Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. - From Faktura To Factography

From Faktura to Factography
Author(s): Benjamin H. D. Buchloh

Source: October, Vol. 30 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 82-119
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778300 .
Accessed: 16/07/2013 08:07
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
This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
From Faktura to Factography
BENJAMIN H. D. BUCHLOH
As the firstdirectorof the Museum of Modern Art, AlfredBarr largely

determinedthe goals and policy of the institutionthatwas to definethe frame-
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 artistswork-
ing in the new revolutionarysociety. What he found there, however, was a
situation of seeminglyunmanageable conflict.
On the one hand, he witnessedthe extraordinaryproductivityofthe origi-
nal modernistavant-garde (extraordinaryin termsof the number of its partici-
pants, both men and women, and in termsof the varietyof modes of produc-
tion: ranging fromMalevich's late suprematistwork throughthe Laboratory
Period of the constructivists,to the Lef Group and the emergingproductivist
program, as well as agitprop theaterand avant-garde filmsscreened formass
audiences). On the otherhand, therewas the general awareness among artists
and culturaltheoreticiansthattheywere participatingin a finaltransformation
of the modernistvanguard aesthetic,as theyirrevocablychanged those condi-
tions of art production and reception inheritedfrombourgeois societyand its
institutions.Then, too, therewas the growingfearthat the process of that suc-
cessful transformationmight be aborted by the emergence of totalitarianre-
pression 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 dismantleitselfand its special-
ized activitiesin order to assume a differentrole in the newlydefinedprocess of
the social production of culture.
These conflictingelementsare clearlyreflectedin the diary thatBarr kept
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.Photomontageforcatalogueaccompanying
SovietPavilionat Pressa Exhibition, Cologne.1928.
NOT~
I-ol.;
SAKI"
s~i::i~iiii-
iove
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
But Barr was no more fortunatein his search forpaintingduring his visit
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
there was a historical reason for the frustrationof Barr's expectations. For
Tretyakov enunciated the position these artistshad adopted in the course of
transformingtheiraestheticthinkingin relation to the emergingindustrializa-
tion of the Soviet Union: the program of productivismand the new method of
literaryrepresentation/production that accompanied it,factography. "Tretyakov,"
Barr's diary tells us, "seemed to have lost all interestin everythingthat did not
conformto his objective, descriptive,self-styled journalistic ideal of art. He had
no interestin paintingsince it had become abstract. He no longerwritespoetry
but confineshimselfto reporting."3
This paradigm-changewithinmodernism,which Barr witnessedfromthe
very firsthour, did not make a strongenough impressionon him to affecthis
futureproject. He continued in his plan to lay the foundationsof an avant-
garde art in the United States according to the model that had been developed
in the firsttwo 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 factographicpro-
duction fromenteringthe general consciousness of American and European
audiences.
In 1936, when Barr's experiences in the Soviet Union were incorporated
in the extraordinaryexhibitionCubismandAbstract Art,his encounterwithpro-
ductivism 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,illustratedwithtwo photographsof
Lissitzky'sexhibitiondesign forthe 1928 Pressaexhibitionin Cologne, the fol-
lowing, ratherperspicacious appraisal of the ideas and goals of the Lef Group:
1. AlfredBarr,"RussianDiary 1927-1928,"October,
no. 7 (Winter1978), p. 21.
2. Ibid.,p. 19.
3. Ibid., p. 14.

FromFakturato Factography 85
The Lefis more than a symptom,more than an expressionof a fresh

culture or of post-revolutionaryman; 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 avant-
garde refusedto confrontthe implicationsseen so clearlyby Barr. Instead, what
happened at that moment, in the process of reception,was what had been de-
scribedin 1926 by Boris Arvatov,who along withAlexei Gan, Sergei Tretyakov,
and Nikolai Tarabukin made up the groupofproductivisttheoreticians.Arvatov
wrote about the painters who refused to join the productivists,"Those on the
Right gave up theirpositionswithoutresistance. . . . Eithertheystopped paint-
ing altogetheror theyemigratedto the Western countries,in order to astonish
Europe withhome-made Russian Cezannes or withpatriotic-folkloristic paint-
ings of littleroosters."5
It is against thisbackgroundthat I want to pursue the followingquestions:
Why did the Soviet avant-garde, afterhaving evolved a modernistpractice to
its most radical stages in the postsyntheticcubist work of the suprematists,
constructivists,and Laboratory Period artists,apparently abandon the para-
digm of modernism upon which its practice had been based? What paradig-
matic changes occurred at that time, and which paradigm formationreplaced
the previous one?
For the sake of detail and specificityI will limitmyselfin what followsto a
discussion of only some aspects of the respectiveparadigms that generated the
crucial concern forfakturain the firstperiod, and that made factography the pri-
mary method in the second period of Russian avant-garde practice.
Fakturawas firstdefinedin the Russian contextin David Burliuk'sfutur-
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
from1913-1919fakturawas a major pictorialconcern, as it was at thattime for
painters such as Lissitzky, Popova, and Rozanova, who had their origins in
syntheticcubism and who had been profoundlyinfluencedby Malevich's su-
prematism. Further,it remained the central concept in the nonutilitarianob-
4. 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

referredto as the Laboratoryconstructivists.During an extremelyhecticperiod
of approximatelyseven years (from 1913-1920) the essential qualities offaktura
were acquired step by step and developed furtherby the individual membersof
that avant-garde.
By 1920 it seemed to them that theyhad broughtto theirlogical conclu-
sion 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
Burliuk and Larionov the third to address fakturaexplicitly-had Painting"--
established
this specificallyRussian source, arguing that"throughthe resonance of the col-
ors, the sound of the materials, the assemblage of textures(faktura)we call the
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 offakturaamong
the various factionsof the Russian avant-garde. More recentlyMargit Rowell has added refer-
ences 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 referencesto the phenom-
enon appear simultaneously and often independentlyof one another.
As early as 1912 the question offakturais 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 con-
sists 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 differ-
entiatingbetween "a unifiedpictorial surfaceA and a differentiated pictorialsurfaceB. The struc-
ture of a pictorial surface can be I. Granular,II. Fibrous,and III. Lamellar.I have carefullyscruti-
nized Monet's Rouen Cathedraland 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 offakturain the writingsof Malevich, forexample, where he calls
Cezanne the inventorof a "new fakturaof the pictorial surface,"or when he juxtaposes the linear
with the texturalin 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," identifyingit as

