Vkhutemas

Architecture at Vkhutemas, book cover by El Lissitzky, 1927.

Vkhutemas (Russian:Вхутемас, acronym for Высшие художественно-технические мастерские Higher Art and Technical Studios) was the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow. The workshops were established by a decree from Vladimir Lenin with the intentions, in the words of the Soviet government, 'to prepare master artists of the highest qualifications for industry, and builders and managers for professional-technical education'. The size of the school was in the range of 100 faculty members and an enrollment of 2500 students. The formation of Vkhutemas was a merger of two schools: the Moscow College of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture and the Stroganov School of Applied Arts, which had been an art school and craft school respectively. The workshops had artistic and industrial faculties; the art faculty taught courses in graphics, sculpture and architecture while the industrial faculty taught courses in printing, textiles, ceramics, woodworking, and metalworking. It was a center for three major movements in avant garde art and architecture: Constructivism, Rationalism, and Suprematism. At the workshops, faculty and students transformed views of art and reality with the use of precise geometry with an emphasis on space, in one of the great revolutions in the history of art. In 1926, the school was reorganised under a new rector and its name was changed from 'Studios' to 'Institute' (Вхутеин, Высший художественно-технический институт), or Vkhutein. It was dissolved in 1930, after political and internal pressures throughout its ten-year existence. The school's faculty, students, and legacy were dispersed into as many as six other schools.

Basic course

A preliminary basic course was an important part of the new teaching method that was developed at Vkhutemas, and was made compulsory for all students, regardless of their future specialization. This was based on a combination of scientific and artistic disciplines. In the basic course, students had to learn the language of plastic forms, and chromatics. Drawing was considered a foundation of the plastic arts, and students investigated relationships between color and form, and the principles of spatial composition. Akin to the Bauhaus' basic course at which all first year students had to attend, this gave a more abstract foundation for the technical work in the studios. In the early 1920s this basic course consisted of the following: 1) the maximal influence of colour (given by Lyubov Popova), 2) form through colour (Alexander Osmerkin), 3) colour in space (Aleksandra Ekster) 4) colour on the plane (Ivan Kliun), 5) construction (Alexander Rodchenko), 6) simultaneity of form and colour (Aleksandr Drevin), 7) volume in space (Nadezhda Udaltsova) and 8) was by Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine.

Art faculty

The primary movements in art which influenced education at Vkhutemas were Constructivism and Suprematism, although individuals were versatile enough to fit into many or no movements—often teaching in multiple departments, working in diverse media. The leader figure of Suprematist art, Kazimir Malevich, joined the teaching staff of Vkhutemas in 1925, however his group Unovis, of the Vitebsk art school that included El Lissitzky, exhibited at Vkhutemas as early as 1921. Constructivism was developed as an art form in graphics and sculpture, but it had architecture or construction rather as the underlying subject matter, and was present throughout the school. The artistic education at Vkhutemas tended to be multidisciplinary, which stemmed from its origins as a merger of a fine arts school and a craft school. A further contribution to this was the generality of the basic course, whose multidisciplinary approach continued after the specialization of a student and was matched by the versatility of the faculty. Vkhutemas cultivated masters in the Renaissance mold, many with achievements in graphics, sculpture, product design, and architecture. Painters and sculptors often made projects related to architecture; examples include Tatlin's Tower, Malevich's Architektons, and Rodechenko's Spatial Constructions. Artists moved from department to department, such as Rodchenko from painting to metalworking. Gustav Klutsis, who was head of a workshop on colour theory, also moved from painting to sculptural works to exhibition stands and kiosks. El Lissitzky, who was trained in architecture, worked across media in graphics, print and exhibition design.

Industrial faculty

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Tubular steel chair designed in Tatlin's atelier at Vkutein, 1927.

The industrial faculties had the task of preparing artists of a new type, artists capable of working not only in the traditional pictorial and plastic arts but also capable of creating all objects in the human environment such as the articles of daily life, the implements of labor, etc. The industrial department at Vkhutemas endeavored to create products of viability in the economy and functionality found in society. Class based political requirements steered artists toward crafts, and the designing of household or industrial goods. There was significant pressure in this respect by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, that in 1926, 1927, and 1928, required a student body composition 'of worker and peasant origins', and several demands for 'working class' elements. This push for design economy resulted in a tendency towards working, functional designs with minimized luxuries. Tables designed by Rodchenko were equipped with mechanical moving parts, and were standardized and multi-functional. The products designed at Vkhutemas never bridged the gap between workshops and factory production, although they cultivated a factory aesthetic—Popova, Stepanova, and Tatlin even designed worker's industrial apparel. Furniture pieces constructed at Vkhutemas explored the possibilities of new industrial materials such as plywood and tubular steel.

