Why We Paint Ourselves

by Ilya Zdanevich and Mikhail Larionov (1913)

Editor’s Note:
In 1912, Russian artist Ilya Zdanevich called upon his fellow radicals to abandon contemporary museum art and instead to take their artistry to the streets. A year later, Zdanevich and Mikhail Larionov co-authored this manifesto, “Why We Paint Ourselves,” proclaiming their bold intention to paint their faces with bright colors in public.

To the frenzied city of arc lamps, to the streets splashed over with bodies and to the squeezing houses we brought a painted face. A good start has been made and there is a long track ahead of the runners.

Creators, we have come not to destroy building but rather to make it famous and solid. Our painting is neither an absurd idea nor an escape – it is rather closely linked to the mode of our life and art.

Bellowing a song about a man, like a trumpeter before a battle, it calls for gaining victory over the earth, hypocritically hidden behind wheels until the time of revenge, and the sleeping weapons have woken up and are spitting at enemies.

Restored life requires new public and new preaching.

Our painting is the first speech to have found truth unknown before. And the fires it inflicts tell us that the servants of the earth, retaining hope to save old nests, have gathered their strength to protect the gates and cluster as they know, the first goal we score will bring us a victory.

The evolution of art and the love for life guide us. Loyalty to our trade encourages us fighters. Perseverance, which characterizes some of us, is what grants power nothing can overcome.

We connected art to life. After a long period of the masters’ retreat, we noisily cognized the life and life invaded art. Face painting is the beginning of the invasion. It is therefore that our hearts are thumping.

We are not aiming at aesthetics only. Art is not just a monarch but also a pressman and a decorator. We value both the font and the news. Synthesis of decorativeness and illustration lies at the core of our painting. We decorate life and preach – and therefore we paint ourselves.

Painting – new valuables belonging to people, like everything in our days. Old ones were incoherent and pressed out by money. Gold was valued as an embellishment and became expensive. We are overthrowing gold and gems from the pedestal and declaring them to be of no value. Those collecting and keeping them, be careful – you will soon be poor.

It started in the year 1905. Mikhail Larionov painted a model standing against the background of a carpet, elongating her in the picture. Yet it was not a town crier. The same is now being done by Parisians painting the legs of dancers, and ladies powdering their faces in brown and elongating their eyes in Egyptian fashion. But this is because of age. What we undertook is to connect contemplation with action and fling ourselves into the crowd.

To the frenzied city of arc lamps, to the streets splashed over with bodies and to the squeezing houses we brought something unseen before: unexpected flowers have entered the greenhouse and are teasing.

(Printed in French in “Bulletin de l’Effort Moderne”, #.21)

City dwellers have long been applying rose varnish on their nails, make-up on their eyes and lips and brushing their cheeks – but all of them are imitating the earth.

We creators, have nothing to do with the earth, our lines and paints have emerged together with us. If we had been born with plumage like parrots, we would pluck feathers for brushes and pencils.

If we had been given eternal beauty, we would paint it over and kill it – we, who are going to the end point. We are not concerned with tattooing. Tattooing is forever. We only paint ourselves for an hour and the change of emotional experience calls for the change of the painting as a picture devours a picture, a series of shop-windows flicker outside a car window – our face. A tattoo is beautiful but far from being meaningful – it tells us of nothing but tribes and heroic deeds. Our painting is a pressman.

Expressions do not interest us. What does it matter if people have got used to understanding them, spiritless and unsightly. Like the squeal of a street-car warning passersby in a hurry, like drunken sounds of a great Tango – our face. Facial expression is significant, but colourless. Our painting is a decorator.

A rebellion against the earth and transformation of faces in the projector of feelings.

A telescope spotted constellations lost in the spaces, painting will tell the story of lost thoughts.

We paint ourselves because a clean face is disgusting, because we wish to herald the unknown, we are reconstructing life and carrying a multiplied human soul to the upper reaches of existence.