But the specificallyRussian qualities offaktura are nonethelesschallenged

by other details of this production. For the religio-transcendentalfunctionas-
signed by Markov to the term faktura just too close to the essential pursuitof
is
collage aesthetics as defined in 1914 by, forexample, Georges Braque. Braque
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
Tarabukin wrote a definitionoffakturathat would essentiallyremain valid for
the entireperiod of Laboratory constructivismto follow."The formof a workof
art," he declared, "derives fromtwo fundamentalpremises: the materialor me-
dium (colors, sounds, words) and the construction, throughwhich the material is
organized in a coherent whole, acquiring its artistic logic and its profound
meaning.'"7
What qualifies the concern forfakturaas a paradigmatic feature(differen-
tiatingit at the same timefromprevious concernsforfacturein the worksof the
cubists and futuristsin westernEurope) is the quasi-scientific,systematicman-
ner in which the constructivists now pursued theirinvestigationofpictorialand
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
Opoyaz Group in Petersburgin 1915 and 1916 respectively,the constructivists
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: thereforethe increased concern forfaktura;it no longer needs any justification,
it becomes autonomous, it requires new methods of formationand new materials."
Quite unlike the traditionalidea offatturaorfacturein painting, where the masterfulfacture
of a painter's hand spiritualizes the merematerialityof the pictorial production, and where the
hand becomes at the same time the substituteor the totalization of the identifyingsignature (as
the guarantee of authenticity,it justifies the painting's exchange value and maintains its com-
modityexistence), the new concern forfaktura in the Soviet avant-garde emphasizes preciselythe
mechanical quality, the materiality,and the anonimityof the painterlyprocedure froma perspec-
tive 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 phe-
nomenon 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
Rodchenko.Oval HangingConstruction
Light). 1921.
(SurfacesReflecting
sculpture.They attemptedto definethe separate materialand proceduralqual-

ities by which such constructsare constitutedwith the same analytic accuracy
used to analyze the interrelationships
of theirvarious functions- what Saussure
would call the syntagmaticaxis - which are equally relevant for the constitu-
tion of a perceptual phenomenon. Furthermore,theyaddressed the apparatus
of visual sign production,that is, productionproceduresas well as the tools of
theseprocedures.It was preciselythesystematicnature of thisinvestigationthat
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 subtitledSurfacesReflecting
Light)
and at the triptychPureColors:Red, Yellow,Blue, he had developed to its logical
conclusion that separation of color and line and that integrationof shape and
plane that the cubists had initiatedwith such excitement.With some justifica-
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
8. AlexanderRodchenko,"WorkingwithMaiakovsky,"manuscript1939, publishedin ex-

cerptsin FromPainting
to Design,exhibitioncatalogue,Cologne, Galerie Gmurzynska,1981,
pp. 190-191.

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 sup-
port surface,more than emphasizingthenecessaryself-referentiality ofpictorial
signifiersand theircontiguitywith all other syntagmaticfunctions.It already
meant, as well, more thanjust the object's shiftfromvirtualpictorial/sculptural
space into actual space. We should not take the referenceto SurfacesReflecting
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, incorpo-
ratingthe technicalmeans of constructioninto the work itselfand linkingthem
withexistingstandards of the developmentof the means of productionin soci-
etyat large. At firstthishappened on the seeminglybanal level of the tools and
materials that the painter employs- shiftsthat stillcaused considerable shock
thirtyyears 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 paint-
ing or an object. The brushgave way to new instrumentswithwhich
it was convenientand easy and more expedient to work the surface.
The brush whichhad been so indispensable in paintingwhich trans-
mittedthe object and its subtletiesbecame an inadequate and impre-
cise instrumentin the new non-objectivepainting and the press, the
roller, the drawing pen, the compass replaced it."
The very same conviction about laboratory technology is concretized in
Rodchenko's systematicexperimentationwith pictorial surfacesas tracesor im-
mediate results of specific procedures and materials: metallic and reflective
paint are juxtaposed with matte gouaches; varnishes and oil colors are com-
bined with highlytexturedsurfaces.
It is thistechno-logicof Rodchenko's experimentalapproach thatseems to
have prevented aesthetic comprehensionforeven longer than did Duchamp's
most advanced work of 1913, such as his ThreeStandardStoppagesor his ready-
mades. With its emphasis on the material congruence of the sign withits signi-
fyingpractice, on the causal relationshipbetween the sign and its referent,and
its focus on the indexicalstatus of the sign, Rodchenko's work has defieda sec-
ondary 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
Further, this emphasis on the processqualitiesof painting was linked to a

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 rela-
tionshipsthattied theseessential featuresof the modernistparadigm eventually
to the socially dominant modes of control and management of time and per-
ceptual experience in the Soviet Union's rapidly acceleratingprocess of indus-
trialization.
Fakturais thereforethe historicallylogical aestheticcorrelativeto the intro-
duction of industrializationand social engineeringthat was imminentin the
Soviet Union afterthe revolutionof 1917. For that reasonfakturaalso became
the necessary intermediarystep within the transformationof 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
Stepanova were members), gives a definitionof art production,his statementis
strikinglyclose to ideas of Taylorism, social engineering,and organized con-
sumption,as theybecame operative at thattime in both westernEuropean and
American society."Art,"he wrote,"is an informedanalysis 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.""
Finally, the notion offaktura already implied a referenceto theplacement of
the constructivistobject and its interactionwith the spectator. To emphasize
spatial and perceptualcontiguityby mirrorreflection - as hintedin Rodchenko's
projectforconstructionswhose reflectivesurfaceswould mirrortheirsurround-
ings-means, once again, to reduce the process of representationto purely
indexicalsigns:12matterseeminglygeneratesitsown representationwithoutme-
diation (the old positivist'sdream, as it was, of course, thatof the early photog-
raphers). Contiguityis also incorporatedin the kinetic potentialof Rodchenko's
HangingConstructions, since theirmovementby air currentsor touch literallyin-
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, construc-
tionwas 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
applied it to Duchamp's work in her essay "Notes on the Index," October,nos. 3 and 4 (Summer
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.

constructionas 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 ratherbe-
cause, more than ten years later, preciselythe same historicalphenomenon is
described and analyzed in a text that is by now rightfullyconsidered one of
the most importantcontributionsto twentieth-century aesthetic theory. I am
of
speaking, course, of Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay "The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction," and the followingexcerpt might be com-
pared with Stepanova's 1921 statement:
What they[the dadaists] intended and achieved was a relentlessde-
structionof the aura of theircreations,which theybranded as repro-
ductions with the very means of production. ... In the decline of
middle-class society,contemplationbecame a school forasocial be-
havior; it was counteredby distractionas a variant of social conduct.
... [Dada] hit the spectatorlike a bullet, it happened to him, thus
acquiring a tactile quality. ... (Thus the dada work restores the
quality of tactilityto the art of the presentday, a quality which is im-
portantto the art of all periods in theirstages of transformation.)14
The historicalobservationsby Stepanova and theirsubsequent theoriza-
tion by Benjamin have another correlativein the work of Lissitzky fromthe
period 1925-27. Already in 1923 in his Prounenraum for the Grosse Berliner
Kunstausstellung, Lissitzky had transformedtactilityand perceptual move-
ment- stilllatent in Rodchenko's HangingConstruction - into a full-scalearchi-
tectural reliefconstruction.For the firsttime, Lissitzky'searlier claim forhis
Proun-Paintings, to operate as transferstations from art to architecture,had
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 nonrepresentationalart of his time- thatone
findsStepanova's analysis fullyconfirmedin Lissitzky'spractice. The vertical
lattice relief-constructionthat 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 Illumina-
tions,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 trans-
lation).

