I found this travelogue of Danish author Hans Scherfig’s 1950 trip to the USSR. I think it will be of interest to people here so I have translated it. The illustrations are by Scherfig himself.

This chapter is less a travel description than an essay on Soviet visual arts. Scherfig examines the development and social function of Soviet art, arguing that artistic style reflects the society that produces it. Scherfig traces Soviet art from the experimental Futurism, Constructivism and Imaginism of the early post-Revolutionary period to the emergence of a more realist and popular style, criticising both the avant-garde’s isolation from ordinary people and later Soviet art’s monumental, theatrical character. He sees the greatest potential in mass participation in amateur art, contrasting this popular artistic culture with a technically sophisticated but culturally exhausted Western art increasingly confined to a small elite.

Travels in the Soviet Union

Table of Contents

Chapter 14

Style is the spirit of the age materialized, the essence of the age made visible. The style of the bourgeois age is functionalism, the utilitarian style, which expresses the economics of capitalism. The machine age, whose ultimate goal is man as automaton, the robot which Hitler created and which American capitalism fosters — “Superman” and the “Atomic Girl.”

Liberal-minded architects of the West have taken offense that the new buildings of the Soviet Union do not appear in the economic style of functionalism. And free-thinking aesthetes have turned away from socialism in indignation because Russian artists do not follow the abstract tendencies of Western Europe. But there is nothing to be done about it. Style must necessarily be different in a socialist workers’ society from what it is in the bourgeois capitalist world. Art must take a different form in a society where it belongs to the people than in countries where it is reserved for a very narrow circle, and it must be different in a new and dawning epoch from what it is in a dying, concluding period.

There have surely also been those who lamented that the refinement of the Rococo could not continue into liberalism, but came to an end together with feudalism. And there will be people who complain that the machine style of liberalism has not been carried on into the socialist Union.

When the Soviet Union was being built up technically, there was naturally a great enthusiasm for machines. People were proud of the new factories, they rejoiced in owning machines. But they did not make machines the masters of man; they had the upper hand over them, they did not make a cult of them, man was not shaped in the image of the machine. Man was liberated by owning the machine.

Capitalist functionalism did not come to dominate the new society, despite the influence of German and French bourgeois modernism in the twenties. Functionalist buildings from that period can still be seen in Moscow; they stand there somewhat poor and sterile, somewhat old-fashioned, reminders of a bygone period. It takes time for a new style to crystallize, but the new Soviet style can already be glimpsed, although not every attempt has been successful. It expresses not bourgeois economics, but festivity and abundance and optimism. It is shaped by popular traditions, by plenty and cheerfulness and extravagance, by the very immensity and diversity of the country itself.

Refinement and sophistication are not inherited from one cultural period to the next; renewal comes from the roots, not from the top. It was bourgeois formalists and anarchists who dominated the arts in the first years after the Revolution, but they did not come to determine the art of socialist society; their time ended with the NEP period. They had embraced Futurism even before 1914; the leader of Futurism, the Italian Marinetti, had lectured to young artists in Moscow in 1912 and preached “dynamic culture,” the romance of steel, the destruction of the old culture, the demolition of museums and monuments; he later quite naturally became one of the pioneers of Italian Fascism.

Smolenskaya Square, Moscow 1950

The Russian Futurists adopted the designation Imaginists. Lenin called the movement “hooligan communism.” Imaginism gave rise to countless new tendencies: bio-communism, luminism, imprematism, cubo-futurism, and so on. Opposed to them were the constructivists, who fashioned their abstract compositions out of wheels, wire, machine parts, gas pipes, etc., on the thesis that only the engineering aspect held any interest for the new age. One remembers from this confused period Tatlin’s monument to the Third International, an abstract construction with spirals which, by means of an electric motor, revolved at different speeds around a steel mast.

