WHAT IS ARTISTIC FORM? MUNICH-MOSCOW
1900-1925
LUKA SKANSI
Munich was, at that time, the embankment that
contained in Eastern Europe the influence of French
painting with its barbaric ‘pontaventism’.1
Science is the materialization of the reality for the
reason, art is the materialization of the reality for the
eye.2
For a large part of Russian artistic culture at the turn of the century,
Munich represented not only one of the most important centres of innovation in the artistic production in Europe, but rather an alternative to artistic
events, subsequent to Impressionism, that spread slowly from Paris all
over the continent. On closer inspection there is a fully-fledged pilgrimage
towards the schools, the ateliers and the institutions of the Bavarian
capital, starting from the 1880s and continuing until the outbreak of the
First World War. The reasons for this migration are only partially cultural
or scientific: it was a common practice for Russian middle and upper class
families to send children to study in Germany, especially for Jewish
families, due to constraints imposed by the Czarist regime on their access
to higher education.3 In the winter semester between 1912 and 1913 there
were about 5000 Russian students registered at German universities, while
in Munich alone there were 552 of them.4
Il’ya Repin, one of the greatest painters of Russian realism, called Munich
the “greenhouse of German art”, or the “German Athens”. Together with
Pavel Chistyakov, the master of an entire generation of Russian painters at
the turn of the century (such as Polenov, Vrubel’ and Surikov), he recommended their students from the St. Petersburg Academy attend painting
schools in Munich, in particular, the private school of the Slovenian artist
Ažbe Anton (1862-1905), considered in those years to be one of the most
important pedagogues in Central Europe.5 Ažbe’s school was at the time
the largest private academy in the city and one of the most popular
destinations for young painters, together with the atelier of the Hungarian
painter Simon Hollóssy,6 attended by Vladimir Favorsky, the future dean
of the Vkhutemas. Since 1891, the year the school was founded, to 1905,
the year of Ažbe’s death, a consistent number of Russian artists from
different generations spent a formative period here. The most renowned
among them were Valentin Serov, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Ivan Bilibin,
Vasily Kandinsky, Aleksey Javlensky, Igor’ Grabar (who would be Ažbe’s
first assistant for some years)7, Vladimir and David Burlyuk, Kuz’ma
Petrov-Vodkin, Aristarkh Lentulov and Mikhail Matyushin. Some of these
artists, once back in Russia, would join the Moscow faculty of arts
(MUZhVZ), or would operate within their own private schools; others,
such as the Burlyuk brothers, Kandinsky or Matyushin, would organise
exhibitions, events and publications that would have a decisive role in
promoting the avant-garde movements on the national and international
art scene.
Not all Munich art scene is linked obviously to Ažbe’s school. Munich
was a complex cultural universe at that time, where various artistic trends
coexisted, starting from the emerging languages of Secession, the birth of
expressionist movement, the neoclassical review promoted by figures
linked to the Werkbund and to the first hints of abstract art in the work of
the artist-architect August Endell, and the painting circle of the Neu
Dachau-Gruppe.8 In general, some of the crucial figures of the future
Moscow avant-garde art scene spent a formative period in Germany.
Lissitsky, for example, attended the Technische Universität in Darmstadt,
and his entire career would be characterized by a strong relationship with
German and Swiss contexts. 9 The sculptor and author of the Realist
Manifesto Naum Gabo studied in Munich starting from 1910. His
education interests ranged from physics and theoretical physics – he attended courses given by Wilhelm Röntgen and Arnold Sommerfeld – to art
history and art theory: he was an assiduous student of Theodor Lipps’s and
Heinrich Wölfflin’s lessons.10
Furthermore, Germany represented an attractive pole for the young
Russian students of history and the theory of art and architecture. The
main Russian art historians of the first half of the 20th century shared a
formation experience in Germany, and particularly in Munich in the
departments of Art History, Aesthetics and Philosophy, where they became acquainted with the theories of Konrad Fiedler, Theodor Lipps,
August Schmarsow, Cornelius Gurlitt, Adolf Hildebrand, Heinrich Wölfflin and Paul Frankl. The aesthetic theories of the German “formalist
school”, the treatises on Raumkunst, the Einfühlungstheorie, as shall be
explained later in the essay, would be quickly absorbed and endorsed by
Aleksandr Gabrichevsky, Aleksey Sidorov, Vladimir Favorsky, Igor’
Grabar, Mikhail Alpatov, art historians, Munich students and Germanophiles: in the years following the Revolution, these scholars have been
particularly active in disseminating German texts and theories in Russia,
and their scientific and cultural activity in the twenties and thirties is
considered as a fundamental scientific endeavor in establishing a modern
iskusstvovedenie [the discipline of art history] in the Soviet Union.
In this context, it is important to note that some of the renowned and
influential German essays in art and architectural history have been
available in Russian in the first two decades of the 20th century: Heinrich
Wölfflin’s Die Klassische Kunst, Renaissance und Barock and Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Adolf Hildebrand’s Das Problem der Form in
der bildenden Kunst, Albert Brinckmann’s Plastik und Raum.11
The aim of this text is not to enumerate all the experiences that Russian
scholars had in relation to the German prewar context, but rather to
demonstrate how rooted the German theoretical studies were in the
formation of the Russian artistic, architectural and in a wider sense
aesthetical culture, between the 1910s and 1930s: a repercussion that has
often been neglected but, as will be made clear in the following analysis,
was simply latent. There is no specific stylistic influence, no migration of
“taste” for a specific trend or for specific artistic or architectural stylemes.
