VLADIMIR FAVORSKY
The second rector of VKHUTEMAS. 1923-1926
Many researchers of VKHUTEMAS have the opinion that its heyday began with the arrival of Favorsky as rector. Of all three VKHUTEMAS rectors Favorsky stands out as a creative figure: a brilliant artist, an outstanding art theorist and a talented teacher, he enjoyed great authority among professors and students.
Favorsky was born in Moscow in 1886, in the family of a lawyer. In 1905 he went to Germany. In Munich, he studied drawing and painting at the school of Simon Hollosy. Simultaneously with the study of drawing and painting, he attended classes at the art theory department of the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1907, he returned to Moscow. In the same year Favorsky entered the Faculty of History and Philology at Moscow University. In 1913, he graduated from the Art History Department of this faculty. In his diploma work “Giotto and his predecessors” Favorsky tried to analyze the complexity of spatial relationships in the paintings of the Italian Proto Renaissance.
Being a head of VKHUTEMAS, Favorsky did not support the introduction of industrial art ideas. In the spring of 1923, when he became Rector, there was a conflict situation in the educational institution. Supporters of the new type of art school believed that the leadership did not reform the structure and methods of teaching radically enough; the old professor wanted to end experiments and return to normal academic studies. Efforts to increase the role of industrial faculties were not successful.
Favorsky understood that the problem of VKHUTEMAS structure was one of the most difficult among the problems he had inherited from his former leadership. The Commission of the Institute of Artistic Culture, which conducted an audit of the educational institution in 1922-1923, demanded the liquidation of the Main Course and the establishment of an industrial faculty or “association of industrial faculties”. Favorsky was to give his own opinion on these changes.
In the summer of 1923 the “Fundamentals of building VKHUTEMAS as a university” were developed, in which Favorsky gave the first preliminary answer to the substantive and structural issues on the agenda. It was planned to build on such general principles “from general art-plastic education through special art to professional”.
In the field of structure, it was suggested:
- first, to establish a mandatory two-year Main Course, in which all artistic disciplines were divided into three cycles: 1) planar-colour (soon a graphic cycle was separated from it); 2) volumetric-spatial; 3) spatially-volume (then it was called spatial).
- secondly, four of the eight special faculties with a two-year training period (Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Graphic) were proposed to be retained as autonomous faculties, and the four industrial faculties were proposed to be merged into one Industrial Production Faculty with four specialities: metalworking, woodworking, ceramic and textile.
А. Lunacharsky supported the new management of VKHUTEMAS and in October 1923 approved the proposed curriculum and programs.
Favorsky’s vision was to maintain the Main Course and strengthen it within the structure. But the structural separation of the industrial faculties was a clear concession from his side to the growing movement for the introduction of the ideas of production art in VKHUTEMAS.
Favorsky saw the Main Course not just as a set of artistic disciplines, but viewed its structure as the foundation on which the structure of special faculties grew. Favorsky quickly realized that the structural unification of the four industrial faculties would unite a team of “Temadecs” (“Temadec” is an acronym for textile, metalwork, woodwork and ceramics faculties) and would lead to the consolidation of supporters of production art. Favorsky considered it right to build VKHUTEMAS structure, based not so much on the final result of the work of a particular specialist (architect, painter, ceramist, etc.), but on the proximity of artistic and plastic means and techniques used by the master in the creative process.
According to the new Regulations, VKHUTEMAS consisted of the Main Course and four faculties: Plane and Color, Volume, Spatial and Pedagogical. The existing eight faculties were to be merged into three new faculties as follows: The Plane and Color Faculty included Graphic, Painting and Textile Departments; the Faculty of Volume – Sculpture and Ceramics; the Spatial Faculty – Architecture, Woodwork and Metalwork. It was planned that the duration of training in VKHUTEMAS will be five years, from which two years will be spent at the Main Course and six months will be taken by diploma work.
Discussions about the structure of VKHUTEMAS continued almost all three years of the Favorsky rectorate. The Main course managed to defend itself and it remained an important stabilizing factor. But the structure of the special faculties was never fully determined.
During his time as rector, Favorsky continued to insist on turning VKHUTEMAS into an art and technology educational institution that would not give preference to industrial faculties. Although this position was supported by many professors, Favorsky still faced opposition from supporters of industrial art. Favorsky himself insisted on building VKHUTEMAS on a formal rather than on a production basis.
Under V. Favorsky’s rectorate, the faculty of graphic arts gradually separated from the group of faculties of production. Under the influence of Favorsky, it gradually turned into a place of training of graphic artists, rather than specialists in printing. Favorsky paid great attention to such manual methods as engraving (on wood or linolium), etching, lithography, and some of them were revived in the 20’s as a kind of graphic art and VKHUTEMAS became an important center for the development of xylography, lithography and etching.
The “General Resolution on the State of VKHUTEMAS …”, adopted in 1925-1926, stated: “The Board considers it necessary to remove the unhealthy and incorrect subdivision of VKHUTEMAS into purely artistic and purely industrial faculties. This division distorts the tasks and nature of VKHUTEMAS. Having emerged from the combination of artistic and industrial Stroganov School and the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, VKHUTEMAS was supposed to organically synthesize the elements of one and the other and develop into a new type of art and technical institution … However, the practice and structure of VKHUTEMAS still based on the wrong principal difference between the faculties of art and production and their problems … VKHUTEMAS is not purely artistic, …or a purely technical school, but is a school of art and technology… All faculties of VKHUTEMAS are equally productive and equally artistic…. The criterion for structural division of VKHUTEMAS cannot be a formal-aesthetic principle. This can only be the principle of production”.
This was Favorsky’s actual defeat in his struggle to create a single structure for VKHUTEMAS, to apply the structure of the Main Course at special faculties.
In 1923-1926 not a single specialist has graduated from all industrial faculties of VKHUTEMAS (including printing faculty), while other faculties only in 1925 let out 122 people (Architecture – 16, Painting – 93, Sculpture – 13). Such a situation is explained by the fact that at industrial faculties more resolute reorganization of programs and methods of training was conducted.