On the stage Meyerhold carried on with his “bio-mechanical” stage settings, resembling gymnasiums fitted with trapezes and wall bars, or factory halls with revolving wheels, ladders and bridges, over which the actors moved like acrobats. Machines and men were to become one. I remember from my youth seeing a couple of these plays copied on an experimental stage in Copenhagen. The characters were cubes, cones and cylinders; the actors went about inside boxes, shouting through megaphones. Language itself was considered far too traditional and reactionary, and the actors spoke “abstractly”: Minke, minke, da, da, da —

What was characteristic of these bourgeois revolutionary artists was their absolute isolation from the people. Ordinary people did not understand them and responded to them with hostility. When a statue of Bakunin, made in the cubo-futurist style, was erected in Moscow in 1918, it aroused such resentment that it had to be taken down again. Many of the Constructivists and Imaginists were, however, talented artists; names such as Malevich, Burliuk, Rodchenko and Gan come to mind. Some of them later became distinguished artists in the applied arts. I met Burliuk in New York in 1930, where he stubbornly produced abstractions out of cogwheels, nuts, screws and electrical apparatus, and I remember him as a kindly and gifted man.

The formalist tendencies held sway over artistic life for only a few years. Their possibilities were gradually exhausted; the sensations could not continually be renewed, the follies could not be varied. The Imaginists’ contempt for reality and nature prevented any development; they had begun at the wrong end. Their individualistic isolation, their lack of contact with the people, was fatal. They belonged to the final stage of a passing epoch, and they disappeared with the last vestiges of capitalist enterprise in the NEP period.

In literature, Gorky came forward with his demand for socialist realism. In the theatre, Stanislavsky opposed the exaggerated form, the grotesque and the eccentric, which he explained as the result of bourgeois over-saturation. The common man does not need piquant stimulants for his appetite; he is spiritually hungry and needs plain and nourishing fare. He wants to laugh and weep from the heart; he does not want exaggerated form, but “the life of the human spirit, expressed simply and intelligibly, not contrived, but strong and convincing.” Precisely the same tendency came to assert itself in painting and the visual arts, not as dictates “from above,” but as an inner necessity in a society where the people are the highest authority.

But Russian literature and Russian theatre had traditions that the visual arts lacked. There was no Gorky or Stanislavsky among the painters. The new realism was inspired by the older academicians and drew its impulses from the narrative naturalism of the eighties. Contemporary Russian art still brings Erik Henningsen[1] and Edvard Petersen[2] to mind. A painter like Yablonskaya[3] recalls P. S. Krøyer[4], Mikhail Khmelko[5] paints much like Tuxen[6], Victor Oreshnikov[7] resembles Viggo Johansen[8]. You can tell that the realist programme was formulated by a writer; the narrative, the literary, dominates the pictures, the subject becomes the essential thing. The great events, the feats of the Five-Year Plans, the civil and military victories have given rise to an optimistic monumental art, a heroic naturalism, which often takes the form of tableaux or panopticons. Enormous paintings, immensely popular, but with their showiness and illusionism very far removed from popular simplicity.

Among the many portraits of Stalin, you have to search a long time to find a truly penetrating, characteristic portrait of the great man. The artists seem most often to have placed the greatest importance on a conscientious rendering of the overcoat, the uniform and all the external trappings. At a large exhibition of portraits and historical pictures connected with Stalin’s life, arranged on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, there was not a single portrait that stood comparison with, for example, V. A. Tropinin’s inspired portrait of Pushkin, V. Perov’s painting of Dostoevsky, or Repin’s portraits of Tolstoy. Where portraits of Marx, Lenin and Stalin occur on banners, badges, emblems and so forth, a particular style has gradually developed; here the portrait has become a symbol, which justifies stylization. The images of Marianne in the Phrygian cap, which are seen everywhere in French public buildings, are not portraits either, but symbolize the idea of the nation and the revolution.

As for the many portraits of Stalin, the abundance of pictures seems to torment and alarm Western European democrats, and various ingenious explanations have been offered for the phenomenon. But might the reason not be quite a simple one: that Russians hang Stalin’s picture on their walls because they like the man? The individual Soviet citizen’s love for the brilliant man who, through revolution and construction, war and reconstruction, has accomplished the incredible, is surely something natural and human. This is not a matter of leader-worship or Byzantinism, but of the well-founded gratitude of ordinary people. The great humanist who came from the people, and under whose work the living conditions of people have been utterly transformed throughout the vast realm, must naturally be loved. He personifies the Soviet people; in him they celebrate their own strength. Surely admiration for the great and extraordinary should be permitted in a socialist democracy?

