The avant-garde is the cutting edge of experimentation and artistic innovation in art. Avant-garde art, not yet canonized, not capitalized, not locked up in museum storerooms, problematizes established habits of perception, criticizes conservative forms of communication and communication in society, offering new images of desires, things and relationships. The avant-garde, therefore, is not a separate period in the history of Western European art, but its immanent quality, which actually makes it art. This is a kind of glimpse into the post-history of mankind through an appeal to the experience of collective memory, its pre-history. Therefore, it is always relevant to study the conditions of the possibility of art in the present that open up in it.
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Krusanov A. V. Russian avant-garde: 1907-1932 (Historical review). T. 1. Fighting decade. Book. 2. - M.: New Literary Review, 2010. - 1104 p.
Andrey Krusanov's book is, first of all, the richest historical material, an attempt, as far as possible, to restore the history of the Russian avant-garde in a sequence of steps and events on the basis of almost exhaustive newspaper, magazine and archival material. The interpretation of the artistic events associated with the intense time of 1910-30 is restrained, factual, rather traditional and indistinguishable from the avant-garde myths about itself. The author lays claim to the historical reconstruction of this social movement as a certain system of views, primarily in the social aspect. The merits of the work include an exhaustive story about public speeches, actions and performances of Russian futurists. Numerous statements of artists about themselves act, according to Krusanov, as genuine "testimony" about this most interesting phenomenon, which the author carefully and meticulously collected and cataloged.
2
A. N. Lavrentiev. Varvara Stepanova. Creators of the avant-garde. M., 2009.
The "Amazon" of the Russian avant-garde Varvara Stepanov is mentioned, as a rule, separated by commas with her husband Alexander Rodchenko. In a beautifully illustrated book, the author managed to show that she was an independent artist and theorist, an irreconcilable, principled and bright woman. The author succinctly and clearly presented the main directions of activity, the political and artistic worldview of Stepanova, perhaps more fully than other Russian production artists, who embodied in her work the radical ideas of INKHUK and LEF. The main achievements of Stepanova are associated with her work in the theater of the Sun. Meyerhold and at Tsindel's 1st cotton-printing factory in Moscow, where she designed innovative clothing models and fabric designs, which are still used, for example, in Adidas sports series. But, as Lavrentiev showed, this was not at all what made the great Stepanova. Her artistic ideas are worth much more than any modern design, because she managed to justify the possibility of combining beauty and usefulness in the works of a left-wing artist.
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Andrey Fomenko. Montage, factography, epic. Industrial movement and photography. St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg University, 2007.
The study of the St. Petersburg scientist opens a new page in the understanding of the Russian avant-garde and, above all, production art and factography. The main achievement of the researcher is the analysis of avant-garde art in Soviet Russia in the 1920s, mainly photography, in the inseparable connection of political and artistic revolutionary theories that the most interesting artists of that time tried to combine in their work - the constructivists of the INHUK and LEF circles (the circle of A. Rodchenko, L. Lissitzky and others). They worked within the framework of collective projects aimed at changing social relations, sensuality and everyday life of the new Russian people. Recognizing, following the Russian formalists, the autonomy of artistic phenomena, Fomenko manages to offer an integral comparative analysis of ideological, aesthetic and political strata, representing the late Russian avant-garde as a unique phenomenon, not reducible either to its ancient Russian roots, or to Western modernism, or to the Stalinist style and socialist realism. .
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Krauss R. Authenticity of the avant-garde and other modernist myths. M., Art magazine, 2003.
The book is the result of ten years of research in 1970-80 and is a collection of articles connected by cross-cutting topics and a common methodology, of which the text about the lattice as the main structure of avant-garde works and the problem of authenticity in the avant-garde is of particular interest. The author examines these themes on the material of famous avant-garde artists, from Rodin and Picasso to Giacometti and Richard Serra. The author focuses mainly on the Western avant-garde, and she is mainly interested in the formal aspects of the respective works. The "grid", according to Krauss, is the central matrix of avant-garde art in a formal, meaningful, constructive and psychoanalytic sense. She even gives it a mythological meaning and offers to understand it through the psychoanalytic themes of repression and schizophrenia, which, however, are related not to the personality of the artist, but to the works themselves.
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Hansen-Leve A. Oge. Russian Formalism, M.: Languages of Slavic Culture, 2001.
