Art in Translation, 2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17561310.2016.1216050
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Visual Geometry:
El Lissitzky and 5

the Establishment
of Conceptions Authorq

of Space–Time in 10

Igor Dukhan Avant-garde Art

Translated by
Christina Lodder
First published as “Vizual’naia
pangeometriia: El’ Lisitskii v
stanovlenii prostranstvenno-
vremennoi kontseptsii iskusstva
avangarda,S” Iskusstvoznanie 10,
AQ1 nos 3–4 (XXXX): 386–99.
Abstract
15
The development of new spatial and temporal conceptions in twentieth-
century art is examined through the prism of the ideas of El Lissitzky’s
text “Art and Pangeometry.” A comparative analysis of space–time
models in art, mathematics and physics indicates that at the beginning
of the twentieth century, artistic experiments “had fallen behind” in the
intensity of their conceptual construction of space. This text analyzes
the ways in which irrational spaces were modeled in the theory and
practice of El Lissitzky and the avant-garde along with the move towards AQ3
an artistic image of space–time. AQ2

user
 2 Igor Dukhan

Figure 1
AQ16 El Lissitzky, Constructor (self-
AQ17 portrait). Photomontage. 1924.

KEYWORDS: space–time conceptions, avant-garde, space in art, Authorquery:

time
in art, perspective, developments in mathematics, relativity D:20161808160
118+05'30'
Authorq
13:31:18
uery:
El Lissitzky played a special and, indeed, unique role in developing------------------
newD:201618
conceptions of space–time in the avant-garde’s philosophical thinking081601185
about art and in their experimentation with art and design. As an art-
ist and thinker, El Lissitzky (1890–1941) was active in the period of
the avant-garde’s mature form-making and theorizing at the end of the
1910s and beginning of the 1920s. His essay-manifesto “Art and Pange-
ometry” (1925) was both a clear expression of the space–time ideas of
10
the avant-garde and a philosophical synthesis of twenty years of exper-
imenting with the radical transformation of space and time in artistic
practice. It is precisely the space–time philosophy of “Art and Pangeom-
etry” within the context of actual trends within the explorations of the
late avant-garde that is the focus of the present discussion.
In the 1920s, the theory and practice of avant-garde artistic exper- 15
imentation turned back to “the great period,” actively “historicized,”
and clothed rapture and excitement in the forms of a new classical
synthesis and clarity. Strictly speaking, avant-garde ideas like “the new
classicism,” a new version of classical clarity that was opposed to the AQ4
retrospective classicism in the ideological version of Action Français,
20
had developed earlier under the influence of the philosophy of Henri AQ5
Bergson. As a counterweight to the established beau ideal, the theorists
and artists involved with cubism and futurism had put forward the idea
 Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 3

Figure 2
El Lissitzky, Illustration to Sikhes
Khulin by M. Broderzohn. Scroll,
lithography, 1917.

Figure 3
El Lissitzky, Front side of the
bolder-packet for Chad Gadia.
Chromolithograph on paper, Kiev,
Kultur-lige, 1919.

of a vital “classicism of the future.”1 Even so, it was only in the 1920s
that “the new classicism,” rather paradoxically, became the distinctive
“synthesis of the avant-garde,” a synthesis moreover in which histori-
cizing and innovative-modernizing tendencies both fought and collabo-
rated. One might recall the principal assertion of the leader of Suprema-
tism Kazimir Malevich in his correspondence with El Lissitzky in 1924:
5
“For me, the New Classicism develops out of the ideology of the general
movement of human activity and therefore the name comes from this
theory of activity.”2 The leader of the radical avant-garde characterized
his entire system as a “new classicism,” historicizing the avant-garde
esprit in a synthetic theory of the new creativity. In contrast, Gino Sev-
erini in his essay of 1921 (1925) criticized avant-garde experimenta- 10
tion in the context of classical categories, observing that his contem-
 4 Igor Dukhan

Figure 4
El Lissitzky, “Kunst und
Pangeometrie,” in Carl Einstein and
Paul Westheim (eds), Europa-
AQ18 Almanach (Potsdam: Gustav
AQ19 Kiepenheuer, 1925).

Authorq
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8081601

poraries’ interest in poetry and philosophy must be combined with an

attention to mathematics and especially to geometric proportionality.3
This reflects the intellectualizing trend of the postwar avant-garde and 5
simultaneously its criticism “from within,” including a more profound
relationship to the classical experience itself (proportionality) and to
the ideas of mathematics and the natural sciences.
Malevich’s formula of “the new classicism” appears unexpectedly
in view of his anarchic and sharply “anti-classical” statements of the
10
1910s. It is appropriate to recall Malevich’s futurist criticism of archi-
tecture, in which “the very best buildings have to have Greek columns,
like crutches for a lame duck,”4 and architecture was the embodiment
of classical bourgeois attitudes. Malevich also criticized painting as the
personification of the classical imitation of the visible world, stating
that “objects have disappeared like smoke for the new artistic culture,”5 15
 Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 5

Figure 5
El Lissitzky, ”Kunst und
Pangeometrie,” in Carl Einstein and
Paul Westheim (eds), Europa-
Almanach (Potsdam: Gustav
Kiepenheuer, 1925).

in which the construction of a new world in the “dynamism of move-

ment” and “dynamism of pictorial plasticity” was most important.6 In
addition to this, during the Vitebsk period (1919–22), Malevich’s vision
developed towards a new philosophy of art and reality. The nature of 5
this movement is conveyed by the title of his important treatise “Supre-
matism: The World as Non-Objectivity or Eternal Peace.” It unfurled a
monumental picture of the evolution of creation from “the meaningless
effervescence of the universe”7 to the perfection of world peace in “the
white world of Suprematist non-objectivity.”8 Suprematism was con-
10
ceived as an artistic method for transforming the world and a major
means for this development was rhythm—which was considered to be a
6 Igor Dukhan

Figure 6
El Lissitzky, Proun 1 E “The City.”
Paper, lithography, 1921.

