Russian Avant-garde: Theories of Art, Architecture and the CityThe revolutionary avant-garde of Russia in the Twenties was among the most fertile episodes of all Modernism. But the theoretical ideas underlying their challenging imagery and language have hitherto been only glimpsed. Since Stalin stamped out such enquiry in the early Thirties, key personalities were driven into obscurity. Soviet researchers permitted to touch this material could publish only circumscribed vignettes which neither mediated the cultural divide nor placed the ideas in their larger intellectual and political contexts. Here for the first time is a study that exploits the freedoms of the new situation in Russia to explore the intellectual challenges of this extraordinary material and to present its ideas with the same objectivity as we apply to Western work. At one level the book is a readable and colourful introduction to the whole period and its major artistic and architectural personalities, many of whom emerge as individuals with coherent views and distinctive careers for the first time. At another level, it is a unique source book of original documentary texts which not only bring the period to life in entirely new detail, but offer a launchpad for teaching and further research. By cutting through the period in different ways, successive chapters build a multi-dimensional narrative that starts with foundations of avant-garde theoretical debate in the nineteenth century. |
Contents
ummubRS | 8 |
NEW ARTISTIC FOUNDATIONS | 14 |
WHAT SHOULD A SOVIET | 25 |
Copyright | |
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abstract Academy aesthetic Alexander Alexander Vesnin Alexei Gan amongst approach Architecture Faculty Arkhitektura artistic Asnova avant-garde Barkhin building Chapter Chernikhov colour competition project complex composition concept construction Constructivism Constructivist architects contemporary architecture Corbusier creative Cubism cultural economic elements engineering formal functional method housing ibid ideas industrial Inkhuk Ivan Ivan Leonidov Khan-Magomedov Konstantin Melnikov Konstruktivizm konstruktsiia Kuznetsov laboratory Ladovsky Le Corbusier Lenin Leningrad Leonidov Lissitzky Lunacharsky machine Malevich mass material Melnikov Modernist Moisei Ginzburg Moscow movement MVTU Narkompros Narkomtiazhprom Nikolai Nikolsky object organisation painterly Palace Palace of Soviets pavilion perspective Petersburg Petrograd photograph pre-Revolutionary principle problem produced programme Rationalists Revolution revolutionary rhythm Rodchenko Russian Shchusev social socialist Soviet architecture space spatial Starr structure Style and Epoch Suprematism Suprematist task Tatlin teaching technical theory Twenties UNOVIS urban Vesnin Vesnin brothers Vkhutemas Vladimir whole workers Zholtovsky