlin Alexanderplatz. In 1939 he began a trilogy entitled November 1918: A German

Revolution. The concluding volume of this epic series - Karl and Rosa - is a

fictionalized account of the final months of the Spartacists' struggle. This text, a

strange mixture of fact and fantasy, contains some thought-provoking reflections on

the duty of the living to the dead. Karl and Rosa was first published in German in

1950; an English translation was issued by Fromm International, New York, in

1983.

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Epitaph 1919.

Red Rosa now has vanished too, Where she lies is hid from

view. She told the poor what life is about, And so the rich have

rubbed her out. B. Brecht.

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KOLLWITZ

Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) was a socialist-feminist artist whose graphic works

invariably addressed social themes. Her somewhat melancholy images of workers

and the poor were notable for their realism and human sympathy. Although

Kollwitz aligned herself against their exploiters, she never joined any left-wing

political party. She was, however, prepared from time to time to use her skill as an

artist in a partisan fashion by producing posters for particular causes and

campaigns. And she naturally shared some of the ideas of the Spartacists. For

example, like them Kollwitz was strongly opposed to war in all its forms (her

younger son Peter had been killed during the first world war).

Kollwitz's diaries and letters reveal the moderate character of her political beliefs

and her rejection of revolutionary violence. In June 1921, she wrote: 'I am not a

revolutionary ..... I believed myself to be revolutionary and was only an evolutionist.

Indeed, I now no longer know whether I'm still a socialist, whether I'm not actually

much more of a democrat' (3) It is clear that Kollwitz was not a supporter of

Liebknecht or Luxemburg, nevertheless she admired their courage and was

profoundly shocked by their deaths: her diary described the murders as 'despicable

and outrageous' .
 Since Kollwitz was known to the Liebknecht family, she was commissioned by

them to make a portrait of Karl from his corpse. The catalogue of her drawings

contains six studies of Liebknecht's head (four in profile, two in three-quarter view).

To gain a better understanding of her subject Kollwitz read Liebknecht's letters. She

also witnessed his funeral and was deeply impressed by the silence of the thousands

who attended it. (Liebknecht was buried on the 25th of January 1919 along with

twenty-five other Spartacists in Berlin's Friedrichesfelde cemetery; an empty coffin

for Luxemburg was included because her body had not yet been discovered.)

The problem of producing a convincing pictorial memorial to Liebknecht pre-

occupied Kollwitz for two years. She made nearly twenty drawings while seeking a

satisfactory composition. She made an etching and then a lithograph but these

were rejected. Only in the traditional German medium of woodcut - which Kollwitz

was prompted to employ after seeing an exhibition of Ernst Barlach's woodcuts in

June 1920 - was she able to achieve the simplicity and boldness of design

appropriate to the subject matter. Through her mastery of expressive body

language and gesture (the figures of the mourners), and by means of emphatic

black and white contrasts, a stylization of form, a vertical/horizontal opposition

(mourners and corpse), and powerful, engraved lines, Kollwitz communicates a

sense of grief and loss. Death, mourning, grief - these were subjects which had a

special appeal for Kollwitz and they recur throughout her oeuvre. Her images

represent emotions such as grief and sorrow; they also serve as cathartic releases

for these emotions.

Kollwitz's woodcut has been described as a 'socialist pieta' because of its affinity

with traditional Christian representations of the dead Jesus mourned by his family

and disciples. Jacques-Louis David's paintings of the murdered body of the French

revolutionary Marat was, of course, a secular art-historical precedent for Kollwitz's

image.

Along the bottom edge of the woodcut is an inscription 'Die Lebenden dem Toten'

('Those who live to him who died') a phrase which is a reversal of Freiligrath's line

'Die Toten an die Lebenden' ('Those who died to those who lived') from a poem

written for victims of an earlier revolution, that of 1848. Once the woodcut was

finished Kollwitz offered prints of it for sale in order to benefit a workers' art
exhibition.

Kollwitz realised that her graphic memorial to Liebknecht would lead many

people to the erroneous conclusion that she agreed with his politics. This explains

her defensive self-justification: 'As an artist, I have the right to distil the emotional

content out of everything and anything, to let that content take effect on me, and

then to give outward expression to it. I also have the right to depict the workers'

leave taking from Liebknecht, indeed, the right to dedicate this work to the

proletariat, without identifying myself with Liebknecht's political views. Or do I

not?’ (4)

These remarks confirm that the grief signified by the woodcut is as much that

of the depicted characters - the workers - as it is the personal expression of

Kollwitz's sorrow .

GROSZ

Like his fellow Dadaist John Heartfield, George Grosz (1893-1959) was more

politically committed than Kollwitz. Both men joined the KPD on the 31st

December 1918 receiving their membership cards from Rosa Luxemburg herself.

