Bobko Jane, Dzhafarova Svetlana (eds.). The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932

New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1992. — 732 p. — ISBN-10: 0892070951; ISBN-13: 978-0892070954.In this volume twenty-one essays by eminent scholars from Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States explore the activity of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde in all its diversity and complexity. These essays trace the work of Malevich's Unovis (Affirmers of the New Art) collective in Vitebsk, which introduced Suprematism's all-encompassing geometries into the design of textiles, ceramics, and indeed whole environments; the postrevolutionary reform of art education and the creation of Moscow's Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops), where the formal and analytical princples of the avant-garde were the basis of instruction; the debates over a "proletarian art" and the transition to Constructivism, "production art," and the "artist-constructor"; the organization of new artist-administered "museums of artistic culture"; the "third path" in non-objective art taken by Mikhail Larionov; the return to figuration in the mid-1920s by the young artists - and former students of the avant-garde - in Ost (the Society of Easel Painters); the debates among photographers, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, on the superiority of the fragmented or continuous image as a representation of the new socialist reality; book, porcelain, fabric, and stage design; and the evolution of a new architecture, from the experimental projects of Zhivskul'ptarkh (the Synthesis of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture Commission) to the multistage competition, in 1931-32, for the Palace of Soviets, which "proved" the inapplicability of a Modernist architecture to the Bolshevik Party's aspirations. More than seven hundred of the finest examples of Russian and Soviet avant-garde art are reproduced here in full color. Drawn from public and private collections worldwide - notably, from Baku, Kiev, Moscow, Riga, Samara, St. Petersburg, and Tashkent in the former Soviet Union - these works are by such masters as Natan Al'tman, Il'ia Chashnik, Aleksandra Ekster, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, Liubov' Popova, Ol'ga Rozanova, Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, and the Vesnin brothers.ContentsThe Politics of the Avant-Garde. Paul Wood
The Artisan and the Prophet: Marginal Notes on Two Artistic Careers. Vasilii Rakitin
The Critical Reception of the 0.70 Exhibition: Malevich and Benua. Jane A. Sharp
Unovis: Epicenter of a New World. Aleksandra Sbatskikh
A Brief History of Obmokhu. Aleksandra Shatskikh
The Transition to Constructivism. Christina Lodder
The Place of Vkhutemas in the Russian Avant-Garde. Natal'ia Adaskina
What Is Linearism? Aleksandr Lavrent'ev
The Constructivists: Modernism on the Way to Modernization. Hubertus Gassner
The Third Path to Non-Objectivity. Evgenii Kovtun
The Poetry of Science: Projectionism and Electroorganism. Irina Lebedeva
Terms of Transition: The First Discussional Exhibition and the Society of Easel Painters. Charlotte Douglas
The Russian Presence in the 1924. Venice Biennale. Vivian Endicott Barnett
The Creation of the Museum of Painterly Culture. Svetlana Dzhafarova
Fragmentation versus Totality: The Politics of (De)framing. Margarita Tupitsyn
The Art of the Soviet Book, 1922-32. Susan Compton
Soviet Porcelain of the 1920s: Propaganda Tool. Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky
Russian Fabric Design, 1928-32. Charlotte Douglas
How Meierkhol'd Never Worked with Tatlin, and What Happened as a Result. Elena Rakitin
Nonarchitects in Architecture. Anatolii Strigalev
Mediating Creativity and Politics: Sixty Years of Architectural Competitions in Russia. Catherine CookeIndex of Artists and Works