Leon Trotsky: Two Vienna Exhibitions

[My own translation of the Russian text in "Kievskaya Mysl" No 145, 27 May/9 June, 1911, reprinted in Sochineniya, Vol. 20, Moscow-Leningrad 1926, Compared to the German translation. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

One – in the old " Artists' House" (Künstlerhaus), the other – in a rather incongruous, pretentiously simplified, stone cube, with a small green fez at the top, in the Secession house. In simplistic, fanciful hieroglyphs, the word Secession, once a symbol of rebellion, appears on the gray, also far-fetchedly simple, cover of the catalog, while the catalog of the exhibition " Artists' House" already on its cover bears the burden of tradition, in the form of three venerable, but very annoying muses – painting, sculpture and architecture.

The Union of Artists is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its existence this year, and the exhibition itself is called the jubilee one. Half a century is a considerable period for art. But Secession is already approaching the middle of its second decade of innovation. In 1897, nineteen young artists revolted against the old corporation, which in art diligently pulled the strap of the academic routine, and in business matters even more zealously cultivated job-hunting, Byzantineism and nepotism. In 1898, on Karlsplatz, not far from the old artists' house, there was already a stone cube with a lace fez made of gilded tin ...

"Secessionism" was not a local Viennese phenomenon – Vienna did not even have the initiative – but a pan-European one. The revolution in painting only reflected the revolution in everyday life. Giant cities have grown and bled the village, absorbing everything gifted, energetic and courageous. Life became a restless whirlwind. The stable, unchanging, lasting dissolved without a trace. Movement triumphed over "matter", which was transformed into active energy. The eternally transforming form overshadowed the content, and the form also drowned in the subjective stream of impressions. A new human type took shape and found its new expression in the art of impressionism.

The Berlin professor Georg Simmel, in his brilliant lecture on Rodin, spoke about the new art and the "new soul" recently in Vienna. The "new soul" is all in motion, and this movement is without central striving, without dogma. Different not only in the two nearest moments, but also at the same moment, it is never equal to itself. It is always different. The soul of the Renaissance was in motion, too. But that movement was smooth and measured, between two extreme moments of rest. Renaissance people wavered between faith and unbelief, between Christianity and "paganism", between virtue and vice, between yes and no. The modern soul does not know such limits. It combines everything and dissolves everything in itself. Each of its states is only a stage on the path from the unknown to the unknown. It unites in itself all the contradictions, its yes only shades its no, it believes and does not believe at the same time, it loves goals without paths and paths without goals. And now it was this eternally contradictory, alarming, moving that Rodin was able to express in the most stubborn and inert material – in stone.

When I listened to the nervous speech of the Berlin philosopher of the "new soul", the figure of the late Paul Singer¹, such a heavy, such an imposing, such a reliable figure, involuntarily surfaced in my mind. Oh, this one knew no paths without a goal and goals without a path! His goal was given to him once and for all in the program of his party, his path was clear and direct. Dissolving himself in the party, he always remained himself – an unrepeatable personality, an unbending individuality. Did Singer have a "new soul"? Or Bebel, who is so similar to a tightly drawn bow, to a tense spring of action – in the name of one and the same goal for half a century? Or is it an outdated soul?

On the other hand, there is the American Carnegie, or the Berlin Aschinger, who sits in the centre of a monstrous telegraph-telephone-exchange web and, pulling one wire, then another, manages the turnover of millions, turning into billions. These new souls, too, presumably, are not at all akin to moral-aesthetic Platonism with its paths without a goal and goals without a path.

Simmel's characteristic leaves both Bebel and Aschinger, the polar phenomena of modern culture, aside, and comes down to the self-characterisation of a group. Simmel's "new soul" is, in fact, the soul of the intelligentsia of big cities, impressionism is its art, aesthetically disguised indifference is its social morality. Nietzsche is its prophet, "Simplicissimus" is its satire, Simmel is its philosophical feuilletonist, as Sombart is its economic feuilletonist.

