A Recuperative, though insightful comment from an exhibition at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Introduction

The title of this exhibition is taken from Lautreamont and Marx respectively; it indicates the basic themes and links radical art and revolutionary politics. With this union the traditional notion of art often seems to disappear, and the concept of politics take on an added dimension. The exhibition itself illustrates the theme visually, the catalogue texts supplement this. The message is sometimes obvious, sometimes subliminal.

One of the recorded slogans of the May Revolution in France last year read: "1936 - Derniere couche de peintuire". In seizing the means of communication as best as it could - and this it did most successfully, millions were aware of the wall slogans - the revolutionaries made it clear by the very nature of the slogans that this was a new type of revolutionary situation. Lenin's definition ''Revolution is the Festival of the Oppressed' was near to realization. Poetry had come to the streets again. The Commune reborn, not in the form but in the spirit of 1871 when similar creative force had appeared. In Russia, when the Revolution was young, poetry had manifested itself there - on the streets. When, following the suppression of the May events, one could read journalists of the bourgeois press lamenting the disappearance of 'a poetic quality of life'; then one can be doubly sure that poetry had passed from form to matter.

This exhibition is concerned with certain themes related to that slogan ' 1936. ..' For many 'primitive' societies painting, poetry etc. have no such life-span, as forms they had never in effect existed. The fantastic poetry of the Naven for example is part of a natural environment, everyone's environment. At the time when one might have witnessed the Naven ceremonies one might also have heard individuals in Russia declaring that art had outlived its usefulness -"the collective art of the future is collective life". In France Dada had attempted to assassinate culture. Surrealism following in the wake had proposed a new non-repressive reality principle, one accessible to all ''Surrealism is within the compass of every subconscious'. These things have a similar and essential core - the non-hierarchical - classless society. On the Iatmul people Gregory Bateson writes: 'In this community there are no steady and dignified chiefs 'indeed no formulated chieftainship at all -but instead there is a continuing emphasis on self-assertion'. ('L'anarchie c'est je' - slogan, Paris, May 1968). Such a factor is not one usually explored by art historians for a variety of reasons. It is however a guiding principle of this exhibition. But the difficulty of 'exhibiting' such a factor is obvious. It could be done better in book form. What has been attempted is to document the reactions of artists to such a revolutionary state. The variety of exhibits and their contradictions might point to the fact that it need not be the monolithic featureless block we might deduce it to be from self-styled 'Western' versions, or their projection by one-man's imagination - i.e. Utopian novels etc. So-called classless societies are obviously not that for a variety of reasons: their bureaucratic organization - higher functionaries must receive higher salaries than lower ones: 'Repressive men carry their repression into the new society' (Marcuse) i.e. the introjection of bourgeois values into the new state merely perpetuates some aspects of the bourgeois state. The break with such ideology - with the reality principle itself - can perhaps only be effected by imagination. Phantasy is that part of the consciousness which has retained its independence from the reality principle. Hence the new rationality of last May's rallying cry ' 'L'imagination au pouvoir'. The political and economic revolutions that have been accomplished are part-revolutions: they are reforms. Admirable reforms perhaps. Reforms one can still hope and work for in certain areas - the real exploited labour areas in the West - the Third World. But such reforms, in the West, leave untouched the problems of our everyday penury (lack of control over decisions which vitally affect us, increasing emphasis on non-participation from the work place to leisure time, the near-impossibility of being able even to opt out or a society that seems antagonistic to one).

One of the criticisms inherent in the exhibition is directed against the idea of imagination enslaved. Artistic imagination, I believe, needs to be set free from the confining notion of form - sculpture, painting, happening etc. - in order to intervene directly in our everyday lives. Freed of form it might be revealed as a common property to all men. Such freedom is vital to the process of revolution and to a post-revolutionary situation (new society).