On the contrary, this influence can be better traced by following a broader
theoretical discourse that affects the same foundations of artistic production in a paradigmatic way. This is the reason why it is found in different
fields of artistic expression, in aesthetic theories, manifestoes, teaching
methods, often in seemingly incompatible environments, or in figures that
apparently could not be assimilated to the same cultural milieu. It derives
from one crucial epistemological problem that, in fact, arose in Germany
starting from the last decades of the 19th century: the notion of space in
figurative arts, or better, the problem of the spatiality of the artistic form
[Raumkunst, prostranstvennost’ formy]. This notion represented an almost
exclusive object of reflection and research for artists, architects, art
historians, philosophers of this period; it was faced as a cultural
“problem”, as an epistemological shift that helped to redefine the instruments for understanding reality and the relations that artistic and intellecttual production establishes with reality. In other words, these intellectuals
redefined the “coordinates” of the artistic object, its actual status: it was no
longer solely observed, measured and judged by its material and linguistic
component, but it was conceived as the result of both its volumetric and its
spatial component. The spatial aspect took such a decisive role that it
became the basis upon which to build a new definition of the aesthetic
value of the artistic and architectural works.
But what exactly is the spatial component of form, and why did this
abstract concept become the object of reflection of such an important intellectual community between the end of the 19th century and the 1920s?
And to which extent can an influence on Russian artistic, architectural or
urbanistic practice really be discussed?
The new critical category – Raum – introduced a key component into the
sphere of artistic and architectural thought: a sensory, empathic relation
between a human being and a work of art, or, speaking in architectural and
urbanistic terms between man and his physical environment. Without
going too deeply into the development of German aesthetic thought of the
late 19th century, and trying to avoid in this discourse the complex nuances
that differentiate the single theoreticians, we may assume that the notion of
space is nothing but a way of defining the “irrational” aspects of the works
of art and architecture. These aspects have been identified as essential in
the distinction between an artifact and a work with artistic value. For
German theorists, the artistic component of a form and the
phenomenological quality of form cannot meet its physical, volumetric or
utilitarian component: the analysis requires a different focus in order to
comprehend the reasons behind its aesthetic “status”. Different theorists
have proposed their own answers concerning this question: for example
Vischer, with his definition of empathy (Einfühlung) – a process by which
the mind tends to find its self-representation in art –, Lipps with his
Raumästhetik – the idea that the psychology of the forms should convey a
more general syntax of art forms –, Wölfflin with his interest in the visual
aspect of architecture – the psychologising as a true criterion of aesthetic
evaluation of architecture.12
We can assume that, in general, the German aesthetic debate on this topic
recognised two fundamental processes that affect the relationship between
the subject (the human mind) and the object (the work of art). The first one
is related to the conviction of the centrality of perception: our sensory
apparatus (mainly visual and tactile senses) is the fundamental filter for
our comprehension of the material reality. The process of perception offers
us information on external objects and ideas on the representation of
reality (of an object, a physical phenomenon): this idea of reality is
directly related to the relationship established between our perception and
our mental elaboration of that data. This process, which affected the
artistic and theoretical debate on the arts, was recognised initially by the
scientist Hermann Helmholtz as intuitive and innate, as it belongs to our
natural and innate perceptual features, and therefore is autonomous from
reality.13 Spatial perception was seen as the basis of all our awareness of
reality. Wölfflin would later argue that through the psychology of
perception – which is the process by which we try to gain all of our
understanding of the world – in a certain sense we bring order to reality.14
The second generally accepted concept is the recognition of the process of
abstraction: for German theorists the human mind founds artistic
satisfaction only in the transition from one “lower” level – in which the
form is an expression of its material, physical quality – to a “higher” level,
in which the form is solely a product of the mind, where the material
elements have been used by the means of the expression of form. The
process of abstraction is what makes a composition of colours a work of
art, a carved volume a sculptural work, or a building a work of
architecture. The critique of the centrality of the technical and functional
component in architecture is evident: art is definitely autonomous from
reality, and space synthesises and conceptualises the different aspects of
its aesthetic values.
In this sense, Schmarsow’s definition of architecture, contained in his
famous essay Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung (1894), is
extremely clarifying.
Psychologically, the intuited form of three dimensional space arises
through the experiences of our sense of sight, whether or not assisted by
other physiological factors. All our visual perceptions and ideas are
arranged, are ordered, and unfold in accordance with this intuited form;
and this fact is the mother lode of art whose origin we seek. (…) Our sense
of space [Raumgefühl] and spatial imagination [Raumphantasie] press
toward spatial creation [Raumgestaltung]; they seek their satisfaction in
art. We call this art architecture; in plain words, it is the creatress of space
[Raumgestalterin].15
The intellectual that absorbed German aesthetic theories in a wider sense,
and in particular the chapters concerning the issues of spatiality in
architecture, was the art historian and art theorist Aleksandr Georgievich
Gabrichevsky (1891-1968), a crucial figure, not only for the artistic and
architectural culture in the Soviet Union, but for the entire legacy of Soviet
culture of the twentieth century. Almost unknown to Western historiography, his importance has only recently been reconsidered in Russia –
though still in a very fragmentary way – after a period of almost total
amnesia and “forced” removal from disciplinary environments. 16 His
production was extraordinarily rich and included heterogeneous theoretical
aspects of artistic creation, music, philosophy and architecture, with
competences and interests ranging from classical to contemporary
subjects.17
Gabrichevsky studied Art History at the Moscow University. During his
studies, in 1914, he attended the Munich University and in particular Paul
Frankl’s seminar on the analysis of architectural monuments.18 In the same
year, Frankl, one of the most famous of Wölfflin’s pupils, published his
famous treatise Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst,19 where
he analysed the evolution of the architectural space in religious and civil
buildings from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, and discussed the
analytical methods of Wölfflin, Riegl and Schmarsow. This book seems to
have had a great influence on Gabrichevsky, although his texts are in
general imbued with references to the aforementioned German aesthetic
culture.
