This paper was submitted to fulfill a midterm assignment for my first semester graduate Media Studies Course at NYU Poly. I never received a grade on it. My professor told me that the language that I used was rarely seen at the graduate level and he himself even approached my academic advisor about its authorship. Once the confusion was cleared we had a rather lively discussion about my time as a student of Benjamin Buchloh's and the state of collective art engagement in the new media society.
Examining the Appropriation of Cultural Production
Techniquesby the State in an Industrializing Society
Jason WilsonMedia Studies Seminar
October 28, 2011
In their text, “Communication and New Media” JohnHarrison and Martin Hirst make critical distinctions about the investigation of media in history and substantiate the claim that a political economy of media is the safest way to investigate media history. They note that a political economy is, “a theory of socialeconomics which argues that knowledge and analysis of ownership and control of‘economic entities is a useful, indeed, essential means of understanding.” They make the further distinction that political economy “can be based on a class analysis or some other taxonomy, such as institutional form (33).”
Benjamin Buchloh, in his essay ”From Faktura toFactography,” provides an analysis of the progression of the Russian avant-garde art practices towards a form of representation tailored to the needs of the working class. In doing so he exercises principles of extrapolation that Hirst and Harrison would describeas a political economical analysis. The artistic and political climates in Russia in the 1920’s do provide a perfect historical setting to which we can apply some of Hirsts and Harrison’s theories. Buchloh does a good job of exploring the advancement of the avant-garde’s means of photographic representation specifically by means of a political economical analysis of theRussian political society. Buchloh’s argument is lacking only in that he does not support a lot ofhis theories with factual historical information about the society, only the artists and their work. By studying Buchloh’s evolution of socialist realist art practices of the Russian avant-garde, we can better understand the framework for the use of a political economy of media in the analysis of a rapidly industrializing society. I intend to expound on some ofhis points to further explicate the cultural climate and to expound on the idea of a cross referential analysis that would achieve a political economical analysis.
Artistic and political climates in Russia after the revolution of 1917 met a crossroads that has been expounded on by many historians and art critics. The country was experiencing a social revolution, industrial and artistic revolution all at once. The Russian avant-garde artists were already highly involved in the modernist crisis of representation that was, for many soviet artists, spelled out
by Kazemir Malevich in 1915 with the “Black Square”. John Milner notes that this singular painting was the starting point of Suprematism, and, “was intended as a full stop in the history of art (14).”
The painting and subsequent Suprematist movement intended to free art from the previous set of standards of pictorial objectivity and to liberate the artistic investigation from the realm of mimesis, back to the investigation of lines, colors, pure artistic forms. Milner notes that this painting was a catalyst for cultural awareness across the entire avant-garde movement in Russia (Milner 15). What is interesting though is that the artists chose to assault the narrative content of art on the eve of a socialist revolution. That they would eventually thrust themselves into the investigation using means of industrial production is implicit of three distinct facts: that they were in the midst of a monumental upheaval of artistic representation, the post revolutionary society was also in a sort of identity crisis during Stalin’s transition to power, the country (along with other larger nations during WWI) was still advancing technologically despite enmity among the ruling and working classes. The crisis of artistic and political representation seemed to have met head on, and painting would no longer suffice as an adequate means of producing a new objective modernist representation.
This crux in the means of artistic production is the starting point of Buchloh’s essay. Propelled by the audacity of the Suprematists, Russian artists began to totally abandon the bourgeois aesthetics of painting in search of a new art that would reach and represent the working class. Buchloh includes notes from the personal journal of Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, during a trip to Russia in 1927. Barr notes that Alexander Rodchenko, had, “done no painting since 1922, devoting himself to the photographic arts.” He ends this entry with, “but I must find some painters if possible.” Buchloh describes Barr’s meeting withthe constructivist writer, Sergei Tretaykov where Tretyakov sums up the new anti-painting movement. Barr describes that Tretaykov was only interested in creating art that conformed to,“his objective, descriptive, self-styled journalistic ideal of art (Buchloh82-84).” Barr's inability to find the sort of representation that he needed is exemplary of
The painting and subsequent Suprematist movement intended to free art from the previous set of standards of pictorial objectivity and to liberate the artistic investigation from the realm of mimesis, back to the investigation of lines, colors, pure artistic forms. Milner notes that this painting was a catalyst for cultural awareness across the entire avant-garde movement in Russia (Milner 15). What is interesting though is that the artists chose to assault the narrative content of art on the eve of a socialist revolution. That they would eventually thrust themselves into the investigation using means of industrial production is implicit of three distinct facts: that they were in the midst of a monumental upheaval of artistic representation, the post revolutionary society was also in a sort of identity crisis during Stalin’s transition to power, the country (along with other larger nations during WWI) was still advancing technologically despite enmity among the ruling and working classes. The crisis of artistic and political representation seemed to have met head on, and painting would no longer suffice as an adequate means of producing a new objective modernist representation.