The attack on art as such is long standing and has come from various quarters. A fairly crude, behaviourist position1 characterized the writings of some of the Russian men of the 1860's - e.g. Pisarev. He asked himself the blunt, tactless but still relevant question: 'It (culture) is all very beautiful but can it possibly be true, that is, does it fit the condition of man?' ...It is, he said 'a parasitical plant which feeds continually on the sap of human toil'. The disappearance of culture in Pisarev's view, was to be succeeded by the emergence of a 'non-cultural' scientific culture, whose ideal was neither invented nor abstracted but found and left where it alone could be represented - in actual and living phenomena.2 ) This is not a far-call from the constructivist thesis of the 1920's. The idea was also central to early surrealism: 'Admit that literature and painting are the saddest paths leading anywhere' (Breton). Marcuse, under the guiding light of Freud but denying Freud's pessimism on the essential factor that the reality principle cannot be changed, has thrown another 1ight on the subject: 'The aesthetic quality of enjoyment, even entertainment, has been inseparable from the essence of art, no matter how tragic, how uncompromising the work of art is. Aristotle's proposition on the cathartic effect of art epitomizes the dual function of art: both to oppose and to reconcile: both to indict and acquit; both to recall the repressed and repress it again ' 'purified'. People can elevate themselves with the classics: they read and see and hear their own archetypes rebel, triumph, give up or perish. And since all this is aesthetically formed, they can enjoy it - and forget it'. 3 )

Both surrealists and constructivists had only scorn for bourgeois capitalism and its achievements. The demand for change was seen, as now, to be of necessity - total. Art comes under attack as part of the system. Its avant-gardism is seen as mere packaging of an outworn commodity. It functions too readily as part of the media, part of the 'spectacle' that serves as a substitute for our own lives. It is a distraction encouraged, it often appears, to prevent us questioning the system; keeping up with the schisms of minimalism or whatever can be a fulltime occupation. If it is part of the system, then its dangers can be compared in effect, if not magnitude, to TV's effects in the last 2 decades which will certainly have played an enormous role in lowering the consciousness of the working class. A class whose importance to the revolution is fundamental. If Marcuse is right, as I believe he is, in his analysis of culture - he may justly be criticized for ignoring the working class and positing too much hope in the intelligentsia. What of course is needed is a fusion of the two, and this is the extraordinarily difficult task at this juncture. That the need was recognized by surrealists and constructivists and that they were unable to move from analysis to real action at least leaves us with some guide. In remaining faithful to an ideal the surrealist group aborted its real chances of moving into the area of actuality. The constructivists, after the Revolution, working unknowingly within a framework of falsehood could act; and thus make propaganda for a machine that clearly betrayed the ideals of 1917. However, what is clear is that Mayakovsky, Vertov or Tatlin could on occasion touch the pulse and soul of the Russian worker, they used a language that communicated ' Mayakovsky's agit-poems, Tatlin's Tower, Vertov's 'Kino-eye' films. They were literally able to function in the factory and the street, and not in producing anything remotely escapist. Yet, due to what in retrospect we may call a false-consciousness; they were often expressing a reactionary party-line, the line of the Five-Year Plans, the call to slave harder etc. Work became a fetish that was insufficiently challenged. Lissitzky though would anticipate surrealism when writing that 'communism will have to be left behind because suprematism -which embraces the totality of life's phenomena - will attract everyone away from the domination of work'.' Five years later the cover of 'La Revolution Surrealiste' called forth 'And War on Work'. 'Never Work' was one of the most frequently written slogans last May. The whole work ethic is one of the principal props of capitalism - whether it be in the Russian State or Western versions. It is only beyond the performance principle and its basis on work that a non-repressive reality principle can be envisaged. In fairness to constructivism it might be argued that in its early, heroic, Utopian phase, while undoubtedly extolling labour it also envisaged a technology that would have been advanced enough to lead to a considerable labour reduction. (The kind of technology people such as Buckminster Fuller predict will free us from the domination of work). While in its later phase - that of the factograph -a film such as 'Man with a Movie Camera' is also a hymn to leisure activities. One might too make the point that despite Gastev and the Americanisation fervour, despite the man = machine equation that Meyerhold seems to have celebrated, there was in the latter's work, and in the theatre of his pupil Eisenstein, a counter-force clearly anti-mechanolatric - that force came from the circus, it represented the play element. It was clearly evident in Meyerhold's early productions in collaboration with the constructivists - Popova and Stepanova, and more than evident in Eisenstein's work at Proletcult, including 'Strike'. The circus not only counteracted the spectre of mechanical man, it also related directly to the culture of the Russian masses Americanisation and clowning produced as lunatic a poetry as did the artist-engineer. The play instinct was far from being dominated by the work-instinct. Here, one might quote Buckminster Fuller:

