Francesco Mazzaferro. 'The Masters of Art discuss on Art' - A Soviet Anthology on History of Art Sources

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Francesco Mazzaferro
'The Masters of Art discuss on Art' - 
a Soviet Anthology on History of Art Sources

A few days ago, I was able to buy, thanks to the internet and the retailer ozon.ru, the second edition of a Soviet anthology of history of art sources. It is an impressive work, in seven tomes, published between 1965 and 1970, with more than 3900 pages, 790 illustrations and, to be precise, 314 chapters on artists. In reality, the physical volumes are eight (the fifth tome was published in two volumes). The Moscow publisher - Искусство (Arts) [1] - was created in 1933. It was the institutional vehicle for the publication of all the publications on art in the Soviet Union. The cost of each volume at the time of the publication was laughable - 2 rubles - a figure that today is, in nominal terms, less than 5 euro cents, but was certainly very low also in those years.

The work has the title "Мастера искусства об искусстве", or "The Masters of Art on Art" (you could extend it as “The Masters of Art Discuss on Art. The subtitle states that it is about "Избранные отрывки из писем, днебникоб, речей и трактатов в семи томах" and therefore "Extracts from letters, diaries, speeches, and treatises in seven tomes". The anthology covers the entire span of art history from the Middle Ages to 1917, the year of the October Revolution.

A picture of the first edition of the anthology
Source: http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/sova-books/post183708026/

The overall ambition is evidenced (also in term of geographical coverage of the project) by the inclusion, as from the first volume, of Hindu and Chinese works of the period contemporary to our Middle Ages, followed by Arabic and Persian ones. European sources appear only at the end of the first tome. 

The emphasis on the art of the peoples of the Soviet Union (whose texts are included in the sixth and seventh volume) is pretty obvious; including those texts at the end of the anthology points to their role as epilogues of the universal history of the sources of the history of art. It is also evident the intention to set a symbolic end limiting the time extension of the anthology: 1917 as year of the October Revolution. All presented texts should therefore belong to the years preceding the communist revolution. If the first edition (issued in the second half of the Thirties) was chronologically very close to the end limit of the anthology, the second version – which is its extension – did not go beyond the fall of the czar.

A picture of the first edition of the Anthology: Renoir

Source http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/sova-books/post183708026/

Equally evident the reason for the strong presence of the arts in Central Europe (especially Hungary), which at that time belonged to the area of influence of the USSR. However, there is a wide coverage of artists from Italy, France and Germany, and texts from Spain, Great Britain and the Flemish world are equally well represented. Almost absent, on the other hand, the United States (alas, the Cold War was played also in this field). It is remarkable, in my opinion, the fact that there are sections on well-known ideologically rightist artists, as Emil Nolde in Germany and Maurice Denis in France.

The first edition of the Anthology was in four tomes; the second one, as mentioned above, was in seven tomes (in reality, eight volumes) with extension and inclusion of texts from the entire world, and a revision of previous translations. More than a second version, it was, in reality, a new anthology. It is a work of the first five years of the long Brezhnev era (Brezhnev came to power in 1964 and died in 1982). Around end 1960s there was a very acute perception that the Soviet world could compete and eventually beat the Western liberal democracies. These were the years of the Prague Spring, but also of a continuous intensification of the influence of the USSR’s global role, in Africa, Asia and Latin America. With the benefit of insight, it is now evident that it was a wrong perception, but there is no denying that in the 60-70 years the gap between the level of well-being ensured by the two political and social models was much smaller than what it would be later on in the 80-90 years.

There is no doubt that the anthology was meant to pursue precise objectives of the communist regime. It has already been mentioned in another post that – as from the time of the Stalinist Neo-Renaissance - the publication in the USSR of the Treaties of Italian Renaissance architecture was justified by reasons of internal and external identity (click here for more information) In the thirties it was necessary to legitimize the new imperial architectural style of Moscow, now grown not only to be the capital of a rather vast regional empire under Russian hegemony – like at the time of the czars – but even the capital of a world duopoly as real ideological superpower. The publication by Stalin of the sources of art history (in this case, the entire corpus of the Treaties of Renaissance architecture) had a clear doctrine goal: the restoration of classicism against the Russian avant-garde, which had dominated the first decade of the revolution. The era of the autonomy of thought, the time of constructivism and suprematism as avant-garde movements, was finished, and, paradoxically, the Renaissance treatises marked its end with a first class funeral. The anthology "The Masters of Arts discuss on Art" only includes painting, sculpture and drawing (i.e. it excludes the architecture, by its nature the most 'political' of all art disciplines). Yet, both the first edition (of the Stalinist period) and the second (in the Brezhnev era) must definitely have been evaluated, approved and even supported at the highest levels of the political system.

