Revolutionary Visions in Early Soviet Visual Culture
Amir Saifullin
This dissertation explores the artistic method of Projectionism, developed by Solomon Nikritin (1898–1965) after the October Revolution. Its primary objective was to reveal and transform reality through visual representation in the context of the early Soviet project. The Projectivists’ specific innovation was to place the creation of ideas above objects at the core of artistic practice and to prioritize the process of this creation over its result. However, the scholarly analysis of Soviet avant-garde art has largely been influenced by conflicting assumptions, either viewing it as a utopian yet impossible political endeavor or strictly utilitarian in orientation. Consequently, scholars have consistently emphasized the significance of Constructivist art in visually shaping early Soviet life while overlooking alternative creative practices.
This neglect of the knowledge theory underpinning the program of Soviet art, coupled with a lack of archival research, has entrenched certain scholarly perspectives. To rectify this, I aim to bring Nikritin’s Projectionism out of archives and storages, shedding light on its remarkable role within the cultural landscape of that period. As a method conceived to project ideas and organize perception, rather than things and sensations, I will demonstrate that Projectionism represented the opposite pole of two imperative forms of organizing post-revolutionary vision. My argument posits that early Soviet visual culture should not be primarily viewed through the lenses of »utopia« and »construction,« but rather through the perspectives of vision, which I will define as Projection and Montage.
Building upon this conceptual foundation, my analysis will reveal how both modes of vision's organization are genealogically linked to the world-building project of »Soviet Enlightenment,« an intellectual enterprise aimed at developing social and cultural consciousness among the proletarian masses through an appeal to theory mediated by the means of philosophy, science, and art.