THE GREAT UTOPIA
THE RUSSIAN AND SOVIET AVANT-GARDE, 1915-1932

Paul Wood, Vasilii Rakitin, Hubertus Gassner et al

Exploration of the one place and time in the 20th century (except, briefly, for the linkage of Italian Fascism and Futurism) when radical art actually did become the house style of a revolution.

9.25 x 12.25 hardcover catalog of the shockingly comprehensive 1992 exhibition that traveled between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the State Tret'iakov Gallery, State Russian Museum and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Includes 21 essays by eminent scholars from Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States that explore the activity of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde in all its diversity and complexity. Easily the most extensive reference work on this period.

The scope of this catalog is a blessing, but the Exhibition was criticized for its girth: "THE GREAT UTOPIA . . . intends to overwhelm the viewer, and unfortunately it does. With more than 800 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, textiles, ceramics, furniture and architectural models, occupying almost the entirety of the newly renovated building, it must surely be, as the museum boasts, the largest show in the history of the Guggenheim. At least, it feels that way.² [Michael Kimmelman: Russia's Fling With the Future: The New York Times, September 25, 1992]

Contents

• The Politics of the Avant-Garde by Paul Wood
• The Artisan and the Prophet: Marginal Notes on Two Artistic Careers by Vasili Rakitin
• The Critical Reception of the 0.10 Exhibition: Malevich and Benua by Jane A. Sharp
• Unovis: Epicenter of a New World by Aleksandra Shatskikh
• Color Plates 1-318
• A Brief History of Obmokhu by Aleksandra Shatskikh
• The Transition of Constructivism by Christina Lodder
• The Place of Vkhutemas in the Russian Avant-Garde by Natal'ia Adaskina
• The Constructivists: Modernism on the Way to Modernization by Hubertus Gassner
• The Third Path to Non-Objectivity by Evgenii Kovtun
• Color Plates 319-482
• The Poetry of Science: Projectionism and Electroorganism by Irina Lebedeva
• Terms of Transition: The First Discussional Exhibition and the Society of Easel Painters by Charlotte Douglas
• The Russian Presence in the 1924 Venice Biennale by Vivian Endicott Barnett
• The Creation of the Museum of Painterly Culture by Svetlana Dzhafarova
• Fragmentation versus Totality: The Politics of (De)framing by Margarita Tupitsyn
• Color Plates 483-733
• The Art of the Soviet Book, 1922-32 by Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky
• Russian Fabric Design, 1928-32 by Charlotte Douglas
• How Meierkhol'd Never Worked with Tatlin, and What Happened as a Result by Elena Rakitin
• Nonarchitects in Architecture by Anatoli Strigalev
• Mediating Creativity and Politics: Sixty Years of Architectural Competitions in Russia by Catherine Cooke
• Index of Artists and Works

Includes works by El Lissitzky, Alexandr Rodchenko, Naum Gabo, Vladimir Tatlin, Wassily Kandinsky, Konstantin Malevich, Ivan Kliun, Liubov Popova, Marc Chagall, Georgii Yakulov, K. A. Vialov, Alexandr Vesnin, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Nikolai Suetin, Varvara Stepanova, Vladimir Stenberg, Ivan Puni, Olga Rozanova, Natan Altman, Yurii Annenkov, Mikhail Larionov, Ivan Kudriashev, Petr Konchalovsky, Gustav Klucis, David Burliuk, Vladimir Burliuk, Ilia Chashnik, Vasilii Ermilov, Vera Ermolaeva, Alexandra Exter, Pavel Filanov, Natalia Goncharova, Pavel Mansurov, Mikhail Matiushin, Kasimir Medunetsky, Petr Miturich, Alexei Morgunov, Vera Nikolskaia, Alexei Babichev, Varvara Bubnova, Vasili Chekrygin, Alexandr Drevin, Boris Ender, Ksenia Ender, Mariia Ender, Nikolai Grinberg, Elena Guro, Karel Ioganson, Ivan Kliun, Aleksandr Deineka, Yuri Pimenov, Aleksandr Tyshler, Lev Yudin, Boris Korolev, Ivan Kudriashev, Nikolai Ladovsky, Mikhail Matiushin, Konstantin Medunetsky, Petr Miturich, Alexei Morgunov, Solomon Nikritin, Mikhail Plaksin, Kliment Redko, Sergei Senkin, Antonina Sofronova, Vladimir Stenberg, Varvara Stepanova, Nikolai Tarabukin, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Konstantin Vialov and many others.

"Since the publication in 1962 of Camilla Gray's pioneering study of the Russian avant-garde, The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863-1922, over 130 books and catalogues on the subject have appeared in English, French, German, Italian and Japanese. And since the comprehensive exhibition "Paris-Moscow, 1900-1930" organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1979, and then hosted by the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow two years later as "Moscow-Paris, 1900-1930," there have been over 100 exhibitions devoted to the Russian avantgarde in public and private venues throughout the U.S., Europe, the Soviet Union and Japan.

"These statistics alone indicate that the Russian avant-garde -- the mosaic of personalities and events that transformed the face of Russian art, literature and music in the 1910s and '20s -- has already received wide coverage. True, a decade or so ago, the subject was still fraught with the difficulties of territorial access and political bias, but the early and mid '80s witnessed the general recognition in the Soviet Union of the avant-garde as a valuable component of the Russian cultural heritage, and the result was a series of major exhibitions in Europe and Japan that drew substantially on Soviet holdings." [From John E. Bowlt¹s review of the Guggenheim's The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932: Art in America, May, 1993 ]

Price: $350.00
PayPal Secure Payment

Domestic Shipping: $10.00