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 The Situation is Hopeful: Another Step towards a New History of Art of the Soviet Period Alise Tīfentāle, Art Historian | |
| This book is in two parts: a collection of articles from the confer ence Recuperating the Invisible Past. Perspectives and Ways of Dealing with the Complexity of Art History of the 1960s–1980s in Eastern Europe held on 17–18 May, 2011, at the Goethe In stitute in Riga, and articles relating to the exhibition Parallel Chronologies. Invisible History of Exhibitions (17 May–4 June, 2011, Riga Art Space). The work invested by the Centre for Con temporary Art in the comprehensive survey and evaluation of our cultural legacy from the Soviet period is inestimable, and this collection of articles is a major step forwards on the way towards systematic and conclusive research. At the same time it sharply highlights the problems which are yet to be resolved, among them those of terminology and methodology. These unresolved issues provide grounds for a positive and hopeful mood: for researchers in the field there is still plenty to do, and we can anticipate wonderful new discoveries, and perhaps even new theories of art history. What is “modernising art”? First of all we need to establish what the main focus of attention is in the research articles and materials that comprise this collec tion. As the compiler of the publication Ieva Astahovska points out in the introduction, the chief issue concerns “modernising socialistperiod art” (p. 11). Even though one is left with an im pression that most of the authors of the articles have implicitly agreed upon some kind of concrete definition of “modernising art”, in order to achieve greater understanding it would be of benefit to discuss what is meant by this phrase, and why. Initially, in the traditional Western interpretation modern ism was seen as a continuous progression towards an ever higher level of abstraction. In accordance with the scheme of evolution of art movements and styles conceived in the mid 1930s by the first director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Alfred Barr, the inevitable development of modern art leads only and solely towards abstraction. Later this was joined by Clement Green berg’s reading of medium specificity. This was followed by the notion of the antiintellectualism and apolitical nature of high art which, in turn, the avantgarde movements of the 1960s sought to overturn, firstly by revolting against the processes of the art market, consumerism in general and capitalist ideology, but soon enough, of course, becoming an organic element of these same phenomena. One is left with the impression that the authors, for the most part, assume that “modernising” is everything that re sembles Western artistic expressions of the same time period in terms of form. In my opinion, this is not the place to discuss contentbased anthologies, as the respective backgrounds, the economic, social, and ideological structures within the societies under communism and capitalism were far too different, and we have reason to consider the majority of assertions about possible contentbased similarities as being speculative. Western artists chose a certain arsenal of formal means of expression in order to express dissatisfaction with the existing order – the art gallery system, museum policy, the general crisis of consumer society and democracy and similar; meanwhile, artists on this side of the Iron Curtain, even when using similar formal techniques, were communicating a completely different message. It’s quite like with Karl Marx and Communism: although the quotation may be the same, it nevertheless carries a completely different meaning and ramifications in the Soviet Union than, let’s say, amongst activists of the Communist Party of France. Likewise one should seek differences in content and meaning between, for instance, a beautifully painted portrait of Lenin in Soviet Latvia, and the drawing with a friendly greeting that Picasso sent from Paris to Stalin on his birthday. Correspondingly the “modernising” ex pressions, too, should be just as rigorously examined, in assess ing the cultural context. Another aspect yet to be clarified is that of the system of co ordinates – what is to be the point of reference prior to which art is “not modern” and after which it becomes “modernising”. Most of the studies included in this collection of articles refer to a rela tively late period of the Soviet era, that is the late 1960s and the 1970s. Again by tacit agreement it seems to be assumed that in the previous decades nothing “modernising” had taken place. Re ally? In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding, the historical period from the end of WW2 until the collapse of the Soviet Union should be viewed in the way it developed and changed, in addition seeking to formulate in reasonably precise terms which, in each time period, were the manifestations of the “not modern” against which some “modernising” feature would stand out. For example, according to Boris Groys the socialist re alism of Stalin’s era is quintessential modernism, but for Alfred Barr during this same time period there is nothing more anach ronistic than figural painting. And so on. That is why this aspect is still open to debate and could offer a promising direction for further research and theorisation. How to complicate matters further? Another potentially fruitful area of research is about the political and economic control of artistic activity under the Soviet system, starting with educational institutions and finishing with the fa cilitators of professional career development – the Artists’ Union and Art Fund, commissions, exhibitions and acquisitions. Ieva Astahovska in her introduction states that for the studies “...more important is revealing of differing conditions, largely those