The notion of art is a favorite fetish of European thought.

M. Ristić and K. Popović

     Socialist realism was made official as the only formula in art at the First Congress of Soviet Writers held in 1943 in Moscow, although it had been canonized, as the only stylistic form of artistic creation, already from 1934, when it was accentuated as an “antiformalist” art that primarily dealt with socialist matters.⁴ Already then, avant–garde artists as well as its theoreticians viewed socialist realism as reactionary and as abandoning the revolution. On the other hand, one should not forget that socialist realism regarded itself as “the savior that would deliver Russia from barbarism by preserving the classical heritage and all of Russian culture from the ruin into which the avant–garde wanted to plunge it.” ⁵ One should also know that the concept of realism was not rejected even by some artistic drifts of the avant–garde itself.⁶ For many, like for the constructivists, it became unacceptable only when it was charged with being exclusively socialist. Many other forms of realism in art are parallel with avant–garde flows, but as Groys observes, in the early 30's, the avant–garde more or less swayed towards socialist realism. He illustrates this by the example of not only fascist art in Italy and Germany, but also French neo– classicism and Hollywood movies.⁷ Renunciation of the radical language of the avant–garde and a comeback to order, especially after all the devastating challenges of the profound economic crisis, was recommended by numerous artists and humanists.

“The myth of the innocent avant–garde”, in the opinion of Boris Groys, stems from the widespread conviction that the birth of the totalitarian art of socialist realism between 1930 and 1940 was the result of a simple reverting to the old,“ a regressive reaction to the new art that was not understandable to the masses.” In such interpretations, “socialist realism is simply a reflection of the traditionalist tastes of the masses.” … But it “was not created by the masses but was formulated in their name by well–educated and experienced elites who had assimilated the experience of the avant– garde and been brought to socialist realism by the internal logical of the avant–garde method itself, which had nothing to do with the actual tastes and demands of the masses.” ⁸

    The period between the two world wars was marked by dramatic changes, some of which were not as eye–catching as the short skirt and the strident jazz music. The era of the technical reproduction of images, as Benjamin called it, transformed not only the work of art itself, stripping it of its aura, but also changed the classical European culture. It was the new media – photography and film – but also the advances in printing technology, that primarily contributed to the enormous increase of the number of pictures. Illustrated daily papers, magazines, posters, advertising leaflets, postcards, etc., started to be produced in huge circulations from the mid–20s. That led many researchers to the conclusion that a modern mass culture that functioned within global frameworks had sprung to life. For Debord, Dada and surrealism “marked the end of modern art.” ⁹ According to him, the advent of the society of the spectacle should be placed in precisely the late 1920's, when the zone of “pure art” was abandoned in favor of a mass culture and the society of the spectacle.¹⁰

    The rise of photography in the period between the two world wars, and of course of film too, but here we are dealing with photography, was also boosted from the technological side by the advancement of picture reproduction and multiplication techniques. Radically new, both technical and creative interventions in the structure of the photographic image were the consequence of its inclusion in the avant–garde context. And last, but not least, the sphere of advertisement and agitation in a society of mass culture and the spectacle, could not have been imagined without the active participation of photography. Photography with all its sub–types: photomontage, photo collage, photogram, etc., offered a model for the mass production of pictures. It became a visual matrix, upon which the standard for representing reality in popular culture was developed.

    By definition, the avant–garde stems from a militant context, and indeed it so behaves in some of its segments. Quite generally, we can say that one of its demands was for art to renounce the representation of reality and to dedicate itself to the utopistic project of reshaping the world. In the view of Hannah Arendt, already as of the very beginning of the 20 th century, some of the ideas of totalitarianism can be recognized in avant–garde programs.¹¹ After all, it is well known that the avant–garde sprang from the bosom of the bourgeois, capitalist system, but it would have never had so courageously and aggressively opposed the generally accepted societal conventions had it not adopted the moral support of revolutionary political ideas.¹²

    Politically observed, totalitarianism can also be said to have emanated from a revolutionary context, like the avant–garde, which was predominantly leftist, although leftist in a wide range from leftist civic democrats up to communist partisan-ship.¹³ Appropriating the right to revolution, the avant–garde renounced exclusivity, abandoned the context of art and ushered in new fields of action in the sphere of popular culture – from window dressing, magazine and poster design to staging mass performances. One should not forget either that many eminent representatives of the avant–garde, like Rodchenko, Mayakovsky and Lissicky, as well as the Bauhaus artists, for example, were propagandists and masters of adver-tising.¹⁴In a letter addressed to Yugoslav artists in 1945, the painter Alexander Deyneka particularly emphasizes that in the days of war, many artists worked in the “Okna TASS” (“The TASS Windows”), which showed themselves to be high artistic propaganda forms, a sharp weapon, with which the Soviet artists killed the enemy just as neatly as the fighters on the front.” ¹⁵