A special museum has been opened in Moscow for the gifts that have been sent to Stalin over the years. It is the most interesting and astonishing museum I have ever seen. These thousands of beautiful and touching and strange and tasteless things gave a better impression of the artistic wealth possessed by the Soviet people than any exhibition of professional artists’ easel paintings. These homemade works of art from all corners of the vast realm were a treasure-house which, far better than the priceless treasure-houses of the tsars in the Kremlin, showed the wealth and diversity and popular strength of the country. It was an outpouring of innocence and joy and optimism.

It is not taste that creates art; it is immediacy, the joy in things, the connection with nature. Innocence has fallen into disrepute in the bourgeois world, where cleverness in business is the measure of human worth. In the Soviet Union people can laugh and weep from the depths of their hearts. They can take an immediate pleasure in pictures without regard for the pictures’ refinement. They hang their coloured lithographs on the walls among lace and paper flowers without interference from aesthetic-minded architects. And this innocent pleasure in pictures is not perverted by industrial speculation: there is no lurid weekly press and no sexual comics; life is lived without the Saturday Evening Post and Søndags B.T.[9]

The homemade paper flowers are highly imaginative creations, not naturalistic imitations, but entirely original flowers of the imagination, with a tradition reaching back into folk art. The starched lace curtains are arranged in folds whose origins lie in Byzantine ornamentation, and they are placed not only at the windows but also in the middle of the wall. I remember the neon lights in Kiev, which advertised nothing whatsoever, but were simply there for decoration, great yellow sunflowers and red poppies that made the street festive.

You should not be afraid of the banal. The coloured lithographs and oil prints and chromos that sweetened my childhood have never been dimmed by any other art I have seen. Immediate pleasure in pictures must surely be the first prerequisite for engaging with art. The puppet theatre with its scenery, the varnished picture on the cover of the ABC book, the old Copenhagen roller blinds with Frederiksborg Castle and the Church of Our Saviour, the faience dinner service with little landscapes of men and women at the bottom of the porridge bowls have given me greater pleasure in art than any museum experience I have had since.

Axel Salto[10] once said in a radio lecture that the visual arts, which in Western Europe have reached a stage where their formal possibilities are becoming exhausted, will find their renewal in the Soviet Union — if not in this generation, then in the next or the one after that. I am convinced that Salto is right, and I do not believe we need wait a generation. The conditions for a new great popular art are already present: the appetite is there, the joy in things, the innocence. The soil is there in which art will grow naturally and organically.

In the Soviet Union, art is in its beginning stage; among us, we are witnessing its brilliant final phase. In the Soviet Union, art belongs to the whole people; it grows and matures with the people. Among us, art in its refined final stage is reserved for a very small minority, which will become smaller still once the snobs have been deducted.

The Russian painters and museum workers I spoke to were inclined to agree with me in this conclusion of our hour-long conversation. They did not think that Soviet artists had anything to learn from Western formalism. Art which has reached the furthest limit of its possibilities cannot become the basis of a renewal. You cannot begin at the wrong end. The art now growing in the Soviet Union will become the possession of the whole people in a way not known since the Middle Ages, and found today only among the remnants of primitive tribes.

I asked the director of the Tretyakov Gallery why the abstract art of the twenties was not exhibited.

— Formalist art interests nobody. We regard it as belonging to a bygone period, a stage that has been left behind, he replied.

— But that does not prevent it from being exhibited. Even if one no longer cares for the Constructivist and Imaginist pictures, they still have a historical interest.

— Anyone who is interested can, of course, see the pictures and study them in the museum’s depot.

— But why aren’t they on public display? Why can’t the ordinary museum visitor see these pictures and make up his own mind about them?

— The public has made up its mind. It is the public that does not want the pictures exhibited. When they have been exhibited, the museum’s complaints register has been filled with protests. People don’t want those pictures in the museum. I had nothing against exhibiting them, but the museum belongs to the people. They are the ones who decide.

It is quite pleasant to encounter a museum director who does not regard the museum as his own private collection.

Moscow 1950

I was told about the material conditions of artists. They are placed in much the same position as Soviet writers; their trade unions have a role much like that of the Writers’ Union, with its administration, numerous institutions and substantial resources. Besides the state, the museums and the many public institutions, the trade unions are the artists’ largest clients. The thousands of trade unions, with their social institutions, rest homes, sanatoria, nurseries, libraries, clubs and palaces of culture, have a demand for artistic decoration that cannot possibly be met. For the most part they have to make do with posters, reproductions and copies. Graphic art, which produced such splendid work already in the years of the Revolution, remains very highly developed.

