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Section 1. Architecture
https://doi.org/10.29013/AJT-21-1.2-3-7
Markovskyi Andrii, Candidate of Architecture (PhD), Scientific Secretary of the Department of Plastic Arts Synthesis at
National Academy of Arts of Ukraine E-mail: [email protected]
PARALLELS IN ARCHITECTURE OF THE INTERWAR PERIOD IN KYIV AND ROME
Abstract. Analysis of the identities and differences of architectural trends in interwar Rome and Kyiv in the context of socio-cultural, historical and political factors that influenced the field of art. Comparison of the development paths of Soviet post-constructivism and Stalinist Empire style with the architecture of Fascist Italy.
Keywords: historicism, eclecticism, avant-garde, Postconstructivism, Soviet neoclassicism.
The architecture of the USSR as a whole in the projects of A. Speer and P. Troost. These identities designated period was analyzed in their research works by A. V. Ikonnikov, Yu. S. Aseev, S. O. Khan Magomedov, D. S. Khmelnitsky and N. P. Bylinkin. In more detail in the context of Ukrainian national development, the issue is revealed in the works of B. S. Cherkes, B. L. Yerofalov-Pilipchak, etc. Khmelnitsky and Cherkes draw parallels of the genesis processes of domestic and foreign architecture. V. O. Vesnin gives a brief analysis of the Italian architectural experience as a contemporary in his diaries. However, given the vastness and versatility of the issue, the topic raised remains open for further in-depth study and development. Comparison of processes in Kyiv and Rome of the interwar period as a separate research topic is raised for the first time.
Analyzing the architecture of the Soviet neo-classicism, the so-called Stalinist Empire, researchers often draw parallels between the USSR and Nazi Germany, comparing domestic experience with the
are regularly extrapolated to other totalitarian and authoritarian regimes of interwar Europe, including Fascist Italy, which is considered in the orbit of German political influence.
However, despite the significant similarities and almost identical socio-political and cultural processes, the architecture of Italy during the time of Benito Mussolini has a number of characteristic features formed by differences in both state factors of influence and authentic artistic heritage, which influenced the formation of the field of creative activity.
In general terms, the socio-cultural area seems close to the background of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR, but with a more detailed analysis, we can note a number of key differences that are somehow related to the conditions for establishing power in the country. Unlike Germany, which lost the war and in which the National Socialist Workers' Party came to power in a wave of revanchism and opposition of the
"strong" model of government to the "weak" Weimar Republic, which resulted in antagonism to the Bauhaus in particular and the avant-garde in general; and in contrast to the USSR, whose transition from constructivism to neoclassicism, as a reflection on the new social climate, was mentioned in our previous articles [1]; the coming of the Nazis to power was more planned. In fact, the new ruling elite did not oppose itself to the previous government, but only radicalized the previously planned course. In art, this resulted not in the prohibition of the avant-garde, but in its gradual evolution in an ideologically favorable direction.
We consider it appropriate to compare some Italian projects of those times with Kyiv examples. In particular, with competitive proposals for the construction of the Government Quarter of Karo Semenovych Alabyan - one of the founders and in-spirers of Soviet neoclassical architecture, who in 1932 became executive secretary of the newly created Union of Soviet architects (after 1955 known as the Union of architects of the USSR). Accordingly, considering the personal role of K. S. Alabyan in the power-induced, leading union of architects of the country, his work in this context can be extrapolated to the official course of the ruling elites.
We also consider it important that neoclassical reminiscences in the architecture of K. S. Alabyan had considerable experience gained after analyzing the best world samples during professional business trips: "...(in 1925 - to Paris, in 1935 - to France, Italy and Greece) he studies outstanding monuments of antiquity, Renaissance, classicism and modern European and American architecture and construction equipment" [2, P. 408]. Accordingly, the contemporary to Alabyan neoclassical architecture of fascist Italy also could not escape the artist's attention. In 1935, the construction of the World Fair quarter in Rome (EUR) beg an with the main dominant - the Palace ofCivilizations, for the project of which a competition was announced [3].