Much the most exciting part about technology is not the technology or automation at all, but that man is going to come into entirely new relationships with his fellow men. He will retain much more in his everyday relations of what we term the naivete and idealism of the child'. It is an interesting fact that Fuller not only extends constructivism, but relates all to the surrealist quest: 'Surrealism relives in exaltation the best moments of childhood'. However, Fuller seems to avoid the question: his predicted state of affairs is hardly likely to come about under the present social structure which moves rather to the opposite pole -reduction of human potential to a new nadir. Even a move from alienated labour to alienated leisure (long predicted, still not in sight) is hardly a stupendous advance. I find it impossible to believe that there is going to be the slightest surrender of power and its instrumentation. Fuller seems unduly idealistic. In 1927 Naville would criticize the surrealists for their idealism; and consequently break with them. His criticism was just. So though was Breton's reply ' the economic and political revolution was revolution half-formed (Revolution by day, but not by night). Both sides were right, and no common ground seemed really evident.

If constructivism was also romantic and idealist in much of its oeuvre, it did to some degree succeed in changing the world. While the surrealists were asking 'What should one do with Notre Dame?' Answer: 'Replace the towers by a glass cruet, one bottle filled with blood, the other with sperm. The building will become a sexual school for virgins' someone in Russia, following in the wake of constructivism had changed his church into a tank. The Revolution in architecture, design and typography had however to succumb to a new totalitarianism. The fact that the constructivists built so little should not, I feel, cause us to neglect the idea of changing the physical environment (at an Architectural conference in Berlin about 2 years ago - students hung banners saying ''Stop Building' and 'All Buildings are beautiful'). The constructivist projects are more than paper dreams, simply looking at the dreariness and monotony of twentieth century towns then turning to Melnikov, Leonidev etc. shows that we have yet to learn some vital lessons. The idea that we take to the air in Tatlin's ornithopter becomes less and less a fantasy, more and more a necessity.

The fact is that following its Utopian phase constructivism returned to the here and now; the material to be used was the fact, the fact as photo, as reportage etc. However, 'art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it'. Hence, despite their denials of art they still shaped their reactions and records in a dynamic form. Futurism lived on, even in those forms Lef listed as being those in which it moved ' 'slogans, leaflets, montages, popular songs, signs, cinema hoardings....film documentaries, marches for processions, photographs. ..' Among the film documentaries are Vertov's 'Kino-eye' series and 'Man with a Movie Camera'. In this film Vertov seems to be saying 'This is everyday life in the new Socialist (Soviets plus electrification) State that is to come into being'. It is everyday life of the time, but transformed, energized by the Proun force which Lissitzky had left for others to harness. This is the perceptual dynamic of a Revolutionary Society. 'Man with a Movie Camera" is Utopian, but made with the elements of the present; as such it is also critique, critique of an actual monolithic State. The other side of the coin was then being developed in Paris. There, Breton, Aragon and others were aimlessly wandering the streets in search of 'objective chance' - those fabulous coincidences that appear to bring ones subconscious into harmony with the subconscious of a city. Breton's account of such events ''Nadja' - is a surrealist masterpiece, and much closer to that constructivist masterpiece 'Man with a Movie Camera.' than we are usually given to think. The streets and buildings in 'L' Age d'Or' are also subject o the will of a dynamic that we impose on them, in this case its source is

"LOVE. ..LOVE. ..LOVE...LOVE"

But this too is an avant garde film, one shown to 'special' audiences, rather than the oppressed whom it urged 'to satisfy their hunger for destruction' and 'abolish a society made up of different classes'.

