Fig. 1. Reconstructed scale model of the Light Monument
of the Revolution at the 1987 Kazan Exhibition.
ABSTRACT
The author discusses the life and work of Grigory Gidoni, artist, inventor of the early days of the Soviet Union. Nearly forgotten, Gidoni's works and ideas shed light on the spirit and the artistic and ideological atmosphere of the U.S.S R. in the decades following the Revolution.
In the autumn of 1987, the All-Union Festival of Light and Music was held in Kazan, in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, featuring an extensive exposition of works related in one way or another to the festival's theme [1,2]. Alongside the works of Kandinsky, Rodchenko and Burlyuk, a reconstructed model of the Light Monument of the Revolution by Leningrad artist Grigory Gidoni (Fig.1) was exhibited in the hall of retrospective art at the very center of the exposition. In Color Plate  No.2, the model is shown as it was exhibited against the background of paintings depicting V.Tatlin's well-known monument symbolizing the Third International. Far from being accidental, the arrangement of the two works underlined the fact that both belong to a time of innovative quests for new forms and methods by young Soviet artists. But the fates of the two monuments are entirely different. Although not without effort, Tatlin's work has come through years of silence to reach present-day audiences; most books on Russian revolutionary vanguard art feature photographs of his monument. On the other hand, Gidoni's significant Light Monument has remained unknown even to specialists both in Russia and abroad until recently. I recall the interest evoked by a reconstructed model of Tallin's monument in the "Moscow-Paris" exhibition of 1981. The first introduction to Gidoni's work at Kazan in 1987 proved equally memorable and impressive. One cannot overemphasize that Tallin's and Gidoni's works have much in common and are linked not only by the spirit, revolutionary pathos and exposed, open Constructivism of the time, but they also can be seen as claims to the still-remote future.
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Fig. 1. Reconstructed scale model of the Light Monument
of the Revolution at the 1987 Kazan Exhibition.
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How did we become aware of Gidoni's monument? About 25 or 30 years ago, the student design bureau "Prometei" (now a scientific research institute under both the same "Prometei" moniker and my supervision) disseminated questionnaires among all the members of the creative unions of the USSR on the synthesis of music, painting and "color hearing" (or synesthesia). Several artists referenced Gidoni as a follower of the ideas that formed the basis of Scriabin's light symphony. In 1969, after publishing an open letter in the mass media that summed up the questionnaire responses [3], we received additional responses from Gidoni's colleagues and his son (who emigrated to the United States and now lives in Canada). As a result, several of Gidoni's books and copies of his other publications have been added to our archives at the Kazan Museum of Light Music.
We found the most complete information about the Light Monument in an article published in 1928 in the Soviet popular jouinal Ogonyek, where we found a photo of Gidoni's model in its complete form (Fig.2). It is worthwhile to cite a passage from the article (with my notes in brackets):
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Fig.2. Gidoni's scale model of the Light Monument
of the Revolution (1928).
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[Gidoni] set himself to the task of reflecting the grandeur of the Great October Revolution in this light monument. The central idea of the monument is to erect a giant glass model of the globe on Revolution Victims Field in Leningrad. The entire monument is to be assembled of three huge parts - a sickle, a hammer and a gearwheel - with each part being used for other purposes (e.g. the multi-storied building built inside the metal construction of the sickle and inside the hammel's handle is used for the arrangement of exhibitions). The central part of the project is the giant globe made from matte glass that will hold a giant 2000-seat capacity theater. [It should be noted in passing that Scnabin, the creator of the light performance "Prometheus," dreamed of a theatiical hall of such spherical form.]
The transparent globe will also perform light orchestial functions bv displaying, with the use of complicated mechanisms, constantly changing combinations of colors. The spectators on balconies of both the upper gallery and tower can watch the perfoimances with equal comfort as those inside globe. The model ol this huge Monument of the Revolution was exhibited on the occasion of the Leningrad VTzIK session [VTzIK is the Russian pre-War abbreviation of the All-Union Central Executive Committee] and attracted the attention of wide public circles [4].
The article goes on to mention that the sculpture was to be constructed at full scale and exhibited at the World Electrotechnical Exhibition in Leningrad in 1928.