    After the proclamation of the “death of painting, the death of easel forms”, the triumph was announced of mechanical and collective forms of art production and distribution, as stated in Nikolai Tarabukin's famous 1923 essay, “From the Easel to the Machine”. Radojica Živanović Noe, one of the thirteen Serbian surrealists, having perceived the limits of the traditional work of art, publicly rejected his theretofore artistic work, easel painting, as well as his position of a portrait artist. In the almanac Nemoguće–L' Impossible, in 1930, he crossed out his painted self–portrait with a black X–mark and explained in a manifesto text his act of renunciation of stereotypical artistic practice in which he no longer saw any sense.¹⁶ For him, as well as for the entire Serbian surrealist movement, the visual message, but one articulated in the new media, such as film and photography, was, from the very beginning, of equal importance as the textual one. But, in contrast to the almanac Nemoguće–L' Impossible and the first issue of Surrealism Here and Now, in which photography visualized the idea of the automatic dictation of thoughts, in the last two issues of this magazine, it, as indeed the entire surrealist movement, turned to socially engaged themes. Or, as Rastko Petrović formulated it, from interpreting the diktat of the subconscious, the surrealists shifted ad hoc to historic materialism procedures, substituting materialism for idealism.¹⁷

    This about–turn of surrealism towards ideas of dialectic materialism was met with distrust by the leftists, despite Koča Popović's frank admission that past activity along the lines “surrealism to the surrealists” was mistaken, for surrealists belonged within the official frameworks of left–oriented movements.¹⁸ One of the strongest ideological accusations from the left proceeded from the very name of the movement, from the assertion that any link with reality was necessarily alien to surrealism, and that, instead of on materialistic, it resided upon metaphysical theories. Defending the right to their own reading of Marx and Engels and their own interpretation of historic materialism, the surrealists rejected art that would from a “static realism, entirely in the service of the prejudices and interests of the bourgeois culture, shift to another, just as shallow realism”.¹⁹ Therefore, in the third issue of the magazine Surrealism Here and Now, under the title “Instead of Social Art”, they published twelve photographs documenting various aspects of reality: from Marconi conducting experiments before the Pope, through street riots in Philadelphia, to the man with four teats.²⁰br>

	Златко Моврин, Дизалица на хидроцентрали Зворник, 1958. Zlatko Movrin, Crane at the Zvornik Hydro–Power Plant, 1958

    The photograph, as an authentic picture of reality, and not only the picture of “shallow realism”, registers “surrealist elements in modern social life”, as indicated in the title of this photo–essay. How close surrealism and social art really in fact are,²¹ even though they are vehemently critical of one another, is perhaps best attested to precisely by their shared love of photography. Namely, the photographs from the book La Russie au travail, which illustrate life and work in the Soviet Union, are illustrations of the concrete effects of the revolution, found their way, by no accident at all, that same year, 1932, to both the Stožer (Pillar) and the pages of Surrealism Here and Now.²² Particularly interesting is the photograph entitled “Imagination in the Service of Propaganda”, brought by the next issue of the magazine Surrealism Here and Now, because it was taken during the 1 st of May parade in the streets of Moscow in 1932.²³ Namely, in Gorky Park, the Park of Culture, as they proudly called it then, was established an “art factory”, in which as of 1928 the best artists, mainly theatre design students worked, to be joined in that same year, 1932, by the “former constructivists”, who created a series of temporary constructions and carnival dolls.²⁴

    The material of avant–garde art is no longer canvas, oil and paint, nor is it problems of the illusionist representation of space, but it is life itself. The artist was to be an engineer, and his atelier had to become a workshop. And the promotion of photography, above all in books and magazines on the left wing, stemmed from the belief that a “factual” type of artistic expression could more easily convey the message to the most diverse strata of society.²⁵

    Having opted for the photographic illustration and photomontage, in other words for photography, as the decisive visual medium in spreading pictures about social and political reality, the concept of the avant–garde magazine Surrealism Here and Now, and with it of the entire surrealist movement, aligned itself with the left artistic wing, where the groups Zemlja (Earth) and Život (Life) were already active, but also those around the paper Danas (Today) with Miroslav Krleža at the helm, as well as of the Nova literatura of Pavle Bihaly and Oto Bihalji–Merin. Pavle Bihaly in particular rendered a significant contribution to that effect with his photomontages for Nolit editions. Jovan Popović, a writer and one of the prominent theoreticians of socialist realism, considered photomontage to be “the expression of the new spirit which sees reality and which rediscovers this world of objects around us”. And, in connection with Nolit book jackets, he observed quite rightly that they were drawing on the experience of the German Dadaists, primarily John Heartfield, but while he “likes the simultaneous multiplicity of montage and collage, Bihaly prefers simplification and the clear expressiveness of the ordinary”.²⁶

	Војници на стадиону за Дан младости, Београд, 1986. Soldiers at the Stadium on Youth Day, Belgrade, 1986

At the moment when in 1932 all art groups in the Soviet Union were abolished by a decree of the Bolshevik Party, the few Yugoslav avant–garde groups, each on its own, championed the official colors of the left and its totalist position that only the art of socialist realism was acceptable. In a nutshell, that meant that art had to step down from its ivory tower and was to be socially useful and politically efficient. The objective of art became to transform reality and create the new man. Discussions on the autonomy of the work of art were done with, and “in contrast to the post–revolutionary avant–garde that asked the question what the role of the artist in shaping the new society should be”, a very dissimilar concept was espoused, the constructivist and utilitarian slogan “art into life”.²⁷ Utopistic ideas about art as the generator of social change were reshaped in the fold of the avant–garde itself, with one of the key issues becoming the development of a new language of art that would be understandable to millions. Thus, the surrealist Djordje Jovanović, forgetting the original surrealist program, proposed a return to realism in his essay entitled “Realism as the Artistic Truth”, but in a revolutionary key: “Just as philosophers are long since not required to only interpret the world, but also to contribute to changing it, so may not artists only be elated or disgusted with the world, but must also contribute to changing it.” ²⁸