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Making Modernism Soviet provides a new understanding of the ideological engagement of Russian modern artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, and Vera Ermolaeva with the political and social agenda of the Bolsheviks in the chaotic years immediately following the Russian Revolution. Focusing on the relationship between power brokers and cultural institutions under conditions of state patronage, Pamela Kachurin lays to rest the myth of the imposition of control from above upon a victimized artistic community. Drawing on extensive archival research, she shows that Russian modernists used their positions within the expanding Soviet arts bureaucracy to build up networks of like-minded colleagues. Their commitment to one another and to the task of creating a socially transformative visual language for the new Soviet context allowed them to produce some of their most famous works of art. But it also contributed to the "Sovietization" of the art world that eventually sealed their fate.
The first multi-archive-based study of Soviet relations with Latin America from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Moving through a vast geographical, cultural, and artistic terrain and juxtaposing numerous modernist works, this volume explores the multiplicity of modernism and provides in-depth case studies, including of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, the reception of jazz music in Europe, and the Cubist movement in the visual arts.
The Russian artist Kazimir Malevich was one of the great figures of twentieth-century art, and a pioneer of abstraction, whose painting The Black Square of 1915 has become an icon of modernism. Yet he is a creative figure about whom much still remains to be elucidated. Soviet scholarship ignored him for decades, and Western scholars were inevitably only able to work with the limited visual and documentary material that was available to them. It was only after the fall of Communism in 1991 that access to such material became easier. This book represents the fruits of the research that has been conducted since then by a range of Russian and Western scholars who have been able to shed vital new light on the artist's life, his training, his art, his career, his relationships with other artists and movements, and his theories.
"With an abridged translation of the Dictionary of Moscow Conceptualism."
Futurism was Russia's first avant-garde movement. Gatecrashing the Russian public sphere in the early twentieth century, the movement called for the destruction of everything old, so that the past could not hinder the creation of a new, modern society. Over the next two decades, the protagonists of Russian Futurism pursued their goal of modernizing human experience through radical art. The success of this mission has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Critics have often characterized Russian Futurism as an expression of utopian daydreaming by young artists who were unrealistic in their visions of Soviet society and naïve in their comprehension of the Bolshevik political agenda. By t...
"This book explores the relation of abstract art to nature. Traditional picturing and sculpture are based on conventions of resemblance between the work and that which it is a representation "of". Abstract works, in contrast, adopt alternative modes of visual representation, or break down and reconfigure the mimetic conventions of pictorial art and sculpture. Obviously this means that abstract art takes many different forms. However, this diversity should not mask some key structural features; these center on two basic relations to nature (understanding nature in the broadest sense to comprise the world of recognisable objects, creatures, organisms, processes, and states of affairs). The fir...
In the early twentieth century, a group of writers banded together in Moscow to create purely original modes of expression. These avant-garde artists, known as the Futurists, distinguished themselves by mastering the art of the scandal and making shocking denunciations of beloved icons. With publications such as "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste," they suggested that Aleksandr Pushkin, the founder of Russian literature, be tossed off the side of their "steamship of modernity." Through systematic and detailed readings of Futurist texts, James Rann offers the first book-length study of the tensions between the outspoken literary group and the great national poet. He observes how those in the movement engaged with and invented a new Pushkin, who by turns became a founding father to rebel against, a source of inspiration to draw from, a prophet foreseeing the future, and a monument to revive. Rann's analysis contributes to the understanding of both the Futurists and Pushkin's complex legacy. The Unlikely Futurist will appeal broadly to scholars of Slavic studies, especially those interested in literature and modernism.
Presenting a multifaceted portrait of modernist culture in Russia, an array of distinguished scholars shows how artists and writers in the early twentieth century engaged with politics, science, and religion. At a time when many Russian social institutions looked to the past, modernist arts powerfully amplified a gamut of new ideas about individual and collective transformation. Expanding upon prior studies that focus more specifically on literary manifestations of the movement, Reframing Russian Modernism features original research that ranges broadly, from political aesthetics to Darwinism to yoga. These unique complementary perspectives counter reductionism of any kind, integrating the study of Russian modernism into the larger body of humanistic scholarship devoted to modernity.
In Empire of Terror Mark D. Silinsky argues that Iran is one of the United States’ deadliest enemies. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the Guards, bring Iran’s sway over much of the greater Middle East and pose a growing existential threat to Western security. Providing insights gained from his thirty-eight years as an analyst in the U.S. defense intelligence community, Silinsky argues that Iran’s political leaders and Guards are animated by aggressive, unforgiving, and totalitarian principles. He draws historical parallels to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to compare the intelligence and security services of states with totalitarian aspirations and to illustrate ideo...