According to Gidoni's colleague, D.F.Lasarev of the Institute of Optics, there were plans to create a museum devoted to Lenin at the top îà the monument, inside the hammel. Gidoni's son provided me with photographs in which one can distinctly see fragments of the monument and the slogan "Workers of the World, Unite!" insciibed across the USSR on the globe. For the 1987 exhibition, Kazan artists reconstructed the model in strict accordance with the photographs. It should be noted, however, that, judging by diawings of the monument taken from Gidoni's books, his flights of fancy were not limited to what we see in his drawings (Fig. 3). According to our evidence, after its demonstration on the above-mentioned jubilee session (22 October 1928), the pioject was approved by the people's education commissar A.V.Lunaicharsky and prominent theatre director V.E.Meyerkhold, and was allegedly åven favorably appreciated by Stalin himself. The model was destroyed during the World War II Leningiad blockade, a short time after Gidoni's death in 1937. In those days it was considered both honorable and dangerous to meet face-to-face with the people in power in the Soviet Union; however, we failed to reveal any documentary evidence of any meetings between Gidoni and high-ranking officials. Accoiding to information obtained from his son, the authorities took action against Gidoni in 1937, accusing him of spying for the Japanese.
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Fig.3. Drawing of the Spherical Theater, a regular
emblem on the covers of Gidoni's books.
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Biographical details on Gidoni are very scarce. There is a short entry in the six-volume bibliographical dictionary, Artists of the USSR [5]. Other details can be found in special articles published in some of the pioceedings of the All-Union Conferences on Light and Music [6,7] and also in some short publications that have appeared from time to time in Soviet periodicals [8-10]. We do know that Gidoni was a graphic artist who attended St.Petersburg University, the Sorbonne and Ecole National des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Additional information obtained from the private letters of Gidoni's son contains some details about his family. Allegedly one of Gidoni's relatives, General A.Gidoni, was a pioneer of Italian aviation, and - also allegedly - the small town of Gidonia near Rome is a pilot-training center.
Generally speaking, one can form the truest notion about Gidoni by closely examining albums of his prints [11-13] and ex librises kept in libraries [14-15]. Without dwelling upon their value (they seem to be quite ordinary), we can suppose that they at least had momentary meaning for the artist himself, since he was supposedly a most fearless fighter against every traditional form of fine art in this period.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF GIDONI'S IDEAS
Scriabin's ideas about a universal synthesis of visual art and the light symphony were enthusiastically received and supported in Leningrad during the 1920s. These ideas were pursued at the State Institute of Art History by musicologists V.G.Karatygin, S.A.Dianin, G.M.Rimsky-Korsakov [16], while artist M.Matyushin experimented with principles of light-music synthesis at the Academy of Arts [17,18].. In 1919, Leningrad composer V.V.Scherbachev wrote the original light-music composition "Nonette" [19]. Working at the State Physical and Technical Institute, L.S.Theremin invented the electromechanical instrument called the "termenvox" (the theremin) and began to combine its performance first with light, and later with triggered tactile and olfactory sensations [20]. At the Institute of Optics in 1923, composer A.G.Chesnokov and the light-engineer S.O.Maizel conducted a number of experiments with light-music [21]. In the mid-1920s, A.M.Dymshitz set forth the original ideas of "spatial music" and light-musical displays which he planned to execute in the hall of the Press House being built in Leningrad at the time [22,23].
No one knows whether Gidoni had any contact with these researchers. He mentions virtually none of them in his works, in which he constantly emphasizes his own pioneering role. It is highly probable that few of these people encountered each other in their fields of activity although they were part of the generally ecstatic atmosphere of inexhaustible innovation during the post-revolutionary years, an atmosphere noted by A.Blok at the very outset of the century: "Russia is a young country and its culture is synthetic" [24].
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Fig. 4. Gidoni's illustrations of Patent No. 527,
a "light decoration" machine.
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Gidoni first set forth the idea of an artistic usage of light in 1920 in his lengthy article "Light Decorations," which effectively formed the basis of all his future books and projects [25]. At the same time, he registered and obtained Patent No.527 for an invention described as "a contrivance for obtaining light decorations on a transparent screen," which was based on the formation and decorative use of color shadows (Fig.4). Gidoni actively popularized both the idea of light art and his invention via presentations such as the one delivered at the State Institute of Art History in June 1925 under the title "Colored Light as the Basis of a New Art Form." His activities were warmly accepted by the press not only locally, but also in Moscow [26-29]. In each of his articles, Gidoni insisted that the first light concerts must be held as soon as possible and that Scriabin's "Prometheus" should certainly be the first light performance. Gidoni had worked out his own system of controlling light flow, brightness and color (Fig.5). He had also created a system of digital notation (Fig.6), which was used by G.M.Rimsky-Korsakov (the prominent composer's nephew) for "decoding" the light string of the luce in "Prometheus," about which the composer had "forgotten" to provide explanatory remarks to performers [30]. Gidoni also generated light interpretations of numerous poems and pieces of music, which he performed at home; finally, he established in his flat the Laboratory of the Art of Light and Color, of which he was the only permanent employee. It later became a department of the State Technical Institute of Physics under the auspices of the academician A.F.Ioffe, who had done earlier extensive work for Theremin and his "radio music" research.
