D O C U M E N T / I N T R O D U C T I O N

INTRODUCTION TO
LEONHARD LAPIN’S “OBJECTIVE ART”

andres kurg

Leonhard Lapin’s “Objective Art” was written for Event Harku ’75:
Objects, Concepts—an exhibition and an accompanying symposium
on the premises of the Institute of Experimental Biology in Harku,
near Tallinn, Estonia, in December 1975. Organized by Lapin together
with artists Sirje Runge (his wife at the time) and Raul Meel and physi-
cist Tõnu Karu, the symposium was offi cially billed as a meeting
between young artists and scientists, and the exhibition was opened a
week ahead of the event. Lapin’s speech at the symposium, of which a
translation follows, not only served as an introduction to the works and
exhibited artists, but also acted as a manifesto for a tendency in Esto-
nian art of the 1970s that Lapin termed “objective” and that he saw as
having a growing signifi cance in the future. Objective art, in the art-
ist’s mind, answered to the industrialization and urbanization of the
late 20th century, to the growing signifi cance of not only mechanical
but also electronic machines in everyday life, and to the emergence of
the so-called artifi cial environment. Rather than representing this
environment, new art had to intervene in it or even produce it. Lapin’s
call was quite different from other reactions to the changing postindus-
trial environment in the mid-1970s in the Soviet Union, in that instead
of active intervention, many of them proposed withdrawal as the most
appropriate tactic to resist the grim surrounding reality.

Lapin, born in 1947, was throughout the 1970s a central fi gure in

doi:10.1162/ARTM_a_00052

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a circle of architects and artists in Tallinn who had studied in the
Estonian State Art Institute during the first half of the decade. In their
artistic work, the members of this circle sought various ways to com-
ment on the changing everyday life and the modern urban environ-
ment. In this they employed means and methods drawn from pop art,
abstract art, and conceptual practices, but also, as Lapin’s text makes
clear, from the historical avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s. This
approach contrasted with the previous generation of artists of the Thaw
and post-Thaw periods in the 1960s who had emphasized in their work
notions of artistic autonomy and aesthetic value and who saw art as an
apolitical, self-contained object. In his speech Lapin terms this latter
approach “lyrical-romantic art,” art that offers solely sensuous pleasure,
relying on traditional means of representation and on a play with forms
and colors that contradicts the needs of the contemporary environment.
If lyrical-romantic art depends on an artist’s personal handwriting and
is thus “subjective,” the new art that participates in the construction
of a new kind of environment needs to be “objective,” free from emo-
tions and with a universal aspiration.

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A happening at the former airfield in Lasnamäe, Tallinn, 1974. From left: Jaan Ollik,

Avo-Himm Looveer, Leonhard Lapin, Tiit Kaljundi, Kristin-Mari Looveer, Jüri Okas,

Liivi Künnapu, Vilen Künnapu, Sirje Runge. Photograph by Jüri Okas.

The interest of Lapin and his colleagues in the transformation of
urban reality derived also from their diverse backgrounds: Lapin had
graduated in 1971 from the architecture department and Runge studied
industrial design until 1975, while several other participants in the
Harku exhibition also came from architecture or design backgrounds.
At the same time, throughout their studies they actively collaborated
with other art fields, took part in exhibitions and events, organized hap-
penings and theater performances, and interacted with writers and
musicians. Lapin frequently contributed to the cultural media on topics
ranging from contemporary architecture and the preservation of the
20th-century heritage (from 1971 to 1974 he worked at the State
Directorate for Restoration) to the use of audiovisual technology in con-
temporary theater performances. The idea of art as engaging with the
(postindustrial) environment emerged in several texts from these years.
In 1971, in a speech titled “Art Designs the Environment” and delivered
at the Exhibition of Independent Student Works at the State Art
Institute, he stated that “the human living environment has become
the central concern for contemporary culture . . . all spatial artworks
serve this aim.”1 He further distinguished between “beautiful art” as a
commodity intended to function as a home decoration and art that rep-
resented an “architectural sensibility” and was intended to contribute
to the production of a new environment. The same Exhibition of
Independent Student Works is mentioned later in Lapin’s “Objective
Art,” together with a happening titled “Coloring the Elephant” that fol-
lowed its opening. During this happening a large group of art and
architecture students repainted a dilapidated playground in a turn-of-
the-century suburb of Tallinn in bright yellow, red, and green. From
today’s viewpoint the circumstances of the happening are telling: the
whole undertaking was supported by the local municipal housing com-
mittee, which also provided the paint, giving the students recognition.
More importantly, the artists’ choice of the site demonstrated their
interest in strange, abandoned, and “uncanny” urban spaces that con-
trasted with the rationalized new towns. This interest in art descending
to the streets or foraying into abandoned industrial quarters continued
during the second half of the 1970s. In a speech given in 1976 at a
meeting of young artists and actors, Lapin proposed erasing the borders

Leonhard Lapin, “Taie kujundamas keskkonda” (1971), in Leonhard Lapin, Kaks kunsti.
Valimik ettekandeid ja artikleid kunstist ning ehituskunstist 1971–1995 (Tallinn: Kunst,
1997), 16.

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between everyday life and theater by calling for the replacement of
historical theater buildings with “theater-factories, theater-combines,
theater-systems.”2 If the style of Lapin’s speech was occasionally hyper-
bolic, it should not be seen as a mere parody, for several of his ideas
were consistent with his artistic interests at the time. In the same year
Lapin organized a major overview of Estonian monumental art that
included a section on experimental architectural and art proposals. In
1978 he was one of the leading forces behind the architecture exhibi-
tion that aimed to criticize the dominant architecture establishment in
Estonia through conceptual projects.3

It is Lapin’s interest in the rediscovery of the evolving postindus-

trial territories of the city, together with an aesthetic derived from
industrialization and machine logic, that provides the context for
“Objective Art.” Lapin describes the process of “objectification” as
resulting from 20th-century industrialization and mechanization and
as a conscious acknowledgment that humanity depends on machines
and on what Lapin calls the artificial environment. The term artificial
environment is related to the expansion of the postindustrial environ-
ment, including immaterial networks as well as the recognition of mar-
ginal territories in the urban economy.