These two artists had been radicalized as a result of their experiences during the

first world war. For them art's most important task was the relentless criticism of

the bourgeois society and German militarism. Grosz contributed many savage

caricatures and cartoons of SPD leaders and policies to Spartacist pamphlets in the

post-war period. Large sales, acts of censorship and prosecutions by the authorities

testified to the effectiveness of this kind of political satire. (5)

 There is a pen, brush and ink drawing by Grosz entitled Remember 1919 which

depicts the ominous figure of a hangman judge hovering above the coffins of

Liebknecht and Luxemburg; the eyes of the judge appear to have been put out and

the figure terminates in pools of blood. The meaning of this image is ambiguous: it

can be interpreted as a posthumous plea for justice and as a criticism of German

law (blind and bloodstained). It should be explained that the soldiers responsible for

the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg were never properly tried and

convicted. Some men were tried and received light sentences, while others avoided

punishment altogether.

When Grosz created the drawing is uncertain, though most scholars favour 1919.

It was first published in Münzenberg's satirical magazine Eulenspiegel in 1931.

Five years later it appeared again in a collection of Grosz's drawings entitled

Interregnum published in the United States as a warning against Nazism. The

drawing carries an inscription by Grosz to his friends and patrons Mr and Mrs

Erich Cohn dated November 1935; the dedication is in remembrance of the time of

the 'Red conflict'.

Remember 1919 is rather tame in comparison with other works Grosz produced in

1919 and 1920. For example, the pen and ink drawings Cheers Noske! The

Proletariat has been disarmed (1919), The Communists are Dying and the Foreign

Exchange Rate Goes Up (1920), and Knocking Off Time (1920) are much more

caustic.
Liebknecht and Luxemburg are not directly featured, instead their fate is

generalized: while businessmen gorge themselves at the table their agents of

violence and repression - the military - massacre the reds. A representation of

Liebknecht can be found in at least one of Grosz's drawings from 1919, namely

This is How the State Court Should Appear! an image which appeared on the cover
of the satirical weekly Der Blutige Ernst, number 3, 1919. Grosz pretends that a

second revolution has succeeded (it is a 'World upsidedown' fantasy): a people's

court is trying the German military caste. Grosz uses the picture-within-the-

picture device to introduce a garlanded portrait of Liebknecht above the heads of

the judges. Liebknecht's spirit presides over the court's deliberations and demands

retribution.

FELIXMULLER

Conrad Felixmüller (1897-1977), an artist associated with Expressionism in his

youth, was living in Dresden at the time of the events of 1919. He came from a

working class background and although alienated from his origins by his artistic

training at the Dresden Academy, he became politicized and joined the German

Communist Party. Felixmüller was one of the few artists to take an active part in

street demonstrations. In January 1919, at a Spartacist march, workers and

soldiers clutching red flags were shot to death around him. His lithograph Dead

Comrade

(1920) depicts such a corpse.

Felixmüller’s memorial to Rosa and Karl is also a lithograph: the image is a lyrical

one showing the two figures clasped together like lovers ascending towards a huge

red star above a city roofscape; thus, Christian iconography was adapted to meet

Expressionist-Socialist ends.

BECKMANN

Max Beckmann (1894-1950) was resident in Frankfurt at the time of the abortive

Spartacist revolt. A somewhat isolated figure and extreme individualist,

Beckmann's modern, figurative work is, like his politics, difficult to categorize. He

came from a middle-class background - his father was a wholesale flour merchant

- and achieved early acclaim and success as an artist, but then suffered a nervous

breakdown following harrowing experiences as a medical orderly during the first

world war. Towards the end of the war, Beckmann's art evolved in new directions
as he struggled to give form to his pessimistic vision of the human condition. His

well-known canvas The Night (1918-19) depicts a man and a woman being

tortured in a claustrophobic setting. Characteristically, Beckmann rendered this

disturbing subject with a degree of detachment and objectivity: both victims and

torturers appear to be at the mercy of evil forces they cannot control. The coldness

and fatalism of Beckmann's pictures offer the viewer little comfort, nor do they

suggest any remedy for the horrors depicted.

In a lecture delivered in London in 1938, Beckmann disclaimed any link with

politics: 'I have never been politically active in any way. 1 have only tried to realize

my conception of the world as intensely as possible' (6) His protestations of

political neutrality cut no ice with the Nazis who branded him a 'cultural

Bolshevik' and condemned his art as ‘degenerate’. In 1919 Beckmann may not

have been politically committed or active, nevertheless certain entries in his

wartime diaries prior to 1919 reveal a sympathy for the masses: 'We must share in

the great misery which is bound to come. We must surrender our hearts and

nerves to the horrible cries of deception of these poor deceived people. Now more

than ever we must stand as close as possible to the people. That is the only thing

which might justify our fundamentally quite superfluous existence as artists: to

give to the people a picture of their destiny'. (7) They also reveal a tentative

identification with left-wing ideals: 'Perhaps if we were a little less pre-occupied

with profitability, if - and I scarcely dare to express the hope - we could live by a

stronger communist principle .... .' (8)

Beckmann scholars consider the subject matter of the lithograph entitled

Martyrdom, dating from 1919, to be the killing of Rosa Luxemburg. This

lithograph is one of a set of ten with the overall title Die Holle (Hell). (A transfer

drawing for the lithograph also exists.) Like most of Beckmann's works,

Martyrdom features a jumble of figures crammed into a shallow, stage-like space.