But art is not the preserve of professionals. It belongs to the people on a scale that is unimaginable in other countries. The amateur theatres are not merely an amusement, but an artistic activity pursued with enthusiasm and seriousness under the guidance of professional directors. Every factory and institution has a theatre in its club, where amateurs have developed an artistic style reminiscent of the theatre of antiquity. The thousands of amateur theatres attached to factories, offices and collective farms are as commonplace as sports clubs. Every enterprise has its orchestras and choirs, and all the peoples of the Soviet Union are born dancers. The splendid Georgian dancers who visited Copenhagen a few years ago were amateurs. The clubs also have studios for painters and sculptors, where hundreds of thousands of workers, clerks and peasants engage in art for the sheer pleasure of it, without professional concern for the wishes of customers, without bread-and-butter jealousy or intrigue. Here the new art is being born under the influence of popular traditions. It is from here that the professional artists will be recruited. This is where it happens, in the people.

The encouraging thing about Soviet art is that it belongs to the people. New and unfinished, diverse and original, it grows with the people; it develops organically. No authority outside the people dictates it, no superior, condescending aesthetes presume to instruct the people in matters of art and cultivate a snobbery for refinements that only a handful can appreciate. Taste is left in peace. You do not have to ask an architect’s permission before you are allowed to like something. Paper flowers, oil prints and lace are good enough if people like them. The pleasure of things is what matters, without the condescending interference of the aesthetes.

Original Danish text

XIV.

Stil er tidsånden materialiseret, tidens væsen i synlig form. Borger tidens stil er funktionalismen, nyttestilen, som udtrykker kapitalismens økonomi. Maskinalderen, hvis yderste mål er mennesket som automat, robotten, som Hitler skabte den, og som den amerikanske kapitalisme fremelsker — »superman« og »atompige«.

Det har fornærmet vestens frisindede arkitekter, at Sovjeunionens nye bygnininger ikke fremtræder i funktionalismens økonomiske stil. Og frie skønånder har krænket vendt sig fra socialismen, fordi russiske kunstnere ikke følger Vesteuropas abstrakte retninger. Men der er ikke noget at gøre ved det. Stilen må nødvendigvis blive en anden i et socialistisk arbejdersamfund end i den borgerlige kapitalistiske verden. Kunsten må forme sig anderledes i et samfund, hvor den er folkets, end i de lande, hvor den er forbeholdt en meget snæver kreds, og den må være anderledes i en ny begyndende epoke end i en døende afslutningsperiode.

Der er vel også dem, der har begrædt, at rococoens raffinement ikke kunne fortsætte ind i liberalismen, men fandt sin afslutning sammen med feudalismen. Og der vil være folk, der klager over, at liberalismens maskinstil ikke har kunnet videreføres i den socialistiske union.

Da Sovjetunionen blev bygget teknisk op, sværmede man naturligvis for maskinerne. Man var stolt over de nye fabrikker, man frydede sig over at eje maskiner. Men man gjorde ikke maskinerne til menneskets herre, man havde krammet på dem, man drev ikke kult med dem, mennesket blev ikke formet i maskinens billede. Mennesket blev frigjort ved at eje maskinen.

Kapitalismens funktionalisme kom ikke til at præge det nye samfund trods indflydelse fra tysk og fransk borgerlig modernisme i tyverne. Man ser endnu i Moskva funkisbygninger fra den tid; de står der lidt fattige og sterile, lidt gammeldags, erindringer fra en overstået periode. Det tager tid, før en ny stil udkrystaliseres, men den nye stil i Sovjetunionen kan allerede anes, selvom ikke alle forsøg har været vellykkede. Den udtrykker ikke borgerlig økonomi, men fest og overflod og optimisme. Den er præget af folkelige traditioner, af overskud og munterhed og ødselhed, af selve landets umådelighed og mangfoldighed.

Raffinement og forfinelse arves ikke fra en kulturperiode til den efterfølgende, fornyelsen kommer fra roden og ikke fra toppen. Det var borgerlige formalister og anarkister, som beherskede kunsten i den første tid efter revolutionen, men de kom ikke til at bestemme det socialistiske samfunds kunst, deres tid var omme sammen med NEP-perioden. De havde annammet futurismen allerede før 1914; futurismens fører, italieneren Marinetti havde holdt foredrag for unge kunstnere i Moskva i 1912 og forkyndte »den dynamiske kultur«, stålets romantik, tilintetgørelsen af den gamle kultur, ødelæggelse af museer og mindesmærker; han gik senere naturligt ind som en af den italienske fascismes pionerer.

