1

Lev Kuleshov
The Death Ray, 1925
EDITED BY MARGARITA TUPITSYN

MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFÍA l MADRID

THE MIT PRESS l CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS l LONDON, UK
In the exhibition Russian Dada 1914–1924, the Museo Nacional Centro
de Arte Reina Sofía focuses on an episode that is little known in Spain
but was extremely influential for the development of artistic modern-
ism: the impact of Dadaism in Russia during the years leading up to the
Revolution and immediately following it.
In a context of enormous social and political upheaval both before
and after the outbreak of revolution, a radical modernism germinated
in the Russian artistic milieu and permeated the rest of the continent.
These tendencies have already received attention from the Museo Na-
cional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in exhibitions such as Rodchenko and
Popova: Defining Constructivism (2009) and The Russian Avant-Garde
Book (2013).
Dada was born in 1916 as a disorderly response rather than a move-
ment with a sense of purpose, something that undoubtedly distances it
from the programmatic nature of both the artistic avant-gardes and the
political proposals that fed the totalitarianisms of the time. It emerged
in a Zurich that was sheltering exiles, war refugees, deserters, and con-
spirators, one of them Vladimir Lenin, whose home was just yards from
the Cabaret Voltaire, the nerve center of the origins of Dada.
The chronology of this exhibition thus starts with the outbreak of
the Great War in 1914, continues with the birth of Dada, and ends with
the death of the Bolshevik leader, an event that was to lead on to the ori-
gins of Stalinism and its subsequent demand for an academicist, realist,
and antimodernist propaganda, far removed from the artistic produc-
tion that had put Russia at the most radical forefront of the avant-garde.
The transnational character of the Dada experiment responds to a
loss of confidence in the values established by the nationalist move-
ments of the nineteenth century. It proceeds by challenging logic, es-
tablished verbal and visual languages, and the values they represent. Its
members therefore declared, “The signatories of this manifesto live in
France, the United States, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium,
etc., but have no nationality.”
Nevertheless, the various local branches of the movement were to
have characteristics of their own, and it was from this specificity that
they made their contributions to a modern art defined precisely as a
response to the debates on identity inherited from the previous cen-
tury, and as a result of weariness at forms of art seen as the products of
a world in decline.
In the case of Russia, several critics of the time pointed out the Da-
daist tendencies of the Russian avant-garde in its radical separation of
form and content. Even Roman Jakobson came to speak of the October
Revolution as the culmination of the political aspirations of Dada.
What is beyond doubt is that there was a creative seedbed in Russia,
where the pioneering antiacademic experiments of Kazimir Malevich, El
Lissitzky (the pseudonym of Lazar Markovich Lissitzky) and Aleksandr
Rodchenko served as a spur for those who were drawn to negation, irony,
and the absurd as radical forms of response in a period marked, to use
Friedrich Nietzsche’s term, by the “transvaluation of all values.”
With more than two hundred paintings, drawings, collages, photo-
graphs, books, and films, the exhibition presents an in-depth survey of
the period, arranged in several sections: abstraction, collage, and the
readymade as mechanisms for contesting reason; revolutionary themes
and the movement toward internationalism; and the interactions be-
tween Russia and the European Dadaists, with special reference to the
groups in Berlin and Paris.
Russian Dada 1914–1924 comes at a most opportune moment. With
the new century, the commemoration in 2018 of the end of the World
War I, and the reactivation of the debate on the October Revolution
with its centenary in 2017, the context seems ripe for using today’s in-
struments and methods to rethink the contribution of the arts in the
agitated Russian scene of the first decades of the twentieth century.

ÍÑIGO MÉNDEZ DE VIGO Y MONTOJO

MINISTER OF EDUCATION, CULTURE AND
SPORT AND GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN
Perhaps it is the disappearance of grand narratives that has brought
certain chronicles out of the shadows where they previously lurked. It
may be that Russian constructivism, socialist realism, and the trail left
by both throughout the twentieth century have left earlier experiments
in a no-man’s-land, even though they were laden with significance at a
particular point in history. One such case is without doubt the revela-
tion of the political component of the absurd in Russian Dadaism dur-
ing the first decades of the last century.
“Dada,” despite its legendary aleatory origin, means literally “yes
yes” in Russian, a fact that appears above all to announce a Nietzsche-
an affirmation in the initial formulation of Russian Dadaism. Its sense
seems to be that of a forthright and radical declaration, a transforma-
tive harbinger of Bergsonian vitality. However, in the canonical narra-
tives that locate the emergence of Dada in various cities (Zurich, New
York, Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Hanover, and even a brief episode in Barce-
lona) sufficient attention has never been paid to the phenomenon in the
context of pre- and postrevolutionary Russia. Nevertheless, the Dadaist
reaction to bourgeois culture, which elevates a subordinate language to
the forefront precisely amid the tragic context of the First World War,
is something inherent to the October Revolution. The politicization of
avant-garde culture was already imminent and inevitable in the 1910s,
as was soon to be demonstrated by surrealism. Roman Jakobson would
situate Dada at the origin of the political vindications from which the
revolutionary phenomenon arose. However, the paradoxical Dada simul-
taneously denied this trust in the Revolution. The movement was, in a
way, stillborn. As Victor Tupitsyn points out in the current volume, “in
the cultural space, Dadaism is a kind of death drive, and in that sense it
is not without its appeal, especially when combined with the ‘theatrical
drive’ that balances the relationship between Eros and Thanatos. And if
that is the case, theatricality in moderate doses is still necessary for visual
art—at least so it can ‘seem’ alive. This might already have become a part
of the postmodern cultural landscape, especially since nostalgia for Da-
daism manifested itself in the second half of the twentieth century.”
Dada is inevitably read from the perspective of the recovery of its
strategies from the late 1950s onward in various contexts, especially the
United States. Those experiments with aura, object, language, and the
disappearance of the author under the impenetrable aegis of Duchamp
might have overshadowed others that were silenced by the passage of
time and the weight of historical events (Stalinism and its deviation
from the destiny of the October Revolution), appearing too isolated,
ultralocal, or derivative to be taken into consideration. And yet a whole
series of practices is found in Russian Dada that undoubtedly revitalize
and offer a more polyhedrous vision of a certain face of modernism,
possibly—yet another paradox—the most antimodern of them all and
the one that most violently denied the idea of progress inherited from
the Enlightenment.
Russian Dada had first to escape from the watertight avant-garde
compartment that futurism and its local evolution, cubo-futurism, had
become. And while the urge to “create something new out of those
residues” (Kurt Schwitters) found its pulse in international Dadaism
through collage, one of the chief contributions of the Russian variant
was undoubtedly the development of photomontage as a means of re-
trieving the literal image from the hegemony of the pictorial. In Russia,
as Kazimir Malevich recalled in his 1933 autobiography, everything that
was not assimilated to nature was regarded as futurism. In this respect,
the experience of the reception of the avant-garde in Russia was not
so different from that in Spain and Portugal (recently analyzed at the
Museo Reina Sofía in the exhibition Pessoa: All Art Is a Form of Lit-
erature), where the penetration of avant-garde discourses soon drifted
into a confusion of heteronyms and isms, with a tendency to simplify
phenomena originating beyond the national borders and, at the same
time, to complicate them with local nuances and ramifications, a case
in point being ultraism in Spain.
Photomontage, developed in Germany’s Weimar Republic by the
likes of George Grosz and John Heartfield, meanwhile gave a new im-
pulse and significance to the extraordinary proliferation of images in
the context of an incipient culture of mass consumption. The photo-
montages of El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Gustav Klutsis
represent the capacity of these images to intervene with timely and
renovatory urgency in the public sphere, revealing the extent to which
Russian Dada, which originated in 1914 and so predated the expatri-
ate experiments centered on the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, also pre-
cedes the later axiom that art must be useful, new, and revolutionary.
The Dada experiment is thus a laboratory, a testing ground onto which
graphic design, painting, photography, magazine editing, stage design,
advertising, architecture, and illustration all come into play in a huge
upheaval or, as Hans Arp put it, “total pandemonium.” This ability to
move among media, together with the attempt to integrate art and
life within the doubly affirmative “yes yes,” allows us to speak of Rus-
sian Dada as a local and derivative phenomenon that was nevertheless
extraordinarily influential in its context. The path traced by Russian
Dada from 1914 to 1924 is the one leading from the upheaval to the proj-
ect and from the tabula rasa to the new order.
It is surprising to discover in this exhibition how many different pre-
figurations of Dada existed in Russia under different denominations.
On the one hand was the transrationalism and “shiftology” of Aleksei
Kruchenykh, who gave a pioneering assessment in 1912 of the way in
which the experience of the emotions was moving faster than human
thought and speech. The first metamorphoses of this new panorama
emerged precisely from poetry, so that the origins of Bolshevism, that
attempt to reach a degree zero in history, can be located in the analy-
sis of language and its reduction to minimal units. The members of the
“41°” group thus presented themselves as “the founders of the word”
in 1919 at the Fantastic Pub in Tbilisi, a Caucasian emulation of the
Cabaret Voltaire. On the other hand, the “everythingism” of Mikhail Le
Dantiu and Ilia Zdanevich and the apparently contradictory “nothing-
ism” of the TvorNichBuro (Creative Office of the Nothingists) decried
that it was in the paradox between the visual and the verbal, “where
words fail,” that the strategies of established power were revealed, with
the slow penetration of discourses to the innermost core of each hu-
man being. This was an experience of totality, a positive and affirmative
overcoming of reason as it had so far been understood, and an enshrin-
ing of change as a radical value. Dada, that is, but imbued with a confi-
dent pragmatism alien to its Central European kin, which concentrated
more on a nihilism that even led to complacency and, on occasion, to
the reactionary.
With this exhibition, the Museo Reina Sofía embarks on a nonca-
nonical narrative inserted in a peculiar context. Russian Dada must
be understood in its specificity as an exceptional participant in what
Immanuel Wallerstein and Boaventura de Sousa Santos have more re-
cently termed the “semiperipheries,” or those spaces able to mediate in
contacts between the center and the periphery. While Russia lay after
1917 at the heart of the debates and the most atavistic fears of the trium-
phant bourgeoisie that had emerged from the revolutions of the nine-
teenth century, it remained one of the historically most complex spaces
for negotiation between East and West, between opposed cosmogonies
and antithetical worldviews, and between reaction and revolution. For
what other than this is the role that Russia has occupied, and continues
to occupy, in the collective unconscious of Central and Southern Eu-
rope? How can it possibly still be regarded from Western Europe as an
“other,” threatening and at the same time seductive? If Jakobson con-
sidered that the October Revolution was the culmination of the politi-
cal aspirations of Dada, how should we read the legacy of that initial
moment from the standpoint of the present?
The advances that had taken place in nonobjective painting in the
years before the chronological period of this exhibition were the result,
on the one hand, of the dead end facing a cubism and futurism that had
turned academic and, on the other hand, of the lyrical derivations of ex-
pressionism. While they had managed to undermine age-old principles
of the representation of reality and the emotional implications of rela-
tions between apparently autonomous colors and forms, the Dadaists
were moreover able to criticize their self-absorption and their surren-
der to the dynamics of taste, both components of bourgeois ideology.
We therefore wish now to transcend the cultural logic of early social-
ism, materialized in the grand image and discourse of the omnipresent
constructivism, through the analysis of the illogical, the negation of the
inherited logos, which appears as one of the key elements in the found-
ing moments of what Jorge Semprún described as the most influential
experiment of the twentieth century.

MANUEL BORJA-VILLEL
DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEO NACIONAL
CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFÍA

Osip Brik
Scrapbook “Dada,” ca. 1923–1924
Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 1917
Gustav Klutsis
Design for the billboard Storm:
Strike on Counterrevolution,
ca. 1918
PREFACE

Russian Dada is the first major exhibition

to approach Russian avant-garde art from
the perspective of the canons associated
with the international Dada movement. The
exhibited works gathered from Russian and
European museums and private collections
were produced at the height of Dada’s
flourishing, between World War I and the
death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924. Like the
Dadaists, the selected Russian artists strove
for internationalism, fused the verbal and
visual, and engaged in eccentric practices
and pacifist actions, including outrageous
performances and antiwar campaigns. The
exhibition emphasizes the art’s multimedia
character and its political implications during
the world war, the two Russian revolutions,
and the change in leadership from Lenin to
Joseph Stalin.
In his seminal book Dada: Art and Anti-
Art, Hans Richter states, “Curiously enough,
Dada tendencies seem to have made their
first appearance in Russia, where the
Futurist influence was still very strong.”1 A
decade later, the first Western publication
of works by critic Nikolai Khardzhiev, a
contemporary of Kazimir Malevich, would
reverberate with Richter’s account by
identifying the proto-Dadaist characteristics
in the first transrational opera, Victory over
the Sun (1913). Much earlier in the century,
the formalist critic Roman Jakobson and art
historian Abram Efros had linked the aesthetic
radicalism of Dada, as manifested in Marcel
Duchamp’s Fountain of 1917, with the October

1. Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (London: Thames and

Hudson, 1965), 198
Revolution of the same year. And yet, despite these acknowledgments
of what Leah Dickerman designates “dada tactics,”2 as well as Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti’s conclusion (during his visit in 1914) that Russians
were “false futurists,” the term futurism has stuck to the prerevolutionary
avant-garde.
Russian Dada begins by picking up on these references to the proto-
Dadaist strategies of those avant-gardists who adamantly refused to
associate with Italian futurism. They replaced futurists with budetliane
(men of the future) and engaged in a critique of Italian futurism’s
fidelity to urbanism, rationality, and technological progress. Alogical and
transrational creativity, saturated with laughter and perverse parody,
became the operational devices they used to shock the public, disparage
traditional artistic and social values, and mock technical skills. Perhaps
the budetliane’s most important gesture was their rejection of Western
modernism’s celebration of originality and individual authorship, values
they replaced with a proto-Dadaist model of multistylistic and collective
practice coined everythingism. In the atmosphere of this theoretical
strategy, Ivan Kliun, Mikhail Larionov, Malevich, Aleksei Morgunov,
Ivan Puni, Olga Rozanova, Vladimir Tatlin, Kirill Zdanevich, and
Ilia Zdanevich exhibited together in the first resonant, antiacademic
exhibitions, introducing nonobjective art, paintings with assemblage,
reliefs made from found objects, and installation works built using ready-
mades. These forms of production proved to be instrumental for Dada.
Like the European Dadaists, Russian avant-gardists loathed and
suffered from World War I, whose outbreak in 1914 intensified the
awareness of the political significance of their cultural revolt. Aleksei
Kruchenykh, Malevich, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Rozanova prompted
antiwar campaigns, creating posters and collages that denounced
militarism and German brutality. The February and October Revolutions,
which took place in the last phase of World War I, unshackled the leftist
and anarchist factions to which many avant-gardists belonged. Together
they could now fertilize real politics and reach out to members of the
international art community who shared their views. Among these, the
Dadaists were frontrunners. In the revolutionary period, the artists
and poets who are united in Russian Dada engaged in parallel practices
based on reason and antireason, sense and nonsense, rational design
and chance-based collages, absurdist and political theater, mocking and

2. Leah Dickerman, “Introduction,” in Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris,
ed. Leah Dickerman (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2006), 7.
propagandistic cinema. In this kind of formal and semantic dichotomy,
Russian da, da (yes, yes) was converted into nyet, nyet (no, no), averting the
clear-cut consumption of Bolshevik ideology and the political specificity
of public spectacles as well as refracting an uncritical submission to
positivist constructivism and to a purist form of suprematism.
Before Lenin returned to Russia in 1917, he was a frequent visitor to
Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, the founding site of Dada. His death in 1924
coincided with the end of Dada and the beginning of surrealism. In Russia,
this was a turning point from the hyperproductive and multifaceted
revolutionary epoch to the rise of cultural and political rivalry, the
consequences of which were no laughing matter. The budetliane concept
of a ray as a metaphor of gushing new visions, converted by Mayakovsky
into a disseminator of the revolutionary spirit, was reshaped into “the
death ray,” a device of danger and suppression.
Russian Dada also builds a long, protracted bridge between the
Dadaists and those Russian artists who visited or lived in Paris, Berlin,
and New York in the early 1920s. Natalia Goncharova, El Lissitzky,
Larionov, Puni, Sergei Sharshun, and Ilia Zdanevich joined various
Dadaist factions, exhibited in Berlin’s Der Sturm gallery (a staunch
promoter of Dada), and organized and participated in key Dadaist events,
such as the soirée The Bearded Heart (1923). Lissitzky commenced his
activities by mechanically reproducing Prouns as well as the designs he
made at the time of Victory over the Sun, restaged in Vitebsk in 1920.
As a result, he was able to effectively popularize Malevich’s and his
own mode of nonobjectivity and globalize the characters of this iconic
proto-Dadaist performance. Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International
became the Dadaists’ epitome of antiart, and Mayakovsky and critic Osip
Brik’s European trips made Dada publications and reproductions of key
works available in Russia. Katherine S. Dreier, the legendary collector
committed to promoting Dada in New York, considered the Soviet avant-
garde highly relevant and influential for her agenda. The iconoclast David
Burliuk, who arrived in New York in 1921 after escaping the Bolsheviks’
purge of anarchists, joined Dreier and her artists, and soon his paintings
were displayed in her apartment next to Duchamp’s. These and other
examples of the Russians’ integration into Dada milieus, along with their
correspondence with Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, and Francis Picabia,
compellingly demonstrate the legitimacy of Russian Dada.
MARGARITA TUPITSYN
GUEST CURATOR AND EDITOR
CONTENTS

20 PUTTING
RUSSIA ON THE
DADA MAP
Margarita Tupitsyn

172 DADA IN
CYRILLIC
Victor Tupitsyn

206 HUMOR AS
PARODY,
ECCENTRISM, AND
SATIRE IN SOVIET
226 ANARCHISM AND
THE RUSSIAN
FILM AFTER
WORLD WAR I
ARTISTIC Natasha Kurchanova

AVANT-GARDE
Olga Burenina-Petrova
259 ILIA ZDANEVICH 285 ALEKSEI KRUCHENYKH
NATALIA GONCHAROVA AND IN LOCKSTEP WITH THE MARCH
EVERYTHINGISM, 1913 OF TIME (FUTURISTS AND THE
OCTOBER REVOLUTION), N. D.
263 ILIA ZDANEVICH TO FILIPPO
TOMMASO MARINETTI, 1914 289 ALEKSEI KRUCHENYKH
DECLARATION NO. 6 ON THE
265 OLGA ROZANOVA ARTS TODAY (THESES), 1925
THE BASIS OF THE NEW CREATION
AND THE REASONS WHY IT IS 291 BORIS ARVATOV
MISUNDERSTOOD, 1913 SPEECH CREATION (ON
“TRANSRATIONAL” POETRY),
269 IVAN PUNI AND KSENIA 1923
BOGUSLAVSKAIA
LEAFLET, 1915 294 NOTHINGISTS
DOG’S BOX, OR THE WORKS
271 NIKOLAI PUNIN OF THE CREATIVE BUREAU OF
APARTMENT NO. 5, 1930s NOTHINGISTS IN 1920–1921

273 KAZIMIR MALEVICH 301 VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY

2ND DECLARATION OF AND OSIP BRIK
THE SUPREMATISTS, FROM OUR LINGUISTIC WORK, 1923
THE “DECLARATIONS OF
HUMAN RIGHTS,” 1918 303 LEF
DECLARATION: COMRADES,
275 KAZIMIR MALEVICH ORGANIZERS OF LIFE!, 1923
THE APPEAL OF KAZIMIR
MALEVICH TO THE PROGRESSIVE 307 VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY
ARTISTS OF ITALY, 1919 LENIN AS A DECANONIZER,
1924
277 ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO
TO ARTISTS-PROLETARIANS, 1918 310 ROMAN JAKOBSON
LETTERS FROM THE
279 ALEKSANDR RODCHENKO WEST. DADA,1921
RODCHENKO’S SYSTEM, 1919
314 SERGEI SHARSHUN
281 VARVARA STEPANOVA MY PARTICIPATION IN
NONOBJECTIVE CREATION, 1919 THE FRENCH DADA
MOVEMENT, 1967
283 ILIA ZDANEVICH, ALEKSEI
KRUCHENYKH, IGOR TERENTIEV,
AND NIKOLAI CHERNIAVSKY
MANIFESTO OF THE “41°,” 1919 321 LIST OF WORKS
PUTTING
RUSSIA
ON THE
DADA MAP
Margarita Tupitsyn

Marcel Duchamp
L.H.O.O.Q., illustration on the cover of
the journal 391, no. 12, Paris, March 1920
21
22
 Anti-futurism,
Proto-Dadaism,
and Everythingism

In Russia everything that did not resemble

nature was considered futurism.1
—Kazimir Malevich, “Autobiography,” 1933

Anonymous A 1912 photograph shows Ilia Zdanevich, at

Ilia Zdanevich, 1912 the time a law student in Saint Petersburg,
posing for a camera while gazing at a book re-
production of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.2 p. 22

Stolen from the Louvre in 1911, the painting

had become a lost original, prompting both
lament and mockery. Having read Filippo To-
masso Marinetti’s first manifesto, from 1909, in
translation, and several years ahead of Marcel
1. Unless otherwise noted, all Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), Zdanevich chose p. 21
translations are the author’s.
2. Ilia Zdanevich scholar Gayraud Régis, the Mona Lisa as a target for theatrical defa-
in an email to me on June 30, 2017, mation when, on January 18, 1912, during his
confirmed the date of this image as 1912
and explains that the reason it is dated first public lecture in the Troitsky Theater, he
1919–1920 in the exhibition catalogue stated that the painting was not worth find-
Iliazd (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou,
1978) was the organizers’ reluctance ing and claimed that a cheap ready-made such
to believe the photograph was taken as a shoe should supersede it.3 “Art must re-
before Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q.
flect contemporaneity, in my opinion, a pair
3. The lecture was organized by Saint
Petersburg’s Union of Youth, a society of of contemporary shoes is more precious, more
artists and writers formed in 1909, the
same year Marinetti’s first manifesto was
elevated and useful than all Leonardo da Vin-
published. The union was a financial and cis. Giaconda, go to hell, Giaconda! We should
logistical umbrella for the first exhibitions
and public appearances of the avant-garde.
represent a big city. We should paint slaps and
4. Zdanevich’s speech was recounted street fights.”4 Two years after these proto-Da-
by a contemporary critic, N. Breshko- daist manifestations in Russia, Zdanevich elab-
Breshkovsky, in the newspaper
Peterburgskaia gazeta. See I. E. orated on the significance of mass-produced
Vasil’ev, “Il’iazd: vekhi zhizni i objects for twentieth-century art in the lecture
tvorchestva I. M. Zdanevicha,”
Izvestiia ural’skogo gosudarstvennogo “Adoration of a Shoe,” which took place at the
universiteta, no. 24 (2002): 178. Saint Petersburg cabaret Wondering Dog on
5. See Zdanevich to Marinetti, January 28,
1914 [see p. 263 of the present catalogue];
April 17, 1914 (three months after Zdanevich’s
and Marinetti to Zdanevich, June 1922. meeting with Marinetti in Saint Petersburg).5 p. 24

23
 Challenging Italian futurism’s fascination with progress and technology,
Zdanevich hailed “common, mass-manufactured” object as “a symbol
of today,” forecasting that “in thousands of years, to those who think of
the twentieth century there will appear a specter not of an airplane . . .
not of futurism . . . not of wireless telegraph . . . not of Marinetti or of
Tolstoy, but of a shoe.”6
Through his brother Kirill, Zdanevich met and joined forces with
Mikhail Larionov, the outrageous avant-gardist who formed groups
and organized exhibitions with such scandalous names as Donkey’s Tail
(1911–1912) and Target (1913). Larionov’s fixation on negation for the
sake of negation turned him into a detractor of the absurdities of con-
temporary life, which he deconstructed with what the German Dadaist
Hans Richter called “daemonic humour” and graffiti-like writing within
the space of his paintings.7 Larionov and the poet Velimir Khlebnikov,
another friend and collaborator, shared Richter’s awe at the creative
power of laughter. Khlebnikov’s short poem “Incantation by Laughter”
(1908–1909) amply corresponds to Richter’s eventual claim that laughter
was “the only guarantee of the seriousness with which, on our voyage of
self-discovery, we practiced anti-art.”8
Together with Natalia Goncharova, his partner and equally an ad-
p. 25 vocate of primitivism, Larionov launched rayonism (Luchizm), which

24
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Envelope and letter to Ilia Zdanevich,
Paris, June 1922

Mikhail Larionov
Man, 1913

Kirill Zdanevich
Composition, 1916

6. “Poklonenie boshmaku,” in Il’ia

Zdanevich, Futurizm i vsechestvo,
1912–1914, ed. A. V. Krusanov, 2
vols. (Moscow: Gileia, 2014), 1:17.
7. Hans Richter, Dada: Art and
Anti-Art (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1965), 182.
8. Ibid., 65.

25
 operated through an array of radiant lines.
Zdanevich and artist Mikhail Le Dantiu—who,
along with Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich,
Vladimir Tatlin, Aleksei Morgunov, and Kirill
p. 26 Zdanevich, took part in Donkey’s Tail and Tar-
get—helped Larionov theorize his inventions
9. Tristan Tzara’s Dada manifesto of
into a broader aesthetic system dubbed “ev- 1918 also uses the metaphor of crossing
erythingism” (vsechestvo).9 Zdanevich’s of- light rays as the guardians of time.
10. On Marinetti’s visit to Russia, see N. I.
ten scandalous promotion of everythingism Khardzhiev, “‘Veselyi god’ Maiakovskogo,”
is smartly interpreted in two 1915 sketches by in Stat’i ob avangarde, ed. Rudol’f Duganov,
Iurii Arpishkin, and Andrei Sarab’ianov,
Sigizmund Valishevsky that show Zdanevich 2 vols. (Moscow: RA, 1997), 2:18–31; and
lecturing to a group of donkeys. In the more Aleksandr Parnis, “Benedikt Lifshits i F.
T. Marinetti: k istorii odnoi polemiki,” in
detailed version, the donkeys are undersigned Terent’evskii sbornik: 1996, ed. S. Kudriavtsev
with the names of local leading conservative (Moscow: Gileia, 1996), 225–49.
artists and critics as well as Marinetti (whom 11. Richter, Dada, 65.
12. On this subject, see my “Collaborating
Larionov had similarly reproached during
on the Paradigm of the Future,” Art
the former’s visit to Russia in early 1914).10 Journal 52, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 18–24.