So confined is the

space that the roof of a car bursts out beyond the framing edge in the top left-hand

corner. The composition is agitated and confused: lines run in all directions;

shapes overlap and interrupt one another; fragmented, ambiguous forms recall the

multi-faceted structures of Cubism and a scatter of light and dark patches makes

the content hard to decipher. Eventually, the iconography becomes clearer: moon
 and stars in the background indicate a night time event. Their feeble light discloses

a scene of brutality: the diagonal figure of a woman falling backwards, surrounded

by vicious soldiers who assault her with rifle butts and barrels. The presence of the

soldiers and the cross-like position of the woman's arms makes a clear reference to

Christ's crucifixion. On the right stands a laughing, bourgeois civilian (intended to

represent Noske?) holding the woman's left leg under his arm and threatening her

crutch with his hand. The lithograph implies that whenever a woman is assaulted

or killed by a group of men, rape or sexual violation is also involved.

An allegorical dimension is typical of Beckmann's oeuvre: he used particular

figures and events to point more general lessons and morals. Martyrdom is no

exception. Luxemburg is not presented as a political leader who is being attacked

because of her beliefs and actions by her political opponents, instead she stands for

all women who are victims of torture and murder. What is gained in terms of

generalization is lost in terms of historical and political specificity. Luxemburg

would not have shared Beckmann's pessimistic world view - 'Hell is on earth, it is

what humans have created' - because she had faith in ultimate victory no matter

how many defeats existed along the way.

Violent and sadistic subjects pose a general problem for artistic representation:

is the viewer to derive aesthetic pleasure from the image of someone being beaten

with rifle butts? Is human pain to be aestheticized, to be made enjoyable? Even

when an artist strives to communicate the suffering of victims to the viewer, the

principle of form and stylization inherent in all art - as T. W. Adorno has pointed

out - transfigures the event, endows it with meaning and significance and thereby
lessens the horror. (9) Some artists have responded to this dilemma by avoiding

unpleasant subjects altogether. If this attitude were to be adopted by all artists,

then crucial areas of human experience and history would be excluded from the

scope of art.

In the case of the Beckmann, an unsettling tension exists between the aesthetic

qualities of the lithograph and its violent content. Indeed, the character of the

content infects the form - the pleasure is that of dissonance rather than harmony.

As in all artistic representations, the viewer is distanced from the event depicted -

the event is necessarily subjected to the requirements of medium and form -

nevertheless it is also preserved in the image. Thus a historical incident is

memorialized and for as long as people see the lithograph they will be reminded of

the dark side of humanity. As Adorno once observed: 'it would be better for art to

vanish altogether than to forget suffering ..... Suffering .... .is the humane content of

art'. (10)

MIES VAN DER ROHE

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) a German-American architect was a radical

in artistic matters (he was a modernist, one of the founders of the International

Style) but not in politics (his stance was apolitical). It is somewhat surprising

therefore that he was commissioned by the KPD to design a monument to the two

communist martyrs to be sited in the Friedrichesfelde cemetery in Berlin. As Mies

recalled later, the commission came about almost by accident: Mies was asked by

Eduard Fuchs (treasurer of the KPD) for his opinion of a design for a stone
monument that was academic and classical in its conception. His response was

laughter and the comment 'it would be a fine monument for a banker'. (11) When

challenged to devise an alternative, Mies suggested a monument resembling a brick

wall on the grounds that victims were generally shot against such walls.

In the event Mies did not design a plain brick wall but a massive, free-standing

brick structure with horizontal, box-like projections. The heavy, rectangular masses

reminded Arthur Drexler of stacked coffins. (12) The sheer bulk of the memorial, its
 plainness, severity and emphatic horizontality endowed it with an awesome

presence and solemnity. Twisted purple clinker bricks were used to give the

monument a richly textured surface. During the 1920s, Mies was fond of using

bricks as a building material. Philip Johnson remarks that Mies 'liked the regular

rhythm achieved by the repetition of a module and he enjoyed the craftsmanship

involved in coursing and bonding'. (13) (Thus brick was paradoxically both a model

of the modular structures which were to typify the modern architecture of the

future and a manifestation of the waning era of handcraftsmanship.) A symbolic

meaning has been perceived in the choice of brick for the monument: according to

Phillip Goodwin, brick symbolises the bond between Liebknecht and Luxemburg

and the masses - 'a common material for leaders of common people'. (14) One can

also detect an analogy between the 'truth and honesty to materials' aesthetic of Mies

and the materialist philosophy of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. No ornament or

images appear on the monument apart from a star, hammer and sickle, and a

flagpole.

The memorial was unveiled by Wilhelm Pieck leader of the KPD in June 1926

and destroyed by the Nazis when they came to power in 1933.

It seems that when Mies became a leading American architect his earlier

pragmatism - his willingness to design a monument to two communist

revolutionaries even though he did not share their politics - was regarded with

suspicion by the US government officials. Most of the books on Mies focus on his

work in America. They either ignore the monument to Liebknecht and Luxemburg

altogether or refer to it as briefly as possible.

