Viewing the influence of Vkhutemas on the Bauhaus from the perspective of production art: Main concepts and directions

Pu Anyuan ORCID: 0000-0002-4002-0386 Postgraduate student; History of Russian Art; St. Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, St. Petersburg, Universitetskaya nab., 7-9 anyuanpu@gmail.com

Introduction

Russian Russian Art Academy, one of the most important centers of the Russian avant-garde art movement at the beginning of the 20th century ^[1], and its predecessor, the State Free Art Workshops (SVOMAS), laid the foundation for teaching the basics of modern design within the framework of the Russian Art program already in 1918 ^{[2, pp. 24-25]}. After that, VKHUTEMAS and Bauhaus jointly created the basic system of modern design education, providing a theoretical basis and stylistic guidelines for the formation of modernist design ^[3].

However, due to the influence of political, cultural and other factors, VKhUTEMAS's research appeared relatively recently and there are fewer of them than in the Bauhaus. Some Western scientists habitually call VKHUTEMAS the Soviet Bauhaus or the Communist Bauhaus. However, with the deepening of VKhUTEMAS' research, it became clear that the established point of view of "West-centrism" intentionally or unintentionally includes VKHUTEMAS and Bauhaus as "two centers of Eastern and Western modernist design" ^[4] of that time, and, moreover, each of them has its own unique historical status. As a result, VKHUTEMAS is often misunderstood as part of the historical heritage of the Bauhaus. Some scientists even believe that the chaotic VKHUTEMAS of that time could hardly have had a definite impact on the Bauhaus ^{[4; 5]}. Blurring the conceptual boundaries between VKhUTEMAS and Bauhaus, such points of view imply the discursive construction of ideological criticism of the bourgeois camp in relation to the socialist system represented by the Soviet Union, in an attempt to preserve the usual perception from the point of view of West-centrism.

In this work, VKHUTEMAS is taken as the center; based on the analysis of conceptual principles, structural transformations and production strategies, specific ways and manifestations of the influence of the Russian avant-garde on the Bauhaus in various periods of the 1920s are explored. In addition to looking at the past, we also hope to provide a new perspective and theoretical approach for today's rethinking of "modernism", especially for rethinking the relationship between social systems and national design methods.

1. Exotic resonance: New Art in Russia and the Bauhaus in Germany

The First World War had disastrous consequences for both Russia and Germany, and after the general leftist revolution, the nascent Russia and the Weimar Republic began comprehensive cooperation – from politics to culture. Russian avant-garde artists, including Kandinsky and Tatlin, created "new art" of a different kind. In addition, the impact of the revolution in Russia was deeper than in Germany, and immediately after the 1917 revolution, the Russian Committee of Public Education under the leadership of Anatoly Lunacharsky began to reorganize the spheres of culture and education.

For VKhUTEMAS and Bauhaus, the connection between them was obvious as early as 1918 ^[6]. In January 1918, the Committee for Public Education established an Art Department in Petrograd, headed by the most progressive avant-garde artists of that time and responsible for the management of Soviet cultural institutions and artistic activities. Its founder, Kandinsky, called the Art Department responsible for creating "new art" to achieve a new life, advocating that artists "actively and directly participate in all areas of artistic life" ^[7]. The plan for the development of art, developed by the People's Commissariat of Education, called for "eliminating categorical boundaries between a sculptor and a craftsman, a painter and a standard-bearer artist and elevating craftsmanship to art" ^[8]. The Stroganov Central School of Art and Industry and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MUZHVZ) were reformed, and the first and second State Art Workshops were created, respectively, designed to spread class consciousness and the abilities of new art among previously disadvantaged workers and peasant strata. In the Free Art Workshops, it is specifically provided that each artistic genre will have its own place, art (painting, sculpture, architecture) and production faculties (printing, ceramics, metalworking, woodworking, textile) have been created, the educational program of which students complete for three years. After learning general skills, in the fourth year, they enter the mentor's workshop to obtain four years of professional knowledge ^{[2, pp. 25-27]}.