De russiske futurister antog betegnelsen imaginisterne. Lenin kaldte bevægelsen »lømmel-kommunisme«, Imaginismen avlede utallige nye retninger: Bio-kommunismen, luminismen, imprematsmen, kubo-futurismen m. m. Over for dem stod konstruktivisterne, som fremstillede deres abstrakte kompositioner af hjul, ståltråd, maskindele, gasrør o.s.v. udfra den tese, at kun det ingeniørmæssige har interesse for den nye tid. Man husker fra denne konfuse periode Tatlins monument for Tredie Internationale, en abstrakt opbygning med spiraler, som ved hjælp af en elektromotor roterede med forskellig hastighed omkring en stålmast.

På teatret huserede Meyerhold med »bio-mekaniske« scenebilleder, der lignede gymnastiksale med trapezer og ribber eller fabrikshaller med roterende hjul og stiger og broer, hvor aktørerne bevægede sig som akrobater. Maskiner og mennesker skulle blive eet. Jeg husker fra min ungdom et par at disse stykker, kopieret på en forsøgsscene i København. Personerne var terninger, kegler og cylindre, skuespillerne gik inde i kasser og skreg gennem råbere, selve sproget blev anset for at være alt for tradionelt og reaktionært, der blev talt »abstrakt«: Minke, minke, da, da, da —

Karakteristisk for disse borgerlige revolutionskunstnere var deres absolute isolation fra folket. Almindelige mennesker begreb dem ikke og reagerede fjendtligt imod dem. Da der i 1918 i Moskva blev opstillet en statue af Bakunin, udført i kubo-futuristisk stil, vakte det en sådan forbitrelse, at statuen igen måte fjernes. Mange af konstruktivisterne og imaginisterne var forøvrigt taIentfulde kunstnere, man husker navne som Malevisj, Burljuk, Rodjenko, Gan. Nogle af dem blev senere fremragende kunstindustrielle. Jeg mødte Burljuk i New York i 1930, hvor han stædigt fremstillede abstraktioner af tandhjul, møtrikker, skruer og elektrisk materiel, og husker ham som en venlig og begavet mand.

Det var kun i få år, at de formalistiske retninger beherskede kunstlivet. Mulighederne var efterhånden udtømt, sensationerne kunne ikke bestandig fornyes, galskaberne kunne ikke varieres. Imaginisternes ringeagt for virkeligheden og naturen forhindrede enhver udvikling; de havde begyndt ved den forkerte ende. Deres individualistiske isolation, deres mangel på kontakt med folket var dræbende. De tilhørte en forbigangen epokes sidste stadium, og de forsvandt sammen med NEP-periodens sidste kapitalistiske foretagsomhed.

Over for literaturen kom Gorkij med sit krav om socialistisk realisme. På teatret gik Stanislavskij imod den overdrevne form, det groteske og excentriske, som han forklarede som et resultat af overmæthed hos bourgeoisiet. Den jævne mand behøver ikke pikante pirringsmidler for sin appetit, han er åndelig sulten og trænger til jævn og nærende kost; han vil le og græde af hjertens grund, han ønsker ikke den overdrevne form, men »den menneskelige ånds liv, udtrykt enkelt og forståeligt, ikke udspekuleret, men stærkt og overbevisende«. Ganske den samme tendens kom til at gøre sig gældende inden for maleriet og billedkunsten, ikke som diktater »ovenfra«, men som en indre nødvendighed i et samfund, hvor folket er den højeste autoritet.

Men russisk literatur og russisk teater havde traditioner, som billedkunsten manglede. Der var ingen Gorkij eller Stanislavskij mellem malerne. Den nye realisme blev inspireret af ældre akademikere og fik sine impulser fra firsernes fortællende naturalisme. Man erindres stadig om Erik Henningsen og Edvard Petersen, når man ser russisk nutidskunst. En maler som Jablonskaja minder om P. S. Krøyer, Mikhail Khmelko maler omtrent som Tuxen, Victor Oresjnikov ligner Viggo Johansen. Det mærkes, at det realistiske program er formuleret af en forfatter; det fortællende, det literære dominerer billederne, temaet bliver det væsentligste. De store begivenheder, femårsplanernes kraft præstationer, de civile og militære sejre har fremkaldt en optimistisk monumental-kunst, en heroisk naturalisme, som ofte har karakter af tableau eller panoptikon. Kæmpebilleder, som er meget populære, men som med deres effektfuldhed og illusionisme er meget langt fjernet fra folkelig enkelhed.

