Susan Compton

In December 1912, in their manifesto 'A Slap in the Face of Public Taste' an aggressive group of young Russian artists rebelled against the well-established approach to art of the powerful symbolist generation. They were quickly dubbed 'Futurists' by critics but, in strong contrast to the Italian movement of that name, the Russians rooted their inventions in the distant past, marrying the most modern ideas to the most primitive. They looked for a 'world-from-the-end' Worldbackwards, and gave show more that title to one of a most remarkable series of illustrated books. show less

Illustrated throughout with examples from the British Library's extensive collections, and with a narrative chronology, Russian Avant-Garde Books is an important survey of Russian design and literature of the 1920s and 1930s. It emphasizes continuity with the preceding Futurist years and explores the development of graphic design and photomontage in books and journals about theater and architecture as well as in collections of poetry and prose by avant-garde writers, including the show more Constructivists.

From the February Revolution of 1917 to the Soviet Writers' Conference of 1934, the Russian book was at the forefront of avant-garde movements, notably Mayakovsky's LEF - "Left Front of Art. With inventive typography, the use of photomontage, and graphic styles rivaling political posters, "worker artists" set commercial standards in the design of book covers that have rarely been surpassed.

Among the best-known authors whose early books are represented here are the poets Pasternak, Kruchenykh, and Kamensky; the linguists Brik and Shklovsky; the filmmakers Eisenstein and Vertov; the theoretician Arvatov; and the artists Zdanevich, Rodchenko, Stepanova, and Lavinsky.

Susan Compton is an art historian and curator. She is author of The World Backwards: Russian Futurist Books 1912-16, which remains the standard reference on Russian avantgarde books of that period. show less

Beyond beautiful, this is a fascinating and comprehensive look at Chagall's work for a small Russian Yiddish theater.

One of the best books on the subject.