Figure 7
El Lissitzky, Proun 1 A “The Bridge.”
Paper, gouache, 1919.

general starting point for art and reality, something like Maurice Mer-
leau-Ponty’s “flesh of the world.”
For all the impulsiveness of Malevich’s discourse, with its combi- 5
nation of mystical illumination and rational constructs, “The World
as Non-Objectivity” captured a grandiose conception of harmonizing
art and life. The impetuous teleology of the movement towards clari-
ty was born in the transformation of mystical experience into rational
and classical constructions. The treatise’s dedication to Mikhail Ger-
10
shenzon—an outstanding scholar of Alexander Pushkin’s poetry and of
 Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 7

Figure 8
El Lissitzky, Proun 30T. Oil on
canvas, 1920.

classical Russian culture—explains a lot. Andrei Bely described the un-

derstanding between Malevich and Gershenzon: “I remember in 1916,
that he [Gershenzon] the admirer of Pushkin’s consummate clarity tried
to make my soul embrace the most paradoxical picture of the most 5
paradoxical Suprematist; this picture that hung in front of him in his
study.”9 Gershenzon told Bely: “Everyday, I stand in front of this paint-
ing with trepidation; and I find in it something completely new and a
new source of thinking and feeling.”10
If one disregards the symbolic aspect of the interaction between
10
Malevich and Gershenzon in the context of the apocalyptic ethos of
the Silver Age, then the classicist Gershenzon’s discovery of a profound
source of intellectual and emotional harmony and a teleology close to
this classical Pushkin scholar in the work of the “barbarian” avant-gar-
de artist Malevich is completely comprehensible. The departure point—
the beginning of the vector of Malevich’s movement towards a “new 15
classicism” already applies to the period of The Black Square, although
the direction of this vector was clarified at the stage of “The World as
Non-Objectivity.” The “New Classicism”—is a teleological metaphor
for this synthesis of philosophy and art.
It was not by chance that the leader of Suprematism, Malevich,
20
talked about the “new classicism” in his letter to El Lissitzky. The im-
age of a new avant-garde rationality had emerged most clearly in Lis-
sitzky’s artistic theory and practice, following his collaborative work
with Malevich at Unovis (Utverditeli novogo iskusstva [Champions of
the New Art]).11 Even before the Revolution, Lissitzky had been par-
ticularly attracted to a philosophical and mathematical foundation for 25
8 Igor Dukhan

Figure 9
El Lissitzky, Proun. Oil on canvas,
1919–20.

his own artistic experimentation, having received his architectural and

artistic training at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt. In 1919,
Lissitzky had invited Malevich to Vitebsk, which for some years became 5
a creative laboratory for the radical avant-garde, and where Lissitzky in
partnership with Malevich had been busy constructing the project of a
Suprematist universe. From 1921 to 1925, El Lissitzky was once again
in Germany and Western Europe, where he naturally appeared at the
very epicenter of the European avant-garde art scene. It was actually
10
here that he became engaged in his intensive intellectual thinking about
the avant-garde experiment, which received its synthetic expression in
“Art and Pangeometry.”
The essay-manifesto “Art and Pangeometry” is a masterpiece of
avant-garde artistic philosophy. El Lissitzky’s text was first published in
15
 Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 9

Figure 10
El Lissitzky, Kurt Scwitters. Gelatin
silver print, 1924–25.

the famous avant-garde Europa Almanach, issued in Potsdam (1925),

under the editorship of the eminent avant-garde theorist Carl Einstein
and the illustrious literary and artistic critic, Paul Westheim.12 The al-
manac comprised an international collection of texts about various
aspects of painting, literature, music, architecture, sculpture, film, and 5
fashion. In other words, it was an attempt to synthesize the artistic and
philosophical theory of the avant-garde.
The new avant-garde rationality in Lissitzky’s conceptual and ar-
tistic practice had the declared intention of instilling a mathemati-
cal clarity into the dynamic and irrational artistic image. In “Art and
Pangeometry,” the object of Lissitzky’s thinking and criticism was the 10
conventional judgment of the eye. He tried to comprehend the evolution
of visual thinking and systems of spatial construction from elementary,
rhythmic forms and perspective, to the irrational limitless space and
space–time, under the sign of the evolution of conceptions of numbers
and relativity. Lissitzky’s imagination was stimulated by the ideas of 15
10 Igor Dukhan

Figure 11
El Lissitzky, Kurt Scwitters. Gelatin
silver print, 1924–25.

space revealed by non-Euclidean geometry and the theory of relativity. He

was attracted by the irrational worlds discovered by the latest math-
ematics and natural sciences, which could not always be represented by
spatial, geometrical or numerical means—conceptual worlds of “imma- 5
terial materiality” (Lissitzky’s phrase). We should note Lissitzky’s open
acknowledgement “in passing” in his 1924 letter: “… I am a rationalist,
but there are moments when I get scared of the ‘ratio’.”13 We find this
intense and dramatic duality of the rational and the irrational on every
page of “Art and Pangeometry”: how is it possible to represent ration-
10
ally and visualize with artistic means what cannot be represented, the
irrational and the imaginary?
Central to Lissitzky’s critical thinking and artistic practice was over-
coming “scientific” perspective as a hindrance and obstruction to the
 Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 11

Figure 12
El Lissitzky, Kurt Scwitters. Gelatin
silver print, 1924–25.

dynamism of vision. As is well known, in these years the problem of

perspective was central to both classical and avant-garde theory. The
development of classical perspective was a subject for research by the
outstanding theoretician and historian of classical art Erwin Panof-
sky (“Perspective as ‘symbolic’ form”).14 In fact, Panofsky cites “Art
and Pangeometry”15 which had just been published, contesting the
5
avant-garde conception “of the end of perspective,” which it had pre-
sented. This theme—the crisis of scientific perspective in seeing—was
the subject of a significant number of theoretical discussions in the first
third of the twentieth century.16 The critical departure from classical
perspective, characteristic of new trends in European art, started ap-
proximately in the 1880s. 10
12 Igor Dukhan

Figure 13
El Lissitzky, Hans Arp.
Photomontage, gelatin silver print,
1924–25.

In his Proun paintings, photography and theory of the 1920s, El

Lissitzky developed contemporary space–time models of art, which
generalize and defeat the rationality of classical perspective: “scientific”
perspective becomes a particular instance, a fragment of a global system 5
of “pangeometry.” The path of universal “pangeometry” is amplified by
the intuitive and perceptive spatial investigations of Paul Cézanne and
the multi-dimensional “duration” of the futurists and cubists and the
establishment of a post-perspectival way of seeing. As a whole, in the
critical period between Cézanne and cubism and futurism, the classi-
10
cal rationality of “scientific” perspective turned out to be already con-
quered by the new artistic experiments, the significance of which—in
the attempt to understand space from the inside, in the complex tactile
 Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 13

Figure 14
(1)–(8) El Lissitzky, A Tale of Two
Squares, Vitebsk, 1920, Visual book
AQ20 (Berlin: Skythen-Verlag, 1922).

Authorquery:
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Please state what parts (1)â••(8) each
represent in Figure 14 caption
14 Igor Dukhan

and visual synthesis, and in the dynamism of the subject’s position was
creating an artistic whole that approximates to the living interaction of 5
space and time.17
In this context, Lissitzky had the extraordinary conceptual courage
to attempt to explain rationally the new artistic perceptions by means
of their relationship to mathematics. In “Art and Pangeometry”18 the
evolution of the structure of artistic representations was correlated with
10
the development or more accurately with the dissemination and pop-
ularization of the ideas of numbers. In this, Lissitzky, to some degree,
continued the classical tradition of artistic–mathematical studies and of
artists appealing to mathematics as the ideal synthetic representation
of the world for explaining visual puzzles. Lissitzky’s approach raises
associations with the beginning of the first European “theory of paint- 15
ing” by Leon Battista Alberti, where we read “In these short notes about
painting we, above all, in order that our statement will be as clear as
possible, borrow from mathematics those propositions which relate to
our subject and, having mastered them, we give an account of painting,
beginning with its natural origins, in so far as our talent allows. Never- 20
theless … I am not writing as a mathematician but as a painter; mathe-
matics measures the form of an object intellectually, independent of all
its material (Conciossiache i Matematici con lo ingegno solo le spezie
e le forme delle cose, separate da qualsivoglia materia), we, wishing to
represent an object for viewing, will for this purpose use, as they say,
the more accurate Minerva.”19 For Alberti, the “science of painting” 25
was based on the dominating judgment of the eye (“Painting must try
to represent only what is seen”) and this judgment of the eye is the fun-
damental criterion of truth in painting.20
At the very beginning of “Art and Pangeometry,” El Lissitzky ad-
dressed the reader with an almost Albertian appeal to seek mathematic 30
foundations for artistic experiments, taking into account the difference
between the approaches of art and mathematics: “The parallels between
art and mathematics must be drawn very carefully, for every time they
overlap it is fatal for art.”21 The meaning of this appeal is that mathe-
matics must “help” art in its journey from the visible (and restrictedly
35
visible) to the infinite and invisible. It is precisely in this respect that
art fundamentally lags behind the evolution of mathematical develop-
ments.
Pondering the convergence between visual and mathematical prac- tice,
El Lissitzky demonstrated what is extremely rare for an artist—a profound
understanding of the contemporary state of mathematics and 40 its
evolution. While studying in the architectural faculty of the Higher
Technical School at Darmstadt, he had taken courses in mathematics
and during the writing of “Art and Pangeometry” seriously studied
mathematical investigations, noting in a letter of 21 March 1924, “…
Have received the history of mathematics and am reading it, it’s good.”22 45
As his wife, Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers noted in her reminiscences, the AQ11
Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 15