92 OCTOBER
low
CabinetofAbstractArt.Hannoversches
El Lissitzky. 1926. Installation
Hannover.
Landesmuseum,
viewshowsaluminum wallsandcorner
relief cabinet
withmovable
panel.Works
ondisplay
byLissitzky,
Schlemmer,andMarcoussis.
position clearly engages the viewer in a phenomenologicalexercise that defies

traditionalcontemplativebehavior in frontof the work of art. And the move-
able wall panels, carryingor coveringeasel panels on display, to be shiftedby
the viewers themselvesaccording to theirmomentaryneeds and interests,al-
ready incorporateinto the display systemof the museum the functionof the
archive that Stepanova predictedas its social destiny.In the late '20s Lissitzky
wrote a retrospectiveanalysis of his Demonstration Rooms,and once again it is
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:
... traditionallythe viewerwas lulled intopassivityby thepaintings
on thewalls. Our construction/design shall make theman active. This
is the functionof our room. . . . With each movementof the viewer
in space the perceptionof the wall changes; what was whitebecomes

......1.
MONO_*P?:Il:I: 8I
FloatingVolume. 1919. Installed

El Lissitzky. in El Lissitzky's
CabinetofAbstractArt. Thetwo
viewsindicate fromwhitetoblackdepending
change onviewer'sposition.
black, and vice versa. Thus, as a resultof human bodily motion, a

perceptual dynamic is achieved. This play makes the viewer active.
. The viewer is physicallyengaged in an interactionwith the ob-
?
ject on display.15
The paradox and historicalironyof Lissitzky'sworkwas, of course, thatit
had introduced a revolution of the perceptual apparatus into an otherwise
totallyunchanged social institution,one thatconstantlyreaffirmsboth the con-
templativebehavior and the sanctityof historicallyrooted works of art.
This paradox complementedthe contradictionthathad become apparent
severalyears earlierwhen Lissitzkyhad placed a suprematistpainting,enlarged
in El Lissitzky,
15. El Lissitzky,"Demonstrationsraiume," ed. Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers,
Dresden,VEB-Verlagder Kunst, 1967,p. 362.

94 OCTOBER
to the size of an agitational billboard, in frontof a factoryentrancein Vitebsk.

This utopian radicalism in the formal sphere--what the conservative Soviet
criticslater would pejorativelyallude to as formalism- in its failureto commu-
nicate with and address the new audiences of industrializedurban society in
the Soviet Union, became increasinglyproblematic in the eyes of the very
groups thathad developed constructiviststrategiesto expand the frameworkof
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
time) required systemsof representation/production/distribution which would
recognize the collective participation in the actual processes of production of
social wealth, systems which, like architecturein the past or cinema in the
present,had established conditionsof simultaneous collective In order to
reception.
make art "an informedanalysis of the concretetasks which social lifeposes," as
Babichev had requested, and in order to "fillthegulfbetween artand themasses
thatthe bourgeois traditionshad established,"as Meyerhold had called for,en-
tirelynew formsof audience address and distributionhad to be considered. But
around 1920 even the most advanced works among the nonutilitarianobject-
constructions- by Rodchenko, the Stenbergbrothers,Tatlin, and Medunetsky
- did not depart much furtherfromthe modernistframeworkofbourgeois aes-
theticsthan thepoint ofestablishingmodels of epistemologicaland semioticcri-
tique. No matterhow radical, these were at best no more than a negationof the
perceptualconventionsby whicharthad previouslybeen produced and received.
With sufficient historicaldistance it becomes clearer thatthisfundamental
crisis within the modernistparadigm was not only a crisis of representation
(one that had reached its penultimate status of self-reflexive verificationand
epistemologicalcritique). It was also, importantly,a crisisof audience relation-
ships, a moment in which the historicalinstitutionalizationof the avant-garde
had reached its peak of credibility,fromwhich legitimationwas only to be ob-
tained by a redefinitionof 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, tryingto resolve the
contradictionsof theirpractice by reaffirming 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
differentstrategiesto transcend the historicallimitationsof modernism. They
recognized that the crisisof representationcould not be resolvedwithoutat the
same time addressing questions of distributionand audience. Architecture,
utilitarian product design, and photographic factographywere some of the

practices that the Soviet avant-garde considered capable of establishingthese

new modes of simultaneouscollectivereception.16Arvatov givesa vividaccount
of the gradual transitionfromthe modernistpositionin 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
art, since theywere convinced of the complete self-sufficiency of art.
They could not comprehend any other formof art production but
thatof the easel. . . . In 1921 the InstituteforArtisticCulture, which
had once united all the Left artists,broke up. Shortlythereafterthe
Institutestartedto work under the banner of productivism.Aftera
long process of selection, afteran obstinate fight,the group of non-
representationalconstructivistscrystallizedwithin the group of the
Left (Tatlin, Rodchenko, and the Obmochu-Group), who based
theirpractice on the investigationand treatmentof real materials as
a transitionto the constructiveactivityof the engineer. During one
of themost importantmeetingsof theInchuk a resolutionwas passed
unanimously to finishoffwiththe self-sufficient constructionsand to
take all measures necessaryin order to engage immediatelywith the
industrialrevolution.17
BetweenFakturaand Factography
Photomontage:
The relatively late discovery of photocollage and montage techniques
seems to have functionedas a transitionalphase, operating between the fully
developed modernistcritique of the conventionsof representation,which one
sees in constructivism,and an emerging awareness of the new need to con-
structiconicrepresentationsfor 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 pic-
torial and sculpturalproblems furtherthan anyone else in Europe (except, of
course, forDuchamp)- did the collage technique proper entertheirworkat all.
It seems credible that in fact Gustav Klucis, a disciple of Malevich and a col-
laborator withLissitzky,was the firstartistto transcendthe purityof suprema-
tistpaintingby introducingiconic photographicfragmentsinto 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: Formbestimmtheitund Format der
Fotografie,"Foto-Essayszur Geschichteund TheoriederFotografie,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 intro-
duced the technique into the transformation of the modernistparadigm is un-
important.18What is farmore crucial is in what way the artists(who mightvery
well have simultaneously"discovered" the technique for their own purposes
quite independentlyof one another)relatedto the inherentpotentialand conse-
quences of the reintroductionof (photographic)iconic imageryat preciselythe
moment when mimetic representationhad seemingly been dismantled and
definitivelyabandoned.
Announcinghis claims to priority,Klucis also underlinesthe essentialdif-
ferencebetween the Soviet typeofphotomontageand thatofthe Berlindadaists
when he writesin 1931:
There are two general tendenciesin the developmentof photomon-
tage: one comes fromAmerican publicityand is exploited by the
18. The twoessaysthattracethehistory ofphotomontage in thecontextofthehistoryofpho-

tographyand thehistory ofemergingadvertisingtechnology are RobertSobieszek,"Composite
Imageryand theOriginsofPhotomontage," PartI and II, Artforum,
September/October 1978,
pp. 58-65, and pp. 40-45. Much morespecifically
addressingtheoriginsofphotomontage in ad-
techniquesis Sally Stein'simportant
vertising essay,"The CompositePhotographic Image and
theCompositionof ConsumerIdeology,"ArtJournal, Spring1981,pp. 39-45.
: s
-~:i::::-:;::-:::-:::1:I::
ii::i::::' ::
GustavKlucis. The Dynamic City. 1919.

