UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

HUMANITIES FACULTY
DEPARTMENT FOR ART HISTORY
Nomeda Repsyte
When a Work of Art is Whole
An Attempt to Int roduce
the Early Philosophical Essays (1919-24) of
Michail Michailovic Bachtin (1895-1975)
into the Discipline of Art History through
their Analysis and Actual Application f or an Interpretation of
the Self -Portraits (c. 1917-8) by
Chaim Soutine (18931943)
thesis for a cand. phil. degree in art history
Supervisor: dr. Nicoletta Isar
September 2004
2
There is no point in philosophizing," declared the Unknown Poet
evasively. "Both of us - you through literature, I through art - have
experienced every kind of death. Therefore, death can never really
surprise us. Spiritually speaking, a man of culture inhabits not one but
many countries. He lives not in one epoch but in many. He can elect
any form of death and does not grieve when death at last catches up
with him. Overcome by ennui, he pronounces: 'So, we meet again!' It
all seems so ridiculous to him.
Konstantin Vaginov. Kozlinaja pesn. 1928.
3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS 4
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND THEIR SOURCES 5
1. INTRODUCTION 9
2. THE RAVE AROUND THE RUSSIAN
The Bachtin Industry and the Belated Newcomer
13
3. THE SEQUENCE PROBLEM
Mismatching the Interpretative with the Historical
23
4. THE TRI-PARTITE ANALYSIS OF A WORK OF ART
Towards Systematic Studying of Works of Art
33
5. THE PAINTINGS OF MERIT
The Unstable Self-Portraits
68
6. CONCLUSION 81
RSUM P DANSK 87
ILLUSTRATIONS 89
APENDICES
1. M. M. Bachtin and Ch. Soutine: Biographical Data
2. Publications of the Early Texts in Russian and their Translations
3. Ch. Soutine s Paintings: Statistical Data
104
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND PHILMOGRAPHY 123
4
ABBREVIATIONS
AG Avtor i geroj v esteticeskoj dejatel nosti[Author and Hero in Aesthetic
Activity]
IO Iskusstvo i otvetstvennost [Art and Answerability]
KFP K filosofii postupka [Towards a Philosophy of the Act]
KVM K voprosam metodologii estetiki slovesnogo tvorcestva [Towards Questions
of Methodology of Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity]
L Landscape, number indicating the plate in the catalogue raisonn
P Portrait, number indicating the plate in the catalogue raisonn
SL Still- life, number indicating the plate in the catalogue raisonn
5
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND THEIR SOURCES
No. Picture Page Source
1. Anonymous. M. M. Bachtin in spring of 1974 in his
Moscow Flat. Black and white photograph. Size unknown.
Moscow.
2 Holquist&
Cl a r k 1984:
342
2. Anonymous. Ch. Soutine in Paris in c. 1934-5. Black and
white photograph. Size unknown. The Madeleine Castaign
Collection, Paris.
2 CR1: 54
3. Ernst Neizvestnyj. An Illustration from the Cycle for Crime
and Punishment by F. M. Dostoevskij. Late 1960s. Inks on
paper. Size unknown.
89 Dostoevskij
1970:
unpaginated
4. Sakalauskas, M. Vilnius University: the Petras Skarga
Courtyard. Colour photograph. 1970s. Size unknown.
89 Maciulyte-
Kasperaviciene
et al . (1979):
ill. 110.
5. Anonymous . M. M. Bachtin in Nevel. Black and white
photograph. C. 1923-4. Size unknown. Moscow.
89 Ho l q u i s t &
Clark 1984: 41
6. M. M. Bachtin. K voprosam metogologii estetiki slovesnogo
tvorcestva [ Towar ds Ques t i ons of Met hodol ogy of
Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity]. A fragment of the title
page of KVM. 1924. M. M. Bachtin s Archive, Moscow.
89 Bachtin 2003:
264
7. Soutine, Chaim. La jeune femme. C. 1915. Oil on canvas.
73 x 46 cm. Private collection, Paris.
90 CR2 : P1
8. Soutine, Chaim. La f emme qu chien (Portrait de Mme.
Ascher).C. 1915-6. Oi l on canvas. 64. 8 x 49. 8 cm.
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City.
90 CR2 : P2
9. Sout i ne, Chai m. L homme la pipe (Portrait de M.
Chauveau). C. 1916. Oil on canvas. 54.9 x 46 cm. Private
collection, Paris.
90 CR2 : P3
10. Soutine, Chaim. Le violoncelliste (M. Serevitsch), c. 1916.
Oil on canvas. 81 x 44.8 cm. Marion Koogler McNay Art
Museum, San Antonio, Texas.
90 CR2 : P4
11. Soutine, Chaim. Le jeune homme au petit chapeau. C.
1916. Oil on canvas. 81 x 50 cm. Private collection.
91 CR2 : P5
12. Soutine, Chaim. Portrait d homme. C. 1916. Oi l on
canvas. 60.5 x 50 cm. Private collection, Paris.
91 CR2 : P6
13. Soutine, Chaim. Femme couche sur un divan rouge. Oil
on canvas. C. 1916. 54 x 81.3 cm. Private collection, USA.
91 CR2 : P7
6
14. Soutine, Chaim. Femme couche. 1916. Oil on canvas.
59.1 x 92.7 cm. Stanley E. Stern Collection, New York.
91 CR2 : P8
15. Soutine, Chaim. La femme au rocking-chair. C. 1916. oil
on canvas. 60.6 x 45.1 cm. Private collection.
92 CR2 : P9
16. Soutine, Chaim. Les trois paysans. C. 1917. Oil on canvas.
92.7 x 73 cm. Private collection.
92 CR2 : P10
17. Soutine, Chaim. Potrait d homme (Emile Lejeune). C.
1922-3. Oi l on canvas. 54. 9 x 46. 5 cm. Muse de
l Orangerie, Paris.
92 CR2 : P59
18. Soutine, Chaim. L idiot du village. C. 1919. Oi l on
canvas. 92 x 65 cm. Muse Calvet, Avignon.
92 CR2: P19
19. Soutine, Chaim. Autoportrait au rideau. c. 1917. Oil on
canvas. 72,5 x 53,5 cm. Private collection, Paris.
93 CR2 : P11
20. Soutine, Chaim. Autoportrait. c. 1918. Oil on canvas. 54,6
x 45,7 cm. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, New
York.
94 CR2 : P12
21. Soutine, Chaim. Autoportrait la barbe. c. 1917. Oil on
canvas. 81 x 65,1 cm. Private collection.
95 CR2 : P13
22. Soutine, Chaim. L atelier de l artiste la Cit Falguire .
C. 1915-6. Oi l on canvas. 65. 1 x 50 cm. Pr i vat e
collection, Paris.
96 CR1 : L1
23. Soutine, Chaim. Paysage de banlieue aux maisons rouges.
C. 1917. Oil on canvas. 60 x 73 cm. Private collection.
96 CR1 : L2
24. Soutine, Chaim. Les maisons rouges. C. 1917. Oi l on
canvas. 54.3 x 65.1 cm. Private collection, Paris.
96 CR1 : L3
25. Soutine, Chaim. Les maisons. C. 1917. Oil on canvas. 61
x 50 cm. Private collection, Paris.
96 CR1 : L4
26. Soutine, Chaim. La Cit Falguire Montparnasse. C.
1918. Oil on canvas. 81 x 54 cm. Private collection, Israel.
97 CR1 : L5
27. Soutine, Chaim. Maison et jardin aux environs de Paris.
C. 1918. Oil on canvas. 55.2 x 38.1 cm. Leona Cantor
Palmer Collection, Beverly Hills, California.
07 CR1 : L6
28. Soutine, Chaim. Paysage. C.1918. Oil on canvas. 55.9 x
68.1 cm. Private collection, San Francisco, California.
97 CR1 : L7
29. Soutine, Chaim. La maison blanche sur la colline. 1918.
Oi l on canvas. 52. 4 x 63. 5 cm. Ear l i er t he Col i n
Collection, New York.
98 CR1 : L8
30. Soutine, Chaim. La fret. C. 1918. Oil on canvas. 60 x 73
cm. Private collection, Geneva.
98 CR1 : L9
7
31. Soutine, Chaim. Paysage avec maisons. C. 1918. Oil on
canvas. 54 x 65.1 cm. Kunstmuseum Luzern.
98 CR1 : L10
32. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte aux harengs. C. 1916. Oil
on canvas. 64.5 x 48.6 cm. Private collection, Paris.
99 CR1: SL1
33. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte la soupire. C. 1916. Oil
on canvas. 61 x 73.7 cm. Earlier the Colin Collection, New
York.
99 CR1: SL2
34. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte la lampe. C. 1916. Oil on
canvas. 54 x 64.8 cm. Galerie Yoshii, Tokyo.
99 CR1: SL3
35. Soutine, Chaim. Les pommes. C. 1916. Oil on canvas.
38.4 x 79.1 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
99 CR1: SL4
36. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte aux citrons. C. 1916. Oil on
canvas. 63 x 54 cm. Gustav Zumsteg Collection, Zrich.
100 CR1: SL5
37. Soutine, Chaim. Les oranges sur f ond vert. C. 1916. Oil
on canvas. 41 x 63 cm. Private collection, Paris.
100 CR1: SL6
38. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte la pipe. C. 1916. Oil on
canvas. 54 x 94 cm. Muse d Art Moderne de Troyes.
100 CR1: SL7
39. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte aux harengs avec plat ovale.
C. 1917. Oil on canvas. 50 x 73 cm. Private collection.
101 CR1: SL8
40. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte la table ronde. C. 1917.
Oil on canvas. 61 x 50 cm. Private collection, Paris.
101 CR1: SL9
41. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte aux harengs et aux oignions.
C. 1917. Oil on canvas. 38.1 x 61 cm. Private collection.
101 CR1: SL10
42. Soutine, Chaim. Les harengs et la bouteille de Chianti. C.
1917. Oil on canvas. 67. 9 x 40 cm. The Madeleine
Castaing Collection, Paris.
101 CR1: SL11
43. Soutine, Chaim. Les poissons. C. 1917. Oil on canvas.
45.1 x 64 cm. Private collection, Paris.
102 CR1: SL12
44. Soutine, Chaim. Le poulet la table. C. 1918. Oil on
canvas. 65.1 x 81 cm. Private collection, Paris.
102 CR1: SL13
45. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte aux poivrons et aux carottes.
C. 1918. Oil on canvas. 61 x 46 cm. Private collection,
Paris.
102 CR1: SL14
46. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte la volaille. C. 1918-9. Oil
on canvas. 58.4 x 79.1 cm. Private collection, Australia.
103 CR1: SL15
47. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte au chou rouge. C. 1918.
Oi l on canvas. 53. 3 x 44. 5 cm. Earlier of the Collin
Collection, New York.
103 CR1: SL16
48. Czanne, Paul. Czanne at the Palette. c. 1890. Oil on 103 Kl e e b l a t t &
8
canvas. 92 x 73 cm. Sammlung E. G. Bhrle, Zrich. Silver (1998):
23
49. Gogh, Vincent van. Portrait in Front of the Easel. 1888.
Oi l on canvas . 65 x 50. 5 c m. Van Gogh Museum,
Amsterdam.
103 Kl e e b l a t t &
Silver (1998):
23
9
1. INTRODUCTION
Life can be consciously comprehended only in concrete answerability.
M. M. Bachtin. K folosofii postupka. The early 1920s.
Put most briefly, the main focus (problemformulering) of this paper could be formulated in the
following way: an attempt to investigate a possibility of a relationship between M. M. Bachtin s
thought and art history through (i) an analysis of his earliest essays, 1919-1924, and (ii) through an
actual analysis of Ch. Soutine s three self-portraits, 1917-8 (?), from the point of view of
systematic philosophical aesthetics set forward in these writings.
It is no exaggeration to say that the amount of attention resulting in exorbitantly large
bibliographies and numerous conferences and world congresses that M. M. Bachtin s (ill. 1)
intellectual heritage has generated within the academic world since the 1960s is nothing short of
extraordinary. In contrast to other humanities and some social sciences art history has remained
nearly completely indifferent to the tidal wave instigated by the discovery of the Russian thinker
and scholar, though such a state of affairs does not seem to have been shaped by the conscious
rejecting his ideas as inapt for art history. The fact that M. M. Bachtin s ideas are not at least yet
commonplace in art history has had an influence on the mode of constructing and presenting the
argument in this paper.
At the present moment M. M. Bachtin s scholarship and the story of his reception are
moving into another phase. However, the long period of domestication of his ideas within the
context of poststructuralism and postmodernism has not yet receded into the background fully. It
means that a discipline like art history can very easily begin gravitating towards the same failures
of the days past that had taken place in other fields and disciplines. It is, therefore, important to
take a panoramic look at the first decades of M. M. Bachtin s studies, which have acquired the
label of the Bachtin Industry, wherein a very unobtrusive presence, but a presence nevertheless, of
art history can in fact be uncovered. The chapter immediately following this introduction, 2. The
Rave around the Russian: the Bachtin Industry and the Belated Newcomer, is devoted to sketching
the situation, which is bringing to the forefront the fact that the long overlooked beginnings of
M. M. Bachtin is the most sagacious starting place for art history.
10
Four essays of various lengths and at diverse stages of achievement constitute the 1919-
24, or earliest, writings by M. M. Bachtin. After the completion of their first publication in the
middle of the 1980s some scholars have mostly been interested in finding a philosopher within
these writings whilst others have been content to reiterate that the earliest essays attest to the
definite failure of the thinker to achieve the goals he had set to himself in these writings. The
latter is based on at times overtly critical close readings of these texts performed from the
assumption that M. M. Bachtin s thought moves from the general to the particular. In the
meanwhile a handful of biographical facts have been available for nearly a decade now, and they
allude to a potentially very different organisation of the inter-relations between the early essays
having an effect not only on the early M. M. Bachtin, but on his entire intellectual heritage. In 3.
The Sequence Problem: Mismatching of the Interp retative and the Historical, as it seems for the
first time so far, another arrangement of the early essays as constituents of the textual cluster
within M. M. Bachtin s heritage is proposed and explained in detail.
One of the objectives of the next chapter, 4. The Tripartite Analysis of a Work of Art:
towards Systematic Studying of Works of Art, is to test the hypothesis forwarded in the previous
part of the paper. Methodologically it can be best achieved in an ingenuous way, namely, by
adhering closely to the configuration of one of the four essays that functions as the gravitational
centre of the entire cluster of the early writings. Yet the main goal of this chapter is to present in
greater detail the theoretical-methodological framework for analysis of work of art as formulated
by M. M. Bachtin in the 1919-24 writings. The analytical-descriptive way of working on the basis
of the structure of one of the essays has been complemented by a specifically art historical
guilloche in the form of references to the texts written about Ch. Soutine (ill. 2) and his art dating
from after his first larger posthumous retrospectives in the 1960s. These references, albeit
indirectly, demonstrate the vitality of formalism, which M. M. Bachtin opposed already in the first
half of the 1920s.
Ch. Soutine s three self-portraits are analysed in 5. The Paintings of Merit: the
Unstable Self-Portraits adhering to the theoretical framework described in the previous chapter on
tripartite analysis. The chapter consists of three smaller parts focusing on the aesthetic object of
the self-portraits, analysing artistic material in these works and investigating how the aesthetic
object of the works is carried out by articulated artistic material. M. M. Bachtin s conception of
artistic material and consequently its actual analysis demands to go beyond theoretical approaches
that have so far been employed in the writings on Ch. Soutine. On the other hand, it allows to use
11
a methodological approach for analysing pictorial space developed within the field of empirical
aesthetics that remains very modestly integrated into art history to this date. However, the limits
of this paper do not permit any detailed presentation or thorough evaluation and discussion of the
approach chosen for analysis of artistic material in the three self-portraits by Ch. Soutine.
The final part of the paper, 6. Conclusion, elaborates on the status of M. M. Bachtin s
scholarship at the present moment and some of the language-related problems that will affect any
discipline setting about to deal with M. M. Bachtin irrespective of the part of his heritage. The
concluding part sketches very briefly possible ways of continuing integrating M. M. Bachtin into
art history. Finally, it raises the question whether modernism of the first half of the 20th century
should not be fundamentally rethought.
There are two reasons explaining the presence of Ch. Soutine in this paper. The first of
them is straightforward. Though study of theories, methods and alike on their own is far from
being a novelty within art history, introduction and eventual absorption of a new one within the
discipline still remains dependent on how successful it can be during actual studies of concrete
works of art. The selection of only three works by one artist has been made, but this delimitation
of art historical material has been dictated by the scope of this paper, and as well it permits also to
carry out a more in-depth analysis of the actual works. The second reason comes from the story of
the Bachtin Industry that for a fairly long time thought that M. M. Bachtin s writings were of
significantly later date than they actually were. In order to bring in an additional and yet discrete
distancing device from the latter it has seemed more sensible to select works by an artist who was
contemporary of M. M. Bachtin and his early essays (ill. 4) and who at the same point of time is
not one of modern art s canonical figures that tend to be more susceptible to dominant
interpretative views of the day.
Also, next to the main body of the text there is a number of other materials included in
the paper. 49 illustrations used in this paper have been taken from several books and catalogues,
and all their sources are provi ded i n a rel evant t abl e. The fi rst of the appendices gives
biographical summaries of the lives of M. M. Bachtin and Ch. Soutine that have been compiled
from various sources. The second appendix shows the chronology of the publication of the early
essays and their translations. The third appendix contains essential tables, graphs and notes
complementing the analysis of material in the three paintings in the fourth chapter. The list of
literature and filmed materials used during the work on this paper is also provided as well as the
Danish summary of the text.
12
With the sole exception of the Gallicised version of the original name Sutin the rest of
Russian names and titles are transliterated from Cyrillic following the ISO standard while the
Anglicised forms of the proper names and titles are preserved in citations from and references to
the works where they have first appeared spelled according to those rules. All italics in quotations
from M. M. Bachtin s works are his own; there are occasional question marks in quotations, and
they indicate so far undeciphered places in the manuscripts. Each citation is supplied with two
page numbers respectively referring to the places in the Russian original and the English
translation. When quotations from M. M. Bachtin s texts have been altered in comparison to the
existing English translations, they have been supplied with the asterisk sign at the end.
When this paper was nearly finished the first volume of M. M. Bachtin s completed
works containing the early essays and extensive commentaries to them became available. The
wealth of information included in this volume required comparison as well as readjustment of all
the references to M. M. Bachtin s works and consequently appropriate changes in English
translations. At the same time no significant new information emerged that would have subverted
the hypothesis worked out in the third part of this paper in regard to internal relations between the
early essays. Several additional details that further support the presented hypothesis in the third
part are made known for the first time in the commentaries, and they have been added to the third
part, though the presented factual material in this part of the paper is not completely exhaustive in
comparison to what it now available to the reader in more than 500 pages of commentaries to the
early essays (Bachtin 2003: 343-878).
13
2. THE RAVE AROUND THE RUSSIAN
The Bachtin Industry and the Belated Newcomer
It began to be felt immediately that in our spiritual world a new
colossal continent, a new part of the world had emerged. And
nearly just as instantly in the capricious humanitarian consciousness
these books, in likeness to the chardin skin, dried up and shrank to
two-three phrasiological sentences, recognisable signs.
Vladimir S. Bibler. Michail Michailovic Bachtin, ili Poetika kul tury.
1991.
The organisers of the 9th International Bachtin Conference, Brian Pool, Gert Mattenklott and Jurij
Murasov, that took place on July 26-30, 1999, at the Freie Universitt Berlin, Germany, made an
attempt to add a previously virtually undetectable component in this event. In the 9th IBC s
electronic call for papers dispatched from the Department of Comparative Literature of FUB in
1998 an intention to set up a panel devoted to visual arts was being announced when the fifth of
five described areas was formulated as 5. Visual arts (painting and media) . An inclusion of a
panel on visual arts in a programme of a conference, which focus is not framed by the issues of art
and its studies could today surprise a few, if any at all. Yet a panel on visual arts gains a rather
different connotation when it becomes clear that it has been included in an event that in its own
turn is an element constitutive and indicative of the phenomenon that without exaggerations could
be seen as the most peculiar and astonishing intellectual adventure of the academia of the late 20th
century.
This event-in-progress has been aptly labelled the Bachtin Industry by an American
Slavist (Morson 1986) since the heritage of the Russian thinker Michail Michailovic Bachtin
(1895-1975) is at the heart of this most interesting activity. It commenced approximately in the
middle 1960s simultaneously in the European East (the former USSR and more specifically
Russia) and West (France), comparatively quickly reaching the academia outside Europe. Thus,
the philosophy-focused 9th IBC was supposed to announce that regardless of the delay of 30 years
visual arts and their studies are finally joining the Bachtin Industry or that these studies and
possibly even making of visual arts are at least becoming aware of M. M. Bachtin s ideas.
However, the final programme of the 9th IBC demonstrated that the Bachtin Industry could hardly
14
delight in one more addition to its by now incredibly vast thematic-disciplinary domain. The fifth
panel Bachtin und die anderen Knste worked on the last day of the 9th IBC, however, none of
its 12 presentations was going to address the oddly singled out painting, whilst of visual media-
based artistic practices such as photography, film, video and computers only cinematic arts were
given marginally more attention.
The unsuccessful outcome of the organisers intention to set visual arts and M. M. Bachtin
side by side was predetermined. The thinker s concepts and terms turn up relatively frequently in
minor genres of art writing such as articles in glossy art magazines, essays in catalogues
accompanying smaller exhibitions, reviews in popular periodicals and alike. There these notions,
among which the carnival, grotesque body and dialogue as well as their derivatives are most often
encountered, recur without their author, in a matter of fact, manner for these concepts and terms
lead a life of their own. An incorrect conclusion could be drawn from this observed tendency,
namely, that M. M. Bachtin s heritage has generally become or is at least becoming - an integral
part of art history. It is, however, very difficult to substantiate such a claim and consequently to
expect art history to make an ample contribution to the Bachtin Industry.
All three relatively recently published collections of articles tracing the influence of M.
M. Bachtin s thought on human sciences (Mendelker 1995, Bell & Gardiner 1998, Lhteenmki &
Dufva 1998) do not make notice of studies of visual arts as a domain, on which this heritage has
had a qualitatively or quantitavely perceptible impact. An examination of the Bachtinian
bibliography scattered throughout printed
1
and electronic
2
databases points to the same direction
since the amount of found materials could not support the idea that at least quantitatively there is
absorption of M. M. Bachtin s ideas into art history taken place: books (Roberts 1990, Bal 1991,
Efimov & Manovich 1993, Haynes 1995, Kemp 1996)
3
, articles (Ka uk 1985, Smith 1990, Weibel
1
The secondary literature bibliographical listings in the following publications have been consulted:
Karpunov (1989), Jurcenko (1995), Karpunov & Makarevic (1995), Magnutova (2002), Nordquist (1988,
1993), Le Bulletin Bakhtine/The Bakhtin Newsletter (1986, 1991); Adlam & Shepherd (2000) still not being
available at the time.
2
The following electronic databases have been consulted: The Analytical Database compiled and maintained
by the Bakhtin Centre at the University of Sheffield, England, UK (http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/A-
C/bakh/dbase.html), Bell & Howell Information and Learning (former UMI Dissertations) ProQuest, MLA,
UnCover, EBSCOhost, Art Index and Humanities Citation Index.
3
Regardless of the extensive use of visual works of art, the postgraduate (M. A.) dissertation by Gediminas
Lankauskas (Lankauskas 1993) has not been included since it is primarily an anthropological study. Another
ignored group of art studies, in which M. M. Bachtin s ideas are markedly present (e.g., Daniel 1986,
Darkevic 1988), is the works written Irom the perspective oI kompeksnoe izucenie iskusstva [complex
research of art], an approach from the 1970s and 1980s that is awaiting its analysis, history and evaluation to
be written.
15
1993, Kotovic 1995, 1996, Smith 1995, Kemp 1998, Codell 1998)
4
and dissertations (Aylen 1996,
Wright 1997)
5
that address the issues of art and invoke this thinker s ideas to varying degrees date
from the period of 1985-2003 and amount to only 15 bibliographical entries
6
. It is indeed true that
the Bachtin bibliography deals with several thousands of entries from almost literally the entire
World, therefore inevitably remaining chronically incomplete and with the active margin of error.
Yet there are no significant reasons to expect these potentially lacking bibliographical materials
would contain enough data to alter the fact witnessing art history s general disinterestedness in M.
M. Bachtin s heritage. Though the appearance of M. M. Bachtin s concepts and terms in any
connection to art above all attests to the general popularity the Russian thinker s concepts and
terms have gained in the humanitarian thinking so far, it does, nevertheless, deserve a closer look.
Taken as a collective writing, the texts in question cover a long time span and invoke a
variety of artistic genres and practices. They deal with Medieval (Catholic and Byzantine)
painting, Italian Renaissance murals, paintings and alter panels, Dutch and Flemish paintings,
prints and drawings of the age of Mercantilism, English murals of the 19th century as well as
Russian landscape and self-portrait paintings and drawings and American sculptures from the
same period, modernist paintings and several artistic phenomena of the post-1945 period. On its
own, this chronologically and topically sizeable domain is encouraging a question as to what kind
of method-theory might satisfactorily cover this vastness and, furthermore, as to who and what
might be the author of such a method or theory. Some clarifications can be retrieved from the
ways the authors of the texts approach M. M. Bachtin s ideas.
An explanation provided by a particular author why M. M. Bachtin needs to feature in his
or her work is rare. Deborah J. Haynes is driven by her personal interest in the religious and
moral overtones for the nineteenth-century debate about art-for art s sake versus art -for-life s
sake (Haynes 1995: xiii). For Peter Weibel (Weibel 1993) M. M. Bachtin is needed as a
constituent of the artistic theoretical discourse of the late 20th century affecting contemporary
visual art. Only one author has given a direct and articulate explanation why art history needs M.
M. Bachtin. The problem is namely art history itself that as late as 1997 is seen in this way:
4
An article on M. M. Bachtin and Marc Chagall is known from a partial reference in a footnote to an article
(Edwards 1998: 177, n3) as it could be neither obtained nor verified bibliographically. Academic article that
refer to visual arts for other purposes than investigating them directly have been excluded (e.g., Rosenberg
1990, Costa 1991, Best 1993).
5
D. J. Haynes postgraduate (ph. d.) dissertation (Haynes 1991) is not counted as an individual entry since it
has been reworked into a book (Haynes 1995).
6
Writings dealing with mass media-based artistic practices (photography, cinema, video and computer art)
and architecture have not been investigated.
16
This older construct carries a number of associated methodologies and
assumptions. Meaning is authoritative and singular. Context is defined in
idealist terms: the relationship of object to culture occurs in a stable matrix in
which culture, in a Hegelian sense, is defined by a zeitgeist, an informing
spirit that functions in a monolithic fashion to mold the intellectual and
material products of an age. (Miller 1997: 11)
Later in the article Angela Miller advocates the need for a Bachtinian turn in art history in order
to reshape the disciplinary field into a practice fitting today s political trends, i.e. encompassing
just about any visual production-oriented activity, in both its methods and topics of investigations.
Presumably M. M. Bachtins heritage contains much needed to achieve such goals. Other authors
do not elaborate on the reasons that make M. M. Bachtin essential to them or to studies of visual
arts in general finding it sufficient to include a nebulous remark on instrumental value of some M.
M. Bachtin s concepts and terms in their own pursuits. What are the techniques through which the
authors of the texts in question integrate M. M. Bachtin s ideas into art history?
In fact, one of these techniques is surprisingly simple. Crudely put, it amounts to going
directly to M. M. Bachtin s texts in order to extract from them those concepts and terms that seem
to be most suited for a particular author s undertaking. Wolfgang Kemp treated the thinker s
concepts as simple Stichworte (Kemp 1996)
7
. Marielle Barbara Desiree Aylen swapped one word,
the reader, with another, the viewer, that seemingly serves a study of visual arts better and in her
opinion causes no semantic changes of any kind (Aylen 1996: 18-9). In the words of D. J. Haynes
this attitude is understood as a box of tools from which we take what we need (Haynes 1995:
7)
8
. This quasi-logical notion guided her through the writing process of the only book addressing
visual arts and M. M. Bachtin s ideas and, in her view, demonstrates both the applicability of the
thinker s heritage to the studies of visual arts and even the direction, i.e. the box of tools
methodology, in which to proceed.
7
In an article of a later date W. Kemp elevated the term chronotope from a mere Stichworte into a more
thoroughly defined concept necessary for the analysis of the pictorial space through narratives (Kemp 1998).
8
D. J. Haynes work received hard and not underserved criticism (Gaughan 1996, Tihanov 1997, Carrier
1998, Edwards 1998) for haziness of the argument and failure to press M. M. Bachtin s writings into
structuralist and poststructuralist discourses, though none of the reviewers was concerned about the dubious
box of tools methodology. There are two more discussions of D. J. Haynes book, although in them the
book is utilised for other purposes than discussing and evaluating D. J. Haynes attempt(Emerson 1997: 215-
5, Hasenmueller 1999).
17
Other authors take a somewhat more refined stand towards M. M. Bachtin. In a blunt
manner they invoke some aspect of his ideas in order to denounce them as unsuccessful. For
instance, Mieke Bal in her book drawing on Rembrandt s works makes a reference to M. M.
Bachtin only to immediately announce him vague in his terminology, hence, impeding
investigation of the alterity-similarity issue (Bal 1991: 26). Likewise, David R. Smith, an
American art historian specialising in the art of the Netherlands of the Golden Age, points to M.
M. Bachtin exclusively as a poor appropriator of the term chronotope, originally coined by Albert
Einstein (Smith 1990: 163, 172-3 ns30-2).
9
For John Roberts M. M. Bachtin is noticeable in the
capacity oI one oI many pendants` to Valentin Nikolaevic Volosinov (1895-1936), a prominent
Marxist and author of the reasonably well-known, albeit disputed,
10
Marksizm i filosofija jazyka
[Marxism and the Philosophy of Language], 1929 (Roberts 1990: 150, 152). After these singular
appearances M. M. Bachtin quite understandably never re-emerge in these writings again.