The fundamental study of the famous Austro-German Slavist and literary critic Hansen-Löwe is not directly devoted to avant-garde art, but to the closest and most adequate theories to it - the Russian formal school, that is, OPOYAZ (V. Shklovsky, Yu. Tynyanov, B. Eichenbaum, etc.). The listed literary critics themselves were, as you know, excellent writers. Therefore, as the central concept around which Hansen-Löwe unfolds an impressive reconstruction of the whole of Russian formalism, he chooses the concept of "estrangement", which simultaneously acts as an artistic device and a means of analyzing avant-garde works. If you want to understand what the avant-garde is in his idea, and at the same time learn how to work with the material in order to be a modern European scientist, you have to master this difficult book.
With very few events take place here - and, as a rule, the media pay attention to pseudo-events, artificially inflated through advertising and due to the ambition of the inflated face. Truly important and valuable humanitarian research, as it were, creeps into the research process, at first they are invisible, and only then it turns out that everyone is already using them. Such is the study of Krusanov. Looking ahead and speaking briefly, this is a conscientiously written and very well prepared book, which is a huge rarity these days.
Because in our country there are practically no newly written high-quality histories of literature: Russian literature of the 19th century, 20th century. or, say, the history of Leningrad literature in 1924-1990. There is nothing, and what remains of socialism can be taken to the trash. There are many different modern studies, but not literature: the history of ice cream, toilets, bicycles, resorts, bachelors, striped fabrics ... Thick, funny translated books, mostly of no use to anyone. And the support ones, i.e. reliable, with an encyclopedic coverage of the histories of literature - no. Because there is no infrastructure necessary to create them. And now one, exemplary one appears - the history of the Russian avant-garde.
3 0 years of exploring the world
In order to fully understand the meaning of the event, I will begin with the history of the publication in question. Andrei Krusanov has been working on studying the world of the Russian avant-garde (MRA) since 1981. Alexander Ivanov has been working on The Appearance of Christ to the People for 20 years, Krusanov for almost 30. Only two volumes of three have been published. The foundation was laid in 1996, when the publishing house "New Literary Review" released the first volume in the first edition. It was a paperback book with a volume of about 300 pages, dedicated to the period 1907 - 1917. In 2003, UFO published the second volume already in two books - the volume of the first was 800 pages, the second - 600, the volume was devoted to the avant-garde five-year plan of 1917-1921. After the impression that this study made, it became clear that it was necessary to go back and expand and deepen the first volume by publishing it again. As a result, in 2010 the first volume (2nd edition), dedicated to 1907 - 1917, appeared in two books - about 800 pages in the first, about 1100 pages - in the second. This is the book I am writing about.
The third volume in 3 books will cover the period 1921 - 1932, but it has not yet been written, although the materials have been collected. Its exit is still beyond the horizon. Three volumes correspond to three stages in the development of the Russian avant-garde world: growth (1907 - 1916), domination (1917 - 1921) and decay (1922 - 1932). It is clear that the choice of the avant-garde for description is due to the fact that work began in the years of stagnation, when the avant-garde was almost banned.
I describe in detail the volumes and terms, so that it is logical to proceed further to assessing the quality of the work, and for this I will make an excursion into the biography. Andrey Krusanov graduated from the Technological Institute in 1981 (and immediately after graduating from his technical university he plunged into the MRA), worked as a chemist-technologist at the Institute of Synthetic Rubber, a researcher at the Institute of Precambrian Geology and Geochronology, and since 1991 he fell off his usual fasteners. Along the way, he was a member of the Gastronomic Saturday group, and in 1983 - 1988. published essays and articles on history in a journal of the same name.
This Precambrian is most appropriate here: the Russian avant-garde Krusanov studies precisely as a geological period, as sedimentary and volcanogenic strata, as stromatolites and oncolites. Hence, firstly, a clear orientation towards chronology, the reconstruction of the history of the Russian avant-garde as a sequence of events - without attempts to replace history with a structural-typological approach or post-structuralist amusements. Krusanov is a positivist, the starting (and final) point of his knowledge is empirical facts. Naturally, the sections have introductions that talk about the tasks that the avant-garde faced, analyze possible ways to solve problems, and then study which options were implemented and by whom. So at the micro level, a deductive method was used: from theoretically possible options to practice.
And there is only one theoretical reasoning in the book - it is connected with the meaning of the main term. As Krusanov explains in a short preface, “Russian avant-garde” for him is not a concept, but a name, which determined the selection principle and explains why this or that phenomenon was included in the book or not.
O volume taken
By the way, following this path, it was possible to build a model of an art object, structurally ordered in such a way as to theoretically outline ways of turning it into an object of “anti-art” or avant-garde, i.e. destruction of the traditional form, reversal of individual features, replacing them with opposite ones. Let's say, sound for silence, objective image - for non-objective, mixing of colors - for juxtaposition of pure tones, understandable text - for abracadabra. And only then, from the height of the theoretical model of the possibilities of the destruction of the form, to make a deductive transition to specific phenomena.