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Fig.5 Illustration of Gidoni's light instrument,
from the certificate for Patent No.22 778 (1930).
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Fig.6. Schematic of light panel featuring Gidoni's digital notation.
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Two triumphant events led Gidoni to create this unique laboratory: his address to the All-Union Central Executive Committee on 22 October 1927 and his lecture and light-concert at the Main Conference Hall of the Academy of Sciences on 26 May 1928. The academy lecture forms the basis of Gidoni's first book, The Art of Light and Color (Introduction, Genesis, Forms, Predictions) [31]. The book is truly "introductory" in that Gidoni appended to it a detailed plan of extensive future studies in the new field. Judging by everything, the plan was never completed. In truth, the plan outlined activities of the as yet non-existent Institute of Light and Color that Gidoni had dreamt about. In subsequent years, he published a number of scores of Pushkin's works [32-34] which included written text through which he attempted to elucidate his thoughts on new art. Gidoni sought every avenue for the expression of his ideas; perhaps the most desperate of his decisions (at first glance his motivation is unclear) was to append a vast section entitled "Dialogue on Art of Light and Color" to a book he wrote about the painter Gustave Courbet [35]. And there is a detail that one cannot help but be touched by: almost all his books feature a signature stamp that designates it as an "author's publication" or a "publication of the Laboratory of Art of Light and Color"; moreover, the imprints indicate that "literary and technical editing were done by G.Gidoni" and "drawings were colored by the author himself." What was the source of his obsession and patience?
Years passed by, but Gidoni never succeeded in erecting the Light Monument of the Revolution, dedicating his time instead to light theater, which was also a failure. He proposed an installation of "light clocks" in the Museum of the Revolution in Leningrad, but the proposal was rejected. He also proposed to build a number of "light shooting-galleries" and "light columns." This led to Gidoni's regression from lofty dreams to ordinary decorative work. "I am in trouble now"," he wrote in 1933, "Even if I am misunderstood now, I will introduce, against all odds, a tremendous new art and a new way of painting for the future. Let these pages come to light issued by an as yet unknown laboratory" [36]. Bibliographical references in his booklets mention his plans to publish light scores to the "International," Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Shakespeare's "Hamlet," as well as a piece for olfactory color. He also planned to publish the letters of Karamzin and books devoted to the activity of da Vinci, Rembrandt, El Greco, Manet and Ciurlionis; unfortunately we failed to find any of these publications in archives or libraries. In accordance with the well-known Russian proverb "the thing promised must be 3 years awaited," Gidoni understood the vanity of his hopes as they passed the 3-year mark. Although these projects were not dependent on him alone, he felt the need to defend himself by making excuses that sounded a bit hopeless:
[People ask,] "We have heard about light concerts for several years, but when will your first performances be held?" My bitter experience - accumulated when confronting such diverse, absolutely unimaginable and often stupefying obstacles that have met me in my life - has taught me to answer very cautiously: "They will be held in due time or a little later" [37].
Gidoni then hopefully puts off the dates anew: "I think it will be possible to greet the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution with the first light concerts" [38].
Finally, in 1932, Gidoni was unexpectedly invited to take part in the building of the grandiose Council Palace in Leningrad, which was to replace the Temple of Jesus Our Savior, which was destroyed in 1931. It may seem at this point that the avenues opened to make his dream come true. Unfortunately, additional information about this project is absent; at least, the Leningrad State Archive of Literature and Art (LGALI) has not released any additional facts. As to other archives, neither the artist's son nor I could gain access to them. The fate of the Council Palace is generally well known: its ready-made steel reinforcements were used during World War II for anti-tank barriers. Those war ruins were replaced at the site by an open air swimming pool; with the subsequent break up of the USSR the Temple was restored to its original place.
