Ukrainian Theatrical Drawings and Sketches of the Avant-Garde Era: Representation of a Four-Dimensional Space-Time Continuum

The first third of the twentieth century was a unique time in Ukrainian history. Many factors influenced the unprecedented explosion of creative thought and development of avant-garde movements in Ukraine, among which were revolutionary events, the people’s struggle to gain their sovereignty, the pursuance of freedom from the centuries-long oppression under the Russian empire, rapid industrialization and urbanization, expanding relationships between the Ukrainian creative elite and the cultural environment of Western Europe, which included joint exhibitions and actions, memberships in art groups, education in Western Europe’s academies, and adoption of new philosophical and worldview ideas. Discoveries made by mathematicians1, physicists2, and philosophers3 not only changed the fundamental concepts in science and the wider worldview, but also shaped new art practices. Without a doubt, Henri Poincaré’s ideas of a sensorimotor space and the non-Euclidean geometries developed by Lobachevsky and Riemann, all related to the Bergson’s philosophy (Dukhan, 2009, 195), directly influenced avantgarde artists. In the early twentieth century, the important step was made towards eliminating the borders between temporal and spatial arts, established by eighteenthcentury Classicist concepts.


Introduction
The first third of the twentieth century was a unique time in Ukrainian history. Many factors influenced the unprecedented explosion of creative thought and development of avant-garde movements in Ukraine, among which were revolutionary events, the people's struggle to gain their sovereignty, the pursuance of freedom from the centuries-long oppression under the Russian empire, rapid industrialization and urbanization, expanding relationships between the Ukrainian creative elite and the cultural environment of Western Europe, which included joint exhibitions and actions, memberships in art groups, education in Western Europe's academies, and adoption of new philosophical and worldview ideas.
Discoveries made by mathematicians 1 , physicists 2 , and philosophers 3 not only changed the fundamental concepts in science and the wider worldview, but also shaped new art practices. Without a doubt, Henri Poincaré's ideas of a sensorimotor space and the non-Euclidean geometries developed by Lobachevsky and Riemann, all related to the Bergson's philosophy (Dukhan, 2009, 195), directly influenced avantgarde artists. In the early twentieth century, the important step was made towards eliminating the borders between temporal and spatial arts, established by eighteenthcentury Classicist concepts. 1 At the beginning of the twentieth century, Henri Poincaré, Hermann Minkowski, Bernhard Riemann, Charles Howard Hinton and other mathematicians developed the idea of the ndimensionality of space. 2 The physics discoveries of electromagnetic and radio waves, X-rays, and radiation at the end of the nineteenth century filled the emptiness of Euclidean space with different types of energies; Albert Einstein's special and general theories of relativity combined four dimensions in a single continuum. For further reading on the connection between the formation of Cubism and Suprematism with these scientific achievements, see Henderson, 1975Henderson, -1976Ambrosio, 2016;Luecking, 2010. 3 Henri Bergson introduced the concept of duration (la durée) (1889); time became a major theme in Edmund Husserl's thought (1928)

Ukrainian Avant-Garde Theatre
The search for means of representing new properties of the space-time continuum in avant-garde fine art embraced the specificities of each branch of art, including both two-dimensional (painting, drawing, graphic art) and three-dimensional (sculpture, architecture). Four-dimensional theatrical art and recently born art of cinema were different as they inherently reflected a complex mix of how image and action are developed in space and time. Blending different two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and four-dimensional kinds of art into a complex continuum marked the establishment of fundamentally new properties of a work of art as a phenomenon of human activity. The theatre art gave a grounding for Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts developed in Phenomenology of Perception: "the unity of space can be discovered only in the interplay of the sensory realms" (Merleau-Ponty, 2005[1945, 258). Given that a theatrical sketch is a two-dimensional project of a future four-dimensional work, avant-garde scenographic sketches represent a unique phenomenon for learning the evolution of space-time continuum representation. The name of Les Kurbas stands at the origins of Ukrainian avant-garde theatre. He was a pioneering Ukrainian director who thought of a theatrical performance as of a synergetic entity where the result of interaction between individual componentsmotion, rhythm, sound, image, colour, light -was greater than the sum of the parts. Kurbas' ideas were supported and developed by prominent artists such as ballet dancer and founder of the School of Movement Bronislava Nijinska, avant-garde painters Oleksandra Exter, Vadym Meller, Anatol Petrytsky, and others. According to these ideas, a theatre director and a scenic designer were inseparable in their work. Thus, a painter had to acknowledge all the details of the play, from the rhythmics of actors' movements defined by a director to the stage constructions, costumes, makeup, light, and a principle that would guide the character's movement on stage.

