2.1. Léger v Socialist Realism

I want to now discuss a more specific case of realist practice which can be seen to be in sharp contradistinction to the realism effected by Heartfield's practice. By discussing Fernand Léger's contribution to 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris, I want to broaden the discussion out to international realist debate and its consequences for artists seeking to contribute to an increasingly urgent political agenda.

The cultural debates organised by the French Communist Party in the mid 1930's at the Masion de la Culture in Paris provide us with a useful starting point. Taking place at a time when the strategy of the Popular Front was being adopted by the left as the most effective way of fighting fascism, with its emphasis on class collaboration rather than class struggle, it was a period where the general debate about realism was orientating around what sort of art could best serve as a left-wing oppositional force. The discussions around realism had long come to a closure in the Soviet Union with the 'consolidation of Stalin's rule and the codification of socialist realism as a 'progressive' international force.'60 Thus, with its political prestige and control of the European communist parties (via the Comintern), it was this cultural position which dominated the conference. However, the international discussions around realism and the related issues of form, content and effectivity was far from the Stalinist orchestrated debates witnessed within the Soviet Union in the early 30's - throughout this period there was opposition and presentations made of other, more complex notions of realism, notably in the writings of Brecht, Benjamin and Aragon. Although the weight of socialist realism was reflected within the Maison de la Culture debates, galvanising most artists 'who wanted their art to have some place in a world that increasingly demanded commitment of one kind or another,'61 there was still space for alternative definitions to be made. It was here that Fernand Léger pointed to his notion of 'new realism', which he describes as the freeing of 'colour and geometric form' and stated that 'the play of formal contrasts in a work of art could...be used to achieve more appropriate representations of the condition of modernity.'62 Rejecting the restrictive prescriptions of figurative socialist realism, Léger outlined a practice that was free of imposed restraints in favour of a modern art that could depict the world in both its complexity and diversity. Léger argued that it was the technique of montage which embodied this new art, castigating the 'technically conservative conceptions of realism as an 'insult' to the masses' and stated 'it is officially to pronounce them of incapable of rising to the level of that new realism that is their age.'63

Shortly after the conference, following a wave of mass strikes and factory occupations, a Popular Front government was elected in France. A new department for Sport and Leisure was established which aimed to give art a new public role and it was through this that Léger was commissioned to produce five public panels for the 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris.

The panels produced were consistent with the 'machine aesthetic' that dominated his previous paintings and represented the view that technology symbolised the heart of the new order and was the 'source of a new beauty'.64 The panel entitled 'Work' (fig. 5) that was installed in the Pavilion of Education consisted of the assemblage of technological and architectural photographic elements juxtaposed into a dynamic, unified form. The centralisation of technological elements reflects Léger's identification with a modernist notion of progress through technological advancement. Although this position is in keeping with Lenin's maxim of 'socialism is soviets plus electrification,' the means by which this is represented, with the elements organised to symbolise a new world which centred around and under the control of the worker, is very different from the works organised under the prescriptions of a Stalinised socialist realism. 'Work' represents Léger's 'realism of the ideal,' an ambiguous position that represented the influence of the avant-garde in that 'radical changes in economics, politics, and science had reached the cultural world.'65 It was by this method that he aimed to produce a 'popular, contemporary and collective art.'66

Fig.5 Fernand Léger, Travailler (work) 1937, photomontage (now destryed), Universal Exhibition, Paris

Léger's theoretical position on the aim of his work can allow a voluntarist reading of his practice: in the absence of any real popular leftist movement with any sense of what it might mean to make 'collective' work, he moves towards fulfilling an abstract ideological position. Indeed, the work's organisational function can be located more in a fetishised technological modernism than as any sort of critically realist approach that has been discussed so far- the 'revealing things as they really are'. But realism is more than just about what the works content is organising. What is of direct interest here is the insertion of this content, the ideological commitment to a world socialist vision, through the form of photomontage into the context of the Universal Exhibition. Léger's work stood in stark contrast to both the German and Russian Pavilions, the former with its classical Aryan stereotype 'Comradship' (Fig 6) and the later's similarly heroic 'The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman' (Fig 7). Léger's experimental, dynamic approach to producing work can be seen to resist and disrupt the dominant views of representational forms embodied in the art championed by both the Stalinist and Nazi states. By seeking to solidify the means of representation and formalise the relationship of art to the state, both championed a practice which closed down the possibilities of other methods of production and representation. Léger's realism goes some way to revealing the monovision of these positions- it becomes evident in both the Soviet and Nazi preferred practices that there is an absence of space for the process of speculation and questioning over what sort of art can best engage with contemporaneity.