In 1923, Gabrichevsky wrote two fundamental essays: Arkhitektura and
Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture [Space and Volume in Architecture].20
His aim was to define the epistemological nature of the artistic component
of architecture and its relationships with the utilitarian aspects of the
discipline:
In a more strict sense architecture indicates: 1) a special kind of spatial
arts, creating buildings, that manifests itself not in the utilitarian aspects,
but is contemplated as an artistic creation, as a visual artistic unity of
spatial relations. 2) a particular aesthetic category […], that expresses the
nature of the aesthetic object as a structure, as a construction, as a result or
an image of a rational utilitarian building.21
The art of architecture, i.e. its aesthetic value is to be found within its
spatial quality, a characteristic that architecture shares with all other forms
of art. Gabrichevsky promptly defines the differences between the
different aesthetic categories of painting, sculpture and architecture:
[…] in painting, every quality of spatial relations is reduced to the
expressive gesture on the material surface, in sculpture this quality is given
by the organic metamorphosis of a solid substance, while in architecture,
we always have a juxtaposition or opposition of space and volume,
between the spatial nucleus and a materic envelope.22
Architecture, unlike the compositional strategies with surfaces and
volumes operated in painting and sculpture, is formed by two indivisible
components, that are facing each other and that collaborate to form the
aesthetic quality of architecture – the volume and the space –, and each
one is defined by its own composition rules and characteristics. Regarding
the spatial component, for Gabrichevsky architecture must be experienced
in the dynamic sense, observed all around, perambulated. He reported how
art historians have already produced a classification of basic types of
spatial and architectural volumes, according to the principles of movement
and orientation: the differentiation of form can actually be based on a
centripetal (Zentralraum), longitudinal (Langraum) or transversal orientation (Breitraum), between forms made for a “moving man” (Gehraum)
or a “standing, motionless man” (Verweilraum). “Architectural space” –
continues Gabrichevsky – “can not only be perceived as an adequate expression of human functions, but also as an adequate expression of some
irrational elements, not amenable to anthropomorphic control (mastery)”.23
In other words, the extent of the aesthetic value of architecture is measured
by the degree of its incisiveness on man’s sensitive apparatus, on the
irrational component of his mind. These sensations are provoked, according to Gabrichevsky, by two different formal phenomena: architecture is
a synthesis of the expressive qualities of the caves – quarry buildings made
of amorphous volumes – and of monumental buildings, made of volumes
and masses. The architectural form is therefore defined – following
Hegel’s definitions of the individual arts, in the third part of his
Aesthetics 24 – as the synthesis of negative architecture [otritsatel’noe
zodchestvo] and infinite sculpture [neogranichennaya skul’ptura].25
The volumetric component of architecture is better defined in his essay
Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture: architecture is “a contrast and
synthesis of spatial dynamics and material tectonics”. 26 Volume is
expressed through the materialisation of the complex relationship between
structure and architectural language. It is interesting to note that by
introducing the definition of the tectonic meaning in architecture, Gabrichevsky declares his position within the contemporary architectural
debate:
In recent times, thanks to the development of technology and to the
emergence of a new architectural style, theorists are inclined to once again
reject any boundary between utilitarian practice and artistic value, and are
ready to recognise the beauty in any functional tool to the extent of its
usefulness.27
The reasons that caused the German “formalist” school to criticise the type
of architecture that identifies its essence in purely structural and functional
components can clearly be found in Gabrichevsky’s essays. But,
considering the period in which these essays were written (1923), another
criticism manifests through these texts – a critique towards the
functionalist slogans promoted by the emerging constructivist movement:
the utilitarian component was simply not accepted in an aesthetic
discourse on architecture. Gabrichevsky avoids any direct reference to the
constructivist manifestoes of Aleksej Gan (Konstruktivizm, 1922) and
Aleksandr Vesnin (Credo, O zadachakh khudozhnika, 1922), but it seems
clear that his position diverges from the contemporary constructivist
instances, that instead focus the priorities of architecture on the degree of
its efficiency, rationalisation, function.
Gabrichevsky draws from different theoretical sources. There are references to Wölfflin, Schmarsow in his writings; the tectonic aspects of architectural form are probably derived from Semper or Bötticher; but the
union of two different theories (Raumkunst and Tektonik) into the same
discourse is quite rare and can be probably referred to Frankl s Das Entwicklungsprinzip.28
Gabrichevsky’s knowledge of German aesthetic literature becomes even
more evident in the list of encyclopaedic entries he edited for the
dictionary of the Russian Bibliographic Institute. 29 Besides the
monographic entries on “Tietze”, “Schmarsow”, “Riegl”, “Schnaase” and
“Worringer”, he edited the entry Formal’nyj metod [the formal method].
Here he identifies the main historiographical contribution of the German
school, not so much in the general formal approach in studies on art, but
above all in having institutionalised the contemporary iskusstvovedenie as
an autonomous scientific discipline.