Alexander Ticket No. 1. 1919.
Rodchenko. Alexander
Rodchenko. forPro Eto. 1923.
Photomontage
AaM.
Out iliii-iii iii?l
?-
iii-iiiiiiiii
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
attemptsat collage and photomontagereveal the difficulty of the paradigmatic
transformation that is inherentin thatprocedure,and the concomitantsearch,
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 functionswhichthe new proceduresthatlegit-
imize 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,Prefacetotheexhibition Berlin,1931,citedin Dawn

catalogueFotomontage,
London/NewYork,Pantheon,1976,p. 15.
Ades, Photomontage,

98 OCTOBER
work: the transparencyof constructionprocedures; the self-referentiality of the

pictorial signifyingdevices; the reflexivespatial organization; and the general
emphasis on the tactility,that is, the constructednature of their representa-
tions. But, on the other hand, photocollage and photomontage reintroduced
into the aesthetic construct- at a moment when its modernistself-reflexivity
and purificationhad semioticallyreduced all formaland materialoperations to
purely indexical signs- unlimitedsources fora new iconicity of representation,
one thatwas mechanicallyproduced and reproduced, and therefore - to a gen-
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
photographicquotations and theirjuxtapositionswere not in part motivatedby
theirauthors'reliefat having finallybroken the modernistban on iconic repre-
sentation.This, in extremecontrastto the Parisian vanguard's collage work,in
which iconic representationultimatelyreappeared, but which never made use
of photographicor mechanically reproduced iconic images.
But the rediscoveryof a need to constructiconic representationsdid not,
of course, resultprimarilyfromthe need to overcome the stricturesof modern-
ism. Rather it was a necessary strategyto implement the transformationof
audiences that the artistsof the Soviet avant-garde wanted to achieve at that
time. "Photomontage," an anonymous text (attributed by some scholars to
Rodchenko) published in Lef in 1924, not only traces the historicaffiliationof
photomontage'sconglomerate image with the strategiesof advertising,juxta-
posing photomontage'stechnique and its iconic dimension with the traditional
techniques of modernist representation,but also introduces the necessityof
documentary representationin order to reach the new mass audience:
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 substitutionresides in the factthat the photographicprintis not
the sketchof a visual fact,but its precise fixation.The precisionand
the documentarycharactergive photographyan impact on the spec-
tatorthatthe graphic representationcan never claim to achieve. ...
An advertisementwith a photographof the object that is being ad-
vertisedis more efficientthan 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).

Quite the contrary,the author seems to invite that competitionby defining

photomontagefromthe start as an agitational tool that addresses the Soviet
Union's urban masses. It is with this aspect in mind that the practitionersof
photomontagecould not accept the confinementof the medium to the formsof
distributiontheyhad inheritedfromcollage: formslimitedby the single, rect-
angular sheetof paper, itsformat,scale, and size ofeditionentirelydetermined
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 singularityof thisobject fragmentsof a multi-
tude oftechnicallyreproducedphotographicimages 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
productionhave to be changed, but the formsofdistributionand institutionsof
disseminationand receptionhad to be transformedas well. The photomontage
technique, as an artisticprocedure that supposedly carries transformative po-
tentialqua procedure, as the Berlin dadaists seem to have believed, therefore,
in the workof Rodchenko and Lissitzky,becomes integratedas only oneamong
several techniques- typography,advertising,propaganda- that attemptedto
redefinethe representationalsystemsof the new society.
Aimi
Ierr
I1RS
Carlo D. Oi
?Aw
-W, -d::
El Lissitzky.Photomontageforcatalogueaccompanying
KurtSchwitters.
Untitled (Der Sturm). 1919. SovietPavilionat Pressa Exhibition, Cologne.1928.

100 OCTOBER
FromModernism
toMass Culture
In 1926 Lissitzkydeveloped a theoryof contemporaryart 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 distributiondevelopmentsoccur-
ringin othercommunicationsmedia: books, graphicdesign, film.Althoughhis
beliefswere buoyed by the same naive optimismtowardsthe enlighteningpower
of technologyand the media that would ten years later limitthe ultimaterele-
vance 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 artisticproduc-
tion. 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 transfor-
mations as a product of needs and functionsratherthan as a resultof techno-
logical changes. The textis importantforthe clarificationof Lissitzky'smotiva-
tion in the followingyears, as he decided to abandon almost all traditional
formsof graphic and photographic,let alone painterlyor sculptural, produc-
tion, and to concentrateexclusively on those practices that establish the new
"monumentality"-the conditions of simultaneous collectivereception:
It is shortsightedto suppose that machines, i.e., the displacementof
manual by mechanical processes, are basic to the developmentofthe
form and the figureof an artifact.In the firstplace it is the con-
sumers' 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 impor-
tant thinghere is that the mode of productionof words and pictures
is included in the same process: photography.. . . [In America] they
began to modifythe relationof word and illustrationin expositionin
the directopposite of the European style.The highlydeveloped tech-
nique offacsimileelectrotype(half-toneblocks) was especiallyimpor-
tant 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 deli-
cate hands of a bibliophile,but seized by a hundred thousand hands.

S
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 au-
dience as a determinantof form,and on the perspectiveof creatingconditions
forsimultaneouscollectivereception,becomes even more obvious in theessay's
at-firstsurprisingequation 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
withthe theater- the peep-show as he calls it- where the spectatoris separated
fromthe performers,and the spectator'sgaze is contained--as in traditional
easel painting--in the centralperspectiveof the proscenium stage. The revolu-
tionary transformationof book design ran parallel in Lissitzky'swork to the
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
generatesthe tactilityof experiencingthe reader's movementthroughtime and
space.22
This integrationof the dramatic experienceof theatrical/cinematographic
space and the perceptual experience of static signs of graphic/photographic
montage and typographyis successfullyachieved in 1928 in Lissitzky'sfirstma-
jor exhibitionprojectforthe InternationalPress Exhibition,Pressa,in Cologne.
Not surprisingly,we findon the firstpage of the catalogue that Lissitzkycre-
ated 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 thinkingof Lissitzky'sinvolvementwiththe design of exhibi-
tions 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
developmentof his own work, as well as in the radical transformationof mod-
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
21. El Lissitzky, "Unser Buch," in El Lissitzky,pp. 357-360.

