El Lissitzky.

Paris
Author(s): John Milner
Source: The Burlington Magazine , Sep., 1991, Vol. 133, No. 1062 (Sep., 1991), pp. 640-641
Published by: (PUB) Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.

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EXHIBITION REVIEWS

90. Avernes, by Henri Hayden.

Much illumination is shed on Proust's 1962.65 by81 cm. (Exh. Galerie
Marwan Hoss, Paris).
singular ability to divine correspondences
between art and life. They could be serious
- as in likening the lyrical suggestiveness
of Vinteuil's sonata to the stealthy advance
of light in a de Hooch interior - or frivolous
- as when he notes the resemblance between
a haughty footman, barring Swann's way91. Proun 2C, by El Lissitzky,
into a concert already begun, to an impass-1920. Oil, paper and metalised
ive Roman soldier by Mantegna. Such paint on panel, 60 by 40 cm.
perceptions, seeing the universe with the(Philadelphia Museum of Art;
eyes of another, are Proust's means of en-exh. Musee d'art moderne de la
larging human experience. ville de Paris).
From Chartres devoted Proustians can
take the short journey to Illiers-Combray, which was not limited to painting. Through- precise handling of materials and an im-
where Proust spent holidays as a child, outtohis career Lissitzky maintained the plication of construction, either within the
extreme precision of the architect engineer.work itself (using mixed media, collage,
see the concurrent exhibition Proust Illustre,
(also to 4th November) at La Maison Gouache,
de collage and indian ink were used etc.) or by implication (his puppets could
Tante Leonie. Collected here are illustrated for preparatory studies, often leading tobe built, like his Lenin Podium which has
editions of his work by Madeleine Lemaire, lithographs where masking could producebeen constructed for the exhibition).
Van Dongen, Philippe Jullian, Laboureur exact edges to geometric forms, as well as Lissitzky's early studies from his archi-
and others. a wide variety of visual textures or graintectural tours have the sepulchral and
STUART PRESTON to imply differing materials for construction.decorative gloom of a follower of symbolist
Lissitzky's work - whether in paint (Fig.91),design. Next, he responded vigorously to
print,1865-
'Au temps des Impressionnistes. La peinture roumaine collage,
photography, exhibitionthe brief renaissance ofJewish art that fired
1920. Texts by Jacques Lassaigne, et. al. design,
159 pp. photomontage
+ or architecturalChagall's imagination. Invited to Vitebsk
col. pls. + numerous b. & w. ills. (Union Latine,
projects - was always characterised by by
a Chagall, Lissitzky executed illustrated
Paris, 1991), 175 FF. ISBN 2-909290-00-X.
2Henri Hayden. Peintures et eeuvres sur papier 1911-1970.
Text by Samuel Beckett. Col. pls. + b. & w. ills.
(Galerie Marwan Hoss, Paris, 1990).
3Proust et les Peintres. Texts by Jacques Guerin, Anne
Borrel, Marie-Lucie Imhoff, and Michel Hoog. 534
pp. + 129 col. pls. + b. & w. ills. (Muste des
Beaux-Arts, Chartres, 1991), 290 FF.

Paris
El Lissitzky

The most surprising document in this

exhibition El Lissitzky 1890-1941 (at the
Mus6e d'art moderne de la ville de
Paris until 30th September) is Lissitzky's
address book. Under 'M' it includes Erich
Mendelsohn, Malevich, Mondrian and
Marinetti- an impressive cross-section of
the European avant-garde. Lissitzky's de-92. Vladimir Mayakorsky's
. : ....:: :
For the Voice, designed by El
termined aim, certainly throughout the
Lissitzky. 1923 (this edition
1920s, was to be international in his art
1973). 19 by 13.5 cm.
and multidisciplinary in his works. He (Stedelijk Van
shared with Malevich, Tatlin and the con-
Abbemuseum, Eindhoven;
structivists a determination to undertake exh. Muste d'art moderne
a fundamental examination of creative work de la ville de Paris).