Mellem de mange Stalin-portrætter skal man lede længe for at finde et virkeligt indtrængende, karakteristisk portræt af den store mand. Kunstnerne synes oftest at have lagt størst vægt på en samvittighedsfuld gengivelse af overfrakken, uniformen og alt det ydre sceneri. På en stor udstilling af por-trætter og historiske billeder med tilknytning til Stalins liv, som var arrangeret i anledning af 70-års fødselsdagen, var der ikke noget portræt, som stod på højde med f. eks. V. A. Tropinins åndfulde billede af Pusjkin eller V. Perovs maleri af Dostojevskij eller Repins Tolstoj-portrætter. Hvor portrætterne af Marx, Lenin og Stalin forekommer på faner, mærker, emblemer o.s.v. har der efterhånden udviklet sig en bestemt stil, her er portrættet blevet et symbol, som berettiger stiliseringen; billederne af Marianne med den frygiske hue, som ses overalt i franske offentlige bygninger, er jo heller ikke portrætter, men symboliserer nationens og revolutionens idé.

Hvad forøvrigt de mange Stalin-portrætter angår, så synes overfloden af billeder at pine og forurolige vesteuropæiske demokrater, og man har forsøgt at give forskellige sindrige forklaringer på fænomenet. Mon ikke årsagen er den enkle, at russerne hænger Stalins billede på deres væg, fordi de kan lide manden? Den enkelte sovjetborgers kærlighed til den geniale mand, som gennem revolution og opbygning, krig og genrejsning har ydet det utrolige, om er noget naturligt og menneskeligt. Her er ikke tale fører-tilbedelse eller byzantisme, men om almindelige menneskers velbegrundede taknemmelighed. Den store humanist, som er udgået af folket, og under hvis arbejde levevilkårene for mennesker er blever totalt ændret i det vældige rige, må nødvendigvis være elsket. Han personificerer sovjetfolket, det hylder i ham sin egen styrke. Skulle beundring for det store og usædvanlige ikke være tilladt i et socialistisk demokrati?

Der er åbnet et særligt museum i Moskva for de gaver, som i tidens leb er blevet sendt til Stalin. Det er det interessanteste og forunderligste museum, jeg har set. Disse tusinder af smukke og rørende og mærkelige og smagløse ting gav et bedre indtryk af den kunstneriske rigdom, som sovjetfolket ejer, end nogen udstilling af professionelle kunstneres staffelibilleder. Disse hjemmelavede kunstværker fra alle det vældige riges egne var et skatkammer, som langt bedre end tsarernes ubetalelige skatkamre i Kreml viste landets rigdom og mangfoldighed og folkelige kraft. Det var et opbud af uskyld og livsglæde og optimisme.

Det er ikke smagen, som skaber kunst; det er umiddelbarheden, glæden ved tingene, forbindelsen med naturen. Uskyldigheden er kommet i miskredit i den borgerlige verden, hvor fiffighed i handel er målestokken for menneskelig kvalitet. I Sovjetunionen kan mennesker le og græde af hjertens grund. De kan glæde sig umiddelbart over billederne uden hensyn til billedernes finhed. De hænger deres farvelitografier på væggen mellem blonder og papirblomster uden indblanding fra pædagogiske arkitekter. Og den uskyldige billedglæde perverteres ikke gennem industriel spekulation, der er ingen kulørt ugepresse og ingen sexuelle tegneserier, livet leves uden Saturday Evening Post og Søndags B.T.

De hjemmelavede papirblomster er meget fantasifulde produkter, ikke naturalistiske efterligninger, men højst originale fantasi-blomster med tradition tilbage i folkekunsten. De stivede blondegardiner arrangeres i folder, hvis op-rindelse bunder i byzantinsk ornamentik, og de anbringes ikke kun ved vinduerne, men også midt på væggen. Jeg husker neon-lysene i Kijev, som ikke reklamerede for noget, men bare var der til pynt, store gule solsikker og røde valmuer, som gjorde gaden festlig.