In recent years Mies has come under attack from architectural critics for his

formalism. (15) Is this criticism applicable to his 1926 monument? Certainly the

monument was an abstract structure; it did not depict Liebknecht or Luxemburg.

Also, the static quality of its horizontals precluded any sense of the dynamic

struggle in which the two Spartacists had been engaged. (In this respect Mies'
monument contrasts sharply with Johannes Molzahn's painting The Idea -

Movement- Struggle (1919), dedicated to Karl Liebknecht, which utilised the

splintered forms and dynamic diagonals of Futurism.) (16) Nevertheless, the

materials and form of the monument were capable, as we have seen, of

communicating symbolic meanings. Indeed, this modernist monument was much

more successful as a memorial than the majority of twentieth century public

sculptures to heroes and heroines in both East and West.

KITAJ

R. B. Kitaj (b 1932), the American-born painter resident in England, first achieved

art world recognition during the early 1960s. His painting The Murder of Rosa

Luxemburg (1960) is somewhat different from other examples which have been

considered because first, it was executed by an American and not a German, and

second, it was produced very much later in time. As a result the painting is more

anecdotal (in the sense of telling the story of what happened), and more detached/

reflective than the works produced immediately after the murders. In terms of

genre, Kitaj's canvas can be characterized as a history painting; however, as we

shall see shortly, the history to which it refers encompasses that of Kitaj's forebears

besides the events in Berlin in 1919.

Kitaj is a highly cultured and widely read artist. His pictorial method is quasi-

literary in the sense that his paintings sometimes include written matter and

'quotes' from other images; also, his catalogue notes frequently include

bibliographies and citations to texts which have informed the creation of the works
in question. Kitaj is a very self-conscious artist who is well versed in the theories of

collage and montage debated by the Surrealists, and by Soviet and German artists

and writers in the 1920s and 1930s. He is also knowledgeable about the

methodology of art history, in particular the mode of analysis of iconography and

iconology practised by such scholars as Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl, Edgar Wind and

Erwin Panofsky. (17)

R. B. Kitaj, The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg, (1960). Tate Gallery Collection. Photo

courtesy of Tate and Kitaj.

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The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg is a loose assembly of images and words which

interlock and overlap in various ways. Its manner of execution is somewhat crude:

the semi-graphic drawing style and brushwork are reminiscent of graffiti and, to a
certain extent, Abstract Expressionism. Although some degree of recession is

implied by the work's overlapping elements, there is a lack of aerial depth and

conventional perspective. The painting is emphatically two-dimensional; its space,

and therefore its time, are not singular and coherent. Dark hues predominate -

black, brown, blue, ochre - in keeping with the sombre theme. In the top left-hand

corner of the painting is the ragged shape enclosing the outline of a woman's head

and upper body. According to Kitaj, this is not a portrait of Luxemburg but a

depiction of his grandmother Rose, a Jewess who fled from Russia at the turn of the

century to avoid persecution. (18) Helen, his other grandmother, appears in profile

(centre left) grasping the distorted, horizontal body of Luxemburg whom Helen

resembled physically.

Above the floating corpse of Luxemburg is the side view of a car or van with the

profile face of a driver. To the right is an outline shape resembling that of a German

soldier with a helmet which itself encloses the image of a nineteenth century style

statue. Luxemburg's killer appears in the top right-hand corner but his features

and identity are obscured by a box of writing. The murder weapon - a pistol - is

rendered in such a way as to imply that it is also a phallus. Vertical striations of red

and green pigment suggestive of blood and pain occupy the lower right-hand area

of the canvas. A good deal of the lower part of the painting is left bare. Kitaj's

signature and the work's title appear in the bottom left-hand corner plus a

depiction of a monument in the form of an obelisk set in a landscape. Finally,

another monument, this time a pyramid and classical temple, painted with streaks

of bright orange, green, blue and pink appears centre left.

 Kitaj's deliberately fragmentary method of pictorial construction makes the

painting hard to decipher. However, this task is assisted by the box of writing in the

top right-hand corner. This box serves as a key to the rest of the image. Its literary

matter consists of four items: first, an account of Luxemburg's death quoted from

P. Frolich's biography (1940); second, the information that the face of the man in

the car resembles that of Field Marshall Count von Moltke (chief of the German

General Staff at the outbreak of the first world war; he died in 1916); third, the

information that the statue immediately to the left of the box is based on the

German National Monument Niederwald commemorating the founding of the new

German empire in 1871; and four, a reference to an article by Neumeyer in the

Warburg Institute journal on German monuments, plus the information that the

obelisk monument is based upon a design for a memorial to Frederick the Great

reproduced in Neumeyer's article.(19)

Several purposes are served by the meta-linguistic text located within the fabric of

the painting: it supplies a key to the iconography; it reveals the sources of some of

the imagery and underlying ideas (the sources are twofold: the history of politics

and the history of art. This reminds us that art is as much the result of the tradition

of art as it is of history directly); it calls attention to the fact that history-writing

and history-painting are retrospective reconstructions of events based upon

information derived from various sources. The intertwining themes of Kitaj's

painting should now be clear: the story of Luxemburg's murder; German

nationalism and militarism; and monuments.