During his Munich years, Gabrichevsky met Kandinsky, with whom he
developed a close friendship and had intense intellectual debates, although
he was already acquainted with avant-garde environments in Moscow, in
particular with Larionov, Goncharova, the Burlyuk brothers, Popova and
Falk. With the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Moscow
where he graduated in 1915; in 1917 he achieved the academic quailfi-
cations he needed to begin his academic activity with a thesis entitled
Space and composition in the Art of Tintoretto.30
Gabrichevsky’s pedagogical activity began in the early postwar years and
was divided between different cultural institutions and universities in
Moscow. Between 1917 and 1925 he taught in the Department of “Theory
and History of Art” at the Moscow State University, at the MIKhIM
[Moskovsky institut istoriko-khudozhestvennykh izyskaniy i muzeevedeniya], but the most interesting aspect of his work from this period is
represented by his active participation in the founding of the RAKhN –
Rossiyskaya akademiya khudozhestvennykh nauk [Russian academy of
artistic sciences].31 The institute was officially founded in October 1921,
under the auspices of the Minister for culture and education Anatoly
Lunacharsky, and was initially composed by three departments: the
psycho-physiological (directed by Kandinsky), the philosophical,32 and the
sociological department. Gabrichevsky worked actively with Kandinsky
on structuring – in both theoretical and practical sense – the psychophysiological department, and he was at the same time directly responsible
for the creation of a section for spatial arts [sektsiya prostranstvennykh
iskusstv] that assembled sculpture, painting and architecture into one
single analytical framework. He held several seminars in the institute33 and
collaborated in producing the Slovar’ khudozhestvennoy terminologii [Art
Terms Dictionary], a scientific project within the RAKhN, where he
himself edited the entries “abstraction”, “grotesque”, “representation”,
“archeology” and “architecture”: the content of the latter merged into the
aformentioned essays Arkhitektura and Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture, as discussed previously.
Within this institution, between its different departments and activities, he
was in contact with eminent members of the Russian pre-and postrevolutionary culture: philosophers, poets and writers (Bely, Bryusov,
Voloshin, Shervinsky, Akhmatova, Pasternak), musicians and choreographers (Neygauz, Rikhter, Rumnev), artists (Kandinsky, Falk, Natan
Al’tman), art theorists and art historians (Florensky, Favorsky, Sidorov,
Nekrasov, Tsvetaev) and architects (Ivan Zholtovsky and Moisey
Ginzburg).34
The project for the creation of the psycho-physiological laboratory had
already been discussed in a working group formed within the Inkhuk,
starting from 1920, inspired by Kandinskij and composed by artists and art
theorists (Falk, Favorsky and Gabrichevsky).35 The instances that bound
the group in this brief experience was the common interest in the
definition of the relationship between art and the cognitive sciences, with
the aim to found a science of arts based on the relationship between art and
human sensations. 36 After leaving the Inkhuk, Kandinsky and his
associates moved the entire work program to the emerging psychophysiological department at RAKhN with the aim “to discover the internal
laws on which the creation of art is based, in each of his different forms of
expression, and on these bases to found the principles of the creation of the
total work of art [sinteticheskogo khudozhestvennogo vyrazheniya].37
The department began working in August 1921 with seminars held by the
physicians Uspensky (“The role of science in the study of art work”) and
Lazarev (“Colours and their physico-chemical analysis”),38 and it continued during the winter semester with conferences held by the originators
of the department: Bakushinsky, Kandinsky, Gabrichevsky, Mashkovets.39
The academic year 1922–23 was entirely dedicated to specific topics of
artistic production such as rhythm, space and time. A specific commission
was formed for each topic, with the aim of organising and promoting
lectures and discussions that ranged from broader aesthetic and
philosophical aspects to the specific relationships between these topics and
the different forms of artistic expression: painting, sculpture and architecture. In that year Konstantin Malevich, among others, lectured “On
principles of art: on color, light, on pointilizm in space and time”,40 and
Konstantin Yuon, an important pedagogue from the late Imperial Russia,
painting teacher to Vladimir Favorsky and of the avant-garde artists Tatlin
and Aleksandr Vesnin.