Fig.6. Josef Thorak, Kameradschaft (Comradship), 1937, bronze, height670cm for the National Socialist German Exhibition, Paris

 

Fig.7. Vera Mukhina, The Worker and the Collective Farm, 1937, bronze, height, c.12m, for the USSR pavilion, Universal Exhibition, Paris

It is the very use of heroic and classical devices which becomes the main instrument by which both the Nazi and Soviet states aim to produced an accessible, public and didactic art. This served not only to reinforce the ideological hegemony of the Soviet and Nazi states and their right to represent the real, but also their right to own it. It is worth briefly looking at what sort of reality is being organised or 'revealed' by socialist realism and look at the role of art in both the Nazi and Soviet state at this time.

It is no coincidence that there is apparent similarities between the favoured classical style of the Nazis and that of Soviet socialist realism and their resistance to the 'decadent and degenerate' traits of the avant-garde. The Soviet and Nazi states were economic mirrors of each other. The only difference between them was of the ideology employed to construct and legitimatise the state and hide the real nature of social relations. In Nazi Germany any reference to the concept of realism was abhorred and disqualified because this was associated with Soviet culture and (ironically) with the 'degenerate' modernist avant-garde. However, this did not prevent the Nazi state from promoting an art which had the same cultural effect as their ideological enemies in the Soviet Union. It will be useful to briefly map out why a so-called socialist state's attitude to cultural production appeared to be very similar, if not identical, to its opposite Nazi number.

On the international front the biggest threat for the Soviet Union was the rise of fascism- not however because of its complete atomisation of workers organisation or its anti-Semitic and racist ideology (and its in human consequences), but on the basis of capitalist competition. Nazi Germany with its explicit expansionist aims was seen as a serious economic threat to the Soviet Union. Hence, as we shall see later on in more detail, what was needed to counter this threat were collaborations and alliances with the bourgeoisie of other capitalist states against the growing threat of fascism. This was reflected in the cultural policy of socialist realism which rejected radical tranformative conceptions of art as proposed by the leftist elements within the avant-garde. This is a crucial point. The Soviet Union had changed materially and no longer needed to make any connection with any Marxist understanding of realism with its dialectical approach. Its own register with reality had changed and now had a vested interest in covering up 'the real,' hence its hostile dismissal of the avant-garde and its volatile, experimental approach.

If we now go back to the 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris it becomes clear just how much Léger's montage practice was at odds with the general cultural production of the time. By the mid 30's the Communist Party, who by this stage 'caught a cold every time Stalin sneezed',68 dominated the Popular Front and put forth the line of socialist realism as an effective method to resist fascism. And it is here that Léger's realism stands in stark contrast to socialist realism's ideological mantle and thus takes on a sort of critical function. This work may indeed be a long way from the direct activist/transformative approach demonstrated by Heartfield, but nevertheless it represented a critical interruption of the dominant cultural practices by a tactical use of montage which challenged the now normalised closure of the experimental and critical capacity of art. It is in this capacity that Léger's work can be identified as effective realist approach.

 Footnotes

60 Roberts, J, 1994, p 196

61 Wood, P, ibid. p 256

62 Ibid. p 200

63 Ibid. p 60

64 The Open University, 1983, p 58

65 Honnef, K, Pachnicke, P, 1991, p 55

66 The Open University, 1983, p 58

67 It was the AKhR ( The Association of Artists of the Revolution- formerly AKhRR) which helped establish the foundations for the development of socialist realism. Very much a resistive force against the 'empty abstractions' of the avant-garde, proclaiming that 'we will depict the present day: the life of the Red Army, the worker, the peasants, the revolutionaries and the heroes of labour. We will provide a true picture of events and not abstract concoctions discrediting our Revolution in the face of the international proletariat' (AKhRR 'Declaration', 1922)

68 Wood, P, 1994, p 312