VKHU TE MAS
Higher art and technical workshops
Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops) was organized in Moscow as a result of the merger of GSKhM I and II and was located in the buildings they previously occupied at 11 Rozhdestvenka (now MArchI) and 21 Myasnitskaya (now the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture). Vkhutemas began to work in the fall of 1920 (the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars on its formation was published only on December 25). In 1927 Vkhutemas was renamed Vhutein the Higher Artistic and Technical Institute, which was disbanded in 1930. The creation of Vkhutemas refers to the second stage of the post-revolutionary reform of art education, when educational institutions were united everywhere. There were several main reasons for the reform. First, by this time, students' dissatisfaction with the lack of clear programs and uniform principles of teaching in the Free Workshops was revealed. Secondly, in the circles of the avant-garde teachers themselves, in contrast to the idea of absolute creative freedom of the individual, the ideas of the objectivity of the laws of shaping were increasingly strengthened. The new artistic pedagogy was based on the methods of analytical research of the artistic form, born in the creative experiment of the avant-garde artists. The third reason for the restructuring of the Free Workshops was the need to create art cadres for industry. According to the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars, Vkhutemas was "a special higher technical and industrial educational institution with the goal of training highly qualiďŹ ed artists for industry, as well as instructors and leaders for vocational education."
E.V. Ravdel was appointed the authorized representative of the Art Department of the NKP for the Moscow State Agricultural Academy, and he had to create an educational institution that would meet new tasks. At a meeting of the responsible workers of the Art Department of the NKP, Ravdel presented the "Draft Regulations for the Moscow Higher State Art Studios", which was approved.
B.D.Korolev, A.M. Lavinsky, I.M. Tchaikov; in the architectural field, I.A.Golosov, N.V. Dokuchaev, V.F.Krinsky, N.A. Ladovsky, K.S.Melnikov declared themselves as innovators; VE Tatlin, LM Lisitsky, VF Stepanova taught at the production faculties. Some of the teachers were part of Lef's working group. Many left-wing teachers worked in Inkhuq.
The Moscow Higher Art School has implemented the concept of a new artistic pedagogy, accumulating the formal achievements of the latest trends in art. Of course, the organization and activities of the Vkhutemas were not limited to the problems of the avant-garde. The educational institution was associated with the artistic processes in the Russian culture of the 1920s as a whole, but the spirit of the avant-garde, the tasks of the avant-garde movement determined the character of the Vkhutemas in the most important way.
Vkhutemas was a pedagogical laboratory for testing the theoretical provisions of the artistic avant-garde. Famous masters of painting, sculpture and architecture, who had previously taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and who did not share the radical attitudes of the avant-garde, such as I.V. Zholtovsky, A.V. Shchusev, I.V. Rylsky, A.E. Arkhipov, also collaborated with him. , V. N. Yakovlev, D. N. Kardovsky, S. M. Volnukhin, I. N. Pavlov and others. The composition of teachers has changed significantly over the years, including replenishing with graduates of the Higher Artistic School.
Already at first, Vkhutemas gathered the largest representatives of the avant-garde movements of the 1910s. Individual workshops in different years at the Faculty of Painting were headed by V.D. Baranov-Rossine, A.A. Vesnin, A.D. Drevin, V.V. Kandinsky, I.V. Klyun, P.P. Konchalovsky, P.V. Kuznetsov, A.V.Lentulov, I.I.Mashkov, N.A. Pevzner, L.S.Popova, A.M. Rodchenko, N.A. Udaltsova, R.R. Falk, A.V. Shevchenko A.A. Exter; on the sculptural A.S. Golubkina,
At all faculties, an important place was occupied by the disciplines of theory and history of art, which were taught, as a rule, by major art critics and theoretical artists, among them are V.Ya. Adaryukov, A.I. Anisimov, A.V. Bakushinsky, A.G. Gabrichevsky, A. I. Larionov, A. A. Sidorov, P. A. Florensky, A. M. Efros. In addition to pedagogical artists and prominent figures in certain areas of production, many specialists in the history of technology and crafts, as well as in the field of natural
