When we published the Jakobson-Tynyanov theses last year (nlr 37), we wished to draw attention to the confrontation of vanguard art and aesthetics with revolutionary politics and theory in the Soviet Union during the decade after the Bolshevik Revolution. El Lissitsky’s polemic on the future of the book is another key document from the same period. Just as Jakobson and Tynyanov prefigured much of the current debate on structuralism, Lissitsky in an obvious way foreshadows many of the insights of Marshall McLuhan. By going back to the twenties we are not being in the least antiquarian but posing the problems which, say, Barthes or McLuhan have raised, but in a revolutionary context. Moreover Lissitsky was himself a practising artist, for whom theoretical problems were inextricably intertwined with his work and his politics.
Lissitsky was born near Smolensk in 1890. Before the Revolution he trained as an engineer and architect in Darmstadt, visited Paris and travelled throughout Italy. On his return to Russia he worked as an apprentice architect, but devoted his time increasingly to painting and book illustration, especially children’s books. His work was heavily influenced by both Jewish and Russian peasant popular art. In 1917 he rallied to the Revolution and a year later designed the first Soviet flags which were carried across Red Square on May Day. Chagall, who shared his preoccupation with Jewish and folk art, invited him to teach at the Vitebsk Art School. But it was here, paradoxically, that Lissitsky fell under the influence of Malevich, who was to oust Chagall from his post as Principal. In this way he came in contact with Constructivism and entered the modern era. He worked principally on posters, such as the famous Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, architectural drawings and book designs. Lissitsky also devoted himself to elaborating a network of contacts throughout Europe, addressing conferences of Dadaists, contributing to De Stijl, lecturing widely and co-founding the trilingual magazine Veshch-Gegenstand-Objet in Berlin. During the latter part of the twenties he began to concentrate on furniture and interior design and, after the onset of Stalinism, was able to continue work designing exhibition displays and pavilions and from 1932