In 1963 Kitaj had a one-man show at the Marlborough Gallery in London which
included The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg. He supplied the catalogue information

for this exhibition and his note for the painting included a short bibliography on

Luxemburg plus the full details of the Neumeyer article. (20) (Incidentally, the

catalogue is dedicated to 'The Open Society - with reservations'.) This learned

article discusses the artistic character and social function of monuments to genius

in German classicism. Two of the illustrations accompanying the article - H.

Dannecker's design for a monument to Frederick the Great and his generals (an

obelisk), and Janus Genelli's design for a monument to Kant (a pyramid and

Greek temple) - were the source of two images in the Kitaj. Neumeyer points out

that one problem facing the designers of monuments is whether or not to celebrate

the achievements of particular individuals or the more universal powers that act

through them. In practical terms: should a monument take the form of a portrait

figure or symbolic architecture? (As we have already seen, Kollwitz chose the first

option while Mies van der Rohe chose the second.)

Kitaj's painting is at once a memorial to Luxemburg and a reflection upon the

problem of constructing such memorials. At least this is one conclusion that can be

drawn from the inclusion of images of monuments of different types within the

picture and the citing of the Neumeyer article. Can a memorial to a socialist martyr,

the picture seems to be asking, take the same form as officially approved

monuments to great leaders? The work articulates the conflict which exists between

the goal of providing a historically accurate account of what happened to

Luxemburg, and the goal of devising a monument capable of transcending the

particular circumstances of her death. In fact, the problems posed by this canvas
are part of a wider issue, namely, the difficulty of producing a convincing socialist

mythology, one which will avoid the simplistic hagiography and retrogressive visual

rhetoric of socialist realist monuments.

Michael Podro, in a perceptive article, has pointed to certain affinities between

Luxemburg and Kitaj. (21) She was a Pole 'exiled' in Germany, he an American

'exiled' in Britain. Both were fascinated by German society and culture; both were

born into Jewish families. Kitaj has explained that when he conceived the painting it

was not Luxemburg's revolutionary politics which prompted him but the fact that

her death was the murder of a Jew. (22) It was precisely to avoid a similar fate that

his grandmothers had emigrated from Austria and Russia to the United States.

Rosa's life and death was, for Kitaj, 'an ikon for the dark times I associated with my

grandmothers'. Thus the painting contains a personal reference which is probably

too oblique for the viewer to understand without the aid of Kitaj's gloss.

Kitaj chose to represent the theme of the murder of Jews in terms of the banality

of evil (unimaginative thugs doing their work). Luxemburg's killing prefigured

what was to happen to Jews and communists in Germany under the Nazis. A

degenerated form of Romanticism, Kitaj argues, was a component of German

fascism. It is this link, Kitaj says, he had in mind when he introduced the Romantic

ruins imagery of the monuments.

In spite of the personal allusions of Kitaj's painting, it still concerns a

revolutionary figure. Left-wing themes recur in Kitaj's work and therefore it is

reasonable to infer that he is, politically speaking, a socialist. (23) Yet there

remains the problem of how works with socialist subjects - especially historical
ones - are to be effective within the practical struggles of the present. For socialist

artists the 'language' to be used in art is of crucial importance because the kind of

'language' and level employed determines, to some extent, the audience. Kitaj's

complexity, his fragmentary, allusive imagery is not immediately accessible to the

lay public despite the extra pictorial information he so assiduously provides.

Podro also has pointed to the tension between Kitaj's 'concern to make an

emotionally charged private art for a small group of initiates, and a publically

resonant art'. At the same time the educational value of the painting should not

be underestimated: in 1961 his work served to introduce me - an ignorant art

student - to Rosa Luxemburg.

SPADARI

Giangiacomo Spadari (b. 1938) is an Italian artist, little known in Britain, whose

interest in socialist martyrs extends over many years. At the Galleria Schwarz,

Milan, in 1972 he held an exhibition entitled The Rose and the Lion of twenty works

reflecting upon the killings of Luxemburg and Trotsky. Two years later in Berlin, at

the Pool Gallery, he mounted a show called Rosa Luxemburg: A Life for Socialism.
 G. Spadari, Brotherly Greetings from the SPD, (1972).

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Spadari's work as a painter matured in the late 1960s. He was strongly influenced

by the revolutionary events of 1968 and regarded his painting as an artistic avant-

garde equivalent to the political avant-garde of that time. By 1970, disillusioned by

the failure of the left to fulfil its potential, Spadari felt the need to re-examine

history, in particular to analyse the fate of those leading figures of the worker's

movement who sought to reconcile socialism and democracy.

 G. Spadari, Rosa and Luise (Kautsky), (1974), acrylic on canvas, 100 x 80 cm.

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Spadari's pictorial method - the use of image fragments 'quoted' from various

sources combined in such a way as to produce a dynamic, non-naturalistic,

ambiguous space - somewhat resembled that of American Pop artists like James

Rosenquist. However, Spadari's touchstone was not Pop art but Cuban posters and

earlier forms of left-wing montage aiming for a new kind of realism. His readymade

imagery included news photos, stills from Eisenstein's films, Dada collages,

newspapers and Russian Constructivist graphics. The task he set himself was to re-

work and re-edit this material. What Spadari sought was an anonymous, public

means of communication, not an individualistic, personal form of expression. A

favourite technique was to paint from projected, over-exposed or solarized

photographs.