Paradox! The artistic elements of last May's events were obvious: quotations from Breton were among the most frequently used wall-slogans. But the artistic revolution was seen as finished (1936 to be exact), the limitations of surrealism had been recognized: the monotony of the automatic text and the dream recital given as literature4 , the recuperable quality of its art works, reduced so often to a new form of stocks and shares. Breton's idea of the object whose construction is outside all aesthetic consideration and hence within everyone's creative scope (it seems to me the best pieces were made by the poets or their wives) may remain true, but such objects are hardly likely to discredit the world of appearances, One might equally expect this from the plethora of worthless objects already in the stores; but these are part of the system, part of the 'creation of ever more parasitic and unproductive labour', part of the vicious consumer-consumed circle. Perhaps though the surrealist object may be related to such things as Rodchenko's mobiles? Very different formally and functionally, their similarity is one of heresy. Produced by Marxists and, to varying degrees, conceived within a socio-economic framework, they relate to productivity in a highly ambiguous way. And, since their authors would have denied that they were simply 'art' one might be justified in making comparisons and criticisms outside the scope of art. However, we treat them as works of art, to me some of the most interesting produced in this century. But for many they belong to the past, there is no path continuing from them, they are a half-way house; now the action is seen as outside.

The ideal remains - poetry must be practised. And indeed it was (though not by all), from the Barres Trial to the events of 'Nadja'; in Russia 8000 people took part in the re-enactment of the Storming of the Winter Palace; in 1927 there were 7000 Blue Blouse groups in the factories, clubs etc. I have already spoken of the poetry of the barricades. Revolution is Poetry. There is poetry in all those acts which break the system of organization. 'The way to possibility lies through the road marked no thoroughfare'. ('Trespassers will be liberated'). In the move property becomes damaged; the inhabitants of Paris find their walls daubed with slogans; the press becomes paranoiac - they forget the violence which calls forth this violence - the dead in Vietnam, Bolivia etc; the violence of the factory floor, the violence of poverty. But as Monnerot wrote 'there is nothing about which the indispensable, ignoble, sacramental question 'who does it belong to' cannot be asked'. This is a civilization which seems to indict itself. If I quote the Iatmul or the Senoi then this is because some aspects of their culture seem admirable. Not of course the brutality to which they are exposed by their environment. It is not necessarily a question of regression back from the affluent society (though freedom from certain commodities would be an enrichment). Liberation depends on progress, rational progress, not progress measured in terms of profit. Technology can be an instrument of liberation, but not a technology creating and satisfying false needs; a liberatory technology is one freed from present restrictions, under changed ownership - i.e. common ownership. Such will surely depend on a changed consciousness, our present consciousness having as built-in norms - competitiveness, acquisitiveness. That it can be otherwise does seem proven in the examples of some 'primitive' societies.

The problem of effecting the 'small' change of consciousness that could lead to a revolutionary proletariat (simple realization that they are being swindled) is difficult enough, so that to suggest that the goal is existence under a non-repressive reality principle may seem absurdly Utopian. But, the conditions for both changes do at least exist, and have on occasion been realized. The new proletariat is anyone who desires to change this world. Not only the exploited classes, but anyone who responds to the promptings of our consciousness by the artists, poets and doers who have broken the organization of appearances. Be it Malevich on his death-bed, triumphing over totalitarianism with a pure poetry; Breton lecturing in Haiti and causing a Revolution; those unknown Paris communards demolishing Thier's house in 1871, or painting the magnificent slogan in the Sorbonne in 1968: 'I take my desires for reality, for I believe in the reality of my desires' etc. etc. - there is no hierarchy. Our instincts may be triggered, we must then act. How to act is one's own problem. This exhibition has documented some of the ways, ways taken by a very specific group of people. That one can only document the history of an elite, history being mainly the history of an elite, is no doubt regrettable. But in the present context ('art outside the frame' within a museum) to document that other history would probably be a more tabooed undertaking than this, where the risks of disarmament and containment are certainly present.

Ronald Hunt

• 1Nevertheless one incorporated in the wider critiques of Breton and Marcuse.
• 2Eugene Lampert: Sons against fathers: Studies in Russian Radicalism and Revolution: Oxford 1965.
• 3H. Marcuse: Eros and Civilization Boston 1955.
• 4In this respect the Senoi in Malaya were the real surrealists, There, dream interpretation was practised daily, in families and groups. Once such interpretation action was based they had known no violence for a very long time.