The Art of Absolutism

When Hitler spoke out against "Impressionism [...] Futurism, Cubism,

Though at apparent odds with one another in terms of both politics and aesthetics, the art of the Italian Futurists, Russian Constructivists, and Third Reich Germany are all inseparable from the rigid ideologies that spawned them and that they in turn promote. As they all conceive of art's purpose as helping instigate social revolution and/or affirming the values of such, they are functionally much alike. To understand this it is helpful to define "ideology," not as "political theory or principle" as it is often used, but as literary and social critique Russell Kirk defines it, "an alleged science of politics, dogmatic and often utopian, closely allied with the interests of a particular social class or political sect" (Kirk 349). These particular interests are-respective to the aforementioned movements-the enthusiastic modern man, the Russian underclass, and the disgruntled post-WWI German citizenry. But if there is not much seeming overlap between the immediate interests of these disparate groups, their status as favored and the promised utopian ends of the ideologies that purported to champion them are essentially identical.

Upon turning to the theoretical foundations of these movements, their similarity in terms of their ideological natures becomes readily apparent. If the various manifestos of the Futurists are to be taken at face value and not as merely the immoderate rhetoric of self-promotion, then they share with the Constructivists and National Socialists materialist, rationalist, and anti-traditionalist views. In a manifesto dated 1914, Bruno Corradini and Emilio Settimelli pronounce, "Futurist measurement will be made in accordance with logic (together with the relationships which govern material reality..." (Corradini and Settimelli 148). They go on to assert, "money is one of the most formidably and brutally solid points of the reality in which we live. It is enough to turn to it to eliminate all possibility of error and unpunished injustice" (Corradini and Settimelli149). Writing in 1913, Valentine de Saint-Point distills the Futurist worldview even further. For her, the unsung virtue of "lust" is "the quest of the flesh for the unknown" that underlies all human activity (de Saint-Point 72). "Christian morality [...] following on from pagan morality, was fatally drawn to consider lust as a weakness," she writes (de Saint-Point 72). Unbridled forward movement in pursuit of carnal appetites and material things is then the end of human existence for the Futurists, and the shame and caution exhibited by our predecessors is something to be cast off.

But this particular materialist view of the world is at odds with those of Constructivism and Hitler's Germany. As de Saint-Point suggests, the Futurist's thoroughgoing confidence in the forward momentum of human ingenuity elevates revolution and progress to ends in themselves from which an ideal society will necessarily spring (albeit an ideal apparently lacking in both compassion and stability). Endless change wrought by innovation holds the same godhead position within the ideology of Futurism as class equality and the exaltation of the Aryan racial group do for the Constructivists and Nazis respectively. Despite the later Italian Fascist invocation of Ancient Rome, neither do the Futurist's preoccupations satisfy notions of racial purity and cultural continuity. Perhaps this is a partial clue as to the difficult to define nature of the later Italian Fascists and their notoriously muddled position in regard to race which was largely dictated for them by Nazi Germany. As well, the advancements of the Machine Age were largely a product of capitalist industry, and Futurist writings that celebrate the brutality and lust of modernism or the "justice of money" would find no favor among communists concerned with the plight of the proletariat laboring at the lowest levels of such a system. Nevertheless, what is common to all here is a desire to "[escape] the tragedy and grandeur of true human existence by giving [...] adherence to a perfect dream-world of the future" (Kirk 351).

No where is this tragic hopefulness in regard to the socially transformative potential of art in hand with ideological politics more in evidence then in the work of the Russian Constructivists. With roots in Russian-Futurism, and likewise bent on discarding the superfluous and ornamental art of the past, they initially derived grand inspiration from the revolution of 1917 and the seeming new dawn for Russian society it heralded. Leading inspiration Vladimir Tatlin had once gone as far as to claim that events of the Russian art world had foreshadowed those of the revolution (Gray 219). However, the movement factionalized and eventually was supplanted in the graces of the state by Socialist Realism, a shamelessly propagandistic style not wholly unlike that seen in Hitler's Germany. By the time of his death in 1953, Tatlin was marginalized and long since disillusioned as to the actual nature of the communist regime. However, he had faired far better than the followers of his primary rival Kasimir Malevich. By maintaining that the artist must be concerned primarily with dictating style and remain aloof from issues of functional engineering, Malevich's disciples found themselves in the unenviable position of eventually being branded elitists by the Soviet regime. In the nature of political revolutions driven by ideology, there is a tendency to swiftly denounce one's fellows for deviating from "the divine cause." The lesson of the Constructivists is that, even the enthusiastic artist ready to lend his talents to some great new populist cause may quickly find himself exiled, imprisoned, or otherwise persecuted.