22. Yve-Alain Bois, "El Lissitzky: Reading Lessons," October,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 artistbe-
gan: 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 relativelymodest project in Moscow's GorkyPark. Unlike the 1926 design for
the InternationalContemporary ArtExhibition in Dresden, or the cabinet design for
the Hannover Landesmuseum in 1927, this project was conceived and pro-
duced as a set fora trade show ratherthan an exhibitionof contemporaryart;
furthermore,it was the result of the collaboration of a group of artists.
Klucis, the "inventor"of photomontage,Lissitzky'scolleague and disciple
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,officiallyentitled"ProductivistManifesto,"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 photo-
montage 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 earlierforad-
vertising,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
gives us a clear view of his awareness that the functionsof the technique within
24. Lissitzky, Prounund Wolkenbiigel, Dresden, VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1977, p. 115.
25. Lissitzky, "Der Kiinstler in der Produktion," Proun,pp. 113ff.

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
Lissitzky'sdefinitionof the functionsof the technique in 1927: the morphology
of the productsof thattechnique has changed substantiallyby comparisonwith
its original manifestationsin 1919-23. Those features that the technique of
photomontagehad inheritedfromits origins in collage and the cubist critique
of representationwere 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 ofjux-
tapositionand fragmentationby which the originsin advertisingwere inverted
and where the constructedartificialityof the artifactdestroyed the mythical
nature of the commodity.This shiftbecame apparent in the gradual returnto
the iconicfunctionsof the photograph,deletingaltogetherthe indexicalpotential
of the photograph(as stillvisible in Lissitzky'sphotogramsofthe '20s) as well as
the actual indexical structureof the agglomerated fragmentsof the photomon-
tage itself,where the networkof cuts and lines ofjutting edges and unmediated
transitionsfromfragmentto fragmentwas as important,ifnot more so, as the
actual iconic representationcontained withinthe fragmentitself.
Thusfaktura,an essential featureof the modernistparadigm thatunderlay
theproductionof the Soviet avant-gardeuntil 1923, was replaced by a new con-
cern for thefactographic capacity of the photograph, supposedly renderingas-
pects of realityvisible withoutinterferenceor mediation. It was at thismoment
- in 1924 - that Rodchenko decided to abandon photomontagealtogetherand
to engage in single-framestillphotography,whichtransformsmontage through
the explicitchoice of camera angle, the framingof vision, the determinantsof
the filmicapparatus, and the camera's superiorityover the conventionsof hu-
man 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 fragmen-
tation, iconic representationof an absent referentis favoredover the indexical
materialityof the trace of a verifiableprocess, tactilityof the constructionof in-
coherentsurfacesand spatial referencesis exchanged forthe monumentalityof
the camera-angle's awesome visions and the technologicalmedia optimismthat
it conveys. Yet while it is evident that at thismoment the premisesof the mod-
ernistparadigm were vacated, and that a programmaticcommitmentto new
audiences entirelychanged the nature of artisticproduction,it seems no more
appropriate to neglect or condemn as propagandaLissitzky'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 tech-
nique of the "painted collage") as being responsibleforprovidingadvertising's
visual and textual strategies,operative to this very day.
BetweenPhotomontage
and Propaganda:The Pressa
Partially as a response to his firstsuccessfulexhibitiondesign in Moscow
in 1927, a committeechaired by Anatoly Lunacharsky decided to ask Lissitzky
(togetherwith Rabinowich, who later withdrewfromparticipation)to design
the Soviet Pavilion at the forthcomingInternational ExhibitionofNewspaperand
BookPublishingin Cologne, the firstexhibitionof its kind. Since the decision of
the committeewas made on December 23, 1927, and the exhibition was to
begin in the firstweek of May 1928, Lissitzky and his collaboratorshad four
months to plan and produce the design of the exhibition. Apparentlyjust two
days afterthe committeehad appointed him, Lissitzkysubmitteda firstgeneral
outlinethatforesawtheformationof a "collectiveof creators"withhimselfas the
general coordinatorof the design. Among the approximatelythirty-eight mem-
bers of thecollective,only a few,among themthe stage designerNaumova, had
previouslyparticipatedin exhibitiondesign and the decorationofrevolutionary
pageants.26The largestgroup withinthecollectiveconsistedof agitpropgraphic
designers,shortlythereafterto become some of the most importantgraphic de-
signers of the Soviet avant-garde. The majorityof the 227 exhibitswere pro-
duced 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-twoby eleven feetand depicted, in
constant alternationof camera angles, of close-ups and long-shots,the history
and importanceof the publishingindustryin the Soviet Union since the Revo-
lution and its role in the education of the illiteratemasses of the newly indus-
trialized state. Thus the photofresco,The Task ofthePressIs theEducationofthe
Masses (its officialtitle), functionedas the centerpieceof an exhibitionthatwas
devoted to documentingthe achievementsof the Revolution in the educational
fieldfora skeptical, if not hostile western European public.
26. For a detailed descriptionof the historyand the procedures of the work forthe Pressaexhi-
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
: -::
::
:~:wS:::::?:__?:
:ii:-::i
:ii~i~iiii~iiii:i
:::i::
:..
::::::`::;:
:::::---
::-::::I:
--:--::-r
:;:"-::::
::::);t:j
---:--::- ::-,,-;::ir ::.::::
_:::a~_:--?
::.;:-::::
.-.?_:::
:::
-::a?
--:ii:ilii-
.::::
i~ii-i~~~ ~b~Faf~Q~~gi ?:::

::i~i-~P:
- :~s`-:'i-i:
.~i?i"di~-~iiiii:-i i
-...
ie?.g~:~
;~I~i
,~e
?4::-i:
:--:::::
%
..... ~:~Fa~a-: %- rr-s~:::: :-:
-
..
1
::: i:-::
:,,::;:::
-s
:I ;i:
i&-f-$
withSergeiSenkin).
El Lissitzky(in collaboration
Photofrescoin Pressa Exhibition. 1928.
:::::?::
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
The actual structureof thephotofrescofollowedthe strategiesthatLissitzky

