[PEN-L:14538] Anarchism vs. Marxism-Leninism

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Fri Dec 10 15:33:32 PST 1999



> I don't make any claims as to the goodness of the soviet union. However,
> there was a lot of new and good work done in the arts in the USSR in the
> early 1920s. Perhaps there was a flowering, all the sadder in terms of
> what happened later.
> michael yates

Constructivists such as Gabo, Lissitsky. Malevitch, Pevsner, Rodchenko, Tatlin, Vertov attempted merger of art and life via radical approach to mass culture, performance, production. Their work combined radical political ideals, commitment to Bolshevik Revolution and interest in new technologies, materials, techniques, structures. They made art intended for everyday such as clothing, books, furniture and they designed/distributed political posters, built public monuments, staged agit-prop street theater. Experimentation resulted in precursors of contemporary multi-media art as connections between likes of architecture, film, poetry, theater were explored. All the while, many of these same artists involved themselves in abstract and non-representational painting and sculpting. Also, recall Moscow film school from which came Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, aforementioned Vertov, art museums built throughout country, and art education for proletariat.

Rise of Stalin brought dynamism/eclecticism of too-brief period to end. Among casualties was poet Mayakovsky who committed suicide in 1930. Michael Hoover



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