Rev­o­lu­tion: New Art for a New World

Can art be ful­ly under­stood with­out the polit­i­cal con­di­tions under which it was pro­duced? Rev­o­lu­tion: New Art for a New World exam­ines the rise and fall of an artis­tic move­ment embed­ded in their polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal con­text. In this new doc­u­men­tary, direc­tor Mar­gy Kin­mouth zooms in on the 1917 Bol­she­vik rev­o­lu­tion to appre­ci­ate the vibrant, abstract work of the Russ­ian avant garde.

She peels back ​“suc­ces­sive lay­ers of his­to­ry” seek­ing out the per­son­al jour­neys of artists, then even­tu­al­ly focus­ing in on the art­work them­selves. The film lays out its sub­ject like an entic­ing quest, as if many mys­ter­ies are about to be uncov­ered. Voiceovers and melo­dra­mat­ic music add a the mood, with the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive accom­pa­ny­ing mon­tages of paint­ings, film footage and pho­tographs. This col­lag­ing tech­nique offers a won­der­ful immer­sion into this very spe­cif­ic moment in time.

A role play, in which actors recre­ate an Impe­r­i­al Acad­e­my meet­ing is at odds with the rest of the film’s style. But in gen­er­al, it sticks to its cho­sen angle, exam­in­ing the art­works through a polit­i­cal lens. The list­ing of fam­i­ly mem­bers and faces also becomes an over­whelm­ing over­load of infor­ma­tion. How­ev­er, it does reaf­firm the sheer diver­si­ty exist­ing with­in the rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment. As Kin­mouth explores the avant garde’s demise dur­ing the Stal­in­ist purges, the film’s pace also slows down, empha­sis­ing a focus on this peri­od. At one point, the film even touch­es upon the anti-avant-garde artists such as Kon­chalovsky and Kus­todiev, acknowl­edg­ing the lim­its to its scope.

Real­is­ing the idea of artists attempt­ing to under­stand a chang­ing world, their con­fus­ing and tumul­tuous can­vass­es per­vade the screen. Yet, by con­trast, the doc­u­men­tary itself is remark­ably con­cise and method­i­cal in its dis­cus­sion of both the art and the polit­i­cal his­to­ry. There’s the sug­ges­tion that it is hind­sight which offers a clear view of the past rather being too wary of the moment in which you’re liv­ing. We are told that Malevich’s Black Square is worth mil­lions today, hav­ing once been moth-balled and hid­den in a pota­to crate dur­ing Stalin’s reign. The film always refers back to the present day – the inter­vie­wees are pri­mar­i­ly liv­ing descen­dants of the artists, and shots of Moscow and St Peters­berg are dis­persed through­out. Thus, Rev­o­lu­tion reach­es its ulti­mate con­clu­sion that art tran­scends time, where the pol­i­tics and artists them­selves do not.