In this way, unrealized (or later realized) possibilities could be identified and new phenomena could be discovered that should be attributed to the avant-garde. First of all, this refers to the theater, to the activities of V. Meyerhold (the production of Blok's Puppet Show is a typical avant-garde phenomenon, including the rejection of stage illusion and the fury of indignant spectators) and N. Evreinov (monodrama as a result of the impact of the principles of impressionism on dramatic art), Krusanov simply did not have the theoretical means to recognize which as precisely the avant-garde. Therefore, by the way, the theater as an art form is completely absent in the first volume, and this is a significant gap in the book.
True, the production of "Puppet Show" at the theater of V. Komissarzhevskaya formally refers to December 30, 1906, and the "geochronological" countdown began with Krusanov from 1907, but one could make an exception for one day due to the importance of this production for "the Russian history of the destruction of traditional forms”, which, in fact, is the essence of the avant-garde.
Secondly, Krusanov's book is characterized by an orientation towards compiling the most complete list of events - not from already published books, but from primary sources - newspapers and archival materials. Related to this is the list of publications that he "activated": from "Birzhevye Vedomosti" and "Apollo" to the journal "The Life of Psychoneurological Students". The maximum completeness of the list of events is especially important for the first stage of growth - so as not to miss points of growth and not to miss the real diversity of manifestations of innovation in painting, literature and music.
Hence the volume of books describing the world of the Russian avant-garde: Krusanov introduced many new facts into scientific circulation. The method is very simple - looking through de visu newspapers for 1907-1932. During this twenty-five years, Krusanov studied at least two thousand titles of periodicals, each for many years. I remember that when I was working on a book about K. S. Merezhkovsky (published in 2003), then, restoring the history of the pedophilic scandal of 1914, I regularly worked in the newspaper department of the National Library of Russia. And whenever I came to the newspaper department, Andrey Krusanov was already sitting there, and in front of him lay a mountain of newspaper files.
At dull conscientiousness against the weaving of words
Conscientiousness is the main property of Krusanov the researcher. It is clear that no one would have paid attention to the fact that Krusanov missed the Nizhny Novgorod Volgar or the same Life of Psychoneurological Students. One cannot even expect a reproach that such editions have been omitted even from the most caustic reviewer. However, here a phenomenon arises that is known literally to a few: it is the excitement of competing with oneself (there is no one else to compete with) in an effort to cover everything.
Usually conscientiousness is associated with the epithet "dull". A man sits and dejectedly looks through newspaper after newspaper - 10, 20, 30 years old. But again, few people know the phenomenon of conscientiousness, reckless, driven by ambition: the researcher sets the task to embrace the immensity and does it. This is the timing of the study. By the way, in Soviet times, scientific work at the Institutes of Russian (IRLI, Pushkin House) and World Literature (IMLI) was carried out by a sector or even a department. And here is one person. However, in Soviet times, such a study of the avant-garde, i.e. anti-realism, was unthinkable in principle.
One can speak of such industriousness today as a surprising exception, since essayism, weaving of words, as witty as possible, imitation of omniscience and the technology of quickly writing beautiful, but random theories based on what one does not have to collect and search for months in newspaper departments and archives, have become established. and what has already been published and is at hand, in the home library or on the Internet, which has already corrupted many.
By the way, the modern system of grants, into which many fit in, is directly pushing to hack work: since you need to quickly report for the received grant, everyone tries to choose a topic that can be “learned” in a year and a half, write something quickly, successfully report, close the topic and immediately open a new one. The system of grants has given practically no increase in knowledge to our humanities; moreover, it is destroying it. This circumstance is emphasized by Krusanov's many years of work, which has nothing to do with grants. Something serious can be created only by being completely free.
To art of england the size of england
If we compare the first (300 pages) and the second (1900 pages) editions of the first volume of The Russian Avant-Garde, it becomes clear in which direction the book developed. First, the number of facts covered has increased, which can be indirectly estimated by the number of notes (bibliographic references). In the first edition there are 1088 of them, in the second - 5480, i.e. five times more. In connection with the abundance of facts, we like to say that we should not make a map of England the size of England, we should not fill up with factual information ... In fact, it is factual information on the history of culture that we lack in all areas of humanitarian knowledge.
