WESTERN AFFLUENCE AND TOTALITARIAN MERCANTILISM. Swiss artist Jean TINGUELY is interviewed by art critic Andrei KOVALEV

A. K.: It may sound silly, but what is the aim of this Moscow exhibit?

J. T.: What is important for each artist is to feel a new atmosphere and novel context. Here, in the Soviet Union, I feel a touch of young artistic impulses filling me with energy. For me it is important that many of the 20th-century artists found inspiration in the ideas of Malevich and Kandinksy. Proletarian Art is also important. I see it as an attempt to popularize art and to bring it closer to people. It was Russian artists who approached real revolutionary culture most of all. Lisitsky used to say that all people must become happy: "Constructions must move towards the Sun". An old Communist hymn has the line: "All flowers reach out for the Sun". This is the primary basis of the Communist idea.

A. K.: Here's a nice how-do-you-do! I thought that the idea of Proletarian Art has left never to return. I thought that from now on there would only be art for art's sake.

J. T.; The development of socialism on the basis of heavy industries is your country's slogan. It was launched by Lenin and advanced by Stalin. Among other things, that enabled the development of totalitarianism and indisputable seizure of power by the centre by 1927. Stalin said: "We need great works of art based on the idea of patriotism." In the 30s-40s, you made lots of wonderful films, under Stalin's direct guidance. They were gay, patriotic and optimistic. All that was very positive. Though after a talk with Ilya Ehrenburg, Malraux wrote that Stalin had bad taste. Still I think that "Alexander Nevsky" is the greatest film of the 20th century. Eizenshtein made this film after Stalin ordered him to return from Mexico.

A. K.: Which do you like best: "Alexander Nevsky" or "Battleship 'Potemkin'"?

J. T.: "Alexander Nevsky" of course. Its music is terrific. I saw it for the first time when I was 16 and at least four times afterwards.

A. K.; Your idea to have your exhibit in the city of Malevich, Kandinsky and Tallin can well signify the return of a status as the world's art capital to Moscow. This is pleasant to know for us. Perhaps you would like to pass some message to the Soviet public. Am I right?

J. T.: First of all, I want to turn your attention to the fact that our highly industrialized society has reached the point whereby we can clearly see what it is all about: fascism. There are so many cars in our small country of Switzerland and it creates immense ecological and psychological problems. It is like the military actions of the past. The German occupation of France was done with 46,000 tanks and other military vehicles. Today, about 20 million German cars pass through our country from Germany southwards to Italy and the Middle East. All that is awfully harmful for the environment. To put it in a nutshell: war is peace, peace is war.

A. K.: It makes me think about Orwell.

J. T.: Orwell described an extremely functionalized society, while what we have in our country is some kind of wild consumerism. All are possessed by the insanity of rabid consumerism. Even unemployed people are important from the point of view of capitalists, because they also must participate in the endless buying race. Capitalism is an unjust society. From the ideological point of view, it must be court-trialed. That was the point of departure of the ideology of the postwar revolutionary movement and the 1968 revolution in Paris.

A. K.: What about socialism?

J. T.: Socialism isn't economically efficient any more.

A. K.: What should be the basis for the new and good society then: unjust but efficient capitalism or also unjust (as I see it) but absolutely inefficient socialism?

J. T.: I don't know. But if you are successful with the noble aims of your perestroika and build an economically efficient society, in ten years you'll find yourself up to your ears in consumer goods, and then you'll have to face these same problems.

A. K.: I must say that at present we have other and different problems. For example, I found out, this morning, that batteries in my tape recorder have died, and batteries are in very short supply here, so I have to record our conversation by hand. Therefore, I think that your indignation aimed at the "society of consumerism" (which perhaps is a bad society) might be lost on us, living in a society notorious for almost every type of shortage. However, some people in this country advocate ideas similar to yours. Please tell me: what is an artist's role in a capitalist society? Can the artist influence this society?

J. T.: In a capitalist society, the artist plays no role whatsoever. Engineers and business people are needed by society. The artists' role is either of embelisher or of a side-dish. Did you ever hear of an artist being able to change anything?

A. K.: What about Proletarian Art which means not only a revolution in culture but also in people's everyday life? Proceeding from this idea, we can conclude that only politicians are real artists, and Stalin was the greatest artist of all, the greatest avant-gardist, because he could change everything and built something beautiful and full of Love and Optimism.

J. T.: Then Hitler was also a great artist, as well as Mao, while I'm not, since I have killed no one. I'm a peaceful person. I'm against all power — an anarchist. My supreme ideals are those of Kropotkin and Bakunin. Those two people were Marx's teachers.

A. K.: Then they were also teachers of Lenin who once lived in Zurich and then returned to Russia. Later it was Stalin who learned from them.

J. T.: Stalin didn't learn anything. He just killed several dozen million people.

A. K.: But that was his version of the "Black Square", an entrance to the society of everyone's content.•

That was the end of our short but spirited interview, at the Central Artists' House, the venue of the exhibition, because my interlocutor suddenly had to help two smart workers who were erecting, with capitalist efficiency, some weird construction. I had the impression that the maestro was playing a trick on me, especially about the Stalinist conception of arts, and I think that the reader might have the impression that my interviewee was a boring advocate of Critical Realism in art or some kind of Eurocommunism fundamentalist. But those who choose to visit the exhibition on Krymsky Val St. will believe the opposite and will really be enchanted by the fantastic, cosmic, moving, terrific constructions from old wheels, rusty metal, discarded masks and real human skulls, entitled: "Safari of Moscow Death", "Moscow Proletarian Art", "The Altar of Western Affluence and Totalitarian Mercantilism", and so on. When we parted, Jean Tinguely gave me a brochure of the exhibition on which he had written a witty wish that ! have "success and wealth". Several hundred capitalists from Switzerland and the USA thronged to the opening of the exhibition. They couldn't conceal their fascination with maestro's art. I've never seen so many capitalists in one place before!