Solarization, Spadari argued, generated a more emphatic result which

eliminated detail while foregrounding the essential. Generally, he organized his

works around stylistic contrasts, for example, juxtaposing a soft-focus against

a two-dimensional, graphic style.

Colour/monochrome contrasts were also employed. The heterogeneous character

of his paintings raised the issue of the relativity of representation. Spadari's

concern was as much with the 'linguistic' aspects of painting as with the political

content. Rather than seeking to invent a new artistic idiom, he preferred to employ

existing 'linguistic tools' which had already been mediated. Thus the series The

Rose and the Lion was not only an essay on two historical figures but also a

meditation on the different kinds of pictorial evidence which remains from the

past. Our knowledge of the past depends upon such fragments, therefore Spadari's

paintings were an example of the process of historical re-construction and

interpretation.

STEVENS

May Stevens is an American, socialist-feminist artist, writer and teacher who was

born into a working class family in Boston in 1924. (24) During the late 1970s

Stevens produced a series of collages of handwritten words and photographic

images dealing with the contrasting lives of her mother Alice and Rosa Luxemburg.

These collages were later assembled in booklet form - Ordinary/Extraordinary -

published in July 1980. Whereas Luxemburg was an articulate, politically active

woman who achieved international fame, Alice Stevens was an ordinary worker,

mother and housewife who in middle age became mentally ill and retreated into

silence.

As the basis for her collages Stevens selected family album type photographs of
her mother and Rosa, plus documentary images including a horrific police

photograph of the latter's decomposing head. Stevens then photo-copied and re-

photographed the
 images together with written quotations in such a way as to abstract them and to

reduce them to a sharp black/white contrast. By this means disparate raw material

was given a measure of formal unity. However, a simple and coherent message is not

supplied. Stevens leaves it to the viewer to make comparisons and to identify

connections between the two lives.

Two feminist ideas informed the collages, namely, 'hidden from history' and 'the

personal is political'. By treating her mother as subject matter, Stevens rescued an

anonymous life from the oblivion that is the fate of the vast majority of human

beings, especially women. Stevens' reflections on the unhappy experiences of her

mother revealed the effects of class position and sexism: private life was inextricably

linked with larger political issues. Luxemburg was, for Stevens, the exemplar of that

wider public realm in which she as an artist and activist was attempting to

intervene. Alice and Rosa thus represented for Stevens two role models, two

mothers, one natural and one ideal. Stevens' quest for self-identity and fulfilment
necessarily involved them both.

A set of antitheses is implied by the collages: Alice/Rosa, ordinary/extraordinary,

the unlived life/the lived life, private/public, personal/political, present/past,

silence/speech. However, the actual situation is more complex than this because

some of the antitheses apply to both women. For instance, Rosa herself found

difficulty in reconciling her private life - in particular her lengthy love affair with

the Polish revolutionary Leo Jogiches - with her public, political career.

Furthermore, a merger of the causes of feminism and socialism was then (and now)

problematical. Although Rosa was committed to the emancipation of women, she

did not contribute to the women's movement in the same way that her friend Clara

Zetkin did. Rosa's conviction was that only the advent of socialism would enable

women to make real progress, hence she devoted herself to that cause rather than

to feminism as such.

In addition, both Alice and Rosa were martyrs in their different ways. And, as the

chronological sequences of images showed, both shared the experiences of growing

up and ageing. In short, the collage juxtapositions reveal common factors as well as

differences.
 May Stevens, Demonstration, (1981). Acrylic on canvas, 6’6” x 10’. Collection

Donald Kuspit. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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 May Stevens, Voices, (1983), acrylic on canvas, 6’6” x 10’. Photo courtesy of the

artist.

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 May Stevens, The murderers of Rosa Luxemburg, (1986). Acrylic on canvas, 6’6” x

10’6”. Photo courtesy of the artist and David Heinlein.

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--

During the 1980s Stevens' attention has shifted from collage to painting.

Demonstration (1982) is a large canvas depicting a political parade in which images

of Liebknecht and Luxemburg are being carried aloft. Voices and Procession, two

canvases dating from 1983, are also large (78" x 120"). Freely executed in acrylic,

they represent the funeral procession of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. These works

are interpretations rather than copies of documentary photographs of the event. For

instance, in Voices Stevens goes beyond photographic verisimilitude by filling the

top half of the image with the words of Luxemburg: 'Ich war, Ich bin, Ich werde
sein!' ('I was, I am, I will be!'). This expression - which could apply to Rosa herself -

was in fact used by her to refer to the revolution whose failure cost her life. A few

days before her death she wrote defiantly: 'Tomorrow the revolution will rear its

head once more and will proclaim, with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I will be!'.

Rosa's words ascend into the sky above the coffins and the heads of the mourners;

the revolutionary is dead but as long as her words survive in the minds of the living

her voice will be heard.