had laid out in the essay that accompanied the catalogue of his firstexhibition
design in 1927. Large-scale photographicprintswere assembled in an irregular
grid formationand the visual dynamic of the montage resultedfromthejuxta-
positionof the various camera angles and positions,but no longer froma jagged
linear networkof seams and edges of heterogeneousphotographicfragments.
While the scale and size of the photomontage- it was installedon the wall
at a considerable height- aligned the workwitha traditionofarchitecturaldec-
oration and mural painting, the sequencing of the images and theiremphatic
dependence on camera technologyand movement related the work to the ex-
perience of cinematicviewing, such as thatof the newsreel. In theirmostlyen-
thusiasticreviews, 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
expositions,climaxes, retardations,and finales.""27 Reviewing both the Dresden
Hygiene Exhibition design by Lissitzky and the Cologne Pressadesign, a less well-
disposed criticstillhad to admit the design's affiliation
with the most advanced
formsof cinematic production:
The firstimpressionis brilliant.Excellent thetechnique, thearrange-
ment, the organization,the modernway it has been constructed...
Propaganda, propaganda, that is the keynoteof Soviet Russian ex-
hibitions,whethertheybe in Cologne or in Dresden. And how well
the Russians know how to achieve the visual effectstheirfilmshave
been showing us foryears!28
Even though Lissitzkydid not meet Dziga Vertov until 1929 (inaugurat-
ing friendshipthatlasted until Lissitzky'sdeath in 1941), it is verylikelythat
a
in 1927-28 he was drawing not only upon the collage and montage sources of
cubism, dadaism, and constructivism,but equally upon thecinematicmontage
techniques that Vertov had used in the firstKino-Pravdafilms,and used still
more daringlyand systematicallyin 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 con-
siderable 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. Rjasanzew, p. 78.

28. Cited in Rjasanzew, p. 79.
29. Hubertus Gassner, Rodchenko Munich, Schirmer/Mosel, 1982, p. 121.
Fotografien,

instances, was very much at the center of the constructivistdebate itself,to

make "construction"and "montage" the procedures that would transformthe
passive, contemplative modes of seeing. Sophie Kiippers argues that it was
Vertov who learned the montage technique from Lissitzky's earliest experi-
ments 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
magazine USSR in Construction can we recognize, according to Kiippers, the
influenceof Vertov's Kino-Pravda.
In spite of the obvious parallels between the cinematographic montage
and the photomontage,and leaving aside the question of historicalpriorityand
influence,it is importantto clarifyin this context the specificdifferencesthat
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 com-
pared and contrastedand could be offeredforextensive reading and viewing;
complicated processes of constructionand social transformationcould be ana-
lyzed in detailed accounts that ran parallel with statisticsand other written
information;and the same subject could, as Rodchenko argued, be represented
"at differenttimes and in differentcircumstances." 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 be-
come 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 constructivistsactually to implement
theirproductivistprogram (due to shortage of materials, lack of access to in-
dustrial facilities,disintereston the part of the engineersand administratorsof
the State manufacturingcompanies) that drove these artistsinto the field of
typography,publication and posterdesign, agitational propaganda and exhibi-
tion design.30 The emergence of a strongantimodernism,backed by the Party
as a resultof Lenin's New Economic Policy in 1921, required the returnto tra-
ditional 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, photographicrepresentationand 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
the frameworkof modernism are now applied to a practice of representation
that had deliberatelyand systematicallydisassociated itselffromthat frame-
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 differentproduction procedures and
modes of presentationand distribution,any historical critique or evaluation
will have to develop its criteriafromwithinthe actual intentionsand conditions
at the origin of these practices.
Lissitzky'sexhibitiondesign does overcome the traditionallimitationsof
the avant-gardepractice of photomontageand reconstitutesit withinthe neces-
sary conditions of simultaneous collective reception that were given in the
cinema and in architecture.Further,in his new practice of montage, Lissitzky
incorporatedthe method of"systematicanalytical sequence," as Tretyakovwas
to defineit shortlyafterwards.Tretyakovwrotein 1931 thatthe photographer/
artist should move from the single-image aesthetic to the systematicphoto-
graphic sequence and the long-termobservation:
If a more or less random snapshot is like an infinitelyfinescale 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 sys-
tematically. Sequence and long-termphotographic observation--
that is the method.31
Modernism's
Aftermath
In spite of the fact that even the most conservative internationalnews-
papers reported enthusiasticallyon Lissitzky's Pressadesign, and that he re-
ceived 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 personallydissatisfiedwiththe results.This
is evident in a letterthat he wrote on December 26, 1928, to his Dutch friend,
the de Stijl architectJ. J. P. Oud. "It was a big success forus," he mused, "but
aestheticallythere is somethingof a poisoned satisfaction.The extremehurry
31. Sergei Tretyakov, "From the Photoseries to the Long-Term Photographic Observation," in
Foto, IV (1931), 20, reprintedin German translation in ZwischenRevolutionskunst
Proletarskoje und
SozialistischemRealismus,ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhart Gillen, Cologne, Dumont Verlag,
1979, pp. 222ff.

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 writtenduring 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
personalityand all that stuff,or as the anarchistic romanticismof
blind confidencein the spontaneous power of the proletariatin the
historicalprocess- a proletariatwhichis itselfa productofbourgeois
society.33
But it is also clear by now thatboth Lissitzky'sand Benjamin's media opti-
mism 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 accelera-
tion of capitalistdevelopment throughconsumption. Thus, what in Lissitzky's
hands had been a tool of instruction,political education, and the raising of
consciousness was rapidly transformedinto an instrumentforprescribingthe
silence of conformityand 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.

GustavKlucis. Photomontage
poster(two versions).
1930.
;-i::::::-
;,:::
::::i- :::::
: -:
::
:i:::::-: ::,-::? -:?
-:-:
::
-:::::i
:lj ON
v,,Aft;
ii
_..kja~E-.~~
:: ::?:-
.i::(:
aiziii
dialectical abandonment of modernismwas soon to become a historicalreality.

As early as 1932 we see the immediate impact of the Pressaproject in its adap-
tion forthe propaganda needs of the Fascist governmentin Italy. Informedby
the membersof theItalian League of Rational Architecture,in particularBardi
and Paladini (who was an expert on the art of the Soviet avant-garde), the
architectGiuseppe Terragni constructedan enormous mural-sizedphotomon-
It would require a detailed
tage for the Expositionof theFascist Revolution.34
formaland structuralanalysis to identifythe transformationsthat took place
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 continu-
ity of a formalprinciple becomes apparent, proving that it is by no means
simply the case of an available formalstrategybeing refurbishedwith a new
political and ideological content.
34. HertaWescherwrotein 1968in herhistory ofcollagethatP. M. Bardi'sworkTavoladegli
had been modeledupon Lissitzky'smontageworkpublishedin Westernjournals. For
orrori
Paladini, Wescherargues,the relationship was even more directsince he had been born in
MoscowofItalianparentsand had developeda stronginterest in theSovietavant-garde.In re-
sponsetotheexhibition oftheSovietPavilionat theVeniceBienalein 1924,he publisheda study
Artin theSovietUnion(1925). See Wescher,Collage,Cologne,DumontVerlag, 1968,pp. 76ff.