If an interest in the growing urban culture and its relationship to

contemporary art was commonplace in the early 20th century, it
reemerged in the postwar Soviet Union during the 1960s when a new
wave of industrialization initiated heated discussions about the charac-
ter of art and its role in society. Collaborations between artists and sci-
entists similar to the Harku event were widespread and officially
endorsed throughout the 1960s. Moreover, early in the decade groups
such as Prometei in Kazan and Dvizhenie in Moscow actively investi-
gated ways to redefine art in the face of new technologies and media.
Yet by the mid-1970s most of these initiatives had either dissolved or
seamlessly merged with the mainstream media. According to common
belief, the 1970s were a reaction to the optimist 1960s, when wide-
spread hopes for a techno-utopia and a reformed socialist society were
crushed (the so-called Prague Spring) and followed by Brezhnev-era

Leonhard Lapin, “Ettepanek Tallinna teatrielu muutmiseks Tallinna eluteatriks,” in
Ettekanne 28. 03 1976, seoses teatrikuuga toimunud loomingulise noorsoo kohtumisel (manu-
script in Leonhard Lapin’s personal archive).
On both exhibitions, see Mari Laanemets, “Flight into Tomorrow: Rethinking Artistic
Practice in Estonia during the 1970s (Leonhard Lapin)” (this issue).

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political and economic regression. The 1970s were marked by a grow-
ing dissident movement that withdrew to private spaces, seeking shel-
ter in irony and individualism or in happenings and actions that
consciously retreated from the urban environment. In this context,
what made Lapin’s call different from being solely a belated engage-
ment with technology and art? Industrialization and mechanization
had been the Soviet Union’s official utopia, promising better living
standards and equal welfare for all. However, this was only partially
achieved, and by the 1970s several phenomena that had previously
been hailed as progressive—such as mass housing—had become sub-
ject to extensive critique. Belonging to the generation that was critical
of the socialist-modernist bureaucratic society, Lapin and his col-
leagues were fully aware of this. And yet, instead of turning his back
on modernization, Lapin, on the contrary, proposed that industrializa-
tion had not been extensive enough. Writing in 1973 about the all-
encompassing machine age, he argued that it was most clearly and
most radically represented by industrially produced architecture.
Moreover, according to Lapin, “[s]tructures with exceptionally complex
functionality (like factories), could be considered machines rather than
architecture.”4 From an architecture that was produced by a machine he
looked forward to an architecture that would itself be like a machine
and serve its user. Lapin’s thinking was very likely inspired by groups
such as Archigram, Coop Himmelblau, and others.

In the art context, Lapin saw machines and machine environments

as opening up endless playful potential. In a print series from the mid-
1970s—Machines, Man-Machine, and Woman-Machine (exhibited also in
Harku)—Lapin demonstrated an almost Marcusean position toward
technology, criticizing the narrow association of machines only with
production and putting them at the service of pleasure and freedom of
choice.

The second feature that separated artists in Tallinn during the
1970s from the experiments of the 1960s was their emphasis on a dif-
ferent kind of viewer. This resulted from the growing influence of
(Western) mass culture in society, from the spread of rock music, from
popular TV culture, and from the increasing spread of consumer items.
More importantly, a change in the structure of the viewer’s relationship

Leonhard Lapin, “Masinaajastu ja kunst,” Kultuur ja Elu 9 (1973): 56.

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to media of mass communication occurred at this time. Technology
was now considered to be more central to everyday life, and for this rea-
son these new means of communication were believed to stand in a
much more personal or direct relationship to their users. More than
once during the 1970s Lapin and his colleagues argued that TV and
radio rendered all previous artistic approaches futile, demanding a
heightened attention to the medium: “a child who is born in the 1970s
grows up inside a speeding car and on the background of pulsating
television screens.”5 It would have been unlikely for such an audience
to have the same interest in traditional art genres. In a text written
together with Runge, Lapin urged the investigation of the synaesthetic
potential embedded in new technologies: “The new era employs senso-
rial, motoric, kinetic, sonic, and verbal means as information in order
to embrace all human senses and the central nervous system.”6 If the
new means of information were on an everyday level represented by TV
and radio, then its equivalent in art had to be kinetic art and happen-
ings rather than traditional representational art objects.

Two important sources for Lapin’s text may help shed additional

light on the background ideas that were important for him at the time.
The first is Malevich’s 1927 treatise The Non-objective World (translated
by Lapin, literally, as “The Objectless World” so that the title may corre-
spond with his use of the word objective). Lapin was first introduced to
Malevich in 1968 through a Polish translation of Non-objective World
that was available in local bookshops. In 1975 he came into contact with
Pavel Kondratiev, a student of Malevich’s and Pavel Filonov’s who gave
him access to the Russian translation. That same year while they were
visiting the International Council of the Societies of Industrial Design
(ICSID) congress in Moscow, Lapin and Runge visited George
Costakis’s collection of Russian avant-garde art.

Lapin’s concept of objective art is indebted to Malevich’s text in
more ways than one: from his emphasis on the new art being born out
of urban culture (for Malevich, futurism and cubism represented “the
art of the industrial, taut environment”)7 to the priority he gives to
artistic production over representation (“an artist who creates rather

5
6

Ibid., 56.
Sirje Lapin (Runge) and Leonhard Lapin, “On sügis, lehed langevad,” in Thespis. Meie teatri-
uuendused 1972/73, ed. V. Vahing (Tartu: Ilmamaa, 1997), 289.
Kazimir Malevich, The Non-objective World (Chicago: Theobald, 1959), 61.

