Presidential Library Tells How Vladimir Mayakosky Became a Poet

"Give me new art!" Vladimir Mayakovsky cried in his famous poem, "Order No. 2 of the Army of Art." "I want to create socialist art," he wrote in his autobiography, "Myself." And so, he created this new socialist art himself. In fact, starting not with poetry but with painting, the talent of the artist began to emerge in Mayakovsky from an early age. On July 19, the anniversary of the birth of the poet, playwright, actor, and artist, Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) is celebrated.

His elder sister Lyudmila and mother, Alexandra, told about the early experiences of the future artist. According to their memories, which are presented in the book Mayakovsky: The Poster Artist (1940), his interest in landscape painting was not typical of him. The portrait was the real passion of the young artist, but even in his earliest sketches, portrait features were emphasized and brought to satire and caricature. One of Mayakovsky's first cartoons depicted himself as a ten-year-old strongman, who could lift six chairs at once.

Mayakovsky began his artistic journey in the Georgian city of Kutaisi, where he studied painting with the artist Krasnukha. Krasnukha had graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts with a gold medal. After Mayakovky's father's death in 1906, the Mayakovsky family moved to Moscow. In order to support his mother and sisters, Vladimir used his drawing skills to earn money. He wrote in his autobiography published in the collection of his works titled 255 Pages of Mayakovsky that "there was no money in our family, so I had to work hard and draw." He particularly remembered the Easter egg drawings he made.

In Moscow, Mayakovsky met students with revolutionary ideas, became interested in Marxist literature and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1908. He was arrested three times, but even in prison, he continued painting. As described in the book Mayakovsky: The Poster Artist, "in what is known as the 'Myasnitsky House' (the prisoner's quarters on Myasnitskaya Street), Mayakovsky created a series of caricature drawings, dealing in this way with the guards he despised. Mayakovsky continued this activity while in the Sushchev Police Station, where his sister sent him not only paper and paint, but also books on the history of art."

After spending 11 months in solitary confinement at Butyrskaya Prison, Mayakovsky emerged "Released being agitated... I thought I could no longer write poetry. My experiments were a failure. I turned to painting."

In 1910, Mayakovsky began his studies with the landscape painter Zhukovsky. He recalled that he and some other students would write silver-plated tea sets together. However, he said that he could not stand "tiny-pretty things". This characteristic clearly shows what attracted Mayakovsky to art and how he treated everything that was "pretty" or stylized with contempt.

Mayakovsky managed to enroll in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture without a certificate of reliability. At first, he diligently copied heads, torsos, and still lifes. The futurist group also included artists such as Goncharova, Kulbin, Burliuk, Rozanova, and others. Osip Brik, one of the theorists of the Russian avant-garde, wrote in the preface to Vladimir Mayakovsky's book that another innovative artist like Mayakovsky might have been added to this group if an unexpected event had not occurred.

Mayakovsky described this experience as follows: "One afternoon, I published a poem, or rather, some poems. The bad ones. They were not printed anywhere. It was night. On Sretensky Boulevard, I read my poetry to Burliuk. David paused, looked at me and said: 'Yes, you wrote these yourself, but you're a brilliant poet.' ... That evening, quite unexpectedly, I became a poet."

Mayakovsky had stopped studying to become a painter, but he did not abandon his artistic skills. Brick wrote that he loved to draw portraits and drew all his friends just for the sake of art. He also drew cartoons for humorous magazines to earn money. Mayakovsky was skilled at working with pencil, ink, oil, watercolors, charcoal, and even burnt matches or cigarette butts if there was no other material available.

In 1915, Korney Chukovsky introduced Mayakovsky to Ilya Repin. He described this meeting in his book Repin. Mayakovsky. Bryusov (1940). Repin even suggested that Mayakovsky should paint his portrait, which is an honor that few artists have received. However, Mayakovsky refused to do so. He also refused to work with Bunin and Rozanov, who were both respected writers at the time.

Repin prepared a canvas and selected brushes and paints in his studio. He told Mayakovsky he wanted to capture "the inspiring hair" of the poet. When the appointed time came, Mayakovsky arrived, but he had shaved his head. Repin was disappointed, saying that he wanted to portray Mayakovsky as a people's tribune.

In the preface to Terrible Laughter. Windows of ROST, published in 1932, Mayakovsky recalled that there were no holidays and they worked in a large, unheated workshop called ROST, which was later described as a smoke-filled bourgeois workshop. He said that if there is such a thing as a "revolutionary style" in art, it is the style of their windows. He also mentioned that many of their works, which were designed for one day and later exhibited at the Tretyakov Gallery and in Berlin and Paris, had become real works of art ten years later.

The Presidential Library's portal features a collection called Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) that includes digital copies of documents and materials related to the life and works of one of the most significant poets of the 20th century.