master formulated his credo as “Architecture—that is art in its highest

sense, mathematical order.”23 In our current discourse—it represents the
trace of the methodological idea of classical clarté.
We will briefly summarize Lissitzky’s argument. The origin of rep-
resentation is the physical two-dimensional flat plane, corresponding to
the system of natural numbers, its “rhythm—the elementary harmony
5
of the natural numerical progression: 1, 2, 3, 4 …”24 The next stage
is the formulation of the initial depth of space: “if for example, in a
relief, the animal in front covers a part of the animal behind, this does
not mean that that part has ceased to exist, but that there is a distance,
space, existing between these two bodies. One comes to know from
experience that there is a distance existing between individual objects, 10
that the objects exist in space. The two-dimensional plane ceases to be
just a flat surface. The plane begins to presume upon space and there
arises the numerical progression 1, 1½, 2, 2½ …”25
Lissitzky’s observation is completely accurate: and that system of
relationships between the object and space, and system of fractional 15
numbers was formulated in the context of ancient Egyptian culture. As
the historian of mathematics D. Stroik emphasized, “the most striking
feature of Egyptian mathematics is its work with fractions.”26 If, in Lis-
sitzky’s conception of the initial image of space, harmony and equilibri-
um existed between objects and their spatial surroundings, then in the
following stage—perspective—the object is fully subordinated to space. 20
Perspective “has fitted the world into a cube, which it has transformed
Authorquery:
in such a way that in the plane it appears as a pyramid … Perspective
D:20161808160
118+05'30'
defined space and made it finite, then enclosed it.”27 This completeness
13:31:18
of perspectival space matches the constancy of its perception in time:
“perspective representation is the clear, objective, obvious way to rep- 25
resent space.”28 A mathematical analysis of artistic systems followed:
“Planimetric space provided us with the arithmetical progression. There
the objects stood in the relation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … In perspective space we
acquired a new geometric progression; here objects stood in a relation:
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 …” This is a provocative assertion. Even so, it perfectly
30
reveals Lissitzky’s intention—to present the quintessential evolution of
the image of space as a subspecies of mathematics.
El Lissitzky takes issue with the “inflexibility” of the perspective
continuum: “The Euclidean conception of fixed space was destroyed
by Lobachevsky, Gauss and Riemann.”29 And he examines the means
of transforming artistic space. He exposes a fundamental weakness in 35
artistic experiments with constructing images of space: “Up to the pres-
ent time the ‘universal set’ of art has acquired no enrichment. In the
meantime, science undertook fundamental reconstructions.”30 What are
the implications of this “reconstruction”? Examining recent develop-
ments in mathematics, Lissitzky focused on the dialectic idea of the 40
number, or in mathematical terms on generalizing the conception of
number. The evolution of the number can be presented as the gradual

45
16 Igor Dukhan

expansion from the objective to the non-objective, irrational and vi-

sionary (virtual).31 As a whole, nineteenth-century mathematics devised
“the uninterrupted sequence,” including active and complex, signifiers
and non-signifiers, everyday conceptions of numbers. Mathematics pos-
sessed definitions that were equally rational and irrational, objective 5
and imaginary. It was precisely this rapid development in the concept
of numbers in mathematics at the end of nineteenth and beginning of
the twentieth century that paved the way for “Art and Pangeometry.”
From the point of view of mathematics’ development of the irration-
al and visionary (virtual), the experiment of the conceptual formulation
of art in Lissitzky’s evaluation was very limited. The artist noted the first 10
attempts to model the irrational in painting:

Our arithmetical notation, which is called the positional system,

has long used the 0, but it was not until the sixteenth century
that the 0 was first regarded as a number, as a numerical reality,
and no longer as nothing (Cardano, Tartaglia). It is only now in 15
the twentieth century that the Square [Kazimir Malevich’s Black
Square]32 is being acknowledged as a plastic value, as 0 in the
complex body of art. This solidly coloured33 square, stamped out
in a rich tone on a white surface [Black Square] has now started
to form a new space.34
20
How can a representational system expressing the irrational be con-
structed? El Lissitzky asserts that this must be a new visuality, based not
on the “measurable” planimetric or depth-perspective narrative, but on
intense relationships:

New optical discoveries have taught us that two areas of different 25

intensities, even when they are lying in one plane, are grasped by
the mind as being at different distances from the eye.

In this space, the distances are measured only by the intensity

and the position of the strictly-defined areas of color. The space is
arranged in the simplest directions—vertical, horizontal, or diag-
onal. It is a positional system. These distances cannot be meas- 30
ured by any finite measure, as can the objects in planimetric or
perspectival space. The distances are irrational; they cannot be
represented as a determinate ratio of two whole numbers.35

In this “gap” between intensities lies the colossal energy of space–time

dislocation, which is rationally inexpressible. 35
Lissitzky was more specific about the means of constructing an irra-
tional, infinite space:
Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 17

Suprematism has advanced the ultimate tip of the visual pyramid

of perspective into infinity.

It has broken through the “blue lampshade of the firmament.”

For the color of space, it has taken not the single blue ray of the
spectrum, but the whole unity—the white. Suprematist space may
5
be formed not only forward from the plane, but also backward
in depth. If we indicate the flat surface of the picture as “0,” we
can describe the direction in depth by “–” (negative) and the for-
ward direction by “+” (positive) or the other way round. We see
that Suprematism has swept away from the plane the illusions of
two-dimensional planimetric space, and has created the ultimate 10
illusion of irrational space, with its infinite extendibility into the
background and foreground.36