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than imitates expresses himself; his works are not reflections of nature
but, instead, new realities, which are no less significant than the reali-
ties of nature itself”).8 Beyond that, Lapin, like Malevich, emphasizes
the role of intellectuals in providing inspiration for the creation of art
(“creative workers are thus always a step ahead of the general public—
they show it the road of progress”).9

What also becomes explicit in the English translation of Lapin’s

speech is his paradoxical use of the term objective in relation to
Malevich’s nonobjectivity (Russian bezpredmetnost’). Lapin’s under-
standing of objective art brings together several separate traditions:
“objective” art for him is a way of giving up actual objects and proceed-
ing toward nonobjectivity; at the same time, Lapin derives his examples
from various reappropriations of objecthood in the postwar period: the
use of iconic images in paintings by Estonian artists such as Malle
Leis, or the found objects in works by Kaljo Põllu. Lapin’s relationship
to nonobjectivity was somewhat clarified in a later text on Malevich
where Lapin proposed that while he gave up objectivity with his cre-
ation of the Black Square, Malevich nevertheless created a new type of
objectivity, “a reality of concretized feelings.”10 Furthermore, according
to Lapin, Malevich’s architectural models (architektons) should be seen
as a radical return to the objective world, “although this world is
imbued with the spiritual.”11

The second source for “Objective Art”—a more implicit one—is

Pierre Restany’s White Book, published in Milan in 1969 as Livre
Blanc–Objet Blanc and available to Lapin through its Finnish transla-
tion in 1970, when it was distributed as a supplement to the art year-

8
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10

Ibid., 30.
Ibid., 34.
Leonhard Lapin, “Musta ruudu maagia,” in Kaks kunsti. Valimik ettekandeid ja artikleid kun-
stist ning ehituskunstist 1971–1995 (Tallinn: Kunst, 1997), 90.
Ibid., 90. The revival of the historical avant-gardes in the Soviet Union during the 1970s
has been sometimes seen as a kind of mimicry or a tactic that was in fact widespread at the
time: in order to legitimize contemporary art practices, one needed to find precedents for it
in the past, and the Soviet Union’s own avant-garde heritage was most suitable for this.
Sirje Helme, “In the Beginning There Was No Word,” in Lapin, Kaks kunsti, 194. Yet this
interpretation reduces the theories of Malevich and others solely to an opportunistic mask
without any real relevance for Lapin’s work. However, in fact, Lapin’s avant-garde rhetoric
pointed to the utopian meaning hidden inside the abstract aesthetic of modernism, while at
the same time it sustained the official course of industrialization and mechanization. This
rhetoric gave agency in modeling the new society to the artist/architect, who now, being in
control of various streams of information, was responsible not only for issues of form and
typology, but also for the meaning of the architectural environment.

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book Taide.12 The manifesto-like White Book, written after the events of
May 1968 in Paris, was intended to provide guidance for artists to over-
come the separation between traditional art forms and embrace new
technology in the name of the art of the future (“total art” and “art for
all”). Significantly for the Soviet context, Restany linked the revolts of
1968 to those in Prague on account of the fact that in both cases the
protestors belonged to the same generation. Other points in Restany’s
book that reverberated with Lapin’s concerns include the fact that
Restany viewed science and technology and their collaboration as fun-
damental for the redefinition of the art of the future. This, he argued,
would help overcome the differences between various fields of art
(“painters and sculptors, urbanists and architects, composers and cho-
reographers, designers and aestheticians, film-makers and poets”).13
Lapin quotes Restany directly at the end of his “Objective Art,” where
he copies the concluding paragraph of Restany’s White Book, concern-
ing art descending to the streets and museums becoming centers of
production. Lapin writes,

If we reject the enormous opportunity that is within our reach
today, and if we predict that excessive mechanization will lead to
the destruction of the culture we want to achieve, we will empty out
the freedom of action, creation, thought, and seeing; and in doing
so we will negate the human being.14

It is interesting that where for Restany the emphasis was on defending
art’s synthesis with technology as a tool for collective liberation, in the
Soviet Estonian context the emphasis shifted to the “negation of the
human being” through censorship and the restriction of free speech.
This inspired the artist Raul Meel to call his samizdat collection of texts
from the Harku ’75 symposium To Allow for the Human Being.

For several Western critics, Restany’s statements in Livre Blanc–
Objet Blanc hinted at the complicity of neo-avant-garde art with the

13
14

Pierre Restany, Valkoinen kirja (Porvoo: WSOY, 1970). The original wish of the author and
publisher was to disseminate the book, which in the French edition had only a white cover
without any text on it, by word of mouth and not through official sources of distribution.
See Romy Golan, Point de chute: Restany á Domus–Le Demi-Siécle de Pierre Restany, ed.
Richard Leeman (Paris: INHA 2009), 408–9.
Pierre Restany, Valkoinen kirja, 33.
Leonhard Lapin, “Objective Art” (this issue), from Leonhard Lapin, “Objektiivne kunst,” in
Valimik artikleid ja ettekandeid kunstist 1967–1977 (Tallinn, 1977), 63.

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market and its dominant institutions.15 Restany’s uncritical celebration
of technology has been seen as connoting the acceptance of postwar
spectacular capitalist society with its emergent mechanisms of con-
trol.16 If this critique cannot be directly transposed to Soviet Estonia in
the 1970s, it does point to the possible dangers implicit in Lapin’s posi-
tion. Lapin in his speech demands more support for objective art from
“public organizations and state institutions” because otherwise “the
quality of this [objective] art will not be improved even in ten years’
time.” However, it is hard to imagine how, if Lapin’s demand were ful-
filled, objective art could have avoided becoming entangled with the
dominant power structures and prevented from turning into a form of
propaganda. It is similarly hard to imagine how the artist-intellectual
for whom Lapin claims agency in his speech could have maintained
her independence in these circumstances. At the time when Lapin was
making his proposal for objective art, artists and architects were
actively rediscovering urban wastelands and their “otherness” as their
playgrounds, using kinetic objects as stage decorations for rock con-
certs, and initiating discussions in the media on the role and possible
uses of the industrial heritage. It might then be argued that, contrary to
Lapin’s own assumption, objective art maintained its utopian status as
an alternative and answer to the status quo precisely to the extent that
the official power structures did not adequately identify or address the
emergence of a new viewer subjectivity and the appearance of a new
postindustrial environment.

Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1976), 139. (He is referring to Restany’s article “Le Livre blanc de l’art total;
pour une esthetique prospective,” Domus 262 [1968].)
Benjamin Buchloh, “Plenty or Nothing: From Yves Klein’s Le Vide to Arman’s Le Plein,” in
Premises: Invested Spaces in Visual Arts, Architecture and Design from France 1958–1998 (New
York: Guggenheim Museum, 1998).

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171

D O C U M E N T

OBJECTIVE ART

leonHarD lapin

The current exhibition is held under the star of objective art.1 It brings
together artists who in their work do not express their subjective world
outlook, who do not indulge in forms inspired by actuality; rather, they
have moved toward a higher level of general ideas, objective structures,
or materials. An objective work of art is not an imitation of reality but
part of reality, or reality itself. An objective artist does not express, he
constructs; his creative process is not so much emotional and sponta-
neous as it is intellectual.

The most extreme and most modern form of today’s objective art

is Conceptualism, which is concerned with the representation of the
facts of reality itself. To the art that imitates or interprets reality, the
Conceptualists have counterposed the art of ideas, set free from materi-
ality, the art of pure concepts, which in itself is a fact of reality.

Impressionism in painting and Art Nouveau in all aspects of art
and design, which triumphed in the last quarter of the 19th century,
derived their inspiration from nature, and were thus the last art move-
ments that represented forms that had surrounded the human being
up to that point. Advances in science and technology, which have con-
tributed to increased productivity as well as the growth of cities, have
allowed us to create—next to the natural landscape—an artifi cial

All underlined words and passages are by Lapin and can be found in the original text.

172

doi:10.1162/arTM_a_00053

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environment that has now become home to the majority of inhabitants
in civilized countries.

Paul Cézanne who, in his Post-Impressionist painting, strove for
the geometrical reduction of natural forms to three basic shapes—the
sphere, the cone, and the cylinder—can be considered one of the first
objective artists. His was an attempt to model an artificial environment
within the framework of living nature. In 1906, the Cubists revolution-
ized our concept of space, bringing different views of objects simulta-
neously onto the picture plane, representing reality in a fragmented
way and in its simple geometric shapes.

Basic geometric forms that are actually used in architecture, the
urban environment, and industrial culture have introduced into paint-
ing the technological world and an objective reality that is independent
of the human being.

Cubism also incorporated collage—materials without specifically

painterly qualities—as a typographic element, and as a product of mass
communication.

One of the first committed proponents of objective art is, in my
opinion, Kazimir Malevich, the father of Russian Suprematism, who in
1913 rejected a subjective approach to pictorial representation and the
play with the attributes of reality; instead, he created a new artistic real-
ity cleansed of all that is traditional—“a black square against a white
background.” It was a courageous act—to abandon all the canons of old
and modern art, to remove everything beautiful, to make actuality dis-
appear, and create a new reality as a “zero form,” establishing a whole
new art system on it.

Here it would be useful to recall some of Malevich’s thoughts from

“The Objectless World”:2

The following translation has been altered here to fit Lapin’s use of the notions of “objec-
tive” and “objectivity.” Lapin used a Russian version of Malevich’s book, Mir kak bespred-
metnost’ [The world as nonobjectivity], translating the Russian term predmet (object) into
Estonian as ese (thing, item, object). The 1959 English translation of the same quote in
The Non-objective World reads, “When, in the year 1913, in my desperate attempt to free
art from the ballast of objectivity, I took refuge in the square form and exhibited a picture
which consisted of nothing more than a black square on a white field, the critics and,
along with them, the public sighed, ‘Everything which we loved is lost. We are in a des-
ert. . . . Before us is nothing but a black square on a white background!’ . . . But a blissful
sense of liberating non-objectivity drew me forth into the ‘desert,’ where nothing is real
except feeling . . . and so feeling became the substance of my life. This was no ‘empty
square’ which I had exhibited but rather the feeling of non-objectivity.” Kazimir
Malevich, The Non-objective World (Chicago: Theobald, 1959), 68–74.

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173

When, in the year 1913, in my desperate attempt to free art from the
ballast of actual objects, I took refuge in the square form and exhibited
a picture which consisted of nothing more than a black square on a
white field, the critics and, along with them, the public sighed, “Every-
thing which we loved is lost. We are in a desert. . . . Before us is nothing
but a black square on a white background!” . . .

But a blissful sense of being liberated from things drew me forth into the
“desert,” where nothing is real except feeling . . . and so feeling became
the substance of my life. This was no “empty square” which I had
exhibited but rather the feeling of thinglessness. . . . The general public
is still convinced today that art is bound to perish if it gives up the imi-
tation of “dearly-loved reality” and so it observes with dismay how the
black square of pure feeling—abstraction—makes more and more
headway.3

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The form of representation that Malevich created gave birth to
magnificent Russian Suprematism and Constructivism, and their ideas
are alive to this day. Art movements developing an objective visual lan-
guage also took shape in Germany, as embodied by the Bauhaus; in
Holland—De Stijl; in France—L’Esprit Nouveau; and elsewhere.
Objective visual language dominated architecture and design in the
whole world during the interwar period, enabling the combination of
new ways of production with aesthetics. Architecture and industrial
design, which grew out of this objectivity, predominate in the art of
building and applied art of today.