Whilst discussing P. Weibel s essay (Weibel 1993), Cecilie Hgsbo stergaard in her
own work found it worth noticing that when introducing M. M. Bachtin P. Weibel was in actual
fact accepting other interpreters , specifically that of Julia Kristeva s, version o f M. M. Bachtin as
his own (stergaard 1999: 405, 409). In all the likelihood C. H. stergaard unintentionally
emphasised one more common and important feature of the texts addressed here. Their authors
appear to be oblivious to the very existence of the Bachtin Industry already having its own history
(e.g., Machlin 1986, 1992, 1993a-b, 1995b, Jurcenko 1995a, BB/BN 1996, Emerson 1997) that
remains inseparable from M. M. Bachtin s heritage because it continues to function as the place,
from which any inquiry willingly or not originates. It is a paradox: on the one hand, these texts
have been written from or in encounter with the discipline of art history that in the course of the
last third of a century was intensely preoccupied with its own history and developmental strategies
that are at least partially responsible for the first encounters with M. M. Bachtin; on the other hand,
these texts demonstrate the utter oblivion towards anything historical surrounding the thinker.
This deliberately or not activated ignorance does not pass without effects.
9
It is, however, true that a few years later the same art historian found the idea of the carnivalesque
satisfactory for an analysis of a work by Rembrand (Smith 1995).
10
There exists a hypothesis that in the 1920s M. M. Bachtin wrote several works that were published under
the names of others. Next to Marksizm i f ilosof ija jazyka [Marxism and the Philosophy of Language],
Freidizm: kriticeskij ocerk [Freudism: a Critical Essey], 1927, by N. V. Volo inov and Formal nyj metod v
literaturovedenii: kriticeskoe vvedenie v sociologiceskuju poetiku [The Formal Method in Literary Studies: a
Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics|, 1928, by Pavel Nikolaevic Medvedev (1891-1938? 1941?) are
also the disputed works .
18
It has already been mentioned earlier that the interest in M. M. Bachtin dates from the
middle of the 1960s, the time when the thinker was still alive and resided in Saransk, Mordovian
ASSR, USSR. The Bachtin Industry was set off by two publications: after 34 years the revised
edition of Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo [Problems of Dostoevskij s Poetics] (PPD) was
published in 1963 and followed up in 1965 with Tvorcestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul`tura
srednevekov ja i Renesansa [Creativity of Franois Rabelais and Folk Culture of the Middle Ages
and Renaissance] (TFR), a work written in the late 1930s and defended as a doctoral dissertation in
the 1940s (see Appendix 1). Even before the first translations into non-Slavic languages came out
in 1968
11
the reader without sufficient skills in the Slavic tongues was introduced to M. M.
Bachtin s ideas. Working from the position of neo-modernism of the French New Criticism, Julia
Kri st eva was t he fi rst academi c aut hor i n t he West t o appropri at e t he Russi an s i deas
interpretatively i n 1967 (Kri st eva 1967) and t hen agai n i n 1970 (Kri st eva 1970); albeit
acknowledging certain problematic areas she was overall approving of M. M Bachtin s literary
schol arshi p. Thi s coul d have been achi eved onl y because t he t wo books were seen as
contemporary texts, and it enabled J. Kristeva to emphasise those particular moments in PPD and
TFR that could be without substantial difficulties incorporated into the New Criticism s agenda.
Hence, unintentionally the works had been stripped of their historical-intellectual
circumstances, in other words, no attempt was made to try to understand those works in theirs and
not the reader s historical context for there were no indications that the books were not as
contemporary as the dates of publications suggested. In the following years more and more details
regarding the authorship of M. M. Bachtin started to be available, and they soon lead to an
understanding that the contemporaneity of the works was more the result of the situation of the
humanities in the 20th century than the property of the texts themselves (Machlin 1995b-c,
1997)
12
. Yet in spite of all this the approach towards M. M. Bachtin remained in the style of the
precedent set by J. Kristeva, i.e. reading of his oeuvre from the position of the suprapersonal
11
PPD s translations came out in this chronological order: Serbo-Croatian in 1967, Italian and Japanese in
1968, French (two different versions), Polish and Romanian in 1970, Czech and German in 1971, English
1973, Bulgarian 1976, Hebrew 1978, Portuguese 1981, English (second version) 1984, Spanish 1986, Korean
1988, Finnish and Swedish 1991, Lithuanian 1996. TFR s translations came out in this chronological order:
English 1968, French 1970, Japanese 1974, Czech and Polish 1975, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian 1978,
Italian 1980, Hungarian 1982, English 1984 (second version), German, Portuguese and Spanish 1987,
Swedish 1991, Danish 2001.
12
V. L. Machlin has argued that during the first post-1917 decade the Russian thinkers formulated the
paradigm of the non-classical humanitarian thought and were themselves aware of its importance for
European thinking and culture. It had been silenced by 1929-30 before ever having a possibility to become
an established mode of thinking. In this author s opinion many problems of contemporary humanities as well
as the early views of M. M. Bachtin s work stem namely from here.
19
theories (Emerson 1995: 2) whilst ignoring the historical circumstances. This principle is the
essential and influential legacy of the early Bachtin Industry.
M. M. Bachtin may have remained predominantly within the sphere of linguistics and
literary scholars, had his emergence not coincided with the explosive tendency that has become to
be known as postmodernism manifesting itself as a consolidated stratagem after the thinker s death
in 1975. Since postmodernism accepted the policy of nearly total, if not to say totalitarian,
ressentiment (Machlin 1993c: 135) as its defining moment, M. M. Bachtin s thought, then semi-
institutionalised and already rising to the status of the cutting-edge academic fashion, were not to
be spared: towards the thinker postmodernists did not have any intentions to uphold the
benevolence and genuine interest that the neo-modernists of the French School succeeded to
maintain regardless of their tilted interpretations (cf El'Muallia 1995). In other words, M. M.
Bachtin metamorphosed from one of us into our other who, as Vitalij L. Machlin noticed
(Machlin 1993c), must be punished, although never stating it clearly, of which sins and crimes M.
M. Bachtin was being accused. If he were to be punished for the biggest crime and sin in the eyes
of postmodernists, i.e. being a modernist, then they were attacking a postmodern version of a
modernist or at best a modernist of the French School and definitely not a modernist of the
historical modernism and not even a modernist in M. M. Bachtin s own version. Simultaneously,
postmodernists did not fail to notice that M. M. Bachtin s thought possessed certain plasticity.
Turning for the assistance to the formalist root of postmodernism and its transdisciplinary mindset,
too governed by the suprapersonal theories (C. Emerson) metadiscourse, the Russian s thought
could have been put to generating plentiful bibliographies and large conferences. It all reached the
apogee in the Centennial 1995 year, when there was a Dialogue on Every Corner, Bakhtin in
Every Class (Emerson 1995: 1), after which the interest in M. M. Bachtin started to dwindle
slightly (Emerson 2002).
It is, however, only a part of the Bachtin Industry. The structuralist-postmodernist
discursive modes, through which M. M. Bachtin s heritage was looked at lost their significance,
though not yet the critical textual mass, and towards the middle of the 1980s the inner split began
t o t ake pl ace wi t hi n t he Bacht i n I ndust r y. Bachtinistics was branching out from the
Bachtinological mainstream as distinctly different line of investigation from the latter s orientation
towards domestications, application and extensions of M. M. Bachtin s thought in favour for, in
the manner of speaking, fundamentally oriented research of M. M. Bachtin s heritage(Bogatyreva
1991: 2, Norenkov 1992, Ivanov 1995, Vachruev 1997, Vasil ev 1997, 1998). It was caused by
20
the publication of M. M. Bachtin s last major essay written some time between 1918 and 1924,
though printed only in 1986 (Bachtin 1986) as the last piece of writing that had previously been
known only to a very small group of people. Two secondary texts could be placed next to the
original essay as contributing to very different degrees to the emergence of Bachtinistics. They
were an American biography by Michael Holquist and Katerina Clark (Holquist & Clark 1984)
and a little known Master-level dissertation by Matthew Roberts, which appears to be the earliest
paper arguing that M. M. Bachtin was neither a Formalist nor a Marxist regardless of the agendas
and wishes of structuralists and poststructuralists (Roberts 1989). Since then Bachtinistics has
been taken up by too many researchers to be named and distributed across different countries, even
if at one point of time one author had attempted to present this line of inquiry as an old fashioned
and quite ridiculous preoccupation of post-Soviet Russian scholars only (Emerson 1997).
The reasons because of which the 9th IBC s organisers intentions to set up a Bachtinian
visual arts panel in 1999 was indeed predetermined to fail become graspable.
13
On the one hand, a
dozen of articles in today s art history can hardlybe considered a sign of serious interest or of
forthcoming contributions from art history to the studies of the Russian thinker. On the other
hand, as it can be seen in 11 of the 15 found art historical texts, currently M. M. Bachtin of art
history is the same M. M. Bachtin of the structuralist-postmodernist take that as a working concept
has been unproductive for more than a decade and in fact eventually outsourced by Bachtinistics.
The Bachtin Industry, which has hitherto not halted entirely, may have found this interesting
purely from the statistical point of view, e.g. as an augmentation of the Bachtin bibliography and a
prolongation of the list of disciplinary fields having an affiliation with the Bachtin Industry even
on this late date. In such a situation the impression forms that perhaps there is hardly anything that
could catch the attention of art history at this time, and it is, therefore, entirely reasonable to ask,
on which grounds art history should be even considering engaging with M. M. Bachtin at all.
Firstly, there is this tiny detected interest in M. M. Bachtin within art history as well as
the Bachtin Industry s curiosity about art history s attitude to the thinker s thought. It could be
argued if the interests indisputably scarce and sporadic are capable of constituting an adequate and
convincing reason for a more comprehensive engagement with this author. Yet at the same time
13
On August 4, 2000 the Bakhtin Centre at the University of Sheffield, England, UK, dispatched the
electronic announcement about the symposium Adventures of Dialogue: Bakhtin and Benjamin, to be held on
June 21-2, 2001 at the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
One of the symposium s themes has been formulated as Vision and Visuality (carnival, carnivalesque,
baroque [sic], the grotesque, theatricality; photography, cinema, art, advertising, posters, stadium, sport, the
Olympics; graffiti; the Net) . It seems that this symposium did not receive any wider resonance.
21
they are also indisputably, even though not entirely effortlessly, noticeable. Moreover, the
absence of solidified interest in M. M. Bachtin s ideas from art history s perspective is most likely
rooted in the internal development of art history in the course of the last few decades. Hence, this
dearth does not serve as sufficient precondition for concluding even on a hypothetical level that his
ideas are in fact futile for the art historical disciplinary field and therefore they should not be
dismissed before t aki ng a cl oser l ook at t hem. In fact , it advances exactly the opposite
assumption.
Secondly, the relevance of M. M. Bachtin to art history has already been suggested by
juxtaposing his ideas and that of two classics of art history, Alois Riegl (Bogatyreva 1991: 5,
Haynes 1995: 64, 87-9, 99) and Aby Warburg (Sokolov 1997), and well-known theoreticians of art
like Jos Ortega y Gasset (Bogatyreva 1991: 5), Theodor Lipps (Haynes 1995: 41-4), Jan
Mukarovsk and Roman Ingarden (Grjakalov 1995, Grbel 1989) and Lev S. Vygotskij (Lima
1995).
14
A few odd cases hinted at M. M. Bachtin s importance for understanding the art of the
late 19th-early 20th centuries (Bogatyreva 2002, Bunina 1989, 1991, 1992, Ustjugova 1991) and
the late 20th century (Abelinskiene 1995, Bogatyreva & Volkova 1991). It is true that on the
surface these instances are reminiscent of the domestication technique of M. M. Bachtin as one of
us that was prevalent in the early Bachtin Industry, nevertheless, it permits an assumption that M.
M. Bachtin s writings may substantiate themselves as relevant for studies of visual arts.
Obviously, at t hi s t ime only a hypothetical supposition of this probable connection could be
adopted here.
Finally, there is the thinker s own observation about the possible connection between his
ideas and visual arts. For the first time this commentary has been emphasised by Per Dalgaard in
the middle of the 1980s (Dalgaard 1986). In 1970-1 the Polish journalist Zbigniew Podgrzec
conducted a lengthy interview with the thinker (Podgrzec & Bachtin 1975). During one of the
sessions the journalist asked M. M. Bacht i n what he thought of the illustrations by Ernst
Neizvestnyj (b. 1926) that he had created for the new limited edition of Prestuptlenie i nakazanie
[Crime and Punishment], 1866, by Fedor M. Dostoevskij (1821-81) (ill. 3):
Dostoevskij is being illustrated as if it were dramatic or daily-life events.
In the best illustrations I know, it was succeeded to show Dostoevskij s
14
M. M. Bachtin s ideas were also extensively compared with the works of structuralist and poststructuralist
theoreticians who addressed the matters of art. Since this matter is a question of M. M. Bachtin s reception
story and history of the human sciences in the 20th century, these attempts are taken into consideration here.
22
Petersburg. But in the illustrations of E. Neizvestnyj for the first time I
had seen the universal man. They are also interesting purely from the artistic
poi nt of vi ew. It i s not i l l ust rat i ons at al l . It i s t he cont i nuat i on of
Dostoevskij s world and images (obrazy) in the other sphere, the sphere of
graphic art. (in Dalgaard 1986: 134)
This specific comment, in which M. M. Bachtin touches upon visual art, and unusual in itself
because this kind of observations are extremely rare in M. M. Bachtin s heritage, has another
worth besides its rarity. The actual significance of this commentary is in its conveyance of M. M.
Bachtin s view that though there are differences between arts, there are also certain points where
they intersect, in this case the two different arts being literature and visual art. In its own turn, it
suggests that there may be some aspects in the Russian s theoretical considerations that are or may
be valid and valuable not only for literary art, which was the main interest of M. M. Bachtin s, but
also for other arts as well including visual arts.
The briefly sketched history of the Bachtin Industry and art history s status as a novice in its
relation to M. M. Bachtin s heritage suggest that the most sensible is to start at the beginning with
the four articles dating from 1919 to 1924 and referred to as the Architectonics of Answerability,
philosophical aesthetics or simply the early essays. These four essays are Avtor i geroj v
esteticeskoj dejatel nosti[Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity], Iskusstvo i otvetstvennost [Art
and Answerability], K f ilosof iji postupka [Towards a Philosophy of the Act] and K voprosam
metodologii estetiki slovesnogo tvorcestva [Towards Questions of Methodology of Aesthetics of
Verbal Creativity] that until 2003 was known under the title Problema soderzanija, materiala i
Iormy v slovesnom chudozestvennom tvorcestve [The Problem of Content, Material and Form in
Verbal Aesthetic Creativity]. They have been available since 1986 in Russian, however, all four
of them are available only in English, Polish and Spanish translations (see Appendix 2). The
American biographers were the first authors to put forward an idea that the early essays should be
seen as one cluster (Holquist & Clark 1984: 63-94), seconded independently by a Russian
researcher (Bar t 1985). Later investigations accepted the idea of grouping the early writings into
one cluster whether they would be addressed individually (Roberts 1989, Haynes 1995, Bruhn &
Lundquist 1998) or as a part in holistic interpretations (Morson & Emerson 1989, Holquist 1990,
Volkova 1990, Bogatereva 1991, Pankov 1994, Bogatyreva 1996, Bruhn 2001). The organisation
of these essays within the cluster poses a significant problem, which must be addressed before they
could be read as setting forward a theoretical framework.
23
3. THE SEQUENCE PROBLEM
Mismatching of the Interpretative with the Historical
[R]eaders who have formed their view of Bakhtin on the basi s of
t he l at er wri t i ngs may wel l fi nd t he earl y works profoundl y
embarrassing.
Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan. Bakhtin s Homesickness: A Late Reply to
Julia Kristeva. 1995.
Regardless of their disciplinary specialisations and concrete topics of investigations, the
researchers addressing the early essays as either a sovereign subject or a constitutive segment
within M. M. Bachtin s thought appear to favour the same structural conceptual line along which
the actual arrangement of the texts is performed. The interpreters and commentators organising
their arguments around the textual wholes of the essays find it most pertinent to open their articles
and books with IO moving on to KFP and proceeding with AG and KVM ( cf Volkova 1990,
Bogatyreva 1991, Bonetskaja 1991, Pankov 1994, Zylko 1994, Haynes 1995, Gorobinskij 1996,
Bruhn & Lundquist 1998, Bruhn 2001). Also the American Slavists behind the translation of the
essays into English took a firm stand that this arrangement of the works is the correct one
(Holquist 1990: xvii), as well as the publishers of the essays in one volume, which came out in the
Ukraine in 1994 (Bachtin 1994). In the Bachtin Industry, where any consensus has been difficult
to achieve, such an accord appears nothing short of incredible, especially keeping in mind the fact
that the earliest papers are ridden with problems like very uncertain dating, fragmentary survival
and difficulties with deciphering of the original texts and dubiously genuine titles in the case of
KFP and AG. It has been widely known since 1984 (Holquist & Clark 1984), i.e. two years before
all four essays had become available in Russian and nine years before they had been translated into
English, that the main body of the earliest surviving writings was in disarray. Nevertheless, it has
resulted in what now appears to be a firm conviction that the early essays are inter-related in such
a way as represented by the IO-KFP-AG-KVM sequence.
This particular order of organising the early essays is, however, strongly interpretative
and a result of certain conditions dependent on particular trends in the Bachtin Industry more and
l ess on scrupulous research of the circumstances around the beginnings of M. M. Bachtin.
24
Encapsulating his early thought in these particular inter-relations within the cluster of the earliest
works also constructs a very specific view of the young thinker in the very beginning of his
intellectual enterprise. The definite sequence, IO-KFP-AG-KVM, discloses that the positioning
each of the fours essays in a fixed position within the series assigns each text a particular label. In
this way the earliest known works by M. M. Bachtin acquire the following connotations: the six
paragraphs of IO is an enthusiastic manifesto of the young thinker, KFP an attempt to write a
grand prima philosophia that had given impetus for philosophical-theoretical AG and theoretical-
methodological KVM. The sequence of this kind, in other words, shapes history of the thinker s
thought in the first half of the 1920s as being a meticulous move from the general to the particular.
Charting the bibliographical data, it is evident that this notion of M. M. Bachtin s thought s
development emerged after the publication of KFP in the middle of the 1980s together with
evident discomfort among the commentators who following this arrangement of the early essays
could not have carried out a satisfactory reading of these papers as presenting a lucid philosophical
whole, which M. M. Bachtin announced in IO of 1919.
I n 1986 t he t ext of KFP was pri nt ed i n Filosof ija i sotsiologija nauki i techniki
[Philosophy and Sociology of Science and Technics], an annual almanac published by Moscow s
publishing house Nauka [ Sci ence] , and t he second i ssue of t he j our nal Sociologiceskie
issledovanija [Sociological Investigations]. This essay was the last significant text by M. M.
Bachtin to reach the wider reading audience. Concurrently, it was also concluding the publicising
of the texts from his earliest period as by then IO and AG s major part had already been available
for some years as IO was reprinted in the journal Voprosy filosofii [Questions of Philosophy] in
1977, some parts of AG has appeared in the same journal in 1977 and in the journal Voprosy
literatury [Questions of Literature] in 1978 as well as nearly all surviving text of A G was
published in the collection of articles Estetika slovesnogo tvorcestva [Aesthetics of Verbal
Creativity] released in 1979. KVM in the thinker s own edition under the title Problemy
soderzanija, materiala i f ormy v slovesnom chudozestvennom tvorcestve [Problem of Content,
Material and Form in Verbal Artistic Creativity] was known in print since 1975 and it was
reprinted in 1986 in the collection of articles Literaturno-kriticeskie stat ji[Literary-Critical
Articles] together with the earlier unpublished fragment of AG that also appeared in the almanac.
The response to these awaited publications was twofold.
On the one hand, there appeared a number of works attempting to see M. M. Bachtin as a
philosopher since KFP compellingly suggested him having started as a thinker with strong
25
philosophical inclinations (e.g., Sevcenko 1989, Machlin 1990, Volkova 1990, Bogatyreva 1991,
Isupov 1991a-b, Eremeev 1992a-b, Gogotisvili & Gurevic 1992, Bonetskaja 1993, 1994, Orlov &
Zylko 1993, Pe kov 1996; item Emerson 1994, 1997: 31-72, 207II, Jurcenko 1995a: 8-16). Yet
overall it was obvious that if M. M. Bachtin were to be seen as a philosopher, it could have been
done so only with certain reservations and a fair amount of benevolence towards him and his early
works. On the other hand, the completion of the first publishing of all the extant texts by M. M.
Bachtin from his earliest years demonstrated that these texts were in such a peculiar condition that
they first needed to be scrupulously researched and evaluated. They survived in less than perfect
condition, more exactly, the early essays survived only in partial condition as manuscripts, as texts
and as a larger intellectual undertaking or an intention towards such by the Russian thinker in the
first half of the 1920s. Missing pages, not written out properly sections of KFP and AG and, as it
has recently transpired, KVM being only one of the two planned parts of the larger paper (Bachtin
2003: 711-7), as well as are the most often cited problems of the early essays.
M. M. Bachtin spent the first years after the Russian October Revolution, the time that
coincided with his first post-university years, in the former Russian imperial provinces.
Encouraged by Lev Vasil`evic Pumpjanskij (1891-1940), M. M. Bachtin s acquaintance from the
gymnasium days spent in Vil no (Holquist & Clark 1984: 40ff; ill. 4), now Vilnius, the young
thinker came to Nevel some time in the spring or summer of 1918(ill. 5). In the autumn of 1920
he moved to Vitebsk where he had remained until the late winter of 1923-4 or early spring of 1924
when he returned to Leningrad. It was Nevel s newly founded and short -lived periodical Den
iskusstva [Day of Art] that on September 13, 1919 printed M. M. Bachtin s six-paragraph long
debut article, IO. Then followed several years without any publications and, as it seems, even
without any significant publishing possibilities in both the Soviet Byelorussia s provinces and the
main metropolitan centres of the Soviet Russia.
In 1984 M. Holquist and K. Clark suggested a list containing six works that date from the
period of 1918-24: (i) IO published in September of 1919, (ii) a book on F. M. Dostoevskij that
assumingly was the first version of PPD and reportedly completed by August of 1922, (iii) a book
on verbal aesthetic creativity where KVM was planned to constitute a part, this book was reported
to be in process in February 1921 and completed by August of 1922, (iv) a text on moral
philosophy that was in process in March 1921 and completed by August 1922, (v) a text on
relations between authors and the heroes they are creating and (vi) a text on ethics and law, which
was intended to serve as an introduction to (iv) and was in progress in January 1922 and
26
completed by August 1922 (Holquist & Clark 1984: 53-4). The American biographers indirectly
stated that after August of 1922 M. M. Bachtin was possibly working solely on KVM as an
individual text otherwise refraining from making any suggestions as how these texts, or more
precisely titles, may be related to each other as well as to the currently surviving manuscipts from
that period.
Seventeen years later in a somewhat more strict manner the Russian researchers also
listed six texts dating from 191924, however, their list is not identical with the proposal by M.
Holquist and K. Clark: (i) IO, (ii) KFP, (iii) AG, (iv) Sub jekt nravstvennosti i sub jekt prava
[The Subject of Ethics and the Subject of Law], (v) a work on M. F. Dostoevskij, (vi) KVM as
PSMF (Laptun & Jurcenko 1995: 95-6). V. I. Laptun and T. G. Jurcenko suggested that the Iaith
of the manuscripts of (iv) and (v) was so far unknown. The newest chronology of M. M. Bachtin s
life and work lists five works from the 1919-24 period: (i) IO, (ii) KFP, (iii) AG, (iv) Sub jekt
nravstvennosti i sub jekt pravaand (v) KVM as PSMF (Laptun 2001: 523-4). The editors and
commentators to the first volume of the completed works containing the early essays added to the
list compiled by V. I. Laptun and T. G. Jurcenko (vi) the book on F. M. Dostoevskij and (vii)
Estetika slovesnogo tvorcestva as possibly once an individual text, yet without excluding the
likelihood that it had direct links with AG and KVM (Bachtin 2003: 343-5).
All of these lists, especially when set against the four texts available today, contribute
easily to the perception of the young M. M. Bachtin wanting much and accomplishing next to
nothing and indeed forming a picture of the 1919-24 period as the time of the young thinker s not
a very successful debut as a thinker, who, as it has been mentioned earlier, started with the general
and moved towards the particular. There have been several variations on the incompleteness issue
by transferring this quality onto the entire period of 1918-24. One of the attempts to make sense
out of the chaotic state, in which the early essays remained, was to forward the notion that M. M.
Bachtin purposively created a disarray in his papers (Orlov & Zylko 1993: 421) in order to escape
encircling philosophical, or theoretical, ideas for the sake of philosophy, or theory, by taking out
t he i deas of nezaver onnost ( unfinalisation) and nezaver aemost ( unfinalisability) from his
writings and implementing them in life where openness for dialogue was the governing ethics.
The condition of the manuscripts was deciphered as demonstrating Bachtins storstillede omend
mislykkede projekt (Bruhn & Lundquist 1998: 36; cf Holquist & Clark 1984: 63, Haynes 1995:
114).
27
Interestingly, the cause behind this failure is, as a rule, left unnamed, and it could be
assumed that the source of it was M. M. Bachtin s youthful enthusiasm. The young thinker had
simply overestimated his own ability to recognise that at the time his capabilities did not
correspond to the grandness of his undertaking. It was, thus, predetermined to end in the
regrettable failure performed with overmodige hndbevgelse (Bruhn & Lundquist 1998: 37).
Irony of such conclusions regarding the beginnings of M. M. Bachtin is that in the days of
poststructuralism and postmodernism praising openness, the fragmentary and so forth the early
writings by M. M. Bachtin were being approached from exactly the reverse position. There have
been searches in them for neatness and lucidly in argumentation and presentation, although
knowing that most of the textual mass was never prepared or perhaps even intended for
publication or that these writings carried those peculiarities of philosophising and ways of
articulating that were a part of that modernism that post-structuralists and postmodernists wanted
so badly to do away with. Nevertheless, establishing that there are distinct shortcomings or least
pretexts for serious doubt in organising the early essays following the notion that M. M. Bachtin
was working his way from the general towards the particular does not itself provide an alternative
and desirably more convincing arrangement of the works within this cluster of works. The factual
data around the early essays is not abundant, still, it is capable of revealing a facet of the early
essays that has not been taken into consideration by most commentators and interpreters, including
D. J. Haynes who introduced the IO-KFP-AG-KVM into the discipline of art history (Haynes
1995).
In 1991 and 1992 Russian scholar N. I. Nikolaev published the findings he uncovered in
the archive of L. V. Pumpjanskij (Nikolaev 1991, 1992). It did confirm that IO was conceived in
the course of the summer of 1919 when the ideas of the author-hero relationship as well as M. F.
Dostoevskij as a topic of particular interest were being discussed among the intellectuals
sojourning in Nevel (Machlin 1995a). These archives provided another very significant piece of
information. It is the commonly-held opinion that regrettably the manuscript of AG is missing its
beginning, and except for a little fragment (AG 69-88/208-31) the rest of the text is surviving
seemingly intact. N. I. Nikolaev s discoveries point to completely opposite direction. AG s is in
fact not missing, or at least it is not missing in the usual sense of the word, because what was once
the part of the opening chapter, or perhaps even chapters, of AG had become KVM in 1924. The
difference between the original introduction and the text s version as KVM is not known. There
are several important repercussions of this seemingly petite discovery.
28
AG and KVM constituting a rather unusual, yet still unmistakable whole, lend themselves
to the following. It cannot be excluded that when Zizn` iskusstva [Life of Art], the Petrograd
newspaper, was reporting in August of 1922 about M. M. Bachtin s by then finished book Estetika
slovesnogo tvorcestva [Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity], it was telling the intellectuals of the
Soviet capital about the same work, which M. M. Bachtin called Patterns of Verbal Creativity in
the letter written in February of 1921 to the neo-Kantian philosopher Matvej Isaevic Kagan (1889-
1937) who had also recently been staying in Nevel . There is one compelling aspect related to the
manuscripts that speaks for such a possibility. M. Holquist and K. Clark themselves (Holquist &
Clark 1984: 54) emphasised that on the basis of the physical appearance the manuscript containing
notebooks with the early writings falls into two distinctive sets; one of the sets is devoted
exclusively to the literary problems which are today known as AG.
Analogically, it is not beyond the realm of the possible that the second set of the
notebooks containing the piece of writing today known as KFP is in one way or another equivalent
to works with the distinct thematic orientation towards ethics, which are mentioned several times
in the documents from 1921 and 1922. In the letter of January 18, 1922 to I. M. Kagan the thinker
mentioned that he was preoccupied with the text engaged with the subject in moral life and the
subject in law , of which he had already spoke to I. M. Kagan in the letter of November 1921
when asking for a book that was needed for completing this text. According to the first issue of
Iskusstvo [Art], the Vitebsk-based magazine published in March of 1921, at that time M. M.
Bachtin was working on a book-length work on moral philosophy. In August of the same year
Petrograd s newspaper Zizn iskusstva[Life of Art] also mentioned that M. M. Bachtin was
writing a work dealing with the issues of moral philosophy. Thematically KFP is certainly not
disconnected from the issues of moral philosophy as well as law, and this allows to build a
hypothesis that the part of the manuscript containing the notebooks with KFP and the three
references from 1921-2 to the work preoccupied with moral topic.
One more support for this hypothesis comes from the various biographical data (Holquist
& Klark 1984, Konkin & Konkina 1993, Pan kov 1993, 1998). In both Nevel and Vitebsk much
time was being spent on lengthy informal discussions, public engagements and job duties. Just as
consuming, or probably even more so, were M. M. Bachtin s health problems. In the course of the
stay in Vitebsk he had lived through the life-threatening typhoid fever in February of 1921 and the
operation on the right leg as a result of the typhoid-related complications of osteomyelitis that had
29
been troubling M. M. Bachtin since his school days. Hence, KFP can be accepted as the second
larger text or textual project M. M. Bachtin was working on after the publishing of IO.
Thus, this scarce documentary data turns out to be more capable than it may be initially
thought. In the early 1920s M. M. Bachtin was not working on the excessively large amount of
papers as either the Russian or American researchers have suggested. The mistake on the part of
the researchers might be the impulse to treat each title- like mentioning in the letters and
newspapers as actually standing for the same amount of individual texts, written, in progress or
indented, or to have no doubts at all that information contained in these notes and letters is
undoubtedly correct. The mysterious text, maybe even a book, on F. M. Dostoevskij is illustrative
of this situation. At this point of time the existence of such a work altogether is known exclusively
from the short reference in the above mentioned Petrograd newspaper Zizn iskusstva. The
materials from the archive of L. V. Pumpjanskij, whose book Dostoevskij i anticnost` [Dostoevskij
and the Antiquity] was published in 1922, confirm that M. M. Bachtin s idea of the work on F. M.