In the protocol of the Commission we find the requirement to include
psychology in art analysis and art history, as a science that provides the
main tools for the study of spatial forms. Adolf Hildebrand’s essay Das
Problem der Form is quoted as a seminal book for understanding the
relationship between human perception, artistic form and composition
methods.41 The aim of the Commission is to investigate the analysis of the
perception of spatial forms and the content of their dynamic elements, the
perception of parallels, proportions and symmetry, the criteria of the
perception of depth, and space perception.42
In the winter between 1923 and 1924, the “Commission for the Experimental Study of Rhythm” organised a series of lectures on rhythm in
sculpture (Nedovich), painting (“Rhythm and composition in the ancient
Russian painting”, Tarabukin), nature (Vul’f), a report on the “Congress
On Rhythm” held in Geneva (Chetverikov), and a conference on the
psychology of rhythm according to Theodor Lipps (Rumer). One of the
founders of the constructivist movement in architecture, Moisey Ginzburg,
held a seminar here about the rhythmic element in architecture, in four
sessions between December 1923 and February 1924, which Ginzburg
published in his two renowned books (Ritm v arkhitekture and Stil’ i
epokha).43
Perception, rhythm, space, time, sensation, the physiological analysis of
colour, the relationship between art and the sciences: following these
general – but revealing – pieces of information that document the work
inside the RAKhN, and in particular inside its psycho-physiological
laboratory, we can conclude that topics which characterised the research of
a considerable part of the German scientific community entered Russia not
only through single and isolated “transmission channels” but even became
the study subject of a multidisciplinary research centre. The theory of art
and architecture and analysis of physiological and perceptive systems
started to collaborate in the structuring of seminars regarding the study of
specific artistic and architectural devices such as rhythm and space. The
paradigms that emerged from the German art and architectural historiography of the last decades of the nineteenth century, such as the autonomy
of art and the definition of the aesthetic value of artistic forms, were
proposed inside the RAKhN, and reconnected to the activity of distinguished scientists like Hermann Helmholtz, Ernst Mach and Wilhelm
Wundt. Their handbooks, the foundational studies in the field of psychophysiology – many of them already available in Russian before the First
World War – were widely known, including their far from limited
observations on the general problems of contemporary aesthetics.44
However, regardless of the short existence of the RAKhN,45 and despite it
being impossible to measure its effective importance for the development
of art and architecture in Soviet Russia, it seems interesting, if not
necessary, to think about its scientific project, and about the number of
figures, so crucial in those years that initially subscribed it. This
multidisciplinary institution – in the still unexamined panorama of the
research institutes active in Moscow after the First World War – collected
historians, artists, musicians, choreographers, physiologists, physicians,
biologists, and psychologists. The generation of art historians grouped in
the RAKHN (Sidorov, Nekrasov, Bakushinsky, Favorsky and Gabrichevsky) were all students of the Moscow University chair of Art History
before the revolution, and they all shared a strong intellectual link with
Germany. At this time there was also a small number of artists (Kandinsky, Favorsky and Falk) and architects (Zholtovsky and Ginzburg) inside
the RAKhN, the latter present in the activity of the institute, but not in the
design of programs of work.46 Apart from Kandinsky, Bakushinsky and
Nekrasov, all these figures taught more or less simultaneously within the
Vkhutemas, while Favorsky became its rector between 1923 and 1926. It
was during Favorsky’s direction that Gabrichevsky held three courses
within the Vkhutemas (“Renaissance”, “History of modern painting” and
“Theory of spatial arts”), parallel to Pavel Florensky’s course “Theory of
perspective” which was also developed inside the RAKhN, according to
some studies.47
The relation and the parallelism between the topics that run through the
RAKHN project and some of the Vkhutemas preliminary courses are issues
yet to be explored and demonstrated. What should be emphasised is that
the landscape of cultural institutions in Moscow after the First World War
is increasingly complex, entwined and rich. Furthermore, the more one
penetrates the structure of the faculty of the main architectural and artistic
school of the USSR – the Vkhutemas, the Soviet Bauhaus – the more the
historiographical “mystification” – and narrowness – in which it was
confined becomes evident. A wide range of theoretical teaching, which
appeared in the school from 1921 onwards, and together with the
contribution of Favorsky, Gabrichevsky, Florensky and Ginzburg, constituted a real critical counterpart to the generally known productivism, constructivism, the appeals for the organisation of production, the activism
architects acting as producers of the new socialist reality. Moreover, some
of the topics that circulated within the RAKhN (space, rhythm ...) were
already present in the architectural environments in the early months after
the Revolution. The world of production of the form, and in particular the
so-called “rationalist” wing of the Soviet debate (referring to the
researches of Ladovsky, Dokuchaev, Krinsky, and partially Mel’nikov and
Golosov)48 is parallel to many of the themes of the world that theorises
and historicises the genesis of architectural form: these connections are
still to be investigated.
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Moscow.
Lissitzky-Küppers, Sophie ed. (1968): El Lissitzky: life, letters, texts,
Greenwich, Conn.
Mallgrave, Harry Francis; Ikonomou, Eleftherios (eds.) (1994): Empathy,
form and space: problems in German aesthetics, 1873-1893, Santa
Monica.
Markuzon, Viktor (1976): Aleksandr Georgievich Gabrichevsky (19811968), in: Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie, 1, pp. 346-347.
Quilici, Vieri (ed.) (1969): L’architettura del costruttivismo, Bari.
Pertseva, T.M. (1979): Poiski form vzaimosvyazi nauki i iskusstva (po
materiyalam Gakhna), in: Trudy VNIITE, 21, pp. 30-42.
Pogodin, Fedor (2004); A. G. Gabričevskij: biografia e cultura: “Slavia”,
n. 1, pp. 67-69.
Severzeva, Ol’ga; Stukalov-Pogodin, Fedor (1997): Breve profilo di un
intellettuale negli anni di Stalin. A. G. Gabričevskij in URSS anni ’30’50. Paesaggi dell’utopia staliniana, Alessandro De Magistris ed.,
Milano, pp. 127-132.
Senkevitch, Anatole Jr. (1983): Aspects of spatial form and perceptual
psychology in Soviet Architecture of the 1920’s, in: Via. Architecture
and Visual Perception, Cambridge, Mass.
Skansi, Luka (2007): Form, style, history, autonomy. Moisej Ginzburg and
Ritm v arhitekture, in: Fabrications. The Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 17, 2, pp. 26-49.
Sternin, Grigory Yu. (1994): Russkaya khudozhestvennaya kultura vtoroy
poloviny XIX veka – nachala XX veka, Moscow.
Tafuri, Manfredo (1980): La sfera e il labirinto, Einaudi, Torino.
Vischer, Robert; Vischer, Friedrich Th. (2003): Simbolo e forma, Torino.
Weiss, Peg (1979): Kandinsky in Munich. The Formative Jugendstil
Years, Princeton.
Williams, Robert C. (1972): Culture in Exile. Russian Emigrés in
Germany 1881-1941, Ithaca/London.
Wölfflin, Heinrich (1985): Psicologia della architettura, Venezia.
Notes
1
This statement was pronounced by Kuz’ma Petrov-Vodkin, and quoted by
Sternin 1994: 127.
2
“наука есть оформление действительности для разума, искусство –
оформление действительности для глаза”, Aleksandr G. Gabrichevsky, Problema arkhitekturnogo sinteza kak vzaimnoy organizatsii massy i prostranstva,
originally published in Zhurnal Gakhn, n. 3, 1927, now in Gabrichevsky 1993.
3
The statistics reveal that Jewish students attended mainly medicine, chemistry,
engineering and law universities, while Russian upper class students chose
Germany mainly for philosophical studies. At the time, the neo-Kantian department in Marburg, held by Hermann Cohen and Friedrich Lange, was one of the
most popular among Russian students: Boris Pasternak and Nikolai Berdyaev were
formed here, among others. Williams 1972.
4
The most substantial presence was recorded in Berlin (1.174) and Leipzig (758),
the other main destinations were Königsberg, Heidelberg and Halle. In almost all
universities Russians accounted for half of the foreign students, and often the
majority of them were Jewish. Ibid. p. 25.
5
Katarina Ambrožič, Ažbetova šola 1891-1905, in Ambrožič 1988.
6
Simon Hollósy (1857-1918), Hungarian painter and teacher, founded his painting
academy in Munich in 1886. His school was attended by many Russian painters.
7
Igor’ Emmanuilovich Grabar (1871-1960) was an important figure for the Russian artistic culture of the twenties. He was active as a painter but above all as an
art historian, being the author of the monumental History of Russian art: Istoriya
russkogo iskusstva, Izdanie I. Knebel, Moscow (1909-1914). Supervisor of the
Galeriya Tret’yakov in 1913, Grabar was officially named its director in 1918, and
remained so until 1925. From early 1918 he was active in the Narkompros section
for the conservation of works of art; he would also head the museums section of
Narkompros. Grabar 2001.
8
The group was formed by Adolf Hölzel, Ludwig Dill and Arthur Langhammer.
Hölzel was Oskar Schlemmer’s and Johannes Itten’s painting teacher. According
to Peg Weiss, Kandinsky only became aware of Hölzel’s work in the Bauhaus
years. Weiss 1979.
9
On Lisitzky’s postwar activity see Lissitzky-Küppers 1968; Manfredo Tafuri,
Urss-Berlino 1922: dal populismo all’“internazionale costruttivista”, in Tafuri
1980.
10
Gabo took a study trip to Italy during 1913, based on an itinerary prepared by
the same Wölfflin, before permanently leaving Germany because of the impending
war. Hammer, Lodder 2000: 21.
11
Heinrich Wölfflin, Klassicheskoe iskusstvo. Vvedenie v izuchenie ital’yanskogo
vozrozhdeniya, Brokgauz-Efron, S. Petersburg (1912); Renessans i barokko, Gryadushchy den’, S. Petersburg (1913); Osnovnye ponyatiya istorii iskusstv. Problema
evolyutsii stilya v novom iskusstve, Del’fin, Moscow (1922). Adolf Hildebrand,
Problema formy v izobrazitel’nom iskusstve i sobranie statey, Musagaet, Moscow
(1914), translated and edited by Vladimir Favorsky, together with eight other
essays that the German sculptor published in the first decade of the 20th century.
Albert Erich Brinckmann, Plastika i prostranstvo, Izdatel’stvo Akademii Arkhitektury, Moscow (1935), translated by E. A. Nekrasov, edited and introduced by
Alpatov. There are also translations of other Munich-based historians such as
Wilhelm Hausenstein and Oskar Wulff. But the list could be continued, especially
if we extend the boundaries to outside of the strict discipline of art history: many
books by Oswald Spengler were already available before the war, while some of
the seminal studies on physiology and optics, extremely important for the psychophysiological aspects of the formalist reading of art and architecture – written by
Hermann Helmholtz, Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Wundt – soon became the object of
an important epistemological debate regarding the relationships between science,
politics and art, having a strong impact upon all of Marxist culture in the period
between the two revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Skansi 2007.
12
I refer to Robert Vischer, Über das optische Formgefühl. Ein Beitrag zur
Ästhetik, Credner, Leipzig 1873, translated as Sul senso ottico della forma. Un contributo all’estetica, in Vischer 2003; Theodor Lipps, Ästhethik. Psychologie des
Schönen und der Kunst, partially translated in De Rosa 1990; Heinrich Wölfflin,
Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur, translated in Wölfflin 1985.
13
I refer to Hermann Helmholtz’s treatises Handbuch der physiologischen Optik
(1856) and Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen (1863) translated as Trattato di
ottica fisiologica, Sull’analisi dei suoni mediante l’orecchio and I fatti nella percezione in Helmholtz 1967.
14
“La nostra organizzazione dei corpi fisici è la forma con cui comprendiamo tutto
ciò che è fisico.” Wölfflin 1985: 37. [Our organisation of the physical bodies is the
structure through which we understand all that is physical] (My translation).
15
August Schmarsow, Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung, translated as
The Essence of Architectural Creation, in Mallgrave, Ikonomou, 1994: 286-287.