In the first period of its self-determination, the new intelligentsia, then noisily breaking with tradition in all areas of philosophy, morality and art, sought support in sociality. But very soon it overcame social tendencies in itself with refined individualism. “I understand everything,” the bearer of the “new soul” could say about himself, “but I value this understanding in myself much more than the practical conclusions to which it obliges me. Human history is interesting for me because it is resolved in the hemispheres. of my brain; the history that is being done on the streets today is too much mass-produced and therefore alien to me. Don't think that I love peace of mind or yearn for the old completeness of forms (at times, perhaps, for a while!); on the contrary, the perpetual movement and anxiety of the spirit is mine element; but, among other things, I really appreciate ... the peace of the body. "

Having severed its short-lived and superficial connection with sociality, the new art established itself on paths without goals. It very quickly left behind its period of daring, brought its technique to an amazing height in the variety of techniques and exhausted itself. The gold on the Secession dome has peeled off, the tin has slightly rusted, and moving from the "rebels" exhibition to the routineists' exhibition, you can hardly distinguish what actually separates these two camps at the present time.

What is most striking in both exhibitions is the overwhelming dominance of landscape and portrait, that is, the most individualistic kinds of art. In the portrait, as in the landscape, the solitary soul finds its expression. And it must be admitted that today's artists have learned to give their portraits that final touch of intimacy, which is lacking in the works of even the greatest old masters. Particularly good are portraits of women, which the old artists did less good than portraits of men. External activity associated with the social role of a man (warrior, priest, judge, burgomaster ...) threw its reflection on the portrait and gave the face significance. Woman did not have this, which is why the old female portraits are so flat. And today's artists, intimists, "underground" people, according to Dostoevsky, have learned to identify not the external activity of a warrior or burgomaster – on the contrary, they have forgotten how to do this – but the internal concentration of the face, its concentration on their own emotional experiences, on the overflow of feelings. The face almost dissolves in the mood, so the viewer needs to make a creative effort to put the face back together again – and this creativity of the enjoyer becomes a source of pleasure in itself. This "Woman with Poppies" by Alfred Roll from Paris is beautiful – and not with the thin lips and nostrils of her thin face, not with the gentle curve of her chin and neck, but beautiful with those invisible currents of melancholic cheerfulness that not only animate the face, but also make it on your eyes change their mood. Even further in the same direction – and in front of you is Schmoll von Eisenwerth's “Woman with Flowers” – on the steps of a stone staircase. Through the haze of thoughtfulness, facial features barely show through. The sadness of thoughtfulness envelops the whole figure, and is felt even in the bend of the arm, even in the folds of the dress, even on the steps of the stairs. And in the same intimate tones, two other paintings by Eisenwerth were painted: a thin girl on the veranda, in the predawn twilight – all in anticipation, almost frightened; a woman enveloped in green penumbra, in frozen anxiety ("Waiting for Spring" and "In the Gazebo"). Both Roll and Eisenwerth are in "Secession".

The fact that the new portrait masters are able to extract the innermost experiences from the soul through the crust of majesty, belligerence, scholarship or "nobility" makes many portraits of cardinals, judges, professors and ministers extremely similar to secret caricatures. Fortunately for customers of high rank, there is still a good number of portrait painters who know how to famously put the general on a black horse, superbly inflate the admiral's cloak, equip a lawyer with a Roman fold on his forehead and capture all the diamonds of the wife of a councillor of commerce with the professional care of a pawnbroker's valuer. It should be noted that such portrait painters are still concentrated mainly in the patronised old corporation ...

A soul that loves paths without a goal has neither passion nor strength. But on the other hand, it often knows a longing for strength, for primitive integrity, even for rudeness. There are a lot of images of a mighty body and spontaneous passions at the Secession exhibition, but the models of passion are fatally lacking in passion, and the images of strength lack strength. Rudolf Jettmar's Hercules seems to be a circus athlete, and a powerful dragon looks like a scare crow stuffed with straw. Heinrich Zittel depicts "Unbridled Strength" in the form of a young centaur. The technique is the same as that of Rodin: part of the figure is hidden in the raw material, as if in the bowels of Mother Nature. Rodin overcomes the inertia of the stone in this way. His figures are created before your eyes. You see a lump from which the chisel has freed a beautiful image, removing the excess, and since the figure is not finished, then, mentally reproducing the process of creativity, you yourself complete it. But in the majolica centaur of the Viennese sculptor, embodying unbridled strength, you see neither restraint nor strength behind good muscles, but only the artist's desire to give both. Grom-Rottmeier exhibited the decorative canvas "Strength and Cunning". Cunning is represented by a naked woman, and strength is signified by a knight, a very sorrowful countenance, one of those who stand at the gates of a panopticum or illusion. In the "Artists' House" things are no better with "strength". The overwhelming figure of Wieland the Blacksmith, exhibited by Wollek, testifies far more to bestial brutality than to strength.