There were many successes of these departments, and they influenced design to come. At the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, the Soviet pavilion by Konstantin Melnikov and its contents attracted both criticism and praise for its architecture of working class economy. One focus was on the 'nakedness' of this structure, in comparison to other luxurious pavilions such as the pavilion by Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann. Alexander Rodchenko designed a worker's club, and the furniture that the Wood and Metal Working Faculty (Дерметфак) contributed was an international success. This student work won several prizes, and Melnikov's pavilion won the Grand Prix. As a new generation of artist/designers, students and faculty at Vkhutemas made the way for designer furniture by architects such as Marcel Breuer, and Alvar Aalto later in the century.

Metalwork and Woodwork

The dean of this department was Alexander Rodchenko, who was appointed in February 1922. Rodchenko's department was more expansive than its name would suggest, concentrating on abstract and concrete examples of product design. In a report to the rector of 1923, Rodchenko listed the following subjects as being offered: higher mathematics, descriptive geometry, theoretical mechanics, physics, the history of art and political literacy. Practical tasks included graphic design and 'volumetric and spatial discipline'; while practical experience was given in foundry work, minting, engraving and electrotype. Students were also given internships in factories. Rodchenko's approach effectively combined art and technology, and he was offered the deanship of Vkhutein in 1928, although he refused. El Lissitzky was also a member of the faculty.

Textiles

The textile department was run by the Constructivist designer Varvara Stepanova. Although like the other departments, this was run on utilitarian lines. Stepanova encouraged her students to take an interest in fashion: they were told to carry notebooks so that they could note the contemporary fabrics and aesthetics of everyday life as seen on the high street. Stepanova wrote in her 1925 course plan that this was done 'with the goal of devising methods for a conscious awareness of the demands imposed on us by new social conditions'. Lyubov Popova was also a member of the textile faculty, and in 1922, when hired to design fabrics for the First State Textile Print Factory, Popova and Stepanova were among the first women designers in the Soviet textile industry. Popova designed textiles with asymetrical architectonic geometries, but also work that was thematic. Before her death in 1924, Popova produced fabrics with grids of printed hammers & sickles, which would predate work by others in the political climate of the First Five Year Plan.

Architectural schools

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Lydia Komarova, Comintern House, designed for Alexander Vesnin's workshop in 1929

Architectural training at Vkhutemas was divided in two camps—the neoclassical school of Ivan Zholtovsky, the first dean of the Architectural Department, and United Left Workshop or Obmas headed by Nikolai Ladovsky. A third independent department, Experimental Architecture, emerged in the 1924/1925 season, headed by non-conformists Konstantin Melnikov and Ilya Golosov. Through the basic course, architectonic art such as Constructivism and Suprematism were also significant influences on the architectural design curricula.

Two competing Moscow architectural schools of the period were MVTU led by Alexander Kuznetsov, and Moscow Institute of Civil Engineers led by the Vesnin brothers. This school merged with MVTU in 1924, and it was also proposed that Vkhutemas be merged with MVTU in 1924 in an effort at consolidating architectural education. The artistic and industrial design faculties were retained, further differentiating Vkhutemas from MVTU, which, after acquiring the institute, was focused more on engineering. MVTU was stronger for Constructivism in architecture, while Vkhutemas was based in the arts and design. Members of the OSA Group were divided between MVTU and Vkhutemas, participating in both schools. OSA staged the 'First Exhibition of Modern Architecture' exhibition at Vkhutemas in 1927. Many of the faculty shared jobs with other colleges, and the student body was especially mobile. Vkhutemas absorbed many students who, in a better world, would have chosen a different profession. For example, Nadezhda Bykova, born in 1907 and raised in Serpukhov, aspired to be a doctor, but since Serpukhov at that time was not eligible for admissions into medical school, she took a ticket to Vkhutemas and joined Ladovsky's class. In 1932 she designed her first subway station and eventually became one of the most prolific architects of the Moscow Metro. The educational system, like the society itself, was boiling and constantly changing.