26
Sigizmund Valishevsky
Untitled (Ilia Zdanevich
lecturing donkeys), 1915

Ilin (Nal)
Futurism in a Village, 1914

The drawings’ iconography is a reminder that Larionov’s Donkey’s Tail

referred to an occasion in 1910 when French critics praised a picture
submitted to the Salon des Indépendants that turned out to have been
made by a donkey (whose tail art students had tied a paintbrush). Vali-
shevsky expanded on this stunt as an example of old-fashioned critics’
inability to evaluate modern art. In the detailed version Larionov is also
included as a donkey-waiter, preferring a common profession to the
phony highbrow community. Valishevsky’s spoofs evoke another com-
ment by Richter on the self-deprecating tactics of Dada: “We laughed at
ourselves just as we laughed at Emperor, King and Country, fat bellies
and baby-pacifiers.”11
Striving to undermine European modernists’ fixation on originality
and authorial significance, everythingism was an unrestrained amalga-
mation of all other styles. It announced that pastiche and copying result
in an independent artwork.12 On an unconscious level, this paradigm of
appropriation liberated Russian avant-gardists from accusations of West-
ern modernism’s influence. According to art historian Rosalind Krauss,

27
 “pastiche mocks the modernist project of a self-realization achieved
through control of what is internal to the medium itself . . . pastiche as-
serts an almost endless access to ‘style’ as a series of personal and capri-
cious choices open to the artist-subject as a kind of consumer browsing
among compositional options.”13 Thus, everythingism’s act of negation
through an acceptance of everything suggests an equation between the
Russian nyet (no) and da (yes) and predates similar Dadaist equations,
as in the leaflet Dada Raises Everything (1921), which also includes the
phrase “Futurism is dead.”14
Like the Dadaists at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, members of the radi-
cal avant-garde milieu acted not only through exhibitions but public
disputes and performances such as Zdanevich’s Mona Lisa lecture. In
fact, Malevich later claimed “Futurism was mostly expressed in behav-
ior in relation to the given condition of society. This is why Futurism
manifested itself much more in performances than in artworks. Artists
and poets smash everything.”15 This was an effective tool to explode the
bourgeois society and to create the kind of public disorder conveyed
in Nikolai Kulbin’s 1913 cover for the book Vzorval, a neologism that
p. 29 best translates to “Explodity.” (Earlier Kulbin had founded the cabaret
Wondering Dog, depicted as a corporate body in Le Dantiu’s 1914 draw-
p. 30 ing Igor Severianin’s March to Berlin.) Kulbin’s doodle for the Explodity
cover shows a fervent speaker and an agitated audience about to topple
him. It could easily be an illustration for a debate that took place on
March 23, 1913, at Moscow’s Polytechnic Museum, organized in con-
junction with the Target exhibition, which ended with a fistfight and
police involvement. There is little doubt, however, that the “exploder”
is Larionov, for inside the book appears his portrait, also by Kulbin.
These kinds of theatrical disputes led to efforts to revolutionize
theater and adopt cinema for broader dissemination of avant-garde
performances. The now-classic absurdist opera Victory over the Sun
(1913) was a first step in this direction. The idea came from the Union of
Youth and immediately caught Larionov’s attention. In a contemporary
newspaper interview he revealed his concept for an avant-garde theater
without a stage, where viewers would sit “on a wire grid under the ceil-
ing.”16 He emphasized that the music should sound like “an orchestra
tuning up its instruments”; in such a theater, “actors would play not
only people but also props, costumes . . . it will not be so much a staging
of plays . . . as hoaxing theater.”17 The next move was the issuing of the
manifesto “Why We Paint Ourselves” (1913), signed by Larionov, Gon-
charova, Le Dantiu, and Ilia Zdanevich, and claiming that painting one’s

28
Nikolai Kulbin
Cover of the book Explodity
by Aleksei Kruchenykh, Saint
Petersburg, 1913

13. Rosalind E. Krauss, The

Picasso Papers (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1998), 17.
14. Although Mayakovsky first visited
Paris in 1922, he most likely received
this leaflet directly from Tzara, whom
he met in Paris during his second visit
(November 2–December 20, 1924).
He also returned with Tzara’s 7 Dada
Manifestos, published in 1924. body frees the artist from isolation and ego
15. Kazimir Malevich, “Avtobiografiia,” and allows for life’s invasion. The phrase “Our
in Malevich o sebe, sovremenniki
o Maleviche: pisma, dokumenty,
painting is the newsman” envisions the artist
vospominaniia, kritika, ed. I. A. as a walking kiosk committed, in opposition to
Vakar and T. N. Mikhienko, 2 vols.
(Moscow: RA, 2004), 1:39.
the official press, to delivering an independent
16. Larionov is quoted as saying this message.18 Painted, Larionov and Goncharo-
during an interview with Moskovskaia va played in Vladimir Kasianov’s silent (now
gazeta on September 9, 1913, in I.
E. Vasil’iev, “Il’iazd: vekhi zhizni i lost) film Drama in the Futurists’ Cabaret no.
tvorchestva I. M. Zdanevicha,” 180–81. 13 (1913), launched nearly concurrently with
17. Ibid.
Victory over the Sun. A spoof of crime films, it
18. Ilya Zdanevich and Mikhail Larionov,
“Why We Paint Ourselves: A Futurist positions the avant-garde in terms of an aes-
Manifesto, 1913,” in Russian Art of the thetic of risk and criminality.
Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism,
1902–1934, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt Larionov’s concept of transgressive theater
(New York: Viking Press, 1976), 82. and his readiness to abandon easel art posi-
19. Sergei Diaghilev would soon tioned him as a prime candidate to manage
after invite Larionov to design his
theatrical productions in Paris. the stage design of Victory over the Sun.19 Yet

29
 it was Malevich who got the job. Having known Larionov since the or-
ganization of Donkey’s Tail, Malevich in his peasant series shared Lari-
onov’s and Goncharova’s regard for primitivist sources and renditions.
Yet Malevich lacked Larionov’s parodying audacity, a quality that fits
pp. 32, 44, 45 more amply Victory over the Sun’s overall “alogic extremism” and the
transrational language (zaum) of its prologue and libretto, written by
poets Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh respectively.20 The iconic
costumes Malevich made for the opera animated the silent and frozen
peasants of his paintings and converted them into loud and mechanical
strongmen enfolded in multicolored geometric shapes and heralding
“imminent political change.”21 The historian of the Russian avant-garde
Nikolai Khardzhiev, who had a chance to discuss the opera with Mati-
ushin, provides an invaluable sketch:

After lifting a curtain, action did not start. Behind the lifted curtain there
was another curtain made from the white calico and against its background
the author read a prologue. Then two “colorful” characters appeared from
behind the curtain, tearing it in half. Calico tore with a rattle, the curtain

30
 Mikhail Le Dantiu
Igor Severianin’s March
to Berlin, 1914

Karl Bulla
Mikhail Matiushin, Aleksei
Kruchenykh, and Kazimir
Malevich, 1913

20. Nikolai Khardzhiev,

“Sud’ba Kruchenykh,” in Stat’i
ob avangarde, ed. Duganov,
Arpishkin, and Sarab’ianov, 1:302.
In 1914, Malevich publicly defied
Larionov’s scandalous methods
of publicity and asked that he
not be associated with “the
Rayonist Larionov.” Khudozhnik
K. Malevich, “Otmezhevavshiesia
ot Larionova, pismo v redaktsiiu,”
Nov’, no. 12 (1914).
21. Khardzhiev, “Sud’ba
Kruchenykh,” 1:302.

31
 was pushed apart and “budetliane strong- Kazimir Malevich
Alogic Composition, design
men” appeared on a stage dressed in space- for Victory over the Sun
like suits. Their wide shoulders were at the (Budetlianin Strongman), 1913
level of a top of a head, over which towered Kazimir Malevich
an attached cube. Two budetliane strongmen Stage design for Victory
moved like robots and in accordance with the over the Sun, 1913

author's remarks, spoke “vulgarly and down- Kazimir Malevich

wards.”22 Design for the curtain for the opera
Victory over the Sun, 1913

Khardzhiev dubbed Victory over the Sun “anti-

militarist” and thus “diametrically opposite to
the theory and practice of Italian futurists,”
which endorsed the “triumph of machine
22. Ibid., 303–4. Budetliane or
and electricity” and “propagated imperial- budetlianin, a neologism coined
ist expansion.”23 Khardzhiev concluded that by Khlebnikov, means “men
(or a man) of the future.”
the opera’s librettist, Kruchenykh, could “be
23. Ibid., 302–3.
called ‘the first Dadaist,’ forerunning by three 24. Ibid., 302, 305.
years the formation of this trend in Western 25. Mikhail Larionov and Il’ia
Zdanevich, “Nashe prazdnichnoe
Europe.”24 He does not mention a seminal
interv’iu s futuristami,” Teatr v
p. 33 black square drawn on a calico curtain, linking karikaturakh, no. 1 (1914): 19.

32
nonobjectivity and nonsense. Born as a theatrical prop, Black Square
was rooted in theater and created a new kind of a modernist painting,
void of autonomy.
In 1914, Zdanevich and Larionov published “Our Festive Interview
with Futurists,” a laconic exchange riddled with contradictions and
subverting the program of rationality Marinetti had spelled out during
his visit in January.25 Published in a magazine with a suitable name,
Theater in Caricatures, and eventually dubbed the “Yes-Manifesto” (Da-
Manifesto), the interview is a game of mutually exclusive negative and
affirmative declarations, such as saying “yes” to the inquiry “are you
futurists?” and negating it directly after. Such dissonance based on the
equation “yes = no” predates the Dadaists’ declared postulate “Dada is
anti-Dada.”

33
 In 1915, several pivotal exhibitions pursued
everythingism’s dynamic creativity and consol-
idation of art movements groomed in Russia
and Europe. Endorsement of nonobjectivity,
primitivism, the use of ready-made materials
and objects, recitals of unconventional poetry,
and readings of scandalous manifestos matched
social and artistic intentions of the first Dada
group, formed in early 1916 in Zurich. Ignoring
local resistance to Italian futurism, artists Ivan
Puni and Ksenia Boguslavskaia subtitled Tram-
way V, which opened on March 3, 1915, “the
first futurist exhibition.” Puni was of Italian
descent and lived and studied in Paris before
the war—hence, he was not so much concerned
with separating himself from either cubism or
futurism. Larionov and Goncharova’s equiva-
lence of an artist with a housepainter (“We Anonymous
march hand in hand with our ordinary house- Mikhail Larionov, 1913

painters”) mirrored formalist critic Viktor Shk-

lovsky’s portrait of Puni as a masked trouble-
maker (“A housepainter is walking with a long
ladder on his shoulder. He is modest and quiet.
But his ladder hits people’s hats, breaks glass,
stops trams, destroys houses.”).26 26. Mikhail Larionov and Natalya
Tramway V was a meeting place for inter- Goncharova, “Rayonists and Futurists:
A Manifesto, 1913,” in Russian Art
national isms (everythingism), as its eleven of the Avant-Garde, ed. and trans.
Bowlt, 90; and Viktor Shklovskii,
participants included Russian artists who
Gamburgskii schet: stat’i, vospominaniia,
had studied in Europe or visited the Con- esse (1914–1933) (Moscow: Sovetskii
pisatel’, 1990), 224. Puni’s cover
tinent before the war and others who had for the book Futurists: Roaring
been responsible for developing local stylistic Parnassus (1914) was particularly
obscene and along with the drawings p. 174
paradigms. What they shared was an aggres- by other artists resulted in censors’
sive mood, a desire to “spit every day on art’s decision to withdraw the edition.
p. 36 altar.”27 Among such “spits” inaugurated in 27. This expression of Marinetti’s
was used as an epigraph by one of the
Tramway V were Malevich’s alogic canvases reviewers of Tramway V. See Imanuil
p. 41 Englishman in Moscow (1914), Woman at Ad- Saf’ianov, “Tramvai V ili ocherednoi
plevok,” Sinii zhurnal, no. 12 (1915).
p. 39 vertising Column (1914), and Cow and Violin
28. See Aleksandra Shatskikh,
(ca. 1913–1915).28 In all of them Malevich cre- Black Square: Malevich and the
Origin of Suprematism, trans.
ated “alogical juxtaposition[s]” in order to
Marian Schwartz (New Haven:
play out “a struggle with logism, naturalness, a Yale University Press, 2012), 6.

34
Anonymous
“Easter at Futurists,” illustration in the
journal Blue Journal, no. 12, 1915

35
 “Tramway V or a Familiar
Spit,” illustration in the
journal Blue Journal,
no. 12, 1915

36
 petty-bourgeois meaning, and prejudice.” This
antiestablishment agenda, inscribed on the
back side of the piece of wood on which Cow
and Violin was painted, advanced the concept
of everythingism from that of synthesis to that
of differentiation within the concept of syn-
thesis. Englishman in Moscow (1914) also dem-
onstrates Malevich’s attitude toward foreign-
ness in its title and nonsensical kaleidoscopic
mixture of images potentially shocking to an
outsider. An antagonistic saw and sword as-
sert a semantic gap that a foreigner, Marinetti,
conveyed to formalist critic Roman Jakobson
in Saint Petersburg by saying that the Russians
are “false Futurists” and that Russian poetry is
“not futuristic.”29
Malevich’s close associate Morgunov simi-
larly stressed a clash with Marinetti’s passion
for urbanism and technological progress in the
painting Aviator’s Workroom (1913), which jux- p. 49
taposes an airplane, one of the favorite modern
images of the Italians, with an axe, a primi-
tive instrument of rurality, of “Futurism in a
village,” and a symbol of archaic life. But the
axe is also a metaphor for the radicality of
transrational practice. As Kruchenykh states,
“Painters-budetliane like to use parts of bodies,
and cuts, and speech creators budetliane use
severed words, half-words.”30
29. Quoted in Roman Jakobson, “Art
In Tramway V, Tatlin met Malevich’s paint-
and Poetry: The Cubo-futurists, an erly transrationality with Painterly Reliefs (ca. p. 58
Interview with David Shapiro,” in The
Avant-Garde in Russia: New Perspectives,
1914–1915), which combine dissimilar, found
1910–1930, ed. Stephanie Barron materials such as glass, iron, wire, and wood.31
and Maurice Tuchman (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1980), 18.
Nikolai Punin, art critic and admirer of Tat-
30. Vladimir Poliakov, Knigi lin, conveyed the theatrical and playful atmo-
russkogo kubo-futurizma sphere of collectivity in which “Tatlin’s con-
(Moscow: Gileia, 1998), 198.
structivism” was first made: “They sawed and
31. Most of these Tatlin works are
available only in photographic shaved, they cut and polished, they stretched
reproductions. One of the
and bent; painting was almost forgotten. . . .
Counter-Reliefs was acquired
by Puni and Boguslavskaia. From the outside, this could all look like a

37
 mania.”32 The result—coarsely executed whimsical constructions, com-
prised of materials previously not used in art, and without concern for
duration—automatically acquired anti-art status.
As an organizer of and participant in Tramway V, Puni was thrown
into a pool of formal innovations and conceptual possibilities. The result
was a series of assemblages that combine Malevich’s roughly painted
monochromes with Tatlin’s use of common materials and everyday ob-
pp. 58–59 jects. In Relief (1915), Puni juxtaposed several planks of wood assem-
bled as a blue monochrome with their painted imitation, conspicuously
demonstrating the relation between a real object and its representation.
Relief also affirms Jakobson’s point that “in the nonobjective approach
to objectness and the object-oriented attitude toward a nonobjective the-
matic—to the thematic of planes, paint, and space.”33 Puni’s Card Players
(ca. 1915), reproduced in a contemporary magazine review of Tramway
V next to a now lost glass-and-iron Painterly Relief  by Tatlin, recontex-
tualizes Paul Cézanne’s Card Players (1894–1895) not only by abstracting
its content but by assembling wood and iron pieces to such a degree of
density that the artwork’s internal and external borders are perceived
as severely breached. Onto this composition-without-boundaries Puni
affixed a piece of wood to an outer edge, positioning Card Players as a
springboard for Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbau, an “expansive collage proj-
ect . . . related to dadaism” and initiated in the early 1920s.34 Shortly
after Tramway V opened, Malevich and Morgunov announced that they
would appear in the center of Moscow in “a fool’s outfit with wooden
spoons in buttonholes.”35 Although the two artists showed up in regular
coats, the fact that they irritated the public with a readymade—that is, a
dismantler of traditional concepts of artistic creativity—positioned their
appearance as a prelude to the next scandalous show.36
The title of that show, 1915 Painting Exhibition, is somewhat mislead-
ing, for its exhibits far exceeded the medium of painting. According to
Khardzhiev, 1915 “was a parade of formal experimentation” and included
“Tatlin’s Counter-Reliefs, Malevich’s and Morgunov’s alogical canvases,
Kandinsky’s nonobjective compositions, Larionov’s plastic rayonism.”37
The exhibition also featured several pieces involving ready-mades, in-
cluding Vladimir Mayakovsky’s “provocative ‘Self-Portrait’: half of a top
hat and a black glove nailed or glued to a wall that was painted in black
stripes” and “Larionov’s ‘kinetic’ construction and a ‘wall composition’
with a mousetrap and alive mouse—a parody on naturalist tendencies in
art.”38 To Khardzhiev’s description, art historian Aleksandra Shatskikh
adds that the “‘kinetic’ construction” was an installation of a fan on the

38
Vasily Kamensky, David Burliuk, Vladimir Burliuk
Tango with Cows: Ferro-concrete Poems
by Vasily Kamensky, 1914

El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich

Illustration of Malevich’s painting Cow
and Violin (ca.1913–1915) in the book
On New Systems in Art, 1919

32. Nikolai Punin, “Apartment No. 5,”

on pp. 271–272 of the present catalogue.
I believe Punin makes the attribution
“Tatlin’s constructivism” to distinguish
it from a more scheming model of
constructivism worked out from 1920 to
1922 by the Institute of Artistic Culture.
33. Roman Iakobson, “Vospominaniia,” in
Malevich o sebe, ed. Vakar and Mikhienko, 1:126.
34. Dorothea Dietrich, “Hannover,” in Dada: Zurich,
Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris, ed. Leah
Dickerman (Washington, DC: National Gallery of
Art; New York: Museum of Modern Art), 2005, 173.
35. The event was announced in the newspaper
Early Morning (Pannee utro). See N. N. Punin,
“Pervye futuristicheskie boi,” in Malevich
o sebe, ed. Vakar and Mikhienko, 2:146.
36. Malevich, “Avtobiografiia,” 1:39.
37. Nikolai Khardzhiev, “Poeziia i zhivopis,” in
Stat’i ob avangarde, ed. Duganov, Arpishkin,
and Sarab’ianov, 1:27. A checklist includes
glass objects by Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia.
38. Ibid.

39
 wall next to Larionov’s rayonist painting. As it Kazimir Malevich
Alogic Composition 3 (study
“turned on sporadically, [it] stir[ed] a woman’s for the painting An Englishman
lopped-off braid.”39 The poet and artist David in Moscow), 1914

Burliuk’s installation included “calzones, a Aleksei Morgunov

soup, and his calling cards,” which matches Study for The Barber Set Off
for the Bathhouse, 1915
well with Larionov’s and Mayakovsky’s ready-
made objects in 1915.40
Malevich’s proto-Dadaist painting Com-
p. 54 position with Mona Lisa was first exhibited in
1915.41 For this canvas and other alogical com-
positions, he used the term fevralism. Although
positioned as “rayonism’s rival,” fevralism ef-
fectively added another ism to Larionov and
Zdanevich’s everythingism.42 Punin cites the
following statement by Malevich as relating
mistakenly to an exhibition in 1913 instead of
to 1915: “It was decided to prepare something
special. I bought a reproduction of Giaconda at
‘Avantso’ and after gluing it on a canvas, made
a cubist background, pasted in the place of
the lips a cigarette butt, and made an inscrip-
tion, ‘apartment is for rent,’ across the whole
thing.”43 This description promised a picture
much closer, in its degree of naughtiness, to
Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. But instead of apply-
ing the kind of mockery Duchamp performed
39. Shatskikh, Black Square, 22.
several years later in L.H.O.O.Q., in Composi-
40. Ibid.
tion with Mona Lisa Malevich decided not to
41. Shatskikh concludes that the hitherto
recycle old art into a new modernist icon but accepted date of 1914 for Composition
with Mona Lisa is “erroneous.” She dates
to negate it by means of eclipse. For Malevich, it to 1915. See Shatskikh, Black Square, 18.
it became the best ready-made for performing 42. This painting was not exhibited again
a theater of replacement, of victory over the until 1980. On fevralism, see ibid., 1–33.

old. The words partial eclipse partially overlap 43. Punin, “Pervye
futuristicheskie boi,” 145.
a black rectangle looming over the Mona Lisa’s 44. Malevich to Matiushin, ed. Vakar
image like “a curtain in an act where victory and Mikhienko, May 27, 1915, 1:66.
had occurred.”44 The painting Black Square, 45. On the stormy reception of Black
Square by Malevich’s colleagues, see
born of a black square on a curtain and anno- my Malevich and Film (New Haven:
p. 33 tated by Malevich as “no. 1,” carries the Mona Yale University Press, 2002), 9–13.
46. Malevich to Matiushin, ca.
Lisa’s spell. Like Leonardo’s canvas, it is enig- early June 1915, in Malevich o sebe,
matic; it has too many, in T. J. Clark’s words, ed. Vakar and Mikhienko, 1:67.

40
“undecidables” and is coded with a desire for, multiplying and permis-
pp. 55, 57
sion for copying.45
That the painting Black Square (1915) was executed in July, shortly
after Composition with Mona Lisa, is thus only logical. In a letter writ-
ten about this time, Malevich complains that “no one had noticed” his
“new” concepts for Victory over the Sun.46 His dissatisfaction could
easily have prompted him not only to turn compositions developed for
Victory over the Sun into paintings but to dub the term suprematism as
an act of separation from the equivalence of multi-isms, of everything-
ism, and ultimately from Larionov’s supremacy in the Russian avant-
garde. Shortly before the opening of the exhibition 0,10: The Last Fu-
turist Exhibition of Painting, in which Black Square was first shown,

41
 Malevich was still referring to the concept of a black square as a curtain
rather than a composition: “a curtain that depicts a black square is the
embryo of all possibilities and in its development acquires a powerful
force; it’s a precursor of a cube and a sphere, its disintegrations carry
an amazing culture in painting, in the opera it signified the beginning
of victory.”47 Malevich’s use of the Russian word shar (sphere or globe)
suggests he thought of the black square as a global “trademark” open to
multiplication ad infinitum.
Black Square was installed theatrically in a corner in 0,10, separate
from Malevich’s otherwise densely hung canvases, thus emphasizing
its objectness and positioning it to compete with another seminal in-
vention: Tatlin’s Corner Counter-Reliefs. In his leaflet for 0,10, Malevich
writes, with a dose of anarchic egocentrism, “I have transformed myself
in the zero of form and have fished myself out of the rubbishy slough of
p. 43 academic art.”48 He thus refers to Black Square’s status, to paraphrase
Roland Barthes, as “painting degree zero.” 49 Accordingly, Malevich
planned to call a periodical associated with his group Supremus, newly

42
Anonymous
“0,10: The Last Futurist
Exhibition in Petrograd”
Illustration in Ogonek, no. 1,
1916

Kazimir Malevich
I the Apostle of New Concepts
in Art, 1916

47. Ibid. On 0,10, see Charlotte

Douglas, “0-10 Exhibition,” in
The Avant-Garde in Russia, ed.
Barron and Tuchman, 34–40.
48. Malevich, “From Cubism and
Futurism to Suprematism: The New
Painterly Realism, 1915,” in Russian
Art of the Avant-Garde, ed. and trans.
Bowlt, 118; emphasis in original.
49. In introducing the concept
of “writing degree zero,” Barthes
had in mind a true revolutionary
writing rather than the obedient
writing of revolutionaries.
50. Malevich to Matiushin, May
29, 1915, in Malevich o sebe, ed.
Vakar and Mikhienko, 1:66. The
periodical ended up being called
Supremus. The controversy between
Malevich and Tatlin and associates launched in 1916, Zero.50 This and Punin’s elo-
Popova and Udaltsova resulted in
Malevich’s appearance at Tatlin’s
quent conclusion that “in Suprematism Eu-
exhibition The Store (1916) with ropean painting converged in order to die”
“0,10” on his forehead and a note
on his back that read, “I the apostle
landed Malevich on the same ground as the
of new concepts in art and the Zurich Dadaists, who chose the term Dada for
surgeon of reason sat on the throne
of pride in art and declare the
“its appropriateness as an emblem for ‘begin-
Academy a stable of philistines.” See ning at zero.’”51 And they shared this ground
Varvara Stepanova, “V epitsentre
avangarda,” in Chelovek ne mozhet
with Duchamp’s Fountain (1917)—painting’s p. 13
zhit bez chuda: pis’ma, poeticheskie ultimate gravedigger.
opyty, zapiski khudozhnitsy
(Moscow: Sfera, 1994), 61.
51. Nikolai Punin, “Vykhod
Malevicha,” in O Tatline, ed. I. N.
Punina and V. I. Rakitin (Moscow:
RA, 1994) 52; and Leah Dickerman,
“Zurich,” in Dada, ed. Dickerman, 33.

43
 Kazimir Malevich
Costume design for Victory
over the Sun, Budetlianin
Strongman, 1913

44
Kazimir Malevich
Curtain design for the opera
Victory over the Sun, 1913

45
Olga Rozanova
In the Street, 1915

46
Ivan Puni
Barber, 1915

47
Ivan Kliun
Aleksei Morgunov
Self-Portrait with a Saw
Aviator’s Workroom, 1913
(Nonobjective Composition), 1914

48
Vera Pestel Mikhail Menkov
Still Life with Red, 1915–1916 Tramway 6, 1914

50
Ivan Puni
Composition, 1916

Kazimir Malevich
Suprematism: Square on a
Diagonal Surface, 1915
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Line and Compass Drawing, 1915

53
54
Kasimir Malevich
Composition with Mona
Lisa, ca. 1914–1915

Ivan Puni
Composition (The
Understanding Court),
1915–1916

Kazimir Malevich
Three Irregular Quadrangles,
ca. 1915–1916

55
Aleksei Morgunov
Composition no. 1, 1916–1917

56
Kazimir Malevich
Four Squares, 1915

57
 Vladimir Tatlin
Painterly Relief, ca. 1914

58
Ivan Puni
Relief, 1915

59
 Universal War

What a misunderstanding by a man of the

war; here is also a mistake in directing the
destructive force not toward the forms of old
culture, but toward destruction of a body.
—Kazimir Malevich to Mikhail
Matiushin, April 4, 1916

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 inten-

sified Russians’ awareness of the political
Gustav Klutsis significance of their cultural revolt. Malev-
Cannon Fodder, 1921 ich declared, “We should use the war for the
preparation for a final disintegration of aca-
demism.”52 In collaboration with Mayakovsky,
he designed antiwar political posters in imita-
tion of folk lithographs called lubki that, with
a callous mockery associated with this form,
mobilized his peasants for a merciless fight
against German aggression. The solemn Black p. 63

Square, painted in 1915, reflected his “anxi-

ety” and “desire to resist”; it became, simul-
taneously, his antiwar and antiart emblem.53
That same year, Duchamp’s statement that
“the war will produce a ‘severe direct art’”
not only hinted at his forthcoming Fountain
but offered a fit description of Malevich’s rev-
olutionary canvas.54 The war resonated in the
exhibitions Tramway V, organized to benefit
an infirmary opened in Petrograd, and 0,10,
which in its pledge to be “the last futurist ex-
hibition” signaled a final separation from the
52. Malevich to Matiushin, September
13, 1915, in Malevich o sebe, ed.
militarism of Italian futurism. As in the case
Vakar and Mikhienko, 1:69. of the Zurich Dadaists, whose formation was
53. Ibid. In 1915 Ilia Zdanevich became an antiwar phenomenon, the consciousness
a war correspondent for Petrograd’s
Speech (Rech) newspaper, and Le Dantiu of rebellious Russian artists dwelled between
and Larionov departed to the front. “the battlefield” and the cultural field, or the
54. Marcel Duchamp, quoted in
Matthew S. Witkovsky, “Chronology,”
space that art historian Leah Dickerman de-
in Dada, ed. Dickerman, 422. scribes, in reference to Dada artists, as where

61
 “art is imagined in a quasimilitary way.”55 She Kazimir Malevich (designer) and
Vladimir Mayakovsky (text)
continues by citing Richard Huelsenbeck: “Wilhelm’s Merry-Go-Around,”
“the goal was to remake oneself in the mold 1914

of a soldier—‘to make literature with a gun in Kazimir Malevich (designer) and

hand.’”56 Several letters that Malevich wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky (text)
“Look, look, near the Vistula: The
to Matiushin from the warfront convey this German bellies are swelling so
kind of context for creativity: “I am sitting they don’t feel so good,” 1914

on the frontline writing about cubism amid Kazimir Malevich

the rattle, roar, and noise of propellers. I will War, 1914

present it as a weapon with which our under-

standing of a thing as something whole was
effaced from our mind.”57 Malevich’s substi-
tution of a military term for an art style, as
well as his alluding to cubism’s distortion and
fragmentation of the human body, effectively
fits Huelsenbeck’s formula.
Kruchenykh’s response to the war imme-
diately prompted him, again in collaboration
with Khlebnikov, to write War Opera, a never
finished follow-up to Victory over the Sun
that would “unmask woe-warrior Wilhelm II
and his gang.”58 After he became a member of
Malevich’s Supremus society—he would later
describe Malevich as “an eco-artist” who “for
the first time provides a ration (minimum)
of paint and lines”—Kruchenykh applied the
reductivism of suprematism in a handmade
pp. 64–65 book, Universal War (1916).59 The book’s oth-
erwise empty white cover has the Cyrillic
hard sign, used to indicate masculine forms
55. Leah Dickerman, “Introduction,”
of verbs and nouns, including names. The in Dada, ed. Dickerman, 8.
sign’s eradication was being proposed at the 56. Ibid.
time, which for Kruchenykh signified a shift 57. Malevich to Matiushin, November
6, 1916, in Malevich o sebe, ed.
in language to be relentlessly pursued. The Vakar and Mikhienko, 1:97.
hard sign along with the book’s title works to 58. Aleksei Kruchenykh, “O voine,”
suggest that war is a male invention. Inside, in K istorii russkogo futurizma:
vospominaniia i dokumenty, ed. N.
Universal War consists of twelve color col- Gur’ianova (Moscow: Gileia, 2006),
lages accompanied by minimal transrational 238. The opera was never finished.
59. A. E. Kruchenykh, “Nosoboika”
poems referring to the ongoing war as well (1917), in Malevich o sebe, ed.
as to “the looming world and interplanetary Vakar and Mikhienko, 2:109.

