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.

As Dmitri Sarabianov tells us in this lively book, Russia first turned its face to Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century. By the start of the nineteenth century, European ideas had been assimilated into the rich substratum of Russian culture and a unique amalgam began to emerge. Indigenous subjects became the focus of Russian art. In 1870, the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions, whose members were known as the Wanderers, was founded. Its dual purpose was to educate the people through traveling exhibitions and to work for social reform. At the turn of the century, the dominant mode was Symbolism. But Modernist tendencies and other currents were gaining strength. These diverse aesthetics had to be rethought in 1917, when the Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power. Functional, applied design came to the forefront. It is here, with the close of the most brilliant and innovative period in Russia's artistic life so far, that Professor Sarabianov ends his account of the pivotal years that led to the dazzling abstract, geometrical breakthroughs of Russian art. -- From publisher's description.

In 1911 Vasily Kandinsky published the first edition of ‘On the Spiritual in Art’, a landmark modernist treatise in which he sought to reframe the meaning of art and the true role of the artist. For many artists of late Imperial Russia – a culture deeply influenced by the regime’s adoption of Byzantine Orthodoxy centuries before – questions of religion and spirituality were of paramount importance. As artists and the wider art community experimented with new ideas and interpretations at the dawn of the twentieth century, their relationship with ‘the spiritual’ – broadly defined – was inextricably linked to their roles as pioneers of modernism. This diverse collection of essays introduces new and stimulating approaches to the ongoing debate as to how Russian artistic modernism engaged with questions of spirituality in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Ten chapters from emerging and established voices offer new perspectives on Kandinsky and other familiar names, such as Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Larionov, and Natalia Goncharova, and introduce less well-known figures, such as the Georgian artists Ucha Japaridze and Lado Gudiashvili, and the craftswoman and art promoter Aleksandra Pogosskaia. Prefaced by a lively and informative introduction by Louise Hardiman and Nicola Kozicharow that sets these perspectives in their historical and critical context, Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art: New Perspectives enriches our understanding of the modernist period and breaks new ground in its re-examination of the role of religion and spirituality in the visual arts in late Imperial Russia. Of interest to historians and enthusiasts of Russian art, culture, and religion, and those of international modernism and the avant-garde, it offers innovative readings of a history only partially explored, revealing uncharted corners and challenging long-held assumptions.

Russian Through Art: For Intermediate to Advanced Students develops all four language skills while enhancing students’ cultural knowledge through exposure to Russian visual arts. Each of the six thematically organised chapters is accompanied by online resources, available at https://ccle.ucla.edu/course/view/russnart. These supporting materials include online lectures, readings, audio and video clips and assignments of varying levels of difficulty, starting with description and narration tasks and progressing to discussion and debate. Each chapter contains a number of task-based and project-based assignments. The book and website’s modular design make it easy to adapt this comprehensive resource to different course needs and different levels. By the end of the course students will have broadened their active vocabulary, enhanced their grammatical skills while familiarising themselves with Russian art in its various representations and periods.

A major resource, collecting essays, articles, manifestos, and works of art by Russian artists and critics in the early twentieth century, available again at the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution

The author discusses how Russian art has evolved from icon painting through to Socialist Realism. He examines the work of approximately 50 contemporary artists, all of whom are living and working in the Soviet Union and conveys a general view of life in the USSR.

Defining Russian Graphic Arts explores the energy and innovation of Russian graphic arts during the period which began with the explosion of artistic creativity initiated by Serge Diaghilev at the end of the nineteenth century and which ended in the mid-1930s with Stalin's devastating control over the arts. This beautifully illustrated book represents the development of Russian graphic arts as a continuum during these forty years, and places Suprematism and Constructivism in the context of the other major, but lesser-known, manifestations of early twentieth-century Russian art. The book includes such diverse categories of graphic arts as lubki (popular prints), posters and book designs, journals, music sheets, and ephemera. It features not only standard types of printed media and related studies and maquettes, but also a number of watercolor and gouache costume and stage designs. About 100 works borrowed from the National Library of Russia and the Research Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia-many seen here for the first time outside of Russia-are featured in this book. Additional works have been drawn from the Zimmerli Art Museum, The New York Public Library, and from other public and private collections. Together they provide a rare opportunity to view and learn about a wide variety of artists, from the acclaimed to the lesser known. This book is a companion volume to an exhibition appearing at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University.