Dostoevskij must have had its beginning in Nevel . There is little reason to distrust that the
thinker s contemplations over this writer would eventually evolve into the books Problemy
tvorcestva Dostoevskogo [Problems of Dostoevskij s Creativity] of 1929 and Problemy poetiki
Dostoevskogo [Problems of Dostoevskij s Poetics] of 1963. However, it does not mean either that
a finished book existed in the early 1920s altogether. It is more likely that the large project
conceived on the issues of ethics M. M. Bachtin abandoned some time in 1922 or 1923, and it can
be only speculated whether this decision was influenced by his recognition of not being able to
actually realise this undertaking, satisfaction with formulating the most basic function of ethics
within culture (cf Pekov 1996) or simply loss of interest in pursuing this line of inquiry any
further.
As a result, the surviving good 300 book-pages (Bachtin 2003: 2-325) distributed over
three works and yet four texts most probably constitute the entire corpus of the early writings. The
said above shows that it is far from certain that KFP preceded AG and KVM at the time when the
latter did not even exist as an individual essay. Judging from M. M. Bachtin s letters to M. I.
Kagan, the philosophical issues preoccupied him even slightly later t han the aesthetic-
theoretical matters. The difference in time between the two lines of investigations is so minuscule
that a chore of placing one after another is fruitless. In other words, M. M. Bachtin was working
on the philosophical KFP and the aesthetical-theoretical-methodological KVM-AG more or less
simultaneously at least for a period, however short, of time.
30
The answer to the question posed in the beginning of this chapter, i.e. if the structuring of
the early writings along the IO-KFP-AG-KVM sequence is accurate and as a result transferable to
art history, receives a firmly negative answer. Regardless of the strength of the impression that
this particular chronological organisation of the essays in question is representative of M. M.
Bachtin s work during the Nevel-Vitebsk period, it is the achievement of the interpretative and,
therefore, inevitably arbitrary work on the part of the commentators. The link between the created
sequence and the secondary documents from the early 1920s is too weak, and as long as no new
archival discoveries become available, this tie is bound to remain uncertain. If in a few instances
this actual series could certainly be employed as a methodological tool for analysing one or
another aspect of the early writings, by no means it can and should be continuously upheld as
the satisfactory rendering of M. M. Bachtin s thought.
However, to find out that the IO-KFP-AG-KVM sequence is erroneous does not remove
all the problems connected to the early essays by automatically suggesting a doubtlessly correct
alternative organisation. In fact, it only suggests that these essays hardly submit themselves to any
linear manipulation. At this stage the matters are complicated by KVM that interferes into the
parallelism of the two lines philosophical and aesthetic -theoretical-methodological to the
extent that it is being shattered. At the moment nothing concrete is known about the events of, in
all likelihood, 1923-4 that had a direct impact on the appearance of the last of the early essays. If
for a short while to engage into virtual history , it is not unreasonable to form the following
assumption: had M. M. Bachtin not had the impetus to rework the beginning of AG into KVM,
there may have been an entire book- length work on verbal aesthetics as a major work from the
thinker s earliest years. Moreover, the so-called moral philosophy undertaking may have also
resulted in a monograph-long work as it was announced by Iskusstvo [Art] in March of 1921. This
was not the case, and the most extraordinary inter-relationship among the essays materialised with
no entirely trivial consequences.
The link between AG and KVM had been altered by M. M. Bachtin himself. Even if these
two pieces of writing once were the same textual whole, the reworked portion of AG cannot
simply be placed in front of AG and in such a manner the claim made that the long lost part of the
text, hence, has been recovered. The only way to achieve this result would be to dismiss the fact
that after all they are undoubtedly two separate pieces of writing. It would be similar to the denial,
or at least ignoring, M. M. Bachtin s decision to partition one of his works. Figuratively, it could
be understood as the erasure of M. M. Bachtin himself. Still, the relationship between KVM and
31
AG also has the inversion because the two essays are not entirely disconnected from each other
because of the commonly shared origins as constituents of the same study. To some extent a
paradoxical situation is created: KVM is the essay after AG whilst it is also not free from being the
text from before the current version of AG. This ambiguous two-sidedness perseveres because it is
inbuilt in both AG and KVM and not merely attached to them circumstantially. In relation to KFP
the last of the early essays stands in the same paradoxical relation. As the opening section of the
writing that was most probably being worked on before the text addressing the moral philosophy
questions, KVM is foregoing or fully contemporary to KFP and at the same time following it due
to being formed as the individual text in the very end of the 1919-24 period. If until some point of
time in 1923 or 1924 the thinker had been working in two parallel lines, philosophical and
aesthetical-theoretical-methodological , this balance had been irreversibly altered when KVM
began to take shape as a single essay.
However, the strongest argument that the early M. M. Bachtin as well as his entire
thought begins with KVM prepared for publication in 1924 comes from the thinker himself and has
been in fact known for over 30 years and ignored for just as long. In Moscow of the early 1970s
M. M. Bachtin was working on his first collection of articles, Voprosy literatury i estetiki [The
Questions of Literature and Aesthetics] (Bachtin 1975) that would introduce M. M. Bachtin, a
literary scholar known for his interpretative works of F. M. Dostoevskij and F. Rabelais as he had
become known after the two books had been published in 1963 and 1965 respectively, also as a
capable theoretician. The volume was in all probability completed in the summer or early fall of
1974 (Holquist & Clark 1984: 341) and submitted to printers on November 18, 1974 (Bachtin
1975: 504). M. M. Bachtin was compiling this book from the texts he had written over the five
decades that he had at his disposition, and out of all his writings he selected namely KVM to stand
as an opening paper in the first collection of his theoretical works.
Interestingly, it was not the first time after he had gained wider public recognition in the
course of the 1960s that M. M. Bachtin returned to KVM. Before the opportunity to compile VLE
began truly to materialise, M. M. Bachtin had selected a part of this essay from his early writings
to be printed in Kontekst 1973, a scholarly literary annual almanac published by Nauka. Though
S. G. Bocarov and N. I. Nikolaev assert that KVM included in the volume one of the completed
works (Bachtin 2003: 265-325) is the first publishing of this paper since it presents the reader with
the original version of the text from 1924 (Bachtin 2003:344), it can be contended since the
alterations M. M. Bachtin made to KVM in 1974 were not significant to allow this somewhat
32
categorical statement for he changed the title of the essay from KVM t o PSMF and minimally
shortened some passages, even though the restoration of these passages does reveal important
aspect of KVM that has remained unknown until 2003. Firstly, only now the text is known under
its original title from 1924. Secondly, the corrections by M. M. Bachtin made in 1974 removed
references present in the version of 1924 to the intended second part of this paper. In the opinion
of the editors, it might have been the result of closing of Na sovremennik [Our Contemporary] ,
the journal where KVM was supposed to be published, and the changing official Soviet discourse
around formalism in general (Bachtin 2003: 712-3).
In the early 1980s, when even the first publishing of M. M. Bachtin s works was not yet
completed, the Russian philosopher Vladimir S. Bibler wrote that M. M. Bachtin s entire heritage
including the early essays could not be grasped through any approaches that necessitate one or
another kind of strict linearity (Bibler 1991: 13-5). Indeed the impossibility to arrange the early
essays into a simple and elegant line does not contradict that these essays nevertheless do not exist
in an irrevocable chaotic state which can be overturned exclusively by an interpreter. The
comparative mayhem, in which the early writings remain, would seem to benefit greatly from this
perception as it at least consents to the potentiality of some kind of systematisation of these
writings. Generally correct because of its insightfulness, V. S. Bibler s observation taken too
literally can easily turn against the early essays - and by extension against M. M. Bachtin as well -
not dissimilarly to what has happened in the instance of the IO-KFP-AG-KVM sequence. Thus, it
can be concluded that the early essays should be seen as a cluster of writings, in which KVM
serves as the gravitational centre (ill. 6) and yet does not replace the other three papers, and all
four of t hem as represent i ng t he earl y t hought of M. M. Bacht i n can be underst ood as
complementing each other. The following chapter is attempting to demonstrate that only in this
way a framework of systematic aesthetics starts to emerge as one coherent conception.
33
4. THE TRIPARTITE ANALYSIS OF A WORK OF ART
Towards Systematic-Concrete Studying of Works of Art
This is the sin universal to all contemporary aesthetics: a passion for
elements.*
Michail M. Bachtin. Avtor i geroj v esteticeskoj dejatel`nosti. The
early 1920s.
To construct a science about one or another area of cultural creation,
having preserved all the complexity, fullness and distinctiveness of the
scientific object*
Michail M. Bachtin. K voprosam metodologii estetiki slovesnogo
tvorcestva. 1924.
In the introduction to the catalogue published in the relation to The Paintings of Chaim Soutine: an
Expressionist in Paris, an exhibition mounted at the Jewish Museum of New York, USA, in 1998,
Norman L. Kleeblatt and Kenneth E. Silver wrote: Thickly applied and energetically handled, oil
paint is at the heart of Chaim Soutine s artistic project. Soutine raised to a new level of intensity
the oil medium s mutability, elasticity, and sculptural potential, extending some might say
exploding the painterly trajectory (Kleeblatt & Silver 1998: 13). This observation about
Ch. Soutine s contribution of expansion of oil paint s viscosity making his own art exceptional
does not markedly depart from the dominant theoretical stance, from which Ch. Soutine s artistic
activity is most often viewed. Even at a glance there seems to exist abundant data supporting such
a paint-centred deterministic approach. Numerous facts are being drawn from both the Litvak s
life and art eventually creating an illusion of the nearly perfect objectivity within the reach of an
art historical survey of Ch. Soutine.
Paint is what runs through Ch. Soutine, there is hardly anything else, according to the
commentators. Today Ch. Soutine s artistic heritage amounts to approximately 500 paintings
executed without exceptions in oil paints (CR1 & CR2). There also exists a small amount of
drawings kept in the collection of Madeleine Castaing in Paris (Lanthemann 1981), yet without
offering any explanation the compilers of the catalogue raisonn have rejected these works as
being authored by Ch. Soutine (CR1: 85). Ch. Soutine s formal training was carried out under the
supervision of several painters: firstly, by Jankel Morduchovic (Jakov Markovic) Kruger (1869-
1940) at his preparatory drawing courses in Minsk in the beginning of 1910; then from 1910 to
34
1913 at Vil na s kola risovanija [Drawing School] he was supervised by the instructors of that
institution, most likely by Ivan Rybakov (1870-after 1936) and perhaps some other instructors who
joined the staff after 1900; finally, he was taught by Fernand-Anne Piestre Cormon (18581924)
in his atelier at the cole des Beaux- Arts in Paris, into which Ch. Soutine enrolled soon after the
arrival to the French capital and stayed most likely until the beginning of the First World War.
There is Ch. Soutine unceasingly removing layers of paint from the surfaces of old works by other
artists so he could use these old canvases for his own creations; Ch. Soutine rambling in the Cret
landscape in his working attire utterly soaked in paint in 1919-22; Ch. Soutine standing in front of
the Masters work in the Louvre; Mademoiselle Garde noticing some time in the last few years of
the artist s life him smearing paint onto a canvas with his finger; Ch. Soutine insisting on
travelling to Champigny to collect the canvases and the tools before departing to Paris for the
surgical procedure for which, as the events of the next few days would show, he had come too late;
Ch. Soutine on his death-bed with the fingers still bearing the visible traces of paint. His art is
always an art of paint, and his life is enwrapped in paint: Soutine operates as if the gelatinous
stuff which is the material medium of the painted image were as essential to it, and essential in an
analogous way, as, say, the fact that my lover s lips are flesh is essential to them (Bernstein
2000: 169).
This alleged omnipresence of a particular material in an analysis of an artist s lifeand art
is the classical disciplinary practice deriving from the time in history when, as M. M. Bachtin
observes, a classic slogan was proclaimed: there is no art, there are only separate arts. This
proposition in actual fact was putting forward the primacy of the material in artistic creation, for it
is namely material that separates the arts, and if it moves itself methodically to the front in the
consciousness of the aesthetician, it isolates the arts (KVM 269/261) *. The separation of arts on
the basis of material existing within all Kunstwissenschaften reappeared as a significant constituent
in the late 19th early 20th century when studies of art attempted to change themselves from the
aesthicised half-scientific thinking[,which] due to misunderstanding having used sometimes to call
itself philosophical (KVM 266/258)* into a more scientifically trustable undertaking. The
material-centeredness had a twofold importance as it was precisely artistic material that appeared
to be the only constant and steady component of the object under investigation. Simultaneously, it
was opening up the path to the studies of art towards that wanted disciplinary leap since the focus
on material permitted the field to come extremely close to exact-natural sciences as the self-
scientificising project within the studies of art was being carried out by mimicking methodological
35
ways of exact-natural sciences. In the tinker s view, this way of development was a priori
delimited and delimiting, and any discipline choosing to proceed in this direction would in due
course be forced to acknowledge that undertakings of this kind are not all that advantageous:
[F]or the striving to construct a science at any cost and as quickly as possible frequently leads to
an extreme lowering of the level of problematics, to the impoverishment of the object under study,
and even to the illegitimate replacement of this object by something entirely different ( KVM
266/258).
It is, nevertheless, falsifying and inflating to abide by the often repeated characterisation
o f KVM as merely et specifikt opgr med den samtidige russiske formalisme (Bruhn
&Lundquist 1996: 53) or, more narrowly, as the thinker s rebellion against [formalists ] partial
and therefore flawed way of understanding the complex interrelationships of content, form, and
material (Haynes 1995: 30; item Bonetskaja 1985: 68-9). The preamble of KVM the thinker
did indeed straightforwardly and decidedly criticise formalism, the theoretical-methodological
trend, which had taken its basic philosophical principles from the notion of the primacy of
material, but he did not have the goal to wipe material aesthetics out entirely seeing the thinker did
not dismiss it as having certain methodological potential (KVM 271-2/262) for studies of art. The
critical assessment of material aesthetics and formalist methodology is not the only critique in the
early essays. In AG there is a longer passage in which M. M. Bachtin voices his disapproval of
expressionist and impressionist aesthetics of t he 19t h cent ury (AG: 137-53/61-81) ; i n KFP
relativism, pragmatism, pshychologism, aesthetic intuition, practical philosophy (KFP 14-22/11-
19) as well as principles of formalist and materialist ethics (KFP 24-8/19-27) are evaluated
negatively. Although the thinker s contribution to the previously mentioned so-called disputed
texts, i.e. the works from the second half of the 1920s and published as penned by P. N. Medvedev
and V. N. Volo inov, will most likely never be clarified, they may be invoked here as to a large
ext ent cont i nui ng t hi s cri t i cal eval uat i on of bot h modern European phi l osophi es and
methodologies developed on that foundation. All M. M. Bachtin s critical observations in the
early essays needs, therefore, to be seen in a broader perspective.
M. M. Bachtin was questioning more than a method or a philosophy when he did not
praise what he called the impoverishing theories (AG: 159-60/87-8) of hi s day, and hi s
scepticism was reaching considerably further than an attempt at commonplace rivalry between
representatives of different theoretical camps. The thinker s striving towards anexit of the crisis
situation is easily perceptible in all his early writings and they can undeniably be productively
36
analysed as having been defined by this search for workable logical patterns (Gorobinskij 1997).
His criticism was directed at the nature of the modern mind itself for it was the modern mind
overemphasising rationalism (KFP 30/29-30) that had lead culture and thinking about it into the
crisis situation. By the early 20th century, in M. M. Bachtin s words, this grievous situation was
manifesting itself in the existence of two worlds, non-communicating and utterly isolated from
each other: the world of culture and the world of life (KFP 7/2). As a cultural area, art could also
fashion its relation to life as the unbridgeable gap between them: And what is the result? Art is
too self-confident, audaciously self-confident, and too high-flown, for it is in no way bound to
answer for life. And, of course, life has no hope of ever catching up with art of this kind. That s
too exalted for us says life. That s art, after all! All we ve got is the humble prose of living
(IO 5/1).
The modern mind has preserved the medieval logocentric notion that t rut h i s t he
adequacy between the object and the verbal articulation of that what can be known about that
object while the Cartesian self is placed outside cognitive process itself. As a result, the modern
mind s dominant preoccupation is theoretical-methodological, and the modern mind s operative
mode, therefore, can be called reductive in principle ( cf KFP 36/37-8). That is what M. M.
Bachtin labelled theoretism of the modern mind (KFP 10-2/10-2; AG: 163-4/87-9). Theoretisation
starts in the concreteness, but due to the lost defining connection with the reality outside itself it
only manages to produce a theoretised transcription of that particular concreteness. With the help
of logics, psychology and theories of cognition the theoritising mind constructs its own world, or
reality, where generalised approximations are set forward as complete and adequate to the
concrete, in which they have taken their beginning. Products of the reductivist thought, thus,
break away from t hei r ont ol ogi cal ori gi ns and remain submerged in the gnoseological
extrapolations: The classical Kantian example against the ontological proof (?), that a hundred
real thalers are not equal to a hundred merely thinkable thalers, has ceased to be convincing *
(KFP 12/8). It is merely the modern mind s endless self-justifications and self-definitions
(Machlin 1990:15).
When this theoretising mind begins to shape a particular scientific discipline and creates
actual methodologies of analysis, the scientific object of that or another discipline is also being
processed accordingly - it also claims to present itself for more than it is and can be (KFP 12/12).
When, for example, Ch. Soutine s creation is reduced to a set of psycho-physiological responses
(e.g., Posq 1995a, 1997, Kuspit 1998, Hirt 1999, 2000), interaction between different cultural-
37
social groupings (e.g., Kleeblatt 1998, Giraudon 2000, Natter 2000b) and so forth, the complexity,
fullness of his works of art, and, finally, the presence of the artist himself are inevitably lost both
the works and their author are annihilated. In the above quoted theoretical notion that there is little
else besides paint in Ch. Soutine s lifemakes, for instance, his interest in music, theatre, literature,
sport, philosophy, his personal life as well as his own wilful creative intentions accidental,
irrational, dispensable, they can only be invoked as curiosities and used for the dcor of a text. At
some point it even raises the doubt if Ch. Soutine himself did ever exist as the real human being or
if it is a pure concept, an agent having some influence on the artistic material of paint in certain
works of art. No more fullness can be achieved by compiling a succinctly presented collection of
numerous reductivisms as to an extent can be found in the French art historian Raymond Cogniat s
essay from 1973 (Cogniat 1973) and, e.g., supplementing it with the first investigations of Ch.
Soutine s personality (Hirt 2000) and the typology-based characterisation of his biography
(Kleeblatt 2000). The sum of reductions will always remain only what it is, the lot and nothing
more.
It is, therefore, futile to reveal mistakes and shortcomings of philosophies and
methodologies with the sole purpose of developing a similar in nature alternative (cf KVM
268/259) for as long as the participartory thinking remains locked in the crisis situation, any newly
emerging philosophy or methodology will be predetermined to remain simply another gesture of
the theoretising mind. Restoration of the participative thinking intrinsic to all major European
philosophical systems is the only way to overcome this somewhat bewildering crisis brought
about, as M. M. Bachtin conspicuously indicates, by the philosophies of the 19th and early 20th
centuries (KFP 12/8). The solution to the problem can be a development of a new philosophical
framework governed by the mind different from the modern theoreticising mind. It would
ultimately provide the basis for general systematic, without which no studies of art can be
possible, aesthetics a nd particular aesthetics respective of particular arts and for actual
methodologies. From here M. M. Bachtin s idea that any study of art should be systematic
derives; art should be understood systematically and it also should be studied systematically. It is,
thus, imperative that, for example, philosophical-aesthetical studies of literary works of art is
formulated as Poetics, def ined systematically, must be aesthetics of verbal artistic creativity
(tvorcestvo) (KVM 268-9/260)*, and its scientific object must be artistic creation (proizvedenie)
i n wor d (KVM 267/259)*. Working out analogical formulations for investigative fields
preoccupied with individual arts is possible since the thinker had overall never rejected the
38
historical tenet of differentiating arts into arts on the basis of material in the manner of the 18
th
century.
In principle, M. M. Bachtin could have engaged into a polemic debate with any of the
above mentioned lines of theoretical-methodological reasoning, though in the early 1920s such
discussions would have inevitably looked somewhat dated seeing by that time they all had more or
less waned or were in the process of moving into the background. Moreover, disagreements with
anything past would have come out either as purely historical investigations or the thinker s failure
to grasp the configuration of his own time. The early formalism of the 20th century, or material
aesthetics as a wider orientation, was just about the most potent, lively and attention attracting
activity within studies of arts at the time when the young man was embarking on his own
intellectual explorations. Branching out from material aesthetics, which M. M. Bachtin viewed as
[t]he supposition of a general-aesthetic character (KVM 270/262), as it were, the working
hypothesis of those trends in the study of art (KVM 271/262)*, formalism, nevertheless, was not
merely one more theoretical-methodological stance in the multitude of theoretical and
methodological voices at the junction of the two centuries.
Formalism was the vital component, indeed the backbone itself, of the avant-garde, which
saw itself as a grand total project for culture in its widest meaning. M. M. Bachtin was far from
the single intellectual of the early 20th century who was disquieted by the crisis of culture; then it
was the commonly shared sentiment among the personalities with cerebral aspirations. From this
perspective, i.e. from the position of the avant-garde as well as formalism s genealogy with those
aesthetic searches, which M. M. Bachtin criticised in KFP and AG, it becomes possible to see that
in formalism the thinker found the simple reversal of the earlier trends and ideas regarding art, a
conscious alternative and an unconscious inside-out and Doppelgnger of so-called aesthetics of
Einfhlung of the 18th-early 20th century (Machlin 1997: 19). Irrespective of the promise of the
absolute newness that the avant-garde was bringing, that newness was resting on the same old
basis that it was avidly denying and as result the newness could only be the back side of the old
presented as something radically new. The logic of formalism as an attempt to overcome the crisis
was the same type of logic, which so far has always come forward in history of such tasks since
the Renaissance where it is found for the first time: In reality this is logic of the homeostasis of
culture within frames of which any project on overcoming is reduced to repetition (Lyotard), and
paradox becomes the essential characteristic of any project running on the basis of this logic
39
(Genisaretskij 1997: 12). Ironically, the formalists turned out to be the purveyors of a revised
version of the tradition, which they had found disagreeable at the beginning of their venture.
It can seem that although M. M. Bachtin was opposing formalists as the heirs of the
earlier problematic thinking about art, he himself glided towards the exact same difficulties. His
initial straightforward definitions of the study of an art, and of art in general, as well as the study s
scientific object can strike as being no different from what formalism was proposing. The latter
has been introduced as artistic creation (proizvedenie) in word (KVM 9/259)*, that is as a work
of art executed in particular artistic material whilst the explanation of study itself, Poetics,
def ined systematically, must be aesthetics of verbal artistic creativity ( tvorcestvo) (KVM
10/260)*, places the focus on a set of technical principles capable of extra-material signifying.
Taken on their own, these two postulates appear to be infused with the potential to lead to the self-
containing systematic thinking about art where the artist is dissolved within the technical
principles in their own turn cobbled with a work of art as the material object. In a nutshell, this is
the by now traditional hermeneutic art historical thinking, which was by no means unknown mode
of contemplating art at the turn of the last century:
L oeuvre de Soutine nous entrane dans cette double drive, celle d un homme
solitaire et celle d une uvre prolifique, marque par cette rage de peindre
jamais gale. L uvre de Soutine n a jamais t aussi rvlatrice par sa
justesse, sa frocit picturale, par ce don d observation o chaque dtail prend
sa place, creuse sa vrit dans un expressionnisme totalement matris, sans
complaisance ni superficialit, favorisant une sorte de posie corrosive d une
qualit rare qui permet la peinture de gagner en force. La construction des
toiles mne l un vers l autre l ordre et le dsordre, la forme et la couleur dans
un mouvement chaotique passionnel. (Neveux 2000 : 123)
M. M. Bachtin did not stop at the presentation of the two brief definitions of what, in his opinion,
should be the object of attention for art studies and according to which self-perception of these
studies should organise themselves. The thinker identified five problems that formalism, o r
material aesthetics, was predetermined to fail to solve. Through them a significant part of M. M.
Bachtin s fundamental conceptions are beginning to emerge.
The first insurmountable difficulty material aesthetics is facing is an inability to provide a
solid foundation for explanation of artistic form: (1) Material aesthetics is not capable of
founding artistic form (KVM 272/264). This brief and hardly pliable to misunderstandings phrase
lays bare what M. M. Bachtin thought to be the most significant aesthetic category. It is form,
40
entirely in correspondence to the Kantian aesthetics, and not t he concepts of beauty and the
sublime, and for this reason the Russian researcher N. K. Bonetskaja has analysed the early essays
and some later works as encapsulating M. M. Bachtin s aesthetics as a logic of form (Bonetskaia
1991). Though M. M. Bachtin thought that f orm, on the one hand, really material, f ully
consummated in material and attached to it, on the other hand, axiologically takes us beyond the
limits of the work of art as organised material as a thing (KVM 281-2/273-4)*, he found that the
most obvious problem in the formalist perception of form is its overemphasised orientation
towards material. When artistic form is understood as the form of a material, it merely serves as
means of articulating artistic material. Form s function is of a technical-technological character,
and it may with a little of logical-theoretical luck be even reducible to the same status as held by
the painter s brush or the sculptor s chisel which by no means enter the artistic object as its
moment * (KVM 271/265).
If artistic form is understood as the form of a material, and in its own turn material is
taken in that specific determinativeness of material that can be derived from the fields where
material is the scientific object, that being the discipline of linguistics for verbal art and exact-
natural sciences for non-verbal arts, form remains a non-axiological, external ordering of that
material: [M]aterial in art i s organised by form in such a way for it to become a stimulus of
pleasant sensations and states in the psycho-physiological organism (KVM 271-2/264). As a
result, form cannot become an object of investigation in those fields that are preoccupied with
culture and its values, i.e. any of the human sciences as long as a cultural value that remains at the
stage of simple givenness, bare factuality of a psychological or historical kind (KVM 268/260).
Material-related form then should be of interest to the exact-natural sciences and the discipline of
linguistics accordingly to particularities of a given art.
15
Although, as M. M. Bachtin observes
(KVM 272-3/ 264), namel y such a posi t i on shoul d be reached by movi ng l ogi cal l y and
consequently, it is far from being the case.
In accordance with the assessment of Ch. Soutine s heritage by the compilers of the
catalogue raisonn, t here are fewer t han 20 survi vi ng works whi ch creat i on coul d be
approximately placed in the same years as the three self-portraits (CR1: L2-8, SL 8-16, CR2: P10;
ill. 23-9, 39-47, 16). One of these works, Les harengs et la bouteille de Chianti (CR1: SL11; ill.
15
M. M. Bachtin left one possibility for making materially defined form into the object of a humanitarian
study: form should acquire some kind of utilitarian function (KVM 14/264).
41
41), 1917, has been commented in the following manner by the art historian Jeff Werner from
Sweden:
Les harengs et la bouteille de Chianti frn 1917 r en om mjligt nnu
dystrare mlning n Nature morte aux harengs [ ( CR1: SL1 ; i l l . 31)].
Rummet, som liksom i den fregende mlningen r frsnkt i mrker, r mer
dominant. Det omslutter ett par fiskar som, tillsammans med en butelj, hnger
i ett snre. De ger ett intryck av att ha blivit utsatta fr vld och frnedring.
Deras munnar r vidppna och nackarna frefaller knckta. (Werner 1996:
15)
J. Werner identifies forms as belonging to the things positioned in space. He treats the forms of
things as space in purely material terms: plains of dark paint equals to the poorly lit and hence
somewhat undefined space, and these dark areas surround patches of brighter paint that are
indicative of the figures of herrings and bottle assembled into one cluster, i.e. the bodies contribute
to the definition of the space itself. It is the very handling of paint that guarantees that the shown
herrings have possibly been mutilated, and following the same logic it could also be added that the
brighter field of colour coinciding with the visibly distorted left side of the bottle is a result of a
mutilation by breaking the glass itself or damaging of the straw or perhaps a professional
negligence on the part of an Italian bottle producer. According to M. M. Bachtin, the next move in
such an approach should lead to, for instance, an analysis of the viewer s physiological and
psychological responses to this given form-material. However, J. Werner continues in a very
different direction; he begins to invoke speculatively interpreted facts from Ch. Soutine s personal
life, historical events, of which France was a part in the second half of the 1910s, hence, ascribing
symbolic significance to physically articulated material in the paintings from that period:
Det r inte svrt att se mlningen som ett uttryck fr Soutines utsatta position
under denna tid. Han var fattig och det var krig och dyrtid. Rtterna till det
frflutna var avklippta och han levde i ett frmmande land dr han hade stora
problem med sprket. Tidvis sjnk han ner i depressioner och vid ett tillflle
sgs han a frskt ta sitt liv. (ibidem)
The above exampl e i s far from bei ng a si ngul ar case of t he part i cul ar mat eri al -focused
interpretation of Ch. Soutine s art. For example, in thefrequently quoted dissertation by the
42
American painter Esti Dunow
16
the still-lifes from 1916-8 (CR1: SL 1-2, 5; ill. 31-2, 35) are given
this analysis:
The very motif of herrings carries associations with poverty and hunger. The
herring of a staple food of the poor East European Jew. It was also frequently
painted by the Dutch masters as representing the meal of the poor. The
placement of the forms, the emptiness of the spaces, and the drawing itself
accent the sense of barrenness and desertion. The drawing is tentative; we
feel scratchiness of the line, the way one form bites into and eats away at
another ([CR1: SL2; ill. 32]). This quality of line, as both searching and form-
defining, is reminiscent of Czanne. Czanne also used line to inch by inch
define form, using the bends and breaks and redirections of contour to adjust
the forms to each other and space. Sometimes one form will bleed into
another or a negative area will push in front of a positive area, reversing
near and distant space. In the Soutine, the contact between the forms
points to Czanne. Furthermore, the flattening of forms , the tilt upwards of
the table top are Czannian. However, the structural organisation in the
Soutines is linear. The flatness does not result from hammering volumes into
the picture plain, but from the arrangement of shapes and lines. A more
authentic absorption of Czanne s flatness will come in the Cret landscapes
[1919-22, see Matamoros (2000b)] with their compression of planes and
moving in space. (Dunow 1981: 170-1)
As in the passage from J. Werner s article, forms in the cluster of the still lifes and one singled out
example are also fastened to the material, which is articulated in a slightly more complicated
geometrical sense. Here relationships between lines and differentiated planes are introduced
whilst J. Werner stopped at the most elementary understanding of bodies in space, but similar
methodological incoherence takes place all the same. These material articulations are interpreted
as cultural values coated with the ideology of vindication: carrying out a Langbehnesque
juxtaposition of the marginalized Litvak with the acknowledged Old and New Masters results in
the detection of certain similarities, and through this exoneration Ch. Soutine can finally be placed
in Europe s canonical art history.
