Kazimir Severinovich Malevich

Viktor Tupit͡syn

Margarita Tupitsyn

Exploring Malevich's involvement with film for the first time, Tupitsyn draws on little-known writings about cinema by the artist himself, newly accessible works, and many previously unpublished photographs and documents. Malevich's influence on twentieth-century art extends far more widely than has been claimed for him before, the author concludes.".

Malevich and Film

Tupitsyn challenges the view that the Soviet avant-garde peaked in the 1920s and was subsequently forced to conform with Bolshevik politics. Instead she asserts that photography during this period represented the last "great experiment" in the search for the most effective ways to connect art, radical politics, and the masses. Investigating the means by which the new visual tools for disseminating revolutionary messages were adapted to the needs of Stalinist propaganda, Tupitsyn relates major examples of single-frame photography and photomontage to such events as the implementation of the New Economic Policy, Lenin's death, and Stalin's first and second Five-Year Plans, and to mounting censorship of the arts. She also establishes a link between the writings of critics and the development of photography and photomontage at this time. The book presents previously unpublished material from Klutsis's letters, Rodchenko's public lectures, Lissitzky's late writings on the mass media, and Kulagina's personal diaries, as well as many previously unknown photographs.

The Soviet Photograph, 1924-1937

Boris Michailov

"I, Mikhaylov Boris Andreevich, born 1938, Ukrainian. Father Mikhaylov Andrey Nikolaevich, Ukrainian, born 1909. Mother Mikhaylova Khaya Markovna, Jewish, born 1911. Brother, Mikhaylov Anatoliy Andreevich. The only foreign country I have been to is Poland. I have no criminal record. Now I am employed as a photographer at the House of Political Education (in actual fact I am in charge of cleaning the floors)". In 1985, when the Soviet Union still existed, Mikhaylov created a wonderful series of handcolored and toned photographic prints, integrating philosophical, lyrical or enigmatic statements with pictures of every day life situations. Now that Mikhaylov has become a secret star of the Western art scene -- a "brother" of Ilya Kabakov -- this book shows the poetic power of an artist switching in a staggering way between reality and the artificial. This artist's book is a compelling album of sharp humour, deep sadness and unexpected ruptures that characterize our contemporary lives and our selves.

Unfinished Dissertation

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

Russian Dada 1914-1924

In defense of nonobjective art -- The specters of formalism -- Reinventing abstraction -- Dangerous Luncheon on the grass -- The raison d'être of installation art -- Moscow-New York -- The work of art in the age of Perestroika

1922-1992

Moscow Vanguard Art

Aleksandr Mikhaĭlovich Rodchenko

City portraits were a favorite theme of avant-garde photographers. The booming industrial metropolises, whose faces were to change radically within a few years, called for a new vision and unaccustomed perspectives. This is revealed in The New Moscow, Aleksandr Rodchenko's view of the capital of the then still young Soviet Union, whose dynamic awakening during the Socialist era inspired the avant-garde artist to create this unusual project. After being expelled from the October group in 1932, Rodchenko was commissioned to take pictures of Moscow. Out of this series Varvara Stepanova, his wife and colleague, compiled a narrative sequence of eight-nine gelatin silver prints adding to it some photographs from the October period. The photos of street parades, housing projects, technical buildings, new sport facilities, and factories taken between the late twenties and early thirties were meant to appeal on two levels: firstly for their new aesthetics -- the famous Rodchenko perspective and secondly for their film-like sequencing. The artist prepared the series for a 1933 edition, which was never published. Many of his high quality vintage prints were preserved, however, and are now published in a complete reconstruction of The New Moscow.

Aleksandr Rodchenko

"Aleksandr Rodchenko and Liubov Popovaq were leading figures in the Russian avant-garde during its most exciting period, from the 1917 Revolution to Popova's tragically early death in 1924 at the age of thirty-five. Together they believed that new forms of art could play a key role in transforming society and reorganizing everyday life. As leading lights in the Constructivist movement they were responsible for an array of iconic works, from painting to magazine covers and fabric designs. Featuring new scholarship, as well as archival photos and illustrating many previously unpublished works, this book demonstrates the extent of their influence on their circle of friends and collaborators and their wide impact on the course of twentieth-century art." --Book Jacket.

Defining Constructivism

Rodchenko and Popova

International Center of Photography

Gustavs Klucis

Valentina Kulagina

Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina: Photography and Montage After Constructivism is an in-depth study of the work of Gustav Klutsis, the pioneer of photomontage in the Soviet Union and a central figure in the transition from the formalism of the early Soviet avant-garde to the increasingly state-sponsored art production of the 1930s. Also presented is the work of Klutsis's wife and colleague, Valentina Kulagina, an innovative poster, book, and exhibition designer, who participated in such seminal exhibitions as the 1928 Pressa exhibition in Cologne. Photography and Montage After Constructivism includes the artists' important public works - street displays, posters, and book and magazine desigs - as well as intimate family portraits and experimental photographs and photomontages. Drawing from her research at Russian archives and on previously unavailable information contained in the artists' letters and diaries - many translated here for the first time - art historian Margarita Tupitsyn offers new insights on the artists and the political and cultural climate in which they were working.

Margarita Tupitsyn

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