HARRISON

Seeking to demonstrate the long-term development of the Women's Movement has

been a hallmark of Margaret Harrison's work. Not content with the 'instant

feminism' of many of her contemporaries, she has energetically emphasised the

intellectual and political development of independent womankind, and has sought

not to confine this to British bourgeois-educated feminist development. Thus,

alongside the achievements of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft and the

Pankhursts must be seen a broad sisterhood which can draw strength from

understanding the many individuals who contribute to it. Thus the painting From

Rosa Luxemburg to Janis Joplin was conceived and executed for the International

Women's Week in Berlin, 1977, and was installed for that particular context close to

the Zoological Gardens where Red Rosa's corpse was discovered; its combined

intention was to show how the roll-call of women represented in the painting had

suffered and been destroyed by the variety of male-dominated societies into which

they were born, and that despite their achievements, the representation of women in
the parliament houses of the 'democracies' is still pitifully below par.

Margaret Harrison, From Rosa Luxemburg to Janis Joplin, (1977), collage, oil

and acrylic on canvas, photo courtesy of the artist and the Ronald Feldman

Gallery, New York.

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The work was daubed with the word ‘Juden’ beneath the image of Rosa

Luxemburg at its first showing in Berlin, and the artist has chosen to leave the

graffiti on the work. It was subsequently installed at Battersea Arts Centre in

1979, and in 1981 at the City University, New York.

AFTERWORD

As we have seen, each of the artists considered here responded to the same

historical events in different media and different ways. A general question arises

from all these works: what is their value to the world of today? Arguably, the images

are relevant to the present in a number of ways: every generation has to consider its
relationship to history. Who and what is to be remembered and commemorated?

What lessons are to be learned? Every generation has to seek new solutions to the

unresolved problems and contradictions it inherits from the past. Every generation

has also to come to terms with defeat, loss and grief. Such feelings can be aroused by

the tragic fate of historical persons, by the assassination of public figures, as well as

by the deaths of relatives and friends. They can be prompted by social as well as

individual catastrophies because the personal and the political are but different ends

of the same spectrum. In the case of Rosa and Karl, what was lost was not only two

worthy human beings but also a struggle to achieve a better world. If the Spartacist

revolution had succeeded the whole subsequent history of Europe could have been

very different. The rise of Nazism might have been prevented. That failure of

idealism and hope was compounded in their manner of death by yet another

revelation of the inhumanity of which some humans are capable. The value of works

of art, in particular those that indict the crimes of humanity, is that they supply a

partial redemption.

A further question arises: what value do artistic memorials to socialist martyrs

have for the living socialists and the struggle for socialism? Such memorials help to

keep alive the past existence and sacrifices of socialist heroes and heroines. In so

far as they prompt people to read about the lives of famous revolutionaries, to read

their writings, and to learn from their political ideas, experiences and mistakes,

these works perform valuable educational and inspirational functions beyond the

purely aesthetic. As Pope Gregory the Great expressed it in his Pastoral on the

question of Christian devotional imagery: 'To adore images is one thing; to teach
with their help what should be adored is another' (25)

In the light of the cult of personality which developed in the Soviet Union after

Lenin's death - and it is worth remembering that Lenin disliked such cults (26) -

scepticism towards heroic monuments is a rational response. However, all the works

described here avoid the craven flattery and bombastic rhetoric of monuments to

Stalin. Indeed, in the case of Kitaj's painting, the very role and value of monuments

is placed in question.

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NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) This account is based upon J. P. Nettl's book Rosa Luxemburg, (2 Vols) (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1966) and a report in the Times, 22 May 1919, p.11. See

also E. Hannover-Druck and H. Hannover (eds): Der Mord an Rosa Luxemburg und

Karl Liebknecht: Dokumentation eines Politischen Verbrechens, (Frankfurt:

Suhrkampf, 1967).

(2) There are a number of books on the November Revolution and the revolt of the

Spartacists: G. Badia, Les Spartakistes 1918, (Paris: Gallimard/Julliard, 1966); G.

Badia, Le Spartakisme: Les Dernieres Annees de Rosa Luxemburg et Karl

Liebknecht 1914-19, (Paris: L'Arche, 1967); A. J. Ryder, The German Revolution of

1918, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922); E. Waldmann, The

Spartakist Uprising, (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1958); S. Haffner,

Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918-19, (London: Andre Deutsch, 1973); C.

Harman, The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918-23, (London: Bookmarks, 1982).

Several other studies of Luxemburg exist besides Nettl's works: P. Frõlich, Rosa

Luxemburg: Ideas in Action, (London: Pluto Press, 1972); T. Cliff, Rosa

Luxemburg, (London: Bookmarks, 1959); H. Hirsch, Rosa LuxemburgROSA

LUXEMBURG (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1969); G. Badia, Rosa Luxemburg:

Journaliste, Polemiste, Revolutionaire, (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1975); L. Basso,

Rosa Luxemburg: A Reappraisal, (London: Deutsch, 1975); N. Geras, The Legacy

of Rosa Luxemburg, (London: New Left Book, 1976); F. Hetmann, Rosa L. Die

Geschichte Der Rosa Luxemburg uno Ihrer Zeit, (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch

Verlag, 1979); S. Bronner, A Revolutionary of our Times: Rosa Luxemburg,

(London: Pluto Press, 1981); R. Dunayevskaya, Rosa Luxemburg: Women’s

Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982).