A picture from the first edition of the Anthology: Pissarro

Source: http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/sova-books/post183708026/

What were the objectives? What were the selection criteria for the artists’ texts? What were the aesthetic guidelines? Were there fundamental differences between the assessment of the Stalin and Brezhnev eras on art literature? Among the readers there may be perhaps someone who could perhaps suggest some studies or articles to help responding these questions.

It is very likely that the work also meant to provide an original scientific contribution to the study of art literature:  a reading of the phenomenon of the sources of the history of art that should be brought in line with the aesthetic theories of Marxism-Leninism and historical materialism, as well as a with the social reading of history of art. So, perhaps, the anthology offered an alternative interpretation to that in the West, characterized by the dominant position of Croce's idealism which inspired Julius von Schlosser in his seminal monograph Kunstliteratur of 1914-1924.

The curators of the Anthology are four: Alexander Andreyevich Huber (Александр Андреевич Губер) (1902-1961), an Orientalist of Ukrainian origin [2]; Aleksei Aleksandrovich Fiodorov-Davydov [3] (Алексей Александрович Фёдоров-Давыдов) (1900-1969), an art historian specialised in Soviet art; János Mácza [4] (in Russian: Ivan Lyudvigovich Maza - Иван Людвигович Маца) (1893-1974), a Hungarian who emigrated to Moscow in 1923, an art critic and theorist of aesthetics, with a specialisation on avant-garde; and Viktor Nikolaevich Graschenkov [5] (Виктор Николаевич Гращенков) (1925-2005), a scholar of Italian Renaissance. 

Other editors also signed individual volumes. In fact, the first volume in the Middle Ages, published in 1965, was edited by Huber and by the archaeologist Vsevolod Vladimirovich Pavlov (Всеволод Владимирович Павлов) (1898-1972); the second volume on the Renaissance (1966) and the third volume in the seventeenth and eighteenth century (1967) by Huber and Graschenkov; the fourth volume in the nineteenth century (1967) and the fifth volume - in two volumes – on the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century (1969) by Mácza and the art critic Nina Viktorovna Iavorskaia (Нина Викторовна Яворская) (1894 -1970), a specialist in French art; the sixth tome on the art of the peoples of the Soviet Union between the fourteenth and the nineteenth century (1969) and the seventh tome on the art of the peoples of the Soviet Union in the XIX-XX century (1970) by Fiodorov-Davydov, who had died however in the course of 1969. It is also obvious that many other scholars participated in the anthology, selecting texts and providing translations of the texts to be published. 

Our impression is that this is a significant work, both to understand the sources of the history of art - especially for those countries not covered in the literature and styles of Western Europe - and the Soviet Union in the second half of the sixties, including its policies on art and aesthetics. Since this is an important and in fact almost completely forgotten endeavour, it seems appropriate to promise we will do a more thorough analysis of it in the future and to offer an immediate translation of the introductory page to the seven volumes. I cannot exclude errors in translation. I am therefore also publishing the Russian text, to offer readers the possibility to check for errors. Thanks in advance for any indication. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE WHOLE WORK (in Russian)

Для сборников "Мастера искусства об искусстве" использованы  материалы разного рoда: письма, речи, статьи, трактаты, мемуары, судебные документы й т.д. - но только те, где содержатся высказывания живописцев, скульптуров и графиков об искусстве.Такие подлинные слова мастеров проливают дополнительный свет на их творчество й служat драгоценныим материалом для характеристики художественной жизнии разных  стран и эпох.  

Не все художники в одинаковой мере полсовались словом для изложения своих взглядов но искусство. Леонардо да Винчи, Дюрер, Хогарт, Крамской, Репин, например, оставили громадное литературное наследство, тогда  как Тициан, Ватто, Генсборо, Чардин - почти ничего. C другой стороны, художники, подчас не сыгравшие заметной роли в искусстве своими творчеством, снискали широкую известность литературными трyдами - таковы Ченнино Ченнини, Паоло Пино, Гианпаоло Ломаззо и многие другие. Они вводыат наc в круг художественных интересов своево времени и своево общества.