Almost at the same time, Gropius, who had survived the baptism of war and revolution, planned to found a new art school in order to realize his own vision of educating new people and transforming society. The reformation of Russian modernism made Gropius, in distant Weimar, the first to respond to this revolutionary call in Russia. In fact, Gropius and Kandinsky knew each other and communicated closely long before the war. After the October Revolution, Kandinsky continued to inform Gropius about his activities in the field of education ^[9]. Since the end of 1918, members of the People's Commissariat of Education of Russia have consistently established contacts with German left-wing organizations, including the Workers' Art Council, headed by Gropius, the November Group and the West-Ost group. The exchange of views between the Soviet People's Commissariat of Education and the German Workers' Art Committee showed that the development of new Russian art had a certain influence on the subsequent "Bauhaus Manifesto" by Gropius and the founding of the Bauhaus.

For Gropius, at that time in Russia there was a group of fellow travelers who shared the same ideal and had already brought it to life. Such a resonance from a foreign country undoubtedly made Gropius see hope for the future, and he gradually began to prepare better for the creation of the Bauhaus school of contemporary art. From a historical point of view, during 11 years of teaching at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky continued his pedagogical plan laid down at the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture, that is, the pursuit of subjectivity and spiritual pure art. And Gropius, being an idealistic hermit, retained Kandinsky's lessons in abstract art even after the Bauhaus turned to functionalism. At first glance, this anomalous phenomenon can be considered as the embodiment of the open and pluralistic concept of modern Bauhaus education, and secondly, it can be explained as the coincidence of two artistic thoughts and an aesthetic concept. However, more importantly, besides the fact that Gropius was a great artist, Kandinsky may have retained his original aspirations – in this Russian-born and experienced artist. The artists who led the artistic reform carefully realized Gropius' grandiose vision of a new image of society after the October Revolution. No matter how one treats this time – as a transitional stage that consolidated the historical status of the Bauhaus, or as a period of pan–politicization, which Gropius scoffed at - this avant-garde concept from the USSR gave rise to the Bauhaus, whose influence persisted for more than ten years. At that time, the USSR, after radical reforms, was also on the verge of formation.

2. Structural transformation: From "Expressionism" to industrial art

2.1. Industrial art in VKhUTEMAS

Since the schools of futurism and Cubism, which occupied a leading place in the Moscow Free Art Workshops, continued to focus on abstract teaching methods, it was necessary to find a new paradigm capable of reflecting material production and the life of socialism. In cooperation with the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture, on December 18, 1920, Lenin, at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars on the creation of Higher Art and Technical Workshops (VKhUTEMAS), made it clear that VKhUTEMAS is a "special art and higher art and industrial educational institution" created to train "highly qualified artists for industry" ^{[2, p. 32]} with three art faculties (painting, sculpture, architecture) and five production faculties (ceramics, textiles, metalworking, woodworking, printing), in order to combine art with production, science with technology, the new content of socialist life with the needs of the people ^[10]. In the book "Art and Production", the theorist of industrial art Boris Arvatov noted: "Russian production workers persistently searched for a connection between art and social practice and in the revolutionary Marxist worldview inevitably came to the conclusion that it was necessary to break ties with any kind of "pure art", including the art of the left" ^[11].

Obviously, in choosing between art and function, the VKhUTEMAS production team came to a consensus and chose the latter. From the very beginning, they declared a break with Gropius' "intention to transfer handicraft and industrial production as the basis of artistic practice" of the Bauhaus: handicraft exists only to satisfy the aesthetic interests of a small number of people and, thus, is considered as a representative of a certain elite trend, which contradicts the concept of design of everyday life in the modern sense ^[12]. It was in VKhUTEMAS that the Working Group of the Objective Analysis of the Institute of Artistic Culture focused on a large number of proletarian students who did not have an artistic and cultural base. The curriculum was focused on the analysis of elements common to all visual and plastic arts, and teaching abstract generalizations of artistic elements.

2.2. The influence of VKhUTEMAS's production on the Bauhaus

The most direct influence of VKhUTEMAS on the Bauhaus is reflected in the basic doctrine based on the constructivism of reason and order, and it was Mokhoy-Nagy who first brought this systematic influence to the Bauhaus. Long before joining the Bauhaus, he met Lisitsky in Germany and was deeply influenced by the Russian Revolution ^[13]. Mokhoy-Nagy absorbed the ideas of Russian constructivism and became a constructivist. While working at the Bauhaus, he also maintained close ties with the Russian avant-garde, even when Gropius was developing plans for the Bauhausb?cher in 1924. Mokhoy-Nagy also appealed to Lisitsky for a "Russian contribution." Under Mokhoy-Nagy's leadership, teaching at the Bauhaus became more rational, giving more space to the practice and principles of constructivism, and gradually established a learning model focused on the basic curriculum, which marked the beginning of the transformation of craft technology into industrial mass production and the transition from liberal expressionism to rational functionalism.