The Futurists, who in 1909 published their first manifesto in Italy,

can also be mentioned as one of the founders of objectivity. They were
the first modern art group that consciously rejected the cultural tradi-
tion of the past and sought to make art that would correspond to the
new industrial civilization. The Futurists were the first to view the
machine as the symbol of a new beauty, underlining two attributes of
the machine as the principal elements of the new art culture—speed
and power. It would perhaps be useful to point out some ideas from the
“Manifesto of Futurist Architecture,” written by the Futurist architect
Antonio Sant’ Elia in 1914:

The last sentence was modified by Lapin. The original English text reads, “. . . and so it
observes with dismay how the hated element of pure feeling—abstraction—makes more
and more headway.” Malevich, The Non-objective World, 74.

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174

We must build the Futurist city, related to the changing aims of the era
and the appearance of machines, like an immense and tumultuous
structure, active, mobile, and everywhere dynamic, and the Futurist
house like a gigantic machine.

. . . [A]rchitecture must be understood as the conditions, made with
great freedom and boldness, to harmonize man and his environment,
that is, to render the world of things into a direct projection of the world
of the human mind.4

All these tendencies before and after World War I laid the founda-
tion of an industrial culture that resonated with the spread of machine
production and the human being involved in the system. Mass commu-
nication technologies provided this culture with new means of expres-
sion; machines provided it with new frameworks and materials.
Humans who, until then, had been dependent on nature’s primeval
forces and natural materials, and who saw their highest ideals in the
manifestations of nature, became dependent on technology and its
manifestations. Not only did the machine become a new tool, it became
a new goal and a symbol. Human beings, who had felt that they were a
part of living nature, were cast into an artificial environment of which
they did not feel as yet a part. The adaptation to new conditions
demanded a new aesthetic system, a new artistic culture that I would
call objective. That is to say, it is not connected with the chaotic forces
of nature, yet it is bound to the logic of an artificial environment, to the
intellect of the human being at a higher level. The artificial environ-
ment, the world of machines is the manifestation of human intellectual
achievement, similarly to art culture.

The formation of industrial culture is, first of all, related to the
emergence and development of new means of expression that brought
movement and change to 20th-century art and contributed to the rise
of new trends. Many critics have seen this constant replacement of new,

Lapin’s translation differs from the original. “We must invent and rebuild our Futurist
city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, active, mobile, and everywhere dynamic,
and the Futurist house like a gigantic machine. . . . That architecture must be under-
stood as the attempt, to be pursued with freedom and boldness, to harmonize man and
his environment, that is, to render the world of things into a direct projection of the world
of the human mind.” Antonio Sant’ Elia, “Futurist Architecture,” in Futurism: An
Anthology, ed. Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2009), 200–201.

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175

short-lived movements by others as a crisis in 20th-century art, art
becoming decadent. Recently however, it has turned out that some art
movements from the beginning of the 20th century, such as Futurism,
Dadaism, Constructivism, and Surrealism, have reappeared in new
contexts and on new scales, in a synthesis of new and old methods.
The changes in the 20th century should not be seen as chaotic, but
rather as a continuous process of synthesis, which crystallizes the
artistic means of expression most suitable for industrial culture.
Conceptualism, which ignores the old notion of form, reintroduces
ideas that had been lost during the search for new means of expression
and, by taking materials from the actual world, redefines the notion
of form.

It is the tradition of subjective art, dealing with moods, forms, and
colors, which is in crisis. The constant change of forms and colors, the
eclectic combination of formal systems of various subjective art move-
ments leads to the decadence of art, and the artist himself has no clear
idea why or for whom he is working. The artist takes art to the point
where the presentation of his subjective view of the world becomes art
in itself. Subjective art is utterly archetypal, the work of an artist at a
certain level corresponds to an unconsciously evolving pattern.
Objective art, on the other hand, due to its intellectuality, releases the
artist from the constraints of the unconscious, from archetypes. The
artist himself starts to produce new archetypes and new symbols,
which reflect today’s concerns.

Looking back on the historical artistic cultures, the Middle Ages,

for example, we will see that it was a fully objectivist culture. All life
and art in the Middle Ages was completely subjected to a generally
Christian worldview; it encompassed every aspect of a person’s life
and activity. Art was inseparable from life in the Middle Ages; it only
reflected the content of a predetermined way of existence. Modern
interpretations of the formal aspects of medieval art, analyses of the
deviations of single artists from the canonic scheme of art, are mislead-
ing and do not contribute to our understanding of this art. The basis
for medieval art was Christianity; deviations resulted either from diver-
gent interpretations of different schools, or from deep meditation,
which helped talented artists reach a high level of achievement, but
which in the end served a conceptual goal.

By separating some parts of a medieval work of art we might
obtain interesting results for today’s art history, but the method in its

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one-dimensionality does not give us the full picture of a medieval art-
work as a whole, which is subjected to one ethical ideal. Neither is it
possible to divide medieval art into discrete parts—painting, sculpture,
architecture; it should be considered a complex whole, which included
the altar, the pulpit, the church, the castle, and the dwelling. Similarly,
it is not possible to make a distinction between art and design in medi-
eval everyday items. This wholeness is characteristic of medieval art:
rather than speaking of separate genres, we should speak of separate
art objects, or objects of medieval culture, to be more precise; they were
polyfunctional and included practical, aesthetic, and ethical elements
and the three are characteristic of all high cultures, cultures subjected
to a single aesthetic ideal. Even the most sophisticated atheist will not
tell us whether medieval man was happy or unhappy. Neither am I able
to tell you here, but it is highly unlikely that these people if they were
unhappy would have left such a vast legacy—a culture, which can be
analyzed by art historians today from specifically artistic, by historians
from specifically historical, and by theologians from specifically theo-
logical points of view.

