Title & Author:

Laboratory of dreams : the Russian avant-garde and cultural experiment / edited by John E. Bowlt and Olga Matich.

Publication:

Description:

xvii, 359 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-342) and index.
pt. 1. Life creation: the search for a new body: The transfiguration of cannibals: Fedorov and the avant-garde / Irene Masing-Delic -- Body beautiful: the artistic search for the perfect physique / John E. Bowlt -- Remaking the bed: Utopia in daily life / Olga Matich -- pt. 2. Scientific discovery and cultural innovation: Media fantasies and penetrating vision: some links between x-rays, the microscope, and film / Yuri Tsivian -- Tsiolkovsky as moment in the prehistoy of the avant-garde / Michael Holquist -- Toward an exact aesthetics: Pavel Florensky and the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences / Nicoletta Misler -- Development or rebuilding: views of academician T.D. Lysenko in the context of the late avant-garde / Boris Gasparov -- pt. 3. Word and image: manipulating semiotic systems: The sacred profane: image and word in the paintings of Mikhail Larionov / John E. Malmstad -- The profane made sacred: the theology of the Oberiu Declaration / Sarah Pratt -- pt. 4. Socialist realism as radical experiment: The birth of socialist realism from the spirit of the Russian avant-garde / Boris Groys -- Dmitrii Furmanov's Chapaev and the aesthetics of the Russian avant-garde / Ronald Vroon -- Platonov, socialist realm, and the legacy of the avant-garde / Thomas Seifrid -- Eisenstein's poetics: dialogical or totalitarian? / Alexander Zholkovsky -- Postscript: The avant-garde and the retrospectivists as players in the evolution of Stalinist culture / Katerina Clark.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

Drawing upon social history, material culture, and the sciences, this is the first interdisciplinary study of the Russian avant-garde, a brilliant constellation of personalities and ideas that changed the course of Russian culture just before and after the First World War. Though different in creative systems and applications, the artists and writers of the Russian avant-garde shared certain fundamental attitudes toward the purpose of culture, believing, for example, that art had the power to change "life," even as defined by science. The essays discuss the many refractions of that common denominator, treating the avant-garde not as a purely artistic and literary movement, but as a multifarious phenomenon that included cultural experimentation normally considered beyond the confines of the avant-garde.
In one way or another, all the contributors demonstrate that the artists and writers of the Russian avant-garde attempted to make the word flesh by restructuring human life, for the avant-garde not only generated new configurations of geometries and dissonant phonemes, but also heralded the transformations of the world by seeking to overcome physical, even biological barriers.

Resources:
Table of contents
Table of contents
Publisher description

ISBN:

0804725535 (cloth ; alk. paper)
9780804725538 (cloth ; alk. paper)
0804736529
9780804736527

Subject:

Avant-garde (Aesthetics) Russia History 1801-1917.
Avant-garde (Aesthetics)
Civilization
Intellectual life
Avant-garde.
Kunst.
Cultuur.
Avant-garde (Aesthetics) Russia 20th century.
Avant-garde (esthétique) Russie Congrès.
Russia Civilization 1801-1917.
Soviet Union Civilization.
Russia Intellectual life 20th century.
Soviet Union Intellectual life 1917-1970.
Russie Civilisation 1801-1917.
URSS Civilisation.
URSS Vie intellectuelle 1917-1970.
Russia
Soviet Union
Russia Civilization 20th century.
Russie Vie intellectuelle 1917- ...
Geschichte 1917-1970

Form/genre:

History
Books.

Added entries:

Bowlt, John E.
Matich, Olga.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 127254
Call No.: ID DK246.L33; ID:97-B129
Status: Available