Similar events took place in the architecture of Kyiv, where, after the return of the capital from Kharkiv, a competition was announced for the
new Government Quarter [4], in which Kaso Semenovych [5] also took part. Two competitive proposals of K. S. Alabyan for the construction of the Government Quarter were submitted by the structures of the CPC and the Central Committee of the CP(B)U in the form of an almost direct citation of the Colosseum cut by the main axis of the square.
Italian architecture, built in similar to the Soviet and German conditions, the assertion of totalitarian ideology and the key role of the party leadership, historical reminiscences of the militaristic dictatorship of ancient Rome and the cult of ideas aimed at the general population - architecture created in almost identical realities - meanwhile found its expression through avant-garde conciseness, which contrasts sharply with the multi-decorated architecture of the USSR in the late 1930's - early 1950's. EUR architecture is designed exclusively in clear perpendicular lines, almost without decoration, with a minimum amount ofbrutalized polygonal sculpture. The main dominant, the Palace ofcivilizations, gets a rectangular, almost cubic shape, popularly called the "cubic Colosseum" as a diametric contrast with the cylindrical Flavian Amphitheater.
In our opinion, there are two main reasons for such a fundamental difference in the neoclassical architecture of Italy and the USSR:
1. Italian architecture was created against the background of a large number of authentic artifacts of antiquity, some of which, such as the Colosseum, the baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, the Roman Forum, etc., still play an iconic urban emphasis. Their importance can hardly be overestimated, they are self-sufficient in the city space. Therefore, the Italian architecture of the 1930 s could afford more detached variable memories, without direct citation (which, moreover, would be put in conditions of significant competition with the actual monuments). Neoclassical architecture of the USSR is more focused on the experience of the French Empire during Napoleon's time than on antiquity - there are almost no ruins of the ancient period preserved on the territory of the Soviet Union.
2. Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century did not go through such significant socio-ideolog-ical upheavals as the Russian empire with the October Revolution, the Civil War and, as a result, a sharp fundamental change in artistic styles from Art Nouveau to avant-garde, which represented the "old bourgeois" and "new proletarian" eras. Accordingly, in our opinion, the avant-garde in Italian architecture developed more systematically than in Soviet architecture, and more progressively, without opposition, began to be saturated with neoclassical elements when the ideology changed.
The architecture of Karo Semenovych Alabyan in this context was addressed to the experience of antiquity precisely from the point ofview of the Soviet background. His reinterpretation ofhistorical experience was focused, in our opinion, precisely on the expression of the ideological ideas of the ruling elites of the 1930s, manifested in large-scale city-forming projects. If in Rome the new Quarter of the World's Fair was built on the outskirts, leaving the historic ruins intact, in Kyiv a new Government Quarter was created on the site of the specially destroyed St. Michael's Golden-Domed Cathedral and the Church of the Three Holy Hierarchs. In Italy, the quarter was a continuation of the historical genesis, in Kyiv - a contrast to the achievements of previous times. That is why, in our opinion, the "Stalinist Empire style" in the USSR had a number of key differences from neoclassical variations in Fascist Italy. We consider Alabian's approach to urban development, designed to create a new (rather than reinforcing the old) image of the city, to be key: "In no epoch architecture with such force and persuasiveness has solved the problems of a large ensemble as [in the epoch] of the ancient world" [2, P. 411]. However, comparing his projects (in particular the Government Quarter in Kyiv) with other concepts in the style of neoclas-sicism, one cannot fail to notice a relatively smaller number of sculptural details, baroque elements and decor in the ornamentation than in the proposals of his colleagues (D. M. Chechulin, I. V. Zholtovsky,
V. G. Zabolotny, O. V. Vlasov, etc.). In our opinion, the projects of K. S. Alabyan in Kyiv is a synthesis of the Soviet and Italian approach to the development of neoclassical architecture in the mid-1930 s.
The following projects of the master in Kyiv also approved a global ensemble urban planning approach to the introduction of neoclassical art: "In 1945, he participated in a competition for the project of the main street of Kyiv - Khreshchatyk, and the street ensemble includes the Victory Arch, the project of which he made a year earlier" [2, P. 410].
