DOI Heft:
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DOI Artikel:Jackson, Matthew Jesse: Vision and communism
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51715#0030
Crucially, whatever réservoirs of Sex and Death
these pictures tapped into, and they certainly tapped
into some, they always aspire to teach. They are
designed to inflame, but also to edify, not simply to
persuade or entice. There would be no smiling tractor
drivers here. Koretsky’s most powerful art sketches
out a vision of a relentlessly unfamiliar world (at
least to a Soviet citizen), a visibility that would speak
exclusively of others, of the literally invisible worlds
of the American South or South Africa, not of one’s
own problems, hopes or dreams for a better tomor-
row. In this sense, even though these images differ
radically in pictorial form from those of earlier avant-
gardists, such as John Heartfield, Valentina Kulagina,
Gustav Klutsis, or Aleksandr Rodchenko, Koretsky
wanted, like these earlier artists, the union of vision
and Communism to produce a profoundly defamil-
iarizing — even alienating — effect on the viewer.16 17
The autonomous visuality of the Internet, in
which one can search billions of images united by
one capricious word, or merely a letter or number,
is the ultimate dystopia for any Communist vision.
In stark contrast, Koretsky wanted the visible world
to be filled with meaning, to be visually meaning-
full, although the obvious danger was that such
a meaning-filled world would seem too didactic, or
too tame for the technologically-advanced viewer,
16 See the artist’s discussion of these predecessors’ poster de-
signs in Ibidem, pp. 8-25.
17 Further sources:
On vision and visuality, standard departure points are JAY,
M.: DowncastEyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century
Thought. Berkeley 1993; and FOSTER, H. (ed.): Vision and
Visuality. New York 1988.
To track the transformations in postwar capitalist visuality
and Sex/Death, see DEBORD, G.: The Society of the Spectacle
[1967], New York 1994; DIEDERICHSEN, D.-Sexbeat: 1972
bis heute [Sexbeat: 1972 to Today] [1985]. Köln 2002 (2nd ed.);
KRAUS, Ch.: Fifo Green: Vos Angeles Art and The Triumph of
Nothingness. New York 2004; The Invisible Committee: The
Cominglnsurrection [2007], Los Angeles 2009.
On conceptions of the avant-garde in the twentieth Century,
see FOSTER, H.: The Return of the Val: The Avant-Garde at
the End of the Century. Cambridge (MA) 2006.
On the U.S.S.R., Communism, and Communist aesthetics, see
SVENONIUS, I.: The Psychic Soviet and Other Works. Chicago
2006; ŽIŽEK, S.: DidSomebody Say Totalitarianism?F\ew York
2001; and GROYS, B.: The Communist Postscript [2006]. New
York 2010.
the sensory-over-stimulated future Web surfer. In
response, it is as if Koretsky intuited that his agita-
tional images would hâve to channel the forbidden
urgency of Sex/Death if they were to hâve any hope
of compelling the jaded contemporary viewer into
identification with expériences of deprivation and
exploitation.
In the end, Koretsky’s art admits that the com-
bination of vision and Communism could not pro-
duce images of emotional or material abundance in
a convincing way. Vision and Communism could
only manage to offer absence and duress, especially
images of Another under Duress. It is likely that this
Other Person under Duress would hâve become an
engine for a Communist art of the future. As such,
Koretsky’s art might best be described as a kind of
Communist advertising for a future that never quite
arrived. What the advertising would hâve offered
would hâve been the opportun!ty to join a diverse
unseen humanity in its struggles to overcome its
own dehumanization. The implicit message of every
poster and maquette: Communism is not yet capable
of spreading visible joy, but joining its multicultural
world of shared sacrifice and humanist ambition will
ultimately be more invigorating, more life-affirming,
and more personally satisfying than participating in
the ecology of Sex/DeathS1
Among the many publications on Soviet art, see KIAER, Ch.:
Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructiv-
ism. Cambridge (MA) 2005; DEGOT, E.: Russkoe iskusstvo XX
veka [Russian Art of the Twentieth Century], Moscow 2002;
GROYS, B.: History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism. Cam-
bridge (MA) 2010;TUPITSYN, V.: TheMuseologicalUnconscious:
Communal (PostjModernism in Russia. Cambridge (MA) 2009; and
Margarita Tupitsyn’s upcoming study of late Soviet art.
Concerning questions of identification, spectatorship and the
consutnption of art and propaganda, Jacques Rancière’s essay
“The Emancipated Spectator” continues to pose extremely
productive questions; see RANGIERE, J.: The Emancipated
Spectator. London 2009. More generally, Michael Fried’s writing
has thematized these problems for forty years; in particular, see
FRIED, M.: Absorption and Theatricality: Painting andBeholderin the
Age of Diderot. Berkeley 1980; and FRIED, M.: Art and Object-
hood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago - London 1998; on the broader
psychologicallandscapeof these questions, see BUTLER,}.: The
Psychic Eife of Power: Théories in S abjection. Stanford (CA) 1997.
On Viktor Koretsky and his art, see the artist’s observations
collected in KORETSKY, V.: Tovarishchplakat: opyt, raymyshle-
niia [Comrade Poster: Expérience, Thoughts], Moscow 1981;
as well as the survey volume Viktor Koretsky. Moscow 1984.