The two quoted studies of Ch. Soutine s art are constructed with the help of what may be
called the disciplinary common sense: there was the artist Ch. Soutine, he conceived a work of art,
16
Since 1981 E. Dunow has published seven articles on Ch. Soutine (Dunow 1982, 1983, 1993, 1995, 1998,
2000a-b). No significant change in her view of the artist s oeuvre has taken place in the course of the two
decades, therefore the text of the dissertation is given the preference.
43
executed it in paint; an art historian is attempting to understand what problem, idea, theme he
wanted to convey, i.e. what is the content of that work of art, and how he managed to achieve to
communicate his initial conception, i.e. what is the composition, construction, form of a work of
art. If these studies unavoidably collapse into methodologically illogical, according to M. M.
Bachtin s conception, argumentations in the instances of analysing form alone, then quite
justifiably the question arises regarding the scientific object: are art scholars not by any chance
confused about the scientific object they are, or should be, investigating?
To this question M. M. Bachtin gives an unambiguous answer in the formulation of the
second problem faced by material aesthetics: (2) Material aesthetics is incapable of founding the
essential dif f erence between the aesthetic object and the external work, between the articulation
and interconnections within that object and the material articulations and interconnections within
the external work, and it displays everywhere a tendency to conf ound these moments or
constituents (KVM 274/266). From the formulation of this problem it is apparent that the
scientific object of aesthetic investigation, artistic creation (chudozestvennoe proizvedenie) in
word (KVM 267/259)*, falls into two realities the external work, or the material cog , of a
work of art, and the aesthetic object. Both of these entities all the time retain their autonomies
since each of them has got its own articulation of interconnections at the same time being
interconnected as the constituents of the same work of art. In this way M. M. Bachtin does not
reject the classical aesthetic notion of a work of art suspended between the material and the
immaterial. Though the first impulse from a work of art received by the viewer is after all
generated by, in the thinker s words, the external work, the attention needs to be directed at the
aesthetic object for it is there that the meaning of a work of art resides. Thus, aesthetic analysis
must begin with exploration of what the work is for the artist s and the contemplator s activity
directed toward it. The object dealt with in aesthetic analysis is, therefore, the content of aesthetic
activity (contemplation)(sozercanie) directed toward a work. This content we shall call henceforth
simply the aesthetic object (KVM 275/266-7). Immediately, M. M. Bachtin formulates the first
step in the tripartite analysis of a work of art: [T]o understand the aesthetic object in its purely
artistic distinctiveness and its structure, which we shall henceforth call architectonics of the
aesthetic object (ibidem).
The term architectonics (architektonika) is not of M. M. Bachtin s coinage. In the
function of a philosophical concept it is known since the Ancient Greeks, though in art history the
term s usage is neither as old nor as generally employed. The Cambridge Platonist Henry More
44
(161487) introduced the term architectonics into the discourse of art studies for delineating
architecture as a systematic knowledge as distinct from letters and music. In the course of the 19th
century the meaning of this term had gone through changes, and it had come to mean the
disciplinary principles, according to which architectural wholes were to be constructed, that is
architectonics referred to structure or system. For example, in this capacity the term had been
employed by Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) in his two-volume Der Stil in den technischen und
tektonischen Knsten oder Praktische sthetik, 1860/1863, by Heinrich Wlfflin (18641945) in
his dissertation Prologomena z u einer Psychologie der Architektur, 1886, by Adol f von
Hildebrand (18471921) in Das Problem der Form in den bildenden Knsten, 1893. As an art
theoretical term, architectonics had not been popular elsewhere in the studies of art either at the
time when M. M. Bachtin was working on his early essays or later. However, the term
architectonics, whi ch t he t hi nker us ed i n a f ai r l y gener al way as t he contemplatively
(vozzritel no) necessary, nonfortuitous disposition and integration of concrete, unique parts and
moments into a consummated whole (AG 70/209)*, is a philosophical term before it is a
kunstwissenschaftlig concept (cf Bachtin 2003: 526-7, Liapunov 1999).
Etymologically, architectonics is composed of arche a n d tikt meaning origin and
production respectively. In 259a-261c of Statesma, 360 BC, Plato (427347 BC) spoke of the
architekton, the directing chief supervisor of manual labourers whilst not being one himself due to
t he possession of a certain theoretical knowledge. Aristotle (384322 BC) followed his
predecessor and employed this meaning of the architectonic in the similar way when speaking of
architectonic sciences and arts in 1013a of the fifth book of Metaphysik, 350 BC. Immanuel
Kant (17241804) in the sections B 860-62 of Kritik der reinen Vernuft, 1781/1787, reformulated
the understanding of architectonics. There a system and its construction into a unity from separate
units are under the governance of one idea, therefore a system could be seen as identifiable with
the organisation of reason itself for any ideas originate from reason. Since reason is the source,
then a system including its purpose and form is a priori determined by it. Eventually, that system
is identified with structure where all the parts are placed in the inter-twining relations to each other
in such a way that none of them can exist in isolation, and that system-structure is not reducible to
the sum of its components. When a work of art is seen as a system-structure functioning in a
capacity of representing its creator, it is the application of the Kantian ideal within art history.
Here the earlier cited comment by the French art historian Pascal Neveux could be invoked once
again, though it is also not a singular example of the kind that can be drawn from the body of
45
writings on Ch. Soutine and his art. Writing of Portrait d homme (Emile Lejeune), c. 1922-3
(CR2: P59; ill. 17), in the article of the catalogue following the exhibition of Ch. Soutine s works
at the Jdischen Museum Wien, Austria, in 2000, the German art historian Patrick Hirt has
suggested:
Die Schnheit im Werk Soutines ergibt sich durch den Regelverstoss gegen
den bi sher i gen Schnhei t sbegr i f f und i st r ei n bi l di mmanent . Di e
Schwingungen des Krpers folgen einem Rhytmus, den der Knstler mit
seinem kreisenden Pinsel vogibt. Hier zeigt sich, dass ein Krper mehr ist als
die Summe seiner Einzelteile. Ein Krper, der aus Fragmentarisierungen und
Deformationen hervorgegangen ist, sagt etwas ber den Prozess des
gleichzeitigen Zerstrens und Aufbauens whrend des Malens aus. Der
Knstler durchlebt einen Zustand emotionaler Anspannung und erfhrt
dadurch eine befreiende Wirkung. Die Besetzung des Bildmotivs mit
narzisstischer Libido wird nach der Cret-Periode [1919-1922, see Matamoros
2000] zurckgenommen, eine gewisse Externalisierung und Umwandlung im
Objektlibido findet statt. Der Knstler lernt, mit den inneren Bildern
umzugehen, sie in seine Ich-Struktur zu integrieren. Das Moment der
Selbstreflexion wird in den darauf folgenden Jahren noch ausgeprgter an der
Bildentstehung beteiligt sein. Soutine rutscht aber nie in eine reine Manier ab,
sondern versucht authentisches Erleben wiederzugeben. (Hirt 2000: 59)
Thus, according to M. M. Bachtin, the work of art that interests philosophical-aesthetic analysis
needs to be approached from its author s point of view. It is to be examined through the specific
activity of the author s contemplation of a work of art, moreover, through architectonics of that
activity of contemplation. The aesthetic object is paradoxical dynamic on one hand, i.e. an
activity, and static on the other, i.e. its content accessible through analysis of architectonics;
projected into the artist s consciousness as well as directed at the object outside it. The presence
of the author s context in the definition of the aesthetic object may suggest the view that the
aesthetic object could be relabelled into the inner work of art as a pendant to the external work. It
would not be entirely incorrect, only it would also open up new possibilities for misinterpretation.
There might most notably surface the leaning toward merging the artist with a work of art either as
it could be seen in some cited examples from art historical writing (Hirt 2000, Neveux 2000,
Werner 1996) or it may lead to the exclusion of the artist from the aesthetic object (e.g., Haynes
1996: 110-2) or understanding his presence as some odd and not entirely logical appendix (e.g.,
Bruhn & Lundquist 1998: 53-7) . I n ei t her of t he cases t here woul d be an i nst ance of
misapprehension of the aesthetic object consequently leading to a failed analysis of an actual
work, and for this reason the renaming of the aesthetic object should rather be avoided. The basic
46
definition of architectonics and the establishing that the researcher s position is quite similar to
that of the author s are not sufficient to show M. M. Bachtin s notion of the aesthetic object in its
fullness. In the preamble of KVM M. M. Bachtin emphasised that it is scientifically false to
attempt to construct the science of an individual art independently from cognition and systematic
determination of the distinctive nature of the aesthetic within the unity of human culture (KVM
267/259). It is, therefore, necessary to invoke the thinker s conception of culture s systematic
unity.
In KVM M. M. Bachtin maintains the neo-Kantian-Humboldtian notion, which he had
already expressed in his first essay (IO 5/1), that culture consists of three domains: science, deed
and art, or the cognitive, the ethic and the aesthetic. Such an organisation of culture should not be
understood as a conglomerate of three clearly delimited areas. A cultural area has borders, though
it does not possess an inner territory, in other words, each cultural domain is located only on the
borderlines. Hence, any cultural occurrence, event, phenomenon, or in M. M. Bachtin s term,
cultural act exists on these borders as well, such a localisation of each cultural act is the
fundamental condition for its very existence. Whether, for example, cultural act is an art historical
investigation, an art historian s denouncement or praise of an artist or a work of art ex cathedra, it
does not exit the concrete systematicity of culture (KVM 282/274). Each cultural act contains and
reflects this systematicity as much as it is being determined by it; it is each cultural act s ontology
which the thinker called autonomous participation or participating autonomy (ibidem). Every
cultural domain has its own uniqueness in its relationship to the reality that it finds to be on hand
(prednachodimaja real nost). It is not surprising, for if any aspects of the cultural domains begin
to overlap or even coincide completely, then the need for one of them disappears, and its very
existence would need to be acknowledged as accidental and dispensable. To be sure, cognition,
deed and artistic creation each has a very different relation to the reality found to be on hand.
Cognition, or gnosis, is likened to the thinking governed by the laws of logic, and it is
submissive to the criteria of truthfulness. It encounters the reality already organised by the pre-
scientific thinking and evaluated by the ethic deed such as practical, social, political, etc. No less
important it is that this found reality is also already formed aesthetically, i.e. cognition finds a
concretely visualised scientific object.
17
Thus, when an art historian sets out to undertake a
scholarly investigation of one or another aspect of Ch. Soutine s art, he does not find an empty
17
M. M. Bachtin also includes the religious confirmation of the reality cognition encounters without going
into any more explicit explanation of this statement (KVM 282/275).
47
vacuum, a reality res nullius. An art historian inevitably discovers that image of the artist that the
catalogues and eventually exhibition arrangements communicate through their own cognitive and
aesthetic moments. He also encounters the generally dismissive view of the Litvak within art
history of the 20th century on the grounds that are too seldom justifiable from the purely
disciplinary point of view. However, an art historian cannot allow either the ethic evaluatedness
or aesthetic formedness (KVM 284/276) to come into cognition itself for it would jeopardise the
entire cultural sphere. Cognitive act leaves the ethic and aesthetic moments of the reality found to
be on hand out, only the cognitive moment of that reality is acceptable for cognitive act. Although
it is apparent that the cognitive bears negative relation to the reality to be found on hand, the
uniqueness of the cognitive domain of culture, i.e. science, lies in that the cognitive act takes into
account only the prior work of cognition that it finds to be on hand (KVM 285/277; item KFP 18-
9/14-5).
Ethics, or praxis, is inter-subjective relations that can be evaluated according to the good
versus bad axis. In principle, deed, or ethics, also carries a negative relation to the reality that is
found to be on hand and which is ordered by cognition and aesthetics, though this negativity is of a
different kind than that of cognition. The thinker only briefly mentioned that the ethic carries a
conflicting relation to the reality that it finds to be on hand and that it is only characteristic to this
particular cultural domain. For instance, the ongoing annual project directed at raising the
awareness of Ch. Soutine art in the town of his youth, Vilna, is an example of a conflict situation
for it exists in the open opposition to the given situation in the artistic and art-historical community
of today s Vilnius (Vozbinas 1999). In KVM M. M. Bachtin did not provide any to some larger
extent thorough explanation how the ethic should be analysed except mentioning that it is due to
the researcher s sense of what is good and bad. It is not a shortcoming in his views deserving a
round of ignominy for it is correlated with the placement of oughtness (dolzestvovannie) in the
philosophical conception in general. M. M. Bachtin utilised the concept of oughtness in the novel
way. Traditionally, a formal category of ethics the thinker employed ontologically as being innate
to consciousness itself, an attitude of consciousness (KFP 10/10).
The aesthetic, or aesthesis, is distinguished from the cognitive and ethic by having
receptive, positively accepting character: reality found to be on hand by aesthetic act, the reality
cognised and evaluated by deed, enters a work of art (more exactly aesthetic object) and there
becomes an indispensable constitutive moment (KVM 286/278)*. What sets it apart from science
and ethics is kindness and mercifulness for the aesthetic rejects nothing, ignores nothing and
48
opposes nothing; its character is collective and reflecting of the human experience. Here the
aesthetic is taken in its original etymological meaning, namely, aisthanestahai, or to receive.
There is another fundamental difference between art on the one hand and science and deed on the
other. Whilst science creates the world of nature and deed creates the social human world, art is
exempt from this world-creating undertaking. The function of art is to enrich these two worlds,
create a unity of them; integrate them, formulating a new cultural value and meaning. The primary
quality of the cognitive and ethic in comparison to the aesthetic does not degrade that latter. It
must not be thought, however, that each of the domains is in such a manner equalled to one
specific aspect (Fridman 1992: 53) because it would mean that a domain does possess its own
territory. By being located on the borders, each area inevitably consists of all three facets, yet just
one of them is normative of an area s functionality.
With the above explanation of art s placement in the system of culture M. M. Bachtin
provides the solution for the then still significant artistic-theoretical debate between the supporters
of the l art pour l artprinciple and their opponents. That reality, which creative act finds to be on
hand, does not eliminate art itself due to the latter s orientation in culture s systematicity, therefore
art can be encountered as a part of the reality ordered cognitively and ethically and not ceasing to
be art, which means that art is also capable of maintaining its autonomy. Art is also encountered
as art by the creator, only it will not be found in isolation from the general systematicity of culture,
and therefore in his creation each artist, if his creation meaningful and serious, is, as it were, in
a way the first artist (KVM 292/284)*. Simultaneously, the issue how the artistic and non-artistic
are related to each other also lose its complicatedness: art is inclusive of reality, life is found not
only outside art but in it, within in, in all the f ullness of its value-bearing weightiness social,
political, cognitive, and so on (KVM 286/278). As long as art is from the beginning imbedded in
life, it is not an accidental occurrence in the world at large, to which one could easily attach other,
non-artistic, functions and meanings, goals or purposes.
The systematicity of culture that M. M. Bachtin adopts is not simply an agglomerate of
three cultural domains. Arrangement of the organisation of culture into a certain amount of
segments, with or without inner territories, and leaving it at that would result in a system without
the subject. If the subject were to appear in such a system, it could only be the self of the
researcher. This model of systematicity, idiosyncratic for exact and natural sciences, in the
thinker s opinion, could by no means be fitting to human sciences, and it had migrated into them
only due to the earlier already mentioned project of self-scientifisation. A conception of culture s
49
systematicity must from the outset contain the inscribed subject so as to be systematicity of the
humanitarian order (Orlov & Zylko 1993: 428). This fundamental precept was pronounced
together with the three-partite organisation of culture in the first essay: The three domains of
human culture science, art, and life gain unity only in the personality (licnost`), which
introduces them to its [the personality s] unity with the possibility of participation in it
(priobscjaet) (IO 5/1)*.
By describing culture as unable of existing beyond the human being, the thinker begins to
move away from posing the human being-culture problem in the usual terms of subject-object
opposition. Any cultural occurrence is located around the human being, moreover, no cultural
occurrence is possible beyond the human being, and this statement is an axiom: [E]verything in
this world acquires meaning, sense and value only in the relation to the human being, the human
(KFP 56/61). However, the human being is a philosophical abstraction within the general
reflections on culture and its organisation. In its actual reality culture exists as concreteness and
not as generality; the human being is not different in this regard, and the philosophical concept in
life s actuality alters itself to personality. M. M. Bachtin s usage of this particular term may look
to be somewhat too liberal in the given context if it is viewed from the slanted perception of the
necessity for a theory to be clear-cut . The absence of firm rigidity in much of artistic and
philosophical culture in Europe of the late 19th and early 20th century was rather commonplace, as
shown by several researchers (Pankov 1995, Bogatyreva 1996), and therefore M. M. Bachtin s
terminological impurity is not particularly exceptional.
The personality (licnost`) possesses its own unity, which is at risk to disintegrate just like
entire culture could easily fall into individual areas or like art and life could become separated by
the seemingly unbridgeable gap. The internal unity of the personality is secured by answerability
(otvetstvennost)
18
: But what guarantees the internal connection of the personality s constituents?
Only the unity of answerability. For that what I have experienced and understood in art I ought to
answer with my life, so that everything experienced and understood were not to remain ineffectual
in it (IO 5/1)*. M. M. Bachtin does not explain in any way towards whom or what answerability
is directed. There are numerous places in the early essays where the thinker speaks of religious
issues, and it would be enticing to see this concept as fundamentally metaphysical. However, in
the first paragraphs of KVM he also mentions that fortunately, it is no longer necessary at all to
18
Another proposed translation of otvetsvennost i s responsibility. The Russian term encompasses both
meanings at once.
50
engage in serious polemics with metaphysics (KVM 267/259). This is an obvious discrepancy,
but it needs to be remembered that papers have survived in different stages of completion that may
easily be a cause for this inconsistency. Thus, answerability should be understood as some deep
and fundamental condition of existence of each personality.
Similarly, another concept interconnected with answerability, oughtness (dolzestvovanie),
is also employed by M. M. Bachtin in an unusual fashion. The conscious I assumes the position of
answerability in life due to the general attitude of oughtness (KFP 9/3) for without it I itself would
not be obliged to react answerably in and to life altogether. Yet oughtness is not perceived as a
principle of ethics: Oughtness does not have defined and distinctive theoretical content (KFP
9/4), and it suggests that oughtness is existential and wilful predisposition of the personality,
subsequently conditioning answerability. The sudden change in the thinker s terminology, i.e. the
switch from the term personality to the term I, philosophical-theoretical and daily life-like
mundane at the same time, suggests that oughtness and answerability that the personality if
actively aware of them. Thus, oughtness is a distinctive category of acting-act (postuplenie-
postupok) (KFP 10/6)*, and it is a result of the consciousness s acknowledgement of being a part
of the ongoing flow of life, which the thinker in the purely philosophical terminology called being-
as-Event (bytie-sobytie)
19
.
The unifying ability of oughtness and answerability alone do not assure the uniqueness of
the personality because this attitude of consciousness is not reserved for any singular I, each
personality can, or perhaps should, adopt this stance in life. It is the specific place that the
personality occupies in life that provides the personality with that uniqueness: This world is
given to me from my only place as concrete and unique (KFP 51-2/57). The place occupied by
one cannot be at the same point of time be occupied by another, and consequently each I will have
a distinctive, matchless viewing and understanding of the world as well as each I would carry out
actual actions towards the world, and that these actions would be also inimitable by anybody.
From this one unique place I, conscious of its own answerability and oughtness, lives out its life.
To get distracted from one s unique place levels with losing the unity of life itself; in such a
situation it would be bereaved of its concreteness, and it would become a set of abstract
generalities. In other words, the consciousness that jeopardises its attitude of answerability and
oughtness is risking to return to the theoretical mind, and, in M. M. Bachtin s view, it cannot be
19
The term sobytie has also been translated as co-being.
51
desirable. Life in its total can in actual fact be seen as one continuous act: [M]y entire
only/unique life is composed as one ongoing acting (postuplenie) because entire life in its entirety
can be analysed as a kind of composite deed: I act with my entire life, each individual act and
experience is a moment of my life deeds (postupki)* (KFP 8/3).
Through individual acts-deeds the personality, motivated by the all-pervading attitude of
answerability and oughtness, knows, experiences and creates life. Yet since life is accessible to I
only through such individualised acts-deeds, I s activities, carried out under the governance of
their individual oughtnesses, are in real life directed at other individualised deeds carried out by
other Is. In rapport to culture s systematicity, within which actual life passes, each action-deed
has a particular culture orientation determined by the organisation of culture otherwise these
isolated, unique, personal world would destroy the unity of being, which in M. M. Bachtin s
understanding is being-as-Event (bytie-sobytie). The cognitive ignores the ethically evaluative
aspects of the reality found to be on hand as well as the aesthetic arrangement of that reality and
for this reason is satisfied with the presence of only one subject, which, as it has already been
noted, is virtually without any exceptions the self of the researcher himself. The situation is,
however, essentially different in the case of the ethic and the aesthetic. The compulsory
precondition for any ethics is the presence of no fewer than two subjects since the ethic is ordering
the inter-subjective relations.
In M. M. Bachtin s version of culture the aesthetic predominantly, though not
exclusively, preoccupied with art (KVM 279-80/271-2; item Glazman 1992) - has the earlier
described incorporative aptitude to integrate the cognitive and the ethic into one new cultural
meaning and value. This indicates that the aesthetic can no longer be understood exclusively
according to the traditional Cartesian subject-object scheme for through the ethic it takes in the
subject-subject scheme as well. A work of art, in this way, involves minimum two subjects
because life, as it follows, is a sequence of acts-deeds, which are none the other but encounters
between two Is, or between two consciousnesses. From the definition of the research object of
aesthetic analysis it has already become clear that one of these subjects is the author from whose
position a work of art needs to be analysed. Accordingly, I-the author directs the aesthetic action
of contemplation at another I that is not identical to the I of the author. The relationship between
I-the author and I of the self, towards which the author directs his aesthetic activity, is what
determines the aesthetic object.
52
An aesthetic event of contemplation may be seen as a subtype of aesthetic seeing,
although this difference is sometimes ignored (Kany 1980, Haynes 1995) or perhaps interpreted
too much (Bruhn & Lundquist 1998). Contemplation would not be possible without aesthetic
love, or sympathetic coexperiencing, ( AG: 154-5/81-3) because i n t he case of when t he
contemplator s ethical reaction to the object seen were to become negative, not merely conflicting,
no living-in could take place and consequently activity of contemplation would also cease. In
other words, art is not possible without the creator stepping beyond his personal likes and dislikes
of the object of his contemplation for it must be loved in any circumstances, and in this regard it is
entirely accurate to speak of aesthetic love s objectivity (ibid). Objective aesthetic love is not a
particularly well developed theoretically in the early writings, and according to some researchers,
the concept can be understood in a few different ways (Bonetskaja 1993, Bogatyreva 1995: 59-67).
Even in its more than vague, or inexcusably unfinished as some may wish to aver, outline
introduction of objective aesthetic love is an attempt to expand the limits of the classical aesthetics
of modern period resting on the astuteness of beauty and the sublime.
The core of activity of contemplation is living-in (vzivanie) of the seeing subject into
another subject, which is the object of the former sactivity (AG: 72/211, 85/227, 105-8/22-3). If
the subject has adopted the stance in life governed by oughtness and answerability, his living-in
into another subject will not end up in the contemplating subject losing himself in the object of
contemplation. Were the contemplator to lose himself in the object of seeing during living-in, he
would be also suffering the loss of that unique place on the borderlines of the cultural areas, which
would also bring the activity of contemplation itself to a halt, and a work of art would never be
created. Next t o l i vi ng-in, t h e activity of contemplation also involves objectification
(ob jektirovanie ), that is placing the individuality understood during living-in outside the self of
the seeing subject and return to the seeing subject s own unique place, from which aesthetic form-
giving (oformlenie) to that individuality can happen. This sort of aesthetic activity is algorithmic,
and its organisation does not change from one act of contemplation to another, though it must be
emphasised that the chronological sequence in this case is merely a mode of theoretical
articulation of the activity of contemplation and not its positioning in real time. While
architectonics of aesthetic act is invariant and it enables to freeze the encounter between two
subjects at the time when it has taken place, actual reality produced during contemplation of the
world will always be unique and singular even in the case of the same two subjects being involved
in an encounter all over again.
53
The author encounters his hero already existing, he cannot invent him, give birth to him
or devise him in some other way - it is impossible according to M. M. Bachtin s view. In this way
the creative act in effect begins with the ethical for if the authors bore negative ethical attitude
towards the reality to be found on hand, living-in could not take place. When the author decides
to begin with the aesthetic, a work of art results as something unconvincing, it has an obvious
quality of having been made , devoid of any values. The hero, which the author encounters, does
not exist in the physical or natural reality, neither he exists in aesthetic reality for then the author
would not have much to create. This exo-aesthetic reality of the hero is the reality of possible
eventness, it exists only potentially (AG: 255/199), and its importance is that it is the source of
aesthetic objectivity, in other words, that what is holding a work of art from collapsing in the total
subjectivity of the author, will be understood by the author, given form and, hence, will become
the part of a work of art.
The definition of the aesthetic object can be further stipulated: The reality of cognition
and ethic action that enters (as an already identif ied and evaluated reality) into the aesthetic
object and is subjected there to concrete, intuitive unif ication, individuation, concretisation,
isolation, and consummation (zaver enie)
20
, i.e., to a process of comprehensive artistic forming by
means of a particular material, this reality we call - in complete agreement with traditional word
usage - the content of a work of art (more exactly - of the aesthetic object). Content is an
indispensable constitutive moment in the aesthetic object, and artistic f orm is correlative to it;
outside this correlation, artistic f orm has no meaning at all (KVM 289/281). At the first glance,
this formulation appears to contain a stroke of carelessness or what may even be an error on the
thinker s part. Earlier M. M. Bachtin stated that the aesthetic object itself is content of a particular
aesthetic activity, that is the content of aesthetic activity (contemplation) directed toward a work.
This content we shall call hencef orth simply the aesthetic object (KVM 275/266-7). M. M.
Bachtin has introduced content as being that of the author s contemplation of a work of art. In the
expanded definition there appear changes in the formulation of the aesthetic object. In the more
explicit clarification it seems no longer attached to the particular activity of the author towards his
creation, instead content is being fastened to a work of art in its entirety, and in addition content is
equalled only to one indispensable constitutive moment of the aesthetic object. The thinker looks
as if directly contradicting himself: the author, so crucial for any cultural occurrence, seems to
20
The other translations of the term zaver eniehave been suggested by interpreters and commentators:
completedness, completion, completeness, conclusiveness, finalisednes, finalisation, finished quality.
54
have been eliminated together with the activity of contemplation. Moreover, it seems that
architectonics begin to double because there are two human being involved in aesthetic activity of
contemplation.
Indeed, M. M. Bachtin positions the author at a distance to content, and the thinker
identifies this particular placement of the creator as the latter s exotopic position of outsidedness
(vnenachodimost)
21
(KVM 329/282, AG: 96/12, 105-8/22-3), which in its own turn equips the
contemplator with surplus of vision (izbytok videnija) (AG: 72/211, 95-6/11-2, 105-8/22-3) and
possibility to carry out living-in. If the author would engage actively into the events of the two
worlds, he would lose his own unique position of the creator that is none the other than that what
provides the necessary form. Put differently, an artist can remain an artist only when and if he
manages at a certain point to cease being an actual participant in non-aesthetic happenings, but this
condition is applicable to I-the author, which at other times can function as an active participant of
non-aesthetic events, i.e. not being an artist all the time during the actual duration of a lifetime. It
does not mean that the author is separated from the ethic and cognitive in culture altogether; his
location in culture s systematicity alone hinders him from becoming only a distant and removed
observer or voyeur. M. M. Bachtin clearly states that the exotopic position must not be confused
with indifference towards the cognitive-ethic that is taking place in front of the author (KVM
290/282). The author may very well be uninvolved in the actual cognitive and ethic events as an
active participant, yet he is connected to them as being a contemplator who is disinterested, but
understanding the axiological sense of what is taking place; not experiencing (perezivajuscij), but
co-experiencing (soperezivajuscij) the event* (ibidem).
Thus, the aesthetic object as a systematic formation comes across in the capacity a
transgredient entity. The object of aesthetic analysis can be best described using the terms
proposed by the Russian researcher Boris V. Orlov (Orlov 1992: 277, item Orlov & Zylko 1993:
428-9), namely the subjectified object (sub ektirovannyj ob ekt ) and the objectified subject
(ob ektirovannyj sub ekt ). The rel at i onshi p bet ween t he aut hor and a wor k of ar t i s
simultaneously operating as the subject-subject and subject-object relations that form the subject-
subject-object complex. In contrast to the Kantian idea of architectonics, where the governing sole
mind is inside the system, in M. M. Bachtin s version themind is participatory, and in this way
21
The term vnenachodimost has been on various occasions translated also as being located outside, external
location, external position, extralocality, outsideness.
55
system acquires transgrediency (transgredientnost), which permits to include the author in a work
of art even though his position in relation to it is exotopic.
The author is present in the aesthetic object for it is he who provides ethic-cognitive
content with appropriate form, otherwise remaining firmly in his exotopic position. The creator
can without a doubt adopt an anti-ingredient position in relation to his work of art; however, it will
remain only a rhetoric device for a work of art will always remain wholly covered in the author s
fingerprints (Bogatyreva 1996: 42). The author s choice of one or another form is indicative of
his principle position towards the ethic-cognitive, of which he is a part also trough the activity of
contemplation, but not active and direct particpation, that is the choice of form is secondary to the
ethical-cognitive. Seeing the author s activity is directed atthe object of contemplation, it is that
other I non-identical with the author, which serves as the axiological centre of a work of art s
architectonics, though the entire work is given to the researcher from the author s point of view
since it is the author who provided the aesthetic event with artistic form. As a result, a work of
art s each moment can be defined in two axiological systems that of content and that of form
(KVM 293/285; AG: 87-8/207-8), or it can be said that a work of art is governed simultaneously by
both the object of seeing and the author, the latter en-framing the former due to the way content
and form are related to each other. There is, as a result, no discontinuity between the two
definitions of the aesthetic object given in KVM, and doubling of aesthetic architectonics is not
taking place. Architectonics of a work of art and its architectonics, hence, is organised around the
subject non-identical with the author, i.e. the hero.