This crux in the means of artistic production is the starting point of Buchloh’s essay. Propelled by the audacity of the Suprematists, Russian artists began to totally abandon the bourgeois aesthetics of painting in search of a new art that would reach and represent the working class. Buchloh includes notes from the personal journal of Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, during a trip to Russia in 1927. Barr notes that Alexander Rodchenko, had, “done no painting since 1922, devoting himself to the photographic arts.” He ends this entry with, “but I must find some painters if possible.” Buchloh describes Barr’s meeting withthe constructivist writer, Sergei Tretaykov where Tretyakov sums up the new anti-painting movement. Barr describes that Tretaykov was only interested in creating art that conformed to,“his objective, descriptive, self-styled journalistic ideal of art (Buchloh82-84).” Barr's inability to find the sort of representation that he needed is exemplary of
the artists' willingness to explore all other media but painting at the time.
Buchloh marks this as one of the seminal ideas behind the practice of factography, the final step in the Russian artists treatment of traditional modernism, before the total appropriation of these industrial means of artistic production by the state (85). Before this final paradigm of factography, the artist first dealt with the paradigm of faktura. The notion of faktura is based on the idea that the materials and construction of a work comprise its form. The construction of the materials should provide its artistic logic (87).
This logic is the basis for the constructivist investigations in painting, public displays, spatial constructions, cinema, and even writings. Buchloh quotes Alexander Rodchenko as describing the paintbrush as, “an inadequate and imprecise instrument in the new non-objective painting and the press (89).” With this, the artist seemingly predicts the shift from the destruction of painting through the investigation of faktura, to the factographic approach to representation through photography, print, architecture, and industry. All media approaches that would achieve the task of what Buchloh describes as “simultaneous collective reception (94).”
This final abandonment of bourgeois notions of aesthetic production and representation allowed the artists to fully embrace the industrial and utilitarian methods of artistic production that would better represent the masses, and would provide for their collective reception of the works produced.
It is here that we must consider the socio economic climate of the society in an age of mechanical innovation and socialization of government. These factors, most notably the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin’s subsequent assumption of leadership and the artists’ simultaneous denouncement of painting, illustrate the point that Hirst and Harrison describe as the vital nature of the interrelationship between social factors and the governance of new technologies. Hirst and Harrison discuss the process of convergence of the economic, political entities, and technological innovation and how it allows for succinct control of media content, and thus media consumption by a select few (Hirst 32-34).
Buchloh marks this as one of the seminal ideas behind the practice of factography, the final step in the Russian artists treatment of traditional modernism, before the total appropriation of these industrial means of artistic production by the state (85). Before this final paradigm of factography, the artist first dealt with the paradigm of faktura. The notion of faktura is based on the idea that the materials and construction of a work comprise its form. The construction of the materials should provide its artistic logic (87).
This logic is the basis for the constructivist investigations in painting, public displays, spatial constructions, cinema, and even writings. Buchloh quotes Alexander Rodchenko as describing the paintbrush as, “an inadequate and imprecise instrument in the new non-objective painting and the press (89).” With this, the artist seemingly predicts the shift from the destruction of painting through the investigation of faktura, to the factographic approach to representation through photography, print, architecture, and industry. All media approaches that would achieve the task of what Buchloh describes as “simultaneous collective reception (94).”
This final abandonment of bourgeois notions of aesthetic production and representation allowed the artists to fully embrace the industrial and utilitarian methods of artistic production that would better represent the masses, and would provide for their collective reception of the works produced.
It is here that we must consider the socio economic climate of the society in an age of mechanical innovation and socialization of government. These factors, most notably the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin’s subsequent assumption of leadership and the artists’ simultaneous denouncement of painting, illustrate the point that Hirst and Harrison describe as the vital nature of the interrelationship between social factors and the governance of new technologies. Hirst and Harrison discuss the process of convergence of the economic, political entities, and technological innovation and how it allows for succinct control of media content, and thus media consumption by a select few (Hirst 32-34).
Under the guise of social utopianism, the Stalinist government was able to facilitate a benevolent relationship with the avant-garde artists to help represent the people as they rebuilt their political society. A new form of cultural representation was imminent and to an extent the culture producers seemed to have predicted this paradigm. By taking control of the technology (or its innovators or content producers) the Stalinists were able to seize control of the media and its audience. Hirst and Harrison conflate the audience with commodity, and explain how this dual relationship is a dangerous one when espoused under the closed door politics of a socialist regime and this can be seen in the history of cultural consumption during the time (35).