Landscapes (forest, mountains, sea, park, old castle), portraits and sketches, corners of old cities, interiors, nature morte – such is the overwhelming majority of the exhibited works, especially among the Secessionists. The landscape is occasionally enlivened by a figure, but it is usually a peasant, an integral part of the landscape. The interiors give a corner of the apartment, a sofa, a Christmas tree hung with trinkets on a carpet, an alcove of a Lower Austrian peasant, part of a Rococo hall – people were here, everything still has the imprint of their life, but they themselves are no longer there. If it is a city street, then it is certainly old, cramped, half-dark, without people; the darkened stones here testify to the centuries lived. If it is a harbour, then on Sunday with ships resting, without people. There are many gloomy churches, where prayer figures only add to the impression of isolation from the world, of tranquility, solitude. Here is the smithy: hearth, fur, anvil, hammers – but there are no smiths. If people are depicted, then not in their work environment, not in their social function, but during rest, on a holiday, for fun. A village square on Sunday or a market in a small town, where people hustle around to no avail, dribble, and buy coolly. But all this is dominated by landscape, portrait, interior and "quiet life" (Stillleben), where a cucumber on a glass plate, a Japanese doll and a cut lemon are lovingly and emotionally painted.

Sculpture has no outlet in either landscape or interior: want it or not, it has to deal with the person. We have to say the same about sculptural portraits as about painted portraits: they are often beautiful in their transfer of the most intimate in the soul. Bodies are not as perfect and divinely harmonious as in antique sculpture, but incomparably closer to us, softer, more tender, more human. That which was achieved by the greatest impressionist Rodin: the subordination of the whole body, down to the little toe on the foot, to the movement of the soul, entered the sculpture and enriched it. But sculpture looks around helplessly, not knowing what to do with this wealth. In the "Secession" sculpture is poor to the last degree, at the anniversary exhibition of artists it is presented somewhat better. But here and there, it strikes with the scarcity of creative design. The bronze "Congratulatory" in a long frock coat, high stockings and shoes with bows is coyly bowing. A Satyr pours wine. The bowling player is about to roll the ball. Siegfried admires the sword he forged. A thrower is about to throw a stone. The "Night" with a wire hoop decorated with leafy stars. A storyteller of fairy tales. A child with a cat. Perseus. The inevitable "abundance", in the form of a girl with fruits and vegetables. Bathers, of course. An travelling musician looking around at a hissing goose. A fist fighter challenging. Ganymede. Diana …

No matter how much the aesthetes of our national timelessness say that art is limited to form, we will never believe it. In sculpture, we will appreciate not only Rodin, who managed to find completely new forms in the most inflexible of the arts, but also the great Belgian Meunier, who, without breaking with the old form, won a new content for sculpture.

Antique sculpture reproduced the human body in a state of harmonious rest. Renaissance sculpture mastered the art of movement. But the movement served Michelangelo in order to express the harmony of the body more vividly. Rodin, on the other hand, made movement itself the theme of sculpture. Whereas in Michelangelo's work the body creates its own, i.e. his characteristic movement, then in Rodin, on the contrary, the movement finds itself the body it needs. But Rodin did not expand the scope of the sculpture. This was done by Meunier, who introduced the worker at work into the sculpture. Before him, the sculpture knew a person standing, sitting, sleeping, dancing, playing, wrestling, resting, praying, loving, but it did not know a working person. When a person is at rest, when he dances, loves or prays, his body is subordinate to itself. Rodin subordinated the body to movement, but to an inner movement, to the movement of the soul that dwells in the body itself. Love, thought, sorrow – these are Rodin's themes. During work, the body is subordinated to a goal that lies outside it, it ceases to dominate itself and becomes a tool. Moreover, artificial tools expand the natural periphery of the body. All this excluded physical labour from the field of sculpture. Meunier was able to show that labour efforts aimed at resisting material do not destroy the integrity of the body, but give it a new expression; expanding the periphery of the body, labour does not destroy it; turning the body into a tool, he makes the tool a spiritualised part of the body. In the words of Simmel, Meunier discovered the aesthetic value of labour. An immense, not yet touched area unfolded in front of the sculpture.

