Imagining the Unimaginable: World War, Modern Art, and the Politics of Public Culture in Russia, 1914-1917

Conclusion

Conclusion In 1915 Kazimir Malevich was supremely confident that Europe’s artistic traditionlayinruins.HisstrikingBlack Square(figure1)wastobetheabsolute ,indestructiblezeropointfortheconstructionofanewhumanculture ,aculturedesignedtoreplacetheold,corrupt,anddyingartofEuropean civilization. But Malevich could not have imagined that he and the Black Square would help shape a revolutionary Bolshevik culture in the early 1920s, find an echo in abstract expressionism in the 1950s, or grace theGuggenheiminthe1990s.ForMalevichwasunsurethathewouldlive out the year 1916, let alone become an icon of modern twentieth-century life, when the battlefields of the eastern front loomed before him like a bloodycanvas.“Itdoesn’tdepressmethatIamgoingtowar,thatIamgoingtofertilizeasquarearshinofearth ,”hewrotewhileawaitingconscription in 1916. “Worse is that I can foresee no quick end or peace, nor the years it will take to see again that life that existed on the fields of art before the war.”1 Malevich did survive, but the First World War had already transformed the art world he knew. That world was soon to be destroyed in the revolution and Civil War. World War I changed the parameters of public life in Russia, if only forafewyears,andweshouldnotunderestimatetheimportanceofthose changes.Amobilizedandmilitarizedcultureofwarexpandedacrosscivil society, and public structures, priorities, and expressions were altered as war suddenly became a problem that was shared by more people at once thanwasanypreviouseventinhistory.Thismassmobilizationofthepub- lic did not mean that all individuals were mobilized, but it did mean that public engagement and expression became focused on the war and its effects . Individuals experienced similar problems as the war’s effects rippledthroughthepublicsphere ,andanunprecedentedsocialandcultural mobilizationincreasedsocialcommunicationbetweendifferentgroups, aligned diverse interests, and disrupted prewar norms and institutions. Public culture became more fluid as people sought to bring order to the chaosanduncertaintythatsuchdisruptionsbrought;theyhadtofindnew waystosustain themselves as familiarsocial roles,culturalassumptions, and financial support destabilized. Mobilization was much more pervasive , and much more complex, than the traditional Russian myth of the war experience, with its focus on social fragmentation, failed patriotism, and weak civil society, would have us believe. TheexperienceoftheartworldshowsthatRussiancivilsocietyexpanded duringthewaryears.Warandarthadseemedtobetwoseparateactivities before the war, but the lines between the art world and the broader public weakened after 1914, and artists participated in great social events on a scale that would have been unthinkable in the previous decade. Artists werenotonlycapableofself-mobilization,buttheycontinuedtoinnovate inthepublicsphereevenasthewargroundonandrevolutioncameupon them. They produced militarized culture on a new scale, created new institutions in charity events and intergroup exhibitions, and found new audiences as refugees and the nouveaux riches joined the art market. After1914adifferentartworldemergedinImperialRussia ,onebasedmore on individual painters and with a more active and diverse public for art, butthisartworldremainedbasedincivilsocietyandneededastableeconomic ,political,andsocialenvironmenttooperate.WorldWarIthusenabledandenlivenedcivilsociety ,but,ironically,theeconomic,social,and political problems that it brought hindered the ability of individuals to self-mobilize in 1917. 182 | Conclusion The Great War had a great impact on the public place, internal culture , and visual practice of Russian modernism. Wartime mobilization enabledradicalmoderniststoenterpubliccultureandthemainstreamart world for the first time in their careers, and many artists, whether in the aesthetic modernist or avant-garde movement, reduced their public isolation as they sought to protect their artistic milieu and align it with the culture, politics, and institutions of broader society. The emotional impact of the war, the desire to tell stories about it, and the tilt toward conservative taste in the market led aesthetic modernists to adopt narrative andmorefigurativeart,whilepublicpatriotism,professionalambitions, and material needs turned the avant-garde from public iconoclasm and aesthetic destruction toward public engagement and aesthetic construction . The changes in public culture brought on by wartime mobilization gave painters in both modernist milieus opportunities to participate in areas from which they had been excluded or self-excluded, and they became allies to protect the place of modern art in Russian culture during the Tretiakov Gallery debate. Avant-garde public mobilization, political engagement, and integration into mainstream culture began in the mobilization for World War I. These shifted toward revolution only as the public culture changed in 1917. AkeymomentinthehistoryofRussianmodernismcamewhenpublic space opened and the avant-garde dropped their challenge to the public in World War I. It is unclear whether they were ever aesthetic revolutionariesinthesensethattheysoughttodestroytheexistingartworldandre placeitwithanewone ,buttheirpublicutterancesandbehaviordidpose a challenge to established society, culture, and politics before the war. In 1914 individual aspirations and ambitions entered the public culture for alltoseeasavant-gardeartistsproducedpatrioticculture,self-mobilized inwarcharities,participatedinliberalpolitics,andcreatednon-objective art. “We must present the artistic guild with a vigorous call to unite,” declared Vladimir Tatlin in 1914, and he offered up the avant-garde for colConclusion | 183 laboration:“Ibelievethatpreciselythosewhohavebeenrejected,whoare blamedaboveallforpartisanshipandirreconcilability,willbethefirstto stretchouttheirhandsinreconciliation.”2 Intheirrelationshiptoprevailingpublicpower ,theavant-gardewere,ironically,lessrevolutionarywhen they participated in early Soviet art culture than when they painted their faces in1913.ItwasinthemobilizationforWorldWarIthatRussia’sradicalmodernistschangedtheirartculturetoacceptestablishedauthority ,a stance they maintained when...