Search for a method of representation and a new figurative language in the process of Lenin’s plan for monumental propaganda implementation

Abstract

By passing the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars “On Monuments of the Republic” dated April 12, 1918, the Soviet government set the task for the artists in promoting a materialistic worldview aiming to educate a new Soviet man. At the suggestion of V.I. Lenin, that task was supposed to be solved through the “creation of images” of historical characters who were carriers and embodiments of important revolutionary ideas. In the process of implementing Lenin’s plan of monumental propaganda in 1918–1919, a significant number of monuments were created in Moscow and Petrograd in all stylistic trends that existed at that time. Based on the formal and iconographic analysis of the presented works, the article substantiates the choice of the authorities in favor of classical methods of embodying images. Special attention is paid to the consideration of monuments made in the style of Cubism and Cubo-futurism and to explanation why avant-garde methods of representation proved unacceptable for solving the tasks set by the contest. The author also formulates the issue of the discrepancy between the plastic language used within the framework of academicism and symbolism and the emerging Soviet aesthetics and the need to find an adequate figurarive language. The monument to K. Marx by A.T. Matveev, who proposed a synthesis of the classical method of representation with the contemporary language of sculpture, is considered as a successfully found solution.