Other aspects of Gidoni's life - for example his prosecution as a spy for the Japanese and its possible connection to his creative actnity - are unknown, at least to me. The only artifacts retained from his later period are a report about the experimental installation "Kinemachrom", which was designed for the Council Palace by Gidoni colleague D.N.Lasarev and others immediately before World War II (Lasarev donated the report to the Kazan Museum of Light Music, where the reconstructed model of the Light Monument of the Revolution is also stored), and a certificate of Gidoni's post-humous pardon given to his relatives in 1957. Though the fate of the artist-pioneer is indeed dramatic, the drama of ideas he inspired is no less impressive. His theoretical quests and explanations deserve special attention for they are as contradictory and unequivocal as life itself was in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, and they remain instructive even today.
DRAMA OF LIFEDRAMA OF IDEAS
The development of Gidoni's art form follows a readily apparent historical logic. The Art of Light and Color in its elementary forms existed long before Gidoni - for example in stained glass imagery (which rose in prominence between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries) and pyrotechnics (which blossomed exuberantly in the West in the eighteenth century). Light's active role in art grew over time, but until Gidoni's time not quite in accordance with society's demands.
Gidoni's books convincingly show that the artist accepted Lenin's slogan "Communism equals Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country". Electrification revolution, socialism and proletarianism all seemed synonymous to him and led him to believe that his high duty was the creation of "art that is worthy of the new era" [39]. In Gidoni's opinion conventional means of art making had become obsolete because they had lost their value as "means of expression of the epoch and the art of the new class". What is this wonder-art he speaks of? Gidoni fails to answer this question exactly; in fact, he avoids doing so on the grounds that it is as impossible to describe the new art as it is "to describe a mysterious flower, a non-existent land or an aroma" [40]. It is hard to share Gidoni's enthusiasm at the possibilities of gaining worthy admiration by means of static "light decorations" and shadows on a semi-transparent screen. Or were these works part of the realm of animated abstract pictures, as exemplified by the use of film or theatrical "magic lanterns", which had already been executed by Scriabin's followers? Not according to Gidoni. Although he was aware of the abstract films of such contemporaries as G.Richter and V.Eggeling, and also of the light concerts of A.Laszlo, the presence of screen frames did not suit Gidoni any more than did traditional painting. It was necessary for Gidoni to ensure an ingress into space, perhaps so that, as Scriabin used to say, "each atom would shine." With that said, the presence of graphically organized, abstract figures disturbed Gidoni to a lesser degree. Light and color - brightness and chroma - in and of themselves seemed sufficient for him in their futurologistic aesthetics (as seen from his light scores, which contain no explanation of the form itself). It is difficult to imagine these reflections of formless, colored light as artistically significant in themselves.
As Gidoni stated, "The use of light equipment naturally determines the fusion of the wonderfulness of the material. It resolves the insoluble conflict between the requirements of the imagery and the nonsubjectivity of the medium of traditional painting" [41]. In Gidoni's opinion, viewers must be able to submerge themselves in the light waves wrapping around them from all sides. This wish for audience submergence in light made Gidoni insist on presenting his light art in the all-embracing spherical hall of his light theater. Such an interest in the hedonistic presentation of art led Gidoni to integrate with shocking ease the senses of taste and touch, and the sensation of heat, into the Art of Light and Color [42]. One tremblingly turns the yellowed pages of his accounts and feels overwhelmed by the large letters and endless exclamation symbols, the apriori glorifications of the future, and the unguaranteed advances, although one understands that without all this, Gidoni's enthusiastic fire would be extinguished because his explorations and dreams could not be supported by experimentation.
Reminding us constantly of the connection between "cultural revolution" and the electrification of the country, Gidoni nonetheless remained a painter, a subtle theoretician with his own foreshortened outlook of the art of the past. Gidoni emphasized the fact that his Art of Light and Color did not originate in a vacuum. He very scrupulously showed the ways in which light has both literally and figuratively penetrated all conventional arts. In the realm of painting, Gidoni cited the works of the Impressionists, Chiurlionis, Kandinsky, El Greco, Leonardo, Rembrandt and Courbet, presenting (in a subtle and witty analysis) his belief in the use of their chromatic systems in the movable Art of Light and Color. He cited the picturesque music of Berlioz, Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov and, finally, Scriabin's light-carrying "Prometheus." In theater, he noted the scenic mastering of different light sources that had originated in the Renaissance; in architecture, the lighting of buildings, transportation and exhibitions, as well as the phenomenon of light in advertising. He saw in all these facts and phenomena the genetic potential of a future Art of Light and Color (Fig. 7).
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Fig. 7. Gidoni's "renewed" system of arts. First
published in English in Language of Design 1, No.4 (1993) p.370.
