抄録・内容(英) | The aim of this research is to investigate the concept of monumentality just after the Russian Revolution in 1917, by focusing on the new role Monuments take under the War Communism. By examining official documents on the policies for erecting monuments at this time and recollections from artists that had participated in the creation of this cultural policy, this paper points out that many monuments could not have been preserved because of the economic situation of the civil war. Even though the monuments are regarded as objects of permanence and/or commemoration, the “precariousness” of the memorial in this transitory period is considered a central characteristic of monumentality. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that the new forms and concepts of commemorative artworks in the monument movement just after the Revolution is not a mere Bolshevic political Propaganda or an agitation, but rather a contradictory quality between the preservation of the cultural heritage and the rewriting of the past memory before the Revolution. First, this paper examines the idea of “Monumental Propaganda” which Vladimir Lenin himself referred to in a conversation with Anatolii Lunacharskii, the appointed head of Narkompros. This research emphasizes the role of education and enlightenment in the statues of figures, wall paintings, and slogans, etc., according to Lunacharskiïs 1933 memoir. Secondly, this paper describes the figurative statue of Marx and Engels in Moscow and the decorations of St. Petersburg during the first anniversary of the October Revolution as examples of the rewriting of past, moving away from the memory of the city as part of the Russian Empire. Furthermore, ideas of monumentality as demonstrated in the Gesamtkunstwerk by Wassily Kandinsky, ascertain the plan for an organization of a monumental art section in the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow (INKhK). In the Gesamtkunstwerk by the opera composer Richard Wagner, he elaborated the ideas and searched for new forms of the monumentality that were better suited to the new period after the Revolution. Finally, this research refers to the legendary model of the monument for the Third International by Vladimir Tatlin as a case of monuments concerned with new media and technology. His contemporary art critic, Nicolai Punin, described the work as a moving monument equipped with a broadcasting media center rather than a stable architecture. These examples suggest that monumentality has a “precarious” quality at the beginning of the new era, after the October Revolution, which has since inspired contemporary artists' installations and participatory art today. |