Man skal ikke være bange for det banale. De farvelitografier og olietryk og glansbilleder, som forsødede min barndom, er ikke senere blevet fordunklet af anden kunst, jeg har set. Den umiddelbare billedglæde må vel være den første forudsætning for kunstnerisk sysselsættelse. Dukketeatret med dets dekorationer, ABC-bogens lakerede forsidebillede, de gamle københavnske rullegardiner med Fredensborg slot og Vor Frelsers kirke, fayance-stellet med små landskaber med mænd og koner på bunden af grødtallerkenen har givet mig større kunstglæde end nogen senere museumsoplevelse.

Axel Salto fremsatte engang i et radioforedrag den opfattelse, at billedkunsten, som i Vesteuropa har nået et stadium, hvor dens formelle muligheder er ved at være udtømt, vil finde sin fornyelse i Sovjetunionen — om ikke i denne generation, så i den næste eller næste igen. Jeg er overbevist om, at Salto har ret, og jeg tror ikke, at man behøver vente en generation. Betingelserne for en ny stor folkelig kunst er tilstede, appetitten er der, glæden ved tingene, uskyldigheden. Den jordbund er der, hvor kunsten vil gro naturligt og organisk.

I Sovjetunionen er kunsten i sit begyndende stadium; hos os oplever vi dens glansfulde afslutningsfase. I Sovjetunionen er kunsten hele folkets, den vokser og modnes med folket. Hos os er kunsten i sit forfinede afslutningsstadium forbeholdt et ganske lille mindretal, som yderligere vil reduceres, når man trækker snobberne fra.

De russiske malere og museumsfolk, jeg talte med, var tilbøjelige til at give mig ret i denne konklusion af vores timelange samtale. De mente ikke, at sovjetkunstnerne kan lære noget af den vestlige formalisme. Den kunst, der har nået sine muligheders yderste grænse, kan ikke blive grundlaget for en fornyelse. Man kan ikke begynde ved den forkerte ende. Den kunst, som gror frem i Sovjetunionen vil blive hele folkets på en måde, som man ikke har kendt det siden middelalderen, og som det idag kun forekommer hos rester af primitive stammer.

Jeg spurgte direktøren for Tretjakov-galleriet, hvorfor den abstrakte kunst fra tyverne ikke var udstillet.

— Den formalistiske kunst interesserer ikke nogen, vi betragter den som hørende til en forbigangen periode, et overstået stadium, svarede han.

— Men derfor kunne den dog godt udstilles. Selvom man ikke kan lide de konstruktivistiske og imaginistiske billeder mere, har de dog en historisk interesse.

— Enhver, der er interesseret, kan naturligvis få adgang til billederne og studere dem i depotet.

— Men hvorfor er de ikke offentlig udstillet? Hvorfor kan det almindelige museumspublikum ikke se disse billeder og tage stilling til dem?

— Publikum har taget stilling. Det er publikum, som ikke vil have billederne udstillet. Når de har været udstillet, er museets ankeprotokol fyldt med protester, folk vil ikke have de billeder på museet. Jeg havde ikke noget imod at udstille dem, men museet tilhører folket, det er dem, der bestemmer.

Det er ganske behageligt at træffe en museumsdirektør, der ikke betragter museet som sin privatsamling.

Man fortalte mig om kunstnernes materielle vilkår. De er stillet omtrent som sovjetforfatterne, deresremovedforeninger har en lignende betydning som forfatterforeningen med dens administration og talrige institutioner og med store midler. Foruden staten, museerne og de mange offentlige institutioner erremovedforeningerne kunstnernes største kunder. De tusinder afremovedforeninger med deres sociale institutioner, hvilehjem, sanatorier, børnehaver, biblioteker, klubber og kulturpaladser har et behov for kunstnerisk udsmykning, som slet ikke kan tilfredsstilles. Man må for en stor del klare sig med plakater og reproduktioner og kopier. Den grafiske kunst, som allerede i revolutionsårene frembragte så storartede ting, står fremdeles meget højt.

