A lavishly illustrated volume that views Russian avant-garde art
through the lens of Dada.
This
is the first book to approach Russian avant-garde art from the
perspective of the anti-art canons associated with the international
Dada movement. The works described and documented in Russian Dada
were produced at the height of Dada’s flourishing, between World
War I and the death of Vladimir Lenin—who, incidentally, was a
frequent visitor to Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, the founding site of
Dada. Like the Dadaists, the Russian avant-gardists whose works
appear in this volume strove for internationalism, fused the verbal
and visual, and engaged in eccentric practices and pacifist actions,
including outrageous performances and anti-war campaigns.
The
works featured in this lavishly illustrated volume thrive on
negation, irony, and absurdity, with the goal of constructing a new
aesthetic paradigm that is an alternative to both positivist and
rationalist Constructivism as well as metaphysical and cosmic
Suprematism. The text and images show that, while not neglecting the
serious project of public agitation for Marxist ideology, the artists
often pushed the Dadaesque into Russian mass culture, in the form of
absurdist and chance-based collages and designs. In such works,
Russian “da, da (yes, yes)” was converted into a defiant “nyet,
nyet (no, no)”.
Russian
Dada, which accompanies a major exhibition at the Museo Reina
Sofia, Madrid, includes 250 images, almost all in color, and essays
by leading art historians. An appendix provides a wide selection of
primary texts—historical writings by such key figures as Nikolai
Punin, Kazimir Malevich, Varvara Stepanova, and Aleksandr Rodchenko.
Essays
by
Margarita
Tupitsyn, Victor Tupitsyn, Natasha Kurchanova, Olga Burenina-Petrova
Artists
Natan
Altman, Vasilii Ermilov, 41°, Ivan Kluin, Gustav Klutsis, Aleksei
Kruchenykh, Valentina Kulagina, Vladimir Lebedev, Kazimir Malevich,
Aleksei Morgunov, the Nothingdoers, Ivan Puni, Aleksandr Rodchenko,
Olga Rozanova, Sergei Sharshun, Varvara Stepanova, Wladyslaw
Strzeminski, Vladimir Tatlin, Igor Terentiev, Nadezhda Udaltsova,
Ilya Zdanevich, Kirill Zdanevich
Copublished
with Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid