M56 Mikhail Chemiakin and Vladimir Ivanov

Metaphysical Synthetism Manifesto: Programme of the St Petersburg Group (1974)

Metaphysical synthetism was a philosophy conceived by the Soviet émigré artist Mikhail Chemiakin (b. 1943) and the professor of Russian symbolism Vladimir Ivanov (b. 1943). Chemiakin was regarded by the Soviet authorities as a nonconformist. He had been expelled from the prestigious Ilya Repin Institute of Arts in Leningrad for ‘aesthetically corrupting’ his fellow students with his enduring interest in formalism; and, following a period of forced psychiatric treatment, he founded the St Petersburg Group of artists in 1967.

The group believed that for art to flourish it must have a spiritual dimension, rather than just serving society. This concept was deeply rooted in the history of Russian religious art, right back to its Byzantine origins; but the use of Christian symbols in the group’s paintings – there to mark their rejection of materialism for a more transcendent reality – was at odds with the state-sanctioned style of Socialist Realism. As a result, they had their exhibitions closed down by the authorities and they struggled for recognition.

After a failed attempt to escape from Russia, Chemiakin finally obtained permission to emigrate to Paris in 1971. It was here, in 1974, that he and Ivanov issued the ‘Metaphysical Synthetism Manifesto’ (an extract from which is printed below), which expanded on the ideology of the St Petersburg Group. Yet their beliefs were as much at odds in a Western capitalist society, where few artists invoked religious themes, as they were in the USSR.

The Filonov mentioned in paragraph 15 of the manifesto is the early twentieth-century Russian avant-garde painter and theorist Pavel Filonov, who promoted the idea of analytical realism in art.