640

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EXHIBITION REVIEWS

texts in scrolls and designs forJewish

infinity' is a useful stories. New York,
first step to unravelling
These have more vitality it. than originality Ad Reinhardt
- which is both Lissitzky's strength
The most spectacular suite ofandLissitzky's
his weakness. Already, lithographs with depictsChagall, he
an 'electro-mechanical' In its studiedly cool way, Ad Reinha
was working very close to the
version metier
of Victory of
over the Sun. his
They combine at the Museum of Modern Art, New
mentor. Chagall, recently back from
suprematism, constructionParis,
and - in their York (30th May to 2nd September) and
was by no means the naive own waypainter that
- a special return a
to figuration, subsequently the Museum of Contem-
first glance suggests. He knew about
quite different Russian
from Malevich's later 'sup- porary Art, Los Angeles (13th October
Futurists, among whom prematist primitivism
figures'. The opera was
heralds the to 15th January 1992), conceals a hot-
a cult, and he learned all he could about birth of the New Man, to whom Lissitzky house of an exhibition. Organised jointly
contemporary art in Paris from his base at gives a red square at his heart and a red by William Rubin and Richard Koshalek,
La Ruche, particularly about Orphism as star in his head. On the title print, the it has the intensity peculiar to Rubin's
expounded by Apollinaire and Robert New Man holds up a streamer bearing other great projects such as CUzanne: The
Delaunay. This had a strong mystical side the multilingual text: Alles ist bien was good Late Work and, most recently, Picasso and
to it, similar to Theosophy, and its cosmic nachinaetsya et hat no finita, recalling the Braque: Pioneering Cubism, although on this
aims were communicated by Chagall, libretto's 'All's well that begins well and occasion a blockbuster was not his inten-
Yakulov and others to Russia, where they has no end' which appears in another de- tion. As hung at MoMA, Reinhardt's wuvre
combined with the Russian futurist cos- sign. from 1940 until his death in 1967 was con-
mology of Khlebnikov and his contem- The New Man, a traveller in time and centrated to around ninety gouaches, col-
poraries. Much of this Lissitzky couldspace,
havespreads his arms and legs like Leo- lages and oils in six rooms. Everything
learnt from Chagall. An illustration of nardo's
1919 Vitruvian man. The link was in- superfluous, shoddy, or even distracting
has a sky inhabited by cubes and spheres tentional. Like Lissitzky and Leonardo, had been eliminated - not to mention the
interspliced, as Chagall had evolved themthe New Man was an international creative picture labels themselves, which were kept
by 1917-18 in Vesnin. Visual evidence force, as active in science and mathematics
together in group captions near the start
suggests Chagall was inspired by El Grecoas in art, the image of a new, and also of each gallery. White walls and extended
in this, which leads one to wonder whether
ancient, world view. Lissitzky's design baseboards
ac- further demarcated the paint-
Lissitzky's adoption of the pre-fix 'El'tivities
could ranged from painting and furniture ings so that the viewer was guided, as if by
have been another enthusiasm communi- to architecture, books (Fig.92), posters and
their prompting, along a via crucis of colour.
cated by Chagall. exhibitions. Through his travels and con- The brightly tapestried compositions from
tacts he published periodicals with Sch-
All this already has an international tone, the 1940s phased into sections given over
but Lissitzky had himself studied in Ger-witters and Ehrenburg, had close links with
to blues, red and, lastly of course, darkness.
many and travelled in France and Italy.
De Stijl and the Dadaists. He appearedCuratorial
to ventriloquy let Reinhardt ap-
Russian art was at its most international on
know everyone. After Lissitzky, tubercular
pear to speak for himself.
the eve of the First World War. While theand ill, returned to Russia, he faced de- That voice, however, sounded in retro-
War and the Revolutions of 1917 effectively
mands for exhibition and book designs spect
of like one of the trickiest among the
put an end to this until 1922, communism a more overtly propagandist purpose, fromabstract expressionists - whose extremism
itself had of course internationalist aims,
the Pressa Exhibition in Cologne in 1928 Reinhardt castigated while pursuing his
until his death in 1941.
and Lissitzky became a travelling link with own extreme course. Nor could he employ
Western Europe at the first opportunity. He scarcely ever used blue, preferring anything without its opposite or negation.