For Luxemburg's writings see: Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Political Writings,

(London: J. Cape, 1972); Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, ed. by M. Waters (NY:

Pathfinder Press, 1970).

For information on Liebknecht see: H. Schumann, Karl Liebknecht, (Dresden:

Reisner, 1919); K. W. Meyer, Karl Liebknecht: Man Without a Country, (Washington

DC: Public Affairs Press, 1957); H. Trotnow, Karl Liebknecht: Eine Politische

Biographie, (Koln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1980); H. Wohlgemuth, Karl

Liebknecht: Eine Biographie, (Berlin: Dietz, 1975).

(3) K. Kollwitz, The Diaries and Letters of Käthe Kollwitz, (Chicago: Henry Regnery,

1955).

(4) Quoted in Käthe Kollwitz: Graphics, Posters, Drawings, introd. by R. Hinz,

(London: Writers and Readers, 1981).

(5) On Grosz, see B. I. Lewis, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic,

(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971); U. M. Schneede, George Grosz: His

Life and Work, (London: Gordon Fraser, 1979); George Grosz, A Small Yes and a Big

No, (London: Allison & Busby, 1982).

6: 'On My Painting' (1938) -in- Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists

and Critics, ed. H. Chipp (Berkeley, Los Angles & London: Univ. of California

Press, 1968), pp. 187-192.

(7) S. Lackner, Max Beckmann: Memories of a Friendship, (Coral Gables: Univ. of

Miami Press, 1969).

(8) 0p cit.

(9) T. W. Adorno, Aesthetics and Politics, E. Bloch and others, (London: New Left

Books, 1977), pp. 188-9.

(10) T. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, (London: Routledge, 1984), p. 369.

(11) Mies, quoted in, Social Radicalism and the Arts: Western Europe, by D. D.

Egbert, (London: Duckworth, 1970) pp 661-2.

Eduard Fuchs was a scholar, historian and art collector. He was particularly

interested in caricature (he had a large collection of Daumier's work) and erotic

images. Besides Mies, Fuchs knew George Grosz and Walter Benjamin (the

latter wrote an essay on Fuchs).

(12) A. Drexler, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, (NY: G. Braziller, 1960), p. 18.

(13) P. C. Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, (London: Secker & Warburg, 1978), p. 35.

(14) P. L. Goodwin, 'Monuments' -in- New Architecture and City Planning, ed. P.

Zucker, (NY: Philosophical Library, 1944), pp. 589-601.

(15) See, for example, Charles Jencks 'The problem of Mies' -in- Modern Movements

in Architecture, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973) pp 95-1 08.

(16) Molzahn's painting is reproduced in Ernst Scheyer's article 'Molzahn,

Muche and the Weimar Bauhaus', Art Journal, 27 Spring 1969, pp. 269-77.

(17) See M. Livingstone, 'Iconology as theme in the early work of R. B. Kitaj',

Burlington Magazine, CXXII (928) July 1980, pp. 488-96.

(18) R. B. Kitaj, The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg 1960-62, (Statement supplied

to the Tate Gallery, 1983).

(19) A. Neumeyer, 'Monuments to "genius" in German Classicism', Journal of

the Warburg Institute, II (2) 1938, pp. 159-62.

(20) R. B. Kitaj: Pictures with Commentary, Pictures without Commentary,

(London: Marlborough Fine Art, Feb 1963).

(21) M. Podro, 'Some notes on Kitaj', Art International, 22 (10) March 1979, pp

18-25.

(22) Op. cit. ref. 18.

(23) In an interview with Tim Hyman, Kitaj remarked, "I feel like a socialist";
Kitaj: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, by John Ashbery and others, (London: Thames

& Hudson, 1983), p. 45. In this interview, and in a letter to the author, Kitaj

expresses his suspicion of all socialist ideologies, programmes and parties. He puts

his faith in individuals as against collectivities and identifies with the compassionate

ideals of socialism.

(24) On the work of May Stevens see: M. Roth, 'Visions and Re-visions:

Rosa Luxemburg and the Artist's Mother', Artforum, 14 (3) November 1980, pp. 36-

9; L. Tickner, 'May Stevens', Block, (5) 1981, pp. 28-33; May Stevens:

Ordinary/Extraordinary, A Summation 1977-84, (Boston Mass: Boston Univ. Art

Gallery, 1984).

(25) Pope Gregory I (590-604), see Early Medieval Art 300-1150: Sources and

Documents, ed. C. Davis - Weyer, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), p. 48.

(26) See N. Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia,

(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983).

NB. An exhibition covering some of the same ground as this show was: Ikon and

Revolution: Political and Social Themes in German Art 1918-33, (Norwich, Univ. of

East Anglia, Sainsbury Centre, 1986). Catalogue introduction by Willi Guttsman .

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John A. Walker is a painter and art historian.