Four types of architectonics of the artistic whole of a work of art are gathered around the
hero spatial, temporal, architectonics of meaning and axiological (AG: 72/212). The first type,
spatial architectonics, is closely related to the unique and singular place occupied by each I in the
world for this understanding is inseparable from the perception of body articulated as a value in
major European philosophical systems over the centuries (AG: 130-5/52-9). The owner of the
body can experience his own body and its movements only from inside, therefore this experience
of it will always remain partial and incomplete for the beholder of the body the outer aspects of the
body and its movements remain outside the capacity of the eye, and it is never given to the
beholder as a part of the world in front of him. In this sense, the body s beholder is destined to
remain in chronically incomplete awareness of himself since likeness captured by reflecting
surfaces such as mirrors is not presenting a genuine picture of the exterior for the reason that
looking at one s reflection involves conscious posing, and it is not how the body is positioned for
56
most of the time in life (AG: 112-3/32-3). Creative imagination, daydreaming, dreams and
photographs, according to M. M. Bachtin, do not provide wanted results either (AG: 108-10/29-30,
112-3/35) since the beholder of the body has no emotional-volition approach (AG: 95/12) to his
own exterior from the beginning. The exterior of the body, hence, is located on the borderline of
the visual world that can otherwise be simply called the visual world. The outer appearance of the
body and its immediate surroundings as related to it, that is all those elements not available to the
direct visual inspection of the beholder of the body, will function as finalising moments in the
work of art.
Temporal architectonics is related to the experience of the internal life, or soul as
becoming in time internal whole, given, presently existing whole (AG: 176/100)*. In full analogy
with the external body, it can not be accessed in its entirety because two of the decisive moments
in and of life are outside the reach by the beholder of soul. Namely, the instance of birth and the
instance of death will be outside the reach of the self. These two events, but especially death, can
never become the integral and understood parts of one s life because there is no possible way of
knowing about them and emotional-volition approach to them is impossible. An attempt to
consider the world after one s death is achievable, though it will be imagined only from the
position different than one s own. In other words, [t]he whole of my life no has significance in
the axiological context of my life* ( AG: 179/105), and it can only be said that I myself is
condition of the possibility of my life, but not its axiological hero (AG: 180/106). Thus, here, just
as in the case of spatial architectonics, it is only the other that is capable of providing the self with
the part that the self is inevitably missing.
M. M. Bachtin, as it has already been said, did not reject the classical division of art into
different arts, and from his point of view visual arts will always be stronger where spatial
architectonics is concerned whilst literary arts wi l l t ake pri ori t y i n t he case of t emporal
architectonics (AG: 113-4/35-6). It is not to say that temporal architectonics should be completely
excluded from visual arts for narrative is by no means alien to visual arts and painting in particular
if it is taken in its wide meaning of two-dimensional pictures. This difference is apparent when the
question of biography is addressed separately in literature and visual arts. According to M. M.
Bachtin, for literature the main aesthetic goal of biography is the hero s life, his entire personality
and not his internal and external determinedness (AG: 234/173). If in a literary work of art
presentation of the entire life and the entire personality is considerably eased by the specificity of
literary material, then in visual arts it is difficult to achieve within the limits of one work of art,
57
though it can rather effortlessly be mastered within series of works. On the other hand, the other
two types of architectonics, axiological architectonics and architectonics of meaning, will function
essentially in the same way in both literary and visual arts as well as in other arts.
The third and fourth types of architectonics architectonics of meaning and axiological
architectonics are closely related to each other and they are more difficult to detach from each
other hypothetically, though all the four types of architectonics are actually not separable from one
another at all and they do not exist in isolation from each other (AG: 206/138). While spatial and
temporal architectonics are chiefly directed at making the man and his life aesthetically significant,
architectonics of meaning and axiological architectonics include into a work of art the meaning-
governed attitude of the hero in being, that internal place, which he occupied in unitary and unique
event of being, his axiological position in it (ibidem), and it will be singled out for finalisation by
the author, which he understands and grasps during the act of living-i n. In a work of art
architectonics of meaning and axiological architectonics are present as forms of the hero, and on
the basis of history of European literature M. M. Bachtin offered a list of such forms that in their
own turn can be arranged according to their transgrediency (AG: 208-45/138-87). In the scale s
end presenting the lowest transgrediency of the hero s form would be the hero of confession and a
vita of a saint, followed by autobiography/biography, whilst at the end showing the largest
transgrediency of the hero stand type and character, the latter having two sub-types of its own, the
hero of Classicism and the hero of Romanticism, which is at the top of the transgrediency chart (cf
Boneckaja 1985: 70-1). This kind of forms are not coincidental with forms belonging to a work of
art itself nor they are found in works of art in their pure states, but function as aims, as utmost
limits toward which the concrete moments of the work tend (AG: 244-5/186).
What the first step of the tripartite aesthetic analysis is concerned with is the relation
between content as the cognitive-ethical formed aesthetically. Content of the work of art, thus,
must be understood as the event that occurred between two Is that diverge between themselves as
the hero and the author while remaining in a transgredient inter-relation. Since the work of art is
an aesthetic occurrence within systematicity of culture, it encompasses the cognitive, the ethical
and the aesthetic. In its own turn, the aesthetic s function of integrating the cognitive and the
ethical and creating so a new cultural meaning and affixing it in particular artistic material with the
help of form is demonstrative of the author s, who is its provider, cognitive-ethical position
outside the event of the encounter between the two Is. Thus, the first step of the tripartite analysis
must describe and analyse the cognitive and the ethical of the aesthetic object, which constitutes its
58
content, and not to confuse ethical statements that can be said about content, and the ethical, which
is a constitutive part of the aesthetic object of the given work of art. Similarly, the cognitive of
content should be recognised as present in the aesthetic object and not brought into it from outside
by an analyst. As the cognitive moment of content is not present in it as purely cognitive, but as
related to the ethical, in fact it is the ethical has the primacy in content (KVM 293/285), therefore
after identification of the ethical in content it is necessary to determine its relation with the ethical
of content. Analysis of the cognitive will be relying on recognition (uznanie) and its moments can
be found in a number of varying expressions in the work of art, but they will not be given as the
purely cognitive. One the other hand, the ethical is considerably more difficult, as M. M. Bachtin
admits himself (KVM 297/189), and it can best be mastered through retelling of the event and
possibly supplying it with its theoretical description. The concluding part of the first step of the
tri-partite analysis of the work of art needs to direct its attention at how the ethical-cognitive and
the concrete form given to that content are related to each other, that is to understand content
of namely that artistic form and form as the form of namely that given content (KVM 298/290).
After the first part of the tripartite analysis of a work of art has been successfully
performed the aesthetic object and its structure, or the architectonics of the aesthetic object, have
been understood and described, the aesthetic analysis can proceed to its second step where it
ought to address a work of art in its primary, exclusively cognitive givenness and understand its
construction completely independently from the aesthetic object (KVM 275/266)*. In the
thinker s view, an aesthetician needs to become during this stage of analysis a specialist of another
field a geometer, an anatomist, a physiologist, a linguist (ibidem). Literature was an art that
preoccupied M. M. Bachtin most, therefore artistic material in the early essays is explained
through the example of what he thought was literary material - word (slovo) that is encountered by
a literary artist in its specific scientific understanding, namely, word as language.
Though linguistics encounters its object in a range of cultural settings and environments,
it leaves outside its attention any other but the linguistic aspect of word, everything of extra-
linguistic value does not preoccupy the field investigating language (KVM 300/292). Linguistics
forehands scientifically handled material to the artist as a part of reality found to be on hand,
though his need for artistic material does not coincide completely with the understanding of word
coming from linguistics because an artist s activity at large is orientated within culture s entirety
and not only within the cognitive. In the process of artistic creation for him the linguistically
articulated material, therefore, becomes the challenger, and his prime goal in relation to material is
59
to overcome the narrow scientific determinedness of a particular artistic material, yet doing so not
by negating it, but in the way of immanent perf ecting of language (KVM 305/297). Actual
technical decisions in handling material in a work of art depends on the aesthetic object, but in
spite of being a part of a work of art, material will not be a component of the aesthetic object,
th[at] unique aesthetic being, growing out on the borders of a work of art in the way of
overcoming its material-object-like, extra-aesthetic determinedness (KVM 305/297, item 302-
3/294-5). How well an artist has succeeded to go beyond the narrow scientific perception of
artistic material is the direct indicator of his technical brilliance. Evidently, not every artist and
not in each work of art he has created succeeds in overcoming this narrow determinedness of
material by expanding its limits from within material itself.
Obviously, the particular material, word, and its scientific understanding explained by M.
M. Bachtin cannot be transferred directly to painting or any other non-verbal art for that matter if
the insistence of the thinker to retain the delimitation between different arts is to be obeyed. It
could, nevertheless, seem that it is redundant to address the issue of material in painting in any
greater detail, and for Ch. Soutine s commentators there does not seem to has ever occurred a
doubt that this artist s artistic material was anything else but paints and more precisely oil paints.
Also when turning to the discussion of material in her book, D. J. Haynes resorted to analogies and
named paint as being material of an art of painting: Language is to poetry as nature to science, as
materials such as stone, clay, paint are to visual arts (Haynes 1995: 109). On the other hand, the
German scholar Rainer Grbel made a comparison with ceramics and likened literary word with
colour shade and glazes (Grbel 1982: 103). However, both of the suggested analogies appear to
be questionable because of being partial, and it makes them quite removed from M. M. Bachtin s
understanding of artistic material.
The two above proposals for reworking the thinker s understanding of literary aesthetic
material aptly for studies of visual arts dismiss the notion that artistic material in the early writings
is seen as an articulation by the cognitive. If the second step of aesthetic analysis of a work of art
i n t he case of l i t erat ure can t urn t o the discipline of linguistics, even though today such
classification of linguistics appears somewhat odd, where it finds word dealt with as language,
then for visual arts there also ought to be fields of research or entire disciplines that, following D.
J. Haynes and R. Grbel, would see stone, paint or glazes as its objects of their investigations.
Undoubtedly, paint or glazes and so forth can be submitted to a range of investigations such as
chemical, physical and others, and for certain aspects of a work of art s analysis it is directly
60
necessary to carry out examinations in a laboratory setting (e.g., Pratt 1998). Yet overall it would
be no less than onerous to argue that a painter with a few rare exceptions - faces his artistic
material as, for example, molecular structures, wave-lengths or neurological activities. After all,
M. M. Bachtin wrote directly in KVM that [t]here is full analogy between the significance of
language for poetry with the significance of Naturwissenschaft s nature as the material (and not
the content) for visual arts: of physical-mathematical space, mass, sound of acoustics and so on*
(KVM 302/294).
Still, the inclination to include characteristics of a particular artistic material known from
history of visual arts in the understanding of material for visual arts in general is not entirely faulty
if it is seen as relating to the problem of artistic technique. The second step of the tripartite
aesthetic analysis is devoted to the question of material, which the investigator encounters as
already articulated within a particular work of art. For this reason, at this stage, it becomes
necessary to address artistic technique, and by the technical moment in art, we mean everything
that is absolutely necessary f or the creation of a work of art in its natural-scientific or linguistic
determinateness it is inclusive of the entire constitution of a f inished work of art as a thing *
(KVM 303/294). Nevertheless, artistic technique in itself is not the ultimate object of investigation
(KVM 310/302), and its analysis is important and necessary for as long as it helps to uncover the
artist s skill in handling material and reveal aspects of a work of art s composition, because the
artist s and artistic creativity s relation to artistic material is its overcoming (KVM 46-7/294-5, 49-
50/297) for the aesthetic object itself is attached to the material expression of a work of art as
growing out on the borders or at the limits of artistic material.
Then again, it would be just as incorrect to reduce M. M. Bachtin s understanding of
material to its articulation that could be found within one or several disciplines of exact and natural
sciences (KVM 301/293) as it would be to condense his conception to such materials used in visual
art s art paints, marble, clay, stone and so forth. Besides the analogy between language of
linguistics and literary artistic material and visual arts and conception of space within exact and
natural sciences the thinker also spoke, however briefly, of marble (KVM 273/265) as well as
visually apprehended material (KVM 308/300, item 302/293). Already in 1995 the Russian
interpreter of M. M. Bachtin s works AleksandrV. Pankov observed that the concept of material
in the early essays appear to double (Pankov 1995: 77-82), and indeed, artistic material functions
in two different ways in the systematic aesthetics presented in the early essays.
61
One the one hand, artistic material is understood in the sense of substance that is being
handled with the assistance of tools, and this understanding of material can cover both already
established and held traditional artistic materials and possible materials that may be introduced by
any artist. On the other hand, artistic material is encountered by an artist [who] never starts in the
very beginning namely as an artist, i.e. in the very beginning he cannot be dealing only with
aesthetic elements alone* ( AG 254/198) as formulated and understood within one or another
scientific field outside the aesthetic within culture and in accord with the general tri-partite
systematicity of culture at large. The analysis during its second step needs to address artistic
material as understood by one or another scientific field, but at the same time it cannot forego such
facets of the external work of art that are named by D. J. Haynes and R. Grbel. In other words,
analysis of artistic material in the case of paintings has to take into consideration both articulation
of space and specificity of all those aspects of employed material, without which the actual work
of art had not been created at all.
It is in relation to articulation of material that the fourth difficulty faced and left unsolved
by material aesthetics gains its explanation since it is related to the problem of artistic material.
M. M. Bachtin thought that (4) Material aesthetics is not capable of explaining aesthetic seeing
outside art (KVM 279/271). Aestheticised occurrences can be found outside art, for instance, in
myths, nature could be aesthetically contemplated, and transferring of aesthetic forms can be also
encountered in ethics and science. Two knotted together and important moments, nevertheless, are
missing in all of them. There is no organised and articulated material through technique, and it
gives out feebleness of form. This kind of aesthetic phenomena should not be discounted as
unworthy attention of aesthetics, though to start explanation of the aesthetic from these ambiguous
formations is methodologically incongruous* (ibidem). In such aestheticised cases a possibility
for aesthetic seeing is, nevertheless, only rudimentary. At best there can be a hint at the potential
hero, the actually expressed hero is definitely absent, and the author is just as much absent or
otherwise the existence of firmly fastened form would be inevitably present.
The last of the tree steps of the aesthetic analysis of a work of art can commence after
both the aesthetic object, or content, has been understood and described and the analysis of artistic
material in a work of art under investigation has been completed, and it directs its attention to
composition of the work of art. In M. M. Bachtin s understanding, composition of a work of art is
a structure or an organisation of the material work of art intended a priori to execute the aesthetic
object, therefore the third step of the tripartite analysis is presented in the following way: To
62
understand external material work as that what actualizes an aesthetic object, as the technical
apparatus of aesthetic execution (KVM 275/267). He insisted that the often encountered inability
within material aesthetics to discriminate accurately and precisely between the aesthetic object,
exo-aesthetic givenness of a work of art and teleologically perceived compositional organisation of
material is the cause of much equivocality and vagueness within art research. From the point of
view of methodological consistency, analysis of a work of art bounces continuously and freely
between exo-givenness of a work of art and compositional organisation of material since
uncritically understood goal-directed composition of a work of art is declared to be the artistic
value itself, the aesthetic object itself (KVM 276/268; 290/282).
Writing in 1968 of L homme la pipe (Portrait de M. Chauveau), c. 1916 (CR2 : P3; ill.
9) Maurice Tuchman, who is undoubtedly one of the major authorities on Ch. Soutine s oeuvre,
remarked:
Soutine painted portraits of fellow artists and of political refugees who lived
at La Ruche, as in the Portrait of M. Chauveau. Here he commences his
struggle to transform objective appearance into a world of pervasively
convoluted form. His means at this stage is the occasional exaggeration of
natural irregularities the sloping hairline, the high, protruding cheekbone
and enlarged ear. The curvilinear gyrations of the background may be
interpreted as symbolic of his wish to make real forms take on their
potentially free, spontaneous quality. A diagonal composition, which
becomes systematic in the landscapes of Cret [(CR1: L32-97, see also
Matamoros 2000: 178-345)], determines the ensemble of forms without the
use of supporting horizontal or vertical lines. (Tuchman 1968 in Gse 1982b:
53-4)
This commentary illustrates well what M. M. Bachtin saw in the 1920s as confusion of the
aesthetic object of a work of art and its material organisation as teleological composition of a work
of art. Though the portrait s aesthetic object should be connected in one or another way to the
portraits sitter, in this passage the analysis rapidly glides into the discussion of the pictorial space
and its peculiar facets as depending on Ch. Soutine s peculiar technique of exaggerating
naturalistic forms, and organised artistic material indeed appears as the main aesthetic value of this
particular work. Another example of such an approach, however, in an inverted manner, comes
from the commentaries on individual paintings selected for the 2000 Soutine exhibition at the
63
Jdisches Museum in Wien (Natter 2000). Peter J. Bogner, who prepared these commentaries to
the works, about L idiot du village, c. 1919 (CR2: 19; ill. 18), observed:
Der Dorfidiot, dessen Alter schwer zu schtzen ist, sitz dem Betrachter
ergeben gegenber. Das Schema der Komposition scheint Grundstrukturen
Modiglianis als Vorbild zu haben. Die Figur sitzt in der Bildmitte und hebt
sich von dem tiefroten Hintergrund ab, nur ein Stuhl markiert den Raum. Die
Hnde des Dorfidioten liegen artig auf den nackten Knien. Die korrekte
Kleidung ist die eines Pennlers, er trgt kurze schwarze Hosen, eine blaue
Jacke und darunter ein bltenweisses Hemd mit ausgeschlagenem Kragen.
Traurig, wehrlos, machtlos is der Blick des Idioten und abwartend. Soutine
portrtierte dise tragische Figur, ohne dessen innere Realitt herauszukehren.
Er vermied die grosse emotionale Belastung, die eine Auseinandersetzung mit
diesem Sujet verlangt htte. Das Modell wurde in eine Verkleidung gesteckt,
somit konnte Soutine den persnlichen Bezug auf ein Minimum beschrnken.
Bemerkenswert erscheint die Stellung der Hnde in Soutines Portrts. Sie
ruhen meist im Schloss oder auf den Knien. Sie asgen nichts ber die
Dargestelleten aus, sie gewhren aufgrund ihrer Leblosigkeit keinen Einblick
in das Innenleben des Modells. Es entsteht der Eindruck des Posierens vor
dem Maler und Betrachter. Soutine whlte fr seine Portrts vornehmlich
anonyme Personen. (in Natter 2000: 84)
Though in this commentary there could be traced what M. M. Bachtin would call the aesthetic
object, even if it does not comply fully with his conception of the event involving two individual
selves, the work s aesthetic object s connection with compositional organisation of artistic
material is far from clear. This inability of formalist, or material, aesthetics to distinguish between
constituents of the work of art brings around the third problem that it cannot overcome: (3) There
is in works of material aesthetics an inescapable and constant conf usion of architectonic and
compositional forms, so that the former are never clarified in principle or defined with precision,
and are thus undervalued (KVM 276-7/268). This confusion between the constituents of a work
of art is connected with an analogical erroneous identification of different forms of a work of art.
Architectonics forms are fundamental to all arts as well as to the domain of aesthetics, in
other words, in their case the differentiation of art into different arts is of no consequence. These
forms are forms of the aesthetic man and linked to his internal, or that of soul, and external, or
corporeal, bodily values as his environment, forms of the event in his individual-experiential
(licno-ziznenom), social, historical dimensions, and so on (KVM 278/270). Aesthetic forms differ
from compositional forms in them being a part of the aesthetic object and also in their being
64
tranquilly sufficient unto themselves (ibidem). Compositional forms, on the other hand, are
organising actual material of a work of art and because of it they have an auxiliary function in it as
well as differ from calm architectonic forms by having a restless character. Moreover,
architectonic forms predetermine the choice of compositional forms, but, as M. M. Bachtin
specifically emphasises, it does not mean that architectonics forms are stored somewhere in the
ready-made condition, realised independently of compositional forms. This reiterates his earlier
idea that the extra-aesthetic aspect of a work of art, its purely cognitive givenness, is necessary for
any work of art, though it is not the singularly most important constituent in it. M. M. Bachtin
provided a list compiled, as he noticed neither full nor systematically organised (KVM 278/269-
70), to illustrate architectonic forms and compositional forms. Among the first group, i.e.
architectonic forms, he mentioned aesthetic individuality belonging to the aesthetic object itself,
form of self-sufficiency or self-containment, humour, heroisation, type, character, the tragic and
the comic while short story, novella, novel and drama are listed as compositional forms since they
organise material. In this way, the third step of tri-partite analysis can be seen to be an attempt to
correlate architectonic f or ms di r ect ed at t he event and t he aut hor -hero interaction and
compositional forms directed at articulation of artistic material subordinate to the aesthetic object.
The final, fifth, problem that formalists, or material aesthetics, are not capable of solving
is connected to the inability to provide the basis for history of art: 5. Material aesthetics is not
capable of providing f oundation f or history of art (KVM 280/272). Since formalist, or material,
aesthetics is overemphasising the role of artistic material, the only conception of history of art it
can offer will be a sequence of changes in techniques traced in isolated rows of works of art
understood primarily as material objects or simply things. As correctly and attentively pointed out
by the Danish researcher J. Bruhn in his doctoral dissertation (Bruhn 2001), M. M. Bachtin s
comprehension of history is almost certainly the most overlooked theme in his entire heritage in
spite of numerous references to historical issues already present in the early essays. Without
reaching an understanding of M. M. Bachtin s conception of history, it is impossible to determine
whether his systematic aesthetics can be applied to analysis of any works of art from virtually any
period, the practice that could be detected in some of art historical writing presented in the second
chapter of this paper that has invoked M. M. Bachtin. Yet this issue requires a considerably more
thorough investigation than this paper can permit; moreover, the selected self-portraits for the
actual analysis in the next chapter had been created within a very short period of time and in this
way the question of history in this case is not of primary importance.
65
M. M. Bachtin s systematic aesthetics can be summarised as follows. It is built on two
fundamental principles. Following the neo-Kantian-Humboldtian line of reasoning, the first of
them adopts the notion of culture as consisting of three areas cognition, ethics and aesthetics
that can be under no circumstances disconnected and isolated from each other since only this
intertwined relationship provides each of the three areas with indispensable uniqueness within the
entire system of culture. In spite of its own nature, each cultural occurrence will always reflect
this tripartite organisation of culture, and in the case of the aesthetic, or art, though art is not the
exclusive area in culture where the aesthetic can manifest itself, culture s systematicity will be
particularly evident. The second principle states that the integrating core of entire culture is the
personality, or t he human bei ng, that takes the existential position of a nswerability and
oughtness. Governed by these two existential attitudes and f rom the unique place occupied
exclusively by him alone, the human being lives his life. An actual life is lived as a sequence of
concrete and particular deeds and, consequently, it is directed at other deeds, that is at other
personalities. By and large, it can be said that life is lived as an ongoing series of continuous
encounters between personalities. An actual life in its own turn is also governed by culture s
systematicity presenting each human being with reality found to be on hand as well as possibility
for creating new meanings through the creative process because of the specificity of the aesethetic.
On t he basi s of t hese t wo fundament al pri nci pl es M. M. Bacht i n devel ops an
understanding of a work of art and its analysis. The work of art is a systematic cultural
occurrence, therefore it will necessarily encompass all three domains of culture, i.e. the cognitive,
the ethic and the aesthetic. It is also an encounter between two different personalities that have
been involved in a common event, however, it is an event of a particular type, namely, the
aesthetic event, and it defines the actual relationship between such two personalities. As M. M.
Bachtin maintained that the main theoretical category for analysis of art is form, one of the two
participants must be the source of it for a work of art, and the giver of form, hence, creator of a
work of art out of the event, is the author while the other participant is identified as the hero. The
author s position in the event thatis taking place is peculiar because his position, from which
form-giving activity can happen, is located outside the event itself. It does not mean that the
author is entirely outside the event itself since during the process of living-in, which is cognitive-
ethical and not yet aesthetic, he has grasped the position of the hero and only then has taken his
position of outsidedness. It provides the author with the privilege of having surplus of vision
necessary for gathering different and at the first glance potentially miscellaneous moments of the
66
event into one coherent and meaningful whole, and, hence, presenting a work of art as his own
version of the event. Yet at the same time the author is not that human being, around whom the
work of art as cultural occurrence is organised this position belongs to the hero whose
dependency on the author is determined by the ontology of the unique and only place occupied by
each human being in culture, which does not permit the self to form the entire picture of himself
without the assistance from the other.
In the meanwhile, the author and his position in a work of art will be present through that
particular form he has chosen to give his own or another particular creation. Form in a work of art
will function as connected to both the author showing his position towards the event and to the
hero finalising him and the event, in which he participated together with the author. Finalising
moments of the hero will be related to his outer appearance and the immediate surroundings
related to him and to his inner life, respectively entering the work of art as spatial and temporal
architectonics. The hero s axiological position and meaning-governed attitude in the event will be
in the work of art as axiological architectonics and architectonics of meaning, and these two types
of architectonics will be finalised through monads reflecting the author -hero relationship as they
have evolved in the course of European cultural history of since the Middle Ages. Moreover,
finalising moments will also derive from the author through his choice of forms and articulation of
material in a work of art, that is through architectonic forms directed at content and compositional
forms directed at teleogically articulated artistic material.
Thus, a work of art in M. M. Bachtin s systematic aesthetics consists of the aesthetic
object, which is content of the work of art, and it presents the event between the hero and the
author in the latter s understanding as it will transpire through forms used in a work of art. Only
after the analysis of the cognitive and the ethical of the aesthetic object has been achieved, it can
be addressed how particular forms of a work of art relate to content as finalising the event between
the two selves, which is at the core of the aesthetic object. In the second part of the actual analysis
the material work needs to be approached from a position of one or another science and
investigated as the object formulated within that or another cognitive field. This part of the tri-
partite analysis will reveal the particular material-related challenge that an artist has been facing
and an artist s technique and above all his ability to expand the understanding of the cognitively
perceived artistic material or failure to do so. Finally, the last step of the tri-partite analysis of the
work of art should address the material work of art as carrying out, or actualising, the aesthetic
object of a work of art, and this teleologically defined organisation of artistic material in a work of
67
art is seen as composition of an entire work of art. The next chapter will attempt to investigate the
three self-portraits by Ch. Soutine closely adhering to M. M. Bachtin s conceptionsand following
step by step the tri-partite analysis of a work of art.
68
5. THE PAINTINGS OF MERIT
The Unstable Self-Portraits
Chaim Soutine: Paintings of Merit.
The title of the exhibition of his works held at the Crane Kelman
Gallery, London, England. 1967.
In 1917-8, the assumed time of painting the three self-portraits
22
, Ch. Soutine was in his mid-20s
and still a poor nobody, just one of hundreds of foreign artists in the French capital. By then he
had lived some 4 years in Paris, in which the major museums were closed for most of the time
because of the Great War of 1914-8, finished his artistic training that he felt he needed to acquire
and relocated from the artistic community La Ruche to the studios of the Cit Falguire in
Montparnasse in the southern part of Paris (see Appendix 1 and ill. 22, 26). At that time Ch.
Soutine was also engaged in a close friendship with Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920), through
which he acquired his first art dealer Leopold Zborowski (c. 18901932), the poet of the Polish
descent who had a gallery on the Left Bank.
In the curtain self -portrait that is thought to be the earliest of the three works the author
depicted the figure in the three-quarter length, which face and body are half-turned towards the
viewer. The figure is clad in a long dark coat that was frequently regarded as a typical attire of the
East European Jews. There are no any particular things included in the picture that would be a
part of the hero s most immediate surroundings and, hence, related to him except for the dark
patch right behind the figure that melts together with the larger yellow background. The figure
stands motionless, staring directly at the viewer with somewhat frozen eyes.
To a degree the beard self -portrait repeats the similar depiction. The hero of the work is
also shown dressed in a coat of the same type and presented en face gazing directly at the viewer.
The motionless figure, that this time is depicted at just below the shoulder line, is also not
surrounded by any other items. The background in this picture is, however, different from the
22
In this paper it is accepted the dating of the self-portraits given by the compilers of the catalogue raisonn.
However, the beard self -portrait may be of the later date as it was suggested three decades ago (Courthion
1972) not only because of the dark palette that became typical of Ch. Soutine s works in the middle of the
1920s but also because of the hair-line that in this self-portrait is visible more receding than in the other two
self-portraits.
69
curtain self -portrait in the way that it is only the upper part of the picture there is distinctly a
background whilst in the lower part it looks like a screen that has been lowered or not pulled up
high enough. Thus, the hero of these two works is generalised and he is an unremarkable,
ordinary, most likely Jewish person from t he East ern Europe. Ot herwi se i t i s onl y t he
individualised facial features that set the hero apart from a mass of other persons of the similar
background, and these features in addition allow to recognise this portrait, like the curtain
portrait too, as being self-portraits.
The hero depicted in the Pearlman picture shows the figure also portraye d below the
shoulders, like a bust, with the body positioned against the yellow background and directly en
f ace towards the viewer, but this time the eyes, again with the somewhat frozen and nearly dead
look in them, are gazing at some point to the side or behind the viewer or just staring into the air.
The hero of this work is dressed in a suit with a white shirt and a tie, but the clothes are not ideally
pressed. There is a picture with a human figure on its rare side included in the work; however, it is
far from evident how the picture shown in the painting and the hero are related exactly because
there is nothing else distinctive included in the work to show that the picture in the painting and
the figure in it are related as a work of painting and its author. Once again, only the facial features
give out that the depicted person in the work is Ch. Soutine himself.
This change of attire from the outerwear in the beard and curtain self -portraits to the
garment suited first of all to the indoorwear in the Pearlman self -portrait, and the change in the
immediate surroundings of the hero that comes to include a work of art are significant, but the
movement from one type towards another cannot be understood literally as there are no other
indications in the self-portraits for any temporality of this shift. Nonetheless, the hero of the self-
portraits is the hero of the two different, though similar through being types, contexts: one is an
unspecified professionally or otherwise East European Jew, only individualised through
physiognomic features, and another is a person of the lower bourgeois standing related to an art of
painting, though this relation is somewhat vague. It is these two moments that constitute the
axiological and meaning-governed position of the hero, that is to say, that for the hero of the self-
portraits being related to visual arts and painting in particular and being a member of a wider
social group is an important, indeed, existential position in life.
At the same time this position of the hero is also ridden with conflicts. The hero as a Jew
is removed form the world of visual arts in these self-portraits. Though Jews in the Imperial
Russia from the end of the 19th century onwards were not so energetically harassed for their
70
attempts to engage in image-making through the construction of the notion of the Artless Jew as it
was the case in France and the German speaking Europe, it was not entirely conflict-free either,
especially within their own communities as it still continued to imply leaving of the old Jewish
ways in favour of modernisation that at that time meant crossing into the Christian world however
secular. The hero of the self-portraits is therefore in an ethical conflict for originating in the
Jewish environment and making an individual choice to become a Gentile artist he cannot avoid
ending up in a disaccord or a disquiet that is to follow the person for no short period of his life.