This internationalism has another aspect A propensity for wafting pigment onto
the disciplined red, black, white of early
which involves Russian futurist theory. Suprematism. But he was not overwhelmed canvas had to be held in check from the
Malevich launched suprematism in 1915, by Malevich whose visual language he usedfirst; chiaroscuro would be met by ultra-
but he attributed its origins to his col-
to evolve Proun constructions. These in turn close values; errant line gave way to the
laboration in 1913 with the poet Kru- became prototype city plans, exhibition rigours of the grid; the order arising from
chenykh and the composer Matyushin on kiosks, housing, posters, photographs or the grid then dissolved into monochrome,
books. Succinct as it is, the exhibition re- and so on. His many and marvellous state-
the Russian futurist opera Victory over the
Sun, which involves time travel, a world veals all of this range and provides a re- ments built a new rhetoric out of the denial
that is inside out, neologistic language and
markable, intense synthesis of his work- of emotional or aesthetic rhetoric. Yve-
asymmetrical costumes by Malevich. By which frequently comprises no more than Alain Bois's catalogue text entitled 'The
1919 Malevich was a figure of great mag- a few straight lines on a lithographic stone. Limit of Almost' helps to decipher the
netism in Russian art. Suprematism was According to Malevich, economy is the ideology that surrounds this negative pro-
attracting important converts and criticsfourth dimension. Lissitzky, seen in this cess.1 But in alternating between brilliant
as the state exhibition 'Suprematism and exhibition, shows how fruitful this can be. insights and a post-structuralist slant simi-
Non-objective Art' of 1919 made clear. The show includes loans from the lar to that found in the pages of October
Rodchenko, Popova, Exter, Vesnin, Klyun,Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and the magazine (complete with the ritual closing
and soon Gabo, all responded to Malevich catalogue contains an argument about the reference to Derrida), Bois perhaps under-
The other pole was Tatlin. details of their acquisition, as well as some estimates a few fundamentals.
In 1919 Malevich was invited to teach poor translations into English, and a few First, a temperamental ambivalence
at Vitebsk, where he immediately and slips. For example, in Peter Nisbet's excel- always dogged Reinhardt, causing him to
permanently transformed Lissitzky's work. lent article 'Lissitzky and Photography' sidestep what should have been the easy
Henk Puts, in his article 'El Lissitzky the term - 1 in the formula cited should be
choice or to unsettle the orthodox position
(1890-91): his life and work' in the cata-/-1. Russian Futurists preferred to be Number 30 (1938) raises chromatic contrast
logue/book accompanying this exhibition,2irrational.
to a pitch where they acquire a retinal
argues persuasively that Lissitzky supplied JOHN MILNER charge, and the resultant optical flux, in
a missing stage in Malevich's suprematism University of Newcastle upon Tyne stead of sharpening the jazzy rhythms tha
by extending its forms into an implied otherwise belong to the tradition established
third dimension which Lissitzky called'Versions of the exhibition were shown at the Van by Stuart Davis and the American Abstrac
Proun - wherein Malevich's geometric Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, December 1990-March Artists group, overwhelms them. Some
planes are given thickness and a sense1991,
of and the Fundagion Caja de Pensiones, Madrid, where behind Number 30 there also seems
April-May 1991.
construction in their points of contact. This to lurk Picasso's Three musicians (1921) which
2El Lissitzky 1890-1941. By Henk Puts, Yve-Alain
provided potential for actual constructions itself mixes disparate stylistic tendencies.2
in design and architecture, enabling Bois,su- S.O. Chan-Magomedov, Kai-Uee Hemken, A naive reading might attribute these
prematism to escape from the canvas. Jean Leering, Peter Nisbet, M.A. Nemirovskaya.
tensions to an inner struggle between the
220 pp. + numerous ills. in col. and b. & w. (Munici-
Conversely, the mathematical basis of all pal Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Fundagion classical
Caja and the romantic. At any rate,
this is also a crucial link with Malevich,
de Pensiones, Madrid and Muse d'art moderne de he continued to develop as one of those
and Yve-Alain Bois's article 'infinity tola ville de Paris, 1990). ISBN 90-70149-28-1. figures in whom we sense the force of much

641

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