cre ated by the art and the system / power relationships.” (p. 13) Representatives of the most extreme position would argue that collaborationism in any shape or form, and under any regime, is and remains ethically doubtful or at least controversial, and this kind of position, in turn, encourages seeking and finding such pleasing evidence of organised or individual dissent in actions which perhaps were never intended to be such. For example, Piotr Piotrowski points out that only the very few examples of po litically active and subversive art (here mentioning Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian and East German artists and artists’ groups) “... make[s] the foundation of Central Europe’s artistic culture and its contribution to the world culture of those times.” (p. 21) The “art and the system / power” relationships mentioned, especially in the case of the Baltic states, where the Soviet ruling power was indisputably a regime of occupation – albeit so en trenched that it had already normalised within a couple of gen erations – were complex and multilayered enough, and these too should be examined without any attempts at simplification. In the articles it is reiterated numerous times that it is not pos sible, nor is it necessary, to be radical and to view everything as binary pairs of opposites (as, for instance, the often used con cepts/terms “official” and “unofficial” art), and one can only but agree with that. We could also continue the discussion about the usage of the term “Eastern Europe”, because it has long been determined that nothing like that exists and “Eastern Europe” is one of those myths that there is no excuse for reviving these days. Further more, the Baltic states are a different case – in losing independ ent statehood, post World War II they simply disappeared off the world map. From this aspect also there are a great many issues and problems to be resolved. Historians who specialise in the history of culture and art in the Soviet Union mostly focus on the processes taking place in Russia, and even if they do mention the Baltic states, then only in passing. Eastern European research ers like Piotr Piotrowski, for instance, concentrate on countries of the socalled Communist Bloc, ignoring the Soviet republics. Hence on the wider international scale the history of Latvian So viet period art is of no particular interest, neither to one nor the other, and this finally is a field where Latvian researchers have every opportunity to offer something new and noteworthy. The events in Latvia and the Baltic states can be analysed by contrasting and comparing them with the general cultural political context of the Soviet Union. Svede in his “An Aggressive Apologia for the Nonconformist Paradigm” (p. 61) draws our at tention to the fact that, when looking at it from the outside, the presumed differences within the Soviet Union internally perhaps weren’t that many. Theoretically one could agree. At the same time, the extreme corollary of this view is to make overly sweep ing generalisations – such as, for example, the traditional West ern assumption that everything that is “Soviet” equals “Russian”, or the currently topical cynical enthusiasm on the part of cu rator Massimiliano Gioni about the opportunity to marginalise everything on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and to blithely liken it to the creative efforts of the mentally ill, prisoners and outsiders. The Baltic states were, however, the “internal West” of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet occupation was never able to extinguish the local culturalhistoric heritage – both the material and the nonmaterial – completely. That is why I believe that one prospective avenue of study and argumentation in the research of Latvian Soviet period art is directly connected with the defining of these culturalhistorical differences, as well as the determination of potential cultural and political differences in theory and in practice. The milieu in Moscow in 1966 was not the same as in Riga of 1966, and all that remains is to find out exactly how, why and what were the con sequences of the differences. The Estonian researchers Maria Kristiina Soomre and Kädi Talvoja are working in this direction in their article “Exhibitionary Dynamics of the Soviet Era. From AvantGarde to Official Art and Back Again”, by turning to an area of research that is currently topical in the West, one that could be termed the history of exhibitions, and examining the activities of Estonian artists in the broader context of the Soviet Union. What to do with non-conformism? The only theoretical concept in this field which is to be dealt with seriously is the concept of nonconformism which, in turn, is closely linked with the Norton Dodge Collection – the only collection in the West in which Latvian art of the Soviet period is abundantly represented. The theoretical and historical basis for this term has been offered in a number of respected scientific publications by Mark Allen Svede (Ieva Astahovska refers to the collection of articles published in 2002, ‘Art of the Baltics. The Struggle for Freedom of Artistic Expression under the Soviets. 