At first glance, this shift, according to Nikolaus Pevsner and Reiner Banem, marked a fundamental shift in the history of the Bauhaus: from an individualistic orientation towards manual work to a practical shift towards machine production, which also means a transition from irrationalism to a "more rational, international and even academic position" ^[14]. Combined with the publication of Bauhausb?cher, this shift undoubtedly brought the Bauhaus to the brink of a moment of its own theorizing in history.

In the 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto, Gropius argued that the Bauhaus seeks to combine all creative endeavors, principles of applied art within the framework of a new architecture in order to achieve the sublime ideal of unity of art and craftsmanship. However, the reality is that for a long time at the Bauhaus there were no clear guidelines defining the direction of teaching and the purpose of teaching students. Some artists, such as Johannes Itten, tended to metaphysical thinking, focusing on the spiritual rather than the material aspects of art and design. As a result of the emphasis on theory, the academy sometimes discussed more than it acted, conceived more than it produced, and even tended towards the expressionism of traditional German artists and mysticism dominated by Johannes Itten, which clearly violated Gropius' original plan.

In 1921-1922, the Bauhaus gradually moved from expressionism to functionalism. At the beginning of this period, it was also believed that the public image of the Bauhaus was changing from individualism to collectivism and from expressionism to productiveness ^[13]. Russian Russian Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists and the First Russian Art Exhibition, held in September 1922 in Weimar (Germany), gave Europe the first comprehensive view of the Russian avant-garde. The achievements of the movement soon led to the convergence of the myth of the European avant-garde with the ideology of Russian production, which became an ideological turn in the history of modernism. At this point, the artistic concept of the Russian avant-garde began to exert a comprehensive influence on the nascent modernist movement.

2.3. Disadvantages of the formation of production in the Bauhaus

However, on a practical level, even after Moholy-Nagy took over the main teaching and actively introduced the functional orientation of constructivism, the Bauhaus did not immediately move to full-scale production. On the one hand, the reason is that the Bauhaus under Gropius never demonstrated an excessive desire for a certain doctrine or position – obviously, this is the reason why Gropius maintained tension in the school for a long time. On the other hand, what Johannes Itten used to dominate has turned into a balance between Moha-Nagy, Joseph Albers, Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Kandinsky and Klee were skeptical of Moholy-Nagy's dogmatic technical aesthetics.

With in-depth practice and continuous development of the concept of "construction", a layer of "fundamentalism" gradually appears in Mokhoy-Nagy's constructivism, and the final constructivist work exudes a certain "neo-expressionist" spirit in the form of rhyme (Aura). In teaching practice, although design, pursuing the meaning of composition, takes structure as a starting point, it often shows a tendency to formalism in a concrete way, which means it moves towards their opposite. This modeling-based design method not only contributed to the emergence of the so-called "Bauhaus style", but was also criticized for "precise, feigned technical forms" ^[15], which became the object of postmodernism. From this it can be concluded that the Bauhaus during this period of basic teaching under the guidance of Mokhoy-Nagy and the transition to productivism was, in fact, endowed with an incomplete understanding of the art of production.

Of course, we cannot deny the historical significance of Moholy Nagy for the Bauhaus in this critical period, as well as the historical status of the Bauhaus. If the Bauhaus adopted a critical position towards reality from Johannes Itten and advocated the liberation of feelings and the opportunity to develop touch, then Moholy-Nagy's contribution was based on the idea of constructivism, respectively, this rapidly pushed the Bauhaus to a certain constructive stage: from open and free creativity to building a system, and then to effective participation in the construction of a collective. This may also explain why this period is called the "transition to the external" public image of the Bauhaus.

3.Production art and its discontent: From art to production

Although back in 1919, the Bauhaus manifesto proposed establishing strong ties with industry in order to improve the quality of industrial products, the real results were not ideal. The reason is that, on the one hand, the reconstruction of Germany after the war was very difficult, and some industries were still dominated by family-owned workshop manual production. Most of the Bauhaus ideas about the "combination of art and technology" could only remain at the stage of prototypes and experiments; on the other hand, this situation is directly related to the residual position of craft in the ideology of the Bauhaus. Of course, it can be argued that Gropius' initial romantic tendencies were aimed at reorganizing the fragmented socio-cultural environment by restoring the production models of pre-industrial societies, which can be seen as a workaround and compromise in the face of the political situation of that time.