Moreover, the balancing out of the two in essence conflicting positions in life at that point of time
in Europe s history being a Jew and being related to image-making in the Western Christian
tradition is what the author had to grasp during his living-in into the hero.
Thus, the four types of architectonics spatial, temporal, axiological and architectonics of
meaning that in the work of art are gathered around the hero are all present in these self-portraits.
The hero s value- and meaning- laden position in life, which is inseparable from the unique and
singular place occupied by the responsible human being, is his need to be related to painting in life
in spite of any awkwardness and ethical difficulties that this principle decision in his life may
instigate. It is this essential position of the hero, i.e. the coexistence of his Jewish modality
(Posq 2001) and being a part of the Christian art tradition, that the author has grasped during his
living-in and then formed aesthetically and that comes through temporal and especially spatial
architectonics in these works. Temporal architectonics, as it may be expected in visual arts, is not
extensive and in these three self-portraits it does not show the process of the internal life for it only
states the parallel existence of the two inner orientations of the hero. On the other hand, spatial
architectonics that comes through all the finalising moments connected to the appearance of the
figures and their immediate surroundings in the self-portraits, which have been described above,
leads to the author and his position in this aesthetic event.
There are three forms of the hero that have been given to him by the author through the
moments of the outer appearance of the figures in the paintings, though they are not equally
strongly present in the self-portraits. In each portrait the hero is depicted as an unremarkable or at
least insufficiently individualised person whose social position can be guessed only from the
generalised outfits. In other words, the hero is type, the passive position of the collective
personality (Bachtin 2003: 242/183). The hero as type is not contending with the author because
as the subject for him such a hero is very close to the cognitive object and the author is mostly
driven by the search of the discursive truth and in the process reacting to the passivity of the hero
71
by satirising him.
23
However, the relationship is altered significantly when typologising is directed
at oneself as it is then perceived as negative, and these pictures are indeed self-portraits. The
depiction of the hero as type even more emphasises that the hero s axiological position is
connected to being a part of the social world of his time.
Yet the hero has made his decision to become an artist regardless of his background and
consequences, he responsibly initiates the axiological and meaning- laden sequence of his life *
(Bachtin 2003: 239/179), and the idea itself, in this instance of becoming a visual artist or being
related to visual arts and at the same time not becoming an outcast, becomes the core of the hero s
position. It indicates that besides the hero as type there is in the pictures the hero as romantic
character, and the author here is aiming his activity at the hero s searches driven by the idea and its
meaning. The hero as romantic character is not dominating in these works because it is strongly
related to temporality since the ideas of romantic character are revealed through his actions,
although the timelessness of the idea itself that drives the hero towards concrete actions is evident.
Likewise, the hero of these works is not primarily the biographical hero either, even though it
would be tempting to see him in this light since the pictures are after all self-portraits. It is again
the lack of temporality of the hero as connected to the major events of his life in these works that
does not permit discerning the biographical hero clearly present and poses a danger of speculative
readi ngs of meani ngs i nt o t he works si nce t he bi ographi cal hero i s onl y hal f-heartedly
transgredient and can for this reason easily change places with the author.
Thus, the reality that the author cognised and evaluated ethically before giving it its
aesthetic forming is the encounter between these two subjects. By forfeiting temporality of the
hero, the author was able to gather and unify multiple episodes from the hero s life that eventually
could come together as individualised amalgamation of the two coexisting attitudes of the hero in
his live lived from his unique and singular position. Lessening the importance of temporality
together with the finalising moments related to the appearance of the hero and his location in the
immediate surroundings function as the moment of isolation of the entire event that has happened
around the hero s axiological and meaning- laden position in life. The moment of isolation in the
aesthetic event is what enables the author to begin his own artistic activity of form giving. It has
already become clear trough the forms of the hero in the self-portraits that the author was adopting
23
A. W. G. Posq has argued that the self-portraits show the uglified subject (Posq 1994; Posq 2001: 141-
64) but since that argument is built using two paintings, which authorship is disputed, this proposal is not
taken into consideration here.
72
the position of strong outsidedness since the hero as type is for the author very close to becoming
an object of cognition. Yet even in this very authoritative situation the author is still relating to his
hero as the subject - and the absence of caricaturing and satyrisation attests to that and as an
actual living human being and for this reason there are traces of other kinds of the hero in the
works, namely the hero as romantic character, which is the most resisting hero towards the author,
and the hero as the biographical hero.
The relation between the hero and its immediate surroundings throw more light on the
author s attitude towards the hero and the position that affects the form of the aesthetic object.
Though it is true that the hero is generalised and too little individualised especially in the curtain
and beard portraits through the clothes and the emptiness of the immediate surroundings of the
hero, his relation to the surroundings is meaningful as they are not neutral communicatively. In
each of the self-portraits the author bestowed upon the hero the surroundings and his own
positioning within them in the manner, which is suggestive of photography. The frozen glare,
immobility of the body and even the backgrounds in each of the self-portraits are very close to the
customary depictions in the atelier photography at the beginning of the 20th century. Moreover,
the beard and Pearlman self -portraits, where the figures are depicted at the bust level, are
similar to the photographic pictures used in the identification documents. The calmness of the
body position and the simplicity of the attires foremost in the beard and curtain self -portraits
given by the author to the hero add the quality of monumentality to the hero that as an aesthetic
form is elevating and is directed at making the hero more heroic while also revealing the author s
admiring attitude towards the hero. In the Pearlman self -portrait the author depicted the clothing
of the hero creased as it can be done only by the human being and not abstract type.
Consequently, the aesthetic object, or content of the work of art, has been given the form
of aesthetic individuality. Out of the fragments and episodes in the hero s life the author during
his own activity of living-in gathered that information that he understood to be essential and worth
singling out and uniting into one coherent whole as the quintessence of the event between him and
the hero. Furthermore, he turned this cognitive-ethical reality into an aesthetic event by isolating
this reality through providing the finalising moments for the hero s appearance and hisimmediate
surroundings and through including his own position and attitude towards the hero. However, the
form that was given the aesthetic object and the work of art at large is not freely floating
somewhere, but it is attached to the work of art as physical objects and therefore the self-portraits
as the material works, in which the primary artistic material is space, now need to be examined.
73
For an analysis of space, i.e. artistic material in painting, in the three self-portraits as
material works of art, it is possible to utilise the approach to works of art as material objects
developed on the basis of dealing with information quantitatively. Regrettably, the available space
here delimits any fuller discussion and eventual evaluation of these methods themselves. In
comparison to the studies of art works where pure statistical data is combined with the particular
author s interpretation of the results obtained from the processed data (e.g., White & White 1965,
Galenson 2001), the model employed here (Petrov 2000) has the advantage because from the very
beginning it integrates the procurement of data with its representation.
It draws on three fairly basic principles taken from neurological sciences that (i) the brain
deals most efficiently with information when the amount of it received per a time unit does not
exceed 7-8 units, (ii) the brain s tendency to adjust to the reception of these informational units if
they remain relatively undifferentiated and (iii) that certain tendencies of articulation in various
fields of human activities can be arranged on the analytic-synthetic spectrum. This model also
adopts the idea that a painting possesses three spaces that in their own turn are having a direct
affect on pictorial space, form and other purely aesthetic qualities of the work: the external space
related to the peculiarities of the regional light colour and affecting the overall palette, the space of
immediate functioning connected to the parameters like the canvas size and the format and the
internal space standing closest to the pictorial space understood through different categories than
are customary in art history.
Analysis of colours in a large amount of paintings from the South and North Europe from
the period of several hundred years has demonstrated that there are clearly distinguishable
tendencies in usage of colour schemes that may be accepted as typical for national or regional
schools of painting. In the case of Ch. Soutine, it is Russian and French painting traditions that
need to be noticed. Thus, French painting averages 6.0 colours, of them 4.8 being the spectral
colours, while in the case of Russian painting these numbers are 5.9 and 4.6 respectively.
Furthermore, taking the specificity of the regional light colour yellow for French painting and
white for Russian painting as being the core, around which spectral colours are adjusted, two
national colour triads have been proposed: yellow, orange and blue for French painting and white,
red and green for Russian painting (see Appendix 3.1.).
Examining 37 paintings by Ch. Soutine that date from approximately the same period as
the three self-portraits (ill. 7-16, 19-45) suggests that in the period of c. 1915-8 the painter s
palette included fewer colours that could be expected to be found in both French and Russian
74
national colour schemes in painting (see Appendix 3.4.). The total average of colours in these
works is 5.14 and for the spectral colour elements the number is 4.39. Yet Ch. Soutine was
resolute in his choice of colours: white, red, green, orange, yellow and black are used most often
while dark blue and violet are virtually completely absent. Five of these six colours are
constituents of the French and Russian colours triads and all of them appear with the same
frequency in these works. The same patterns can be found in each of the three self-portraits. The
best known Pearlman self -portrait (ill. 20) contains the full Russian triad, the non-spectral black
and the partial French triad without blue. The other two self-portraits also show mixing of the two
national triads. In the beard self -portrait (ill. 21) the complete Russian triad is combined with the
partial French triad without orange while in the curtain portrait (ill. 19)the Russian triad is
partial due to the absence of white and the French triad is present only through orange.
24
Ch. Soutine s palette is very consistent in the first years of his work (see Appendices
3.4.4.1.-2.) and it allows to doubt the statements from the commentators that his colours were
quite arbitrary (Gross 1996: 55), visceral (Kampf 1984: 93) or violent (Posq 1994: 34).
The regularity, with which the mixing of the two triads appear in the early works including the
three self-portraits, is too high in order to conclude that [t]he range of colours Soutine uses is so
vast it is impossible to describe them (Tassi 1995: 52) and through that to uncover the substance
of the world, of men, of passions (Tassi 1995: 54) and the depth of feeling for humanity and its
sentimental significance (Tassi 1995: 56, 58). When Ch. Soutine s palette is broken down to the
spectral colours complemented with black and white, it becomes obvious that in the years of the
Great War he tended to superimpose the French and Russian national colour triads particularly
favouring yellow and orange from the first one and white and red from the second one. The
external space of the three self-portraits as well as the early works at large exists, as it were, at the
intersection of the North and the South - it is unmistakably a combination of the two.
Juxtaposing of the average canvas size with the grand stylistic changes in history of art
since the Renaissance has permitted to notice that there is a correlation between the average size of
the canvas with the major stylistic changes in art history, and in the case of painting that happens
in approximately 50-year long cycles. It means that the increase of the number of paintings-giants,
i.e. the works which area is over 1 m
2
and approaching 1.5 m
2
, corresponds to the onset of a new
24
The self-portraits, which remain in the private collections, were not included in any of the exhibitions
showing Ch. Soutine s works in the last few years and no commentaries on these pictures contain any explicit
references to the colours. It is, therefore, necessary to rely only on the reproductions at this time and accept
the possibility of the error.
75
stylistic change in visual arts 10-20 years later; when the new style has spread, the size of the
paintings most often measures just under 0.5 m
2
. When paintings are studied according to genres
such as portraits, landscapes, genre compositions and still-lifes, the same pattern is also evident
(see Appendices 3.2.1.-3). The size of the early works by Ch. Soutine remains within the limits of
0.21-0.68 m
2
and the actual sizes of the self-portraits are 0.25 m
2
for the Pearlman self -portrait,
0.39 m
2
for the curtain self -portrait and 0.53 m
2
for the beard self -portrait (see Appendices
3.4.1.-3.). Putting this data side by side with the data of French painting in the beginning of the
20th century shows a fine match between Ch. Soutine s self-portraits and the genre of self-portrait
at that time. Moreover, as the curves representing the evolution of painting in the late 19th-early
20th century demonstrates, self-portrait in the middle of the 1910s was by no means a ground-
breaking genre in painting as it was giving the way to the genres of landscape and genre
compositions (see Appendix 3.2.1.).
Another important aspect of the canvas size is its format. It has been found that the
majority of European paintings in their formats are quite removed from the most appealing Golden
Mean as wel l as square and panorami c rect angl e consi dered t o be t he most neut ral
informationally as formats. Instead painters prefer the formats, in which one side is by 10-5%
longer than the other (see Appendix 3.2.4.). Pictures with this format are found so frequently
across all the genres in European art history that it can be held the constant of painting. In addition
it has been observed that the Golden Mean proportion of the format, i.e. 1.66, is used when visual
information needs to be conveyed during a brief period of time as it is in the case of posters (see
Appendix 3.2.5.), in which informational units are organised in a more disbanding manner than in
paintings. That is to say that since the brusqueness of visual information is, as a rule, not the aim
of painting, the format in painting is working towards its internal and more complex pictorial
space.
The formats of the three self-portraits are close to the most often found format in
painting. The correlation between the sides in the curtain self -portrait is 1.36, in the Pearlman
self-portrait is 1.19 and in the beard self -portrait it is 1.24, and they are close enough to the
commonplace 1.15 in painting and French painting in particular (see Appendix 3.2.4.). Overall in
the early works 67.57% are of the formats characteristic for painting, the rest coming relatively
close to the formats typical for posters, and a small number of the works (ill. 10, 35, 38, 42) even
go beyond that approaching the format most frequently found in the monochrome rectangles (see
Appendix 3.2.5.). Ch. Soutine was never delimited in his choice of the formats of his actual
76
canvases by the availability of the old paintings in the Parisian flea markets that he preferred to use
instead of fresh canvases. The sizes of the old paintings were not definite for the painter since in
the process of working on a picture, sometimes even when the owner of the work thought that
process to be over, he would cut some parts off or attach portions of fabric to the work (Pratt
1998). This habit of Ch. Soutine s has been interpreted as doings of the Jew at psychic death s
door (Kuspit 1998: 78; cf Gse 1982a, Posq 1994) or as a minimum of a fairly emotionally
imbalanced person (Chiappini 1995b, Tassi 1995).
However, the correlation between the formats in the three self-portraits and the amounts
of units of visual information in each of them seem to be in contradiction to each other. On the
one hand, the formats chosen are typical for painting and they would allow to create a fairly
complex, or synthetic as it is called in the model used here, organisation of pictorial space in
these works. On the other hand, there are relatively few pictorial elements in each self-portrait. In
the beard self -portrait the male figure is depicted at the level of the bust and clad in an
unremarkable garment; moreover, the figure is presented as being more surrounded by than
standing against the dark undifferentiated background. In this work the total of informational units
to be identified immediately face, garment with lapels, surrounding and the cross-like mark in
left upper corner - are four. In the curtain self -portrait there are slightly more informational units
- face, gabardine coat, scarf, two-part background, i.e. there are five units in this work. The most
complex among the three is the Pearlman self -portrait with its six units, namely, the face, suit,
shirt, tie, painting and a figure on it. Thus, even though the formats chosen for these works could
have easily accommodated more complex organisation of pictorial space, Ch. Soutine kept the
number of informational units to the minimum especially in the beard and curtain self -portraits.
Trying to determine, which inclination the analytic or the synthetic is more
distinguishing of Ch. Soutine as a painter and as an author of these three particular self-portrait, it
would be necessary to carry out a significantly more complicated investigation due to the
peculiarities of the model (see Appendices 3.3.1.-2.). However, sufficiently clear tendencies
towards one or another pole can be observed in seven out of ten sets (see Appendix 3.3.2.). It is
obvious that in all three self-portraits painterliness is present (no. 5), colours are multi-shaded
because of mixing of paints (no. 9) and the preference is given to warm colours (no. 8) at least in
two of the three self-portraits. The pictorial space is static (no. 6) in each of the self-portraits,
there is no any hint of any activity, each time the figure is depicted in the immobile state. As it
has been said above, Ch. Soutine s palette contains fewer colours than it could be expected to be
77
found in both Russian and French painting and the organisation of pictorial space is not as
complex as it may be due to the formats chosen. This allows to decide that means of expression in
the three self-portraits are economical (no. 4). When examining the format and size of the self-
portraits it has become evident that they adhere to the norms of that time for painting in general
and for French painting in particular. Hence, a supposition can be made that normativity (no. 1)
has played a bigger role in these paintings than originality and for this reason that in the case of the
self-portraits rationality (no. 2) was also more significant than intuition.
On the basis of the reproductions that inevitably obscure much of the original aspects of
the pictures it does seem that the curtain self -portrait s surface might be smoother than the
Pearlman self -portrait s and perhaps the beard self -portrait would be located between the other
two (no. 10). Similarly, the question whether pictorial elements in the three works are delimited
from each other distinctly is rather difficult to answer categorically for within each work the
distinctiveness between the pictorial elements is not uniform (no. 7). Perhaps the beard self -
portrait can be viewed as having the least delimited pictorial elements, the curtain self -portrait is
somewhere half-way because of the merging figure and the dark part of the background behind it
and the Pearlman self -portrait s pictorial elements being mostly delimited from each other.
Finally, the form, here understood in the most usual art historical sense, is strict instead free (no. 3)
in these works when considered from the point of view of naturalism, which, with rare exceptions,
needs to be present at least to a degree in the genre of portraiture in order for such pictures to be
recognised as portraits. Thus, the internal space of the three self-portraits as the material works of
art shows that these works display distinct tendencies towards neither the synthetic nor the
analytical but instead are locatable between the two.
Hereby, though with a reasonable degree of hesitation at this time, the palette found in the
self-portraits and the early works by Ch. Soutine at large could be considered a peculiar feature in
his artistic technique only to an extent. It is not unusual for a painter with the East European
artistic background to bring this combined colour scheme with him to Paris around 1900. Ch.
Soutine had a possibility to encounter such a mixed colour scheme from the beginning of his
training for all of his teachers above all Ja. Kruger in Minsk and I. P. Rybakov in Vil no were
in one way or another influenced by both French and Russian painting schools. In spite of its local
specificity presented through the national colour triad the latter had been strongly affected by the
former; moreover, both of these painters and teachers remained passionate for French painting of
their own days and communicated it to their students. So it is mixing of colours through mixing
78
paints themselves in a dexterous manner that can be viewed as Ch. Soutine s technical brilliance in
painting, yet this aspect in his artistic activity will become fully evident only in his later works. In
some pictures from the early period as, for instance, in La f ret, c. 1918 (ill. 30), o Nature morte
aux harengs aux oignions, c. 1917 (ill. 41) or Nature morte au chou rouge, c. 1918 (ill. 47), this
can already be seen, but it will come to its fullness later.
In the self-portraits organisation of the informational units is the most striking technical
feature of Ch. Soutine s. As it has already been mentioned before, the format chosen for each of
the pictures in theory enabled designing of a reasonably complex pictorial space but the painter
decided to utilise fewer elements nonetheless than the format would permit (cf ill. 7-9, 11-2).
Whilst in the beard and curtain self -portraits there is hardly any aiming at relating the
informational units to each other centrifugally in order to create a pictorial space absorbing the
viewer, in the Pearlman self -portrait the figure and the picture are also placed in an ambiguous
relation to each other creating an affect of retreating than approaching. The Pearlman self -
portrait has been several times compared by the art historians to Self-Portrait in Front of the Easel,
1888, by Vincent van Gogh (1853 890) (ill. 49) and Czanne at the Palette (1839-1906), c. 1890,
by Paul Czanne (1839-1906) (ill. 48) (Posq 1994: 35ff, Silver 1998: 23; cf Dunow 1981: 226).
Making the comparison between these three works once again, it becomes particularly evident
how Ch. Soutine through the inter-relations between the informational units created a more
analytic pictorial organi sation than the two other painters though initially it looks like that these
works are very similar to each other. In other words, Ch. Soutine in his three self-portraits used
the format functioning best towards creation of complex and absorbing pictorial space, yet the
amount of the informational units in the picture and their inter-relations were employed in the
manner that is more characteristic of posters, which functioning is directed towards the outside.
It is not entirely effortlessly that the aesthetic object of these self-portraits emerges on the
edges of the artistic material, and it is necessary to acknowledge that the artist s technical skill in
these works is not faultless. In the beard self -portrait the painter did not succeed in handling
paints flawlessly and it is especially visible in the lower part of the picture, which constitutes a
relatively large part of the entire painting, where paints are blatantly visible as namely paints.
Equally noticeable as purely material traces it is the area above the right shoulder and along the
right arm of the figure and the edge of the dark part of the background on the left side in the
curtain portrait. In these two pictures the modelling of paints of the faces - the most important
part of any portrait - of the figures is not immaculate and the larger areas of reds threaten to
79
obscure the faces themselves. In the Pearlman self -portrait the artist was not entirely successful
laying the paints immediately around the figure s head that intended to represent the shadow cast
by it. Nonetheless, these technical imperfections are not hindrances for actualising of the aesthetic
object by the material work.
As there has not been yet an attempt to work out the analogous lists of the forms of the
hero, the aesthetic object and the compositional forms for visual arts and none of the mentioned
compositional forms by M. M. Bachtin can be directly applied here, the compositional form of the
self-portraits can be given, as it were, the working title of the form of defiant portraiture. It has
been shown above that the hero and through him the entire aesthetic object becomes uncertain and,
hence, unstable. The author has taken his own axiological position towards the hero as type that is
a shrinking hero in relation to the author, but he also, however weakly, took the position towards
the hero as romantic hero and as the hero of biography in this way bringing in new a instability
into the works. All three main articulations of the artistic material work directed towards the
similarly unstable aesthetic object.
Superimposing the French and Russian, i.e. Southern and Northern, colour palettes in the
beginning of the previous century in France may have indeed looked like an abrasive and,
moreover, technically failed decision. For these self-portraits this combination is especially apt
because the hero, who is stepping over his Jewish background, is aiming at visual arts of the
region of the yellow light. The inverted correlation between the format and the internal relations
between informational units within each picture, in other words treating the format most suited for
an absorbing pictorial space and complexity of pictorial design in the manner of posters that are
functioning exactly in the opposite way, allows the artist to achieve the effect extolling
monumentality and documentation of the hero that he himself treats as type. This technical step
continues to strengthen the sensation of instability because the ordinary, unsatisfactorily
individualised hero comes forward as significantly distinctive nonetheless. Ch. Soutine s mode of
articulating the internal space of the paintings that suspends it between the purely analytical and
the purely synthetic contributes not only the overall instability of the self-portraits, but it also
creates deceptively an illusion that the author of the self-portraits was possibly failing as an artist
when in fact it was the optimal choice from the point of view of composition of these three works
having this particular aesthetic object. These three main moments of the material work as
actualising the aesthetic object of the three works are that what permits to think of the
compositional form of defiant portrait.
80
In March of 1918 the bombardment of Paris by the German military began and continued
through August. Many fled the French capital escaping from the last surge of the Great War, and
Ch. Soutine together with his dealer L. Zborowski and some other artists from the same circles left
to the Mediterranean coast. They all stayed there for several months and returned to Paris in the
fall. Soon after that Ch. Soutine left again to the South, where he would spend the next three years
virtually without interruptions. His painting will change as other ways of articulating the artistic
material of painting will enter his work, other aesthetic problems will begin to preoccupy him. He
will return to Paris in the late fall of 1921 and within months he will be discovered by dr. Alfred
Barnes, a wealthy American industrialist and art collector. Ch. Soutine will begin ascending
towards his fame and his legend.
81
6. CONCLUSION
The laws of Newton were in themselves significant and before their
discovery by Newton, and not this discovery made them for the first
time meaningful, but there were no these truths as made joint to the
singular-unique being-event of moments, and this is essentially
important, in this it is the sense of deed cognising them.*
Michail M. Bachtin. K filosofii postupka. The early 1920s.
In the meanwhile, the original intention to publish M. M. Bachtin s opera omnia in seven volumes
before the year 2000 has not been possible to implement. Nevertheless, four of the seven volumes
are already available to the reader in the scholarly edition (Bachtin 1996, 2000, 2002, 2003), the
most recent of them presenting a reader with the version of the early essays, that will remain the
standard reference in the future. However, the continuing publication of the completed works
brings back the very same issue of the quality of translations since most readers of M. M. Bachtin
are dependent on them instead of the Russian originals. The English translations have long been
notorious for their modest quality, and the currently available English version of the early writings
(Bakhtin 1990, 1993) contains numerous directly incorrect formulations, though the problem is
smaller with KFP. Moreover, the publishing of the completed works is adding new materials
related to the texts and gathering data earlier known but scattered throughout different publications
into one place. If new translations are not going to appear in the nearest future, a reader in any
language but Russian will be forced to make an impossible choice: to abandon M. M. Bachtin for
the time being or continue working with his ideas on the basis of these deficient translations.
Nevertheless, as defective as the English translations of the thinker s 1919-24 papers are, they still
fared better than, for example, Russian contributions to M. M. Bachtin studies: despite the fact that
the author of the book The First Hundred Y ears of Mikhail Bakhtin (Emerson 1997) claimed to
provide an overview of Russian research, commentaries and interpretations of M. M. Bachtin for a
non-Russian reader, the book actually presented a malevolent caricature of or, in the words of one
reviewer, it perfomed a polyphonically executed hatchet job (Khanin 1999: 221) on all Russian
undertakings prior to the Centennial IBC in 1995.
However, art history s non-participation in the Bachtin Industry can be viewed negatively
as well as positively. In the 1980s art historians became nostalgic of the discipline s Golden Age,
bewailed the lost position once held by art history as one of the leading humanitarian branches and
82
turned to paradigms of poststructuralism and postmodernism for the strategies of the discipline s
renewal. From this point of view, failing to notice M. M. Bachtin at that time can be seen as
detrimental for it could have contributed to methodological rejuvenation. It could have also
brought art history into the Bachtin Industry, which participants undeniably saw themselves ae
being at the cutting edge of the academic thought. On the other hand, by unintentionally
extricating itself from the commotion around M. M. Bachtin during the first decades of the
Bachtin Industry, art history has in advance avoided not an entirely small project of extracting M.
M. Bachtin and his thought from underneath the debris of poststructuralism and postmodernism.
After all, some four decades of applications and extensions later the once asked question 'Skad sie
wzial Bachtin? [Where did Bachtin come from]? (Wozny 1992) has not become irrelevant since
the notion that M. M. Bachtin was some kind of en besynderlig skribent og forsker (Bruhn 2001:
5) is still floating around.
Several lines of interest for art history can be identified in the early essays by M. M.
Bachtin. Besides the evident novelties in these writings such as the transgredient work of art and
the conception of content of the work of art as the event between two subjects as well as typology
of forms in the work of art, there are several other lines worthy of art history s attention. Firstly,
two themes that come forward in the early essays of a more general character are worth singling
out. One of them is systematicity. The idea of systematicity is not unheard of in art history. For
instance, in the 1930s Otto Pcht (1902-88) and Hans Sedlmayr (1896-1984) viewed the relation
between a work of art and culture through the concept of structure, which caused in its time a
harsh negative reaction from both Meyer Schapiro (1904-96) and Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001).
As early as 1897 Alois Riegl (1858-1905) wrote Historische Grammatik der bildenden Knste
where he was searching for his own version of a prima philosophia for a systematic art history,
however, this work was not published until 1966. Paul Frank (1878-1962) wrote Das System der
Kunstwissenschaft in 1938, but only in 1971 the work could be published uncensored. Juxtaposing
M. M. Bachtin s thought with this line of thinking in art history as well as with A. Warburg s art
history that only recently has begun to attract more attention within the discipline may reveal some
long overlooked and perhaps not ever effectively absorbed facets of art history. Another aspect of
the early M. M. Bachtin s heritage is the understanding of interdisciplinarity offered in KVM,
which is tightly related to the idea of systematicity of culture and specifically his understanding of
art i st i c mat eri al . Though i t has been l ong si nce i nt erdi sci pl i nary approaches became
commonplace practice in art history, there exist no small areas that remain unincorporated into the
83
discipline, and this paper has pointed to only one of such fields, namely, empirical aesthetics.
However, the most significant moment in M. M. Bachtin s idea how different sciences and fields
relate to each other, and in KVM he had described how they can interact without reductive melting
into one indeterminate whole, but act together without losing their autonomies and at the same
time without failing to supplement each other and eventually contribute to better understanding of
the object under investigation.
More specifically, in the essays of 1919-24 there can be singled out possibly interesting
and useful for art history the thinker s understanding of artistic material and the problem of artistic
material in general. Expanding the notion of artistic material is undoubtedly one of the major
features of the development of visual art in the 20th century, but theoretically it is a rather poorly
developed theoretical area within art history. Though writings on Ch. Soutine, a relatively
marginal figure in the history of the 20th century s painting, cannot be taken as exhaustively
representing the major contemporary theoretical trends in art history, it does, nevertheless, raise a
question of formalism s vitality, and together with it the issue of artistic material becomes
particularly obvious. It may be said that M. M. Bachtin s early essays contain the conception of
artistic material that is theoretically potent to provide at least one of possible solutions for the issue
of artistic material not only in the case of time-honoured visual arts like painting and sculpture, but
also for arts that employ mass media-based artistic practices. Less evident it is the subject of genre
in the early writings, which is also related to the question of form, because it is explored more
thoroughly in subsequent texts by M. M. Bachtin. However, for art history this would certainly be
of significance and particularly in the instances of fairly complex works of art where the concept
of commonplace genre understanding may benefit particularly from introducing the notion of
novelistic conception of genre. After a more thorough investigation of M. M. Bachtin s
understanding of history it may transpire that art history would also be able to draw on these ideas
too for its own investigations.
The early essays is not the only part of M. M. Bachtin s thought that may be interesting
for art history because some ideas put forward in these texts are continued to be developed in the
later writings, and some of concepts that are usable in and by art history are only hinted at without
naming them directly in the 1919-24 papers. It can be even said that some of them are not
graspable without involving later writings and vice versus. At the same time, and as it has been
shown in this work, many of these ideas art history will have to expound itself since M. M.
Bachtin s prime interest remained literary arts until the end of his life. If some of the ideas
84
developed having specifically literary arts in mind can be directly transferred to visual arts, then
others need to be rethought from the purely philosophical-theoretical point of view and also in
close correlation with already existing ideas within art history itself. It means that a certain
amount of comparativist studies of M. M. Bachtin s works and adequate works by art historians
would be inevitable, and this would need to be carried out without a preliminary strive to reach the
conclusion about M. M. Bachtin s thought, and especially in the first of the 1920s, being an utter
failure on the thinker s part. It cannot be denied or overlooked that there are inconsistencies and
inadequate presentation of ideas in the early essays, and not all of them have been named in this
paper. Yet it is far off to state that the thinker produced bde dobbeltydige og uklare tekster
(Bruhn 2001: 6), because the reason behind some problems in the texts is the fact that due to come
historical circumstances and even accidents only a fragment of those writings had been prepared
properly for publication. As this paper has tried to show, the actual status and condition of the
texts do not prevent M. M. Bachtin s systematic aesthetic to emerge as acoherent and sufficiently
developed conceptual framework that has been effectively used for analysing the three self-
portraits by Ch. Soutine.