62
63
 wars,” which Kruchenykh positioned, as had Aleksei Kruchenykh
Illustrations for the book
Malevich, as a symbiosis of cultural and ac- Universal War, 1916
tual wars.60 His introduction hails nonob-
jective art (“transrational painting,” in line
with “transrational language”) rather than
suprematism. Yet Kruchenykh’s collages dif-
fer from Malevich’s strict geometry. They are
in line with Olga Rozanova’s formally more
anarchic nonobjectivity and juxtapose such
terms as explosion, destruction, and battle,
evoking fragments of broken glass and shell 60. Kruchenykh, “O voine,” 238–39.
splinters. 61. For example, see B. Arvatov,
“Ekspressionizm kak sotsial’noe iavlenie,”
pp. 66–67 For the book War (1916), Kruchenykh re- Kniga i revoliutsiia 6, no. 18 (1922): 27–29.
treated to the album’s verbal component, let- 62. Kruchenykh, “O voine,” 239.
ting Rozanova render the visual arsenal. War’s 63. Punin, “Vyderzhki iz statei N.
Punina,” in O Tatline, ed. Punina and
cover repeats the shapes of the collages in Rakitin, 25; and Nikolai Punin, “Iz
Universal War, whereas the pages inside mix pisem N. Punina A. Arens” (1920), in
O Tatline, ed. Punina and Rakitin, 13.
motifs and styles of folk art primitivism with
64. Aleksei Kruchenykh, “V nogu s
expressionism (the style that both Russian epokhoi (Futuristy i oktiabr’), in K istorii
artists and Dadaists would later defy) and ge- russkogo futurizma, ed. Gur’ianova, 138.
65. “Kvartira no. 5” from the memoir
ometry, in line with everythingism’s tenets.61 Iskusstvo i revoliutsiia (1930s), in N. Punin,
Goncharova had been the first to appropriate O Tatline, ed. Punina and Rakitin, 10.

64
apocalyptic imagery for interpreting war in her black-and-white port-
folio Mystical Images of War (1914). She undoubtedly had conceived it
in response to Larionov’s being drafted into the army. He would return
from the war wounded. For War, Kruchenykh made the radical gesture
of including contemporary newspapers’ war reportages about “night-
mares” and “specific [read “cruel”] ‘war tactics.’”62
In 1916, in conversation with Tatlin, Punin—whose expression the
“ripped consciousness” amply conveys how the avant-garde milieu felt
at the time—spoke of the “socialist character of Futurism” that manifests
itself “not by being for every worker, but in the fact that the entirety of
aesthetic views worked out by socialism had been invested and expressed
in Futurist art.”63 On a similar subject, Kruchenykh said, “men of the
future [budetliane] began their offensive in 1911–12—the years of the new
upsurge of the struggle for liberation of the proletariat.”64 Thus, one year
before the Russian Revolution, a proto-Dadaist everythingism was “roll-
ing over” into an artistic practice of “uncontrolled shift toward left.”65

65
66
 Olga Rozanova
Illustrations for the book War
by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1916

Olga Rozanova
Cover of the book War by Aleksei
Kruchenykh, 1916

67
68
 Revolutions:
Da Da!—
Nyet Nyet!
For every “yes” Dada simultaneously
Vladimir Tatlin sees the “no.” Dada is a yes-no.
Stage design for Zangezi by
Velimir Khlebnikov, Museum —Theo van Doesburg, What Is Dada?, 1923
of Material Culture, Leningrad,
1923
A combative fountain of Dada’s founders . . .
in Russia was realized in the Revolution.
—Abram Efros, “Dada and Dadaism,” 192366

In 1921, prior to Abram Efros’s statement

above, Jakobson analyzed the Russians as hav-
ing traveled toward the October Revolution of
1917 “through a realization of the violence of
artistic form” that in the West had culminated
in Duchamp’s Fountain (1917).67 Photographic
self-portraits made independently in 1917 by
Duchamp and Gustav Klutsis illustrate differ-
ences and similarities in Russian and European
modernisms that in that year converged on the
66. Abram Efros, “Dada i dadaizm,” grounds of Dadaist revolutionary mentality.
Sovremenyi zapad, no. 3 (1923): 118–25.
New York Dadaist Duchamp, dressed in a stylish
67. Roman Jakobson, “Letters from
the West. Dada,” Vestnik teatra, no. 82 suit and smoking his pipe leisurely, and soldier
(1921), in Language and Literature, ed. of the revolution Klutsis sit “for his trick-mir-
Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1987), 39. ror photo . . . each man cloned into five, sitting
68. I borrow this description from Allan around a table contemplating himselves [sic].
Antliff’s “Anarchy, Politics, and Dada,”
Each shows one of them seen from five differ-
which tells the story of Henri-Pierre
Roché, Duchamp, and Francis Picabia ent vantages in a single photo.”68 The external pp. 70–71
making these kinds of photographs differences between Duchamp and Klutsis un-
at Rockaway Beach, New York, in
1917. Allan Antliff, “Anarchy, Politics, derline the fact that although Europeans and
and Dada,” in Making Mischief: Dada Russians concurred in their antiestablishment
Invades New York (New York: Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1997), 220. agendas—often expressed through tomfoolery—
69. Zhorzh Gross, “K moim rabotam,” one was “bourgeois nihilism” and “anarchism”
Lef, no. 2 (1923): 27, 30. The description
of Grosz is by art patron Harry Count
while the other was directed toward “realiza-
Kessler, quoted in John Willett, Art tion of revolutionary problems” and “connec-
and Politics in the Weimar Period:
The New Sobriety, 1917–1933 (New
tion with the workers” (in the words of “Bol-
York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 51. shevik in painting” George Grosz).69 Yet the fact

69
 Anonymous
Multiple portrait of Gustav Klutsis, 1917

that critique of culture and critique of regime

found expression in compositionally matching
70. A. E. Kruchenykh, “O Maleviche,” in
photographs means Dadaist tenets had begun Malevich o sebe, ed. Vakar and Mikhienko, 2:111.
to fertilize real politics and expand the move- 71. Ibid.
ment’s international ambitions. 72. Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism:
A History (Berkeley: University of
Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov, the authors of California Press, 1968), 342.
Victory over the Sun who instigated nihilistic 73. Kruchenykh, “V nogu s epokhoi (Futuristy i
Oktiabr’),” in K istorii russkogo futurizma 144.
consciousness in the Russian avant-garde, had
74. In his memoirs, Zdanevich writes,
swiftly reacted to the February Revolution of “Wherever we put our sight, we saw the new,
1917. Writing from the Caucasus several months and the old values were crumbling to dust.”
Il’ia Zdanevich, Fragmenty vospominanii:
after, Kruchenykh stated that, had he been in Minuvshee (Moscow, 1991), 162.
Petrograd or Moscow, with his “hot head” he 75. This is what Richter wrote on the subject:
would have joined the barricades.70 Around “The Cabaret Voltaire played and raised hell
at No. 1, Spiegelgasse. Diagonally opposite,
this time he gave his verdict on contemporary at No. 12, Spiegelgasse, the same narrow
art and politics: “Our epoch is in zero! . . . The thoroughfare in which the Cabaret Voltaire
mounted its nightly orgies of singing, poetry
world not only has been reshaped (Futurists, and dancing, lived Lenin. . . . It seemed to
sdvig [shift], nonsense), but is thrown away. me that Swiss authorities were much more
suspicious of the Dadaists . . . than of these
What is left? Nothing. What will come? Some- quiet, studious Russians . . . even though
the latter were planning a world revolution
thing beyond the zero.”71 Kruchenykh viewed
and later astonished the authorities by
the February Revolution as he had the war: as carrying it out.” Richter, Dada, 16.
a ground for estrangement (ostranenie, a term 76. Ibid., 176.

70
Shklovsky coined in 1917) and shifts (sdvigi); that is, formalist concepts
catapulted into politics as the avant-garde artists’ and poets’ “conscious
violations and distortions of traditional aesthetics” manifested them-
selves in real life.72 Khlebnikov reacted to the February Revolution more
aggressively. He mocked the prime minister of the provisional govern-
ment, Aleksandr Kirensky, promising him “a slap from the whole Russia”
and making a prank call to the Winter Palace (during which he pre-
tended to represent the Academy of Arts).73 In contrast, Ilia Zdanevich
displayed characteristic sagacity by considering the February Revolution
a rehearsal of what was to come and embarking on the consolidation
of left artists to defend and disseminate avant-garde tenets in the new
sociopolitical reality.74
Vladimir Lenin had returned to Russia in April 1917 after his exile in
Zurich. He remained in Petrograd for only a few months before it became
clear that what lay “beyond the zero” was the October Revolution. In
Zurich, he had lived near the Cabaret Voltaire, visiting it and contesting
with Dadaists in politics and at the chessboard.75 “The Dadaists failed
to convince the workers,” but Lenin boarded an armored train to do just
that, becoming, among other accusations to come, an agent of Dada.76 His
antiwar speech at a Finnish train station—allegedly delivered from an
armored car—employed rhetoric to win the population’s trust. Klutsis’s
photomontages dedicated to the two revolutions of 1917 reflect their

Anonymous
Multiple portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1917

71
 Gustav Klutsis
Illustration (unpublished) for the
History of the VKP(b), 1924

72
Vasily Ermilov
Memorial board Marx and Lenin,
1924

ideological distinctions. His rendition showing

the February Revolution—the words are written
separately, one along a vertical stripe on the left
and another at the bottom—is Dadaist in its ne-
gation of the tsar’s regime and in its manifestly
disjointed imagery; it includes a crossed-out p. 96

portrait of the tsar placed in a black square and

connected to the crowds of “proletarians” and
“soldiers” whose actions, in Malevich’s words,
“turned into a huge manifestation. Next day
shells were cast and spears sharpened.”77 Here
enemies, some disembodied, fall into the barrel
of a gun. Next to a black square is a whimsical
structure consisting of, among other details,
one large and two smaller heads, the latter with
speakers from which slogans stream into the
streets. As was the case with his earlier cited
reports on the war, for his summaries of the
February Revolution, published in the news-
paper Anarchy, Malevich linked the shifts in
art and politics: “Cubism, futurism—breaking
of objects, abolition of all laws of the old. War,
77. “Chto bylo v fevrale 1917 goda i riot, canons, running, movement, crash in the
marte,” in Krasny Malevich: stat’i skies, and on the earth. . . . World war, restruc-
iz gazety “Anarkhiia” (Moscow:
Common Place, 2016), 185. turing of states, revolution, new law, etc.”78 In
78. Ibid., 187. Klutsis’s second photomontage, of the October

73
 p. 97 Revolution, the heroes, such as a sailor, are af- Liubov Popova
Stage design for Earth in Turmoil by
firmed and rendered coherently and on a larger Sergei Tretiakov, Meyerhold Theater,
scale. The revolution’s enemies, paradoxically Moscow, 1923–1924

placed on the left-hand side, are crossed out. In Aleksei Kruchenykh, Kirill Zdanevich,
contrast, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Grigory Vasily Kamensky
Cover of the book 1918, 1917
Zinoviev, and Lenin (who is significantly larg-
er) occupy the right side of the composition. Aleksei Kruchenykh
Page from Kruchenykh’s scrapbook, n.d.
Similar scenarios of brutal societal shifts are
expressed in the portfolio October 1917–1918,
Heroes and Victims of the Revolution, issued to
commemorate the first anniversary of the Oc-
p. 98 tober Revolution. Its contents include Maya-
kovsky’s “first attempt at ‘agitpoetry’” and illus-
trations by Puni, Boguslavskaia, and others who
juxtapose representatives of the toppled classes
and those who toppled them.79 The mockery of 77. “Chto bylo v fevrale 1917 goda i
the former is balanced by the deeds and misery marte,” in Krasny Malevich: stat’i
iz gazety “Anarkhiia” (Moscow:
of the latter in both images and words. Common Place, 2016), 185.

74
75
 PROLETARIAN NONOBJECTIVITY
Neither Heroes and Victims’s expressionism nor Klutsis’s photomontage
dominated the immediate post-October period. Instead, several para-
digms of nonrepresentational art took over the art world: Malevich’s
suprematism, Tatlin’s constructivism, Larionov’s rayonism, and Vasily
Kandinsky’s abstract expressionism. Kandinsky, dubbed the “‘father’ of
Dada,” had already made an impact on that movement’s founders in Zu-
rich, from Hans Arp to Hugo Ball and Richard Huelsenbeck.80 To escape
author-controlled modernist styles, all nonrepresentational practices
were channeled into what can be described as the new concept of non-
objective everythingism, a “Parade of all the Isms” appropriated by the
new army of artists.81 Rooted in Victory over the Sun and Dadaism in Zu-
rich, it was artistic practice “imagined in a multimedia context, in which
abstraction in language, performance, and the visual arts were seen as
integrally related enterprises, and each of great weight.”82
Unlike Kandinsky’s expressionism and psychologism, which faced
tangible obstacles on the path of dissemination beyond the aesthetic
framework, Malevich’s ABC of geometry, Tatlin’s “machine art,” and
Aleksandr Rodchenko’s ruler-controlled formalism aspired to be what
Shklovsky described as “more set as a task than made”; that is, art that
does not depend “on the uninterrupted perception.”83 Mechanical meth-
ods of distribution and the framework of collective perception resulted
in production that had high potential for copying. With these artists, the
imposition of one’s ABC was turned into the proposition of an egalitarian
ready-made aesthetics that could erase references to the past.84 Nonobjec-
tive forms now signified revolutionary consciousness, catapulting their
practitioners into public space and establishing a communicative system
among new, proletarian audiences. In Malevich’s view, it was an ultra-left
social segment that, in carrying his “Suprematist banners,” would be able
to form an equal opposition to the new “left” as well as to the “center.”85
Malevich was now ready to objectify nonobjectivity by releasing it
into real life and organizing it according to the rules of geometry. Hence,
while Kandinsky reached out from Moscow to the masses with a ques-
tionnaire on the perception of form and color, Malevich rolled up his
sleeves and entered the “Red square of Art.”86 Together with a brigade
of younger artists—including Klutsis, Natan Altman, Ivan Kudriashov,
El Lissitzky, Pavel Mansurov, and Władysław Strzemiński—he tested
pp. 77, 104, his geometric alphabet on squares, streets, buildings, and transport.
105
The goal was not to provide a revolutionary layer over the old world
but to build a new one, the pursuit propelling Malevich’s students to

76
 Sergei Senkin
Construction, 1920

Anonymous
View of El Lissitzky’s propaganda
board “The Factory Workbenches
Await You” in front of a factory,
Vitebsk, 1920

78. Ibid., 187.

79. N. I. Khardzhiev, “Fotoshutka
Maiakovskogo,” in Stat’i ob
avangarde, ed. Duganov, Arpishkin,
and Sarab’ianov, 2:154.
80. For example, Richter points out
that under the influence of Kandinsky,
Ball “had taken up the idea of the
Gesamtkunstwerk.” Richter, Dada, 39.
81. El Lissitzky to Sophie Küppers,
March 23, 1924, in El Lissitzky:
Life, Letters, Texts, ed. Sophie
Lissitzky-Küppers (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1968), 48. In 1924,
Lissitzky and Arp demonstrated
this collectivized approach to
p. 110
visual languages in The ISMs of Art,
which illustrates several Russian
works, including Natan Altman’s
Russia, Labor (1921), Aleksandr
Rodchenko’s painting from the
series Linearism (1919), and Tatlin’s
Counter-Relief and Model for the
Monument to the Third International.
82. Dickerman, “Zurich,” 26.
83. Shklovskii, “O fakture i
kontrrel’efakh,” 2:105. Shklovsky wrote
this in 1920 regarding suprematism,
which is exactly when Malevich, with
UNOVIS students, used suprematism
for public decorations in Vitebsk.
84. “ABC” refers to Tzara’s phrase
“To impose your ABC is a natural
thing—hence deplorable.” See his
Dada manifesto of 1918, available
at http://www.writing.upenn.edu/
library/Tzara_Dada-Manifesto_1918.
pdf (accessed January 25, 2018).

77
 nonobjective three-dimensional compositions
such as Klutsis’s Dynamic City (1919) and Lis-
sitzky’s Prouns, an acronym for “project for
the affirmation of the new.” This conversion
of flat nonobjectivity into the three-dimen-
sional eventually led to an entirely new thing
(veshch), which included communicative ap-
paratuses such as Klutsis’s radio orators and
his multifunction constructions such as a
“screen-tribune-kiosk”; Tatlin’s Monument to
the Third International, or Tower (1919–1920);
p. 78 and Lissitzky’s Project for a Tribune on a Square
(1920). Immersion in the transformative quali-
ties of nonobjectivity manifested in artists’ an-
tiart ideology, described by Klutsis as “down
with art” and by Lissitzky as “overcoming
art.” Critic Boris Arvatov called such produc-
tion “proletarian nonobjectivity,” distinguish-
ing it from nonobjective practices in capitalist
society, considered to depend on the personal
goals of the individual artist.87 In contrast, “the
comradely collaboration of artists and theore-
ticians in the proletarian laboratory will cre-
ate an atmosphere in which each problem will
emerge indispensably and objectively from
practical and conscious premises.”88 Forming
a universal language, nonobjectivists created
an effective method to disseminate the revo-
lutionary agenda both at home and to the in-
ternational community, within which German
Dadaists were most receptive. Klutsis’s and
Tatlin’s works dedicated to the Third Congress
of the Communist International (Comintern),
pp. 106–107 Moscow (1921) and the journal International of
Art, planned in 1919 under Malevich’s editorial
eye, aspired to the unification of international
left cultural communities and the dissemina-
tion of an antibourgeois agenda.89
Punin helped to build the model of Tatlin’s
Monument to the Third International, and he

78
Vladimir Tatlin recalled a Dadaist atmosphere of fun and ob-
Construction of the model of
Tatlin’s Monument to the Third scenity, as well as an antiart mood: “They [the
International (left to right: Iosif collective of builders] are making jokes about
Meerzon, Tevel Shapiro
and Tatlin), 1920 painting, art, modernism, etc.”90 Tatlin was say-
ing, “No art . . . Fuck art.”91 On a serious note,
Gustav Klutsis
International, 1922 Punin described Tower as a symbol of class
struggle, with its spiral-line movement signi-
fying “liberated humanity.”92 He believed Tower
was the first revolutionary work that deserved
to be sent to Europe. Indeed, Tower became “an
international event in the art world,” with Ger-
man Dadaists hailing Tatlin as a hero of antiart
and machine culture.93 p. 122

REVOLUTIONARY SHIFTS
Amid the dual atmosphere of mockery and
sobriety, in which the “monument-form”—
Tower—was made, artists were channeling the
serious project of public agitation for Marxist
ideology and Soviet mass culture into absurdist
85. Malevich to Stepanova,
December 21, 1919, Malevich o sebe,
and chance-based collages and designs. In
ed. Vakar and Mikhienko, 1:119. them, Russian da da (yes yes) formed a produc-
86. Malevich to Kruchenykh, tive double bind with nyet nyet (no no), posi-
September 18, 1920, in Malevich o
sebe, ed. Vakar and Mikhienko, 1:129. tioning “transreason” as “the mandatory form
87. Boris Arvatov, “Proletariat i for the embodiment of art.”94 This amply con-
levoe iskusstvo,” Vestnik iskusstv,
no. 1 (January 1922): 10.
curred with the Dadaists’ “central message,” the
88. Ibid. “realization that reason and anti-reason, sense
89. Among the texts written for the and nonsense, design and chance, conscious-
first issue was Khlebnikov’s “Artists ness and unconsciousness, belong together as
of the World” (initially called “The
Global Writing Language: A System necessary parts of a whole.”95 In his text about
of Mutual Hieroglyphs for the People Khlebnikov’s Zangezi (1922; a transrational p. 68
of the Earth”) and Malevich’s “The
Appeal of Kazimir Malevich to the follow-up to Victory over the Sun), Punin ad-
Progressive Artists of Italy” [see dresses the condition as “terrifying, and now
p. 275 of the present catalogue].
90. Nicolai Punin, “Iz pisem N. victoriously present in art rationalism.”96 He
Punina A. Arens,” in O Tatline, is referring most likely to the constructivism
ed. Punina and Rakitin, 23.
of the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK),
91. Ibid., 24.
92. Punin, “Pamiatnik III
formulated in the early 1920s and based on
Internatsionala,” 20. logic. Tatlin’s decision to stage Zangezi in 1923
93. Ibid. challenged INKhUK’s homogeneous concept

79
 of constructivism. Like Punin, Tatlin valued Gustav Klutsis
Electrification of the Entire
Khlebnikov’s more complex, “weaved” percep- Country, 1922
tion of the new reality, where the “materials
of his machine” were “death, war, revolution,
destruction of Western European science, lan-
guage,” rather than solely technological and so-
cial progress.97
Punin emphasizes Zangezi’s “homeyness,”
“low technology,” and amateur acting, which
again contrast with Tatlin’s concept of Tower
as the ultimate public structure, built with
advanced technology. Likewise, a condition
of dialectic opposition was at work in efforts
of politically involved avant-gardists such as
p. 81 Klutsis, whose design for the poster Electrifi-
cation of the Entire Country (1920) has an in-
tentional formal awkwardness in its sense of
monumentality and montage of three regimes
of modernity: artistic (Proun), technological
(the electricity pylon), and political (Lenin).
Similarly, in making his series of “monolithic
communist cities where people of the whole
world will live” (beginning with Dynamic City
in 1919), Klutsis at once believed in their po-
tential realization and resisted being guided by
pure logic.98 Thus, he instructed that Dynamic
City be looked at from all sides and turned, and
he placed one such architectural fantasy, or 94. “Manifesto of the ‘41°’” (1919)
[see p. 283 of the present catalogue].
Dadaist riddle, on the cover of Kruchenykh’s
95. Richter, Dada, 64.
1925 book Kruchenykh Lives! This same at- 96. Nikolai Punin, “Zangezi,” in O
titude is present in the designs of Klutsis’s Tatline, ed. Punina and Rakitin, 62.
agit-structures. Their utilitarian content is 97. Ibid. In his “Society of Presidents
of Planet Earth,” conceived circa
not in balance with the complexity of formal 1920, Khlebnikov characterizes
manipulation. Dadaists as students of the Russian
futurists. Fascinated with Tatlin’s
Like Tatlin and Klutsis, Kruchenykh dis- Tower, in 1918 Mayakovsky wanted
rupted propagandistic mass culture and the af- Tatlin to do the decorations for
Mayakovsky’s play Mystery Bouffe,
firmative political spectacle of the new state, a job he ended up delegating to
particularly its growing publishing indus- Malevich, whose designs are lost.
98. This is how Lissitzky described
try, with a dose of Dadaist negativity and (to to Malevich, in 1919, the significance
use his term) “hooliganism.” Arvatov helped of his Prouns, a spatial nonobjective

80
81
82
 Gustav Klutsis introduce Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov’s con-
Kruchenykh Reads His Poetry,
ca. 1925. cept of transrational language in the new so-
ciopolitical atmosphere.99 Kruchenykh’s anti-
war poems, such as “Air Fortress,” published
in Lef (no. 4, 1924), combine neologisms or
literary shifts with excerpts, almost as long as
the poem itself, from a speech by the politi-
cian Nikolai Bukharin. Khardzhiev compared
“Air Fortress” with the “‘brutal’ grotesques
of George Grosz.”100 Kruchenykh’s complex
frame of politically conscious mind—of disso-
nant experience and flashes of nonsensical re-
ality—drew major avant-gardists to his literary
production. The fact that Kruchenykh lived in
the same building at 21 Miasnitskaia Street as
Klutsis, Rodchenko, Valentina Kulagina, and
Varvara Stepanova only intensified their col-
laboration, which included book cover designs
and mock-heroic impromptu actions in their
studios.101 Some photographs and films record
the use of a revolver, an uncanny reminder that
the collective laughter disguised danger. Many
structure developed simultaneously by representatives of the avant-garde, including
Lissitzky and Klutsis. See El Lissitzky:
Maler, Architekt, Typograf, Fotograf: Klutsis, would be executed in the late 1930s.
Erinnerungen, Briefe, Schriften, ed.
Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers (Dresden:
Significantly, Tristan Tzara, as Sergei Sharshun
VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1976), 15. noted, “dr[ew] a revolver next to his signature,”
99. See Boris Arvatov, “Speech Creation,” once more hinting at Dada’s risky games.102
on pp. 291–293 of the present catalogue.
p. 127
Kruchenykh was popular not only among
100. Khardzhiev, “Sud’ba Kruchenykh,”
1:305. Lef, no. 2 (1923): 27–30, the artists who lived continuously “in the land
featured Grosz with two drawings of the Bolsheviks.” Lissitzky, who stayed in Eu-
under the headline “Works of the
Constructivist George Grosz.” The rope from 1922 to 1925, backed Kruchenykh’s
accompanying text “About My Work” concept of transrationality, even when he
stresses his anticapitalist moods
and faith in the masses, identifies worked in the space of rational architecture.
aesthetics with production, and This is conveyed in one of Lissitzky’s letters
guarantees photography “a big role.”
101. See my “Dada on Miasnitskaia from 1924: “In a few days I will be finished
Street,” in Gustav Klutsis and Valentina with the article on architecture. . . . Am now
Kulagina: Photography and Montage
after Constructivism (Göttingen: working on a photographic self-portrait. A
Steidl; New York: International Center great piece of nonsense, if it all goes accord-
of Photography, 2004), 43–47.
ing to plan”103 Upon his return to Moscow he
102. See Sergei Sharshun, “My
Participation in the French Dada designed the cover for Kruchenykh’s book

83
 Anonymous
View of Pavel Mansurov’s
exhibition in the Museum of
Artistic Culture, Leningrad, 1923

Anonymous
View of the works by the
UNOVIS group in the
documentary film Exhibition of
Paintings of the Petrograd Artists
of All Trends, 1923

84
 Transrational and also presented him with a p. 178

series of presents that included a portrait of

Arp with the inscription “Fotopis portrait of
‘Schwalbendada’ [Swallowdada] Hans Arp,”
which he later supplemented with the self-
portrait he discussed in his 1924 letter. Another
Lissitzky offering to Kruchenykh was a portfo-
lio, Figurines, inspired by Victory over the Sun
and conceived and printed in Hannover in 1923
during a period when Lissitzky was in close
contact with Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. This p. 157

supports Khardzhiev’s dubbing Kruchenykh

“the first Dadaist” and validates Victory over
the Sun’s proto-Dadaist status.104

PHOTOMONTAGE AS A NEW KIND OF DADA ART

The signifying capacity and high potential
of photomontage for political art was recog-
nized equally by the Dadaists, who deemed it
“a medium of Dada art,” and by Russian art-
ists.105 Their shared interest is underscored in
the anonymous text “Photomontage,” printed
in the magazine Lef: “In Russia we can point
to the works of Rodchenko as models of pho-
tomontage . . . in the West the works of George
Movement,” on pp. 314–319
Grosz and other Dadaists are representative of
of the present catalogue. photomontage.”106 In 1918, when the German
103. Lissitzky to Küppers, December Dadaists Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch
12, 1924, in El Lissitzky: Maler,
Architekt, ed. Lissitzky-Küppers, 54. were conceiving of photomontages inspired by
104. Khardzhiev, “Sud’ba Kruchenykh,” the “soldiers’ heads and officers’ uniforms that
1:302. Prior to making Figurines,
Lissitzky planned to stage Victory
they saw on postcards,” Klutsis was produc-
over the Sun as electromechanical ing a sketch for an outdoor placard, Strike on pp. 14–15
theater. The play was restaged in 1920
in Vitebsk by Malevich’s students.
Counterrevolution, dedicated to the Bolshevik’s
105. Doherty, “Berlin,” 93. suppression of the uprising of the Left Social-
106. Gustav Klutsis, “Photomontage,” ist Revolutionaries during the Fifth Congress
Lef, no. 4 (1924), in Photography of the Soviets.107 Strike, like his double-sided pp. 108–109
in the Modern Era: European
Documents and Critical Writings, painting from the period he designated “ana-
1913–1940, ed. Christopher Phillips
lytical,” reflects his study with Natan Pevzner,
(New York: Metropolitan Museum
of Art and Aperture, 1989), 212; Naum Gabo, and Malevich from 1918 to 1920,

85
86
Sergei Senkin which propelled him from cubo-futurism to
City, ca. 1920
nonobjectivity and on to photomontage ren-
dered using formalist methods.
Left critics and filmmakers also aspired to
link nonobjectivity to mechanical media, as
demonstrated by Aleksei Gan relating the two
practices in his magazine Cine-photo (Kino-
fot), launched in 1922, and in Dziga Vertov’s
adoption of Rodchenko’s spatial constructions
for the titles in his documentary film Cine-
truth no. 14 (1923). With a camera, “trans-ar-
tistic plots” (vne-iskusstvennye siuzhety) were
incorporated into artistic practice under the
rubric of antiart. One of the earliest examples
of the union of the mechanical and the non-
objective can be found in Rodchenko’s 1915
Line and Compass drawings, followed by his pp. 53, 278

early photomontages. In contrast to Klutsis’s

soberness and overt political message, Rod-
chenko inclined to a more immediate social
content supported by parody. Thus, as in the
case of transrationality paralleling rationality,
photomontage production developed in the
space of representational dichotomy. At times
Rodchenko’s photomontages compositionally
follow his 1920 theory of linearism (Liniizm),
according to which he defined line as “the last
form,” and after which he would disregard
painting and embark on spatial constructions
and photomontage.
He published his early photomontages
in the first issue of Cine-photo (1922), call-
ing them “Printed Matter for Criticism” and
emphasizing that, like the Dadaists, he saw
this technique as a critical rather than purely
emphasis in original.
agitational weapon.108 The unsigned text that
107. Maud Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen
Knife: The Weimar Photomontages accompanies the photomontages points out
of Hannah Höch (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1993), 17.
that these stand apart from Western and Dada
108. Rodchenko signed his writings ones, which use printed material “abstractly
in the newspaper Anarchy with a and for the sake of aesthetic tasks only.”109 This

87
 is perplexing. Aleksandr Lavrentiev, art his- Aleksandr Rodchenko
Cover design for the journal
torian and Rodchenko’s grandson, points out Lef, no. 2, 1923
that Rodchenko’s photomontage production
was spurred by Mayakovsky’s 1922 visit to
Berlin, where the latter bought many maga-
zines and books related to the subject of Dada.
Examples of Dadaist works were also avail-
able to Rodchenko from his friend Osip Brik, pp. 122, 126, 168, 169

a formalist critic who composed a scrapbook

using material collected on trips to Germany.
Another influence was filmmaker Lev Kule-
shov, whose article in Cine-photo, no. 3 (1922)
Rodchenko illustrated with photomontages
titled Psychology and Detective. Rodchenko pp. 116–117

shared Kuleshov’s charged wit and interest

in mass culture and crime imagery, his blend
of technology and primitivism, and his fasci-
nation with the circus and Americanisms. All
these preferences were consolidated in Rod-
chenko’s photomontages for Mayakovsky’s
poem “About This” (1923), another departure
from constructions of the everyday as exclu-
sively political.
With Lenin’s death in 1924, debates be-
tween nonobjectivists and “objectivists”
sharpened. The subjects of nonobjectivity, de-
familiarization, photomontage, and unconven-
tional regimes of language were prioritized in
the commemorative responses. Lef dedicated
a whole issue to Lenin’s language, publishing
essays by formalist critics; for example, “Lenin
as Decanonizer” by Shklovsky.110 Analyzing the
originality of Lenin’s oratorical and written
pseudonym “Anti,” an ultimate antonym
works, Shklovsky states that a political event that Richter describes as “Dada’s original
as significant as Lenin’s death inevitably stirs moral credo.” Richter, Dada, 186.
109. Kino-fot, no. 1 (1922): 13.
up discussions pertinent to culture and re-
110. An excerpt is included elsewhere
evaluates its practices; old things get ousted in this volume, pp. 307–309.
and renamed, and the scale of comparisons 111. Kazimir Malevich, “Appendix: From
the Book on Non-objectivity,” in The World
changes. Shklovsky shared Malevich’s defi-
as Non-objectivity: Unpublished Writings,
ance, declared in the latter’s essay about Lenin, 1922–1925, ed. Troels Andersen, vol. 3

88
of conventional representations of the Bolshevik leader in “busts or
portraits.” His face, in Malevich’s view, had to be replaced by “non-
objectivity and abstraction.”111
Klutsis’s, Rodchenko’s, and Sergei Senkin’s photomontages exe-
cuted for the 1924 issue of the magazine Young Guard resist “turn[ing]
Lenin into a cliché.”112 Senkin and Klutsis in particular make as many
shifts from conventional portraiture as the flexible technique of
photomontage allows. They clash various periods of Lenin’s politi-
cal activities to the point of paradox, operating through the interplay
of scales and severe fragmentation of bodies and objects. The com-
bination of communist red and anarchic black highlights the origi-
nality of the graphic designs while also mourning the leader. Slogans
boldly cut through the imagery, intensifying its formal character and p. 306

89
 offering new models of junction, between vi- Aleksandr Rodchenko
Type of a Female Convict, 1922
sual and verbal.
p. 93 One laconic composition by Senkin with Gustav Klutsis
Untitled, early 1920s
Lenin’s head affixed to a red, gridded back-
ground stands out. Lenin’s hypnotic gaze
evokes his image in Höch’s seminal photomon-
tage Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last
Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany
(1919–1920), in which Lenin’s head is placed
next to Dadaist Johannes Badaar, among other
personalities. The Dadaists’ encounter with
and interest in Lenin stretched from Cabaret
Voltaire to the politically charged Berlin Dada
and was validated by Lissitzky when he, while
living in Europe, translated and published in
Kunstblatt at the time of Lenin’s death “the
extract from Malevich’s new work Lenin” and

90
Aleksandr Rodchenko Gustav Klutsis
Family Games (from top to bottom: Boris Kulagin, Gustav Klutsis,
Boris Shvetsov, Varvara Stepanova, and Valentina Kulagina in
Maria Shvetsova, and Aleksandr various impromptu actions,
Rodchenko), 1924 1925

91
 p. 94 added Lenin to his earlier design of a speaker’s
podium.113 In his words, the remake became “a
sensation” at the International Theatrical Ex-
hibition in Vienna in 1924. While translating
Malevich, Lissitzky expressed his disappoint-
ment at the decline of Dadaism and proposed
Malevich’s ideas as the replacement for that
sensibility: “I don’t see anything that excites
feeling in Germany any more. . . . ‘Dada’ had a
real passion at the beginning, under the guise
of nihilism. The Malevich script at all events
stirs the emotions.”114
Like Badaar, who used Christ as a refer-
ent in his works, Malevich repetitively linked
Lenin with Christ and even drew an analogy
between Gorki, the mansion where Lenin
died, and “the hill of Golgotha.”115 In tune with
this comparison, Vasily Ermilov assembled a
two-square “memorial board,” on which the (Copenhagen: Borgen, 1976), 336.
p. 93 word Gorki and the date and time of Lenin’s 112. See Viktor Shklovsky, “Lenin
as a Decanonizer,” on pp. 307–309
death are assembled from real materials, of the present catalogue.
among them metal and sandpaper. The result 113. Lissitzky to Küppers, May 11, 1924, in
is a work-sign distinguished by formal auster- El Lissitzky, ed. Lissitzky-Küppers, 50.

ity and decreeing, “We do not want icons.”116 114. Lissitzky to Küppers, March
21, 1924, in El Lissitzky, ibid.
Paradoxically, the framework of Russian 115. Malevich, “Appendix,” 324.
revolutionary “Dada” mapped here in the 116. Viktor Shklovsky, “Lenin as a
duality between rational and transrational, Decanonizer,” on pp. 307–309 of the
present catalogue. E. D. Kashuba
serious and eccentric, culminated in Lenin’s writes that in the early 1920s in Kiev,
physical condition during the last months of where Ermilov lived, “Dadaist ideas
were well known from more than one
his life. Paralyzed, he acquired an insane gaze publication on the pages of periodicals.
and produced scribbles while learning how to For example, in 1922 the magazine
of the leftist formation ‘Semaphore
write using his left hand. He desired to spend into the Future’ published texts by
time with children, which Klutsis reflected in Tristan Tzara and other Dadaists, and
materials about Dadaism as one of the
montages from 1924 that depict him in their radical tendencies in contemporary
company. These works allegorize Lenin’s in- art.” Kashuba also writes about the
manifesto of the Ukrainian panfuturists
fantile state of mind and inability to commu- and their idea of “the hegemony of
nicate or control his body. meta-art” that included the new visual
form “poetry-painting.” In view of
pp. 120–121 Klement Redko’s painting Uprising (1924– Ermilov’s adoration of Khlebnikov’s
poetry, his word pieces, including the
1925) is a spectacular summary of the begin-
ones dedicated to Lenin, might have
ning and end of the revolutionary era. The been inspired by this paradigm. See

92
Vasily Ermilov
Memorial board Gorki,
1924

Sergei Senkin
Illustration for the journal
Young Guard, 1924

93
 El Lissitzky and Hans Arp
Illustration of Lissitzky’s Lenin Tribune
(1924) in the book Die Kunstismen /
Les ismes de l’art / The Isms of Art:
1914–1924, Zurich, 1925

Natan Altman
Cover of the book Lenin: Drawings,
Saint Petersburg, 1921

94
viewer is immediately captivated by the de-
tailed iconography of the original governing
iconostases—destined to be purged and ef-
faced from photographs and photomontages.
Strangely, the ruthless politics of “démontage”
armed Redko’s painting with greater docu-
mentary power than that held by the photo-
graphic media of the Stalin era. Moreover,
Redko’s formalist education left a deep trace
in Uprising, for it is structured as a montage
of nonobjective techniques invented by the
avant-garde artists and surrendered to the
revolutionary cause. Redko had studied with
Kandinsky at the Higher State Artistic and
Technical Studios (VKhUTEMAS) and took
from his elder expressionism. From Malev-
ich, another influence, he learned about the
signifying power of geometrism, and from
Larionov, whose principles of rayonism had
been included in the VKhUTEMAS curricu-
lum, he adapted rays of light, placing Lenin at
the point of their intersection in the central
quadrilateral. This Malevichian shape is deep
blood-red inside and black along the edges,
where eerie swarms of anonymous agitators
and defending agents are marching. Such in-
jection of nonobjective styles is rendered over
a gridded wall of windows, signaling the be-
ginning of the conversion of the universal grid
structure into concrete window grates, and of
unrestrained modernist practices, including
Dadaist transgressions, and left politics into
symptoms of surreal scenarios and repressive
policies.

95
Gustav Klutsis
February Revolution, early 1920s.

96
Gustav Klutsis
October Revolution, early 1920s.

97
 Ksenia Boguslavskaia, Banker Ivan Puni, Red Army Soldier
Study for an illustration for the portfolio Study for an illustration for the portfolio
October 1917–1918: Heroes and Victims of October 1917–1918: Heroes and Victims of
the Revolution by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1918 the Revolution by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1918

Ivan Puni, Laundress Ivan Puni, Mistress

Illustration for the portfolio October 1917– Illustration for the portfolio October 1917–
1918: Heroes and Victims of the Revolution 1918: Heroes and Victims of the Revolution
by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1918 by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1918

98
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Soviet Alphabet, 1919

99
Nadezhda Udaltsova
Red Figure, 1919

100
Ivan Kudriashov
Portrait of a Young Lady (recto):
Nonobjective Composition (verso),
ca. 1919

101
Gustav Klutsis
Red Man, 1919–1920

Varvara Stepanova
Figure, 1921

102
Varvara Stepanova
Torso, 1920

103
104
Anonymous
Proletariat of the World Unite:
Organization of Production
Victory over a Capitalist
Structure, early 1920’s

Anonymous
Untitled (First Room), early 1920s.

Ivan Kudriashov
Design for the decoration of a motorcar
for the First Anniversary of the October
Revolution in Moscow, 1918

105
Kazimir Malevich
Cover of the journal The International of Art
(unpublished), ca. 1919

106
Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia
Cover of the journal The International of Art
(unpublished), 1919

107
Gustav Klutsis
Untitled (recto and verso), ca. 1920

108
109
 Natan Altman
Russia: Work, 1921

110
Pavel Mansurov
Beer-Painterly Formula, 1922

111
112
David Zagoskin Valentin Iustitsky
Construction, 1921–1922 Painterly Construction with Wire,
early 1920s

113
Boris Ender
Karl Liebknecht, 1919

114
Aleksandr Rodchenko Next double page:
Construction no. 92 (on Green), 1919 Aleksandr Rodchenko
Detective, 1922

115
 Vasily Ermilov
Untitled (Composition with
Letters), ca. 1920

Anonymous
Vasily Ermilov in his studio
with an advertising design
for “Read Books” by
Valerian Polishchiuk (left),
ca. 1926

118
Varvara Stepanova
Costume design for the
play Death of Tarelkin by
Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin
for Vsevolod Meyerhold
Theater, 1922

Varvara Stepanova
Props design for Vitaly
Zhemchuzhny’s Evening of
the Book (Red imps disarm
Aleksandr Kirensky), 1924

119
Klement Redko
Uprising, 1924–1925

120
 Osip Brik
Scrapbook “Dada,” ca. 1923–1924
George Grosz and John Heartfield
holding the poster “Art is Dead. Long
live Tatlin’s Tower”

122
 Dada Bridge

The word Dada expresses

the internationality of the movement.
—Richard Huelsenbeck, cited in Roman Jakobson,
“Letters from the West. Dada,” 1921

Dada is Cosmopolitan.
—Sergei Sharshun

Berlin
For his 1922 book And Yet, It Moves, Ilya Eh-
renburg assesses the recent history of the
international avant-garde: “During the war
everyone was separated by the barbed wire
and by the ears of spies. But in 1918, after a
four-year separation, artists and writers saw
that without knowing it, they had arrived at the
same platform.”117 Ehrenburg’s book globalized
the significance of Tatlin’s Tower, referring to
it with the phrase “and yet, it moves,” Galileo’s
alleged pronouncement about the earth after
his condemnation by the Inquisition. Tower’s
rotational quality positioned it as a new sym-
bol of postwar international art, in contrast to
the previous, static separations between East
and West. And with this openness, Dadaist ten-
dencies crystalized into the shared platform.
These were left politics, involving social cri-
tique at once austere and enforced by mecha-
nisms of parody, passionate experimentation,
and fanatical agitation for new ideas.
Along with Ehrenburg and Shklovsky, in
the 1920s several other significant Russian
avant-gardists (Puni, Lissitzky, Zdanevich,
Sharshun, Kandinsky, Mayakovsky) moved to
E. D. Kashuba, “Sotsial’nyi Dadaizm
v tvorchestve Viktora Palmova,” in or spent time in Europe. All of them came into

123
 immediate contact with the Dadaists and to Anonymous
Vladimir Tatlin, Berlin, 1914
different degrees contributed to the expan-
sion of the Dadaist conceptual reservoir. El Lissitzky
Tatlin Working on the Monument
Mayakovsky played a particularly coalesc- to the Third International,
ing role between the Russian and European illustration in the book Six
Tales with Easy Endings by Ilya
milieus. In the fall of 1922 he departed for Ehrenburg, 1922
Berlin in conjunction with the opening, on
October 15, of the First Russian Exhibition in
that city, which, surprisingly, given the Bol-
sheviks’ antibourgeois attitudes, took place
at a private venue, the Van Diemen Gallery.
The exhibition included works by all the ma-
Russkii avangard 1910–1920 v evropeiskom
jor nonobjectivists, giving the impression that iskusstve (Moscow: Nauka, 2000), 224.
nonobjective art was endorsed by the Bolshe- 117. Il’ia Erenburg, A vse taki ona
viks. The popularity of Mayakovsky’s political vertitsia (Moscow: Gelikon, 1922), 43.

Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) posters 118. Several other artists and writers
p. 128
contributed to the production of
of 1919–1921, also displayed in the exhibition, the ROSTA posters that effectively
was amplified by his poetry readings in antici- spread the Bolshevik agenda.
Mayakovsky collaborated with
pation of his forthcoming books For the Voice, Jakobson on at least one poster.
designed by Lissitzky, and 150,000,000, with 119. M. A. Iziumskaia believes the
Berlin Dadaists’ knowledge of Tatlin
p. 128 a cover by John Heartfield.118 came from the publication in 1920
Taken at the First International Dada Fair, of Konstantin Umanski’s book Neue
Kunst in Rusland 1914–1919, in which
a photograph of Heartfield and Grosz hold- Tatlin’s new idea of monuments as “an
ing a placard with the slogan “Art is dead / alive machine” is discussed. See M.
p. 122 A. Iziumskaia, “Nemetskie dadaisty i
Long live the new machine art of TATLIN” Rossiia: puti vzaimodeistviia,” in Rossiia-
registered the beginning of the Dadaists’ fas- Germaniia: kul’turnye sviazi, iskusstvo,
literatura v pervoi polovine dvadtsatogo
cination with Russian avant-gardists.119 At veka: materialy nauchnoi konferentsii
p. 127 the fair Grosz showed Tatlinesque Diagram “Vipperovskie chteniia-1996,” no. 29, ed.
I. E. Danilova (Moscow: Pushkin State
(1920), which, despite its title, dwells on his Museum of Fine Arts, 2000), 56.
characteristic critique of the German bour- 120. Mayakovsky quoted in Nikolai
geoisie and their pervasive urban alienation. Khardzhiev, “Maiakovskii i Tatlin: k
90-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia khudozhnika,”
p. 126 Hausmann’s since-lost Tatlin at Home (1920) in Stat’i ob avangarde, ed. Duganov,
Arpishkin, and Sarab’ianov, 1:233. Tatlin
was more explicitly relevant to Tatlin’s ideas visited Picasso’s studio during his trip
in its juxtaposition of a torso with its organs to Europe in 1913 in conjunction with
an exhibition of folk art. He appears
exposed to effect human physical vulnerabil- as part of a band of blind musicians in
ity, and a modern man with his brain and eyes photographs, playing a bandore with
closed eyes, hinting at his future exchange
replaced by mechanical implants. Such views of retinal art for an art of the mind, a shift
of Tatlin—as an artist-machine in whose mind reflected in Hausmann’s and Lissitzky’s p. 125
photomontages. Duchamp, who is credited
the “details are calculated, honestly, with a with the dissemination of the concept of
ruler,” or, as Mayakovsky described Tatlin to antiretinal art in New York, published a

124
Pablo Picasso in 1922, as an example of an artist who stopped creat-
ing art for “pleasing artists’ own eyes”—was also reflected in Lissitzky’s
photocollage Tatlin Working on the Monument to the Third International,
made for Ehrenburg’s book Six Tales with Easy Endings (1922).120 In the p. 125

photocollage, a ruler is inserted in the place of Tatlin’s eye, liberating

it from “emotional irritation of the hypertrophied and damaged eye”
and “accidental forms” and giving it an “objectively truthful and real
viewpoint.”121
While Tatlin was the Dadaists’ fantasy of a new kind of a progressive
modernist, Puni, the organizer of 0,10, had been physically present in
Berlin since the fall of 1920. Puni’s exhibition at Herwarth Walden’s Der

125
 Sturm gallery in February 1921 put him in con-
tact with German Dadaists associated with the
gallery and its eponymous magazine, including
Arp, Richter, and Schwitters. Richter later re-
called the impact of Puni’s exhibition: “Curi-
ously enough, Dada tendencies seem to have
made their first appearance in Russia, where
p. 47
Futurist influence was still very strong. Puni’s
Barber’s Shop [1915] and Window-cleaner [1915]
are a poetic combination of Simultaneist expe-
rience and original experimentation. His empty
p. 131 Hunger Plate . . . is a piece of defiance that, both
in its directness and in its form of expression,
can be regarded as a Dada document.”122
Richter’s memoir includes an illustration
of Hunger Plate dated 1918, with “Petrograd”
added to the title—a location that transforms
this monochrome with affixed plate into a po-
litical allegory. “In Russia in 1918 they were in
the middle of a revolution, and one potato a day
was a lot. The empty plate was a challenge (to
something or someone),” Richter recounts in
his memoir.123 A photograph of the lost assem-
blage Hunger Plate, preserved in the collection
of the Mayakovsky Museum in Moscow, was
most likely brought back by Mayakovsky from
Germany or Paris, where Puni moved in 1924.
One of the pair’s encounters in Russia resulted
in a Dadaist joke by Mayakovsky, described by
Khardzhiev as a “photographic trick” and “one
of the first examples of photomontage.”124 In
p. 35 a group photograph called Easter at Futurists
(1915), featuring Mayakovsky, Vasily Kamen-
magazine called The Blind Man in 1917.
sky, Kulbin, Arthur Lurie, and Rozanova, the 121. Nikolai Punin, “Tatlin
poet pasted next to himself Puni’s head set (Protiv kubizma),” in O Tatline,
ed. Punina and Rakitin, 30.
against a flowery hanging fabric. This was
122. Richter, Dada, 198–99.
payback for Puni’s refusal to be photographed
123. Ibid., 206. Puni participated in
with him during the exhibition Tramway V. creating street decorations for the
Soviet anniversary and taught at
The accompanying text lists Easter wishes, one
SVOMAS, showing his initial loyalty
of which (Malevich’s) reads, “Reason is a penal and interest in the revolution. This

126
Osip Brik
Scrapbook “Dada,”
ca. 1923–1924
Raoul Hausmann,
Tatlin at Home, 1920

George Grosz
Tatlinesque Diagram, 1920

George Grosz
Two works by the artist
reproduced to accompany
his article “About My Work,
Lef, no. 2, 1923

127
128
El Lissitzky chain for an artist, thus we wish for all artists
Cover of the catalogue
The First Russian Exhibition, to lose their minds.”
Berlin,1922 A photograph of Puni’s exhibition at Der p. 130

John Heartfield Sturm impresses with the installation’s inven-

Cover of the book tiveness and stylistic diversity, ranging from
150,000,000 by Vladimir
Mayakovsky, 1924 figurative expressionism, which Puni had
practiced while teaching at the beginning of
Vladimir Mayakovsky
ROSTA no. 630, “America 1919 at Marc Chagall’s studio in Vitebsk (and
gets concessions from us,” applied in the Heroes and Victims portfolio),
November 1920
to nonobjective Proun-like compositions and
Vladimir Mayakovsky geometric assemblages. Puni hung some of
ROSTA no. 870, “Crisis in
Europe,” January 1921 his framed works over walls painted with
oversized Russian letters adopted from his
painting Flight of Forms (1919), in which he
accomplished an equilibrium between visual
and verbal transrational morphologies (threat-
ened by easily decipherable communicative
models such as Mayakovsky’s Soviet Alpha-
bet [1919]. The overall layered effect of Puni’s p. 99

installation would have evoked Schwitters’s

1919 exhibition of mixed assemblages and
collages at Der Sturm. Schwitters, like Puni,
emphasized the importance of transgressive
poetic language, which, as Dorothea Dietrich
points out, “put Schwitters and Hannover on
the Dada map.”125 This helps to explain why
Lissitzky found shelter with Schwitters in
Hannover, making, as his first project there, a
portfolio of Figurines based on Kruchenykh’s
Victory over the Sun.
Puni’s membership in the radical Novem-
ber Group, formed under expressionist leader-
ship but including Berlin Dadaists; his friend-
ship with Shklovsky, then living in Berlin; and
his collaboration with László Moholy-Nagy
on the manifesto “A Call to Elementary Art—
To the Artists of the World,” published in De
Stijl in October 1921, reflect his openness to
is reflected in his membership in the
everything. Moholy-Nagy had mounted an ex-
German November Group, with whom
he exhibited in Cologne in 1922. hibition of his work at Der Sturm just before

129
 Puni’s. The timing, coupled with Moholy- Anonymous
View of Ivan Puni’s exhibition in Der
Nagy’s preoccupation with nonobjective art Sturm Gallery, Berlin, 1921
and photography, made their interest in each
Ivan Puni
other inevitable. Moholy-Nagy’s subsequent Untitled (Hunger Plate), ca. 1918
Constructions in Enamel (1923), which he or-
dered over the telephone from a local factory
by dictating their composition (they are often
called his “Telephone Pictures”), attests to the
influence, through Puni, of Malevich’s democ-
ratization of formal inventions through reli-
ance on art’s mechanical requisites.126
Puni’s and Moholy-Nagy’s appeal to the
international art community was to establish
nonobjective art as a platform for unification,
an effort that predated the announcement in
Düsseldorf of the “Declaration of the Interna-
tional Faction of Constructivists” at the First
International Congress of Progressive Artists