I introduced the example of the Middle Ages in order to show that
objective art existed earlier, in previous cultural and historical periods.
And this does not only concern the Middle Ages; it also existed in
Egypt, South America, Greece, and the Far East. It seems to me that
the objectification of 20th-century art, a consequence of industrializa-
tion and the way in which it changed every aspect of human life,
will take us toward a similarly integrated culture, when the full range
of the relationships between humans and machines is recognized,
when the artificial environment will be seen as inseparable from
the cosmic environment, when an ethical basis and an ideal is found
for this new ecological relationship. Or, maybe we can look at it as
[Jindrˇich] Chalupecký did: “We understand that the one staying alive
will not necessarily be the human being. What remains is the constant
change and transformation of matter, something existing before and
after consciousness.”5

Jindrˇich Chalupecký, “Avangardismist kunstis,” in Visarid, nr 3. Uuemat USA kunstist
(Tartu: Riikliku Ülikooli kunstikabineti laualeht, 1969). Translated from Jindrˇich
Chalupecký, “Art en 1967,” V´ytvarné um ˇení 10 (1967). The quote in French is slightly
modified: “Nous commençons à sentir que ce n’est pas nécessairement l’homme qui a le
droit de survivre. Ce qui reste, c’est la puissance féconde de l’univers, l’infinie transfor-
mation de la matière, quelque chose qui a existé avant et qui existera après la conscience,”

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177

Now I would like to descend from an endless void to the earth, to
our native country. I would like to return to the land of fair-haired and
tall Estonians, and other brotherly nations. What is the history of objec-
tive art in this country?

I believe that objectivity in Estonian art can be related to the advent

of Constructivism in the 1920s, when in 1923 the Estonian Artists’
Group was founded. This [group] included such artists as Jaan Vahtra,
Eduard Ole, Juhan Raudsepp, Hendrik Olvi, Friedrich Hist, Märt
Laarman, Arnold Akberg, and Edmond Blumenfeldt. Throughout the
1920s the Estonian Artists’ Group arranged exhibitions in Tallinn,
Tartu, Võru, Valga, Pärnu, Viljandi, Rakvere, and elsewhere in Estonia.
They also participated in the first Estonian art exhibitions abroad—in
Riga, Helsinki, France, and Germany, where their work attracted much
attention. Thus a review of the exhibition of Estonian art in Helsinki in
1929 reads: “It is noteworthy that the Constructivist trend—a deriva-
tion of Cubism—has found such a large number of supporters among
young Estonian artists and that among them are the most accom-
plished of the younger generation’s artists.”6

The theory of Estonian Constructivism is formulated in the Book

of New Art (1928). Märt Laarman writes,

The mission of art is not to copy or imitate existing things, but to create
new ones. The material, from which an artwork emerges, is surface,
lines and colors. . . . While Impressionism and Futurism that followed
it [French Futurism—LL] were in their essence lyrical and feminine,
Constructivist art that derived from Cubism has reintroduced the mas-
culine and epic aspects into art. The artist confines his expression to a
set of strict rules and by adopting them joins the collective. They say
that Constructivist pictures are all similar to one another, they always
repeat themselves, and the artist does not express his personality. Con-
sidering what was said earlier, it is evident that individualism has
nothing to do with new art. Moreover, we are proud that we do not
build on the foundation of what is distinct and singular in a person,
what separates one person from another, but on the foundation of what

477. Reference taken from Mari Laanemets, “Kunst kunsti vastu. Kunstniku rolli ja pos-
itsiooni ümbermõtestamise katsest eesti kunstis 1970. aastatel,” Kunstiteaduslikke
Uurimusi 20, nos. 1/2 (2011): 70–71.

6 Märt Laarman, “Eesti kunstinäitus Helsingis,” Taie: Eesti Kunsti Ajakiri 4 (1929): 63.

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people have in common. As a result of this, new art is international. It
is not a fault or a virtue. It is inevitability. Similarly, science and tech-
nology are not at fault for becoming international, common to all. . . .
Art that entertained or diversified life is now in charge of organizing
life.7

These words, which clearly promote objectivity, are still relevant today.
And if the aims of objectivity were unclear before, they should be com-
prehensible after Laarman’s clear and unambiguous wording.

The traditions of the Estonian Artists’ Group are upheld by the
painter Arnold Akberg, who, although advanced in years, had a solo
exhibition at the Art Hall last year. It is a shame that the oeuvre of this
master has not been properly honored in Estonia; consequently, the
wider public is largely unacquainted with objectivity as a living
tradition.

After a period of a vulgar interpretation of art, the creation of

objective art was possible again starting from the mid 1960s, when
Kaljo Põllu came to Tartu and the art group ANK ’64 was founded
in Tallinn on Tõnis Vint’s initiative. At the youth exhibition held in
Tallinn in 1966, Kaljo Põllu showed two Op-Art works, which were
the first publicly exhibited Op-Art and objective art works in Soviet
Estonia. At the same exhibition Tõnis Vint (presenting systems of
signs) and, to some extent, Lembit Sarapuu (showing a composition
with a hand) displayed objective art. There were some other artists,
whose works included some elements free from the imitation or inter-
pretation of reality, but, on the whole, artworks in the Expressionist,
Fauvist, Cubist, and Surrealist mode dominated. In the subsequent
years Tõnis Vint of the ANK ’64 group proceeded to objectivity, and is
still engaged in exploring architectonic and structuralist systems of
signs. He is a theorist and a consummate representative of objectivity
in Estonian art of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. On a parallel
track to Tõnis Vint, another artist to be associated with objectivity is
Malle Leis, on whose paintings flowers have become a kind of sign,
although the decorativeness of her paintings often overshadows their
objectivist perspective. Aili Vint, who, a few years ago, exhibited her
optical paintings, successfully applying objectivist principles, has

Märt Laarman, Uue Kunsti Raamat. Eesti Kunstnikkude Ryhma almanak (Tallinn: Eesti
Kunstnikkude Ryhm, 1928), 7–8.

