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'ACTIVE ART' ('AKTIVA MAKSLA') BY ANDREJS KURCIJS (Andreja Kurcija 'Aktiva maksla')

100%

Pelse S.

Materiali Latvijas makslas vesturei

2003

vol. 3

96-104

The book titled 'Active Art' ('Aktiva maksla', 1923) by the Latvian writer and literary critic Andrejs Kurcijs (1894-1959) belongs to the wide spectrum of avant-garde manifestoes current in Europe of the 1920s. It is a kind of theoretical treatise of activism which deals with problems of both European and Latvian art, including visual art. This work has been examined several times; already Kurcijs' contemporaries made some critical comments but during the Soviet period it had been interpreted mostly as a dualistic split between 'formalist' and 'revolutionary' attitudes. The theoretical background of this treatise is surely related to Kurcijs' studies of philosophy and art theory at the Berlin University in 1922 and 1923. But he had read much of Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, Karl Marx etc. already during his earlier studies of medicine and first literary endeavours. Activism is closely related to formalism - artistic form is that enduring element that excites the viewer with aesthetic means and depends on intellectual effort, contrary to the passive attitudes of naturalist/impressionist legacy. Direct quotes from Amedee Ozenfant's and Fernand Leger's statements testify that Kurcijs was greatly impressed by their ideas. Speaking about activism and cubism, Kurcijs also stress the widely circulating cubist idea that they depict things 'as they really are', apart from their irrelevant, accidental features. More critical is Kurcijs' approach to suprematism. Although it may be the most consequent in rendering 'things in themselves', at the same time it loses its emotional, spiritual qualities, its 'artistic mathematics'. One is prompted to ask if Kurcijs' theory might be derived from the German literary trend named activism. Some common general traits indeed could be discovered, such as emphasis on the autonomy of spiritual phenomena, like literature and art, opposed to the natural determinism typical of the 19th century. Andrejs Kurcijs continued to promote the activist theory and defend his position concerning the fruitful impact of the 'active French painting' on Latvian art in his later exhibition reviews.

THE MARXIST LEGACY AND THE INTERPRETATION OF ART: BETWEEN AESTHETIC VALUE AND SOCIAL SYMPTOM (Marksisma mantojums un makslas interpretacija: Starp estetisku vertibu un socialu simptomu)

63%

Pelse S.

Makslas Vesture un Teorija

2009

vol. 12

38-43

The basic premises of Marxism in respect to art are well known - art is a social phenomenon impossible to explain outside the economic structures of the society in which and for which it is made. Although primitive, deterministic versions of Marxism are largely of historical interest only, seeing art processes as a field of interaction of social, ethnic, gender, race and other contextual factors has not only been recognised but also became a dominant set of interpretational strategies. If feminism, gender studies or the post-colonial discourse are relatively new on Latvian soil, Marxist ideas have circulated in the local intellectual milieu since the late 19th century. In line with the dominant Soviet ideology, they have been comparatively well documented. In the interwar period Marxist ideas developed from more radical, expressionist-style echoes of proletarian culture to gradual restoration of order. Art as the indicator of the class struggle also sometimes left room for the concept of artist-genius, his gift consisting precisely in an ability to sense the social change first, as described by art historian Kristaps Eliass. The writer Andrejs Kurcijs who attempted to introduce the trend of Activism, a term coined in the melting pot of European Avant-garde trends, also voiced a compromise between the understanding of form and sociological assessment, each illuminating the other. Though politically unacceptable, leftist views emphasising serious content instead of the bourgeois formalism were selectively institutionalised as 'progressive' in the following period of Soviet domination.

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'ACTIVE ART' ('AKTIVA MAKSLA') BY ANDREJS KURCIJS (Andreja Kurcija 'Aktiva maksla')

THE MARXIST LEGACY AND THE INTERPRETATION OF ART: BETWEEN AESTHETIC VALUE AND SOCIAL SYMPTOM (Marksisma mantojums un makslas interpretacija: Starp estetisku vertibu un socialu simptomu)