Предшествующее издание "Мастеров искусства об искусстве", вышедшее в 1936-1939 годях в четырех томах под редакцей Д.Е. Аркина и Б.Н.Терновца, давно стало библиографической редкостыо. Настоящее издание, подготовка к которому началась еще вместе c покойным Д.Е.Аркиным (он скончался в 1957 году), ставит  своей целыо не только восполнит этот пробел, но включить ряд материалов, не вошедших в предшествующее издание. 

Дополнительно введены целые разделы по искусству Индии, Китая, Японии, Ближнего и Среднего Востока, документы, освещающие творчество средневековых мастеров Западной Европы и России, а также высказывания многих художников, не представленных ранее (Мартинес, Паломинио, Блейк, Лоуренс, русские художники конца 19-начала 20 века, художники народов СССР у др.) Переводы пересмотрены заново; в в некоторых случаях они заменены новыми, либо исправлены. Поясненя к текстам - краткие предисловия к разделам и примечания к переводам - ограничены только самыми необходимыми сведениями. Они ни в какой мере не претендуют на систематическое изложение художественных взглядов всей эпохи или отдельных мастеров. Их задача более cкромная и чисто служебная - помочь читателю правилно ориентироватся в тех литературных дохументах, которые собраны в настоящем издании:

Структура всего издания cледующая:

Том 1 - мастера искусства цредних веков.

Том 2 - мастера искусства эпохи Bозрождения.

Том 3 - мастера ислусства Западной Европы 17-18 веков.

Томы 4 и 5 - мастера искусства 19-начала 20 века.

Томы 6 и 7 - мастера искусства народов СССР (с древнейших времен до 1917 года). 

INTRODUCTION TO THE WHOLE WORK (in English)

For the collection of the "Masters of Art discuss on Art" different materials are used: letters, speeches, articles, treatises, memoirs, legal documents, etc.., but only on the condition that they contain statements by painters, sculptors and designers on art. These authentic words by the masters cast a new light on their art creation and provide a valuable material for the characterization of artistic life in different countries and eras.

Not all artists did equally make use of the word to express their opinions. Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer, Hogarth, Kramskoj, Repin, for example, have left a huge literary heritage, while Titian, Watteau, Gainsborough, Chardin - almost nothing. On the other hand, some artists – although they did not play any significant role in art thanks to their creations - gained fame through their literary works - such as Cennino Cennini, Paolo Pino, Gianpaolo Lomazzo and many others. They lead us into the sphere of the artistic interests of their time and their society. 

The previous edition of the "Masters of the Art on Art", published in 1936-1939 in four tomes under the editorial lead of D.E. Arkin and B.N. Ternovez, had long become a bibliographical rarity since then. This edition, the preparation of which had already begun thanks to the late D.E. Arkin (he died in 1957), aims not only to fill this gap, but includes a number of new topics, not included in the previous edition. Whole sections have been added on the art of India, China, Japan, the Near and Middle East, the documents relating to the work of the medieval masters of Western Europe and Russia, as well as the statements of many painters not previously displayed (Martinez, Palomino, Blake, Lawrence, Russian artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, artists from other peoples of the USSR). The translations were again revised; in some cases they have been replaced with new ones, more correct. In order to understand the texts, a brief preface has been included in each section and notes added on the translation – materials limited to only essential information. In no way do they claim to offer a systematic presentation of the aesthetic views of an entire era or individual artists. Their modest task is to purely provide some useful assistance - to help properly orient the reader through those literary documents that are included in this publication. 

This is the structure of the edition:

Volume 1 - The masters of medieval art.

Volume 2 - The masters of the Renaissance.

Volume 3 - The masters of Western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Volume 4 and 5 - The masters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Volumes 6 and 7 - The masters of the peoples of the USSR (from antiquity until 1917).

NOTES

[1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskusstvo

[2] Huber's biography on the Russian wikipedia, and on the Ukrainian wikipedia

[3] See Wikipedia 

[4] See the Hungarian Wikipedia

[5] See Wikipedia