Lissitzky’s assertion requires some explanation. The idea of an infinitely

distant point going visually beyond the lines of perspective had already
been realized in the art of the Renaissance and the seventeenth cen- 15
tury, and was theoretically expounded in the projective geometry of
Gérard Desargues. “Scientific” perspective is a mechanism for localizing
the infinite; the entire world is reduced to a single spatial model on the
surface of the picture. “The Renaissance succeeded in mathematically
fully rationalizing an image of space which had already been earlier aes-
thetically unified. This, as we have seen, involved extensive abstraction 20
from the psycho-physiological structure of space, and repudiation of
the antique authorities. But, on the other hand, it was now possible to
construct an unambiguous and consistent spatial structure, of (within
the limits of the ‘line of sight’) infinite extension.”37 But while classical
“scientific” perspective aspired to the localization and “pacification” of 25
infinity within the space–time continuum of the picture, and correlates
with an enclosed and homogeneous (ontologically “empty”) space, Lis-
sitzky spoke of what might really be called limitless infinity, relating to
“a qualitatively” changing space. He was the first art theorist to con-
struct a conceptual model of artistic infinity from the point of view
30
of mathematical infinity. Here Lissitzky was surprisingly accurate in
picking the most topical resource of the latest mathematics—infinity—
which at that time, his contemporary, the talented mathematician and
thinker, Hermann Weyl, defined as the fundamental subject of mathe-
matics.38 Lissitzky and Weyl were fascinated by infinity. For Weyl, infin-
ity was particularly important because it led to a new inner dynamism 35
in mathematics. The entire evolution of the new mathematics—from
Euclid’s stable geometric paradigms to the multi-dimensional spatial
concepts of Nikolai Lobachevsky, Carl Friedrich Gauss and Bernhard
Riemann, on the one hand, and from the system of complete numbers
to irrational and complex numbers, on the other—consisted of making 40
18 Igor Dukhan

the irrational and infinite the most important reality of mathematical

thinking. 5
The extent of the difference and changes in the infinite was inten-
sity. Contemporary artistic experiment moved towards the implemen-
tation in graphic forms of irrational infinite space—a counterpoint in
intensity, overcoming the constraints and immobility of planimetric and
perspectival space. Artistic experiment was able, like mathematics and
10
relativity, by means of the irrational, to pass from pure spatiality to the
space–time continuum.
Lissitzky realized the entire methodological complexity of such a
transfiguration for art: “Mathematics has created a ‘new thing’, the im-
aginary numbers … we reach a sphere which is beyond comprehension,
which derives from purely logical construction, which is an elementary 15
crystallization of human thought. What has this to do with the perspi-
cuity, with the sensuous comprehensibility of art?”39 But further: “Time
now becomes a factor of prime consideration as a new constituent of
plastic form. In the studios of modern artists it is believed that space
and time can be formed into a direct Authorquery:
unity, and therefore that they can 20
40
D:20161808160118+05'30' 13:31:18
replace each other.” In Lissitzky’s understanding, the image of irra-
--------------------------------------------
tional space denoted space–time. Moreover, it reveals two tendencies:
Please provide full details of the source
the inner time of a work, based on the interplay of tensions (such as
for Concerning Two Squares in note 43
in the artistic principle of Suprematism —“Suprematism has formed
the dynamic tension of these forces”),41 and the dynamic transgression
of spatial systems (“curve graphs of speed and dynamism, which have 25
been transposed into the irrational system and made apprehensible,” the
representation of “movement through movement”—Umberto Boccioni;
and the representation of movement by means of symbols—Vladimir
Tatlin and The Model for a Monument to the Third International).42
While in Kazimir Malevich’s suprematist painting the irration- 30
al is revealed through forming an interplay of tensions in an infinite
space, Lissitzky in his Prouns, photography and exhibition spaces
(Demonstrationsräume) constructed various anti-perspectival modes
of space–time. At first glance, in his Prouns we discover a departure
from classical perspective towards ways of constructing space such as AQ14
35
axonometric drawing and isometric projection. In this way, Proun 1
E The City (1921) was constructed (a word that El Lissitzky used to
emphasize the substantively effective rather than the specifically artistic
nature of his experiments).43 Here, Lissitzky established plastically the
duality of classical perspective in the creation of an “objective” image of
an environment, in so far as axonometry and isometry actually convey 40
a significantly more “objective” image of reality, for the sizes of ob-
jects are fixed in their accurate measurements, without any perspectival
“foreshortening.” Nevertheless, Lissitzky achieves the fundamental ef-
fect of the “removal of perspective” in those Prouns where he confronts
and integrates various spatial systems. While Malevich freed infinity as 45
pictorial ontology and worked with “pure” tensions, Lissitzky the ar-
Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 19

chitect remained the constructor of space (“a constructivist–montagist”