1945–1991’). Do we have anything of equal value to put in its place? The main argument in the critique of nonconformist theory is the fact that in Latvia there wasn’t the development of guerilla art and consciously undergound traditions such as, for example, in Soviet Russia, from where this term was derived. Astahovska notes that we are in the “second wave” research phase, when scholars “...do not attempt to interpret the Soviet period art in dichotomies (official / nonofficial art, conformism / nonconformism), but rather deal with the hybrid nature and ambiguous meanings of these processes. Examples are innovative artistic phenomena that were camouflaged or purposefully developed thanks to decisions of cultural policy or institutional processes.” (p.13) She also adds, in the same place, that the collection fo cuses on approaches and methods which would permit working with this historic material in a serviceable manner. In his article “An Aggressive Apologia for the Nonconform ist Paradigm”, Mark Allen Svede, too, advocates clarity in defini tions, calling attention to “...basic semantic confusion resulting from imprecise language...” (p. 61). The article urges for a deeper understanding and a rejection of overly simplistic contraposing of notions. Svede offers at least two solutions. Firstly, the bi nary opposites from the Soviet period nowadays considered as selfevident should be aligned with a third – the layer of Western preconceptions, in this way seeking a new hybrid model that would offer a reassessment of known values. Secondly, Svede reminds us that there are semantic differences between “con formity” (according to the author, this term refers to style and subject matter) and “official” (this refers to the institutional or administrative nature of art activity) (p. 68–69). One can only agree that “semantic confusion” is one of the chief obstacles as to why it is still so difficult to utter even one single sensible and meaningful sentence about Latvian Soviet period art. Even in the exhibition Un citi (‘And Others’) it was precisely this semantic confusion which operated as the main disruptive factor, in the absence of a clearly and rationally for mulated position as regards the issue of what and why there are “others”, apart from each exhibition contributor’s professional interest or individual enthusiasm for one or another phenom enon or work. An example of the confusion in terminology is en countered, for instance, in the article by Epp Lankot, “The Neo AvantGarde and the Historiographical Act”, with the metaphors “personal time” and “silent resistance” (p. 125) which, although poetic and sweetsounding, due to their opaque definition and limitless vagueness often lead to even greater confusion. In the article by Ieva Astahovska devoted to the history of exhibitions, “Parallel Chronologies in Latvia: the New Art in the System’s Breaches. The 1970s”, the deficiencies in terminology and internal contradictions are demonstrated by the proposed allembracing criterion “all these events were unusual for their time” (p. 173). This incorporates three elements: the reflections of Western modernism, the relatively more rebellious design shows and unconventional experiments in the field of perform ance. Within the realms of an article that, too, may be adequate, but the unclear boundaries of criteria could become problematic in further research. It is of some concern, for example, that pho tography is largely ignored in Latvian Soviet period art. Behind its complicated relationship both with the official – institutional ised – art world, to which the greater number of the authors of the “unusual events” mentioned in the article belonged, and with Soviet media policy and censorship, there is hiding more than one surprising revelation. The marginal yet interesting role of art photography and amateur film is, however, mentioned by the Lithuanian researcher Dovilė Tumpytė in her article “Parallel Chronologies in Lithuania: What if...?” How to start writing a new history of art? Not only conciseness of terminology but also the development of a new methodology is one of the cornerstones on which to build a new art history. The art history terminology and methodologies used today are products of Western culture, based on capitalism as the prevailing order, and manifestations of the avantgarde are viewed as resistance to this order, but the main point of reference is the stable and sophisticated canon of Western art (and also art theory), which is reproduced in the millions in the text books destined to be used by higher education students in Englishspeaking countries, and is regularly reinforced by large scale exhibitions at the world’s leading art museums. To my mind, in the analysis of our historical situation it is not possible to utilise Western canonical theories directly. For example, in the collection of articles the theory of post colonialism is mentioned several times as a methodological approach in the writing of the art history of European socialist states. Sounds good, but the usability of this method is debat able, because you can only talk about colonialism if the territory and culture colonised and exploited is in its economic, social and political development at a lower level than the dominating one. In this light, the Soviet occupation can scarcely be consid ered as colonisation, but, of course, individual elements of this method can be used effectively, as proven by an assessment of the situation in Lithuania by Linara Dovydaitytė. In the article “Beyond dichotomies, towards ambivalence: interpretations of Soviet art in today’s Lithuania” she defends postcolonial theories and the viability of the concepts of feminism. Also the theories of feminism and art history methods as sociated with them cannot be directly imported into the field of Soviet Latvian art. Laura Mulvey and many of her followers have shown up the way that in Western capitalist consumer society the stereotypical gender roles are propagated and reinforced through the cinema and other media of popular culture as well as socalled high art. However, in the Soviet culture space quite different gender roles should be considered as the prevailing ones and local art phenomena should be viewed in close con text precisely with these models of behaviour and appearance. And thus we can arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that, for example, much of what could from the Western viewpoint be regarded as the usual attempt to assign to woman the role of being a thing – a sex object, in the context of Soviet