The reaction of art history to the heritage of Ch. Soutine has indeed been perplexing for
decades. The first edition of the catalogue raisonn published in 1993 has sold over 20 thousand
copies, and in 2001 the revised edition of the catalogue was released by the Taschen Verlag. This
number alone does not place the painter next to the French painters of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, still for the figure delegated to the precincts of history of modern painting the number is
not entirely humble. There is a distinct acknowledgement of Ch. Soutine s work from theside of
painters themselves, and the reasonably long list headed by such major masters of the 20th century
painting as Jean Dubuffet (1901-85), Willem de Kooning (1904-97), Francis Bacon (1909-92) and
Jackson Pollock (1912-56) (Tuchman and Dunow 2002) could be continued with the names of
lesser known authors who have been and remain appreciative of the achievements of this peintre
maudit from the East European Nowhere. Literary authors also find his heritage appealing (Dahl
1953/Woolf 1980, Stern 1994, Wiezel 1995, Meisler 1997-8, Klbaner 2000), and among poets he
has become somewhat of a cult figure (Fitzbauer 1983, Michel 1990, Israel 1997, Eshleman 1998,
Perelman 1998, Sarki 2000, Schulman 2001). Two dramatic theatre plays have been written
85
(Israel 1996)
25
, at least one of them has already been staged. Philmography is also slowly growing
(Drot 1967, Lieberman 1970, Mullins 1993, Berzinis 1994). Scholars Irom other disciplines
occasionally stumble upon him (e.g., Kristeva 1980, Miller 1991, Moyle & Moyle 1991,
Korsmeyer 1999, Bernstein 2000, Cauquelin 2000). Art collectors are not indifferent to Ch.
Soutine s worksas the results of auction house sales demonstrate in recent years where a more
accomplished painting by Ch. Soutine easily can reach a seven-digit price, the current highest
being around t 2.3 million. Yet in spite of all that, as late as in 1995 an art historian could be
wandering:
What is still difficult to grasp and remains puzzling to this day, is how
someone born in a little village in Belorussia with no figurative traditions, or
at best broadly Byzantine ones, who knew little or nothing of artistic
movements founded in Moscow in the early part of the century, who was
brought up in a religious and social environment that prohibited any depiction
of the human body should become a painter so swiftly, tenaciously and
spontaneously, expressing himself by means of figures and images (Tassi
1995: 44; cf Szittya 1955: 20-1, Forge 1965: 7, 11, Tuchman 1968/1993: 13,
Werner 1977/1991:17-8, Dunow 1982: 33, Gross 1993: 42-3, Nicoidski 1993:
31-2, Natter 2000b).
The year 2003 was an anniversary year for this painter the 110th anniversary of his birth, 90th of
his arrival to Paris and 60th of his death. Though a jubilee is not necessarily a compelling reason
to begin rehabilitation of an author, it is not the worst of reasons to take a more introspective look
at the painter who is unmistakably a darling with artists and museum goers. Nevertheless, not a
single book or even an article in a reputable art historical journal has appeared on Ch. Soutine in
2003. In the opening sentences of the first large investigation of his life and work its author P.
Courthion remarked: Mais il y a la lgende et la ralit (Courthion1972: 11). So far the two are
remaining merged into one whole. It is of little help to researchers that Ch. Soutine s works are
spread through four continents, some of the works are in private anonymous collections and often
unavailable for viewing. In such a situation medium size and large retrospective exhibitions gain a
special importance, however, until the beginning of the 1980s there have been five large displays
of his works, two in the North America (Wheeler 1950, Sylvester 1968) and three in Europe
(Leymarie 1952, 1973, Sylvester 1963). With the exhibition of 1981 shown in two German
25
The play by the Belarus dramatist V. Drozdov Gospoza f ortuna [Lady Luck] about Ch. Soutine s first years
in Paris could not be as yet found in print. The play was staged in 2001 at the Jakub Kolas National
Academic Drama Theatre in Minsk, Belarus, and shown the same year during Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
86
museums and in a London gallery (Gse 1981) a tendency to present Ch. Soutine s work
interpretatively emerged, and this trend has been continued with the four subsequent exhibitions
during the last decade of the 20th century (Chiappini 1995, Kleeblatt & Silver 1998, Natter 2000).
There remain posed, but never discussed in-depth, questions concerning the matters of attribution,
additionally reinforced by the 1993 catalogue raisonn, a n d t hi s has been only partially
compensated by scholarly prepared exhibitions by French art historians and curators of Ch.
Soutine works created in Cret and during summer stays near Chartres (Matamoros 2000, Valls-
Bled 1989). However, there are still parts of Ch. Soutine s heritage that demands such thorough
analysis and without which any bigger picture of this artist and his work will remain flawed.
Seeing the novelty in M. M. Bachtin s thought and even, according to V. L. Machlin, the
fundamental paradigmatic shift contained in it (Machlin 1997), is far from easy today. Above all,
it is the result of much superficial, hasty and mechanically executed work trying to explain M. M.
Bachtin s philosophical origins and relatively low interest in positioning him and his work in the
concrete historical situation understood more widely than the reality of the post-revolutionary
Russia of the 1920s. The difficulty in appreciating the Russian s thought is furthermore enforced
by the line in the reception of his writings and ideas during the last few decades that more often
than not was carrying out that very same hatchet job (D. Khanin) under the impersonation of
critical reading and evaluation. Yet the fact that his concepts and ideas have been so successfully
for in spite of its shortcomings, the Bachtin Industry cannot be viewed as anything else but
successful used in different disciplines and fields suggests that in his writings, including the
early essays, M. M. Bachtin uncovered some aspects of the entire 20th century that only due to the
whims of history and the twists of faith could become familiar to many only with such a great
delay. It opens new questions and new possibilities, and it is unlikely that art history would be
able to remain aloof to them. In more narrow terms, for art history as the discipline it may very
well mean that such artists like Ch. Soutine, that is artists who could never enter art history
properly most of all because of the notion of modernism enforced in the second half of the 20th
century by poststructuralism and postmodernism, will become the object of investigation
eventually leading to a new and qualitatively different view and understanding of art and its
development in the first half of the previous century and the entire century at large.
87
RSUM P DANSK
Dette cand. phil. speciale er skrevet i overensstemmelse med kravene beskrevet i 2.5.7 af
1985/1990-studieordningen for kunsthistorie. Translitterationen af russiske navne og udtryk er
udfrt iflge ISO-reglerne. Oversttelsen af citater fra russiske tekster er udfrt og/eller justeret af
specialets forfatter. Specialet indeholder 49 sort-hvide billeder, tre bilag, en liste over materialer
bestende af bger, artikler, udstillingskataloger og film, i alt 261 enheder, og dette rsum.
1. Introduktion. Dette speciales problemformulering kan betegnes som et forsg at introducere
M. M. Bachtins ider i kunsthistorie gennem prsentation af hans systematiske stetik, som er
formuleret i de tidligste kendte vrker fra 1919-24, og gennem anvendelsen af den teoretiske-
metodologiske ramme fra disser vrker for en anlyse af tre selvportrtter fra c. 1916-8 af Ch.
Soutine. Da kunsthistorie ikke har vret involveret i den akademiske tumult omkring M. M.
Bachtin i de sidste rtier, vil specialets argument mest bygges p en deskriptiv-analytisk mde.
2. Rasen omkring rusen: Bachtinindustrien og efternleren. Kunsthistoriens interesse i M. M.
Bachtin er fortsat minimale, mens andre humanitre og desuden sociale videnskaber og
forskningsfelter har deltaget aktivt i den skaldte Bachtinindustri i rtier. Ud fra en undersgelse
af fundne relevante kunsthistoriske tekster er der sporet en specifik tendens, dvs. en tilbjelighed
til at behandle tnkerens ider p den samme problemfyldte mde, som allerede forefindes i de
poststrukturalistiske og postmodernistiske tilgange, som har bidraget til fremkomsten af
Bachtinindustrien. I betragtning af dennes ensidighed m hans tidligste kendte skrifter fra rene
1919 til 1924 anses for det mest passende udgangspunkt for en analyse af en mulig forbindelse til
kunsthistorie.
3. Rkkeflgeproblemet: Misforholdet mellem det fortolkende og det historiske. Den alt i alt
lille gruppe af fortolkere og kommentatorer, som ogs tller en enkelt kunstner-kunsthistoriker,
opstiller skrifterne i en rkkeflge byggende p den opfattelse, at M. M. Bachtin, efter at have
publiseret sin frste manifestlignende artikel engagerede sig i filosofien, bevgede sig vk fra det
filosofiske henimod teorien og slutteligt mod metodologien. Dette prsenteres som vrende
historisk baseret, selvom hverken manuskripternes tilstand eller de sekundre historiske data kan
fungere som et ubestrideligt grundlag for en sdan fortolkning, sledes at det fortolkende og
spekulative bruges til at simulere historiske fakta. Generelt set er de historiske fakta meget
sparsomme, men det er dog alligevel muligt ud fra disse at fastsl, at de tidlige skrifter kan - eller
muligvis endda skal - vre organiseret og internt forbundet anderledes. Den nye hypotese
foresls, at de tidlige skrifter skal opfattes som vrende skrevet og eksisterende parallelt, hvorved
en enkelt af disse tekster kommer til at fremst som tyngdepunkt i hele M. M. Bachtins tidlige
periode.
4. Den tre-delte analyse af et kunstvrk: Mod systematisk-konkrete studier af kunstvrker. M.
M. Bachtins systematiske stetik er formuleret p en basis af to fundamentale prmiser. Den
frste ser kultur som bestende af det videnskabelige, det etiske og det stetiske, som samles
88
omking mennesket, og den anden betragter mennesket som levende sit liv ansvarligt fra sit unikke
og enestende sted. Sammenkoblingen af disse to principer har grt det muligt at udvikle en
systematisk koncept af kunstvrket og dets analyse. Kunstvrkets arkitektonik bestr af det
stetiske objekt og det materiale vrk, som holdes sammen af kunstvrkets komposition, den
sidste forstet som det materialle vrk, som udfrer det stetiske objekt. Det stetiske objekt,
eller kunstvrkets indhold, er kommet ud af mdet mellem to individuelle mennesker, og den
mde foregr primrt i det videnskabelige og det etiske. P et tidspunkt en af dem begynder at
udfre en stetisk handling, og i grunden er det en form-givende aktivitet af dette mde, som har
fundet sted. Kunstvrket er bygget omkring helten, dvs. omkirng den ikke form-givende deltager,
men kunstvrket prsenteres fra den form-givende deltagers posi t i on. Forholdet mellem
kunstneren og helten har sin egen arkitektonik, som kan genkendes i kunstvrket gennem heltens
former. Kunstvrkets konkrete analyse skal udfres i tre deler. Frst skal det stetiske objekt
forsts som den videnskabelige-etiske realitet af mdet, som er blevet bearbejdet af kunstneren p
den stetiske mde. Bagefter studeres kunstvrket som det materielle vrk, hvor det vigtigt er at
anskue det kunstneriske material videnskabeligt. Analysen afsluttes med en forklaring, hvordan
det konkrete materielle vrk udfrer det stetiske objekt, og det svarer til undersgelsen af
kunstvrkets komposition.
5. Malerier afenvrdi: De ustabile selvportrtter. Det stetiske objekt af disse selvportrtter
er dn dobbelthed i heltens liv, der kommer fra hans jdiske baggrund og hans nske at vre en
kunstner, som skaber billeder. Kunstneren har tilfjet mere ustabilitet til det stetiske objekt
gennem heltens almindeliggrelsen, som dog ogs har antydninger til helten som en romantisk helt
og som en biografisk helt. Rummet, der er det kunstneriske materiale i selvportrtterne, er
analyseret ved hjlp af den informationelle metode. Det er ogs ustabilt, og effekten er opnet
gennem den blandede farveskala, den uregelmssige brug af billedformat og behandlingen af det
indre billedrum som delvis vrende analytisk og delvis syntetisk. Kunstvrkets komposition i
denne tilflde kan betegnes som det trodsige portrt, selv om Ch. Soutines teknik ikke er fejlfri i
disse billeder.
6. Konklusion. Der er adskillige ider i M. M. Bachtins tidlige skrifter, som kunne vre nyttige
for kunsthistorie. F. ex., hans forstelse af form og kunstnerisk material og den systematiske
tilgang til kunst, som er glemt i kunsthistorie, kunne nvnes. Det skal dog altid huskes, at kun
nogle af hans ider kan flyttes direkte over til kunsthistorie, dvs. at de fleste at dem frst skal
gennemgs af kunsthistorie, fr man begynder at anvende dem i kunsthistoriske undersgelser og
fortolkninger. I disse r udkomer der M. M. Bachtins samlede vrker i den akademiske udgave,
som vil blive standarten i fremtiden, men da ingen ny oversttelser af hans skrifter er p vej,
kommer tilbage det gamle problem vedrrende trovrdigheden af hans tekster p andre sprog end
russisk.
89
ILLUSTRATIONS
3. Ernst Neizvestnyj. An Illustration from the
Cy cl e f or F. M. Dost oev sk i j s Cri me and
Punishment. Late 1960s.
4. The University of Vilnius: the Petras Skarga
Courtyard. In these buildings the First Vilna
Gymnasi um f or Men and Vi l na Dr awi ng
School were located when M. M. Bachtin and
Ch. Soutine were students there in the early
1910s.
5. M. M. Bachtin in Nevel. From left: M. M.
Bachtin, L. V. Pumpjanskij, Rugevic, Gurman
(?), M. I. Kagan.
6. K voprosam metogologii estetiki slovesnogo
tvorcestva [ T o w a r d s Q u e s t i o n s o f
Me t hodol ogy of Ae s t he t i c s of Ve r ba l
Creativity]. A fragment of the title page of
KVM. 1924.
90
7. La jeune femme. C. 1915. Oil on canvas.
73 x 46 cm. Private collection, Paris. CR2: P1.
8 . La f emme au chien (Portrait de Mme.
Ascher). 64.8 x 49.8 cm. University of Iowa
Art Museum. CR2: P2.
9 . L homme l a pi pe ( Port rai t de M.
Cahuveau). C. 1916. Oil on canvas. 54.9 x 46
cm. Private collection, Paris. CR2: P3.
10. Le violoncelliste (M. Serevitsch). C. 1916.
Oil on canvas. 81 x 44.8 cm. Marion Koogler
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas.
CR2: P4.
91
11. Le jeune home au petit chapeau. C. 1916.
Oil on canvas. 81 x 50 cm. Private collection.
CR2: P5
1 2 . Portrait d homme. C. 1916. Oi l on
canvas. 60.5 x 50 cm. Private collection,
Paris. CR2: P6.
13. Femme couche sur un divan rouge. C.
1916. Oil on canvas. 54 x 81.3 cm. Private
Collection, USA. CR2: P7.
14. Femme couche. 1916. Oil on canvas.
59.1 x 92.7 cm. Stanley E. Stern, New York.
CR2: P8.
92
15. La femme au rocking-chair. C. 1916. Oil
on canvas. 60.6 x 45.1 cm. Private collection.
CR2 : P9.
1 6 . Les trois paysans. C. 1917. Oi l on
canvas. 92.7 x 73 cm. Private collection,
Paris. CR2: P10.
17. Soutine, Chaim. Portrait d homme (Emile
Lejeune). C. 1922-3. Oil on canvas. 54.9 x
46.5 cm. Muse de l Orangerie.
18. Soutine, Chaim. L idiot du village. C.
1919. Oil on canvas. 92 x 65 cm. Muse
Calvet, Avignon.
93
19. Autoportrait au rideau. c. 1917. Oil on canvas. 72,5 x 53,5 cm. Private collection, Paris,
France.
94
20. Autoportait. c. 1918. Oil on canvas. 64,6 x 45, 7 cm. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation,
New York, USA.
95
21. Autoportrait l a barbe. c. 1917. Oil on canvas. 81 x 65,1 cm. Anonymous private
collection.
96
22. L atelier de l artiste la Cit Falguire.
C. 1915-6. Oil on canvas. 64.5 x 48.6 cm.
Private collection, Paris. CR1: L1.
23. Paysage de banlieue uax maisons rouges.
C. 1917. Oil on canvas. 60 x 73 cm. Private
collection. CR1: P2.
24. Les maisons rouges. C. 1917. Oi l on
canvas. 54.3 x 65.1 cm. Private collection,
Paris. CR1: L3.
25. Les maisons. C. 1917. Oil on canvas. 61
x 50 cm. Private collection. CR1: L4.
97
26. La Cit Falguire Montparnasse. C.
1918. Oil on canvas. 81 x 54 cm. Private
collection, Israel. CR1: L5.
27. Maison et jardin aux environs de Paris. C.
1918. Oil on canvas. 55.2 x 38.1 cm. Leona
Cantor Palmer, Beverly Hills, California. CR1:
L6.
28. Paysage. C. 1918. Oil ocanvas. 55.9 x 68.1 cm. Private
collection, USA. CR1: 7.
98
29. La maison blanche sur la colline. C. 1918. Oil on canvas. 52.4 x 63.5 cm. Earlier of the
Collin collection, New York. CR1: L8.
30. La fret. C. 1918. Oil on canvas. 60 x 73 cm. Private collection, Geneva. CR1: L9.
31. Paysage avec maisons. C. 1918. Oil on canvas. 54 x 65.1 cm. Kunstmuseum Luzern. CR1:
L10
99
32. Nature morte aux harengs. C. 1916. Oil
on canvas. Private collection, Paris. CR1 :
SL1.
33. Nature morte la soupire. Oil on canvas.
61 x 73.7 cm. Earlier the Collin Collection,
New York. CR1: SL2.
34. Nature morte la lampe. C. 1916. Oil on
canvas. Galerie Yoshi, Tokyo. CR1: SL3.
35. Les pommes. C. 1916. Oil on canvas.
38.4 x 79.1 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York. CR1: SL4.
100
36. Nature morte aux citrons. C. 1916. Oil on canvas. 63 x 54 cm. Gustav Zumsteg Collection,
Zrich. CR1: SL5.
37. Les oranges sur f ond vert. C. 1916. Oil on canvas. 41 x 63 cm. Private collection, Paris.
CR1: SL6
38. Nature morte la pipe. C. 1916. Oil on canvas. 54 x 94 cm. Muse d Art Moderne de
Troyes. CR1 : SL7.
101
39. Nature morte aux harengs avec plat ovale.
C. 1917. Oil on canvas. 50 x 73 cm. Private
collection. CR1: SL8.
40. Nature morte la table ronde. C. 1917.
Oil on canvas. 61 x 50 cm. Private collection,
Paris. CR1: SL9.
41. Nature morte aux harengs aux oignions.
C. 1917. Oil on canvas. 38.1 x 61 cm. Private
collection. CR1: SL10.
42. Les harengs et la bouteille de Chianti. C.
1917. Oil on canvas. 67. 9 x 40 cm. The
Madeleign Castaign Collection, Paris. CR1:
SL11.
102
43. Les poisons. C. 1917. Oil on canvas.
54.1 x 64 cm. Private collection, Paris. CR1 :
SL12.
44. Le poulet la table. C. 1918. Oil on
canvas. 65.1 x 81 cm. Private collection,
Paris. CR1 : SL13.
45. Nature morte aux poivrons et aux carottes. C. 1918. Oil on canvas. 61 x 46 cm. Private
collection. CR1: SL14.
103
46. Sout i ne, Chai m. Nat ure mort e l a
volaille. C. 1918-9. Oil on canvas. 58.4 x
97.1 cm. Private collection, Australia.
47. Soutine, Chaim. Nature morte au chou
rouge. C. 1918. Oil on canvas. 53.3 x 44.5
cm. Earlier of the Colin Collection, New York.
48. Czanne, Paul. Czanne at the Palette. c.
1890. Oil on canvas. 92 x 73 cm. Sammlung
E. G. Bhrle, Zrich.
49. Gogh, Vincent van. Portrait in Front of
the Easel. 1888. Oil on canvas. 65 x 50.5 cm.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
104
APPENDIX 1. M. M. BACHTIN AND Ch. SOUTINE: BIOGRAPHICAL
DATA
Year M. M. Bachtin Ch. Soutine
1893
On t he f ami l y of t he Smi l ovi ci ( now
Belarus ) clothes mender Zal man (Solomon)
and his wife Sarah the tenth child out of 11
children is born.
1895
On November 17 (4) in the family of the
Orel bank clerk Michail Nikolaevic and his
wife Varvara Zacharovna ne Oveckina the
second son is born. There were 6 children
in the Bachtin family.
1903
The family sends Chaim to stay with one of
his sisters and her husband in order to learn a
trade.
1905
The Bachtins move to Vil no (now Vilnius,
Lithuania) where Michail begins to attend
the First Vil no Gymansium.
1907
M. M. Bachtin completes the first grade of
the FVG
1909
M. M. Bachtin completes the second grade
of the FVG.
1910
In spring Ch. Soutine attends the three-month
preparatory art course supervised by Ja.
Krujger in Minsk.
In summer he enrols in the basic three-year
art course at Viln a Drawing School.
Works as a retoucher in a photo studio.
1911
M. M. Bahtin completes the third grade of
the FVG. The Bachtins without the oldest
son move to Odessa (now Ukraine) where
Michail begins to attend the Fourth Odessa
Gymnasium.
The early signs of osteomyelitis are seen.
1912
M. M. Bachtin completes the fourth grade of
the FPG with distinctiona, is awarded the
second prize and is transferred to the fifth
grade.
1913
M. M. Bachtin begins to attend lectures at
Novorossiiskij Uni ver si t y ( now Odessa
University, Ukraine)
Ch. Soutine leaves Viln a to Paris
After arrival enrols in the atelier of F.-A. P.
Cormon at the Ecole des Beaux Arts
Briefly works as a manual labourer, retouches
photographs, works on the preparation of an
automobile salon
1914
On August 4 obtains the residency permit
Spends time with the Kikones in Francville
near Lvry-Gargam
After the beginning of the First World War
enl i st s as a t rench di gger, but rel eased
because of health
S h a r e s t h e s t u d i o wi t h M e s c aninov
(Miestchaninoff) in the Cit Falguire
1915
Jaques Lipschitz introduces Ch. Soutine and
Amadeo Modigliani
105
Often visits the Kikones in Clamart
1916
M. M. Bachtin moves to Petrograd and
begi ns t o at t end l ect ures at Pet rograd
University (now St. Petersburg University,
Russia)
Experiences regular stomach pains that would
last during his entire life.
1918
In summer M. M. Bachtin arrived to Nevel
(now Belarus). He begins to teach history,
sociology and Russian language at Nevel
unified vocational school of the second
level. M. M. Bachtin, V. N. Volosinov, L.
V. Pumpj anski j , M. V. Judi na, B. M.
Zubakin and M. I. Kagan form the Kantian
seminar . In November M. M. Bachtin
participates in the public discussion God
and Socialism .
Together with Modigliani travels to Cagnes-
sur-Mer. Travels alone to Cret for the first
time.
1919
In April M. M. Bachtin participates in the
public discussion Art and Socialism .
In May he participates in two discussions
about religion, gives a public lecture On
the Sense of Life , and together with M. V.
Judina and L. V. Pumpjanskij organises the
plein air staging of Oedipus at Colonus by
Sophocles.
In June M. M. Bachtin participates in the
public debate On the Sense of Love and
gives the speech Leonardo s Worldview at
the commemorative evening for Leonardo
da Vinci.
In July Nevel Scientific Association is
opened, M. M. Bachtin gives speech during
the ceremony.
In August M. M. Bachtin gives a lecture on
A. P. Cechov and participates in the debate
On Russian Culture .
In September begins to lecture on history of
literature. On September 13 IO is published.
In November in a nearby village M. M.
Bachtin gives a public lecture On Art .
In December a Nevel paper announces that
M. M. Bcahtin intends to supervise a public
course about literature and art.
Returns to Cret in spring. On October 17
received the identity card from the local
police.
1920
In June M. M. Bachtin conducts a course on
Russi an l anguage for pedagogi cal and
cultural workers.
In autumn M. M. Bachtin moves to Vitebsk
where in October he becomes a teacher of
literature at Vitebsk Pedagogical Institute.
In December he gets a position at Vitebsk
Conservatory.
L. V. Pumpjanskij, V. N. Volosinov, P. N.
Medvedev, I. I. Sollertinskij and M. M.
Bacht i n f or m a gr oup of i nt el l ect ual
discussions.
Learns about Modigliani s death on January
24 and subsequent suicide by his companion
Jeanne Hbuterne.
mile Lejeune, the Cagnes-based painter,
buys a number of works.
The Zborowskis send their maid, Paulette
Jourdain, to Cret to watch over Ch. Soutine.
1921
In winter M. M. Bachtin gives the lecture
Art and Reality .
In February he is stricken with typhoid. The
operation on the right leg.
In spring he works on the book on moral
philosophy.
On July 16 he weds Elena Aleksandrovna
Okolovic.
In summer and autumn are spent in a nearby
106
village.
1922
Returns to Paris.
Alfred Barnes, the American industrialist,
purchases 52 paintings from the Cret period
from L. Zborowski.
1923
Moves to Cagnes, though frequently returns
to Paris.
Meets Madelaine and Marcellin Castaigns.
Sales of his works begin to increase.
A. C. Barnes shows hi s acqui si t i ons i n
Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Academy of
Arts (19 works).
1924
In spring the Bachtins leave for Petrograd.
The preparation of PSMF for publication in
the late summer.
During summer and autumn he gives a cycle
of private lectures Author and Hero in
Artistic Creation .
Publication of the article Ucenyj sal erizm
[Scientific Salierism] under the name of P.
N. Medvedev.
Gets involved with Doberah Melnik.
Visits the Louvre regularly.
1925
Publication of the article Po tu storonu
social nogo [Beyond the Social] under the
name of V. N. Volosinov.
The daughter Aime is born on June 10, Ch.
Soutine has never acknowledged her as his
own.
Visits theatre and wrestling matches.
Travels to Amsterdam to see Rembrandt s
Jewish Bride .
Settles in the 14th Arrondissemant.
1926
Publication of the articles Sovremennyj
vitalism [Contemporary Vitalism] under
the name of I. I. Kanaev and Slovo v zizni i
slovo v poezii [Word in Life and Word in
Poetry] under the name of V. N. Volosinov.
Regularly stays with the Zborowskis in Le
Blanc.
1927
P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e b o o k Freidizm.
Kri t i cesk i j ocerk [Freudism: a Critical
Ac c o u n t ] u n d e r t h e n a me o f V. N.
Volosinov.
The fi rst one-man show at Henri Bing s
Gallery in Paris.
Jonas Netter and H. Bing begin to trade his
works.
Reads F. M. Dost oevski j , H. de Bal zac,
works on mythology and philosophy.
Meets Elie Faure.
1928
Publication of the book Formal nyj metod v
literaturovedenii. Kriticeskoe vvedenie v
sociologiceskuju poetiku [Formal Method in
S t u d i e s o f L i t e r a t u r e : a Cr i t i c a l
Instroduction into Sociological Poetics]
under the name of P. N. Medvedev.
On December 24 M. M. Bachtin is arrested
on the charge of the counter-revolutionary
activities.
Meets the Castaigns for the second time.
Begins to spend summers in the Castaigns
residency in Lves.
1929
On January 5 M. M. Bachtin is released
from prison.
On July 22 he is sentenced for five years of
concentration camp whilst M. M. Bachtin is
i n t h e h o s p i t a l d u e t o t h e c h r o n i c
osteomyelitis.
In autumn publication of the book Problemy
tvrocestva Doestoevskogo [ Pr obl ems of
Dostoevskij s Creativity] and two articles on
L. N. Tostoj.
E. Faure published the first extensive essay
on Ch. Soutine s oeuvre.
Falling out with E. Faure.
Death of Sergej Djagilev who was planning a
ballet with Ch. Soutine s stage design and
music by Paul Hindemith.
Sa l e s o f t h e wo r k s d r o p d u e t o t h e
economical crisis.
1930
Due to the health condition on February 23
the sentence is changed into five years of
exile in Kustanaj (now Kazachstan). The
Begins to frequent the Castaigns in Lves
where he meets Eric Satie, Pierre Drieu de La
Rochelle, Maurice Sachs.
107
Bachtins depart in March. 3 works shown in a MOMA exhibition.
1931
In April M. M. Bachtin begins to work in
the capacity of economist in a state office in
Kustanaj.
1932
L. Zborowski dies pn March 24.
The Castaigns become his principle dealers.
1934
In July the five-year sentence expires, but
the Bachtins remain in Kustanaj for two
more years. He works on The Word in the
Novel (1934-5).
7 wo r k s s h o wn i n Co p e n h a g e n a t
Charlottenborg.
1935
The first major American exhibition of 20
works at Chicago Arts Club.
15 wor ks i nc l ude d i n a Pa r i s gr oup
exhibition.
1936
On the recommnendation from professor P.
N. Medvedev in September M. M. Bachtin
i s i n v i t e d t o t e a c h l i t e r a t u r e a n d
methodology of teaching literature at the
Mordovian Pedagogical Institute in Saransk.
He works on Bildungsroman.
21 works shown in an individual exhibition at
New York s Valentine Gallery and 14 at Mrs.
Cornelius J. Sullivan Gallery.
1937
M. M. Bachtin is forced to leave the MPI
due to the political climate there.
After a trip to Moscow in July the Bachtins
r et ur n t o Kust anaj , but i n aut umn t he
Bachtin move to Savelovo near Moscow.
He works on works on Forms of Time and
the Chronotope in the Novel.
Moves to 18 Villa Seurat. Friends with
Chana Orlov (Orloff), Konstantin Tereskovic
(Trchkovitch), Mansurov (Mansourouf),
Michonz.
Mademoiselle Garde (Gerda Groth) moves in
with him.
The death of E. Faure.
The first personal exhibition in London, 33
works shown at Leicester Galleries.
15 works shown in a one-man exhibition at
New York s Mrs. Cornel i us J. Sul l i van
Gallery.
18 pa i nt i ngs s hown i n a n i ndi vi dua l
exhibition at Valentine Gallery in New York.
The last important Paris exhibition at the Petit
Palais, 12 works shown.
12 works included in a group exhibition at
Londons Redfern Gallery showing.
1938
On February 17 the right leg is amputated.
Submi ssi on of t he manuscri pt of The
Bi l dungsr oman and i t s I mpor t ance i n
History of Realism which be lost in the
course of the Second World War.