Meunier's aesthetic discovery had deep social reasons. As long as labour was the lot of - legal or moral - slaves, until then it remained beyond the threshold of art. Only the social awakening of the "subject" of labour, the working class, turned labour into a problem for science, philosophy, morality, and art. Meunier solved this problem aesthetically. But the further development of sculpture revealed all the clearer that an aesthetic solution was not enough here. Having shown how to reproduce labour effort in sculptural material, Meunier could not, of course, forge social and moral links between the world of art and the world of physical labour. The separation here remained in full force. While social life developed out of itself contradictions unprecedented in world history and grouped their powerful political movements along the lines of them, art more and more locked itself in the fragile shell of a new soul and, retreating before the onslaught of social passions, left the very great field of human collective life, went into voluntary exile – in landscapes, in portraits, in nature morte and interiors, in idyll and mythology … Although three-quarters of modern artists are students and residents of large cities, you will not find in their painting or sculpture the large city, with its wonders of technical power, with its collective sufferings, passions and ideals. At both exhibitions, I found only two works that reflected the new life of cities. Karl Schulda depicted the construction of a huge building on Mariahilferstraße (Vienna). Olaf Lange gave a colour engraving "The Call". In the painting by Karl Schulda, gloom reigns, the outlines of forests are vaguely looming out of it, and vague figures of workers without faces, only silhouettes of people, glide over them. This is how working people appear to someone who glances at them from the sidelines. In Lange's engraving, under the bridge, a mass is moving, workers, women workers, children, a whole stream of people. Part of the bridge is destroyed, the "call" is heard from the bridge. The whole composition is vague, as if the artist himself was vaguely aware of where the mass was moving and in the name of which the call was being made …

This small canvas and this small engraving expose even more the inanimity and, frankly, the poverty of modern fine art – poverty, despite all the richness of forms and techniques. Something big must move somewhere outside of art, in the very depths of our society, so that art will return from its exile, be enriched with the drama of a working and struggling person and, in turn, enrich his work and struggle …

★

A few remarks about individual works in the "Artists' House". The famous Munich artist Defregger exhibited a large painting "Adoration of the Wise Men", in which both Mary and the shepherds look like ordinary Defregger Tyrolean peasants. An interesting work was given by the Viennese artist Kasparides. The battlefield is strewn with the naked corpses of fallen soldiers. In the evening gloom over the field rises the ghostly Christ, darkened and reproaching. And facing him is a warrior, obediently and boldly … In a vegetable store, Jehuda Eppstein gathered a group of labourers, apparently during lunchtime. It's hot, the bodies are sweaty, the dry lips greedily crumble to the juicy watermelon, one of the customers, obviously a notorious joker, is having a juicy conversation with a young saleswoman, and around there are such magnificent watermelons, pomegranates and pumpkins, and so happy are all those, finding shelter from the heat, to pull in watermelon juice and listen to the vigorous laugh of the hostess. The Dresden-born Mach painted a frightened boy (Der Ängstliche): a thin face, terribly large eyes, a tensely stretched thin neck and convulsively spread fingers. What was he afraid of? A ghost? No, it must have been a stern fatherly shout or an even more formidable teacher's gaze. Fathers and teachers are more terrible than any ghosts. Alexander Rothaug tells the old story about the beautiful Helen in colours in his picture, divided into three parts. On one wing – the Greeks, on the other – the Trojans. The bodies are swarthy, hardened from the sun and wind, their eyes are focused, muscles are tense, there are wounded and killed. And between both wings, Helen, the culprit of the war, stands facing the viewer. Naked, beautiful, calm, she slowly fastens the gold clasp of her chiton.

There are a number of works of "Byzantine" painting at the jubilee exhibition, such as four horse muzzles, which belong to the "favorite" horses of Emperor Franz Joseph. There are battle-patriotic and edifying-historical paintings by special order of the belligerent and clerical-minded heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, for the new palace. One of such edifying works directly states that it has as its purpose "the refutation of the accusations spread from the Protestant side of the alleged cruelty of the imperials (that is, Catholics)". And next to the room where this custom-made product of Catholic apologetics is placed, there is a small canvas by Leo Delitz – "In the Confessional". A young peasant woman piously talks about her sins, and the father eagerly listening to her with one ear is extremely reminiscent of a spring cat. I looked with my eyes for an explanation that this picture was painted in refutation of the malicious narratives of the Decameron about the morality of Catholic priests, but such an inscription did not appear. Obviously, explanations have to be made only in those cases where the picture itself is not convincing enough. Whether these printed interpretations help at all, I do not know – it is easier for customers to judge this.