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179

recently turned her attention to seascapes. Some elements of objective
art have appeared in the works of Jüri Arrak; his best-known objectivist
work—an object with people who are eating—was exhibited at the Art
Hall last year.

After producing optical objects in 1966, Kaljo Põllu made a series

of spatial objects—the “things”—which once again were the first
“pure” objects exhibited in Estonia. In addition to being a creative art-
ist, Kaljo Põllu was a leader in modern art in Tartu; he started the art
group called Visarid and initiated the distribution of a number of man-
uscripts on objective art, which had a substantial influence on Estonian
artists. Kaljo Põllu was also the first to introduce the ready-made tech-
nique into graphic arts, being for some time in the vanguard of pro-
gressive Estonian printmaking. Kaljo Põllu and the Visarid group
initiated several youth and solo exhibitions in the Tartu University cafe-
teria, introducing to a Tartu audience the most avant-garde develop-
ments and objective tendencies in Estonian art. Sadly, this active
person left Tartu in 1975, and an exciting period in Tartu’s art life
ended.

Among the members of the Visarid group, objective art was most
consistently practiced by Rein Tammik, currently a painter, and Peeter
Urbla, currently an art critic, during the late 1960s and the early 1970s.
In recent years they have continued, although not along the same lines,
except that Rein Tammik’s works are still permeated by a certain objec-
tivist attitude toward reality.

After the core members of the ANK group had left the Estonian
State Art Institute in 1966, a new group of young artists practicing
objective art emerged. Every spring they showed their work primarily
at the Independent Works Exhibition in the Art Institute, a tradition
started by the ANK ’64 group. The Independent Works Exhibition in
1968, for example, offered the public a kinetic object by Kalju Simson,
a Dadaist sculpture made from rain pipes by Vilen Künnapu, and a
rubber object by Leida Ilo.

In 1969 Andres Tolts and Ando Keskküla participated in the
Estonian State Art Institute exhibition for the first time, showing their
Pop Art paintings, in which they applied local materials, colors, and
motifs in their grotesque reality.

A large exhibition—with seventy works—took place in 1970, when
a number of works typical of objective art were shown. This exhibition
was the second major event of modern and contemporary art after the

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ANK ’64 show in 1965, yet this time the tendency toward objectivity
was clearly visible.

As the Independent Works Exhibition in 1971 demonstrated, the
artists continued their explorations and investigations in the field of
Pop Art. The quality of the works was higher, and they were more
ambitious than at previous exhibitions. The exhibition culminated in a
happening or live action—the painting of a children’s playground on
Heina Street with a large elephant at its center; this happening brought
together the core practitioners of contemporary objective art in Estonia.
It was the final event in a series of happenings arranged by SOUP ’69
in the years 1968–70. At that point the period of objective art that had
emerged from the State Art Institute ended.

On the basis of these Art Institute exhibitions, a group of artists

engaged in objective art formed under the name SOUP ’69. The
group’s core members included Andres Tolts and Ando Keskküla, as
well as Leonhard Lapin, and they first exhibited under this name at the
Pegasus Café in 1969, and a year later in the Tallinn Art Salon. From
1968 to 1971 the group held numerous exhibitions in different venues,
in offices and factories, and organized discussions and Pop Art eve-
nings to introduce and analyze Pop and objective art that had made its
way into Estonia.

In 1970 an exhibition under the title “Estonian Progressive Art”
at the Pegasus Café brought together the core members of SOUP ’69
and the Visarid group. The exhibition demonstrated an objectivist
approach to art and can be considered a precursor for today’s exhibi-
tion in Harku. When compared to the current exhibition, however, the
Pegasus exhibit featured fewer works and showed more uniformity,
yet it was most unexpected.

The tradition of the annual exhibitions of independent works con-
tinues at the Estonian State Art Institute to this day, showing objectiv-
ist works created by students. Some participants in the current exhi-
bition, such as Silvi Allik, Silver Vahtre, Jaan Ollik, Villu Järmut, Sirje
Lapin, and Jüri Okas, were first showcased at the Independent Works
Exhibitions.

The large-scale group exhibition Saku ’73, held in 1973, has defi-
nitely been one of the most significant of contemporary art events in
Estonia in recent years.

In addition to group and thematic exhibitions, the practitioners of
objective art have presented their work at a number of solo shows and,

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with the kind permission of the juries, have taken part in almost all
annual surveys at the Tallinn Art Hall, although with a small number
of works, and have thus perhaps remained unnoticed.

Raul Meel, who has stayed outside the abovementioned groups and

art school circles, and who works independently, should be looked at
separately. In 1969 he first addressed the notion and practice of geo-
metric structuralism and concrete poetry. To date he has held solo exhi-
bitions in Tallinn in 1970, 1971, 1973, and in Tartu in 1970 (including
an object inscribed with a poem in Tartu in 1971). In 1971–72 he cre-
ated the “portraits” of Estonian writers—proper names—a pioneering
work of concrete poetry in Estonia. In 1969, in an article printed in the
magazine Noorus [Youth] he explained his theoretical views. Raul Meel
has won several international awards and is one of the Laureates of
International Print Triennials.

I would also point out the work of Kaarel Kurismaa who partici-

pated in the Independent Works Exhibitions at the Estonian State Art
Institute, and who was a contemporary of the members of SOUP ’69,
but worked independently of them. Starting in 1967 he produced
kinetic art objects. In 1973 he had his first solo exhibition in Tallinn. In
the spring of 1975 he arranged multimedia performances which took
place during rock music concerts at the Tallinn Polytechnical Institute.

This year Sirje (Runge) Lapin graduated from the Estonian State
Art Institute. Her graduate work A Proposal for the Design of the Areas in
the Central Part of Tallinn was the first attempt to study the application
of the principles of objective art and multimedia in urban environmen-
tal design in Tallinn. The work was shown during the Congress of the
International Council of Societies of Industrial Design in Moscow,
where it attracted much attention.