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However, the situation facing Gidoni did not suit him. With rare exceptions, the control of light and color was executed in the theater as if by a wave of the magic wand [43]. In this connection, Gidoni's announcements about his future publications often mentioned "the crisis of modern theatre and drama and the problem of light in theatre ". Light-music did not suit him because of the absence of any laws of music "conversion" into color. (Nonetheless, Gidoni did not reject light-music's latent existence as a means "to ease the understanding of music for those unskilled in music" [44].) But his explanations reached much further; in his opinion, the new art was born to kill the old one:
Well, let us finally ascertain that traditional painting has died - long live the new painting! The great new art of Light and Colour - simultaneously carrying the synthesis of all arts and opening a new era in mankind's culture - is, perhaps, the greatest art in all of mankind's history! And it could only be born in the era of the electrical bulb! [45].
Moreover, Gidoni tried to form a Marxist basis for his rhetoric. He believed that the golden age of oil painting fell to the Renaissance, synchronously with the emergence of capitalism. With the capitalism of his era traveling off the historical stage, the death of its artistic means was also inevitable. Gidoni arranged with all certainty a synonymic row: socialism, electrification, proletarianism and the Art of Light and Color. We can only regret how both his sober rational thoughts and apparent enlightenments were painted in hues of social demagoguery - such was, alas, the superideological atmosphere of a time of sincere lies and deeply motivated delusions. Gidoni wrote:
The day is not far off when the artists throw their brushes away and come to study, not in laboratories, and not even in institutions, but in the Academies of Light and Colour, since it is only in this field of art - the greatest among all existing arts - that the old dying painting, lost and downtrodden in Paris deadlocks, finds its way (a dialecticallv inevitable development, entailing the resolution of all crisis and contradictions); the old painting will thus regain its youth and vitality [46].
Unfortunately, the late 1930s in Russia saw both the neglect of light-art and the loss of its violent proclaimer. Gidoni's name only began to be recalled in the 1960s and 1970s, always in connection with a resurgence of light-music experiments, sometimes to rebuke him in the context of naive technicism [47] or anti-easel painting [48]. This recalling also resulted in the appearance of more detailed publications on Gidoni, such as the one I wrote in 1990 [49]. Nonetheless, it is only recently that we have been able to speak freely about this unique man [50-52]. I hope that readers who were acquainted with Grigory Ivanovich Gidoni will give us a reason to discuss once more his life and creative activity.
The lack of space here prevents me from analyzing whether and to what degree Gidoni's forecasts were justified. Perhaps his life was simply a chimera in which he vainly exchanged his brush for the insane spear of Don Quixote. But one thing is certain, the mastery of light in today's artistic practice is an everyday aesthetic reality. Artists now use not only "electric bulbs" and "rheostats" but also power lasers and electronic displays. Spherical theater is also a reality, appropriated numerous times in international exhibitions. Moreover, grandiose light performances are conducted in many countries of the world under the dome of the natural sky for hundreds and thousands of people in just the way that Gidoni dreamt about.
We must view these developments in another context. Far from deceased, oil painting lives on alongside other conventional arts. Let us leave more detailed analysis of Gidoni's predictions up to specialists, since extensive experience and theoretical generalizations have been gained in the field [53-56]. My goal has been instead to tell the story of a lost (or, more specifically, buried in oblivion) artist-innovator, a prospector of the future, a man with a tragic fate - to tell about his ideas and his unknown Light Monument, a monument of the Revolution (both October Socialist and scientific/technological) and of his time.
References and Notes
Gidoni Grigory Josifovich, pencil artist, was born on 25.06.1895 in St.Petersburg and died in 1937. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts early in the century and worked in Leningrad. Gidoni painted for the journal "Apexes" (1915; he signed his paintings as "Gidoni" and on occasion as "Gido"). He painted a series of landscapes of both Leningrad and Pavlovsk (1923) as well as Petershoph (autolithographs, "Petershof" album, Leningrad, 1931); portraits of G.Courbet (linog., 1923), V.N.Davydov (Iinogr., 1923), A.M.Gorki (wood engravings, appr. 1928) and others; a numbci of posters (including "All the people, under the arms" from 1919 and "F.Engels - hundreth anniversary" from 1920); numerous portrait book plates and the bas-relief "Tchapayev and Pet'ka with machine-gun" (in plaster, 1936). The works of Gidoni are also exhibited in the Institute for Russian Literature and Art and the Russian Academy of Sciences (St.Petersburg). He is the author of the project of light theater for Leningrad (1925) and the author of the book "Art of Light and Color" (1930).
Published in Leonardo, vol.33, N3, pp. 207-213, 2000