as Malevich ironically called him in a letter),44 creating the effect of
illusionary depth and structures, which were not a feature of Malevich’s
abstraction.
Constructing his work, Lissitzky created in them varied and compli-
cated spatial constructions. In the Prouns 5A (1919), 30T (1920), 12E
5
(1920) L.N.31 (c. 1924) and others, axonometry and isometry were
integrated with other spatial structures “seeking” different foci and
depicting a unified complex of interconnected spaces. In the Prouns,
the architect Lissitzky brilliantly introduced a play with volumetric and
spatial structures in their individual projections on various planes. Spa-
tiality acquired the character of a system of topological dislocations: 10
in front of us unfolds the interaction of topological transformations
of form in which the constituent factor is time. Lissitzky characterized
time in Malevich’s Suprematism as “a dynamic intensity of forces.” It
follows that time in Lissitzky’s montage combinations should be defined
as the dynamic tension transforming spatial structures, the energy of 15
topological dislocations. In Lissitzky’s “dislocations,” topological time
becomes the visible power of the transfiguration of forms, and in this
energy of dislocation and transformation, the space–time field is gen-
erated. Here is visibly incarnate what Lissitzky the theoretician called
“multi-dimensional, real spaces, in which one can go for a walk without
an umbrella, and where space and time are interchangeable and can be 20
brought into one unity.”45
The space–time shift radically overcomes the already mentioned fun-
damental principle of perspective—the integration of the visual field on
the basis of a single, static, viewing position. We have already discussed
Lissitzky’s conceptual criticism of perspective’s “immobile three-di- 25
mensionality.” Lissitzky’s “displacement,” which transformed the single
privileged position of the subject into a space–time dynamic, received
an interesting artistic embodiment in his photographic work46—for
example in his photographic portrait of Kurt Schwitters (1924)—the
artist leader of Hannover Dada, etc. The portrait of Schwitters was a
30
double exposure with a temporal shift between two states. The nega-
tive, which is preserved in the Hannover Museum, shows two, sepa-
rately taken photographs of Schwitters,47 which Lissitzky then exposed
on one sheet, adding a small element (a parrot?) in front of Schwitters’
mouth.48
Lissitzky used a similar method of displacement and double expo- 35
sure (or more accurately—multi-exposure) in his photographic portrait
of Hans Arp (1924). Here he played with and strengthened one method
of perspective—the effect of binocularity of the visual image, appear-
ing when viewed with both eyes. Arp’s head is shown from two an-
gles—almost frontal and almost profile. Leah Dickerman writes: “To 40
understand how Lissitzky’s photographic work subverts the terms of
perspectivalism, it is important that along with the desecration of the

45
20 Igor Dukhan

transparency and pure opticality of the photographic field comes an

explicit challenge to the other concept central to the model—the tem-
poral topos of immediacy. The disembodied Cartesian eye unimped-
ed by matter sees instantly; in contrast Lissitzky’s Swiss photographic
work reveals an intense preoccupation with time, a sense of resistance 5
to temporal capture revealed in the inscription of duration. We can
see this in Lissitzky’s portrait of Arp, in the layered memory trace of
Arp’s bodily position and multiplied body parts produced by double
exposure.”49 Further, Dickerman characterizes the temporal nature of
the photographic portrait of Arp, using Bergson’s category of duration,
la durée. The correlation with la durée does not seem to be entirely 10
successful: Bergson’s duration presupposes a direct and vital, ecstatic
experience of time, but artistic experiments, aspiring to embody this,
confront the complexities of visualizing a continuous immediacy.50 Lis-
sitzky achieved a different effect: in the portrait of Arp, the viewer feels
something else—a vital “duration of distortion” from the well exposed 15
frontal image to the lightly developed “shadow” of his profile. To this
image of duration, we will attach Julia Kristeva’s observation concern-
ing “sensual time” (“le temps sensible”) of Marcel Proust.51 Lissitzky
really did make time sensual and visible.
The ideal of sensual, visible space–time for Lissitzky was the film
20
image. In Lissitzky’s view, only film was able to embody completely the
imaginary/virtual—“forming imaginary space by means of a material
object.”52

Our visual faculty is limited when it comes to the conception of

movement and indeed of the whole state of the object; for exam-
ple: disconnected movements separated by periods shorter than 25
1/30 of a second create the impression of a continuous move-
ment. It is on this factor that film is based. The involvement of
the film as a means of solving the problems of dynamic form
through actual movement is a decided achievement on the part of
V. [Viking] Eggeling and his successors. This is the first step in the 30
direction leading toward the construction of imaginary space.53

Film “generates … an entirely new impression of space, which is there

for as long as the movement lasts and is therefore imaginary.”54
The film image as an ideal model of form-making appears repeatedly
in Lissitzky’s theory and practice: A Tale of Two Squares and For the
Voice were constructed in the form of a visual film montage, and some 35
features of film can be discerned in the series of Khad Gadya (1917 and
1919). He even constructed his biography in 1926 like a film (“The
Film of El’s Life”).
In his conception of the film image, Lissitzky grasped the very es-
sence of the nascent new space–time vision–perception; film introduces 40
a new aspect to our understanding of the visible. Here it becomes pos-
Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 21

sible for the first time to construct a moving image: an artistic image
not constrained by elements or boundaries of the visible, but directly
conveying movement. And although Henri Bergson discerned in cine-
matography the fragmented image of movement and not the sponta-
neity of duration, Gilles Deleuze, picking up the impulse of Bergson’s
thinking, discovered that it is precisely in the language of film that con-
5
sensus makes modality, the congruence with consciousness, movement
and time overcoming those inherent contradictions in Bergson’s ideas.
As Lissitzky saw it, film allows the immediate showing of the “inner”
spontaneous flow of time in the moving image, grasping the living pro-
cess of space–time reality. Lissitzky seems closer to Deleuze’s notion
of film which overcame one of the paradoxical misunderstandings of 10
Henri Bergson’s conception, contained in the last chapter of Creative
Evolution—namely seeing film as a mechanical image of reality.
***
In the perspective of the twentieth-century philosophy of time and
space, El Lissitzky’s investigation stimulated the genesis of a particular 15
space–time discourse, which overcame the differentiation of time and
space in art and mathematics. Beginning with Henri Bergson’s intuition
of duration, and developing these ideas within the Kantian context of
Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of the inner consciousness of time,
temporality as the spontaneous ecstasy of the inner became contrasted
with space as exterior. In the 1910s, the cubists and futurists had tried 20
to embody Bergson’s intuition of duration in their theory and painting,
which must be considered one of the first experiments in the conceptu-
alization of the language of space–time in the twentieth century.
Direct experimentation with space–time in life cannot but confirm
the immediate connection between time and space, and this associa- 25
tion is expressed variously in the scientific languages of relativity and
topology, and later in the phenomenological investigations of Maurice
Merleau-Ponty and in Gilles Deleuze’s ideas of image–time. El Lissitz-
ky’s philosophy of pangeometry attempted to reveal time in spatiality,
the irrational in the visual, and in this effort it had to be applied to the
30
experiment of forming a new artistic language, overcoming the dissoci-
ation between time and space.