Academic Workshop

The original architectural department of Vkhutemas was the 'Academic Workshop'. It was a direct descendant of Zholtovsky's First Architectural Workshop that lasted from 1918 to 1919, and was heavily influenced by the personality of Ivan Zholtovsky and his staff of Alexey Shchusev, and Ivan Rylsky. Zholtovsky practiced a peculiar style of education—which entailed lengthy conversations with very small groups of students (беседы Жолтовского)—at the same time enforcing rigorous training in draftsmanship and classical composition.

Zholtovsky also created a two-tier faculty organisation with three residents and a few part-time 'managers' supervising a body of 'masters' - postgraduate-level instructors (Ladovsky, Golosov brothers, Nikolai Dokuchayev etc). The system began breaking apart before Vkhutemas, as early as 1919, however, at this time in the end of Civil War, disgruntled 'masters' preferred to hold to Zholtovsky, while at the same time practicing Modernist art with numerous independent unions. Most important of these, the First Creative Union (Первое Творческое объединение, Живскульптарх), was actually made of unemployed architects. By 1920, the breakaway faction consolidated around Nikolay Ladovsky, now the leader of Rationalist architecture; the neoclassical minority shrank to a small group around Zholtovsky. In 1923, Zholtovsky left the country for three years, surrendering his Vkhutemas chair to Ladovsky.

Nikolai Ladovsky Workshop

Students in Obmas with models of project assignments in the discipline of "Space".

In the beginnning of the 1920/1921 training season, Ladovsky with fellow instructors Dokuchayev and Vladimir Krinsky set up Obmas. Obmas was an acronym for United Left Workshop (Обмас, Объединенные левые мастерские) these studios were active for three seasons and took over the whole Architectural Department in 1923.

Ladovsky was known for his innovative teaching methods, notably his statement that the primary material of architecture was space. His training program was superficially similar to classical training: first, study a particular architectural element of the past; then, use it in abstract drafts; finally, apply it to real-world architectural tasks ranging from seaside jetties (1922–1923) to skyscrapers (VSNKH Tower, 1924-1925). To Ladovsky's own surprise, this program became a fountain of architectural novelties. Here, at Obmas, creative concept of Rationalism was formulated, and the faculty and students within Obmas were in this way distinct from another prominent group within the school, the Constructivists.

In 1923, Ladovsky proceeded to found another Rationalist group, ASNOVA. Between 1925 and 1930 Ladovsky's department at Vkhutemas-Vkhutein and the Vesnin brothers, divided between Vkhutemas and MVTU, were engaged in a vocal professional competition of students' projects, which further separated the rationalist and constructivist arms of avant-garde architecture. Perhaps the most notorious of the works produced in this atelier was Georgy Krutikov's Flying City, a graduation project of 1928.

Constructivist Workshops

Alexander Vesnin's students produced several innovative designs that contrast interestingly with the products of Ladovsky's workshop. Lydia Komarova's project for a Comintern headquarters for instance was a glass clad, cylindrical structure that prefigures high-tech work later in the century, while Sokolov designed under Vesnin a plan in 1928 for 'resort-hotels' as glass pods, set in the countryside, which became a prototype for Soviet disurbanism. The most famous graduation project however was Ivan Leonidov's Lenin Institute in 1927, produced under Moisei Ginzburg. One student, Kirill Afamasev remarked on the close relationships that developed and the high level of attention from the faculty, and stated that, 'The Vesnin studios - of Alexander and Leonid Vesnin in Vkhutemas, and Victor Vesnin at MVTU - were the heart of Soviet Constructivism.' Meetings occured outside of the school at the Vesnin flat, which attracted visits from abroad, including Le Corbusier among others.

The New Academy

Konstantin Melnikov, who had been a professor at Vkhutemas since 1920, and Ilya Golosov formed a joint workshop known as the New Academy and Workshop No.2. These studios were known for their individualist approach. Melnikov and Golosov resisted both the academic and left-wing camps, but had aspects of both in a middle ground between Zholtovsky's Classicism and Ladovsky's Rationalism. Slogans of the New Academy drafted by Melnikov and Golosov in 1923, spoke in polemics regarding other departments and the dialectics between old and new, form and imitation, absence and decadence, start and end. One such slogan read, 'The true mark of architecture that is NEW is that it does not simply reuse forms, but is based through-and-through on reusing the established perceptual gradations of the architecture that is OLD.' In design Melnikov was an undoubted success, but at Vkhutemas he found a less favourable climate. In 1924, the architectural department made an effort at organizational simplification, and the management merged the New Academy with the Academic Workshop. Melnikov quit Vkhutemas having lost the program that he had created and led. In the fall of 1924, Melnikov was offered the position of chair of the Department of Metalworking, but he did not accept. Melnikov distanced himself from the school at this point but was not completely removed; he exhibited alongside students and other faculty at the 1925 Paris exhibition.