Cubism in the Scenography
Prominent Ukrainian avant-gardist Oleksandra Exter also worked with Nijinska's School of Movement and created a series of costume sketches for ballet performances such as Spanish Dance (1918). In her costume sketches for famous performances in Tairov's Moscow Chamber Theatre, Famira Kifared (1916), Salome (1917, and Romeo and Juliet (1921), (Fig. 1) she used mutually balancing movements-gestures and movements of drapery built on the contrast between straight and curved lines 7 as basic compositional elements. These movements shape the energy while unfolding around 7 'Formative or additional elements of Cubism' as defined by Kazimir Malevich (Malevich, 1998, 130, fig. 3). For more details on additional elements in avant-garde movements, see Malewitsch, 1927, 8-63. human bodies. In costume sketches for Two Hebrews (1917) and Herodias Salome. Dance of Avant-Garde (1917), sharp diagonal lines created by the folds of clothing, all coming from a single point, structure space like the rays of a lightning projector. The folds overlapping one another convey a sense of some permanent alertness, the potentiality of the movement energy. Many famous scenic designers studied in Exter's Kyiv-based studio: Vadym Meller, Oleksandr Tyshler, Anatol Petrytsky, Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov, Isaac Rabinovich. Having a sound background of European education (from The Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and the Académie de la Grande-Chaumière in Paris), Vadym Meller created some of his signature works for Nijinska's School of Movement -these were costume sketches for Assyrian Dances in the ballet City written by Sergei Prokofiev (1919-1920) (Fig. 2). Meller's scenery sketches created in the second half of the 1910s and in the 1920s, as well as Exter's works, are based on the combination of a straight line, a curved line, and an arch which creates a "sickle element" that, according to Kazimir Malevich, constitutes the "formula of Cubism" 8 . "Vadym Meller shows the internal dynamic of movement in seemingly static figures. (…) A figure is divided into many geometric surfaces and points of view that aim to show the viewer the most complete information" (Melnyk, 2009(Melnyk, -2010. Such an aspiration to deliver "the most complete information" implies the search for the whole time field continuum, which was the major objective of Cubism. According to Edmund Husserl's work, the time field, just like the field of view, consists of retentions (primary memory) and protentions (primary expectation) that move from the moment of now to the nearest past and the nearest future (Husserl, 1990(Husserl, [1928, 33-41). Meller's work reflects a similar search; it can be felt in the contemplative nature of shifts in concentrations of the tone of surfaces created by the intersection of straight and radial lines, by volumes being included in one another, by energy impulses coinciding. It makes the viewer glance through the vector directions of movement again and again, putting a linear amplitude into a temporal circle.
8 "Now I would like to focus your attention on a general nature of building a Cubist work: the whole composition leans towards a sickle shape. A sickle-shaped form of lines is like a common denominator any Cubist work should be brought to. In other words, a sickle shape is a formula of Cubism" (Malevich, 1998, 184).   [1921][1922] are drawn by a line that blends into a tint (Fig. 3). The pristine space of paper is perceived as the impenetrability of background, its absolute spacelessness, lengthy two-dimensionality, while its third dimension -depth -was excluded and combined with the fourth one -time -to create a supradimensional eternity. This absence of the third dimension which could have led from the foreground away into the distance, this excluded energy of depth, the direction of will 11 which Oswald Spengler called a rigid time (Spengler, V.1, 1928, 173) is what, in Neo-Byzantinism, gives volume to time and creates eternity. 9 Mykhailo Boychuk was one of the founders of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and professor of the monumental art workshop until 1931. He was repressed in 1937. 10 "Not only world-space, but world-time also is cavern-like" (Spengler, V.2, 1928, 238). 11 "... in reality there is only one true 'dimension' of space, which is direction from one's self outwards into the distance, the 'there' and the future" (Spengler, V.1, 1928, 172). Constructivism had a significant impact on the evolution of Ukrainian avant-garde theatre. Brand new concepts of organising performative space allowed for structuring the stage space with moving elements and multi-level venues, exposing constructions, accentuating different textures. Through an innovative approach to the notions of time and movement, constructivism was also embracing space. Defining a mutual trajectory of the movements of actors and stage elements was important in the construction of the stage space. Constructivist structured space intersected with temporal beings of characters: it correlates with Bergson's understanding of duration ("la durée"), of movement as an abstract unity which holds the n-amount of moments (points on a trajectory) together, of tendency as a change of movement's direction (Bergson, 1912, 58, 65). Anatol Petrytsky used a Constructivist approach in costume sketches for Eccentric Dances (directed by Kasian Goleizovsky in 1922) (Fig. 4). Using mutually reinforcing movements of geometricised structures, the artist makes space the primary compositional means of expression and it becomes an active character. The figures he depicts are not placed in space but are this space; it's not the person who acts in space but the space is created by the movement built by trajectory vectors 12 .
12 Based on Kant's assumptions, Merleau-Ponty claims that "There must be, as Kant conceded, a 'motion which generated space' which is our intentional motion, distinct from motion in space" (Merleau-Ponty, 2005, 450-451). Constructivist principles were most greatly embodied in the artistic environment in Kharkiv, Ukraine's capital during 1919-1934. The Kharkiv-based artist Borys Kosarev (1897-1994, one of the prominent Ukrainian theatrical designers, created decorations for a lot of performances in the 1920s and 1930s. Depth and time (the third and the fourth dimensions) do not have that much significance in his drawings tended toward Constructivism: it seems they are cancelled out and belong only to the actual events happening on stage in real-time in a three-dimensional space. A two-dimensional space of drawings, structured with objects-constructions, is waiting to be filled with a space-time movement of the active will of characters.
Sketches of actors in a role represent a particular segment of the theatrical sketch genre. Normally they were realistic and served as a historical fixation of events. The drawings by Vadym Meller's student Mylytsia (Maiia) Symashkevych made in the 1920s in Berezil are totally different. The laconic black ink drawing of Pavlo Dolyna in Ernst Toller's The Machine Wreckers (1924), for example, is like a construction set made with clear straight lines supplemented with curved lines of different thicknesses. Images shaped by these geometric lines and, more importantly, by the compositional space left empty, quite accurately illustrate Oleksandr Bogomazov's idea about the power of the potentiality of a line which is "developed from the motion of the Primal Element which is part of mass" (Bogomazov, 1996(Bogomazov, [1914, 114) and is "a definite effective quantity of mass" (Bogomazov, 1996(Bogomazov, [1914, 117).

