New books about art – Weekend – Kommersant
[ad_1]
“Picasso and environs” by Ivan Aksenov: the world’s first monograph on Picasso
European University Press
Ivan Aksenov is a poet, playwright, theoretician, teacher, ideologist first of futurism and then of constructivism, Meyerhold’s closest associate, translator and popularizer of the Elizabethan drama, and at one time a Chekist. Among the variety of his activities was art criticism. In the summer of 1917, Aksenov published a small monograph on Pablo Picasso in the futuristic publishing house Centrifuge. It was the first book in the world about the famous Franco-Spanish modernist, but no one in Russia or in the world especially noticed it. In the West, Picasso and Vicinities was opened in the 80s, in Russia it is published for the first time – in the form of a reprint edition with comments and a lot of additions. “Neighbourhood” is the key word here. Aksenov writes about the entire history of European art, philosophy, religion, the laws of tragedy, the Russian and French character, the mores of Bohemia, gender relations, constantly moving away from Picasso and returning to him again. This is not so much art criticism as brilliant, evil and incredibly erudite aphoristic prose – a form that perfectly matches the hero of the book. Aksyonov sings of Picasso as the genius of the new baroque – the ecstatic art of a catastrophic era.
Marcin Wiha “Malevich: direction of inspection”
publishing house Jaromir Hladik Press
Translation Elena Rybakova
Marcin Wiha is a Polish writer, essayist and designer. His books “How I fell out of love with design” and “Things that I did not throw away” were published in Russian. In the biography of Malevich, he does not really try himself in the role of an art historian. This is a text written by a design man who refers to the almost forgotten, utopian origins of his profession (quoting Wihu himself: “Things also remember. Lamps – that they were promised victory over the sun. Armchairs – that they exercised in weightlessness”). Because of this, he opens seemingly well-known facts from the history of the avant-garde as new, sincerely surprised by them, which can annoy, or can cause sympathy. He does not write a biography of Malevich, but rather visualizes and then describes it. The book is arranged as a tour of an imaginary exhibition about the inventor of Suprematism: from childhood and the origins of creativity to death and heritage. Moreover, this exhibition is emphatically modern, with multimedia installations and an Instagram account. Vihi’s text is partly a funny literary game, partly a parable about art and fantasy, partly a montage of documents, and partly a completely classic biography of the artist, written with a slightly naive, familiar psychologism.
Eleonora Shafranskaya “Usto Mumin: the fate of the artist in history and culture”
publishing house MSI “Garage”
The book is about one of the most unusual Malevichev’s students (albeit one who broke with the precepts of the teacher) – Alexander Nikolaev, known as Usto Mumin. A Russian, originally from Voronezh, who studied in Moscow at SVOMAS, Nikolaev arrived in 1920 in Turkestan, popular with artists, and was so fascinated by Central Asia that he decided to stay there and completely rebuild his own identity. He converted to Islam, began to wear Uzbek clothes and changed his name to Usto Mumin, which means “True Master”. Mumin wanted to become something like the Soviet Gauguin – a European artist who not only enjoys oriental exoticism, but seeks a new vision in another civilization. His art is a synthesis of modernism, Persian miniature and Quattrocento painting. Sitting in the 1930s, Mumin was not only a banned, but not too revered figure in the Soviet era. Relative fame came to him in the 90s, but a lot of blank spots remained in his biography. The philologist and art critic Eleonora Shafranskaya is trying to fill them in at least a little. Her biography of Nikolaev-Mumin is the fruit of a large archival work, but at the same time it is a very lyrical book, written at the same time without any Zhezeelian vulgarity.
Bernard Requichot “Faustus and Other Texts”
publishing house UFO
Translation Victor Lapitsky
In France, Bernard Requichot is considered one of the main innovators of the post-war avant-garde, but he is practically unknown outside his homeland. This elusive, not too friendly to the viewer artist is often presented as the antagonist of his more successful contemporary – Yves Klein, prone to flashy effects. Having committed suicide in 1962, at the age of 32, Requichot had come a long way: from religious painting through cubism, an abstraction reminiscent of the gloomy Kandinsky, to strange explosive assemblages, which he called “reliquaries”. Already after his death, it was revealed that Requisho wrote texts – something between philosophical prose, diaries, a theoretical commentary on his own art and its continuation in the word. The graphic side plays a big role here: Requisho’s last things are “unreadable letters” – disturbing messages in squiggles addressed to no one. His main work is the unfinished Faustus, a romantic novel about the artist, written in a language reminiscent of Blanchot and Artaud, permeated not with faith, but with deep doubt in the power of art. This book is almost a complete collection of Requisho’s literary heritage; the appendix contains a large text by Roland Barthes about the artist.
Surrealist Games
publishing house Gorodets
Translation Dmitry Shepelev
Published in America in 1991, a book collected by the English popularizer of surrealism, biographer of Alfred Jarry Alistair Brotchi and art critic Mel Gooding. Surrealists, as you know, considered the game the most important activity – a source of new forms of art, an opportunity to break the social order, a tool for releasing the unconscious, no less effective than drugs and sexual experiments. Brotchi and Gooding compiled a guide to the games invented by Breton, Ernst, Dali and their comrades: from automatic writing and Dadaist verse made from cut newspapers, to potato carving and hunting for priests. However, how can almost all surrealist practices be described as games: paradoxical questionnaires, searches for ready-mades, and so on, so that the book turns out to be an introduction to surrealism as such. Brotchi and Gooding are not limited to well-known facts that pass from text to text. In search of all sorts of rarities, they rummaged through the mass of surrealist literature; in addition to the instructions themselves, there are many amusing examples and illustrations. Even if it’s nice to know surrealism, this book is a fun read.
Subscribe to Weekend channel in Telegram
[ad_2]
Source link