130
 on May 30, 1922. Signed by Theo van Doesburg
(who had not yet announced his theory of el-
124. Khardzhiev, “Fotoshutka ementarism), Lissitzky, and Richter, the term
Maiakovskogo,” 1:153–54. constructivism was a compromise between the
125. Dietrich, “Hannover,” 159. She refers
to Schwitters’s parodic love poem “An three signatories. The term was used again at a
Anna Blume” (1919), published in Der larger gathering in Weimar in September 1922,
Sturm at the time of his exhibition.
recorded as the Congress of Constructivists
126. Even as left artists in Germany
and Russia distanced themselves and Dadaists, a combination that encompassed
from expressionism in the early all progressive artists and suggested an alliance
1920s, the First Universal German Art
Exhibition, mounted in Moscow and between constructivists (read “nonobjectiv-
Leningrad in 1924, was overwhelmingly ists”) and Dadaists.
expressionist. However, there were
notable exceptions, including seven In a photograph of the congress, Lissitzky p. 136
of Moholy-Nagy’s works, among stands out in the background thanks to his pipe
them Construction in Enamel 3 and
Construction in Enamel 4 (both 1923). and checked cap. Tzara is in front, wearing a
On the relationships between Russian similar cap and holding a can while raising
artists and Moholy-Nagy, see Margarita
Tupitsyn, “Colorless Field: Notes on to his cheek the hand of his female neighbor.
the Paths of Modern Photography,” in Perhaps this impromptu gesture resonant with
Object:Photo: Modern Photographs: The
Thomas Walther Collection 1909–1949, futurist eccentricity made Lissitzky doubt

131
 Tzara’s potential for originality. Upon Lissitz-
ky’s return to Berlin, he told Sharshun, who at
the time was translating into Russian Tzara’s
The Gas Heart (1921), that the play had “no
interest for the Russians . . . [for them] there
were a multitude of similar things before and
after the war.”127 In an issue of the magazine
Veshch that year, Lissitzky likewise defined
“Dadaists’ tactics of negation, so reminiscent
of our first Futurists of the prewar period,” as
“anachronism.”128
Lissitzky shared with Schwitters and Arp
an investment in defining Dadaism’s formal
parameters. His analysis of Schwitters’s ex-
hibition at Der Sturm was initially critical:
“Schwitters has the brain of a literary person,
but neither an eye for color nor hands for ma-
terial. Together this creates a confused thing.”
Schwitters’s Merz Portfolio (1923), printed
in Hannover simultaneous with Lissitzky’s
Proun: 1st Kestner Portfolio, demonstrated,
in Lissitzky’s terms, “impregnation by us,” an
ed. Mitra Abbaspour, Lee Ann Daffner,
expression he used elsewhere in relation to and Maria Morris Hambourg (New
Moholy-Nagy’s withdrawal from expression- York: Museum of Modern Art, 2014),
https://www.moma.org/interactives/
ism.129 In Schwitters’s portfolio there is an objectphoto/assets/essays/Tupitsyn.
abrupt shift, similar to Moholy-Nagy’s, from pdf (accessed January 25, 2018).
structural excessiveness to “precise geome- 127. Sharshun cites Lissitzky in
his letter to Tzara, March 6, 1923,
trism” and “organization”—to borrow more in “Sergei Sharshun, pis’ma k
terms from Lissitzky—and the use of red and Tristanu Tsara (1921–1923),” in
Literaturnyi avangard russkogo
black, a palette characteristic of Malevich and Parizha. Istoriia. Khronika. Antologiia.
his students.130 Lissitzky’s execution of Schwit- Dokumenty, ed. L. Livak and A.
Ustinov (Moscow: OGI, 2014), 771.
ters’s and Arp’s portraits in the multi-image 128. El Lisitskii, “Blokada Rossii
technique of the photogram (for which he konchaetsia,” Veshch, no. 1 (1922),
trans. into Russian in El Lisitskii,
invented the neologism fotopis), mirrors the 1890–1941 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennaia
visual and technical complexity of the former’s Tret’iakovskaia galereia, 1991), 73.
Merz art and of the latter’s chance-based non- 129. El Lisitskii, “Vystavki v
Berline,” Veshch, no. 3 (1922),
p. 133 objectivity. trans. into the Russian in El
The First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin Lisitskii, 1890–1941, 136–37.
130. While in Berlin Malevich wrote
opened right after the congress in Weimar and a letter to Schwitters in reaction to
“unleashed the Russian theory of nonobjective his article “Mein Merz und=Meine

132
El Lissitzky
Kurt Schwitters, 1924

El Lissitzky
Hans Arp, 1924

El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters

Cover of the journal Merz, no. 8–9: Nasci,
Hannover, April/July 1924

133
 art onto the European artistic scene.”131 The Dadaists Heartfield, Grosz,
Hausmann, and Huelsenbeck, associated with the German revolution of
1918–1919, welcomed the exhibition and saw in its participants ideologi-
cal allies. Hausmann and Huelsenbeck’s declaration “What is Dadaism
and what does it want in Germany?” (1919) reverberated with Malevich’s
“Declaration of Human Rights” (1918) in its sociocultural radicalism
and far left ideology. Both proposed to transcend the familiar canons of
modernist art movements. However, other Dadaists—Arp, Schwitters,
Tzara, and van Doesburg—were not entirely supportive of the Russian
exhibition, for they disapproved of art practices that committed to one
class, be it proletariat or bourgeoisie. Together they signed a “Manifesto
of Proletarian Art” to refute the notion of such practice: “Art, made by
proletarians, does not exist because the proletarian, when he creates
art, no longer remains a proletarian, but becomes an artist.”132 That is,
the status of “artist” supersedes other commitments, and artists above
all should pursue their own revolutions against artistic convention and
restrictive institutions. For these Dadaists, serving the proletarian politi-
cal cause would mean a loss of control over one’s artistic determination
and independence.
Yet regardless of some political and conceptual differences, European
Dadaists and the Russians who joined them were dedicated to collective
practices and the expansion of international alliances. Sharshun is the
earliest example of a Russian artist consistently committed to building
bridges with the Dadaists. In Moscow, in 1909, he came into contact with
proto-Dadaists Larionov and Goncharova, and in Barcelona, where he
settled in 1915, he met Arthur Cravan and Francis Picabia, witnessing
the launch of the magazine 391. In Paris, where he returned in 1920, he
befriended Tzara, Paul Éluard, and André Breton. And in Berlin, where
he stayed from 1922 to 1923 while waiting for a Russian visa, he exhib-
ited at Der Sturm after Puni (in September 1922) and spent time with
Schwitters, Ehrenburg, Lissitzky, Mayakovsky, and Brik. From Berlin he
corresponded with Tzara, filling him in on art activities and remarking
that “many Russians would like to know what Dada is.”133
The first issue of Sharshun’s publication Transportation (Perevoz),
called “Transportation—Dada,” was a mere four-page document that an-
nounced itself as an “official agency of 3 ½ International” and, on behalf
of Europe, told Russia to “come here.” In it, Sharshun enthusiastically
cites Tzara and advises readers “to go to Paris to see Man Ray, the creator
of new visions,” and he ridicules Berlin’s conservative Russian commu-
nity, urging its members to exchange their passports for Soviet ones.

134
 He is equally harsh and ironic toward some
Russians from avant-garde circles, in particu-
lar those who could compete with him for the
position of the Russian Dadaist. Sharshun dubs
“worthless” the newly formed Rostov-on-Don p. 191
group Nothingists.134 He bashes Zdanevich’s
project University 41°, announced right after
Zdanevich moved to Paris in 1921, as the place p. 199

where “students went on hunger strike by re-

fusing to eat rotten zaum and sdvig”—that is,
the key formalist techniques of Russian proto-
Dadaists. Lissitzky’s rapprochement with the
Dadaists resulted in another eruption of scorn
from Sharshun: “On the racetrack of Russian
artists for the prize of Sameness, E. Lissitzky
has come first.” A telegram text ends the issue,
informing colleagues in Russia—Kruchenykh,
poet Grigory Petnikov, and Rodchenko—that
“‘Transportation—Dada’ has sailed with rein-
forcement into its first voyage.”
Sharshun’s visa was denied, depriving
him of the voyage to communist Russia, yet
his project to transport Dada was taken on by
Mayakovsky and Brik (who had accompanied
Mayakovsky to Berlin). Upon their return from
Merz=Muster Messe im Sturm” (Der Europe they launched Lef and in the second
Sturm, no. 7 [1926–1927]: 106–7). In issue published in German and English an
the letter he admits Malevich as an
influence. Malevich to Schwitters, editorial titled “Declaration: Comrades, Orga-
May 10, 1927, in Malevich o sebe, ed. nizers of Life!” that is saturated with political
Vakar and Mikhienko, 1:189–91.
131. Marc Dachy, “‘Life Is an
and antiart fervor and “summon[s]” progres-
Extraordinary Invention’: Doesburg sive artists “to establish a single front of leftist
the Dadaist,” in Van Doesburg and
the International Avant-Garde:
art—the ‘Red Art International.’”135 The issue
Constructing a New World (London: also includes Grosz’s text “About My Work,”
Tate Publishing, 2009), 31.
a reflection on the aforementioned alliance of
132. Theo van Doesburg, Kurt
Schwitters, Hans Arp, Tristan Dadaists and constructivists. Its two illustrat-
Tzara, and Christof Spengemann, ed images are typical Grosz—grotesque depic- p. 127
“Manifesto of Proletarian Art”
(1923), available at https://libcom. tions of greedy, alienated capitalists and other
org/library/manifesto-proletarian- Berliners. Some of the portraits are cropped
art-1923 (accessed January 25, 2018).
and rendered using straight lines that inter-
133. Sharshun to Tzara, March 30,
1921, cited in “Sergei Sharshun, pis’ma connect the negative spaces of the drawing.

135
 Hans Arp Anonymous
In front of the Schwitters’ house in Hannover Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists,
(left to right: Helma Schwitters, unidentified, Weimar, September 1922
Kurt Schwitters, Nelly van Doesburg, Theo
van Doesburg, and El Lissitzky, with Ernst
Schwitters), 1922

136
 Ivan Puni's Scrapbook
Viktor Shklovsky, Ksenia
Boguslavskaia, Ivan Puni,
and unknowns (left to right),
ca. 1922

Another important manifestation of the

project to transport Dada was Brik’s scrap-
book laconically annotated by Khardzhiev as
“Album ‘Dada,’” probably after Tzara’s journal
Dada.136 Filled with documentation of Dada-
ist works, publications, and related press
collected during Brik’s and Mayakovsky’s
European trips, it includes photographs of
the magazines 391 and Dada, of Fountain and p. 13

other works by Duchamp, and of Hausmann’s

Tatlin at Home and ABCD. The latter work’s p. 126

established date of 1923–1924 indicates either

that Brik—described by Soviet Commissar of
k Tristanu Tsara (1921–1923),” 752.
134. For the group’s texts, see Education Anatoly Lunacharsky as “the Rus-
pp. 294–299 of the present catalogue. sian Breton”—assembled his scrapbook over a
135. For the complete text, see pp. period of two years or that he made it later than
303–304 of the present catalogue.
1922, Khardzhiev’s date.137 Brik’s compilation

137
 Aleksandr Rodchenko
Cover design for the journal Lef (with
a portrait of Osip Brik, unpublished),
1924

Anonymous
Arp with naval monocle, 1926

Petr Galadzhev
Cover of the book Coiler by Viktor
Shklovsky, 1920–1929

136. Khardzhiev received the

scrapbook as a gift from Brik.
137. The comparison is made in A.
Lunacharskii, “K kharakteristike
noveishei frantsuzskoi literatury,”
Pechat’ i revoluitsiia 2 (1926): 17–26.
138. V. N. Terekhova, “Goncharova,
Larionov, Maiakovskii: Parizh,
1922 god,” in N. Goncharova i M.

138
of Dada factography is intertwined on some pages with his own draw- pp. 168–169

ings and comments, affirming his conviction that Dadaism suited the
productivist agenda of Lef that he had helped to theorize. For one of
his unpublished cover designs for Lef, Rodchenko blocked the left lens
of Brik’s spectacles with the magazine’s logotype, thus prioritizing left
ideology over visual apparatuses, including those of a mechanical na-
ture. This image of Brik creates a fascinating pair with a portrait of Arp
taken in 1926 by an anonymous photographer who captured him with
his eye obstructed by a naval monocle. The two portraits underline p. 138

the difference between the far left and moderate Dadaists such as Arp.
The latter continued to invest their creativity into optical rather than
political shifts.

Paris
In Berlin Mayakovsky met Sergei Diaghilev, who invited him to Paris.
Mayakovsky agreed most likely because, among other opportunities, it
meant reuniting with his fellow avant-gardists Larionov and Goncha-
rova, who, since settling in Paris in 1915, had gained acclaim in avant-
garde circles, first in 1912 for Larionov’s exhibition at Der Sturm (which
included rayonism), and then for the couple’s exhibition at Galerie Paul
Guillaume in Paris in 1914. (Guillaume Apollinaire contributed the in-
troduction to the exhibition catalogue.)
Mayakovsky’s reunion with Larionov resulted in a collaboration:
the publication of Sun (1923), a poem in book form illustrated by Lari-
onov. Its theme corresponds with Mayakovsky’s preoccupation with
the symbolism of the ray as elaborated in his “poetical fantasy” titled
“IV International” (1922).138 Expanding on Larionov’s arsenal of meta-
phoric powers for the ray, and dreaming of the revolution’s diffusion,
Mayakovsky writes that it “scatters in the form of a five-edge star . . .
a ray climbs the Apennine Mountains. And a ray shines over the Pyr-
enees.”139 In Mayakovsky’s mind, Khlebnikov’s “new breed of people-
rays” had resurfaced as the revolutionaries amassed on Heartfield’s
cover for Mayakovsky’s book 150,000,000.140 Sun’s cover shows radiant
beams of light overlapping an anthropomorphic form that Larionov
had used earlier that year in his design for the invitation to Le Grand p. 143

Bal Transvestite-Transmental in Paris, on February 23, to benefit the

Relief Fund of the Russian Artists Union in the presence of the major
cubists Picasso, Albert Gris, and Albert Gleizes, as well as Fernand
Léger. Although the titular theme confirms that Larionov’s inclination

139
 for provocation and transgression remained Man Ray
A Dada alliance (top row, left to right:
intact, in the image his gender-ambiguous fig- Paul Chadourne, Tristan Tzara, Philippe
ure lacks the sexual explicitness demonstrated Soupault, Sergei Sharshun; bottom row,
left to right: Paul Éluard, Jacques Rigaut,
in Dadaist works on the same subject, such Mick Soupault, Georges Ribemont-
as Johannes Baargeld’s photomontage Vul- Dessaignes), Paris, November 1921

gar Mess: Cubistic Transvestite at an Alleged

Crossroads (1920). Larionov, like his colleagues
in Russia, continued to rely on the disguised
iconography of nonobjectivity to articulate his
reaction to cultural and political transforma-
tion as well as to express indecencies that had
long infiltrated his art.
In Paris from November 1921, Zdanevich
created, through his public activities, a back-
ground for Mayakovsky’s successful arrival in
the city in November 1922. In this he repeated

140
Sergei Sharshun the role Sharshun had played in laying the
Self-Portrait as Devil,
ca. 1921–1922
groundwork for Zdanevich in Paris.141 The
highlight of Sharshun’s interaction with Paris
Man Ray
Sergei Sharshun,
Dadaists was his participation in the making
ca.1922–1925 of Picabia’s The Cacodylic Eye (1921).142 Zdan-
evich’s lecture “New Schools in Russian Po-
etry,” delivered less than two weeks after his
arrival, equally benefited Russian poets and
artists, demonstrating absurdist techniques
relevant to Russian proto-Dada. Zdanevich
displayed his hunger for public disorder by
sending invitations for the lecture to monu-
ments of Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac,
whose names he also included in the program.
Larionov: isledovaniia i publikatsii “But life is unpredictable,” he grumbled while
(Moscow: Nauka, 2001), 219. “Poetical lecturing. “A postman, a contemporary guard
fantasy” is Terekhova’s expression.
139. Ibid., 220. of order, returned the letters to me because
140. Khlebnikov is quoted in the form of the specified addressees does not
Markov, Russian Futurism, 27. correspond to the postal rules.”143 Zdanevich
141. On Sharshun’s activities in
Paris, see his “My Participation in
described everythingism as “an answer to a fa-
the French Dada Movement,” on natical narrowness of Futurism” and in detail

141
 analyzed the formalist techniques of “shift” Man Ray
Mikhail Larionov, 1923
(sdvig) and “estrangement” (ostranenie) so
central to the formal innovations of the visual Natalia Goncharova
Cover of the book The City: Verses
and verbal avant-gardes.144 by Aleksandr Rubakin, Paris, 1920
When Mayakovsky came to Paris, Zdanev-
Mikhail Larionov
ich was already known and respected by key Poster for The Grand Ball of
Dadaists, as testified in several letters written Transvestite-Transmental Artists,
Paris, 1923
p. 147 to him in 1922: by Picabia (January 30), Tzara
(February 17), and Éluard (November 18).145
These correspondences are about meetings.
Picabia’s invitation to Zdanevich to visit his
studio is particularly significant, for it was
the center of “the internationalism of Dada”
and the place where the Dadaists regularly
met “to thrash out new ideas.”146 The degree
of conceptual novelty that Zdanevich brought
to such gatherings, as well as his endorsement

142
 as a Dadaist, is revealed in the writer and liter-
ary critic André Garmain’s lecture “Ilia Zdan-
evich and Russian Surdadaism,” delivered on
pp. 314–319 of the present catalogue. November 28 (a few days after Mayakovsky’s
142. Ibid., p. 316. departure). By combining surrealism and
143. Il’ia Zdanevich, “Novye shkoly Dada in his title, Germain hints at recruiting
v russkoi poezii,” in Literaturnyi
avangard russkogo Parizha, ed. the Russian into the surrealists’ camp just as
Livak and Ustinov, 795. the competition between the two groups was
144. Ibid. In his lecture, Zdanevich
suggested that the process of destruction of
heating up.
logical language is “a key to understanding For Germain, the most significant event
dreams, to their interpretation, similar
to that proposed by professor Freud.”
in Zdanevich’s biography was the “wish of a
Ibid., 808. Sigmund Freud’s theories despotic mother” to dress him as a girl until

143
 Anonymous
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Valentina Khodasevich,
Elza Triolet, Klara Goll, Ivan Goll, Robert
Delaunay (left to right), Paris, 1924
interested the Tiflis group “41°,” whose agenda
Zdanevich was committed to continuing
he was twelve years old. “‘A very beautiful by creating an informal University 41°.
girl,’” he added.147 Several months prior to this 145. These are in the Archives Iliazd France.
pp. 141–142,
146. Richter, Dada, 183.
lecture, Zdanevich had changed his name to 315
147. Zhorzh Ribmon-Dessen’, “Predislovie
“Iliazde,” but he promptly dropped the French k frantsuzkomu perevodu ‘Lidantiu
female ending to become “Iliazd.” This was at faram,’” in Literaturnyi avangard russkogo
Parizha, ed. Livak and Ustinov, 817.
exactly the time that Man Ray’s photographs
148. Man Ray’s known photographic portraits
of Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy were becoming of Sharshun (1922) and Larionov (1923)
are evidence of his favorable disposition
known in Paris.148 Zdanevich was familiar with
toward them. Larionov’s rayonism must
Duchamp’s female character: along with Rrose have fascinated Man Ray, who around
this time invented the “rayograph.”
Sélavy and Sharshun, he had signed, still us-
149. Richter, Dada, 181.
ing “Ilia Zdanevich,” Tzara’s manifesto “The
150. Ibid.
Bearded Heart,” issued in the spring of 1922. 151. Terekhova, “Goncharova,
Was it after he became familiar with Rrose Sé- Larionov, Maiakovskii,” 232.
lavy that he swiftly adopted and dropped his 152. Sharshun to Tzara, December 12, 1922,
cited in “Sergei Sharshun, pis’ma k Tristanu
female alter ego, doing so as a way to establish Tsara (1921–1923),” ed. Livak and Ustinov, 766.
a dialogue with Duchamp? 153. Éluard’s letter to Iliazd, written in

144
 Man Ray’s photographs of Rrose Sélavy would have triggered in
Zdanevich unpleasant childhood memories of an enforced female alter
ego, a concept Duchamp was now willingly proposing as art. Zdanevich
responded to Duchamp’s concept of cross-dressing and cross-naming
by subverting Rrose Sélavy through an act of a linguistic cutting—just
as he had done with his childhood alter ego when he “cut off his curls.”
On May 26, 1920, a year before Duchamp’s arrival “at the monster gath-
ering at the Salle Gaveau” in Paris, the Dadaists had announced they
“would have their hair cut off on the stage.”149 Richter deemed this a
scandalous but successful event. Involving the participation of Breton,
Éluard, Tzara, Louis Aragon, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and the
recently arrived Sharshun, it was “the climax of the Paris Dada move-
ment” because, finally, “Dada was taken seriously!”—which nevertheless
contradicted its antimovement, anarchic status.150
Mayakovsky and Zdanevich were perfect, super energetic agents for
the management of international Dada. A banquet in honor of Maya-
kovsky, organized by the editors of the émigré magazine Strike (Udar)
on November 24, 1922, became a platform to propose such a project, in
the presence of guests including Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay,
Goncharova, Larionov, and Tzara. The formation of a “tactical group”
followed, called “Across” (Cherez). Its defined goal was “strengthening
connections between left emigrants, the like-minded in Soviet Russia,
and French colleagues.”151 Tzara’s signature, left in the banquet’s guest
book with a heart pierced by an index finger, testifies to his favor-
ing such exchanges, which he was already conducting through cor-
respondence with Sharshun. Under the umbrella of Strike Zdanevich
planned his version of (never realized) compilation projects such as
Huelsenbeck’s Dadaco (1919) and Tzara’s Dadaglobe (1921). Zdanev-
ich asked Sharshun to collect from German Dadaists “poems, prose,
photos, chronicles, reflections,” a request Sharshun could not fulfill
since “no one is left here but Hausmann.”152 Zdanevich did report to
Lef’s editors on various Dadaist events and on his own achievements,
among them the publication of his book Lidantiu as a Beacon (Lidan- p. 195

tiu Faram, 1923), with a cover by Naum Granovsky and an introduc-

tion by Ribemont-Dessaignes.153 Amid “the typographic verdure” with
which the interior of this “transrational drama” was stenciled, one
finds the word dada made to stand out with descending letters and
varied typefaces. Because Lidantiu Faram was made in homage to the
late Le Dantiu, Zdanevich’s collaborator on the theorization of ev-
erythingism, the book’s reference to Dada reinforced everythingism’s

145
 proto-Dadaist pedigree.154 A copy of Lidantiu
Faram with Iliazd’s dedication to Brik was
delivered to Russia in 1924.
Despite such ambitious intentions, the in-
tensifying rifts among Dadaists had by this time
reached a climax, and it was becoming hard not
to take sides as Tzara and Breton wrestled over
leadership.155 As the arguments became person-
al and at times raucous, Dadaists including Ili-
azd and Sharshun cosigned Tzara’s manifesto
p. 149 “The Bearded Heart,” and on July 6, 1923, in
the Théâtre Michel, Iliazd contributed to the
organization of the soirée The Bearded Heart.
He had designed the poster for the evening (as
pp. 168–169 well as the cover of the only issue of the news-
paper The Bearded Heart, published by Tzara in
April 1922), and further participated by recit-
ing excerpts from Lidantiu Faram accompanied
by Igor Stravinsky and other composers, with
actors wearing costumes designed by another
compatriot, Sonia Delaunay.156 But it was the re- the beginning of July 1923, right before the
soirée The Bearded Heart, indicates he
staging of Tzara’s The Gas Heart that triggered had agreed to write an introduction but
Breton’s protest and provoked Éluard—who in changed his mind due to Iliazd’s support
of and participation in Tzara’s event. The
a letter had expressed to Zdanevich his dismay letter is in the Ilia Zdanevich Archive.
at the inclusion of his name in the list of par- 154. Zhorzh Ribmon-Dessen’, “Predislovie
ticipants in The Bearded Heart soirée—to jump k frantsuzkomu perevodu ‘Lidantiu faram,’”
in Literaturnyi avangard russkogo Parizha,
onstage, followed by audience members.157 A ed. Livak and Ustinov, 832, 827. Given that
riot ensued, resulting in damage to furniture, the plot of Iliazd’s Lidantiu Faram contains
a contest between a realist and a modernist,
injuries to those in attendance, and requiring the inclusion of the word dada indicates
the intervention of the police.158 To compensate Iliazd’s identification with Dadaism.
155. On this last Dada period,
for the damages and the cancelation of a second see Richter, Dada, 179–88.
performance, Tzara filed a lawsuit, further dis- 156. Marc Dachy writes, “Van Doesburg
tressing Éluard, who lamented to Iliazd, “I am was personally involved in the event,
producing scenery for interpretations
in advance sad and discouraged. Such an affair of Ilya Zdanevitch’s [sic] Zaoum poems
humiliates me more than one could imagine.”159 by the dancer Lizica Codreano, with
costumes by Sonia Delaunay.” Dachy,
To Zdanevich, everything that happened “‘Life Is an Extraordinary Invention,’” 29.
around The Bearded Heart was a déjà vu ex- 157. The letter is in the
Archives Iliazd France.
perience, reminiscent of the proto-Dadaist
158. Richter, Dada, 190.
public spectacles and scandals in Russia,
159. Éluard’s letter to Iliazd was written
some of which he had personally instigated. shortly after the soirée The Bearded Heart

146
Tristan Tzara
Letter to IIlia Zdanevich on Dada
stationary “Movement Dada,” 17
February 1922

Natalia Goncharova
Ilia Zdanevich as Angel, ca. 1921

Tristan Tzara
Envelope for a letter to Ilia
Zdanevich, 1924

147
 Now he was involved in organizing, as “a help Ilia Zdanevich
Poster for Ilia Zdanevich’s lecture New Schools in
to Tzara,” an event that would prove fatal for Russian Poetry, 1921
Dada and “marked,” in his words, “the end of
Ilia Zdanevich
the ‘Across’ movement,” Dada’s agent in Rus- Poster design for a conference on the Russian
sia.160 Russian ardency for transrationality, first avant-garde, November 28, 1922

publicly manifested in the proto-Dadaist pro-

duction Victory over the Sun, loudly reverber-
ated at The Bearded Heart, where it signaled
that the curtain was closing on the extraordi-
nary adventures of Russian Dada in the land of and is now in the Archives Iliazd France.
European Dadaism (to paraphrase the title of Tzara’s lawsuit was a materialization of the
pp. 224–225 mock trial of Maurice Barrès that the Dadaists
Kuleshov’s film of 1924). staged on May 13, 1921, with Breton as one of
In 1930, in the first issue of the magazine the judges and Tzara among the witnesses.
Surrealism in the Service of the Revolution, 160. Iliazd, “En approchant Éluard,”
Carnets Iliazd-Club, no. 1 (1990).
Breton pledged to be more politically engaged.
161. The script is reminiscent of Picabia’s
As part of this commitment (and not without “Manifeste Cannibal Dada” (1920), which

148
Ilia Zdanevich (Iliazd)
Leaflet for The Bearded
Heart soirée, 1923

pressure from Aragon, who had met Mayakovsky during his last trip
to Paris), Breton, at the end of 1928, printed a still from the now lost
film Not for Money Born (1918).161 The script, based on Jack London’s
Martin Eden (1909), was written by Mayakovsky and Burliuk, who
acted in the film along with Kamensky. The still shows Mayakovsky p. 170
dressed in an elegant suit and top hat as he teases Death in true “sur-
dadaist” manner, an uncanny scene imagined in the postrevolutionary
period and apt for publishing in the surrealist journal two months
after Mayakovsky’s suicide on April 14, 1930.

149
 New York

I am thinking of going abroad in the spring.

