PAVEL NOVICKY

The third rector of VKHUTEMAS. 1926

At the beginning of May 1926 a new rector Pavel Ivanovich Novitsky appeared in  VKHUTEMAS. He was an energetic man, critic and sociologist. Unlike V. Favorsky, he was free from narrow-shell preferences and had no clearly defined artistic concepts of form creation. He appeared in Moscow shortly before his appointment as rector of  VKHUTEMAS: after the end of the civil war, he was head of the Narobraz department in the Council of People’s Commissars for Education of the Crimean ASSR, worked as editor of the newspaper “Red Crimea”, taught at Tauride University. Since 1922, he worked at the People’s Commissariat of the RSFSR in Moscow, headed the department of museums and the Art Department of the Council of People’s Commissars for Education. Therefore he had no group interests in the Moscow artistic environment and was not connected with the previous history.

Novitsky discovered that VKHUTEMAS, created as a “special higher technical and industrial education institution aimed at training artists of higher qualification for industry” for six years of activity has not fulfilled its task. The relationship between industrial and non-productive disciplines posed a threat to the self-liquidation of a number of industrial faculties and, above all, the main industrial faculties – metalwork faculty and woodwork faculty.

From the very beginning of his leadership, Novitsky staked on the faculty of architecture and industrial faculties, i.e. those that trained specialists for the most developing areas of artistic creativity. At this time there were processes of forming new architecture and design, which increasingly determined the overall artistic activity.

Novitsky in his speeches, reports and articles appears as an active supporter of industrial art and constructivism. This also manifested itself in his relations with teachers at the Faculties of Architecture and Production – the closest to him were the constructivists.

One of the first actions was to reduce the period of study at the Main Coursefrom from two years to one with the transfer of subjects to the second year of study (including general art) in the structure of special faculties. This organizational restructuring has benefited manufacturing faculties, which were able to start specializing students a year earlier.

In 1927, in the November issue of the newspaper VHUTEMAS Novitsky, summarizing the results of his rectorate, drew attention to those problems that have yet to be solved. He notes that the faculties of production “have not yet turned into experimental training laboratories of the largest productions in the Soviet industry. But he is particularly dissatisfied with the situation at the faculties of fine arts: “The faculties of painting and sculpture have not become part of the general proletarian business… The stylistic features of the Impressionist technique that dominates the university are hostile to the harsh determination of the revolutionary era. Focused power, courageous determination and sharp integration of goals requires a firm clarity of outlines, forms and color. An active mood, a sense of self-confidence and class self-assertion have nothing to do with loose and vague cezanneism. A powerful consciousness of purpose requires materiality, figurativeness, compositional tasks, and ideological saturation. In the same article he sets general tasks, calling for their implementation: “It is necessary to achieve the maximum social usefulness and reality from our faculties … Our school should prepare modern people, industrial artists, organizers of life”.

Novitsky drew up a line to perform the tasks assigned to VKHUTEMAS by the decree on its creation. He invariably reminded in his speeches and articles that VKHUTEMAS, according to this decree, was preparing “artists-masters of the highest qualification for industry”.

In 1929, in an introductory article to the collection “VKHUTEIN” Novitsky as if summarizing the experience of his VKHUTEMAS leadership, explained his understanding of this higher education institution in the preparation of “artists of a new type”. He divided these tasks into two main groups – those serving industry (mainly manufacturing faculties) and those serving cultural and printing needs (the rest of the faculties), giving preference to the first group. “The art, which has reached the highest quality degrees, should serve industry first, i.e. mass machine production of socially necessary goods <…> A whole number of fields of industry cannot do without artists-technologists and artists-engineers”. According to Novitsky, they included textile, porcelain and faience, glass and maiolica, printing, production of internal equipment for residential and public buildings, transport, production of household items, artistic design of everyday life. Therefore, the industrial faculties were considered as a center for training “new artists of industrial culture”.

In the period of the Novitsky rectorate the fine arts faculties – painting, sculpture, were also considered from the position of formation of new type of artists. They had to train first of all specialists “for cultural socialist construction”, not artists in general, but artists and specialists who should be able to perform specific works of industrial character”.

Novitsky began a course to train a new type of specialist immediately after he took office as rector. Everything that happened in VKHUTEMAS-VKHUTEIN in 1926-1930, was aimed to change the structure of the educational institution, improving the skills of graduates and training programs.

Special emphasis was placed on the sphere of architecture, believing that the architect is “the main type of new artist”, thus bringing the faculty of architecture closer to industrial faculties.

With Novitsky’s active assistance, the creative organization of architects-constructivists, the Association of Modern Architects (OCA), was formalized and began publishing the magazine “Modern Architecture” (CA); Novitsky was part of the editorial board of the CA (1926-1930). In 1925, he was a member of the board of the State Institute of Art History. In 1926 he headed the commission of the Council of People’s Commissars for Education for the evaluation of the Lenin Mausoleum competition projects. In 1928 he was one of the initiators of the creation of the association of workers of new types of creative work “October”, he was an active member of the association. He was the editor of a collection of articles published in 1931.