visual culture and dominant gender roles can be read as something quite the opposite – as liberation, as woman’s struggle to reclaim femi ninity. In my opinion, systematic work could result in a new and functioning methodology which could be used in the analysis of Latvian and Baltic state Soviet period art, and which would also find its place under the sun in an international context. Why on earth strive to utilise theories and methods that were originally devised for completely different situations and clearly are not suitable for our own situation, if every scholar has every opportunity of offering to the world scientific community their own theory – new, original and most relevant to the material in question? The only thing that one may wish to avoid is an un critical attitude or insufficiently critical enthusiasm on the part of the younger generation researchers about individual expres sions of the “avantgarde” in art of the Soviet period, which if accentuated too much, threaten to overshadow completely the landscape against the background of which these individual oc currences stood out. There could also be an opinion that the main line of research is not so much about which artwork or artist at that time was, in our presentday understanding, the most avantgarde, but rather whether things overall were gener ally moving forwards and that certain artistic activities linked up or – quite the opposite – conflicted with the rest of the planned course of life in “the greater zone”. It would be worthwhile, one would think, to find a way of looking at the recent past with interest, but at the same time with a reasonably cool distance, without trying to imitate Western processes, saying that “we too had photorealism over here, so that’s all right then”. It wasn’t all right, and couldn’t be all right. However sunny, interesting or otherwise positive an individual’s memories may be, it must be borne in mind that every development should be regarded within its historical context, in this case – taking into account the repressive and human rights constricting political regime with which each had to form a relationship, one way or another. An indepth and analytical survey of the Latvian Soviet period art scene is still “work in progress”, and ‘Recuperating the invisible past’ is a new step forwards in this direction. Time to hope and time to concern It is of great value that this collection of articles has been pub lished in Latvia and in Latvian (in parallel with the English), thus endeavouring to keep alive the Latvian language as a means of contemporary expression at scientific level. In Latvia, where the official language of study in higher education institutions is and remains Latvian, every publication of professional literature that gives the possibility of receiving the world’s most recent findings in one’s native language is of immeasurably vital importance, and at the same time also provides models of how one can offer a professional opinion on topical issues. This in turn is a prerequi site for the creation of new ideas and concepts, and that after all is our aim, isn’t it? But there is nothing to suggest that at the level of cultural policy systematic and considered work is being invested in or der to achieve this goal. Once again we must return to the very foundations – to the issue of education, and we have to admit that there is some grain of truth in the assertion that in certain fields there is no need to create or maintain study programmes in Latvian tertiary institutions, because those interested can study wherever in the world the said study programme already exists. On the one hand – quite right, because what would be the point of studying art history in Latvia if the studies were to take place almost exclusively in a foreign language. Professional liter ature is available only in English (also German, French and other languages), and the translations of books chaotically selected by some enthusiastic publishing houses, even though good in themselves, are not at the core of required reading (not to men tion that not a single uptodate world art history text book has been translated, let alone written, in the Latvian language). On the other hand, this kind of attitude alienates young re searchers and also prevents the emergence of new theoretical concepts and historical discoveries with regard to Latvian art that could stand up to scrutiny at world level. By thinking and working in foreign languages only, and by integrating into the academic environment of other countries, the facts of Latvian art become insignificant against global considerations; in addi tion the capacity for and interest in expressing onself in Latvian declines, which is made all the more difficult by the fact that every author in every regular publication has to create their own translationversion of standard texts by T. J. Clark, Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. It’s even more absurd that there is not a single publication of a highquality, quotable translation in Latvian of the more significant articles by Mark Allen Svede, even though in fact they have a decisive bearing on all the scholarly literature about Latvian postwar art that is published in the West. Therefore it is now time for concern about the younger generation of art critics and historians. If the art theory and his tory study programmes in Latvia are concentrated only on the history of Latvian art, then one must ask: how is it possible to research, analyse, argue and convince an international public of professionals about local phenomena if the notions of global processes are so fragmentary and unsystematic? Even more so if we aren’t really that interested in what is being said, and in what way, about Latvian art beyond our borders. Translation into English: Terēze Svilane | |
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