On a donkey to Paris to Larionov and Goncharova,
and then somehow to you to New York. I will come
with a donkey, maybe you will let me in.
—Kazimir Malevich to David Burliuk,
October 20, 1926162

In his essay “Anarchy, Politics, and Dada,” similarly plays with death and money.
Allan Antliff observes, “Historically, most of Moreover, Picabia’s text is comparable to
the Nothingists’ “Russia’s Nothingists to the
Dada in New York is subsumed into a category West’s Dada,” written at the same time (see
called ‘proto-Dada,’ but when the goofy word p. 299 of the present volume). In 1939 Aragon
married Elsa Triolet, Brik’s sister-in-law.
finally shows its face here, in the 1921 magazine 162. Malevich o sebe, ed. Vakar
New York Dada, it is to declare . . . that God and Mikhienko, 1:178.
and my toothpaste are Dada, and New York- 163. Allan Antliff, “Anarchy, Politics, and
Dada,” in Making Mischief: Dada Invades
ers can be Dada too.”163 This interpretation of New York, ed. Francis M. Naumann
the status of the Dada movement in New York and Beth Venn (New York: Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1997), 215.
is phenomenally similar to the Russian case,
164. Michael R. Taylor, “New York,”
even in terms of chronology, for in 1920 the in Dada, ed. Dickerman, 296.
Nothingists also used “the goofy word,” open- 165. On the destruction of the anarchists,
see Olga Burenina-Petrova, “Anarchism
ing the door to an assessment of the Russians’ and the Russian Avant-Garde,” on
long-existent Dadaist state of mind as part of pp. 226–257 of the present volume.
the international Dada movement. 166. Markov, Russian Futurism, 9.
167. One such project was the exhibition
Michael R. Taylor’s analysis of Dada in New Russian Painting and Sculpture at the Brooklyn
York concludes, “New York Dada effectively Museum (January 23–March 4, 1923), in
which Burliuk was invited to participate
came to an end in the summer of 1921, when with forty-four works. He likely urged the
Man Ray and Duchamp departed for Paris.”164 organizers to include his fellow avant-
gardists Goncharova, Larionov, and Lado
But this is an overstatement, because, as Taylor Gudiashvili. Also included, and well-known
details, the curator and collector Katherine S. to the Société Anonyme, were Kandinsky (he
was an advisor to Dreier) and Archipenko
Dreier was committed to promoting the move- (the subject of the society’s first show).
ment in New York and placed at its core the 168. According to art historian Irina Vakar,
stable of artists Walden was exhibiting at Der these were Black Square, Black Cross, and
Black Circle (1923–1924). See Malevich o
Sturm. The gallery even became a model for the sebe, 1:179. The month of this letter has been
founding of the Société Anonyme in New York questioned, and Malevich is not likely to
have promised to send his works as late as
in 1920. Man Ray and Duchamp joined Dreier October; that is, only one month before the
as secretary and president, and although they exhibition’s opening. See ibid., 1:178. Perhaps as
compensation for a lack of Malevich’s works,
left for Paris a year after, joining the European Russian artist Constantin Aladjalov (with
Dadaists, they became Dreier’s agents for her whom Dreier collaborated on the design of
the catalogue) placed red and black squares,
own project of transporting Dada to New York. Malevich’s nonobjective signature shapes,

150
 Fleeing Moscow as a result of the Bolshe-
viks’ crushing of the anarchists in 1918, artist
and poet Burliuk arrived in New York (after a
long journey via Japan and Canada) on Sep-
tember 2, 1922.165 Historian Vladimir Markov
describes Burliuk as “the man without whom
there probably would have been no Russian
futurism.”166 But prior to Burliuk’s gaudy career
in Russia, he had become a member, in 1912,
of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and in
1914 had an exhibition under the auspices of
Der Sturm. Dreier’s ambition to fuse European
and American progressive modernists into one
collective made Burliuk’s arrival in New York
pivotal. Like Zdanevich in Paris, he was an
energetic propagandist of the Russian avant-
garde’s theoretical and practical tenets. Bur-
liuk’s correspondence with Malevich attests
to his commitment and his swift integration
into New York’s avant-garde milieu. He almost
immediately enjoyed the fruits of collaboration
with Dreier.167 She and the American critic and
Dada supporter Christian Breton remarked in
their writings on Burliuk’s radical outfits and
earring and on how his madcap personality
matched his paintings. Much like Tzara, Bur-
liuk had an ability to enthrall his audiences.
Malevich revealed to Burliuk that he had
hoped to participate in and even attend the
opening, on November 19, 1926, of the Inter-
national Exhibition of Modern Art Assembled by
Société Anonyme at the Brooklyn Museum.168
Unable to send his works in time, he was not
included, which is unfortunate, as he would
have exemplified the exhibition’s concept of
the fusion of progressive movements: Dada-
Anonymous ists (Arp, Duchamp, Schwitters, Picabia), sur-
David Burliuk, New York, 1924
realists (Ernst), and nonobjectivists (Alexan-
Aleksandr Rodchenko der Archipenko, Gabo, Piet Mondrian, Natan
Cover of the book My Discovery of
America by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1926 Pevzner, Kandinsky, and Lissitzky). At the

151
152
Man Ray
Living room of Katherine S.
Dreier with works of David
Burliuk, Marcel Duchamp,
Pablo Picasso, New York,
1927

David Burliuk’s Forces of

Spring, 1922 [location
unknown], from Katherine
S. Dreier’s private
collection, ca. 1945–1946
photograph by John Schiff

International Exhibition of Modern Art, Burliuk exhibited the paintings

The Eye of God (1923–1925) and The Coming of a Mechanical Man (1926), p. 155
a “surdadaist” pair, with each work registering shifts between the deper-
sonalized and the mechanical, concepts that were equally associated with
Russian constructivism and Dada and here subverted by a representation
of the eye stripped of all mechanical aids. But Burliuk also responded,
most likely inadvertently, to Picabia’s Cacodylic Eye, conceived as a result
of ophthalmic illness. The mass of comments that compassionate friends
began to inscribe on a canvas prepared by Picabia with a rendition of an
eye turned into a collective assault on its imperfection and vulnerability,
with language functioning as remedy to visual impairment. Burliuk’s one-
eye painting offered a reminder of his own ophthalmic injury: During his
childhood he had lost an eye and had since worn an ocular prosthesis. His
glass eye was Burliuk’s objet d’épater—he at times removed it to shock an
opponent. Burliuk spoke French and German but not English, and The
Eye of God depicts the seeing eye rather than the épater eye, revealing
Burliuk’s need of visionary power due to his communicative deficiency
in New York.
The Eye of God entered Dreier’s private collection, and so did the
now lost Forces of Spring (1922), populated by multiple eyes, which Bur- pp. 152, 153
liuk most likely executed upon his arrival in New York. Forces of Spring
affected Dreier so much that she displayed it in her apartment next
to Duchamp’s Tu m’ (1918) and a small Picasso assemblage. Perhaps
recalling Zdanevich’s promotion in Paris of the formalist techniques
of “shift” and “estrangement,” Forces of Spring parades the specifically
Russian modernist tool of hyperbolic textures (faktura). Forces of Spring
is, by means of extreme impasto, a painting that accomplishes a collaged

153
 Anonymous
David Burliuk, n.d.

appearance that competes with such all-over collages as Schwitters’s

Mz460 Two Underdrawers (1921), which Drier also acquired.
Dreier asserts in her foreword to the catalogue of the International
Exhibition of Modern Art, “The service which Soviet Russia rendered to
the rest of the world has been chiefly that it scattered most of its creative
and living spirits over the whole world.” She then adds in a separate entry
on Burliuk, “few men have so long and constantly worked for modern-
ism as Burliuck [sic].”169 Regardless of her stress on aesthetic parameters
and her appreciation of the apolitical Dada of Duchamp and Man Ray,
Dreier’s interest in the political wings of Dada, such as the German one,
and her efforts to exhibit Grosz and Heartfield indicate that Burliuk’s
engagement in left politics as he continued in America was not likely to
affect her support. Burliuk joined pro-Soviet groups, including the John
Reed Club, lectured in workers’ clubs, collaborated with the communist
publishing houses, and painted Lenin’s portrait (with Leo Tolstoy’s) as
well as Mayakovsky’s and Sergei Eisenstein’s.170
Richard Boix’s caricature Da-Da (New York Dada Group) (1921) is
unexpectedly relevant to the theme of Russian Dada. In it Dada is written

154
 David Burliuk’s Eye of
God, 1923–1925, from
Katherine S. Dreier’s
private collection
ca. 1945–1946
photograph by John Schiff

as da-da. The addition of the hyphen makes

it a Russian double affirmation. Dreier is in
the picture and so is Duchamp, playing chess
on the floor by himself.171 This Dadaist game,
which had at Cabaret Voltaire placed Tzara
on the title page. In her introduction,
and Lenin—and, by extension, the discours-
Dreier notes, “Malevich represented es of art and politics—face to face, was now
here by Lissitzky with his group of the
Suprematists.” Katherine S. Dreier, turning into Duchamp’s personal obsession,
International Exhibition of Modern Art shielding him from breaking the pledge to
Assembled by Société Anonyme (New
York: Brooklyn Museum, 1926), n.p. antiart. In Russia, Vsevolod Pudovkin’s film
169. Katherine S. Dreier, International Chess Fever—released in 1925, a year after
Exhibition of Modern Art Arranged Lenin’s death (which itself coincided with
by Société Anonyme (New York:
p. 151 Brooklyn Museum, 1926), 69, 72. Breton’s first surrealist manifesto)—constructs
170. Mayakovsky visited New York a perfect metaphor of a maniacal Dadaist mind
and other American cities in 1925,
after being invited to show his
able to operate only at an elevated temperature
ROSTA poster. After Mayakovsky’s that can drop as quickly as it rises.
return from America, he published
the book The Discovery of America
(1926) with a cover by Rodchenko.

155
 El Lissitzky
“The New Man,” from Figurines:
The Three-Dimensional Design
of the Electro-mechanical
Show “Victory over the Sun”,
1920–1923

156
157
El Lissitzky Kurt Schwitters
First Kestner portfolio Proun, Plate 4 from Merz 3, Merz
print no. 2, 1919–1923 Portfolio: 6 Lithos, 1923

158
159
László Moholy-Nagy (with artist’s El Lissitzky
autograph to Vladimir Mayakovsky) Pelikan Carbon Paper, 1924
Untitled, 1922

160
El Lissitzky
Cover design for the journal Broom,
no. 3, 1922

161
Sergei Sharshun
Ornamental Cubism,
1922–1923
 Sergei Sharshun
Bibi, 1921

164
Sergei Sharshun
The Fortune Dancer, 1922

165
Anonymous Robert Delaunay
Ilia Zdanevich performing as live painting Tristan Tzara, 1923
The Triumph of Cubism in the Banal Ball, Paris,
March 1924 Next double page:
Osip Brik
Natalia Goncharova and Ilia Zdanevich Scrapbook “Dada,” ca. 1923–1924
Program for Olympic Ball, July 1924 left to right: Ilia Zdanevich’s cover for the journal
The Bearded Heart, no. 1, 1922, and a page of
Sonia Delaunay the journal 391, no. 14, 1920, with an illustration
Design for a tennis dress, 1924 of Sergei Sharshun’s drawing (top)

167
 Evgeny Slavinsky
Still from Nikandr Turkin’s film Born Not for
the Money (Vladimir Mayakovsky), 1918

Tristan Tzara
Untitled, May 1931

170
171
DADA IN
CYRILLIC
Victor Tupitsyn

Anonymous
Vasily Kamensky, Kazan, 1914
 Ivan Puni
Cover of the book Futurists: Roaring
Parnassus by David Burliuk, Velimir
Khlebnikov, Igor Severianin, Aleksei
Kruchenykh et al., 1914

174
 There comes a moment when real life, saturated
with art to the brim, will spew it as unnecessary
Nicolai Chuzhak, 1923

1. “It’s Not What Is Said

That’s Important, but
to Whom and under What
Circumstances”
This comment by Vladimir Mayakovsky char-
acterizes his poetry as intentional; that is, di-
rected at an “object” to which the poetic ges-
ture and the poetic message are addressed.
No less important is the context of perception
and the related “dispositives” (dispositifs) that
must undergo objectification. There is noth-
ing new about this, although it was none other
than Mayakovsky who brought to this process
not only a high level of effectiveness but the
ability to see the audience as a situative ob-
ject.1 In that sense, he was a situationist long
before Guy Debord.
Mayakovsky’s early verses and long poems
such as “The Cloud in Trousers” and “Back-
bone Flute,” attest to the author’s talent, as do
some of his plays, including Mystery-Bouffe,
produced by Vsevolod Meyerhold with lost
stage design by Kazimir Malevich (1918). Be-
ing “travel-approved” (because of his loyalty
to the Bolsheviks), Mayakovsky acted as a
link between the Western and Soviet avant-
gardes. Starting in 1923, all of his verse texts
were constructed in “staircase” form. Critics
1. The “objectness” of the audience
was something always already assumed regarded this style as commercial (the more
by Mayakovsky, which helped him
brilliantly defend himself from nasty
lines, the higher the fees), but the “staircase”
comments in a matter of seconds. and, consequently, reading as descent down

175
 the steps follow Hugo Ball’s Dadaist formula, according to which “Dada
= word as motion.”2 During the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP,
1922–1928), the poet did commercial advertising, which is much in ac-
cordance with Tristan Tzara’s thesis that “Advertising and business are
also elements of poetry.”3
In late December 1912, Mayakovsky and David Burliuk, who consid-
ered themselves budetliane (“men of the future”), published the collec-
tion titled A Slap in the Face to Public Taste. One cannot call the “per-
petrator” of such a slap anything other than a proto-Dadaist. Thus, the
term proto-Dadaism is more appropriate here. In this context, public
taste is abolished, and what enters the arena instead is the taste for scan-
dal and for the theatrical manifestation of the state of mind that Anatoly
Lunacharsky, in his text The Foundations of Positive Esthetics (1904), de-
fines as “negative affectional”—a term he borrows from the philosopher
Richard Avenarius.4 Returning to proto-Dadaism, Vasilisk Gnedov, who
gained notoriety with his “Poem of the End” in the book Death to Art
(1915), should also be given his due. The poem is a blank page with not
a single letter or mark on it, other than the title. When “reading” it, the

176
Olga Rozanova author made a “hook-like” gesture without
Cover of the book Transrational
Book by Aleksei Kruchenykh and
uttering a word. The hand motion was the
Aliagrov (Roman Jakobson), 1916 entirety of the poem. As for the end of art,
Ivan Kliun
in the words of Velimir Khlebnikov, “Gnedov
Untitled (Aleksei Kruchenykh), 1925 was the first to know about it . . . the cuckoo
of the alphabet in the pine-forest of names.”5

2. Aleksei Kruchenykh:
Transrationalism
and Shiftology
In his essay “On the History of Russian Futur-
ism,”6 Aleksei Kruchenykh dates the creation
of transrational language to 1912, when he
wrote the following poem:

2. Hugo Ball’s “Dada Manifesto” was

read at the first public Dada soirée, in Dyr-bul-shchyl
Zurich, July 14, 1916. Mayakovsky’s Ubeshchur
poetic descent down the staircase
echoes Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Skum
Descending a Staircase (1912). Vy-so-bu
3. Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto R-l-ez.
1918,” in The Dada Reader: A Critical
Anthology, ed. Dawn Ades (London:
Tate Publishing, 2006), p. 38. This poem was published in January 1913 in
4. In Avenarius’s terminology,
the “affectional” is the positive or
his book Lipstick. That same year, he pub-
negative tint in which sensations are lished transrational poetry in the anthologies
perceived by consciousness. “The
Theater of the Mind” was a phrase
The Little Garden of Judges II and The Union
used by Stéphane Mallarmé. of Youth III. In April 1913, he published “The
5. In the poem “Blue Chains” (1922), Declaration of the Word as Such,” in which
Khlebnikov mentions Gnedov’s
poem “Kuk” (1913) and calls its he introduces and explains the term transra-
author “the cuckoo of the alphabet.” tionalism (zaum). The declaration expresses
Gnedov, whom Khlebnikov included
among the “chairmen of the earth,” the idea that thought and speech cannot keep
was arrested in the 1930s and then up with emotional experience, and therefore
spent twenty years in the gulag.
6. Aleksei Kruchenykh, “Otkuda i
artists should be free to express themselves
kak poshli zaumniki?,” in K istorii not only with common phrases but with a
russkogo futurizma: vospominania
i dokumenty, ed. N. Gur’ianova
language that has no definite meaning and
(Moscow: Gileia, 2006), 301. is not fixed—transrational language.7 “Is

177
178
El Lissitzky transrationalism the language of the future or
Design for the cover of the
book Transrational by Aleksei the language of the past (savagery, the primi-
Kruchenykh, 1925 tive)?” Kruchenykh asks. He then answers
Valentina Kulagina his own question: “For now, this is my opin-
Cover of the book Transrational ion and my faith: transrationalism is new art
Language by Aleksei
Kruchenykh, 1925 given by a new Russia to the entire shocked
and bewildered world.”8 Besides Kruchenykh,
Sergei Gorodetsky and Velimir
Khlebnikov the transrational school includes the poets
Spinny-Spin-Spin, anniversary Velimir Khlebnikov, Elena Guro, Vasily Ka-
book dedicated to Aleksei
Kruchenykh, 1920 mensky, Sergei Tretiakov, Olga Rozanova, Ilia
Zdanevich (aka Iliazd), Igor Terentiev, and
Petr Miturich
Cover of the book Zangezi by Aleksandr Tufanov. Not everyone in the avant-
Velimir Khlebnikov, 1922 garde circles became a convert to the theory
Kruchenykh preached, however. “The poet
has failed to learn the causes of the libera-
tion of the letter,” Malevich wrote to Mikhail
Matiushin on June 23 and July 5, 1916. “The
word as such must be transubstantiated ‘into
7. Essays exploring transrational
language include Viktor Shklovskii,
something,’ but many . . . were compelled to
“O poezii i zaumnom iazyke,” Poetika get mired in that meat. So far, Kruchenykh is
(Petrograd, 1919); and Boris Arvatov,
“Rechetvorchestvo (po povodu ‘zaumnoi’
struggling [against it], not allowing his feet to
poezii),” Lef, no. 2 (April–May 1923): remain in one place for a long time . . . but if he
79–81. [For an English translation of the
latter, see pp. 291–293
can’t find that ‘something,’ he’ll inevitably get
of the present catalogue.]. sucked into the same meat. When you have the
8. Kruchenykh, “Otkuda i kak sounds ‘dyr bul shchyl,’ you . . . have to listen,
poshli zaumniki?,” 304.
not think.”9 Malevich’s words recall Tzara’s
9. Malevich to Matiushin, June 23, 1916, in
Malevich o sebe, sovremenniki o Maleviche: comment about “vowels as the essence, the
pis’ma, dokumenty, vospominaniia,
molecule of the letter, and therefore primitive
kritika, ed. I. Vakar and T. Mikhienko,
2 vols. (Moscow: RA, 2004), 1:88. (or pure) sound.”10
10. Martin Heidegger, who in old age was The elements of transrational language
friendly with Jacques Lacan, described
Lacan’s texts as baroque. The same can also be found in Khlebnikov’s early works,
may be said of Tzara, who asserted (in starting with the lyrical miniature “Bo-beh-oh-
the spirit of François Rabelais) that
“thoughts are produced in the mouth.” bee Is the Lipsong” (1908).11
See Tristan Tzara, 7 manifestov dada
(Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi muzei
im. V.V. Maiakovskogo, 2016), 24. Bo-beh-oh-bee is the lipsong
11. Nikolai Khardzhiev believed that Veb-eh-oh-mee is the eyesong
“besides being a transrationalist Pee-eh-eh-oh is the eyebrowsong
(zaumnik), Khlebnikov was also a
brilliant thinker (umnik).” Thus, the Lee-eh-eh-ay is the looksong
“critique of transrational reason” (with
Gzee-ßzee-gzeh-oh is the chainsong
apologies to Immanuel Kant) is only
half applicable to Khlebnikov, if at all. On the canvas of such correspondences

179
 somewhere beyond all dimensions
the face has a life of its own.

Even though transrationalism (most likely)

began with this poem, Kruchenykh turned
out to be a more systemic transrationalist
than Khlebnikov. In his tract “The Shiftology
of Russian Verse” (1922), Kruchenykh uses
the concept of “shift” to refer to “the merger
(during reading) of two or more words (pho-
nemes) into one sound blot.” In his view,
“shifts can be conscious or nonconscious (or
unconscious). A successful shift strengthens
and enriches the sound of the verse, while 12. Kruchenykh, “Deklaratsiia no. 4 (O
an improper one breaks up its construction.” sdvigakh),” K istorii russkogo futurizma;
vospominania i dokumenty, ed. N. Guz’ia
With regard to the poetic text and what he nova, 305–7. A “shift” is defined as a lexical
calls the “texture of the word,” Kruchenykh deformation of the phrase and its texture,
as a syntactic inversion or relocation
uses performatively engaged concepts, such (according to Ilia Zdanevich), and also
as “shifts,” “shifts-apart,” and “under-shifts.” as the effect of homonymy (according
to Aristotle). Kruchenykh attributed
“The shift, as the fountainhead of language the shift to the status of a universal
games, is extremely prone to give birth to category. See T.V. Tsvigun, "Iskusstvo
oshibki v russkom avangardizme," Vestnik
verses,” he writes in “Declaration No. 4,” add- Baltiiskogo federal'nogo universiteta
im. Kanta (Kaliningrad, 2011), 157.
ing that his “shiftology” (the science of shifts)
13. For more on the influence of
is based on the thesis that “shifts are one of constructivism on the art of dance
the most important impulses of modern po- and theatrical plastics, see E. Surics,
“Soviet Ballet of the 1920s and the
etic technique.” In his view, the shift is not so Influence of Constructivism,” Soviet
much a rhetorical form as “a super-trope, the Union 7, no. 1–2 (1980): 112–37.

trope of all tropes.”12 14. “At the dress rehearsal,” Kruchenykh

recalls, “when everyone was already
The “biomechanics of the shift” that Mey- wearing the costumes (made from a sturdy
erhold and Nikolai Foregger embraced in the wire carcass and thick cardboard painted
by Malevich), one of the actors shot
1920s echo Kruchenykh’s opinion of the op- another with a rifle. It was supposed to be
era Victory over the Sun (1913), for which he a blank shot, but our enemies (who were
part of the theater management) put some
wrote the libretto.13 The opera proved to be hard wadding in the rifle, and it was only
thanks to the sturdy costume that the actor
not so much futuristic as Dadaist.14 “How did was only slightly bruised.” Kruchenykh,
this happen in the opera?” Kruchenykh asks. “Ob opere ‘Pobeda nad solntsem,” 271.
“It’s almost constant dissonances and sud- 15. Ibid., 273–74.
den leaps, and the boldest phonetics, such as 16. Franz Brentano, Psychology from an
Empirical Standpoint (London: Routledge,
songs made up only of vowels or only of con- 1973), 88–89. Brentano’s term intentionality
sonants—in other words, the most unexpected (adopted by Husserl) derives from the
Latin verb intendere, which means “to point
turns and passages. . . . The plot has several to” or being “directed toward some object.”

180
storylines: first of all, if there has already been a ‘dead moon,’ why not
a vanquished sun? In the years when symbolism was in bloom, there
was a very widespread declaration, ‘Let’s be like the Sun,’ which in turn
rhymed primarily with money—gold, hard currency, riches, of which
most of the ‘Sun people’ dreamed at the time.”15 Mikhail Matiushin, who
composed the music for the opera, explained to students that, as an
antithesis of “art for art’s sake,” Victory over the Sun symbolized victory
over the old, familiar notion of the sun as beauty. For Malevich, his black
square on the curtain “signified the beginning of victory.” The square
is an ideal object that becomes a symbol of objectlessness. Recall Franz
Brentano’s “intentional inexistence of the object” in his Psychology from
an Empirical Standpoint (1874), which states that “every mental phe-
nomenon includes [intentionally] something as object within itself . . .
(which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing).”16 The premiere
of Victory over the Sun took place at the Luna-Park theater in December
1913, several months after the publication of the futuristic anthology The
Dead Moon. The moon and the sun are both round, and since the square
is a “competing” eidos, we are dealing with the confrontation of ideal
Platonic figures. In 1920, this “universal war” of eidoi was joined by El
Lissitzky in the poster Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge, in which the
Whites (who were fighting against the Bolsheviks) are identified with
a circle. The budetliane’s attitude toward the culture of the past (in-
cluding Aleksander Pushkin, who was often called “the Sun of Russian
poetry”) was akin to the siege of Troy, and in that sense they were not
that different from the Dadaists. The mention of “universal war” is not
accidental; it is a reference to the twelve-collage series of the same name
by Olga Rozanova and Kruchenykh (1916). Their titles—“The Battle of
the Budetliane and the Ocean,” “The Battle of Mars and the Scorpion,” pp. 64–65
“The Battle with the Equator,” “The Battle of India and Europe,” “Ger-
many in the Dust,” “Heavy Weapon,” “Plea for Victory,” “The War State,”
and so on—speak for themselves. The intervention of language eidetics
into what Edmund Husserl, in Origin of Geometry, calls “the horizon of
the geometric future,” leads to the formation of so-called interlocked
idealities, which cannot be easily “unlocked” since text and image have
already exchanged significations. That is precisely what assisted the
proliferation of modernism and its visual rhetoric in the first three de-
cades of the twentieth century. Typical of the entire series are four lines
from Universal War: “Like a thunderbolt, fell the big box, / And like fluff
exploded the rocks; / Eyes shut, I saw the bullet flying; / It came in for
a kiss, so quiet.”