Author’s Notes

1. I.I. Dukhan, “Filosofiia klassicheskogo v iskusstve i proektnoi

kul’ture modernizma,” Voprosy filosofii, no 6 (2009): 47–56. 35
2. Kazimir Malevich, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh (Moscow:
Gileya, 2003), vol. 4, 308. AQ6
3. Gino Severini, Du cubisme au classicisme (Esthétique du compas et
du nombre) (Paris: J. Povolovzky & Cie., editeurs, 1921). AQ7

40
22 Igor Dukhan

4. K.S. Malevich, Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu. Novyi

zhivopisnyi realizm (Moscow, 1916); reprinted in Malevich,
Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 69.
5. Malevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 51. 5
6. Malevich, “Ot kubizma i futurizma k suprematizmu. Novyi
zhivopisnyi realizm,” Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 44. AQ8
7. Kazimir Malevich, “Suprematizm. Mir kak bezpredmetnost’
ili vechnoi pokoi,” ms, 1921; reprinted in Malevich, Sobranie AQ9
sochinenii, vol. 4, 282.
10
8. Malevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 4, 324.
9. A. Belyi, “M. O. Gershenzon,” Rossiia, no 5 (14) (1925): 4 and 255;
emphasis added.
10. Ibid., 256.
11. For the evolution of El Lissitzky’s creative vision from Unovis to
his active participation in the international avant-garde movement 15
while he was staying in Berlin and Switzerland, 1921–25, see: Susan
Marten-Finnis and Igor Dukhan, “Transnationale Öffentlichkeit
und Dialog im Russischen Berlin. Die Avantgarde—Zeitschrift
Vešč—Gegenstand—Objet,” Osteuropa (March 2008): 37–9;
and I.N. Dukhan, El’ Lisitskii 1890–1941. Geometriya vremeni
20
(Moscow: Art-Rodnik, 2010), 30–62.
12. El Lissitzky,“K. [Kunst] und Pangeometrie,”in Carl Einstein and Paul
Westheim (eds), Europa-Almanach (Potsdam: Gustav Kiepenheuer,
Authorque
1925), 103–13. English translation: “A. and Pangeometry,” in
Authorquery:
Authorquery
ry:
Authorquery:
Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky, Life. Letters. Texts,D:201618081601
trans.
: D:2016180
D:201618081601
Helene Aldwinckle (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968), 348–53. 18+05'30' 25
D:201618081
8160118+0
18+05'30'
13:31:18
60118+05'30'
5'30'
13:31:18
13. Cited by Éva Forgács, “Definitive Space: The Many Utopias of El
Lissitzky’s Proun Room,” in Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed (eds),
Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin, Moscow (Los Angeles: Getty
Research Institute, 2003), 70.
14. Erwin Panofsky, “Die Perspektive als ‘Symbolishce Form,’” in Fritz 30
Saxl (ed.), Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1924–5 (Leipzig: B.G.
Teubner, 1927), 258–330.
15. Ibid., note 75.
16. See, for instance, Pavel Florenskii, “Obratnaia perspektiva,” in
Pavel Florenskii, Ikonostas: Izbrannye trudy po iskusstvu (Saint
Petersburg: Russkaia kniga, 1993), 175–283; and Fritz Novotny, 35
Cézanne und das Ende der wissenschaftlichen Perspektive (Vienna
and Munich: Verlage der Anton Schroll, 1938).
17. Concerning this type of understanding of space, see Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind” (1951), in The Merleau-Ponty
Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen A. Johnson 40
and trans. ed. Michael B. Smith (Evanston, Il.: Northwestern
University Press, 1996), 121–50.
18. Concerning the connection of “Art and Pangeometry” with avant-
garde theory and practice, see: A.G. Rappaport, “El’ Lisitskii i ideia