Lenin's visit

Vladimir Lenin signed a decree to create the school although its emphasis was on art rather than Marxism. Three months after its founding, on 25 February 1921, Lenin went to Vkhutemas to visit the daughter of Inessa Armand and to converse with the students, where in a discussion about art with the students he found an affinity among them for Futurism. There he first viewed avant garde art, such as Suprematist painting and he did not wholly approve of it, expressing concern over the connection between the student's art and politics. After the discussion he was accepting and stated, "Well, tastes differ" and "I am an old man".

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Model of the Lenin Institute of Librarianship by Ivan Leonidov, 1927.

Although Lenin was not an enthusiast for avant garde art, Vkhutemas faculty and students made projects to honor him and further his politics. Ivan Leonidov's final project at Vkhutemas was his design for a Lenin Institute of Librarianship. Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International was built by students and displayed at their workshop in Saint Petersburg. Furthermore, Lenin's Mausoleum was designed by faculty member Aleksey Shchusev. Alexei Gan's book Constructivism, published in 1922, provided a theoretical link between the new emerging art and contemporary politics, connecting Constructivism with revolution, and Marxism. The founding decree included a statement that students have an 'obligatory education in political literacy and the fundamentals of the communist world view on all courses'. These examples help justify the school's projects in terms of the early political requirements but others would arise throughout the school's existence.

Comparisons with the Bauhaus

Vkhutemas was closely parallel to the German Bauhaus in its intent, organization and scope. These two schools were the first to train artist-designers in a modern manner. Both schools were state-sponsored initiatives to merge the craft tradition with modern technology, with a Basic Course in aesthetic principles, courses in color theory, industrial design, and architecture. Vkhutemas was a larger school than the Bauhaus, but it was significantly less promoted and less is known about it in the west. Vkhutemas' influence was expansive however—the school exhibited two structures by faculty and award-winning student work at the 1925 Exposition in Paris. Furthermore, Vkhutemas attracted the interest and several visits from the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred Barr. With the internationalism of modern architecture and design, there were many exchanges between the Vkhutemas and the Bauhaus. The second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer attempted to organise an exchange between the two schools, while Hinnerk Scheper of the Bauhaus collaborated with various Vkhutein members on the use of colour in architecture. In addition, El Lissitzky's book Russia - an Architecture for World Revolution published in German in 1930 featured several illustrations of Vkhutemas/Vkhutein projects. Both schools flourished in a relatively liberal period, and were closed under pressure from increasingly totalitarian regimes.

Vkhutein

As early as 1923, Rodchenko and others published a report in LEF which foretold of Vkhutemas' closure. It was in response to students failure to gain a foothold in industry and was entitled, The Breakdown of VKhUTEMAS: Report on the Condition of the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops, which stated that the school was 'disconnected from the ideological and practical tasks of today'. In 1927, the school's name was modified: "Institute" replaced "Studios" (Вхутеин, Высший художественно-технический институт), or Vkhutein. Under this reorganisation, the 'artistic' content of the basic course was reduced to one term, when at one point it was two years. In these years, the school had a new rector, Pavel Novitsky, who took over from the painter Vladimir Favorsky in 1926. It was under Novitsky's tenure that political pressures increased, including the 'working class' decree, and a series of external reviews by industry, and commercial organisations of student works' viability. The school was dissolved in 1930, and was consolidated with various other programs. One such merger was with MVTU, forming the Architectural-Construction Institute, which became the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1933. The Modernist movements Vkhutemas had helped generate were critically considered abstract formalism, and were seceded historically by Socialist Realism, Postconstructivism, and the Empire style of Stalinist architecture.

External links

• Work from Vkhutemas at schicklerart
• VKHUTEMAS: the Origins of the Russian Avant-Garde