181
 Kruchenykh’s series of “Declarations,” pub- Anonymous
Ilia and Kirill Zdanevich,
lished in the early 1920s about transrationalism Tiflis, ca. 1917
and shifts,17 are in a dialogue with Boris Arva-
Igor Terentiev
tov’s essay “Speech Creation (On ‘Transration- Three Archbishops (Aleksei
al’ Poetry)” where he calls for “the renewal of Kruchenykh, Ilia Zdanevich,
and Igor Terentiev), 1919
language to be guided not by personal impulses
but by the consciously understood needs of the
sociolinguistic production process.” Arvatov’s
statement is as symptomatic as his opinion on
the culture of language, “which was heralded by
the transrationalists but will be carried out by
the proletarian.”18

182
 3. Dada of Tiflis Vintage
The Tiflis analogue of the Cabaret Voltaire
was the Fantastic Pub (1917–1919), which
served as a gathering place for the “41°” group:
Kruchenykh, Zdanevich, and Terentiev.19 In
their manifesto they point out that “Company
41° . .  . affirms transreason as the mandatory
form for the embodiment of art.” 20 On the p. 282

poster for their event in Borzhom Park (Tiflis,

1919), members of the group announce them-
selves as “the famous corkscrews of futurism”
and as “the word-founders.” Kruchenykh
studied the theory and practice of phonetic
shifts (“shiftology”) and, in particular, looked
for “caca” and other obscene-sounding shifts
in the works of various authors.21 His studies
in “cacology” (poor choice or use of words),
in which he was joined by Terentiev, were
mediated by interest in Sigmund Freud’s
theories regarding various “displacements”
and deformations of speech in dreams. This
interest was expressed, for example, in play
with “anal-canal” themes as applied to the
words “annals” and “canal.” In his text “Philo-
sophical Trinity,” Kruchenykh writes, “Kant,
17. Kruchenykh’s various Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer form a circle
“Declarations” are published in K
istorii russkogo futurizma, 285–97.
of dancing, foggy deities who have nothing
18. See Boris Arvatov, “Speech Creation lighthearted about them except their feet.”22
(on ‘Transrational’ Poetry),” on pp. Mikhail Le Dantiu, a young artist and the-
291–293 of the present catalogue.
orist who was involved in everythingism and
19. Nikolai Cherniavsky is also
mentioned as a member of the had been in contact with Mikhail Larionov
group. In addition to the “41°” and Natalia Goncharova in Moscow, stayed
group, Tiflis also had the literary
associations Blue Horns and H2SO4. in Tiflis in 1912–1913. After Le Dantiu’s tragic
20. Ilia Zdanevich, Aleksei Kruchenykh, death in 1917, Zdanevich (also a proponent of
Igor Terentiev, and Nikolai Cherniavsky,
“Manifesto of the ‘41°’” (1919), on
everythingism) dedicated his play Lidantiu p. 195

p. 283 of the present catalogue. as a Beacon, which (cacologically) plays with

21. See A. Kruchenykh, Sdvigologia the artist’s French last name, to his memory.
russkogo stikha (Moscow, 1922), 5.
The “Manifesto of Everythingism, MV” says
22. A. Kruchenykh, Apokalipsis v
russkoi literature (Moscow, 1923), 29. that “uppity letters, unsatisfied with their role

183
 Ilia Zdanevich
Cover of the book Fact by Igor
Terentiev, 1919

Kirill Zdanevich
Cover of the book A. Kruchenykh the
Magnificent by Igor Terentiev, 1919

Kirill Zdanevich
Cover of the book Learn, Artists
by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1917

as handmaidens, are choking language. . . . Correcting our inadequate

mouths, we have arrived at the poetry of many, shouting in multitudes,
and shouting different things. . . The rocket is ready, we are burning
the fuse. Happy travels, until you become an enemy.”23 Everythingism
(according to Zdanevich) “makes the war against the past senseless,
and thus overthrows futurism. . . .But one can be an everythingist with-
out espousing such beliefs: it doesn’t matter whether. . . he regards the
public as sheep or not.”24 Kruchenykh, as the author of Victory over
the Sun (1913), can be called (in the opinion of Nikolai Khardzhiev) the
first Dadaist, three years ahead of the emergence of that movement in
Western Europe.25
Nina Gurianova notes that “the Bergsonian idea of vitality was trans-
formed by Kruchenykh . . . into a shift (explosion) of forms, words and
images . . . existing outside any canon.”26 Antiestablishment rebellion
and provocation were the norm. The only ism considered permissible
was dilettantism. André Breton’s phrase, “Beauty will be convulsive or
will not be at all,” is directly related not only to Kruchenykh but to the
OBERIU group who valued his work: Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr
Vvedensky.27

184
23. Il'ia Zdanevich, “Mnogovaia Aleksandr Vvedensky, Daniil Kharms, and
poeziia,” in Futurizm i vsechestvo, Igor Bakhterev. Their transgressive use
1912–1914, ed. Sergei Kudriavtsev, of transrational language as ready-made
2 vols. (Moscow: Gileia, 2014), 1:183. contributed to the victory of nonsense
24. For more on everythingism, see in the form of surplus absurd. In the
Margarita Tupitsyn’s article in the present 1930s and early 1940, the OBERIU group
catalogue; and Ilia Zdanevich, “Natalia became victims of the Great Terror.
Goncharova and Everythingism,” on “Convulsive beauty” is a phrase that
pp. 259–261 of the present catalogue. appears in Breton’s novel Nadja (1928)
25. N. I. Khardzhiev, “Polemichnoe imia,” as well as in Mad Love (1937). A similar
in Ot Maiakovskogo do Kruchenykh: statement once surfaced in Malevich’s
izbrannye raboty o russkom futurizme letter to Matiushin (July 3, 1913): “You
(Moscow: Gileia, 2006), 319–92. See also encounter lots of artworks which look as
N. I. Khardzhiev, “Sud’ba Kruchenykh,“ in though they were produced in the state
Stat’i ob avangarde (Moscow: RA, 1997), of convulsive seizure.” In 1993, Hal Foster
1:302. In this text, Khardzhiev uses the invoked Freud’s notion of the “uncanny,”
terms “alogical eccentricity” and “elliptical suggesting that “surrealist beauty
syntax” with regard to Kruchenykh’s poetry. partakes of the return of the repressed,
26. Nina Gur’ianova, “Biografiia of the compulsion to repeat.” See Hal
dichaishego: vospominaniia Kruchenykh Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge,
v literaturnom kontekste 1920–1930-ikh MA: MIT Press, 1995), 23. Also see Victor
godov,” in K istorii russkogo futurizma, 14. Tupitsyn, “Canny Uncanny,” in Stripped
27. OBERIU (Association for Real Art) Bare: The Body Revealed in Contemporary
included the poets Nikolai Oleinikov, Art (London: Merrel, 2004), 21–42.

185
 Igor Terentiev
Self-Portrait, ca.1920

186
Igor Terentiev
Untitled, 1923

187
 “Never miss an opportunity to say some-
thing stupid,” Terentiev urged in 1919.
Terentiev, a lawyer by training, had lived in
Tiflis since 1916. As a poet and an artist, he was
formed under the influence of Ilia Zdanevich
and Kruchenykh. In 1918, he joined the “41°”
group and, by his own admission, “went be-
yond the bounds of futurism.”28 “Art is non-
sense under the command of common sense,”
Terentiev believed. In 1922, he was unable to
emigrate to France to reunite with his wife
and daughter, who had managed to go there
before France stopped issuing visas to Soviet
citizens. The phrase, “Drinking wine after 11
p.m. in solitude,” was most likely inspired by
thoughts of parting with loved ones.29 In Tiflis,
Terentiev published two books of verses, The
p. 184 Cherubim Whistle and Fact (1919). His poetic
works also appeared in Kruchenykh’s book
The Obesity of Roses (1918). Having settled in
Petrograd, Terentiev grew close to Malevich,
Matiushin, Vladimir Tatlin, Pavel Mansurov,
and Pavel Filonov. In 1924, he began to work
as a stage director, producing both his own
and other authors’ plays, such as Foxtrot,
The Knot, John Reed, and Nikolai Gogol’s The
28. I. G. Terentiev to M. M. Karpovich,
Government Inspector. He regarded himself as April 8, 1919, in Moi pokhorony. Stikhi.
a pupil of Meyerhold. His interest in Dadaism Pisma. Sledstvennye pokazaniia.
Dokumenty, ed. Sergei Kudriavtsev
began to show when he was still in Tiflis, in his (Moscow: Gileia, 1993), 23.
p. 185 works A. Kruchenykh: The Magnificent (1919), 29. Terentiev’s wife and daughter
returned to Russia in the late 1920s.
17 Nonsense Instruments (1919), and A Tract
30. Terent’ev, 17 erundovykh orudii (Tiflis:
on Total Indecency (1920). Terentiev contin- 41°, 1919), n.p. Terentiev was arrested in
ued to correspond with Ilia Zdanevich, and May 1937 and executed three weeks later.

his tragedy Iordano Bruno survives in a letter 31. Excerpts from the article are published
on pp. 310–313 of the present catalogue.
sent to him in 1924. To illustrate Terentiev’s 32. R. Iakobson and K. Pomorska, Raboty
Dadaist aspirations, several passages from his po poetike (Moscow: Progress, 1987), 7. In
1949, Zdanevich published Poésie de mots
book 17 Nonsense Instruments should suffice: inconnus in Paris; it included Khlebnikov’s
poetry along with works by such Dadaists
as Tzara, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes,
Kurt Schwitters, and Raoul Hausmann.
33. Ibid.

188
 Pieces of dream are good for patches
Zebra gallops Go study Here are exercises
Rewrite, reread, rescind, remove, recycle,
rebound, and run away.30

In 1921, while living in Berlin, Roman Jakobson wrote “Letters from

the West. Dada,” an article in which he surveyed the Dadaist movement
for the Soviet audience.31 Much later, while living in the United States,
Jakobson commented, in a dialogue with Krystina Pomorska, on the ori-
gins of the Russian proto-Dada period when “avant-garde poetry began
to unfold and there appeared an entire string of word-creation revela-
tions from the great Russian poet . . . Khlebnikov . . . who enchanted
me forever.”32 In the same text, he calls Kruchenykh “Khlebnikov’s en-
terprising, clever comrade-in-arms.”33 In fact, it was not enterprising
cleverness but pragmatism, as well as rejection of the symbolist tendency
to treat the text of the Other as a “beautiful lady”—including his own
poems and theoretical works. In a poem dedicated to Kruchenykh in
1921, Khlebnikov creates a more complex psychological portrait of his
“clever accomplice”:

Kruchenykh
Little apparition with a London air,
still a kid at thirty, wing collars and all,
perky, antsy, and brisk.
You keep that Siberian ending, that “chenykh,”
chained to your name like a prisoner on a rock pile.
You take other people’s ideas and repeat them
till you beat them to death.
The face of an “Englishman”—
or maybe an indentured bookkeeper
tired of his books.
Skillful editor of scandalous texts,
lazy, unshaven, and slipshod,
but with eyes like a girl’s
full of tenderness, sometimes.
Enormous gossip, tricky as they come,
a lover of personal put-downs.
You enchanting writer,
negative double of Burliuk!

189
 4. Nothingists
and Nothingism
The Nothingists and the OBERIU group
were two branches of Russian Dadaism. The
OBERIU sat on two or even three chairs: Da-
daism, surrealism, and nonsense (absurdism).
The Nothingists (nichevoki) were something
else altogether. “Nothingists are the Dada
of the West,” they proclaimed, putting forth
such slogans as “We spit on humanity” and
“Everything takes its beginning from Noth-
ing.”34 The word nothing was used as a uni-
versal answer to all questions: Who? What?
How? When? Where? Why? What for? For
p. 191
whom? For what reason? Nothingism (nichev-
ochestvo) found its capital in Rostov-on-Don,
and the Nothing­ists published their poems,
texts, and manifestos in a self-produced pub-
p. 296 lication, Dog’s Box.35 Strategic decisions were
the responsibility of the Creative Bureau of
Nothingists (TvorNichBuro), which included
Boris Zemenkov, Susanna Mar, Elena Niko-
laeva, Riurik Rok, Sergei Sadikov, and Oleg
Erberg. However, its activity proved to be
short-lived, and the Nothingists lasted only
from 1920 until 1922. In the “Decree on Paint-
ing,” Zemenkov writes, “Any work of art that
expresses itself outside the aesthetic laws of
correlation but directly demonstrates with its
form and content the artist’s possession of a
spiritual path is considered permitted until
further notice.”36 The “Decree on the Noth-
ingists of Poetry” declares that “the crisis is
in ourselves, in our spirit” and that 34. See “Decree on the Nothingists
of Poetry,” on pp. 295–297 of
the present catalogue.
Nothing: the purpose of eternity = Nothing.
35. Ibid.
Hence: 36. See “Decree on Painting,” on
In poetry, there is nothing; only Nothingists. pp. 297–298 of the present catalogue.

190
Nothingists
Leaflets of the group Nothingists,
ca. 1924

191
 Kirill Zdanevich and H2SO4 Group Irakly Gamrekeli, Beno Gordeziani,
Cover of the journal Literature and H2SO4 Group
the Rest, no. 1, 1924 Illustrations for the journal H2SO4,
no. 1, 1924

37. See “Decree on the Nothingists Consciousness, Theatre, Literature,

of Poetry,” on pp. 295–297 of and the Arts, ed. Daniel Meyer-
the present catalogue. Dinkgräfe (Newcastle: Cambridge
38. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being Scholars Publishing, 2012), 311–19.
and Nothingness: An Essay in See also Herbert Marcuse, Eros and
Phenomenological Ontology, Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into
trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
York: Citadel Press, 2001), 44. 41. This is a nontraditional
39. Malevich’s Black Square possesses interpretation of “here-Being” (Dasein,
the same quality, although this may in Heidegger) in conjunction with
be a purely subjective perception. Freud’s “fort/da” (“here/there”).
40. See Maria Granic-White, “The 42. In the USSR, a grotesque form
Theatrical Drive: The Unconscious of Marxism was in power. Now, it’s
Entering Consciousness,” in an equally grotesque capitalism.

192
 Life is heading toward the realization of our slogans:
Write nothing!
Read nothing!
Say nothing!
Print nothing!37

Adopting Jean-Paul Sartre’s position, one may surmise that Nothing

is abstraction, since “one abstracts when one imagines separately that
which cannot exist apart.”38 Many scholars link this term to Sartre’s
novel Nausea, written in 1938. A sensation of “nausea” does, in fact,
arise when a person leans over an abyss or tries to peer into nothing-
ness, into a vacuum. Nothingness is hypnotic.39 Its contemplation, if
such is possible, plunges us into a trance the panacea for which is “the
thinging of nothing” (objectification of nothingness or its imaginary
reification).
In his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud concludes
that the death drive is balanced by the libido through their mutual par-
ticipation in the children’s game “fort-da.” Maria Granic-White argues
that one of the mechanisms that ensures the legitimate presence of the
unconscious in the regions of consciousness is the “theatrical drive,”
which plays a fundamental role in the neutralization of the “death
drive” (Todestrieb) and in the battle against Thanatos on the side of
Eros.40 For Heidegger, Being (Dasein) is always here (Da), while what is
there (Fort) is nothingness.41 Thus, Dada can be interpreted as a porto
franco (a “customs-free zone” for the exchange of ideas and preferences
between Dasein and Fortsein).42
In late 1924, Mayakovsky brought back from Paris a copy of Tzara’s
7 Manifestos of Dada, which he had received from Ilia Zdanevich
with Tzara’s autograph: “To Ylya Zdanevitch with all the sympathy of
Tristan Tzaranov.” If Nothingists managed to see this publication in
Moscow, they would have recognized their kinship with Tzara’s Dada-
ism. In its turn, Tzara’s russification of his name in the autograph to
Zdanevich indicates that the conceptual affinity between the author of
7 Manifestos and those of Dog’s Box was mutual.

193
 5. Dada à la Russe in Paris Ilia Zdanevich
Poster for Transrational
Ball, 1923

In one of his notes in 1922, Khlebnikov describes Naum Granovsky

Cover of the book Lidantiu as
the Dadaists as followers of Russian futurists a Beacon by Ilia Zdanevich,
and suggests including Tzara and Ribemont- 1923

Dessaignes among “Presidents of Planet Earth.” Double page of the book

However, as the philosopher René Descartes Lidantiu as a Beacon by Ilia
Zdanevich, 1923
noted, “I do not wish to know if people existed
before me.”43 The Dadaists often followed this
prescription. However, Tzara denied that Da-
daism, cubism, and futurism had a common
background (baggage culturel). In 1921, in the
manifesto “Dada Raises Everything,” Tzara chal-
lenged Marinetti—ten years after Khlebnikov
and the other bu­detliane, who had been shocked
by the Italian futurist’s assertion (during his trip
to Russia in January 1914) that “war is the only
hygiene of the world.” Tzara’s comment about
the birth of the “Parabola of Dada,” with the
repetition of words and specific sounds (such
as “boom boom”) echoes more than just the lin-
guistic experiments of the transrationalists.44 In
the book Critique and Clinic (1993), Gilles De-
leuze writes (with a nod to Henri Bergson and
the philosophy of “vitality”) that “stuttering is
the language of becoming.”45 If so, the transra-
tional speech of Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, and
Tufanov is cut from the same cloth.
Sharshun’s and Iliazd’s involvement in the
Dada scene in Paris and their friendly contacts
with Tzara are discussed in Margarita Tupitsyn's
article elsewhere in the present catalogue. How- 43. Sergei Sharshun attributes this
expression to Descartes in his book
ever, the view of Russia as a provincial empire (a Dada (Kompiliatsiia) (1922).
sort of “colossus on clay feet”) extended, to some 44. Tzara, 7 manifestov dada, 26.
degree, to the Russian Dadaists in Paris. Louis 45. See Margarita Tupitsyn, “Photography
as a Remedy for Stammering,” in Boris
Aragon called Iliazd, in front of Tzara, “an em- Mikhailov, Unfinished Dissertation
bodiment of Russian stupidity,” eliciting a burst (Zurich: Scalo, 1998), 218–20.
46. Louis Aragon, Projet d’histoire littéraire
of laughter from those present—to which one contemporaine (1922–1923) (Paris: Digraphe,
may respond with Khlebnikov’s own verses.46 Mercure de France, 1994), 122–23.

194
195
 O, laugh, laughers! . . .
You who laugh with laughs, you who laugh it up laughishly . . .
Uplaugh, enlaugh, laughlings, laughlets . . .
O, laugh out, laughers!47

In the West, Dada positioned itself as a political, social, and aesthetic de-
marche on the cultural stage—a demarche mediated by World War I and
directed against the elite, using, moreover, the same slogans that have
also become highly relevant in the twenty-first century: namely, deseg-
regation and demarginalization. During the period when Dada was able
to establish itself as a politically engaged context on the cultural stage in
Western Europe, and to some extent in Russia, the slogans égalité and
diversité began to be realized at an accelerated rate. The Zurich and Paris
Dadaists were talented poets, so appeals and declarations performed by
them ( just like Mayakovsky’s poetry, which toed the party line) had an
effect on the public. The signifier is the foreskin (praeputium) of the sig-
nified, as one pediatrician put it. Everything that did not fit the definition
of proto-Dada had to be negated and ridiculed. Be that as it may, Khleb-
nikov’s “self-made word” and “self-made sound” are substantially dif-
ferent from the Dadaists’ theatrical-politicized lexicon.48 After all, even
if a “budetlianin” is a proto-Dadaist of sorts, the victorious abolition of
the past is not his “cup of tea.”
Sentiments toward proletarian culture (as a replacement for the bour-
geois one) echo the principle of the organization of chaos into meaning-
ful strands. Members of the principal wing of Dadaism welcomed “the
struggle of the proletariat,” regarding it as a tool for demainstreaming
bourgeois culture, its values, and its moral stereotypes. The German Da-
daist Georg Gross referred to himself and his accomplices as followers of
total nihilism who oppose attempts to objectify (or reify) nothingness,
especially since to turn nothing into something is to “disguise negation
without removing it.”49 Thus, for instance, Richard Huelsenbeck urged
taking a Dadaist position even toward Dada itself, stopping or ignoring
paroxysms of “systemic” attitude toward it. Dadaism is an anarchic mu-
tiny against everything and everyone, including oneself—that is, against
any “dispositives” established in our consciousness. The connection be-
tween them can be traced in Khlebnikov’s early poem, “Monster Living
in the Heights” (1908–1909):

Enormous arboreal monster, hanging

high with rump of shocking size,

196
 grips a girl who fetched a pail of water,
rolling at him her cajoling eyes.
Diddled for a moment, she’s an apple
on the branches of his shaggy arms.
Enormous monster—rather awful,
really—lolls back and laps. Life has its
charms.50

Leonid Livak writes, “until 1924, the literary

life of the Russian artistic colony [in Paris]
had three characteristic traits: (1) the absence
of anti-Soviet attitudes among the organiz-
ers and members of art groups; (2) the strong
popularity in that milieu of the Soviet avant-
garde in literature and the visual arts; and (3)
close ties to the French Dadaist movement,
stemming from the involvement in it of Ser-
47. Fragment from Velimir Khlebnikov,
“Incantation of Laughter” (1908–1909), gei Sharshun, Valentin Parnakh, and Sergei
in Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov, Romov; their efforts to introduce the young
vol. 3, Selected Poems, trans. Paul Schmidt,
ed. Ronald Vroom (Cambridge, MA: exiles to the Dada aesthetic were supported
Harvard University Press, 1997), 30. by Ilia Zdanevich, the veteran of a scandalous
48. Michael Fried’s reproach of avant-garde, who arrived in Paris in Novem-
surrealists for theatricality can also
be traced to Duchamp’s Rrose Sélavy, ber 1921.”51 Sharshun, who had been in Paris
Étant donnés, and Dada in general, since 1920, became a participant in “the 1921
which (while laying on its death bed)
thought surrealism (with its theatrical Dada Season,” contributed to 391 and Pica-
approach to the so-called imagoes) bia’s Cacodylic Eye, and befriended Tzara.52
was worthy enough to succeed it.
49. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 5.
He was immediately put to work writing
50. Velimir Khlebnikov, “Monster Living manifestos. One of them (undated) has been
in the Heights” (1908–1909), in Collected preserved in Tzara’s archive; it reads, in part,
Works of Velimir Khlebnikov, 3:31.
51. L. Livak, “Geroicheskie vremena
“Art, having filled its belly . . . has birthed the
molodoi zarubezhnoi poezii,” in proletarian. . . . Russia is infected with pre-
Literaturnyi avangard russkogo
Parizha. Istoriia. Khronika. Antologiia.
cision. Turn your eyes into a chronometer.
Dokumenty, ed. L. Livak and A. Chop off the pharmacist’s brains. The hand
Ustinov (Moscow: OGI, 2014), 16.
will knock. The foot will chase and catch
52. Sharshun and his countrymen the
journalist and critic Romov and the poet, up.”53 In 1921, Sharshun published a Dadaist
translator, and dancer Parnakh were also poem, “The Motionless Crowd” (Foule im-
active participants in various Dada events,
including the trial of Maurice Barrés. mobile), and Tzara not only reprinted it but
53. Dossier Tzara, 847. See began to use the author’s name under various
Sharshun’s manifesto in Livak and
Ustinov, Literaturnyi avangard
proclamations. Jakobson believed that the
russkogo Parizha, 24. support for Tzara’s group among the Russian

197
 diaspora in Paris was influenced by Dadaism’s Ilia Zdanevich
Poster for Ilia Zdanevich’s lecture
proximity to the aesthetics and the anarchist “41°,” Paris, May 12, 1922
aspirations of Russian futurism.54
At the scandalous Dada soirée at the Gal-
erie Montaigne on June 10, 1921, Parnakh gave
a demonstration of the poetry of dance while
lying on his back. “I stamp my ribs in perfect
score,” he later wrote in a poem about the
episode. Livak notes that Sharshun, Romov,
and Parnakh became “the main organizers
of the young exiles” from the “land of the So-
viets”—poets and artists who had emigrated
to France.55 Parnakh, Romov, and Sharshun
undoubtedly kept their Russian colleagues
up to date on the happenings in the French
avant-garde, including the “Dada season.” For
Sharshun, contacts with the Dadaists made
sense not only in his capacity as an artist but
also as a writer. Besides participating in ex-
hibitions, he belonged to the Montparnasse
associations the Chamber of Poets and Gota-
rapak, the first of which was founded by Par-
nakh and the second by Dovid Knut, and also
to Romov and Iliazd’s group, Across (Cherez).
The idea of starting the latter group arose on
November 24, 1922, at a banquet organized
by Iliazd in honor of Mayakovsky, who was
visiting Paris and was directly connected to
the upcoming launch of Lef (January 1923),
with which the Across group was going to be
in close cooperation.56 Besides Iliazd, Shar­
shun, Romov, Parnakh, Boris Poplavsky,
Vladimir Pozner, and Mark Talov, members
54. See Roman Jakobson, “Letters
of the Paris avant-garde—Paul Éluard, Ribe- from the West. Dada,” on pp. 310–
mont-Dessaignes, Tzara, and others—were 313 of the present catalogue.
also involved in the group. Its modus ope- 55. Livak and Ustinov, Literaturnyi
avangard russkogo Parizha, 37.
randi included art exhibitions, open discus-
56. In the first issue of Lef, Nikolai
sions, and performances. Sharshun’s poetry Chuzhak asserts, “there comes a
evening was held at the Chameleon café on moment when a real life, saturated
with art to the brim, will spew it as
December 21, 1921. He himself called his style unnecessary.” Lef, no. 1 (1923): 12–39.

198
199
 of poetry “Dada-lir-kan”—lyricism, a Dadaist-
style chirping. Breton, Philippe Soupault, and
Man Ray attended the event.
The Chamber of Poets also included
57. Boris Poplavskii, Dadafoniia:
Poplavsky, one of the most brilliant members Neizvestnye stikhotvoreniia,
of the Russian diaspora in Paris. In the early 1924–1927, ed. I. Zhelvakova and S.
Kudriavtsev (Moscow: Gileia, 1999).
and mid-1920s, he was in regular contact with
58. First printed in FLAGI (Chisla, Paris,
Iliazd and other Dadaists and later authored 1931); translated from Russian by Victor
the Dadafonia (1924–1927) anthology, which Tupitsyn. The last lines of this fragment
echo the death of a character named
collected “astounding examples of Russian Berlioz, who was run over by a streetcar
Dada.”57 Poplavsky, who died in Paris in 1935, in Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master
and Margarita, on which Bulgakov
summarized his impression of 1920s Europe in, was working around the same time.
“Pity for Europe” (1930): 59. Livak and Ustinov, Literaturnyi
avangard russkogo Parizha, 37.
60. Romov was arrested in
Europe, Europe, 1936 and executed in 1939.
your gardens are crowded. 61. Sergei Romov, “Ot dada k
siurrealizmu,” Vestnik inostrannoi
Ophelia reads the newspaper about it
literatury, no. 3 (1929): 178–208.
in a white white taxi, 62. Livak and Ustinov, Literaturnyi
and Hamlet in the tram dreams avangard russkogo Parizha, 90.
of going free under the wheels 63. Iliazd’s confession reflected
the dominant attitude in Russian-
with the smile of a snail speaking literary and artistic circles (in
in a deadly transit.58 Paris), with the exception of Dmitry
Merezhkovsky, Ivan Bunin, Vladislav
Khodasevich, and other writers who
Livak was correct when he noted that the were regarded as “Orthodox.” The
scandal at the Theatre Michel was
“orientation toward the mixing of the arts (Ev- instrumental in drawing attention to the
erythingism) was no accident. The same was fact that agonistic dialogues eventually
turn into antagonism, without which
done by French Dadaists when they present- cultural life is doomed to stagnation.
In this context, antagonism, which
ed astonished audiences with hybrid shows
had to a large extent been adopted
whose content included literature, theater, as the modus operandi of the Dada
movement, played a healing role. To
music, sculpture, painting, graphic art, and be precise, Dada was a “Pharmakon.”
dance. Thus, Romov, the critic and journalist, 64. An allusion to the prerevolutionary
works ‘outside his field,’ organizing an exhibi- Russian anthem, “God Save the Tsar.”
The artist Vagrich Bakhchanian came
tion of Russian artists and sculptors; Poplavsky up with this line regarding Tzara.
and Sharshun are torn between poetry and The irony is based on the similarity
(in Russian pronunciation) between
painting; Parnakh prides himself on combin- Tsar and Tzara. The poet Aleksandr
ing literature, dance, and jazz music in their Vvedensky, who used the same line
as his drinking toast, was arrested
creative work.”59 From 1922 to 1923, Romov because his accusers had no idea he
published the literary journal Strike (Udar), probably meant “Tzara” (not “Tsar”).
65. An allusion to Harald Szeemann’s
whose editorial board included Lunacharsky
exhibition When Attitudes Become
and Ilya Ehrenburg. In 1928, Romov returned Form, Bern Kunsthalle, 1969.