Results from years of Western Siberian Union Worker Consumption surveys suggest that between 1923-24, male and female workers spent 51.3 and 16.9 hours respectively doing cultural or educational activities. By 1932 the male consumption had dropped to 45 hours and 33 hours in 1936. John Barber notes that by the 1930’s cultural activity promoted by authorities spanned a wide array from educational and literacy classes to theatre groups and cinema clubs, but that the aim of culture was to be “pragmatic, production-oriented and unambiguously political (Barber 5).” This philosophy mimics nearly to the word the same manifesto of the constructivist artists who, unsatisfied with painting as a means of representation, adopted the utilitarian tools of production to produce a purely political work.
With this particular historical example we can trace a convergence between the leaders of cultural production and their methods with the heads ofstate. Buchloh points to the popularity of El Lissitzky’s Pressa Exhibition for the International Exhibition of Newspaper and Book Publishing in Cologne of 1926 and the Alexander Rodcehnko’s shift from photomontage to monumental photography of the people and its constructions as key examples of the artist’s determination and willingness toapply their artistic practice in employ of the State (Buchloh104-106,109). At this particular point, enthusiasm for socialist ideals must have still been high and state sponsorship of communal consumption was still high as well. By 1931 Rodchenko is hired by the StatePublishing House as Artist in Residence on the site of the construction of the White Sea Canal. His photographs (captured in his signature new objective
Results from years of Western Siberian Union Worker Consumption surveys suggest that between 1923-24, male and female workers spent 51.3 and 16.9 hours respectively doing cultural or educational activities. By 1932 the male consumption had dropped to 45 hours and 33 hours in 1936. John Barber notes that by the 1930’s cultural activity promoted by authorities spanned a wide array from educational and literacy classes to theatre groups and cinema clubs, but that the aim of culture was to be “pragmatic, production-oriented and unambiguously political (Barber 5).” This philosophy mimics nearly to the word the same manifesto of the constructivist artists who, unsatisfied with painting as a means of representation, adopted the utilitarian tools of production to produce a purely political work.
With this particular historical example we can trace a convergence between the leaders of cultural production and their methods with the heads ofstate. Buchloh points to the popularity of El Lissitzky’s Pressa Exhibition for the International Exhibition of Newspaper and Book Publishing in Cologne of 1926 and the Alexander Rodcehnko’s shift from photomontage to monumental photography of the people and its constructions as key examples of the artist’s determination and willingness toapply their artistic practice in employ of the State (Buchloh104-106,109). At this particular point, enthusiasm for socialist ideals must have still been high and state sponsorship of communal consumption was still high as well. By 1931 Rodchenko is hired by the StatePublishing House as Artist in Residence on the site of the construction of the White Sea Canal. His photographs (captured in his signature new objective
style) were published in the state sponsored publication USSR in Construction Vol. 12 (117). By the late 1920’s the exactitude and inherent hearkening to industrialization, work, and the worker that the factographic practice imbued provided a solution to both the State and proletariat crisis of collective reception. The artists willing conformity to the establishment of the state proved disastrous for the culture of Russia.
In a speech in 1929, leading Moscow Bolshevik, K. Strievsky proclaimed that cultural provision was necessary, “to satisfy the worker’s growing cultural needs and simultaneously to help our construction.” He asserts that to make workers literate in a variety of subjects is needless, but instead the society would benefit from workers literate in one area alone (by handing the public to the state, the artists of the Soviet Avant garde facilitated a convergence between the media and government (Barber 5)).
Further dangers of conflating government industry with cultural and media production can be illustrated in the paradox of library funding. Despite the promotion of literacy, funds were not allocated to libraries during the time. John Barber points to a survey of West Siberian Libraries during the 1920’s and early 30’s. There was no funding allocated to book acquisition in 1930-31, libraries often faced eviction and often returned parcels of new books for lack of funding. Technical literature was favored over fiction, and all books of the “White Guard, opportunist, religious, ancien regime and philistine” variety were culled (6,7). The facilitators of this West Siberian study concluded that the lack of artistic literature would inevitably have an effect on workers ability to describe their feelings, and form feelings about beauty, their personal tastes (8). The states intention was to literally produce succinct emotionless expendable cogs in the machine that would drive national progress.