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1. God is the basis of Beauty. A drawing close to God means the highest tension in the existence of Beauty. A moving away from and forgetting of God means a weakening of the existence of Beauty.
2. Art means the paths of Beauty leading to God. The artist must always aspire to God. The power and viability of his style is determined by the extent of his faith. ‘As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abides in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.’ (St John, 15, 4)
3. Before the coming of Christ the canon was the most perfect embodiment of Beauty. After the coming of Christ, it was the icon; as leaves are transformed into the calyx of a flower, so was the canon transformed into the icon.
4. When a flower fades, the seeds ripen and are scattered by the wind. So also in art, after conjunctive (synthetic) periods, there follow analytical periods, periods of the greatest possible deviation from the tension of the phenomena of Beauty, which lead to decomposition and the separation of form and colour.
5. The laws of art are the laws of Pythagorean numbers. These laws are in no way an abstraction, but the essences of life, recognised through intellectual contemplation. At the basis of the development of every style lie two triangles: (i) The triangle is the triangle of form: the cone, the sphere, the cylinder; their complementary forms: the circle, the triangle, the square. (ii) The triangle is the triangle of colour: blue, red, yellow; their complementary colours: green, orange, violet. The hexagon is the symbol of the interpenetration and the unity of form and colour.
6. Seven basic concepts, like the seven spirits, govern the laws of form and colour, defining the fate of every style, the length of its life; they also determine its legacy. These seven basic concepts make up the triangle and the square. The square: Spontaneity. The demonic. Deformation. The absurd. The triangle: The canon. The icon. The principle of unification.
7. Analytical periods dissipate that energy of form and colour which synthetic periods accumulate. Ultimately, a complete enfeeblement and decadence of the feeling of form and colour takes place. The hexagon disintegrates. The square triumphs. Art returns to darkness, chaos. Freedom is lost. Tyranny reigns. Art is no longer an embodiment, but a mask.
8. The Renaissance only possessed the power it did thanks to the extravagant and ungrateful dissipation of the treasures of the Middle Ages. The energy gathered in the Russian icon has remained undissipated until now. Using the analytical approach, that is, one which separates out the elements, it remains a tormenting enigma and an attempt to use it leads only to dead stylisation. The only way lies not in dissipating but in increasing the accumulated energy – in creating a new icon-painting.
9. The contemporary artist who examines the monuments of ancient cultures falls into a tormenting contradiction capable of damning him to total sterility: on the one hand he sees in the past an unusual intimacy with his own quest, with his feeling of form, on the other, he is struck by the incredible gap between them and him, by their inner reserve and remoteness which stands in the way of any attempt at intimacy. This contradiction is determined by three causes: (i) Forgetting the religious sources of style. Refusal to penetrate the pretersensual world of ideas. (ii) Increased consciousness of the historical-chronological viewpoint – an arrangement which does not give a concrete scale for the measurement of the time distances between styles. (iii) The resulting examination of style not as a form-producing force, but only as its ultimate and limited consolidation in the material. The contradiction can only be removed in the following way: (i) Through contemplation of styles as living organisms – in the unity of idea and material. (ii) Through recognition of the basic law of the development of style as the law of metamorphoses. (iii) Through the differentiation of styles according to religious principles: (a) Before the coming of Christ. (b) After the Mysteries of the Crucifixion.
10. Two kinds of contemplation of the metamorphoses of style are possible: (i) Mythological (style as myth). (ii) Morphological. Morphological contemplation is in the spirit of the further development of Goethe’s views on natural science. ‘The leaves of the calyx are the same organs as were hitherto visible in the form of stem leaves, but then, often in a much changed form, they turn up and gather around one common centre.’
11. From the first method of presentation it follows that the origin of style is cosmogonical. The styles themselves are deities, ‘souls’. The basic thing is the contemplation of the transformation of chaos into harmony, and then the inevitable disintegration of harmony into chaos. Form-producing forces collide with each other like gods and Titans. As the Titans were plunged into Tartary, so Greek antiquity conquered Eastern irrationalism, demonism and spontaneity. Orpheus.
12. From the second method it follows that styles are the pure, self-propelled movements of form and colour. Here it is not deities which are contemplated but pre-phenomena, ideas. The very styles form of themselves something whole – an absolute world. Each style presupposes the existence of another. Everything is organically interdefined and conditioned.
13. Form and colour for the second method are the same, whether as the object of study or the means of symbolising knowledge.
14. In its understanding of the number, metaphysical synthetism follows Pythagorean occult mathematics. If for the contemporary mathematician the number 3 is expressed by a segment of straight line with three equal divisions, then for Pythagorean mathematics the number 3 is a triangle, the symbol of the divine and perfect unity. All the numbers quoted in this book should be understood from this point of view.
15. The tension of Being in this world cannot be conveyed by simple mirror-like reflection. In reflection there is no tension. The job of the artist is to lift form and colour to the highest degree of tension. In analytical art this is called the principle of wholeness (Filonov).
16. The highest tension of form and colour is attained by styles originating in the principle of symbolisation. They achieve the maximum accumulation of energy. The model for this is ancient Egyptian art. A second kind of style is inspired by the naturalistic principle. In the first case God is felt in oneself, in the second, God is found in the world. The basis of the naturalistic principle is perception. It is possible to reproduce naturalistically a vision of the pretersensual world. Only when the pretersensual world is embodied as a symbol is the icon born.
17. The symbol is a combination of the uncombinable. The following types of symbolisation exist: (i) Astral-occult. Each combination of the uncombinable is conditioned by the constellations contemplated in revelation. Fantasy as such plays no part here. All the means of symbolism are beyond arbitrary rule, they are canonical, holy. The Sphinx. (ii) Rosicrucian Esoteric Christian symbols as the basis for the combination of the uncombinable forms of the external world. At this stage a considerable degree of freedom is achieved. The artist relies more on his inner experience, using occult knowledge for the expression of his own pretersensual experiences. At the same time, for the depiction of the realms of the other world into which he cannot yet climb, he uses the description of the experiences of the Great Initiates. Such works no longer appear to be the objects of a cult. Bosch. An example of symbolisation is the panels of the triptych, The Garden of Heavenly Joys: the realm of the pretersensual world is depicted, through which pass the souls of the dead on their way from death to birth; in the centre of the panel is the ‘man-tree’; its extremities – shrivelled branches – signify the loss of ethereal powers, its steps are two boats ‘without rudder and without sails’ which wander over the waters of the nether regions of the other world. On the head of the man is a millstone; on it march demons which have taken possession of the soul of the dead man in the course of his life on earth: the Bear is the symbol of anger, the woman of voluptuousness, the purse of miserliness. In the middle of the millstone are huge bagpipes, the symbol of the tongue of this man which has fallen victim to Ahrimanic numbness. (iii) Surrealist Freedom of the imagination turns into demonic tyranny. Idolisation of the subconscious. Automatism of creation. The artist avoids trying to provide a basis for the combination of the uncombinable: the arbitrary symbolisation of tyranny. The incestuous introduction of the naturalistic principle into imagination. Salvador Dali: ‘The difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.’ (iv) Nihilistic-absurd. The principle of the simple anecdote. The symbol is no longer the voice of the subconscious but the voice of Nothing: speaking from the foundations of the world and speaking as a foundation of the world. The interpretation of the symbol, unlike surrealism, is not impossible, but it is not necessary, for everything leads to Nothing. Being thrown into Nothing. Kabakov. Black comedy. (v) Metaphysical synthetism.
18. Form is one, but the creative processes of its embodiment are not one. In the twentieth century the birth of a new type of creative consciousness is taking place: those processes which earlier played in the subconscious and superconscious regions of the soul are now – thanks to the power of the ‘I’ – boldly introduced into the realm of the conscious. The artist is no longer a holy fool. He is a creator, a friend of God. The degree to which he is permeated by Christ’s impulse determines the degree of consciousness in his work.
19. The icon is the most complete and perfect form of the revelation of Beauty in the world. ALL THE EFFORTS OF THE METAPHYSICAL SYNTHETISTS ARE DIRECTED TOWARDS THE CREATION OF A NEW ICON-PAINTING. FROM PICTURES TO THE ICON.
20. Art renouncing Beauty is Eros. The artist creates harmony only through his love of Beauty.