Men kunsten er ikke forbeholdt de professionelle. Den er folkets i et omfang, som man ikke kan forestille sig i andre lande. Amatør-teatrene er ikke bare en morskab, men en kunstnerisk virksomhed, som drives med begejstring og alvor under ledelse af professionelle instruktører. Hver eneste fabrik og institution har i sin klub et teater, hvor amatører har skabt en kunstnerisk stil, som bringer antikens teater i erindring. De tusinder af amatør-teatre ved fabriker, kontorer og kollektivbrug er noget lige så selvfølgeligt som sports-foreninger. Orkestre og sangkor findes ved hver eneste virksomhed, og alle Sovjetunionens folkeslag er fødte dansere. De strålende grusiske dansere, som besøgte København for et par år siden, var amatører. Og i tilknytning til klubberne er der atelier for malere og billedhuggere, hvor hundrede tusinde arbejdere, funktionærer og bønder beskæftiger sig med kunst for deres fornøjelses skyld uden professionelle hensyn til ønsker hos kunder, uden brødnid og intriger. Her fødes den nye kunst under indflydelse af folkelige traditioner. Herfra vil de professionelle kunstnere blive rekrutteret. Det er ude i folket, det sker.

Det er det opmuntrende ved sovjetkunsten, at den er folkets. Ny og ufærdig, mangfoldig og oprindelig vokser den med folket, den udvikler sig organisk, ingen autoritet uden for folket bestemmer den, ingen bedrevidende nedladende skønånder belærer folket kunstnerisk og opelsker snobberi for noget, hvis raffinement kun nogle få kan goutere. Smagen får lov til at være i fred. Man skal ikke først spørge en arkitekt om lov til at synes om noget. Papirblomster og oljetryk og blonder er gode nok, når man kan lide det, glæden ved tingene kommer det an på uden æstetikernes nedladende indblanding.

  1. Erik Henningsen (1855–1930), Danish painter and illustrator, best known for his vivid, realistic depictions of everyday life in Copenhagen. As a key figure of the Social Realism movement during the Modern Breakthrough in Scandinavian art, he captured both the harsh struggles of the working class and the lighter moments of urban street life. ↩︎

  2. Edvard Petersen (1841-1911), Danish genre and landscape painter, best remembered today for his vivid depictions of everyday life and his contributions to the city of Copenhagen. ↩︎

  3. Tetiana Yablonska (1917–2005) (also spelled Tetyana or Tatiana), influential Ukrainian painter. Her work evolved significantly over her career, moving from socialist realism to impressionism and Ukrainian folk-art-inspired styles. ↩︎

  4. Peder Severin Krøyer (1851–1909), commonly known as P. S. Krøyer, was the most celebrated and technically gifted member of the Skagen Painters, a famous colony of Danish and Scandinavian artists who gathered in the north of Jutland. ↩︎

  5. Mikhail Ivanovich Khmelko (1919–1996) was a prominent Soviet-Ukrainian painter and a leading figure of Socialist Realism. Widely recognized for his monumental, detailed history paintings depicting Soviet military victories, political milestones, and achievements. Awarded the prestigious title of People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1963) and two-time Stalin Prize winner (1948, 1950). ↩︎

  6. Laurits Tuxen (1853–1927) was a prominent Danish painter and sculptor, best known for his dual legacy as a core member of the Skagen Painters and as a leading court painter to European royalty. ↩︎

  7. Viktor Mikhailovich Oreshnikov (1904–1987) was a prominent Soviet and Russian painter, art educator, and academician who held the prestigious title of People’s Artist of the USSR and was a two-time recipient of the Stalin Prize. He is widely recognized as a master of socialist realism, particularly celebrated for his psychological portraiture and large-scale historical-revolutionary paintings. ↩︎

  8. Viggo Johansen (1851–1935) was a prominent Danish painter and a central figure of the famous Skagen Painters art colony. Unlike many of his contemporaries who focused on dramatic coastal landscapes and the harsh lives of local fishermen, Johansen is best known as the “painter of the home.” ↩︎

  9. Magazine published from 1921, first as a supplement to the Sunday edition of the tabloid B.T., later as an independent publiceret. By the 1950’s it has developed into a family entertainment weekly, catering to a relatively well-educated, urban audience. ↩︎

  10. Axel Salto (1889–1961) was a Danish artist and ceramicist widely considered one of the most important masters of 20th-century Nordic design. While originally trained as a painter, he achieved international acclaim for his expressive, organic stoneware. ↩︎