16
Gabrichevsky was inscribed in the “black lists” in 1931 and arrested several
times. The definitive exclusion occurred in 1941 when, accused of “cosmopolitanism”, he was first expelled from the Akademiya Arkhitektury, jailed in
Lubyanka prison and later sentenced to confinement in the city of KamenskUral’sky. He was saved thanks to a direct intervention by his friend, the renowned
architect Ivan Zholtovsky, and enabled to return to Moscow, but he could no
longer teach. From then on, he dedicated himself entirely to translations. The
biographical information is taken from Markuzon, 1976; Gabrichevsky 1992;
Gabrichevsky 1993; Severzeva, Pogodin 1997; Gabrichevsky 2002; Pogodin 2004.
17
In addition to his teaching activity, Gabrichevsky translated many classical
architectural books (from German and Italian): Daniele Barbaro’s I Commentari ai
Dieci Libri di Vitruvio, Vignola’s La Regola dei cinque ordini, Vasari’s Le Vite,
Michelangelo’s Le Lettere, Ascanio Condivi’s La vita di Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Benvenuto Cellini’s Trattato di scultura, Filippo Baldinucci’s Vita di Gian
Lorenzo Bernini, Macchiavelli’s Mandragora, Benedetto Croce’s La poesia di
Dante, Georg Simmel’s essay Goethe. He also edited and annotated Bryusov’s
translation of Goethe’s Faust, and the complete works of Goethe published in
1933.
18
Gabrichevsky 2002: 846.
19
Paul Frankl, Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst, Teubner, LeipzigBerlin 1914. English translation: Frankl 1968. The book is actually dedicated to
Wölfflin. Frankl studied with the master during the preparation of Die Klassische
Kunst and Grundbegriffe. A short but acute biography of Frankl was written by
Nikolaus Pevsner in Frankl 1962.
20
Arkhitektura was written as an encyclopedic entry for the Art Terms Dictionary,
a scientific project developed inside the RAKhN; Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture was originally published in Zhurnal RAKhN, n.1, 1923, pp. 292-390; the
third important essay relating to these topics is Problema arkhitekturnogo sinteza
kak vzaimnoy organizatsii massy i prostranstva, Gabrichevsky 1993.
21
Italics mine. “В более узком своем значении архитектура обозначает: 1) особый вид пространственных искусств, создающих постройки, которая являет-
ся не только полезной вещью, но и созерцается как художественное
произведение, как наглядное художественное единство пространственных отношений. 2) особую эстетическую категорию, выражающую природу эстетического объекта как структуру, как конструкцию, как результат или подобие
разумного целесообразного построения”. Arkhitektura, Gabrichevsky 1993: 1.
22
Italics mine. “[…] в живописи все богатство пространственных отношений
сведено к выразительному начертанию на материальной поверхности, а
скульптура дает органическое претворение массивной материи как самоценности, а в архитектуры мы всегда имеем сопоставление или противопоставление пространства и массы, пространственного ядра и материальной
оболочки”. Arkhitektura, Gabrichevsky 1993: 3.
23
“…архитектурное пространство может восприниматься не только как адекватное выражение функций человека, но и как адекватное выражение некоей иррациональной стихии, не поддающейся антропоморфному овладению.” Arkhitektura, Gabrichevsky 1993: 2.
24
Hegel 1963.
25
Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture, in Gabrichevsky 1993: 7.
26
“…противопоставление и синтезирование пространственной динамики и
материальной тектоники.” Prostranstvo i massa v arkhitekture, Gabrichevsky
1993: 6.
27
“В новейшее время, в связи с развитием техники и зарождением нового
архитектурного стиля, теоретики склонны вновь отрицать всякую разницу
между целесообразностью практики и художенственностью, и готовы признать всякое целесообразное орудие прекрасным в мере его полезности”.
Arkhitektura, Gabrichevsky 1993: 2.
28
The great debate by Semper and Bötticher on the notion of Tektonik that
characterises the German architectural culture of the second half of the 19th century, was practically ignored by the Russians until the early years following the
revolution. The same can be said about the other major issue discussed here – the
interpretation of architecture as Raumkunst. There have not been any references to
these two notions in Russian treatises since the 1850s. Apolony K. Krasovsky,
Grazhdanskaya arkhitektura, St.Peterburg, 1851; N. G. Chernyshevsky, Esteticheskie otnosheniya iskusstva k deystvitel’nosti, 1855; Vladimir O. Shervud, Opyt
issledovaniya zakonov iskusstva. Zhivopis’, skul’ptura, arkhitektura i ornament,
Moscow 1895; Vladimir Apyshkov, Ratsional’noe v noveyshey arkhitekture,
St. Peterburg 1905; Boris N. Nikolaev, Fizicheskie nachala arkhitekturnykh form,
St. Peterburg 1905; Pavel Strakhov, Esteticheskie zadachi tekhniki, Moscow 1906;
P. P. Sokolov, Krasota arkhitekturnykh form – osnovnye printsipy, St. Peterburg,
1912. Even in the urbanistic area, Sitte’s ideas about an urban design based on the
dimensioning of squares for the adequate perception of buildings were not assimilated by Vladimir Semenov (Blagoustroystvo gorodov. Moscow, 1912), Mikhail
Dikansky (Postroyka gorodov, ikh plan i krasota, Petrograd, 1915). The Russian
handbooks on the history of the 19th century do not discuss these questions:
Borisova, Kazhdan 1971; Kirichenko 1979; Kirichenko, 1982.
29
Entsiklopedichesky slovar’ Russkogo bibliograficheskogo instituta Granat,
Moscow, 1926-1927. Now in Gabrichevsky, 1993.