Futurism
The emphases on objects and subjects are dramatically shifted with Futurism becoming established in Ukrainian theatre. The actor's body is deprived of the active, willed element of action, and becomes an "object, mechanical model, stage prop, and decoration" (Sahno, 2008, 652), while space takes over the role of a forming impulse and adopts properties of an acting element. This shift is clearly observable in such works as Kosarev's costume sketches for Ivan Kocherga's Marko in Hell (1928). A costume sketch for Three Witches (Fig. 5) demonstrates a high degree of plasticity: well-weighed curved lines flow through one another and combine three figures in a single object, concentrating viewers' attention on the space between the figures. Flat and decorative, with no sign of volume modelling, these figures share the same objective space with the background. This is how the idea of making space an active subject is embodied, just like in Petrytsky's sketches mentioned above.

Suprematism
Suprematism had a special connection to with performance: "the birth of the square that had to conclude all the painting's objectivity into a single sign" (Marcadé, 2013, 114) was happening -although, as Malevich claimed, "unconsciously" (Malevich, 2004, 66) -while he was working on decoration sketches for the opera Victory Over The Sun (1913). A quadrangular shape that is not yet a square but something close to it serves as a foundation for all six sketches for the opera. According to Jean-Claude Marcadé, "this sign, the black quadrangular, 'the tsar's child,' 'the icon of our time' [...] emerges in the sketches for the 6th scene and the stage curtain" (Marcadé, 2013, 114). Paradoxically, the stage that represented a place full of objects and subjects pushed the emergence of objectlessness. Afterwards, while further developing the theory of Suprematism, Malevich put the domain of Suprematism above the time and space limits, freeing the depicted from all aspects of real nature -"weight, immovability, isolation, time, space" (Malevich, 2000, 90). This complex system of relations between the objects and a performative environment, between movement and tranquillity, between time and space, created objective scenic images at the intersection with Suprematist objectlessness, built with the elements of Suprematist art. Anatol Petrytsky used surfaces, straight lines, diagonals, circles, rectangles while creating numerous character images for Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot directed by Louis Laber (1927). The composition is based on connecting the large geometricised surfaces of the figures with the white infinite space of paper. Additional Suprematist elements (Malewitsch, 1926) used for structuring a two-dimensional sheet of paper gave the clear surfaces the subjective space, that way neglecting the existence of a live actor's body in a scenic space and emphasising the artificial nature of characters. These sketches, especially different variations of the executioner's costumes, chime with Malevich's character drawings for the opera Victory Over The Sun (1913): they follow the principles of a "new scenic design" where "…'live' costumes and masks became acting characters" (Sahno, 2008, 654).