45
Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 23

pangeometrii,” in I.E. Danilova (ed.), Rossiia-Frantsiia. Problemy

kul’tury pervykh desiatiletii XX veka (Moscow: GMII im. A.S.
Pushkina, 1988), 32–57. For the essay’s significance within the 5
context of systems of spatial representation, see Yve-Alain Bois,
“From – ∞ to + ∞: Axonometry, or Lissitzky’s Mathematical
Paradigm,” in Jan Debbaut (ed.), El Lissitzky, 1890–1941: Architect,
Painter, Photographer, Typographer (Eindhoven: Stedeijk Van AQ10
Abbemuseum, 1990), 27–33. See also I. Dukhan, “El Lissitzky—
10
Jewish as Universal: From Jewish Style to Pangeometry,” Ars
Judaica, no 3 (2007): 53–72.
19. Leon Battista Alberti, Della pittura e della statua (Milan, 1804).
20. Ibid.
21. Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” in Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky,
348. 15
22. Lissitzky, letter to Sophie Küppers, 21 March 1924, in Lissitzky-
Küppers, El Lissitzky, 46. AQ12
23. Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, “Life and Letters,” in Lissitzky-Küppers,
El Lissitzky, 19.
24. Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” 349.
20
25. Ibid.; original emphasis.
26. D.A. Stroik, Kratkii ocherk istorii matematiki (Moscow: Nauka,
1990), 37.
27. Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” 349.
28. Ibid. Authorquery:
29. D:2016180816
25
Ibid.
0118+05'30'
30. Ibid. Authorquer
13:31:18
y:
31. As is known, historically, the natural sequence of numbers (based
on the criteria of the nature of quantity and order of objects), was
initially amplified by fractions and negative numbers. Complete
numbers and fractions (positive and negative) and “zero” form 30
the aggregate of rational numbers, which allow the performance
of spatial measurements to any required degree of accuracy. The
system of rational numbers became inadequate for investigating
constantly changing shifts in size. As is known, even in ancient
geometry it was observed that not all segments of exactly defined
length were commensurate; that is, that the relationship between 35
two segments could not always be expressed by a rational number
(e.g. the relationship of the sides of a square and its diagonal cannot
be expressed by a rational number). The investigation into the
uninterrupted processes and methods of converging calculations
led to a more dynamic understanding of numbers, not so much as 40
units of quantity, but more as relationships of size. It is precisely in
this way that Isaac Newton understood numbers. This definition
already contains the idea of the active number—rational or
irrational. As Lev Pontriagin observed, “the move from rational
numbers to active numbers occurred because of the inner logic of
45
24 Igor Dukhan

the development of mathematics rather than because of practical

requirements, because with the aid of rational numbers it is possible 5
to effect any measurement with any degree of precision … Active
numbers represent a limitless medium, in which rational numbers
are positioned.” See L.S. Pontriagin, Oboshchenie (Moscow:
Editorial URSS, 2003). The definitive formulation of the idea of
active numbers occurred in mathematics in the nineteenth century,
10
in connection with thinking about constancy and abstract real
infinity in the work of Georg Cantor, Karl Weierstrass, and Richard
Dedekind. The development of the idea of numbers led to the notion
of complex numbers. The concept first appeared in mathematics in
the sixteenth century, particularly (as Lissitzky recalls) in the work
of Girolamo Cardano, although the systematic theory of complex 15
numbers was developed by Leonhard Euler and Carl Gauss.
Complex numbers became particularly significant in nineteenth-
century mathematics in connection with the development of the
theory of the function of complex changes, although they retained
an element of uncertainty, which was manifest in the definition of 20
a complex number as “imaginary.” For an everyday understanding,
they are best understood, in so far as they represent themselves, in
the form of the number x + iy, where x and i are active numbers,
and i is an imaginary unit (a square which is equal to a negative
entity).
32. The iconic image of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square appears in 25
Authorque
ry:
this place in the text. Lissitzky was referring to Girolamo Cardano
D:2016180
and Niccoló Fontana Tartaglia. 8160118+0
33. Once again, the iconic image of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square5'30'AQ13
appears in the text.
34. Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” 350. 30
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.; original emphasis.
37. Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher
S. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 63.
38. A.G. Barabasheva, Beskonechnoe v matematike: filosofskie i
35
istoricheskie aspekty (Moscow: Ynus-K, 1997).
39. “Wir kommen in ein Gebiet, das nicht vorstellbar ist, das keiner
Anschaulichkeit fähig ist, das aus der rein logischen Konstruktion
folgt, das eine elementare Kristallisation des menschlichen
Gedankens ist.” See: Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” 351. German
text reprinted in Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky: Maler, 40
Architekt, Typograf, Fotorgraf., Errinerungen, Briefe, Schriften
(Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1967), 70.
40. Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” 351.
41. Ibid., 352.
42. Ibid. 45
Lissitzky and Space–Time in Avant-garde Art 25

43. See, for instance, the inscription “constructed 1920 Vitebsk” on the
final page of El Lissitzky’s graphic book, Concerning Two Squares. 5
44. Kazimir Malevich, letter to El Lissitzky, 17 July 1924; reprinted in
Malevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 4, 297.
45. Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” 351.
46. Concerning the space–time aspects of El Lissitzky’s photography,
see Leah Dickerman, “El Lissitzky’s Camera Corpus,” in Perloff
10
and Reed (eds), Situating El Lissitzky, 153–76.
47. Margarita Tupitsyn, Ulrich Pohlmann and Matthew Drutt, El
Lissitzky: Beyond the Abstract Cabinet: Photography, Design,
Collaboration (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1999), 86, illus. 18 and 19.
48. Dickerman, “El Lissitzky’s Camera Corpus,” 159. 15
49. Ibid., 160. AQ15
50. See Mark Antliff, Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the
Parisian Avant-Garde (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1992); and I.N. Dukhan, “Kubizm i dlitel’nost’: filosofiia vremeni
Anri Bergsona v zerkale avangarda,” Iskusstvoznanie 10, nos 1–2 20
(2010): 455–72.
51. Julia Kristeva, Le temps sensible: Proust et l’expérience littéraire
(Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 1–36.
52. Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” 352. Authorquery:
53. Ibid. D:2016180816
54. Ibid., 353. 25
0118+05'30'
13:31:18
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