30
Prostranstvo i kompozitsiya v iskusstve Tintoretta, published in Gabrichevsky,
2002.
31
In 1925, the Akademiya was known as GAKhN (Gosudarstvennaya akademiya
khudožestvennykh nauk – State Academy of Artistic Sciences); in the early months
of 1929 the institute was transferred to Leningrad.
32
The other departments were directed by G. G. Shpet and V.M. Friche, respecttively.
33
Priroda plastiki [The nature of plastic volume, 1922], Problema vremeni v
iskusstve Rembrandt’a [The problem of time in the art of Rembrandt, 1922],
Struktura khudozhestvennoy formy [The structure of artistic form, 1923],
Nauchnoe i khudozhestvennoe mirosozertsanie Gete [Goethe’s scientific and
artistic visions], Vremya v prostranstvennykh iskusstvakh [Time in spatial arts],
Prostranstvo i kompozitsiya Tintoretto [Space and composition in the art of Tintoretto], Odezhda i zdanie [Covering and construction], Markuzon 1976.
34
Within the Akademiya Arkhitektury, Gabrichevsky worked with Ginzburg on a
History of architecture, starting from 1939. On Gabrichevsky and Ginzburg’s
friendship see: Markuzon 1975.
35
Khan-Magomedov 1979; Khan-Magomedov 1994; Senkevitch jr. 1983.
36
Programma dei lavori dell’Inkhuk secondo un piano di Kandinskij, in Quilici,
1969. Senkevitch jr. 1983.
37
“Раскрыть внутренние законы, по которым строятся художественные
произведения в сфере каждого отдельного искусства, и на этой базе установить принципы синтетического художественного выражения”. Otchet o
deyatel’nosti fiziko-psikhologicheskogo otdeleniya. [Summary of the activities of
the psycho-physiological department]. RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 1, l. 26.
38
Letopisi deyatel’nosti fiziko-psikhologicheskogo otdeleniya [Chronicles of the
psycho physiological department], RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 17, l. 1.
39
The conferences were held by Bakushinsky (“Pryamaya i obratnaya perspektiva”
[The direct and inverse perspective] and “Vospriyatie i perezhivanie proizvedeniy
iskusstva” [Perception and sensation of artistic creation]), Kandinsky (“Osnovnye
elementy v zhivopisi” [The basic elements of painting]), Gabrichevsky (“Uchenie
o khudozhestvennoy forme” [Studies on the aesthetics of form]), Mashkovets
(“Problema prostranstva v zhivopisi” [The problem of space in painting]).
40
“O khudožestvennom nachale: o tsvete, svete, puantilizme v prostranstve i
vremeni”, in Protokol zasedaniya gruppy po izucheniyu prostranstvennogo
iskusstva. [Protocol of the meeting of the study group of spatial art] RGALI, f. 941,
op. 12, ed. khr. 8, l. 11.
41
RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 8, l. 1. The role this book played in the avantgarde movements in Russia is still unexplored. Its importance for the Inkhuk group
and for Dokuchaev was analysed in the brilliant essay written by Senkevitch jr.
1983.
42
RGALI, f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr. 17, l. 1.
43
Ginzburg 1923; Ginzburg 1924. The conferences “Stil’ i epokha” (7 and 23
December 1923), “Puti sovremennoy arkhitektury” [The directions of
contemporary architecture] (6. 2. 1924) and “Skhema prostranstvennykh
myshleniy” [An outline of spatial thinking] (8. 2. 1924) are named in Plan rabot
fiziko-psikhologicheskogo otdeleniya RAKhN na 1923 g., [Work plan of the
RAKhN psycho-physiological department for 1923], RGALI f. 941, op. 12, ed. khr.
1, l. 3.
44
Ernst Mach, Analiz oshchushcheniy, Moscow, 1907; from the different translations of Wundt texts starting from the 1890s we recall Max Wundt, Ocherki
psikhologii, Moscow, 1912, Problemy psikhologii narodov [Völkerpsychologie]
and Vvedenie v psikhologiyu, both Kosmos, Moscow 1912, Fantaziya kak osnova
iskusstva, St. Peterburg 1914. To understand the extent of the influence of these
books in Russia, it is interesting to recall Lenin and his book Materializm i
empiriokrititsizm, Zveno, Moscow 1909 (translated into English as Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1952) with
the subtitle Kriticheskie zametki ob odnoy reakcionnoy filosofii [Critical
Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy]. Lenin harshly attacked the epistemological positions rooted in Mach’s theories and Mach’s followers in Russia. Skansi
2007.
45
In 1929 RAKhN/Gakhn was transferred to Leningrad, but in 1926 its activity was
already drastically reduced.
46
The friendship between Zholtovsky and Gabrichevsky is documented in
Gabrichevsky 2002. Gabrichevsky wrote one of the most important essays on the
work of Zholtovsky, published posthumously, A. G. Gabrichevsky, I.V. Zholtovsky
kak teoretik. Opyt kharakteristiki, in Arkhitektura SSSR, n. 3-4, 1983.
47
Pertseva 1979.
48
For the teaching methods applied at the Vkhutemas basic courses see the journal
Izvestiya Asnova (1926); Arkhitektura Vkhutemasa, Moscow, 1927; Elementi
arkhitekturno-prostranstvennoy kompozitsii, (ed. by B. F. Krinsky, I.V. Lamtsov,
M. A. Turkus) Gosstroyizdat, Moskva, 1934; Konstantin Mel’nikov, Mir khudozhnika, Iskusstvo, Moscow, 1985.