The artists’ books made in Russia between 1910 and 1915 are like no others. Unique in their fusion of the verbal, visual, and sonic, these books are meant to be read, looked at, and listened to. Painters and poets—including Natalia Goncharova, Velimir Khlebnikov, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Mayakovsky— collaborated to fabricate hand-lithographed books, for which they invented a new language called zaum (a neologism meaning “beyond the mind”), which was distinctive in its emphasis on “sound as such” and its rejection of definite logical meaning. At the heart of this volume are close analyses of two of the most significant and experimental futurist books: Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards) and Vzorval’ (Explodity). In addition, Nancy Perloff examines the profound differences between the Russian avant-garde and Western art movements, including futurism, and she uncovers a wide-ranging legacy in the midcentury global movement of sound and concrete poetry (the Brazilian Noigandres group, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Henri Chopin), contemporary Western conceptual art, and the artist’s book. Sound recordings of zaum poems featured in the book are available at www.getty.edu.

In her extensive Introduction, Lawton has highlighted the historical development of the movement and has related futurism both to the Russian national scene and to avant-garde movements worldwide.

Gerald Janecek describes the experiments in visual, literature conducted from 1900 to 1930, the heyday of the Russian Avant Garde. Focusing on an aspect of Russian literary history that has previously been almost ignored, he shows how Russian writers of this period tried unusual methods to make their texts visually interesting or expressive. The book includes 183 illustrations, most from rare publications and many reproduced for the first time. The author discusses such figures as the Symbolist Andrey Bely, the Futurists Aleksey Kruchonykh, Vasili Kamensky, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the post-Futurist Ilya Zdanevich, and their use of devices ranging from unorthodox layouts and florid typography to roughly done lithographed or handmade books. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Futurist art movement, founded by F.T. Marinetti in 1909, had a worldwide impact and made important contributions to avant-garde movements in many countries and artistic genres. This yearbook is designed to act as a medium of communication amongst a global community of Futurism scholars. It has an interdisciplinary orientation and presents new research on Futurism across national borders in fields such as literature, fine arts, music, theatre, design, etc. Apart from essays and country surveys it contains reports, reviews and an annual bibliography of recent Futurism studies. Vol. 1 (2011): Special Issue, Futurism in Eastern and Central Europe Vol. 2 (2012): Open Issue Vol. 3 (2013): Special Issue, Iberian Futurism Vol. 4 (2014): Open Issue Vol. 5 (2015): Special Issue, Women Futurists Vol. 6 (2016): Open Issue For Vol. 1-3 please see also: http: //www.degruyter.com/view/j/futur

This is the most comprehensive treatment of a significant episode of the historical avant-garde period to which many refer but with little concrete background. According to Charlotte Douglas (Russian and Slavic Studies, NYU), Zaum "is an encyclopedic account of zaum or 'beyonsense,' the most distinctive feature of Russian avant-garde art and poetry early in the 20th century. Janecek has mined a myriad of arcane and inaccessible sources, gathered the entire historical record in one place, and made it readable and comprehensible. His account of zaum theory and practice will be indispensable for anyone interested in modern poetry and art. Certainly it will become a standard text for all students of Russian Futurism."

"In this meticulously-researched, in-depth examination of anarchism and modernism, Gurianova provides a new and compelling interpretation of the early Russian avant-garde. Her study has major implications for our understanding of some of the twentieth century’s most important modernists and is an important contribution to the history and theory of radical political thought."— Allan Antliff, author of Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde. “Gurianova is the first scholar to study the early Russian avant-garde not as a precursor to the Constructivism of the 1920s, but as a distinctive movement in its own right. In this important book, she identifies an “aesthetics of anarchy” that characterized the movement’s politics and poetics—a concept with provocative implications for our understanding of the relationship between word and image. This is a work of original and compelling scholarship that will profoundly alter our understanding of the Russian avant-garde.”— Nancy Perloff, Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles), curator of the exhibit Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde (1910-1917).

"The British Library has recently acquired a superb and representative collection of Russian Futurist books, which form a unique record of a modern movement. Based on this material, this book surveys the complexity of Russian futurism, and proviudes an unrivalled collection of illustrations which highlight developments in theatre, graphic design, and art in the years of flowering, 1912-16"--Back cover