production faculties. Secondly, the teaching of formal analytical disciplines required the preparation of students, and this is the reason for the emergence of a General Department common to all faculties. Changes in the structure of Vkhutemas and a focus on industrial art in teaching met with protest from students and a number of easel teachers. Attempts by the leadership of the NKP to resolve the conflict, which lasted from the fall of 1921 to the end of 1922, led to the first reorganization and a change of leadership. The most complete and harmonious period in the history of Vkhutemas is associated with the rector's office of Favorsky. During these years, attempts to streamline and structure the programs and work of all faculties lead to the fact that creative and production specializations exist on an equal footing. This also benefited the production faculties, as classes on stable curricula, which included technological, artistic and theoretical disciplines (both historical-artistic and natural-scientific) soon bore fruit. A practical confirmation of the success of the chosen pedagogical line, in addition to the first graduates of professional specialists, was the participation of Vkhutemas in the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and the Art Industry in Paris (1925), where Vkhutemas received awards for a new analytical method, programs and educational and experimental work of students. Having received such international recognition, Vkhutemas is among the first-class educational institutions, like the famous Bauhaus. The period of Novitsky, who taught the interfaculty course "Sociology of Art", is associated with the changes taking place in the country. The fascination with technological advances and the vulgar sociology that intervened
The specificity of the Vkhutemas was in its non-traditional structure, which united the faculties of a creative orientation (painting, sculptural, architectural), production (printing, metalworking, woodworking, textile, ceramic) and a propaedeutic course common for all specialties - the Main Department, which was finally formed by 1923 from preparatory departments different faculties. Such a structure and unified pedagogical guidelines, which they tried to develop and approve in the Higher Art Museum, were supposed, according to the idea of the organizers, to create a common plastic basis for all types of spatial arts and the formation of the subject-spatial environment of a person. In the early years, unprepared youth who came to Vkhutemas entered the test-preparatory department (IPO). Instead, in January 1923, the NKP ordered to organize an art workers' school. Artists A.V. Babichev, K.K. Zefirov, K.N. Istomin, V.E. Lyamin, N.H. Maksimov, E.O. Mashkevich, S.M. Romanovich, V. L. Khrakovsky and others. The achievement of the artistic pedagogy of the Vkhutemas was the creation of a universal system of propaedeutic disciplines, which was highly appreciated back in the 1920s and further development in architectural and design pedagogy in different countries. Along with the formal-analytical teaching methodology, artistic and pedagogical directions of individual groups and masters took shape in the Vkhutemas. At the "production" faculties, new tendencies were associated with the ideas of industrial art, they conquered the traditions of applied arts, decorative ornamentation and stylization, characteristic of the Stroganov School, which was inherited by the Vkhutemas. Significant creative trends such as rationalism and
constructivism in architecture and in artistic design grew out of the avant-garde movement in the Vkhutemas. At the faculties of fine arts (painting and sculptural), great masters had a direct influence on the youth, whose work developed in contact with the artistic avant-garde. A kind of reaction to the avant-garde was the theory of composition by V.A. Favorsky, whose influence extended to several faculties. The history of Vkhutemas-Vhutein is distinguished by extreme dynamism. Over the ten years of the existence of the university, a number of organizational restructuring took place (merger and new division of faculties), curricula and ideological and artistic attitudes changed. Initially, the period of study was set at four years, from 1927 it was extended to five years. Ravdel (1920–1922), Favorsky (1923–1926), PI Novitsky (1926–1930) were rectors of Vkhutemas – Vhutein. Their names are associated with periods of Vkhutemas activity, different in terms of ideological orientation. All violent fundamental conflicts, many personnel changes in one way or another (sometimes directly, more often indirectly) were associated with the problem of the concept of an educational institution. The main battles unfolded over installations for easel or industrial art. The superiority of certain tendencies for a certain time led to a change in the general direction. The Ravdel period is characterized by an orientation towards training personnel for industry; it ended with the transition of a number of leftist masters of a constructivist orientation (Rodchenko, Lavinsky, V.P. Kiselev) from the Main Department to the
After the dissolution of Vhutein in 1930, the faculties were attached to the corresponding specialized universities. The Faculty of Architecture was united with the architectural department of the Moscow Higher Technical School, forming the ASI-MAI (later MARCHI), and remained in the building on Rozhdestvenka. The painting and sculpture faculties were transferred to Leningrad - to the Institute of Proletarian Fine Arts (INPII). The polygraphic faculty was merged with the polygraph ofďŹ ce of the Leningrad Vhutein, forming the art department of the Moscow Polygraphic Institute, which occupied the Vhutein building on Myasnitskaya Street. The textile faculty together with the museum formed the art department of the newly created Textile Institute in Moscow. Other faculties have practically disappeared. Technologists from the Faculty of Ceramics completed their education at the State Experimental Institute of Silicates, artists scattered across various institutes and factories.