For the Bauhaus, the Hannes Meyer period was a period when art was really seen as "non-art", as a pure production act. In order for Bauhaus teachers and students to better understand the essence of functionalism, Meyer continued to strengthen the connection between Bauhaus and VKhUTEMAS even after Gropius. It is obvious that the democratic tendencies of the communist Meyer are more solid, but also closer to the original appearance of functionalism in Russia. Reflected in the design, it represents a fully functionalist "de-artistic" design. Meyer believes that "all subjects are the product of the same formula: function ? economy. They are not works of art, art is a composition, purpose is a function ^[16].

If Moholy-Nagy's almost paranoid construction idea presented Soviet constructivism more formally, then Hannes Meyer's capture in 1928 realized a more complete "communist" core of constructivism in the Bauhaus. More precisely, the Bauhaus, which was previously headed by Gropius, was only a formalistic constructivism and aestheticization of technology, and Meyer exposed its essence, rejecting any aestheticism, giving way to functionalism and engineering. The reason is that the economic crisis of 1929 completely exposed the insurmountable contradictions of capitalism itself, which made Meyer more confident in Marxism. If there is still a place for art in Meyer's mind, then art is an organization, and the artist is the creator of order, which corresponds to the concept of "interpreting art as a political decision" of the Soviet constructivists.

According to Gropius, Meyer was "a blot on the perfect picture." However, if we compare Meyer's ideas with Gropius's document "Bauhaus Dessau – principles of Bauhaus production" in 1926, it turns out that when Meyer openly declared the ideals of socialism in the Bauhaus, "socialism" appeared in public for the first and last time in the Bauhaus. Rather, Meyer straightforwardly cuts through the triple bond that Gropius originally conceived for the Bauhaus – "first the connection between the artist and the craftsman, then the 'connection between teacher and student'". The last link of the school is the "link between school and society", and the means used is "production". From basic material production to spatial production, to the production of knowledge, to the production of social meanings. From a historical point of view, it was the full functionalism advocated by Meyer during this period that really bridged the gap between Bauhaus theory and practice from "art" to "production" in the 1920s. At the final historical stage, the Bauhaus acquired a short but complete connotation of "production".

Conclusion

It can be said that the Soviet industrial art, the center of which was VKHUTEMAS, had a profound influence on the concept and positioning of the Bauhaus, its structural transformations and production strategy. This comprehensive and multidimensional Russian influence not only develops the modern system of design education and finally consolidates the historical status of the Bauhaus, but also lays the foundation for its fate.

Firstly, on an ideological level, the goals of Russian productionism are directly related to the construction of socialism, the creation of a system of proletarian culture, which Arvatov calls proletarian, which is largely in tune with the left-wing ideals of Gropius. Secondly, at the level of artistic thought, productivism and constructivism, as new ideas of the early 20th century, represented the contribution of the Russian avant-garde to modernist design. In the context of the growth of modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Gropius absorbed the ideological overtones of the Russian new art project before the founding of the Bauhaus and used it as a guideline for improving the totalization of the Bauhaus. Finally, at the level of educational practice, thanks to the introduction of Russian constructivism by Mokhoy-Nadem, the Bauhaus created a prototype of the three main components of modern design education, taking lessons from teaching composition by VKhUTEMAS, and opened the transition from expressionism to function. This was a new stage in the transformation of socialism, and thus formed the classic image of the Bauhaus for the outside world.

As a theoretical practice of production, both VKHUTEMAS and Bauhaus dreamed of technical aesthetics due to excessive adherence to the formal rules of constructivism and idealization of design, ignoring the practical problems of production. At the same time, it is worth noting that in past historical reviews, the contribution of Soviet design to modern design is often underestimated or even ignored. Today, when the Bauhaus has become a spiritual symbol of modern life, the goal of reorganizing the relationship between the Russian avant-garde and the Bauhaus is no longer limited to focusing only on the history of modern design as such. More importantly, we are trying to consider the history of modernism as an opportunity to open up another possibility of understanding the modern design system, which still mainly refers to West-centrism and capitalism. Thus, the self-identification of design is being reconsidered and the historical responsibility ("design for people, design for society") underlying modernist design is being re-realized. And VKHUTEMAS can provide us with a new research perspective and a theoretical approach to revisit modernism today.