24
these pictures tapped into, and they certainly tapped
into some, they always aspire to teach. They are
designed to inflame, but also to edify, not simply to
persuade or entice. There would be no smiling tractor
drivers here. Koretsky’s most powerful art sketches
out a vision of a relentlessly unfamiliar world (at
least to a Soviet citizen), a visibility that would speak
exclusively of others, of the literally invisible worlds
of the American South or South Africa, not of one’s
own problems, hopes or dreams for a better tomor-
row. In this sense, even though these images differ
radically in pictorial form from those of earlier avant-
gardists, such as John Heartfield, Valentina Kulagina,
Gustav Klutsis, or Aleksandr Rodchenko, Koretsky
wanted, like these earlier artists, the union of vision
and Communism to produce a profoundly defamil-
iarizing — even alienating — effect on the viewer.16 17
The autonomous visuality of the Internet, in
which one can search billions of images united by
one capricious word, or merely a letter or number,
is the ultimate dystopia for any Communist vision.
In stark contrast, Koretsky wanted the visible world
to be filled with meaning, to be visually meaning-
full, although the obvious danger was that such
a meaning-filled world would seem too didactic, or
too tame for the technologically-advanced viewer,
16 See the artist’s discussion of these predecessors’ poster de-
signs in Ibidem, pp. 8-25.
17 Further sources:
On vision and visuality, standard departure points are JAY,
M.: DowncastEyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century
Thought. Berkeley 1993; and FOSTER, H. (ed.): Vision and
Visuality. New York 1988.
To track the transformations in postwar capitalist visuality
and Sex/Death, see DEBORD, G.: The Society of the Spectacle
[1967], New York 1994; DIEDERICHSEN, D.-Sexbeat: 1972
bis heute [Sexbeat: 1972 to Today] [1985]. Köln 2002 (2nd ed.);
KRAUS, Ch.: Fifo Green: Vos Angeles Art and The Triumph of
Nothingness. New York 2004; The Invisible Committee: The
Cominglnsurrection [2007], Los Angeles 2009.
On conceptions of the avant-garde in the twentieth Century,
see FOSTER, H.: The Return of the Val: The Avant-Garde at
the End of the Century. Cambridge (MA) 2006.
On the U.S.S.R., Communism, and Communist aesthetics, see
SVENONIUS, I.: The Psychic Soviet and Other Works. Chicago
2006; ŽIŽEK, S.: DidSomebody Say Totalitarianism?F\ew York
2001; and GROYS, B.: The Communist Postscript [2006]. New
York 2010.
the sensory-over-stimulated future Web surfer. In
response, it is as if Koretsky intuited that his agita-
tional images would hâve to channel the forbidden
urgency of Sex/Death if they were to hâve any hope
of compelling the jaded contemporary viewer into
identification with expériences of deprivation and
exploitation.
In the end, Koretsky’s art admits that the com-
bination of vision and Communism could not pro-
duce images of emotional or material abundance in
a convincing way. Vision and Communism could
only manage to offer absence and duress, especially
images of Another under Duress. It is likely that this
Other Person under Duress would hâve become an
engine for a Communist art of the future. As such,
Koretsky’s art might best be described as a kind of
Communist advertising for a future that never quite
arrived. What the advertising would hâve offered
would hâve been the opportun!ty to join a diverse
unseen humanity in its struggles to overcome its
own dehumanization. The implicit message of every
poster and maquette: Communism is not yet capable
of spreading visible joy, but joining its multicultural
world of shared sacrifice and humanist ambition will
ultimately be more invigorating, more life-affirming,
and more personally satisfying than participating in
the ecology of Sex/DeathS1
Among the many publications on Soviet art, see KIAER, Ch.:
Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructiv-
ism. Cambridge (MA) 2005; DEGOT, E.: Russkoe iskusstvo XX
veka [Russian Art of the Twentieth Century], Moscow 2002;
GROYS, B.: History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism. Cam-
bridge (MA) 2010;TUPITSYN, V.: TheMuseologicalUnconscious:
Communal (PostjModernism in Russia. Cambridge (MA) 2009; and
Margarita Tupitsyn’s upcoming study of late Soviet art.
Concerning questions of identification, spectatorship and the
consutnption of art and propaganda, Jacques Rancière’s essay
“The Emancipated Spectator” continues to pose extremely
productive questions; see RANGIERE, J.: The Emancipated
Spectator. London 2009. More generally, Michael Fried’s writing
has thematized these problems for forty years; in particular, see
FRIED, M.: Absorption and Theatricality: Painting andBeholderin the
Age of Diderot. Berkeley 1980; and FRIED, M.: Art and Object-
hood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago - London 1998; on the broader
psychologicallandscapeof these questions, see BUTLER,}.: The
Psychic Eife of Power: Théories in S abjection. Stanford (CA) 1997.
On Viktor Koretsky and his art, see the artist’s observations
collected in KORETSKY, V.: Tovarishchplakat: opyt, raymyshle-
niia [Comrade Poster: Expérience, Thoughts], Moscow 1981;
as well as the survey volume Viktor Koretsky. Moscow 1984.
24