Russian Surrealism

davidbyrne.com by David Byrne October 14, 2014

I joined Brian Eno and some others for an early morning (for us) look at
the Malevich show at the Tate Modern. Achim Borchardt-Hume, who curated
the show, walked us around.
As we walked up the steps to the show, Mala Gaonkar, a Tate trustee who
helped set this tour up, told me a story about contemporary Russia. She said
that a web group is currently in charge of creating and spreading chaotic
misinformation. Good examples of what they do are the various stories
circulated in the Russian media regarding the downed Malaysian airliner.
One story that was placed in the news was that the plane was filled with
corpses. (I presume this story was meant to imply that the plane was crashed
on purposean effort by the West to discredit Russia.) The organization
spreading these fictions isnt content to come up with just one such storythe
modus is to spread lots of different ones, so that a chaotic situation can be
established.
Its not propaganda or self serving news in the usual senseit doesnt
support a position in an obvious waybut rather, establishes the existence of
a crazy universe. A place where you really dont know whats going to happen
from one minute to the next.
Gaonkar knows someone in this organization and asked him why he puts out
such craziness. He said one doesnt really have a choice when there is a gun to
your head.

The Malevich show is wonderful. Achim boldly installed two of Malevichs

most iconic minimal worksa painting of a black square and a black and
white quadrantin a room where there is also a video of a
CalArts performance of the avant-garde opera Victory Over The Sun.
In a more conventional installation, those paintingsthe precursors to a lot of
abstract art all over the worldwould have been given the holy Rothko
treatment: presented alone in a chapel-like space as if they were icons. But it
was his involvement in the opera that led him to make the leap to minimal,
non-objective paintinghe wouldnt have done it otherwiseso it made
perfect sense to present the two together.
Malevich famously did the costumes for the operathree-dimensional Cubist
constructions that also obscure the actors faces. Its quite Dada and

surreal, in a very Russian way. To me, there are elements of traditional

Russian peasant wear here (in the costumes, not the square), although
exaggerated to an extreme degree. This fits with what Achim said that
Malevich and his pals wanted: to find a way to be contemporary (they were
aware of what was happening in Europe) but still maintain their Russianness.
Id argue that the square and the circle, etc., were functioning a bit like
Russian iconspaintings in which the actual objects beauty, execution or
elegance is of almost no importance. An icon can be a tiny painting that is not
so special, but once nominatedonce folks believe it has the idea and the aura
in itthen it is regarded as a holy relic. People kiss them and parade them in
the streets: its their symbolic value that matters, not their visual or artistic
quality. (Sounds like much of conceptual art to me.) They can, it is believed,
change lives. I think that for a minute the Russians believed their vanguardist
art could do that too.
Heres a photo from a recent performance of Victory:
OK. These weird outfits dont look much like peasant costumesbut maybe
this drawing does a little:
The theater piece leading to the square seems like a perfect example of using
an experience in a medium youre somewhat unfamiliar with to allow oneself
to make a breakthrough in ones primary area of work. Get out of your safety
zone and maybe something will happen.
But back to Russian surrealism in daily life.
Brian told a story that during WWI, with so many men on the front, and gone
for so long, there existed a situation where marriages had been promised, but
couldnt be fulfilled, as the groom was away fighting a war. However, in many
cases, the marriage ceremony went on as planned, but with a hat belonging to
the groom placed on a chair, symbolically substituting for the man himself.
These were deemed to be legal marriages by the statean instance of statesponsored surrealism.

I cant help but notice the similarity between the nomination of a hat for a
man and the nomination of paintings as power items. The substitution of an
idea for reality seems ubiquitous.
Another story of acknowledging what isnt there.
During WWII, the incredible bounty of art stored in the Hermitage Museum
in Saint Petersburg was spirited away for safekeeping. Only the big, bulky
ornate frames were left hanging on the walls. The guards and docents would
still give tours it seems, leading visitors through the galleries while pointing at
empty framesdescribing the masterworks that werent there.
Malevichs stripped down paintings continue to resurface in unexpected
places. They arent fading away anytime soon. Here are replicas of them, on
easels, functioning as the set for Caetano Velosos recent music tour.

Malevich, like many others of the Russian avant-garde of 100 years ago, was
denounced when the Soviet state became a crazy monster. Malevich left
Russia briefly for Berlin in 1927, tried to get a teaching job at the Bauhaus but
was turned down, and made pedagogical diagramsin German (where he
hoped for employment)to show how he saw the interconnectedness of many
different art forms throughout the centuries. These were a surpriseId never
heard about them before. If he was forbidden to make his radical work then, I
imagine he thought he could at least attempt to impart his ideas to a future
generation directly, by teaching.

davidbyrne.com by David Byrne October 14, 2014