Secondly, the number of quotations from self-descriptive texts of the Russian avant-garde (manifestos, declarations, etc.), as well as from articles and reviews, has significantly increased in the second edition. The size of these quotations has also increased, some newspaper texts are published in full. Hence, another feature of the book is the symbiosis of history, written with the installation of the maximum completeness of the list of events, and an anthology. Taking into account the fact that most of the sources are only in two or three libraries in Russia (in Moscow and St. Petersburg), Krusanov's book has an obvious educational character. Although this is precisely the scientifically written history of the avant-garde, and not a textbook .
Andrey Krusanov. Russian Avant-Garde: 1907-1932 (Historical Review). In 3 vols. T. 2. Futuristic revolution (1917-1921). Book. 1, 2. - M.: New literary review, 2003, 808 p., 608 p.
Long live the revolutionary
ny anarcho-futurism!
Long live the fire!
Long live the world
riot!
From the anonymous Letter to Comrade Futurists
The second volume of Andrey Krusanov's fundamental research on the history of the Russian avant-garde was published seven years after the first one. Then, in 1996, it was a big event - despite the small volume, the book promised to dispel the mass rumors about the mysterious origin and rapid ascent to Olympus of Russian parvenu from art. The first volume, however, was limited to the debut decade of Russian avant-garde artists from 1907 to 1916. The second volume is dedicated to their finest hour - the era of futuristic revolutions in art and politics from 1917 to 1921.
The enduring value of the monograph is that the author acts in the exact opposite of his heroes. Their Herostratus temperament comes up against the unshakable academic training of the historian: the reader will not find a single aesthetic “for”, not a single moral “against” on the pages of Krusan's research. The author does not decide the fate of the avant-garde, does not make historical judgments. His credo: "... as is customary in science, to search for patterns and the internal mechanism of past events." His pathos is to collect as many historical documents as possible and systematize them so that the facts speak for themselves.
The structure of the second volume is simple and monumental: the first book covers the capital life of avant-garde artists (St. Petersburg and Moscow), the second - the provincial geography of their activities. Accordingly, in the first one, we are talking about the relationship of the avant-garde artists with the authorities, in the second - about the perception of left-wing art by the people. In the metropolitan section - about artistic organizations and political patrons of Russian futurists, in the provincial section - about their opponents, admirers and followers. True, in fairness it must be added that such a division is conditional. The theme of the struggle for power is a leitmotif in both books: in order to realize their claim for the future, the futurists, by hook or by crook, subordinated the present to themselves.
The futurists, perhaps, failed to change the course of history, but they certainly left a visible mark on themselves. Domestic archives are replete with minutes of meetings, reports on discussions, posters for exhibitions, reviews, memoirs, newspaper feuilletons, manifestos - in other words, all kinds of documents, according to which a diligent historian can now recreate a futuristic mystery buff in faces and colors. The entire numerous avant-garde brethren - sumists, Olympians, imagists, biocosmists, nichevoks, fuists, zaumniks, luminists, prezantists and non-objectives - in a word, without exception, all reformers of Russian art, whether they are poets, artists, directors or musicians who signed a futuristic charter and not those who signed it are present in Krusanov's panorama. The inimitable charm of this audience, and indeed the whole atmosphere of a futuristic feast, Krusanov conveys with endless quotations. From a newspaper article: "To prove the truth that a healthy psyche can only be in a healthy body, one of the futurists did not find anything better than to split two strong wooden boards on his own forehead." Or here is an eyewitness account of the decoration of the May Day holiday by the Futurists in 1918: "The Futurists brilliantly coped with the task. They defiled the city on the first day. They drew a lot of cyclops and orangutans." The historian himself, as already mentioned, does not give any assessments of avant-garde searches, but only traces the streams of mass stereotypes about futurists - "futurists-hooligans", "futurists-Bolsheviks", "futurists - anarchist renegades", "futurists - builders of a beautiful future" .
The only thing that Krusanov rebels against is modern art history myths, primarily about the Bolshevik leaven of Russian futurism and the intensified persecution of left-wing art in the early 1920s. According to the documents, neither is true. Krusanov shows that the entry of the Futurists into power was the result of the Bolshevik need for cheap propaganda power and - sic! - personal sympathy for Lunacharsky's futurism. Had someone else been in the rank of commissar of public education, the Bytolyans would have been included in the long lists of creators of degenerate art already in 1918. As for the persecution, the soft removal of the Left from the forefront of proletarian art cannot be compared with the mass executions of class enemies perpetrated by the Bolsheviks. The entire liquidation of futurism, Krusanov convinces, boiled down to the following: "they will invite them to the department, they will reprimand them, and they will let them go in peace." Such delicacy of the Cheka should have been appreciated by Mayakovsky, who wrote the following lines in 1918: “You will find the White Guard against the wall. Have you forgotten Rafael? Have you forgotten Rastrelli?