All fistshave been clenched as one,
JohnHeartfield.
cover
photomontage for specialissueagainstfascismof
ArbeiterIllustrierte
Zeitung,vol.XIII, no. 40,
1934.
NDERNUMMER
ft-
ntaw
Ao~o&4ea
?w-dft
mJes
06val
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
tasks,in constructingrepresentationsfornew mass audiences, not only
difficult
to establishconditionsof simultaneouscollectiveviewing,but further,actually
to constructrepresentationsof the masses themselves,to depict the collectivity.
One of the most prominentexamples ofthisnecessityis an earlyphotomontage
poster by Klucis, which in fact seems to have been so successfulthat Klucis
used the same visual configurationfortwo different purposes.35The subject of
35. Gustav Klucis's firstversion of the photomontage poster in 1930 reads, "Let us fulfillthe
plan of the great projects," and it was an encouragement to participate in the five-yearplan of
1930. The second version of the poster is identical in its image of an outstretchedhand which in
itselfcontains a large number of outstretchedhands and an even larger number of photographic
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 transformedKlucis's outstretchedhand into an outstretched
arm witha fist,givingthe salute of the Communist Internationalunder the slogan, "All fistshave
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
the poster in both versions is the representationof political participationin the

decision-makingprocesses of the new Soviet State. In Klucis's posterparticipa-
tion is encouraged by an outstretchedhand withinwhich hundreds of faces are
contained: thus the individuation resultingfromthe participationin political
decisions and subordinationunder the political needs of the collectivityseem to
be successfullyintegratedinto one image. In Terragni's photomural the same
structurehas been deployed; this time, however, the overall formof the out-
stretchedhand of thevotingindividualis replaced by the outlinesof the machine
(the propeller, the turbine) which contains the image of the masses of people.
And it is clear that the Fascist image means what it unknowinglyconveys: 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
mastery.Abstractedas it is, however, fromthe interestsof those who are being
mastered, it appears as an image of anonymityand subjugation rather than
one of individual participationin the constructionof a new collective.
It is significantthat the principlesof photomontageare completelyaban-
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
studiedhis workthoroughlyforthepreparationofher own propaganda movies),
they had also recognized that the achievements of the Russian artistsin the
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
TheCamera,the organizersexplicitlycompared 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 instantlybecome aware of the direct, unproblematic,and truly
grandiose nature of the representationof realityin thisroom. These
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 remnantofmodernistpracticein photomontage,the
seams and the margins where the constructednature of realitycould become
accordingly, "See how the inflammatorywords of Mussolini attractthe people of Italy with the
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
GiuseppeTerragni.Photomontage muralfor the
ofthe Fascist Revolution. 1932.
Exposition of
Exposition Photomural
at theGermanWerkbund
ExhibitionDie
Kamera, Berlin.1933.
........
LAAM,
A
4t as"t 7mm
?Wkl
h
I
AM,
.................
..........

114 OCTOBER
apparent- and thereforeits potential forchange obvious - had now become a

standard practice in totalitarianpropaganda, and constructionwas 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 collectivityas one that
is constantlyto be redefined,we now finddisplaced by the unifiedspatial per-
spective (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, historicallyas well as structur-
ally, this reversal takes place withinthe practices of 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 enter-
prise. And according to Stepanova's own text, Rodchenko abandoned photo-
montage 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
Lissitzky's,forthejournal USSR in Construction is a problem that modernistart
historianshave triedto avoid by stylingthese artistsas puristheroes and mar-
tyrswho had to sacrificetheircommitmentto the spiritualrealm of abstractart
by theirenforcedinvolvementwiththe state. A revisionof thiscomfortingdis-
tortionof historyis long overdue. It is a distortionthat deprives these artists-
ifnothingelse - of theiractual political identity(theircommitmentto the cause
of Stalinist politics was enthusiasticand sincere and came unforced,as is evi-
dent 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
profoundconflictsinherentin modernism itself:that of the historicaldialectic
between individual autonomy and the representationof a collectivitythrough
visual constructs.Clearly the historyof photomontageis one of the terrainsin
which this dialectic was raised to the highestdegree of its contradictoryforces.
Thus it is not surprisingthat we find the firstsigns of a new authoritarian
monumentalaestheticdefinedthroughthe veryrejectionof thelegacy ofphoto-
montage 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

of development. Its firststage was characterized by the integration

of large numbers of photographs into a single composition, which
helped bring into reliefindividual photo images. Contrasts in photo-
graphs of various sizes and, to a lesser extent, the graphic surface
itselfformedthe 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 fragmentedand have all the character-
isticsof a real document. The artisthimselfmust take up photogra-
phy. . . . The value of the photographitselfcame to assume primary
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 reflectionupon the
purposes and functionsof the technique of photomontageitselfwe witness the
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 photo-
montage is inherentlyconnected to the simultaneous solution of the
question fora monumentalstyle,since the monumentalityofthetasks
of the constructionof socialism requires a heroic pathos forthe orga-
nization of the consciousness of the spectators. Only in a successful
synthesisof dynamics and monumentality- in conjunctionwith the
constitutionof a dialectical relationshipbetween the levels of life-
can photographyfulfillthe functionsof an art that organizes and
leads life.38
Thus it seems that Babichev's original, utopian quest and prognosis for
the futurefunctionsof a postmodernistfactographicart to become "an informed
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 ZwischenRevolutionskunst
undSozialistischem
Realismus,pp. 230ff.

:: ::!:
::-:-::- AlexanderRodchenko.Two pagesfromthemagazine
USSR in Construction, no. 12, December1933.
(Special issueon theconstruction
oftheStalin Canal.)
-i??
:::~:::
::-:::-
1:::::?.::
-i:ii
iiiiiii::i::?:i~
:i:--
i-iiiii
iii_-:
i--;
__-:--:
-i :..i::
: f---:-
~_?e__:_
-:::r::-:
:::::-: :---:::
:: .:::-: ?r.
:;-::I:::::i::i(s;:i
: ::
I
P^~iji~~, ~. i?e~;-i -r~;?,~lii:~-;;r,
::::: :-:::::::~
I~-?~rP~E~"""'"~i~-i~i"
-: :-:: -:-::-:::::::'-~--;_
:- :::
: ::?:::
: ::::i
:::::?::-i:
:: .-:
: :i:::
::::::::-::'-?::-?::
:: ----'- -:::::::
::-::::--:::1-;::::::
:-::?ic-:::-l-_-:--:i:.-:-i
_I,:,I:,-,:j.-:
::::
::::'::::::;:--:-
;--;
::-::?:; :;::?:::ii:::-
::?::~~
i~-~i~_:
i~::~~:
~.-.-":~-----"~"*:8'"11"'
ii~iii.li~i
: - :-::::
:i:::::::.:
.: :,--a--~:
-i-,.?,~?R--
:L-:'::
-::::
-:::i:
Overprinted reads:In the course

captionin photograph
of 20 monthsalmost 20,000 skilledworkmenwere -1:::
trained in 40 trades. They were all ex-thieves, ?t~l i-lii.i~-_*-i