Richard Stites writes that, “Much of the political and cultural intelligentsia was annihilated in the 1930’s or reduced to impotence…The flooding of the cities by peasants and the simultaneous rise of the proletariat into the ranks of power changed drastically the whole cultural face of that huge country.” He notes that this "rustication" of the urban spaces in Russia was cause for the regime of militarization
In a speech in 1929, leading Moscow Bolshevik, K. Strievsky proclaimed that cultural provision was necessary, “to satisfy the worker’s growing cultural needs and simultaneously to help our construction.” He asserts that to make workers literate in a variety of subjects is needless, but instead the society would benefit from workers literate in one area alone (by handing the public to the state, the artists of the Soviet Avant garde facilitated a convergence between the media and government (Barber 5)).
Further dangers of conflating government industry with cultural and media production can be illustrated in the paradox of library funding. Despite the promotion of literacy, funds were not allocated to libraries during the time. John Barber points to a survey of West Siberian Libraries during the 1920’s and early 30’s. There was no funding allocated to book acquisition in 1930-31, libraries often faced eviction and often returned parcels of new books for lack of funding. Technical literature was favored over fiction, and all books of the “White Guard, opportunist, religious, ancien regime and philistine” variety were culled (6,7). The facilitators of this West Siberian study concluded that the lack of artistic literature would inevitably have an effect on workers ability to describe their feelings, and form feelings about beauty, their personal tastes (8). The states intention was to literally produce succinct emotionless expendable cogs in the machine that would drive national progress.
Richard Stites writes that, “Much of the political and cultural intelligentsia was annihilated in the 1930’s or reduced to impotence…The flooding of the cities by peasants and the simultaneous rise of the proletariat into the ranks of power changed drastically the whole cultural face of that huge country.” He notes that this "rustication" of the urban spaces in Russia was cause for the regime of militarization
of work, imposition of discipline, and social organization, and the culture and language of bossiness (Stites 79 –82). Igor Golomstock points out that by 1939, the Stalin Prizes were introduced to serve as the main principle for cultural establishment. 10 of the 13 inaugural prizes were awarded to artist who depicted, “thematic work”, or works that depict the leadership and their associates (Golomstock 113 – 115). By the beginning of WWII, art has not only returned to its painterly form, but has regressed to the age-old narcissistic bourgeois practice of the figurative depiction of power.
This regressive convergence of media at the hands of the ruling power can be seen in the cultures of several European countries during the early twentieth century. The propensity toward dangerous propaganda is inherent in the innovation of technology, as ideas do tend to converge behind closed doors. The artists' willing participation in this convergence begs us to question their responsibility as artists to upholding the classical principles of art. Their abandonment of classical techniques of creative production in favor of the techniques of media production seemingly set the stage for the very type of media environment of convergence and hegemony that underpin our current media economy.
This regressive convergence of media at the hands of the ruling power can be seen in the cultures of several European countries during the early twentieth century. The propensity toward dangerous propaganda is inherent in the innovation of technology, as ideas do tend to converge behind closed doors. The artists' willing participation in this convergence begs us to question their responsibility as artists to upholding the classical principles of art. Their abandonment of classical techniques of creative production in favor of the techniques of media production seemingly set the stage for the very type of media environment of convergence and hegemony that underpin our current media economy.
Works Cited:
Barber, John. “Working-Class Culture and thePolitical Culture of the 1930’s.” The Culture of the Stalin Period. Ed. Hans Gunther. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. 3 – 14. Print.
Buchloh, Benajmin. “From Faktura to Factography.” October Vol. 30 (1984) 82 – 119. JSTOR. Web.
Golomstock, Igor. “Problems in the Study of Stalinist Culture.” The Culture of the Stalin Period. Ed. Hans Gunther. New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1990, 110 – 121. Print.
Hirst, Martin and John Harrison. Communication and New Media. South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, 2007. 30 –56. Print.
Milner, John. Russian Revolutionary Art. London: Oresko Books, 1979. Print.
Stites, Richard. “Stalinism and the Restructuring of Revolutionary Utopianism.” The Culture of the Stalin Period. Ed. Hans Gunther. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. 78- 96. Print.
Barber, John. “Working-Class Culture and thePolitical Culture of the 1930’s.” The Culture of the Stalin Period. Ed. Hans Gunther. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. 3 – 14. Print.
Buchloh, Benajmin. “From Faktura to Factography.” October Vol. 30 (1984) 82 – 119. JSTOR. Web.
Golomstock, Igor. “Problems in the Study of Stalinist Culture.” The Culture of the Stalin Period. Ed. Hans Gunther. New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1990, 110 – 121. Print.
Hirst, Martin and John Harrison. Communication and New Media. South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, 2007. 30 –56. Print.
Milner, John. Russian Revolutionary Art. London: Oresko Books, 1979. Print.
Stites, Richard. “Stalinism and the Restructuring of Revolutionary Utopianism.” The Culture of the Stalin Period. Ed. Hans Gunther. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. 78- 96. Print.