Viktor Oleksandrovych Vesnin in 1937, analyzing the contemporary architecture of Italy, noted: "The state in Italy builds some large structures. The fascist regime wants to reflect a "new era"in them. <.. .> It is difficult to determine what this style is. The ideological leader of the new Italian architecture is a "friend of Mussolini", the architect Piacentini has not yet figured out what he wants and where he leads: either "neoclassicism" or "neo - romanticism". <...> There is undoubtedly a "neo" in it - since there is a new era, then it is impossible without "neo". Undoubtedly, there is also "latinism" as a continuation of the "great ideas of the Roman Empire", undoubtedly, there is also "rationalism" as the winning of the century" [2, P. 44-45]. In our opinion, it is paradoxical and, in a certain sense, ironic that such rhetoric is carried out by Viktor Vesnin, who together with his brother Alexander presented two projects for the aforementioned competition for the construction of the Government Quarter in Kyiv. And it was on the example of the transformation of their proposal from the first to the second round that they tried to adapt the constructiv-ist idea to changing the vector of power elites, adding neoclassical elements in the decoration and sculptural design. Neoclassical elements just like in Italy played along with the imperial myth. Only not Roman, but great Russian-Soviet, which was also imbued with militarism in the mid-30 s.
"Without giving preference to any "-ism", Piachen-tini and his associates deftly operate them depending on the circumstances, purpose and significance ofthe
structure" [2, P. 45], Vesnin notes further, meanwhile personally adding foreign empire elements to the avant-garde architecture and turning their object into post-constructivism (according to the definition of the term by Khan-Magomedov [6]). "Theatricality, pose, deceptive pathos, recitation, characteristic of the entire practice of Fascism, found full expression in this architecture" [2, P. 45] - words that we consider appropriate to apply not only to the architecture of the designated Italy, but also to the work of many constructivist and rationalist architects in the vast expanses of the USSR, through compromise and creative search, tried to adapt to new requirements and socio-political request. For example, we can recall the House ofwriters "Rolit" authored by V. G. Krichevsky.
However, we, as a researcher, do not share the unambiguously negative attitude ofViktor Oleksan-drovych to such variations, considering the transition of styles process and the corresponding synthesis an extremely interesting period, which will lay the foundations for new decorative and constructive techniques that will be used in the new style iteration of the departure from neoclassical to modernism and functionalism in the USSR.
Note that in Germany and the USSR, where "pure" neoclassicism strongly rejected the avantgarde, it rapidly disappears with the death of the corresponding authoritarian personalities who supported it. In Italy, on the other hand, fascism architecture was not condemned and continued to develop gradually after the fall of the regime. We directly link this to the fact that the Italian architecture of the 1930s did not contradict previous artistic achievements, becoming, in fact, one of the ways of development of the avant-garde and then just as organically returning to the postwar modernism and international style.
Similarly to Italian, the architecture of countries that were under significant Italian influence, in particular, Albania and Romania, will develop. For example, you can recall the Royal Villa in Dures, on the Adriatic coast opposite Italy, near the capital of the country. It was built in 1937 by architect Cristo Satiri in the style of so-called Monumental rationalism [7], combining the features of avant-garde and neoclassical architecture. The architect, who graduated from Italian universities and also worked at the court of the Romanian royal family, designed the villa in the shape of an eagle.
Conclusion. Analogies and parallels that were drawn between the architecture of the USSR and world artistic progress reveal the depth of ties and the global cultural significance of creative achievements. It would be erroneous to consider Soviet and Ukrainian architecture as a separate phenomenon, devoid of influences and mutually enriching exchange with the global art of those times.
The architecture of Soviet and Ukrainian post-constructivism paradoxically has much in common with the Italian development of neoclassical variations of the interwar period. However, given a number of fundamental differences in the political system and historical environment, which significantly affected the artistic field, the development of Soviet and Italian architecture, with identical trends of the late 1920 s, will acquire more and more disagreements during the third decade of the twentieth century. The Italian systematic evolution from the avant-garde to the neoclassical turned out to be more viable and socially acceptable than the Soviet and German directive transformations, which were criticized and "forgotten" after the death of their respective authoritarian initiators of creative change.
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