:ii:t-
bandits, kulaks, wreckers,murderers.For the first --:%-:--
time theybecame conscious of the poetryof labor,

the romance of constructionwork. They workedto
the music of their own orchestras. ii- a _:::: ..ii:iiiii-iii
ii:iiiii

element of social engineering, inherentin the notion of social progress as a

resultof technologicaldevelopmentwhich art could mediate, had finallycaught
up withmodernism'sorientationtoward science and technologyas its underly-
ing paradigms fora cognitivelyand perceptuallyemancipatorypractice.
This historical dialectic seems to have come full circle in Rodchenko's
career. In 1931 he worked as artist-in-residence on the site of the construction
of the White Sea Canal in order to document the heroic technologicalachieve-
ments of the Stalin governmentand to produce a volume of photographicrec-
ords. But apparentlyin thefirstyear 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 photo-
graphed 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 prerevolutionaryand counterrevolutionary per-
sonalitymastered throughthe process of reeducation in the forcedlabor camps
of the White Sea Canal.39
While it is undoubtedly clear that at this time Rodchenko did not have
any otherchoice than to complywiththe interestofthe State Publishing House
if he wanted to maintain his role as an artistwho participated actively in the
constructionof the new Soviet society(and we have no reason to doubt thisto
be his primarymotive), we have to say at least that by 1931 the goals of factog-
raphy had clearly been abandoned.
However, the contemptmeted out froma Western perspectiveat the fate
of modernistphotomontageand factographicpractice in the Soviet Union dur-
ing the 1930s or at its transformationinto totalitarianpropaganda in fascist
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 stillimi-
tated his friend,the painter, with the so-called photomontage. He
39. Gassner makes a firstattemptat 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 informationon the workingconditions at the
White Sea Canal and the number of victimson the "testimony"of Alexander Solzhnytsyn'swrit-
ings, 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
commercial photograph. . . . It is logical thereforethatwe findmany
modern photographerslined up with architects and designers in-
stead of with painters or photographicart salons.40
Ten years later Steichen staged his firstprojectat the Museum of Modern
Art, the exhibitionRoad to Victory. Once again its propagandistic success de-
pended almost entirely,as ChristopherPhillips has shown, on a debased and
falsifiedversion of Lissitzky'sexhibitiondesigns.41In this case it was Herbert
Bayer who provided American industryand ideology with what he thought
Lissitzky'sideas and practice had attemptedto achieve. Bayer was well suited
to this task, having already prepared an elaborate photomontagebrochure for
the National Socialists' DeutschlandAusstellung of 1936, staged to coincide with
the Berlin Olympics. When asked by ChristopherPhillips about his contribu-
tion to this project forthe Nazis, Bayer's only commentwas, "This is an inter-
esting booklet insofaras it was done exclusivelywith photographyand photo-
montage, and was printedin a duotone technique."42Thus, at the cross-section
of politically emancipatory productivistaesthetics and the transformationof
modernistmontage aesthetics into an instrumentof mass education and en-
lightenment,we find not only its imminent transformationinto totalitarian
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. Christopher Phillips, "The Judgment Seat of Photography," October,no. 22 (Fall 1982),
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"
(reprinted in Modernismand Modernity, Halifax, The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and
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 lend-
ing me the brochure itself.DeutschlandAusstellung 1936 was also published as an insertin the de-
sign magazine Gebrauchsgraphik, April 1936.

HerbertBayer.Photomural
for Edward Steichen's
Road to Victory at theMuseumofModern
exhibition
Art,New York.1942.
_-::.
--?-::::-::-:;-::::-:.:-?_-_~M.
:---
-:-_-
:::::--:::/ ,'7e
:?::-::
:-'_'--
ii.:.. ?'-:---~AV? Vm
C4 ?; ,:sh
-';;-:'";~'~~P
'~iii.-:?---
-i'----::-i~-i~:
1~r::?? al,54*"
:~'-
.B~~'??i ~ ~ ~ ~
Ar~
~a,
lip"
~ ~
INM-ii--:_
~ W/M
~~-Iff",iii'i
s$.pa~a~~:_
&i~;4?i~~~~-~~~ak
"Irha~ kf
:-$;
I(i)i~~~
ill~~;l
q :an Run
j, 1.4
t Vag:li~~_~h~ M*'A!S1
rMVr
HerbertBayer.Photomontagefor brochure
accompanying
theexhibition
Deutschland Ausstellung,Berlin.1936.


Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. - From Faktura To Factography

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Descrizione originale:

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. - From Faktura To Factography

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

From Faktura to Factography

Author(s): Benjamin H. D. Buchloh

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

As the firstdirectorof the Museum of Modern Art, AlfredBarr largely

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

(preceded by the earliest geometricalthingsI have seen, 1915, done

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

The Lefis more than a symptom,more than an expressionof a fresh

4. Alfred Barr, "The Lef and Soviet Art," Transition,no. 14 (Fall

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

jects produced by Rodchenko, Tatlin, and the Stenberg brothers,sometimes

Attemptsare being made in the recentliteratureto constructa genealogy

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

But the specificallyRussian qualities offaktura are nonethelesschallenged

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

sculpture.They attemptedto definethe separate materialand proceduralqual-

8. AlexanderRodchenko,"WorkingwithMaiakovsky,"manuscript1939, publishedin ex-

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

Even at this point in Rodchenko's developmentfakturaalready meant

9. Alexander Rodchenko, exhibition pamphlet at the exhibition of the LeftistFederation in

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

Further, this emphasis on the processqualitiesof painting was linked to a

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

constructionas an active process, and not a contemplativereflection.

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

position clearly engages the viewer in a phenomenologicalexercise that defies

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

FloatingVolume. 1919. Installed

black, and vice versa. Thus, as a resultof human bodily motion, a

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

to the size of an agitational billboard, in frontof a factoryentrancein Vitebsk.

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

practices that the Soviet avant-garde considered capable of establishingthese

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

18. The twoessaysthattracethehistory ofphotomontage in thecontextofthehistoryofpho-

GustavKlucis. The Dynamic City. 1919.

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

Dadaists and Expressionists--theso called photomontageof form;

19. GustavKlucis,Prefacetotheexhibition Berlin,1931,citedin Dawn

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

work: the transparencyof constructionprocedures; the self-referentiality of the

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

Quite the contrary,the author seems to invite that competitionby defining

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

21. El Lissitzky, "Unser Buch," in El Lissitzky,pp. 357-360.

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

Lissitzky's 1927 text not only traces an astonishinglyclear historyof the

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

the historicalcontextof the Soviet avant-garde are entirelydifferent fromthat

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

work fromthis period (nor their subsequent involvementwith Stalin's State

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

i~ii-i~~~ ~b~Faf~Q~~gi ?:::

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

The actual structureof thephotofrescofollowedthe strategiesthatLissitzky

27. Rjasanzew, p. 78.

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM

instances, was very much at the center of the constructivistdebate itself,to

30. Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism,

This content downloaded from 193.63.184.1 on Tue, 16 Jul 2013 08:07:34 AM