Style combinations
Another prominent Ukrainian scenic designer, Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov used the expressive potential of Suprematist elements in combination with Constructivism. In his sketches for The Valkyrie (1929) he was discovering the ideas of a "new materiality" (Avant-Garde…, 2019, 145-9) through compositions of straight lines and geometrical figures -circles, semicircles, rectangles, truncated cylinders and prisms. The feeling of supertemporality, exclusion of time from the compositional equation is what distinguished these sketches. In costume sketches for Sergei Prokofiev's opera The Love for Three Oranges (1926) that did not go into production, Khvostenko-Khvostov combined geometricised figures of Tchelio and Fata Morgana with a decorative resonance of colour. He masterly places anthropomorphous parts (faces, limbs) under a general structure of paper. A duplication solution repeatedly used in costume sketches for soldiers and servants is particularly striking. The rhythmics of squares divided by rhombuses of contrasting colours -emerald and red -is fuelled with diagonals of the marching soldiers' arms and legs. The Suprematist play of two rectangles that build a compositional basis of the servants sketch (Fig. 6) intensifies the emotional expressiveness of marching characters. This is how the artist creates a complex feeling of a permanent, endless, cyclical movement. In scenery sketches for this performance, Khvostenko-Khvostov also implements Futurist elements, adding abstract diagonals to a circular movement of objects and characters.

Conclusions
Oswald Spengler claimed that "every culture has its own philosophy, (...) closely related to that of architecture and the arts of form" (Spengler, V. 1, 1928, 364). Along with the beginning of a new era, the shift in philosophy, and the development of physics and mathematics, the background of the common worldview had also changed and "the notions of time, movement and action, moment and eternity, past and present" thus evolved (Vipper, 1970, 317). Avant-garde movements of the first third of the twentieth century introduced a new understanding of the time-space continuum. Essentially, the approach to represent time -the choice of the research method, the focus on showing a certain characteristic of time -is what evoked the avant-garde movements. Cubist artists were discovering four dimensions of objects and were trying to find the directions of a temporal perspective, transforming them into linear, mutually directed vectors of movement. Futurists were interested in all possible variations of objects' movement, as they existed in space-time, while Cubo-Futurists were focused on the interactions between time and space through the link of movement. Constructivism approached space, giving it the properties of objectivity and subjectivity, blurring the line between object and space. The closed field of a Neo-Byzantinist space-time continuum created the permanent becoming that would never be settled. Suprematists moved their research to supertemporality, sublimating all the energy of the third and fourth dimensions in an effort to embody the spatial n-dimension. Owing to the synthetic nature of project thinking, Ukrainian scenery sketches of the first third of the twentieth century -this avant-garde "disegno" 13 , the concept of a performance -embodied a wide range of ways to show motion in a four-dimensional space-time continuum, combining means of expression from different avant-garde movements. The historical background -Stalinist repressions, limitations of creative freedom with the Procrustean framework of social realism -put an end to the overwhelming development of the Ukrainian avant-garde in the mid-1930s. Prominent avant-garde artists, including Les Kurbas, were repressed, while those who managed to escape persecution had to switch to the agenda of social realism. Any "formalist" elements were under a strict ban. The empirical nature of the Stalinist totalitarian state demanded certain artistic support, and the "art for people" slogan pushed artists back to a commonly understandable classicist concept of the three-dimensional space and perspective depth.
There were no attempts to restage avant-garde plays in Ukraine, but the ideas of Les Kurbas' school and his fellow artists continued inspiring generations of scenic designers. A young generation of artists did re-evaluate the avant-garde theatre ideas during the Thaw in the 1950-1960s (Kovalchuk, 2019, 82-89). Even though most of their attempts were not brought to life (plays would often be blocked by the government), they played a crucial role in building resistance and helping fight the official doctrines of Soviet totalitarianism. The art of Ukrainian non-conformism of the 1960s is often called "the second avant-garde." With that said, our continuing research aims to spot the parallels and differences in how Ukrainian scenic designers of the avant-garde era and theatre designers of the 1960s represented the space-time continuum. Ukraine's declaration of independence at the end of the 20th century spurred the second wave of interest in Ukrainian avant-garde art. Many contemporary Ukrainian artists derive inspiration from avant-garde ideas perceived as art free from political suppression. In this context, an important part of our research is analysing how scientific concepts, philosophical theories, and social and political background influenced the way Ukrainian scenic designers embodied time and space.