Though Tatlin produced many smaller practical items, his best known works are the mock-ups The Monument to the Third International and Letatlin, which now seem mostly emblematic of communism's failed promises. Inspired, but wholly impractical and probably never really intended to be built, they far exceeded the limits of available materials and scientific knowledge of the time (Milner 170, 217). As political theorist Ernest W. Lefever writes in regard to the "grand," unattainable visions of political ideologues, "all utopians are ultimately cynics, lofty critics who disdain modest goals and the grubby struggle to achieve them" (Lefever 84). A "classless society," he tells us, "[is] beyond the capacity of any government to fulfill (Lefever 84). Such a cynic Tatlin was not, but the Bolshevik Revolution he initially championed certainly contained its share of those disdainful of "modest goals."

Though stylistically similar to Socialist Realism, it is a different sort of "utopia" that the Heroic Realism of Nazi Germany proposed. Retrospective in its Greco-Roman pretensions and reactionary and artificial in the sense it arose at Hitler's behest in answer to current artistic trends, it nevertheless bears many similarities to the Italian and Russian movements in its motives. Theoretically, the National Socialists themselves were materialist and perhaps even rationalist in their assertion that race is the most significant and enduring factor in human affairs-a clear argument as to the limits of these worldviews. The classical, quasi-mythological nature of much Heroic Realism, exemplified by the sculptures of Arno Breker, belies the anti-traditionalism of the Nazis in abolishing, subverting, or restructuring social institutions in constructing a cult of race and state. The slowly increasing marginalization of the role of the Roman Catholic Church under the Nazis is just one example of their systematic replacement of existing German cultural traditions with their own quasi-historical, manufactured ones.

It can be argued, of course, that all artistic movements are to some degree ideological in nature. Yet most seek modestly to propose minor social change or the adoption of a new aesthetic or philosophical view of the world; in the end, they are constructive or at least relatively benign. Others, like Dadaism, are radical yet offer no political vision comprehensive, coherent, or seductive enough to actually be implemented. Ultimately what the Futurists, Constructivists, Heroic Realists, and their attendant politics suggest, is that the functional ends of the far-right and far-left are the same. They offer, for their adherents, a few neat answers to the myriad and complex problems of the world; they negate the achievements of the past in demanding the uprooting and destruction of what exists; they put all stock in their own capacity to fulfill human needs-thus they are bound to fail.

Works Cited

Appolliono, Umbro, ed. The Documents of 20^th-Century Art: Futurist Manifestos. New York:

Viking, 1973. Print.

Corradini, Bruno and Emilio Settimelli. "Weights, Measures and Prices of Artistic Genius-

Futurist Manifesto 1914." Apolliono 135-150.

Gray, Camilla. The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922. London: Thames and Hudson, 1986.

Print.

Hitler, Adolf. "Speech Inaugurating the 'Great Exhibition of German Art.'" Art in Theory 1900-

1990. Eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Cambridge: Blackwell Pub. Inc., 1993. 423-

426. Photocopy.

Kirk, Russell. "The Drug of Ideology." The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays. Ed. George

A. Panichas. Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2007. 348-64. Print.

Lefever, Ernest W. "How New is the New World Order?: The Dangers of Ideology and

Tribalism." Macalester International 1 (1995): 71-85. Web. 16 Feb. 2010.

Milner, John. Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-Garde. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale

University Press, 1983. Print.

de Saint-Point, Valentine. "Futurist Manifesto of Lust 1913." Apolliono 70-74.