All these facts have been presented to demonstrate that a consider-

able tradition of objective art has been built up in Estonia. When we
add to this that objectivist principles have been put into practice in
Estonian architecture, urban planning, industrial design, and mass
media—television, radio, and press (as long as they do not contradict
their own means of expression or do not simply echo traditional forms
of art)—we can say that we already have one foot in the new objectivist
culture.

Unfortunately, the wider public or common people are unaware
of objectivist art, and our art institutions and cultural establishments

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have not done much to introduce and popularize it. Even recently the
truly strange idea was put forward that mainstream Estonian art
should be lyrical and romantic, and that the manifestations of objective
art are accidental and deviate from the mainstream. In fact, to speak of
mainstream Estonian art is to push the argument to absurdity; only in
retrospect can we say that.

Thus, I would like to present an idea of two parallel traditions that
exist in Estonia today. One is the “lyrical-romantic” trend, a mixture of
Post-Impressionist, Fauvist, Expressionist, and Cubist styles, which, in
its own way, continues the traditions of the Pallas Art School. Yet this
art only appeals to the senses, creating new works of art through the
eclectic synthesis of different stylistic currents from the interwar
period. Several artists of younger generations have joined the ranks of
these artists, introducing the devices of Pop Art and Hyperrealism into
their work. Thus a “national art” tradition is created, which is nothing
but a combination of artistic styles imported from Europe and a medio-
cre culture of color and form.

Personally, I am not opposed to art that is grounded in the actual
world and interprets reality impressionistically and from the point of
view of the artist’s subjectivity; the majority of our urban population
have moved to the city from the country only recently or a generation
ago, and Estonian urban culture is still in the process of development.
And until now Estonia also lacks a modern metropolis that, with its
new visions and systems, would invade one’s consciousness and instill
in it the spirit of industrial culture. Our people, unaccustomed to the
new ways, still cling to the old, though changed and changing, ways.
This lyrical and romantic trend in Estonian art seems to be
entirely nostalgic, wallows in decadence, and is stagnant though
beautiful. With its plasticity of color or form it offers only a certain
kind of sensuous pleasure, but it is of no use for environmental
design—it will usually be in contradiction to the new environment.
This is also one of the causes of the crisis in Estonian sculpture and
monumental art: they are branches of visual art closest to architecture,
and it is high time that new technologies be used that change art
culture.

Works of the lyrical-romantic current can only be experienced as
works of art; they do not naturally become parts of reality, they are not
objects, or things. The artist’s subjective experience, in one way or

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another, erects a wall between the viewer and the work. From here the
issue of educating the viewer, the problem of explaining art arises.

Objective art, which, at the present moment, is in the experimen-

tal, laboratory research stage, can be very subjective, but it has
embarked on a pursuit of a universal language of artistic expression.
Its aim is to become an indivisible part of the new industrial reality,
of the artificial environment. Its aim is to give form to a new environ-
ment, to solve the problem of the human-machine relationship.

Considering the above, we can look at the current exhibition, on

the one hand, as a natural continuation of the tradition of objective art
in Estonia; on the other hand, it can also be seen as a continuation of
the subjective, lyrical-romantic tradition in art: this is because in
almost all the works presented here the artist’s hand is visible; the local
tradition of form, color, and presentation is felt in spite of the works’
objective and conceptualist overtones. This proves that the present
exhibition is closely tied to Estonian art life today, it is not a minor devi-
ation. It is a general tendency in today’s Estonia, and, in addition to the
artists participating in the current show, there are a number of others
who work in the same direction.

I would like to point out the common cause of all the shortcomings
of this exhibition, which is a lack of resources. As objective art is closely
related to new materials, new manufacturing techniques, and new
means of expression such as electronics and multimedia, it needs
large resources and the support of public organizations and state insti-
tutions. Without these resources, the quality of this art will not be
improved even in ten years’ time.

Or, it will develop along the model of conceptualist art: art as a fact

of reality, art as an act of life. By recording the facts of reality and treat-
ing them creatively, without paying attention to artistic media, every-
one can practice art everywhere, whoever thinks it necessary and wants
to be an artist, disregarding the outcome and its social acceptance. In
this way, every human being is an artist, just like every human being
is a human being. This will set off a whole chain of spontaneous
actions, an avalanche of aimless acts, destroying the myth of art as a
product of a special kind of human activity. Still, some inner activity,
or at least a concrete relationship with reality is needed, and the
inspiration is found in the intellectual sphere and its representatives,
the intellectuals.

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The future of objective art is that art will come to the streets.

Museums will become centers of information and production.
Academies will become laboratories. Monuments and fetishes that
were meant to be eternal will be replaced by multiple changes in form.
Interplanetary space will be the place to celebrate them. If we reject the
enormous opportunity that is within our reach today, and if we predict
that excessive mechanization will lead to the destruction of the culture
we want to achieve, we will empty out the freedom of action, creation,
thought, and seeing; and in doing so we will negate the human being.8

Leonhard Lapin, December 13, 1975

A speech delivered at the symposium
and the exhibition Harku ’75

Tr anslaTion by andres Kurg and KrisTa MiTs

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n o t e This text is the first English translation of the Estonian original, published in

Leonhard Lapin, “Objektiivne kunst,” in Valimik artikleid ja ettekandeid kunstist

1967–1977 [Selected articles and presentations on art 1967–1977] (Tallinn, 1977),

48–63. All footnotes are by Andres Kurg.

The last paragraph is almost a direct quote from Pierre Restany’s Livre blanc–objet blanc
(Milan: Éditions Apollinaire, 1969). The text was available to Lapin through its Finnish
translation, published as a supplement to the yearbook of Finnish art Taide in 1970. See
Pierre Restany, Valkoinen kirja (Porvoo, Finland: WSOY, 1970), 72. D O C U M E N T / I N T R O D U C T I O N image

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