12 works exhibited at Storran Gallery during
a group exhibition in London.
1939
Henry Miller is his neighbour.
Spends summer in Civry where learns about
the beginning of the Second World War.
Registers together with Garde as refugees.
Periodically travels to Paris for medical
consultations as the stomach ulcers turned
into the stomach cancer.
23 paintings shown in an one-man exhibition
at Valentine Gallery in New York.
1940
I n Ap r i l a t t e n d s a c o n f e r e n c e o n
Shakeaspeare in Moscow.
In October gives the speech The Word in
Novel later renamed From the Prehistory
of the Novelistic Discourse at the Institute
of World Literature in Moscow.
I n a u t u mn h e c o mp l e t e s t h e t y p e d
manuscript on Francois Rabelais and works
on an art i cl e for t he Encycl opaedi a of
On May 15 Garde is taken to the Vlodrome
d Hiver.
12 works exhibited in an individual show at
Carroll Carstairs Gallery in New York.
108
Literature.
1941
M. M. Bachtin gives the speech Roman kak
literaturnyj zanr at the IWL.
In autumn and winter teaches Russian and
German at the schools around Kimry.
Olga and Marcel Lalo replace the Castaigns
as the painter s patrons.
Re t ur ns t o Pa r i s , me e t s Ma r i e -Berthe
Aurenche.
Both leave Paris on false identity cards for
Champigny-sur-Veude.
1942
Stays in the provinces, occasionally returning
to Paris.
1943
Ch. Soutine suffers a severe attack, returns to
Paris where he is diagnosed with perforated
ulcers and internal haemorrhage.
After the operation on August 9 Ch. Soutine
dies.
Two days later buried two days later the
Montparnasse Cemetery.
Bi gnou Gal l ery i n New Yorks shows 18
works as a personal exhibition.
1944
First article about Soutine after his death (?)
Niveau Gallery in New York exhibits 13
works in an one-man exhibition.
1945
In August M. M. Bachtin is rehired by the
MPI. In October he becomes the head of the
literature department there.
Ga l e r i e d e Fr a n c e mo u n t s t h e f i r s t
retrospective exhibition of 40 works.
Boston Institute of Modern Art shows 23
works by Ch. Soutine in an exhibition of his
and M. Chagall s works.
1946
In April participates in the conference at the
MPI.
On November 15 M. M. Bachtin defends the
dissertation Rable v istorii realizma for
the title of the doctor. The commission
agrees to award the ph.d. degree.
In a group exhibition 11 works shown at
Galerie Bing in Paris.
1947
In January M. M. Bachtin participates in the
conference at the MPI.
In July he lectures about theory of literature
to the participants of the young writers
seminar in Saransk.
A small restrospective exhibition of 18 works
shown at London s Gimpel Fils gallery.
In Paris Galerie Zak shows 19 works as an
individual exposition.
1948
In February M. M. Bachtin participates in
the conference at the MPI.
1950
M. M. Bachtin heads the interest group at
the MPI studying Chinese literature.
In September he participates in the seminar
of young writers.
Museum of Modern Art, NYC, USA, shows a
retrospective of 75 works (Wheeler 1950),
which also travels to 11 venues in the United
States.
1951
Two speeches during the faculty meetings. Th e Ame r i c a n J e wi s h Co mmi t t e e
unsuccessfully attempts to move Soutine s
remains to Israel.
1952
On February 6 M. M. Bachtin is accused of
the incorrect views by the Scientific Board
of the MPI.
35 works by Soutine are selected to represent
F r a n c e a t t h e Veni ce Bi enni al , It al y
(Leymarie 1952).
1953
Three speeches during the faculty meetings.
1954
1955
M. M. Bacht i n supervi ses t he group of
students working on literary theory and the
gr oup of young wr i t e r s . Wor ks on
pedagogical-methodological articles.
First postgraduate (M. A.) dissertation on
Soutine (Jaffe 1955).
First posthumous biography (Szittya 1955).
A visit to Moscow.
109
1956
1957
M. M. Bacht i n wor ks on t he ar t i cl e
Pr obl e ma e s t e t i c e s ki c h ka t e gor i j
[Problems of Aesthetics Categories]
1958
M. M. Bachtin becomes the head of the
Depar t ment of Rus s i an and For ei gn
Li t erat ure of t he Hi st ori cal -Philological
Faculty of the Mordovian State University
est abl i shed i nst ead of t he Mor dovi an
Pedagogical Institute.
1959
1960
In November M. M. Bachtin received the
letter from young literary researcher from
Moscow.
Aurenche commits suicide and is buried in
the same grave as Soutine.
1961
The fi rst vi si t of V. V. Kozi nov, S. G.
Bocarov and G. D. Gacev to Saransk.
M. M. Bachtin retires.
1962
1963
I n Se pt e mbe r t he s e c ond e di t i on of
Probl emy poet i k i Dos t oev s k ogo i s
published.
57 works are shown at the Edinburgh Fringe
Festival, Scotland, UK (Sylvester 1963), later
travels to the Tate Gallery, London, England,
UK.
1965
The book Tvorcestsvo Francua Rable i
nar odnaj a kul t ur a s r ednevekov j a i
Renessansa is published.
1966
The Department of Russian and Foreign
Literature of the MPU nominates M. M.
Bachtin as a candidate for the 1966-7 Lenin
Award on the basis of the published works.
1967
Publication of the article Iz predistoriji
romannogo slova .
Leningrad City Council rehabilitates M. M.
Bachtin.
1968
Los Angeles County Museum of Art , USA,
or ga ni s e s a n e xhi bi t i on of 90 wor ks
(Tuchman 1968), a reduced version is shown
at Jerusalem s Israel Museum.
1969
The Bachtins are treated in the Kremlin
hospital.
1970
The Bachtins settle in the home for the
elderly in Klimovsk.
Publication of the article Epos i roman
and the answers to the questions from the
journal Novyj mir .
In November M. M. Bachtin becomes a
member of t he Uni on of Wri t ers of t he
USSR.
Due to the health M. M. Bachtin cannot
attend the events to commemorate his 75th
anniversary held at the MPI in Saransk.
1971
On December 14 Elena Aleksandrovna dies. Th e f i r s t catalogue raisonn (Courthion
1973).
1972
The third edition of PPD is published.
In Sept ember M. M. Bacht i n moves t o
Moscow.
110
1973
Conversations with V. D. Duvakin.
Publication of the almanac to commemorate
M. M. Bachtin s 75th anniversary and 50
years of his pedagogical work.
Publication of the article Iskusstvo slova i
narodnaja smechovaja kul tura .
Mus e de l Or anger i e, Par i s , Fr ance,
organises a showing of 109 works (Leymarie
1973).
1974
Publ i cat i on of t he ar t i cl es Vr emj a i
prostranstvo v romane and K estetike
slova
1975
On March 7 M. M. Bachtin dies. On March
9 he is buried at the Vvedenskoe cemetery.
In autumn Voprosy literatury i estetiki is
published.
1979
The only time a painting by Ch. Soutine is
displayed in Vilnius Art Museum, Lithuanian
SSR, USSR, within the travelling exhibit
French Paintings at the End of the Nineteenth
Century and the Beginning of the Twentieth
Cent ur y i n J apanes e Col l ect i ons , t he
exhi bi t i on al so shown i n Leni ngr ad s
Hermitage and Moscow s A. S. Pushkin Art
Museum, RSFSR, USSR.
1981
Second postgraduate (ph.d.) dissertation on
Soutine (Dunow 1981).
A show of 96 works opens in Westflisches
L a n d e s m u s e u m f r K u n s t u n d
Kulturgeschichte, Mnster, West Germany
(Gse 1981-2), the exhibition travels on to
Kuns t ha l l e Tbi nge n, Muni c h, We s t
Ge r ma n y , Ku n s t mu z e u m L u z e r n ,
Switzerland, and Hayward Gallery, London,
England, UK.
1983
1st International Bachtin Conference held in
Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
New York s Gal l eri Bel l man mount s an
exhibition of 44 works (Galleri Bellman)
1984
First American biography of M. M. Bachtin
(Klark & Holquist 1984).
1985
2nd International Bachtin Conference held
in Cagliari, Italy.
1986
Le Bulletin Bakhtine/The Bakhtin Newsletter
is founded
1987
3rd International Bachtin Conference held in
Jerusalem, Israel
1989
4th International Bachtin Conference held in
Urbino Italy.
Pervyje bachtinskie ctenija held in Saransk
Muse des Beaux Arts de Chartres, France,
organises a 78-work exhibition (Valls-Bled
1989)
1991
5th International Bachtin Conference held in
Manchest er , UK ( t he f i r st f ace-to-face
me e t i n g o f E a s t e r n a n d We s t e r n
researchers).
The first postgraduate (ph. d.) dissertation
searching for connections between M. M.
Bachtin and art history (Haynes 1991).
1992
Dialog. Karnaval. Chronotop is founded in
Vitebsk, Belorus
1993
6th International Bachtin Conference held in
Mexico City, Mexico.
Publication of the catalogue raisonn (CR1 &
CR2)
111
First Russian biography of Bachtin (Konkin
& Konkina 1993).
Centenary exhibition in Japan, shown in
Tokyo, Nara, Ibaraki and Hokkaido.
1994
The Bakhtin Centre at Sheffield University,
UK, is founded.
1995
7th Centennial International Bachtin
Conference held in Moscow, Russia.
Museo d arte moderna, Lugano, Switzerland,
shows a retrospective of 82 works (Chiappini
1995).
1996
The fifth volume of the complete works in
seven volumes is published (Bachtin 1996).
Third postgraduate (M. A.) dissertation on
Ch. Soutine (Gross 1996).
1997
8 t h I n t ernational Bachtin Conference,
Calgary, Canada.
On December 15 L homme au f oulard rouge,
c. 1921, (CR2 : P47) is sold at Christie s for
the record price of 1.529 mln.
1998
Soutine-1998, a workshop for painters and an
i nt ernat i onal conference hel d i n Vilnius,
Lithuania.
New York s Jewish Museum opens a 58-
works exhibition (Kleeblatt & Silver 1998).
The show travels to Los Angeles County
Museum and Cincinnati Art Museum.
1999
9th International Bachtin Conference held in
Berlin, Germany.
Soutine-1999, a workshop for painters is held
in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The fourth postgraduate (ph. d.) dissertation
on Ch. Soutine (Hirt 1999).
2000
The second volume of the complete works
in seven volumes is published (Bachtin
2000).
Soutine-2000, a workshop for painters and an
international conference held in Vilnius,
Lithuania.
Jdisches Museum Wien, Austria, shows a
41-work exhibition (Natter 2000).
Muse d Art Moderne de Cret, France,
s h o ws 6 4 p a i n t i n g s b y Ch . So u t i n e
(Matamoros 2000).
2001
10th International Bachtin Conference held
in Gdansk, Poland.
Soutine-2001, a workshop for painters, held
in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Publ i cat i on of t he second edi t i on of t he
second catalogue raisonn.
2002 Soutine-2002, a workshop for painters, held
in Vilnius, Lithuania.
2003 11th International Bachtin Conference held
in Paran, Brazil
Soutine-2003, a workshop for painters, held
in Vilnius, Lithuania.
112
APPENDIX 2. PUBLICATIONS OF THE EARLY TEXTS IN RUSSIAN
AND CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TRANSLATIONS
AA KVM as PSMF AH KFP
1919 Russian
1975 Russian
1978 French
1979 Russian Finnish Russian
French
1982 Spanish Spanish Spanish
1986 Polish Polish Polish Russian
1988 Italian
Norwegian
Italian
Norwegian
Italian
1989
1990 English English English
1992 Portuguese Portuguese Portuguese
1993 English
1997 Polish
Spanish
2000 Swedish
2001 French
2002 Lithuanian
113
APPENDIX 3. PAINTINGS: STATISTICAL DATA
3. 1. The Dominant National Colour Schemes
The results presented in the two tables below have been obtained from analysing 822 paintings dating from
the 15th-20th centuries and owned by different museums (Petrov 2000: 22-3). The distribution of the works
according to the cultural-geographical areas is: 311 works by 67 French painters, 109 works by 33 Italian
painters, 296 by 47 Russian painters and 106 by 20 Spanish painters.
R red, O orange, Y yellow, G green, B blue, N navy, V violet, W white, B black. This
sequence of the colours is not entirely in accord with the actual order of the colours as it is known in physics,
which is rather difficult to represent in a linear fashion. The more correct order would have been: black,
violet, marine, blue, green, white, (green), yellow, orange, red, (black).
3. 1. 1. Colour Elements in Painting from Four Cultural-Geographical Areas
PART OF PAINTINGS CONTAINING 9 COLOUR ELEMENTS ,
%
AVERAGE AMOUNT
OF COLOUR
ELEMENTS, NO
Spectral Colours Non-
Spectral
COUNTRY
R O Y G B N V W B
All Spectral
France 64 86 97 64 49 51 73 69 45 6.0 4.8
Italy 66 83 96 49 61 35 61 73 57 5.8 4.5
Spain 78 26 87 26 37 45 49 83 76 5.1 3.5
Russia 70 56 94 61 45 61 74 75 50 5.9 4.6
3. 1. 2. Frequency of Colour Elements in Paintings from Four Cultural-Geographical Areas
AMOUNT OF PAINTINGS CONTAINING 9 COLOUR
ELEMENTS, %
Spectral Colours Non-
Spectral
COUNTRY
R O Y G B N V W B
AVER-
AGE OF
SPECT-
RAL
COL-
OURS
PER
PAINT-
ING, NO.
PART OF
PAINT-
INGS
WITH
THE
NATIO-
NAL
COLOUR
TRIAD, %
France 37 51 55 30 19 25 33 29 20 2.5 42
Italy 46 42 63 17 39 23 22 21 26 2.5 25
Spain 55 5 58 4 14 19 25 55 59 1.8 52
Russia 50 14 47 40 11 35 34 44 24 2.3 29
114
3. 2. The Area and the Proportion of the Canvas in Painting
In the first stage of investigation from 16 different museums 978 French paintings dating from the 17th-19th
centuries have been selected. The works have been divided into portraits, genre compositions, landscapes
and still-lifes. The tables below show the results obtained from analysing the paintings according to their
sizes in general, in respect to genres and over the period of time (Petrov 2000: 44, 49, 51, 56-6). In the
second stage of investigation 846 French paintings have been analysed from 1620 to 1930. 95 paintings from
the 17th century, 253 paintings from the 18th century, 153 paintings from the first part of the 19th century,
240 paintings from the second part of the 19th century and 105 paintings from the first three decades of the
20th century.
n amount of paintings; Q area, m2; t time; S part among all paintings, %; y index of proportion
Portraits
Landscapes
Genre compositions
Still- lifes
17th century
18th century
19th century, first half
19th century, second half
3. 2. 1. The Area of the Canvas according to the Genre and the Century
3. 2. 2. The Evolution of the Normal Area Painting in Average and in Different Genres
115
3. 2. 3. The Evolution of the Painting-Giant in Average and in Different Genres
116
3. 2. 4. The Distribution of the Paintings according to the Proportions in French Painting
3. 2. 5. Comparison of the Proportions in Painting, Poster and Monochrome Rectangle
Left painting, middle poster, right monochrome rectangle.
117
3. 3. The Characteristics of the Pictorial Space
In the selection of the criteria two groups of art historians have been used. The first group of 10
experts have been asked to compile a list of the characteristics for describing the pictorial space in
painting. The characteristics were to be composed of two constituents, the first representing the
feature of the dominance of the left-hemisphere, the second the right (Petrov 2000: 84). This
group of experts has also been asked to compile the set of model-paintings, that is the set of
painters typical of the analytic and the set of painters typical of the synthetic . On the basis of
univocal agreement among the expert regarding each suggested painter two sets 20 painters have
been compiled (Petrov 2000: 86). The experiment has been carried out twice with different
selections of experts as well as tested with the help of the computers. In each of the three cases the
results have turned out to be fully compatible. This methodology has been applied to the analysis
of more 200 other painters and analogical methodology has been used for analysing poems as well
as composers.
3. 3. 1. The Initial Set of the Left-Right Hemispheric Characteristics
NO. CHARACTERISTICS NO. CHARACTERISTICS
1
Tendency towards norm
tendency towards originality 12
Daily, chamber-like sujets -
Globalism, monumentality
2
Optimism, joy of life
tragic worldview 13
Small amount of depicted items
Large amount of depicted items
3
Rationality-
Intuition 14
Small format
Large format
4
Strictness of form
Freedom of form 15
Flat depiction
Volume-like depiction
5
Economy of expressive means
Richness of expressive means 16
Delimitation of pictorial elements-
Fluidity between pictorial elements
6
Artificiality, constructivist quality
Genuineness, naturaleness 17
Geometric form
Plasticity of form
7
Abstractness, conditionality of depiction-
Realistic, life-like depiction 18
Tendency to monochromatics-
Tendency to polychromatics
8
Easel
Decorum 19
Bright palette-
Dark palette
9
Linearity/graphic quality
Painterliness 20
Tendency towards cold colours-
Tendency towards warm colours
10
Balance, stillness
Expressivity, dynamism 21
Absence of colour hues
Multiple colour hues
11
Narrativity
Lack of narrativity 22
Smooth surface of painting
Tactile surface of painting
Left-hemisphere painters: Antonio Bruni (1799 1875), Aleksandr Brjullov (1799 1852), Hans Holbein
(1497 1534), Jacques-Louis David (1748 1825), Salvador Dali (1904 1898), Aleksandr A. Deineka
(1899 1969), Albrecht Drer (1471 1523), Rockwell Kent (1882 1971), Jean Clouet (1475 1540),
118
Lger (1881 1955), Leonardo (1452 1519), Kazimir Malevic (1873 1935), Georgij M. Nisskij (1903
1987), Vassilij G. Perov (1833 1882), Kuz ma S. Petrov-Vodkin (1878 1939), Pablo Picasso (1881
1973), Paul Czanne (1839 1906), Georges Seurat (1859 1891), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780
1867).
Right-hemisphere painters: Viktor E. Borisov-Musatov (1870 1905), Eugne Delacroix (1798 1863),
Thomas Gainsborough (1727 1788), Vincent van Gogh (1853 1890), Konstantin A. Korovin (1861
1939), Pavel Kuznetsov (1878 1968), Michail F. Larionov (1881 1964), Isaac I. Levitan (1860 1900),
Michelangelo (1475 1564), Claude Monet (1840 1926), Edvard Munch (1863 1944), Rembrandt (1606
1669), Auguste Renoir (1841 1919), Fjodor S. Rokotov (1735 1808), Sar jan (1880-1972),Vassilij I.
Surikov (1848-1972), Joseph Mallorr WilliamTurner (1775 1851), Titian (1476 1576), Marc Chagal
(18887 1985), Michail A. Vrubel (1856 1910).
The second group of 9 art historians has been asked to evaluate each painter using a 6-point scale with the
maximums of +1 for the analytic and -1 for the synthetic . With the help o f the mediating borderline the
evaluations of each expert of every set of the characteristics for every presented painter have been compared
for overlapping and for the frequency of it. On the basis of this data the original list of the painters and the
list of the sets or criteria have been sorted out, and the index of asymmetry calculated for each remaining
painter (Petrov 2000: 86, 89).
3. 3. 2. The Final Ten Pairs of the Left-Right Hemispheric Characteristics
NO. CHARACTERISTICS NO. CHARACTERISTICS
1
Normativity
Originality 6
Balance, stillness
Expressivity, dynamism
2
Rationality
Intuition 7
Delimitation of pictorial elements-
Fluidity between pictorial elements
3
Strictness of form
Freedom of form 8
Cold colours
Warm colours
4
Economy of expressive means
Richness of expressive means 9
Absence of colour hues
Multiple colour hues
5
Linearity/graphic quality
Painterliness 10
Smooth surface of painting
Tactile surface of painting
The remaining left-hemisphere painters: A. Bruni (0.66),, J. Clouet (0.79), J.-L. David (0.62), A. A.
Deineka (0.51), A. Drer (0.60), H. Holbein (0.76), J.-A.-D. Ingres (0.71), R. Kent (0.82), K. Malevic (0.49),
G. M. Nisskij (0.71), V. G. Perov (0.76), K. S. Petrov-Vodkin (0.36), N. Poussin (0.76).
The remaining right-hemisphere painters: E. Delacroix (-0.76), V. van Gogh (-0.78), K. A. Korovin (-0.79),
M. F. Larionov (-0.58), I. I. Levitan (-0.67), C. Monet (-0.80), E. Munk (-0.53), Rembrandt (-0.8), A. Renoir
(-0.76), Sar jan (-0.64), V. I. Surikov (-0.71), J. M. W. Turner (-0.65), M. A. Vrubel (-0.73).
3. 3. 3. The Fi nal Ten Pai rs of the Left-Right Hemispheric Characteristics and their
Tendencies in the Self-Portraits by Ch. Soutine
NO.
HYPOTHETICAL
CHARACTERSITICS OF LEFT
AND RIGHT DOMINATION
P11 P12 P13
119
1 Normativity Originality normativity normativity normativity
2 Rationality Intuition rationality rationality rationality
3 Strictness of form
Freedom of form
strictness strictness strictness
4 Economy of expressive means
Richness of expressive means
economical economical economical
5 Linearity/graphic quality
Painterliness
painterly painterly painterly
6 Balance, stillness
Expressivity, dynamism
static static static
7 Delimitation of pictorial elements-
Fluidity between pictorial elements
fluid delimited fluid
8 Cold colours
Warm colours
warm warm cold
9 Absence of colour hues
Multiple colour hues
multiple multiple multiple
10 Smooth surface of painting
Tactile surface of painting
smooth tactile tactile?
3. 4. Statistical data on the Works by Ch. Soutine, c. 1915-18
3. 4. 1. Portraits
CATALOGUE
NUMBER IN
CR2
TITLE, YEAR SI ZE CANVAS
ORIENATATION
AND FORMAT
MAIN COLOURS
1 La jeune femme,
c. 1915
73 x 46 cm, or
0.34 m
2
Vertical
1.60
Ye l l o w, g r e e n ,
black, red, orange
2 L a f e m m e q u c h i e n
( Po r t r a i t d e M m e .
Ascher), c. 1915-6
6 4 . 8 x 4 9 . 8
cm, or 0.32 m
2
Vertical
1.30
Red, orange, green,
black
3 L h o m m e l a p i p e
( P o r t r a i t d e M .
Chauveau), c. 1916
54.9 x 46 cm,
or 0.25 m
2
Vertical
1.20
Yel l ow, or ange,
r ed, whi t e, l i ght
blue,
4 L e v i ol oncel l i s t e ( M.
Serevitsch), c. 1916
81 x 44.8 cm,
or 0.36 m
2
Vertical
1.80
Y e l l o w , r e d ,
o r a n g e , g r e e n ,
black, white
5 Le jeune homme au petit
chapeau, c. 1916
81 x 50 cm, or
0.41 m
2
Vertical
1.62
Or ange, pur pl e,
white, black
6 Portrait d homme, c. 1916 60.5 x 50 cm,
or 0.3 m
2
Vertical
1.21
Red, yellow, white,
blue, orange, black
7 Femme couche sur un 54 x 81.3 cm, Horizontal Red, orange, black,
120
divan rouge, c. 1916 or 0.44 m
2
1.51 white
8 Femme couche, 1916 5 9 . 1 x 9 2 . 7
cm, or 0.55 m
2
Horizontal
1.57
R e d , y e l l o w ,
orange, green, blue,
white
9 L a f emme au rock i ng-
chair, c. 1916
6 0 . 6 x 4 5 . 1
cm, or 0.27 m
2
Vertical
1.34
Wh i t e , y e l l o w,
green, orange
10 Les trois paysans, c. 1917 92.7 x 73 cm,
or 0.68 m
2
Vertical
1.30
Yellow, red, white,
blue, green, black
11 Autportrait au rideau, c.
1917
7 2 . 5 x 5 3 . 5
cm, or 0.39 m
2
Vertical
1.36
Red, yellow, green,
black
12 Autoportait, c. 1918 5 4 . 6 x 4 5 . 7
cm, or 0.25 m
2
Vertical
1.19
R e d , y e l l o w ,
o r a n g e , g r e e n ,
white, black
13 Autoportrait la barbe, c.
1917
81 x 65.1 cm,
or 0.53 m
2
Vertical
1.24
Red, orange, green,
white, black
3. 4. 2. Landscapes
CATALOGUE
NUMBER IN
CR 1
TITLE, YEAR SI ZE CANVAS
ORIENTATION
AND FORMAT
MAIN COLOURS
1 L atelier de l artiste la
Cit FalguireI, c. 1915-6
65.1 x 50 cm,
or 0.33 m
2
Vertical
1.30
White, red, light
blue, blue, orange,
black, yellow
2 Paysage de banlieue aux
maisons rouges, c. 1917
60 x 73 cm, or
0.44 cm
2
Horizontal
1.22
White, red, light
blue, blue, orange,
black, yellow
3 Les mai sons rouges, c .
1917
5 4 . 3 x 6 5 . 1
cm, or 0.35 m
2
Horizontal
1.20
Red, green, white,
bl a c k, or a nge ,
purple?
4 Les maisons, c. 1917 61 x 50 cm, or
0.31 m
2
Vertical
1.22
R e d , o r a n ge,
yellow, green
5 L a Ci t Fal g u i r e
Montparnasse, c. 1918
81 x 54 cm, or
0.44 m
2
Vertical
1.50
Gr een, yel l ow,
red, black, white
6 Mai s o n e t j ard i n au x
environs de Paris, c. 1918
5 5 . 2 x 3 8 . 1
cm, or 0.21 m
2
Vertical
1.45
White, red, green,
blue ?
7 Paysage, c.1918 5 5 . 9 x 6 8 . 1
cm, or 0.38 m
2
Horizontal
1.54
Yel l ow, or ange
green, white
8 La maison blanche sur la
colline, 1918
5 2 . 4 x 6 3 . 5
cm, or 0.33 m
2
Horizontal
1.21
R e d , y e l l o w,
or a nge , gr e e n,
white
9 La f ret. c, 1918 60 x 73 cm, or
0.44 m
2
Horizontal
1.22
R e d , o r a n g e ,
ye l l ow, gr e e n,
white, black
10 Paysage avec maisons, c.
1918
54 x 65.1 cm,
or 0.35 m
2
Horizontal
1.21
R e d , y e l l o w,
or a nge , gr e e n,
white, black
121
3. 4. 3. Still-Lifes
CATALOGUE
NUMBER IN
CR1
TITLE, YEAR SI ZE CANVAS
ORIENTATION
AND FORMAT
MAIN COLOURS
1 N at u r e m o r t e au x
harengs, c. 1916
64.5 x 48.6 cm,
or 0.31 m
2
Vertical
1.33
Ye l l ow, whi t e ,
black
2 N at u r e m o r t e l a
soupire, c. 1916
61 x 73. 7 cm,
or 0.45 m
2
Horizontal
1.21
Ye l l ow, gr e e n,
blue, white, black
3 Nature morte la lampe,
c. 1916
54 x 64. 8 cm,
or 0.35 m
2
Horizontal
1.20
White, red, orange
4 Les pommes, c. 1916 38.4 x 79.1 cm,
or 0.3 m
2
Horizontal
2.10
R e d , o r a n g e ,
yellow, black
5 N at u r e m o r t e au x
citrons, c. 1916
63 x 54 cm, or
0.34 m
2
Vertical
1.20
Ye l l ow, whi t e ,
black, green, blue
6 Les oranges sur f ond
vert, c. 1916
41 x 63 cm, or
0.26 m
2
Horizontal
1.54
Or a nge , gr e e n,
yellow
7 Nature morte la pipe,
c. 1916
54 x 94 cm, or
0.51 m
2
Horizontal
1.74
Ye l l ow, whi t e ,
blue, green, black
8 N at u r e m o r t e au x
harengs avec plat ovale,
c. 1917
50 x 73 cm, or
0.37 m
2
Horizontal
1.46
Whi t e , ye l l ow,
bl ue, red, green,
black
9 Nature morte la table
ronde, c. 1917
61 x 50 cm, or
0.31 m
2
Vertical
1.22
Ye l l o w, b l u e ,
red ? , g r e e n ,
orange
10 Natur e m o r t e a u x
harengs et aux oignions,
c. 1917
38.1 x 61 cm,
or 0.23 m
2
Vertical
1.60
White, red, green,
purple, black
11 L e s h a r e n g s e t l a
bouteille de Chianti, c.
1917
67.9 x 40 cm,
or 0.27 m
2
Vertical
1.70
Yellow, green, red,
black
12 Les poissons, c. 1917 45.1 x 64 cm,
or 0.29 m
2
Horizontal
1.43
White, yellow, red,
orange, black
13 Le poulet la table, c.
1918
65.1 x 81 cm,
or 0.53 m
2
Horizontal
1.25
Ye l l ow, whi t e ,
g r e e n , o r a n g e ,
black, red
14 N at u r e m o r t e au x
poivrons et aux carottes,
c. 1918
61 x 46 cm, or
0.28 m
2
Vertical
1.33
Red, white, green,
orange, black, blue
3. 4. 4. Colours in Ch. Soutine s Works from c. 1915-8
3. 4. 4. 1. Spectral and Non-spectral Colour Elements
122
PRESENCE OF COLOUR ELEMENTS IN THE WORKS, %
WORKS
R Y O G B M V W B
Average
of the
colour
elem-
ents in
a paint-
ing, No
Average
of the
colour
elem-
ents in
a paint-
ing, No
Portraits 84.62 84.62 76.92 69.23 30.77 0 7.69 76.92 76.92 5.31 3.77
Land-
scapes
100 80 80 80 30 20 10 90 70 5.6 4.0
Still-
lifes
64.29 50 78.57 71.43 42.86 0 7.14 71.43 78.57 4.64 3.14
All 81.08 70.27 78.38 72.97 35.14 5.41 8.11 78.38 75.68 5.14 4.39
3. 4. 4. 2. Combination of the French and Russian Triads
ELEMENTS OF THE TWO TRIADS, No of Works and % WORKS
W i t h 2
elements
W i t h 3
elements
W i t h 4
elements
W i t h 5
elements
W i t h 6
elements
Portaits 1, or 7.69% 3, or 23.08% 4, or 30.77% 4, 30.77% 1, or 7.69%
Landscapes 0 0 4, or 40% 6, or 60% 0
Still-lifes 1, or 7.14% 5, or 35.71% 4, or 28.57% 4, or 28.57% 0
All 2 works, or
5.41%
8 works, or
21.62%
12 works, or
32.43%
14 works, or
37.84%
1, or
2.7%
123
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