200
to the USSR.60 His essay “From Dada to Surrealism,” is one of the most
reliable primary sources.61
Iliazd’s role in the Dada scene in Paris is beyond any doubt. He ad-
mitted his inability to foresee the turn of events, however, the culmina-
tion that, in his words, “put an end to many things.”62 That culmination
was the soirée The Bearded Heart, organized by Iliazd and Romov at the
Théâtre Michel in July 1923. A brawl (or “hand-to-hand combat”) be-
tween followers of Breton (i.e., surrealists) and Tzara’s supporters broke
out, signifying the end of Dada. The Russian group was on Tzara’s side.
Recalling this later, Iliazd admitted that the Bearded Heart blow-up
showed to what extent we were deluded in thinking that the union of
left-wing forces in art had a future.63

6. “God Save the Tzara”:

Dada and the Aesthetic
of Funerals64
The incident at The Bearded Heart soirée did not prevent Breton and
Tzara from mending their relationship—not immediately, but seven
years later and under the banner of surrealism. Every banner has its
front and its reverse side. The aesthetic of funerals and the melancholy
trance are an inalienable part of modern art, but now, in contrast to
Dada, eschatologically oriented artistic practices and functions risk be-
coming a marathon that generates more and more new cycles and rep-
etitions, until the funerary format and our attitude toward it “become
form.”65 The funeral services industry and the art world connected to
it create a suitable environment filled with “melancholy objects” à la
Marcel Proust or Walter Benjamin—that is, ones directed toward the
wistfully “lost time” and at the same time directed forward, but with
one’s back to the past, as it were (if one considers “back-of-the-neck
vision”). That’s the eschatological context and the soil on which the
new aesthetics will blossom in abundance. By “will blossom,” I refer to
something “always already blossoming” and, in some sense, not depen-
dent on temporality.
In the cultural space, Dadaism is a kind of death drive, and in that
sense it is not without its appeal, especially when combined with the

201
 Ivan Puni's scrapbook
Tristan Tzara (left) with two unknowns, ca. 1922

202
Sergei Sharshun
Tristan Tzara, ca. 1921–1922

“theatrical drive” that balances the relation-

ship between Eros and Thanatos. And if that
is the case, theatricality in moderate doses is
still necessary for visual art—at least so it can
“seem” alive. This might already have become
a part of the postmodern cultural landscape,
especially since nostalgia for Dadaism mani-
fested itself in the second half of the twentieth
century. In response to the question, “Which
exercises of the symbolic function should get
top billing, the verbal-audial or the visual?” I
will note that for as long as our consciousness
is constantly oscillating between seeing speech
and listening to the gaze, the insistence on
their segregation is presumptuous. Yet, their
power over our lives and appropriation of the

203
 “capital” they accumulate create reasons for
the “expropriation of expropriators.”
Of special interest are situations in which
not means but codes are appropriated. The
collection of Khlebnikov’s prose works in-
cludes a chapter titled “May upon the Grave-
stone” (1904), which says “there are quantities
with the alteration of which the blue of the
bluebell will . . . after passing through ruptures
unknown to us humans, transform into the
sound of a cuckoo’s song or a child’s cry, and
become that sound. At the same time, chang-
ing continuously, it will form a sort of single-
row multiplicity all the points of which, except
those near the first and the last, will remain in
the realm of unknowable sensations, as though
they were from a different world.”66 No one
who has read A Thousand Plateaus (1980) by
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, can fail to see in
Khlebnikov’s words an analogy to the “rhi-
zome”—production without filiation, identi-
fication, imitation, or regressive-progressive
tendencies.67 That the bluebell and the cuckoo
become a wasp and an orchid in Deleuze and
Guattari makes no difference.
The seminal traveling exhibition Dada:
Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York,
Paris (2005–2006), also warrants mention.
The most striking thing about it (besides the
high quality of the works presented at the
exhibition) was the “partiality” of negation:
having fallen out of love with art, the Dadaists
remained captives of the creative imperative,
or creativity. The formulas “Dada is nothing”
and “Creo ergo sum” seem not to contradict
each other in the slightest, especially since the
Dadaist effect can be achieved regardless of
working method.
Of some interest is the link between Dada
and utopia. Consider Ernst Bloch, who in

204
 conversation with Theodor Adorno described
utopia as a project meant to complete the cre-
ation of an incomplete world.68 Or to create
it “backward,” which is in fact the main goal-
setting of Dadaism, its endgame (τη̃λος and
έσχατος). In his memoirs, the music scholar
66. Velimir Khlebnikov, Proza Leonid Sabaneev notes that, as early as 1912,
(Moscow: Sovremennik, 1990). Aleksandr Scriabin had theorized about paus-
67. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A
Thousand Plateaus (1980), trans. Brian
es in music and spoke of the “magical” nature
Massumi (Minneapolis: University of such “emptiness.” “It is not impossible that
of Minnesota Press, 1987).
someday the music of total silence will have
68. Bloch and Adorno argue that “the
essential function of utopia is a critique its turn,” Scriabin predicted.69 That John Cage
of what is present” (Bloch) and that knew of Sabaneev’s book is doubtful; nonethe-
“utopia is essentially in the determined
negation of that which merely is” less, his 4´ 33˝ and Waiting (1952) are a realiza-
(Adorno). Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. tion of the same ideas.70
Adorno, “Something’s Missing,” in The
Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Recurrences of antiart in artists’ visual
Selected Essays by Ernst Bloch, trans. practices manifested themselves in the post-
Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 12. war culture of the 1950s and 1960s—first in
69. L. L. Sabaneev, Skriabin (Moscow: the language games of the absurdists, then
Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo, 1923).
in the Situationist International (Debord and
70. Long before Cage, Malevich had
the opportunity to “reach” Nothing in others), although these were merely episodic
his black and white squares. Thanks to “victories of nonsense over surrealism.” Once
these works, Nothingness finally gained
the status of context and ceased to be minimalism and conceptualism entered the
merely a subtext in the cultural space. scene, forms of contact with nothingness
71. In 1981, I befriended Jean Brown, the
collector of Dada and Fluxus art. She
became institutionalized. Cage was able to
lived in Springfield, Massachusetts, where “resurrect” Duchamp, whom many had for-
Margarita Tupitsyn and I visited her to
see her collection and share information
gotten, and together, with a joint effort, they
about contemporary Russian art, including were able to influence the young generation
conceptualism and APTART (collective
art projects in Moscow, 1982–1984). Jean
of neo-Dadaists united (by George Maciunas)
was the first to underscore their affinity in the Fluxus group.71 To dot the i, I will end
with Fluxus, which she considered an
heir to Dada. In 1982, Jean gave us a
by mentioning the frivolous portrait of Joseph
copy of memoirs authored by Leokadia Stalin painted by Pablo Picasso at Aragon’s re-
Maciunas, George Maciunas’s mother,
and written in her native Russian. Years quest in 1953. When the portrait was printed
later, we published this opus in the in a newspaper, it caused a scandal that Tzara
Saint Petersburg magazine Kabinet #8
(1994). In 1997 this text was published in himself would have envied.
English under the aegis of the Stedelijk
Museum Amsterdam. See Leokadia
Maciunas, “My Son,” in Kabinet, an
Anthology, ed. Victor Mazin and Olesia
Turkina, with a postscript by Margarita
and Victor Tupitsyn (Amsterdam:
Stedelijk Museum, 1997), 149–66.

205
HUMOR AS
PARODY,
ECCENTRISM,
AND SATIRE
IN SOVIET
FILM AFTER
WORLD WAR I
Natasha Kurchanova

Varvara Stepanova
Cover of the journal Cine-Photo, no. 3, 1922
208
Lev Kuleshov’s Workshop “Engineering of art is based on the spirit of
Boris Barnet, Valentina
Lopatina, Vladimir Fogel, gaiety,” wrote Viktor Shklovsky, an influential
Aleksandra Khokhlova, and Petr critic of emergent Soviet film and a leading fig-
Galadzhev (left to right), 1923
ure in the Russian formalist circle.1 Although
Lev Kuleshov explicitly referring to Soviet director Sergei
Design for the journal
Cine-Photo, no. 1, 1922 Eisenstein, Shklovsky’s insight can be applied
to much of avant-garde art in Russia. This es-
say considers explicit manifestations of this
“spirit of gaiety” in the works of Eisenstein,
Lev Kuleshov, and other prominent filmmak-
ers in Bolshevik Russia, such as the founders
of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (FEKS),
Leonid Trauberg and Grigory Kozintsev, who
made their first films during the period cov-
ered by the exhibition. Because the exhibition
explores the links between Dada and the Rus-
sian art of the period, these films serve as the
basis for investigating possible crosscurrents
that may have reached pioneering Soviet di-
rectors in their search for a new film language.
After all, many Russian artists and critics vis-
ited Berlin in the early 1920s, when the Dada
movement was gaining momentum. Shklovsky
lived in Berlin from 1922 until 1923 and may p. 137
1. Viktor Shklovskii, “Eizenshtein” have been aware of Dada’s existence through
(1927), in Za sorok let: stat’i o kino
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965), 74. I his friend Ivan Puni, whom he knew from Rus-
thank Margarita Tupitsyn, Stuart sia and who was close to the Der Sturm circle.2
Liebman, and Naum Kleiman for their
help and advice on this article. This essay manifestly excludes Dziga Vertov,
2. Shklovsky writes about Puni in Zoo the creator of the mesmerizing documentary
or Letters Not about Love, trans. and
ed. Richard Sheldon (Ithaca: Cornell
newsreel Cine-Truth (Kinopravda), now can-
University Press, 1971), 55–58. onized as the first instance of constructivism
3. Cine-Truth was produced by Vertov, in film.3 Despite an apparent “spirit of gaiety”
Elizaveta Svilova, and Mikhail Kaufman
throughout the 1920s. The trio made pervading Vertov’s production, Shklovsky
twenty-three issues of the cinematic criticized it at the time for Vertov’s resistance
journal, the first of which was shown to
the public on May 21, 1922. See Jay Leyda, to introducing elements of plot construction
Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet in his films, which corresponded to the lack
Film (New York: Collier Books, 1973), 161.
of hints of psychological conflict in his pro-
4. Shklovskii, “Vertov,” in Za sorok let,
70–73, Vertov’s gaiety came from the gut, ductions.4 While creating their own versions
expressing uninhibited energy and a joy of
of a film language, Eisenstein, Kuleshov, and
life, without the element of self-reflection
and parody apparent in films in this essay. FEKS retained the seeds of plot construction

209
 through their pervasive use of such specific forms of humor as parody, ec-
centrism, and satire, rendering their work more acceptable to Shklovsky
as an expression of cinematic art.5
On the larger scale of the development of the film industry in Russia,
the avant-garde had to compete with the popularity of commercial films
made on the foreign market, Hollywood in particular. The Russian Revo-
lution and the concomitant end of World War I marked the beginning of
a period of intensive growth for the Soviet film industry. The Bolsheviks
understood film’s enormous potential for propaganda, entertainment,
and, ultimately, control of the masses, and issued foundational decrees
in support of the new art form. From October 1917 until Vladimir Lenin’s
death in January 1924, the Bolshevik government nationalized the film in-
dustry, established film schools, and set up a rudimentary production and
distribution network for foreign and Soviet films.6 This period coincided
with the flourishing of constructivism and suprematism in Russia and of
the Dada movement in the West. Whereas the influence of the former
on Western art has been investigated at length—including, for example,
considerations of the great interest Western artists such as George Grosz,
John Heartfield, and Hans Richter displayed toward Vladimir Tatlin and
Kazimir Malevich—only recently have scholars attempted to examine the
inroads Dada made in Russia.7 Results of this investigation appear incon-
clusive. Russia at the time was an inspiring and emerging force, which
intrigued and captivated the imagination of the avant-garde in the West.
However, this fascination worked only at a distance. Upon a closer look,
the once-revered Russians disappointed the Westerners.8 The reaction
the other way around was similar: To the Russians, the impressive artistic
achievements of the West often looked like a form of subterfuge.9
In the sphere of performance, including theater and film, a similar dy-
namic of mutual attraction and repulsion defied a common ground of re-
lationship according to the degree of “radical criticism, nihilistic denial,
and abstraction in aesthetics.”10 Seemingly similar explorations of “strate-
gies, conditions of formation and usage of literary and artistic languages
and meaning on paradigmatic . . . and syntagmatic . . . levels,” frequently
compared to a child-like, naive attitude toward the world, ran against
fundamental contextual differences in which the artists were operating.11
When Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, and Tristan Tzara sang, played musi-
cal instruments, recited poetry, or dressed in wild costumes in Zurich’s
Cabaret Voltaire shortly after the outbreak of World War I, they opposed
the dominant capitalist culture by provoking it, thereby distancing them-
selves from the violence and philistinism of the world outside.12 However,

210
5. Shklovsky, “Kuda shagaet Dziga Vertov?,” because they could not extricate themselves
in Antologiia russkogo formalizma, ed. Sergei
Ushakov (Moscow-Ekaterinburg: Kabinetnyi from this culture, their humor tended toward
uchenyi, 2016), 1:247. On Shklovsky and the its wry variant: irony. The protest by Dada art-
development of his theories, see also Il’ia Kalinin,
“Viktor Shklovskii kak priem,” in ibid., 63–106. ists was largely ironic because it both ridiculed
6. All of this was set in motion by a decree Lenin and elevated the artists as representatives of
signed on August 27, 1919. For details on the
Bolsheviks’ nationalization of the Russian film
capitalist culture who rebelled against its ag-
industry, see Vance Kepley Jr., “Soviet Cinema gression. Even though the advent of the New
and State Control: Lenin’s Nationalization
Decree Reconsidered,” Journal of Film and
Economic Policy in 1922, which gave a green
Video 42, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 3–14. light to private enterprise, put a stop to the un-
7. Tomáš Glanc, “Dada izdali,” in “Vy gniete, a fettered dominance of Vertov’s ideological eu-
pozhar nachalsia”: reseptsiia dadaizma v Rossii,
ed. Tomáš Glanc (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi phoria, in Soviet Russia artists and filmmakers
muzei im. V. V. Maiakovskogo, 2016), 7–23. See invented other devices to promote the domi-
also Margarita Tupitsyn, Malevich and Film (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 55–69; and nant Soviet proletarian and peasant culture,
Timothy Benson and Aleksandra Shatskikh, making fun of only those elements that were
“Malevich and Richter: An Indeterminate
Encounter,” October 143 (Winter 2013): 52–68. extrinsic to it, such as the bourgeois, kulaks, or
8. Glanc, “Dada izdali,” 10. ignorant foreigners. At that time, Soviet artists
9. Ibid. See also Roman Jakobson, “Letters were not part of the culture they despised; on
from the West. Dada,” on pp. 310–313 of the
present catalogue; and Sergei Sharshun, “My the contrary, they were building a culture that
Participation in the French Dada Movement,” could be sustained and admired. Instead of
on pp. 314–319 of the present catalogue.
10. Glanc, “Dada izdali,” 8. irony, they used parody, eccentrism, and satire
11. Ibid.; and Grigorii Bammel’, “Dada Almanach,” to laugh at the common enemy, the philistine
in “Vy gniete, a pozhar nachalsia,” ed. Glanc, 40. bourgeois.13
12. Hans Richter, “Cabaret Voltaire: Its Members
and Collaborators,” in Dada: Art and Anti-Art Glumov’s Diary (1923) was Eisenstein’s first p. 213
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1965), 19. film. He made it as a cinematic insert into his
13. As several writers noticed, the differing theatrical adaptation of Nikolai Ostrovsky’s
approaches of Dada and Russian artists were
determined by their relationship to reality. comedy Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man,
Speaking on behalf of the Dadaists, Georges after having studied the craft of theatrical
Ribemont-Dessaignes described their attitude
as “refusal to believe in the sameness of things,” production with the fabled director Vsevolod
wreaking havoc on the idea of logical causation. Meyerhold. The production was staged at the
“One and one becomes two only when they want
it.” Zhorzh Ribmon-Diussen’, “Umer li Dada?,” Proletkult Theater. At the time of Eisenstein’s
in “Vy gniete, a pozhar nachalsia,” ed. Glanc, 45.
training, Meyerhold elaborated his theory
On the Russians’ side, Abram Efros emphasized
the difference between Velimir Khlebnikov’s of biomechanics, which his talented student
life-affirming speech creation (rechetvorchestvo)—
based on live tradition and having as a goal
highly admired. In opposition to the classical
revival of the Russian language—and Tzara’s acting technique, which called for “inward,”
nihilistic “je-m’en-foutisme.” Abram Efros, “Dada
i Dadaizm,” in ibid., 83. Glanc explained the
nearly indiscernible feelings and emotions,
Russians’ reluctance to accept Dada as their own biomechanics emphasized theatrical panto-
by the latter’s “refusal of the category of truth,”
which seemed deficient to the Russians, who,
mime—physical movements and facial ex-
despite their seeming destruction of history and pressions that were controlled and carefully
tradition, were always returning to them, whether
under the guise of the truth of abstraction, novelty,
rehearsed by each actor for each character.
or beyond-sense reality. Glanc, “Dada izdali,” 18. In Meyerhold’s system of biomechanics, the

211
 “psychology” of a character had to be clearly visible in the actor’s physi-
cal appearance, so that the aesthetic “excitation” could be conveyed to the
viewer: “All psychological states are determined by specific psychological
processes. By correctly resolving the nature of his state physically, the
actor reaches the point where he experiences the excitation, which com-
municates itself to the spectator and induces him to share in the actor’s
performance. It is this excitation that is the very essence of an actor’s art.
From a sequence of physical positions and situations there arise ‘points
of excitation,’ which are informed with some particular emotion.”14 Ei-
senstein had a chance to become familiar with the technique not only in
its theoretical but its practical aspects. In 1922, he witnessed rehearsals
of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in Meyerhold’s theater, and he assisted
his teacher in the staging of Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin’s play The Death
p. 119 of Tarelkin, with sets designed by Varvara Stepanova.
After leaving Meyerhold and embarking on his own path, Eisenstein
incorporated his teacher’s emphasis on active outward expression and
movement into his own performing theory, called “montage of attrac-
tions.” In pique to his teacher’s devotion to theater as an art form, Ei-
senstein’s theory of action took a sharply ideological turn, calling for the
overthrow of “‘the values of the past’” and “the abolition of the very insti-
tution of the theatre as such, replacing it with a show-place for achieve-
ments in the theatre or with an instrument for raising the standard of
training of the masses in their day-to-day life.”15 From the beginning of
his independent career, then, Eisenstein’s aesthetics aimed at a practi-
cal goal: mobilization of the masses in support of the Bolshevik cause.
The “attractions” unfolding on stage would be “any aggressive aspect of
the theatre; that is, any element of the theatre that subjects the specta-
tor to a sensual or psychological impact, experimentally regulated and
mathematically calculated to produce in him certain emotional shocks
which, when placed in their proper sequence within the totality of the
production, become the only means that enable the spectator to per-
ceive the ideological side of what is being demonstrated—the ultimate
ideological conclusion.”16
Consequently, the twenty-five attractions that constituted Eisen-
stein’s production of Ostrovsky’s play ranged from narrational solilo-
quys to musical-eccentric acts to clownery, farcical scenes, and singing
performances. Glumov’s Diary was screened near the beginning of the
performance; it followed the first attraction where Glumov (played by
Grigory Aleksandrov, Eisenstein’s assistant at the time and later a promi-
nent director in his own right) presents the audience with a story of his

212
Sergei Eisenstein
Glumov’s Diary (conceived as part of the adaptation
of Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s 1868 comedy Enough
Stupidity in Every Wise Man, which he realized at the
Proletcult Theater), 1923

14. Meyerhold’s lecture on biomechanics,

cited in V. Fedorov, “Akter budushchego,”
Ermitazh, no. 10 (1922).
15. Sergei Eisenstein, “Montage of Attractions
for Enough Stupidity in Every Wiseman,” trans.
Daniel Gerould, Drama Review 18, no. 1 (March
1974): 77; available online at http://www.jstor.org/
stable/1144865 (accessed December 21, 2017).
16. Ibid., 78.

213
 Lev Kuleshov’s Workshop
Aleksandra Khokhlova and
Petr Galadzhev, 1923

Aleksandr Rodchenko
Cover of the journal
Cine-Photo, no. 1, 1922

214
stolen diary. According to Eisenstein, Glumov’s Diary was a parody of an
American detective film. It comprises a series of frames that alternate
quickly and appear to lead to a resolution of a mystery. First, we see a
car driving by a mansion with an impressive ornamented arch on Vozd-
vizhenka Street in Moscow—home of Arseny Morozov, scion of a famous
merchant family. A man in a top hat jumps out of the car while it is still
in motion. He runs up the stairs with his back toward us, turns around
suddenly, and stops long enough for us to see he is wearing a black mask
over his eyes. From Eisenstein’s notation, we know the man is Golutvin,
“a man with no particular occupation,” who will steal his friend’s diary
to extort money from him. With a swift gesture, he takes off the hat,
waves to us while holding it in his hand, and disappears under the arch.
In the following shot, we see Glumov in clown face poking his head out
of a roundel in one of the mansion’s towers. He screams silently, opening
his mouth widely, and disappears from the window. Then the top-hatted
Golutvin appears in his place, catches a rope conveniently hanging in
front of the roundel, and climbs up the ornaments of the tower to the top
balcony surrounded by columns crowned by spiraling cones.
Golutvin hangs his hat on one of the cones and waves his hand. Glu-
mov reappears in the roundel, looks up, sees the hat and then an airplane
in the sky. The next shot shows us a crowded street, a moving automo-
bile, and a masked Golutvin landing in the car (supposedly after having
jumped down from the airplane). Then there is a close-up of his hands,
unraveling a roll of film, and his made-up face, which mimes a smile
followed by an expression of fear. A series of heavily made-up clown-
ish characters follow, some wearing dresses and other female-signifying
paraphernalia, such as prominent breasts. The clowns gesticulate widely
and smile profusely. Glumov approaches each of them, and, trying to
adjust to the demands of each character, transforms through a somer-
sault (an acrobatic trick) followed by a fade-in (a montage trick) into
something that the character might like: a stack of playing cards for his
clown-mother; a mitrailleuse for a clown-general; a baby for a clown
playing the wife of his relative who likes younger men. The last scene
shows Glumov’s wedding, in which he amusingly but decisively folds his
fingers into an insulting configuration, roughly synonymous with raising
a middle finger in the United States. The ending thus metaphorically
dots the i by conveying the creators’ message about American detec-
tive stories. In Eisenstein’s interpretation of Ostrovsky’s play, the hero
is the same as the villain, and the only way to combat the evil is through
parodic laughter.

215
 The same spirit of gaiety reigned supreme
in the productions of FEKS, which Kozintsev
and Trauberg formed in 1921 in Petrograd to
bring the “eccentrism of the music hall” onto
the stage. According to their manifesto, FEKS
was created to enliven theater with “hyperboli-
cally crude, overwhelming, nerve-wrecking,
overtly utilitarian, mechanically precise, in-
stantaneous, rapid” art, in which the apex of
an actor’s production would be a “trick” taken
from the circus. The play would then resemble
a “pile of tricks,” and the actor would become
a combination of an “inventor-fabricator”
and a “mechanized movement,” who would
not “play” but “give himself airs”; would not
“mimic” but “grimace”; would not speak but
shout.17 Shklovsky credited FEKS with influ-
encing Eisenstein’s first independent produc-
tion and its theory: “In any case, the theory of
the montage of attractions (moments filled
with meaning) is connected with the theory
of eccentrism. Eccentrism is based on a choice
of impressive moments and their new connec-
tion, which defies automatism. Eccentrism is
the struggle with life’s routine nature, refusal
of its perception and rendering based on tra-
dition.”18 In 1924, Kozintsev and Trauberg di-
rected The Adventures of Oktiabrina, in which
their eccentric method of acting and stage pro-
duction was introduced on screen. Because the
film is lost, we can only imagine its eccentricity
in action based on a few remaining frames. In
one of them, Oktiabrina appears in an opening
17. Grigorii Kozintsev, Georgii
of a door on which we see a mysterious inscrip- Kryzhitskii, Leonid Trauberg,
tion: “1,000,000 rubles in gold cur[rency].” She and Sergei Iutkevich, Eksentrizm
(Eksentropolis-Petrograd, 1922), 3–4.
is wearing her signature budenovka and deter-
18. Viktor Shklovskii,, “O rozhdenii i
minedly aiming a revolver at two men cower- zhizni ‘Feksov,’” in Za sorok let, 92.
ing on the rails of a stairwell. The scene reads 19. Evgeni Gromov, “Lev Kuleshov,” in
Lev Kuleshov, Selected Works: Fifty Years
like one from an adventure movie, with a clear
in Film, trans. Dmitri Agrachev and Nina
demarcation between the good Oktiabrina and Belenkaya (Moscow: Raduga, 1997), 7.

216
the bad counterrevolutionaries who are trying to misappropriate the
money of the Bolshevik collective.
Reminiscing about his first film from the position of a recognized di-
rector, Eisenstein wrote wryly that Glumov’s Diary “had nothing to do
with cinema,” dismissing his directorial debut as a student exercise. The
film was made two years before the release of Strike and Battleship Potem-
kin, which took over the world nearly instantaneously, and in which
clownery, farce, and gymnastics were replaced by an all-pervasive ideo-
logical pathos. Regardless of Eisenstein’s dismissive remark, Glumov’s Di-
ary uses some basic montage techniques, such as fade-ins and juxtaposi-
tion of panoramic and close-up shots. He could have learned about them
from the films and writings of his colleague Kuleshov, who, although a
year younger than Eisenstein, began a career in cinema much earlier.
At the age of seventeen, Kuleshov was hired as a designer by Alek-
sandr Khanzhonkov, one of the most established prerevolutionary film
producers.19 In 1918, he directed his first film, Engineer Prite’s Project, at
Khanzhonkov’s studio. After having left Khanzhonkov and joined the
film and photography department of Narkompros, Kuleshov directed
newsreels at the military front and taught at the newly founded State
School of Cinematography. At that time, he elaborated key concepts of his
theory, including that of montage, also known as “the Kuleshov effect,”
demonstrating that proper editing and juxtaposition of shots created the
films’ meaning. He also organized the “Kuleshov Collective,” consisting of
his students and collaborators—Boris Barnet, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Alek-
sandra Khokhlova, Sergei Komarov, and Vladimir Fogel among others.
The exhibition features two films from this period in Kuleshov’s career:
Taras’s Dream (1919), a short agitational feature directed by Iury Zheli-
abuzhskii, with Kuleshov in charge of montage, and Extraordinary Ad-
ventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), which became a
marker of Kuleshov’s achievement as an innovative film director.
Taras’s Dream, which lasts eleven minutes, is a slapstick rendition of
а Red Army soldier named Taras, who gets drunk, falls asleep, and has a
dream about his former service in the tsarist army, where his days were
spent being humiliated by his superiors, performing hard labor, and en-
during harsh punishment. A typical absurdist comedy, it includes an ex-
aggerated facial and gestural pantomime by key characters played by clas-
pp. 220–221
sically trained theater actors—the simpleton Taras (Vladimir Riabtsev),
a sadistic sergeant-major (Anatoly Nelidov), and a jealous and vengeful
general (Dmitry Gundurov). The film was made on the occasion of the
first anniversary of the Red Army and carried a rudimentary message

217
 Varvara Stepanova
Cover of the journal Cine-
Photo, no. 2, 1922

about the superiority of the Red Army—at

least where the well-being of its soldiers was
concerned—over its tsarist counterpart. Kule-
shov was in charge of montage and was con- 20. Lev Kuleshov, “The Banner of
Cinematography” (1920), in Lev
cerned with what he called “American shots,” Kuleshov, Selected Works, 37–55.
or a proper use of editing, which made the ac- 21. Lev Kuleshov, “David Griffith and Charlie
tion suitably filmic, as opposed to theatrical, Chaplin” (1928), in Kuleshov on Film: Writings
by Lev Kuleshov, ed. Ronald Levaco (Berkeley:
literary, or pictorial.20 The film incudes sub- University of California Press, 1974), 144–45.
tle fade-ins, masterful alteration of medium- 22. “Pis’mo L. V. Kuleshova Charl’zu
Chaplinu” (1924), in Lev Kuleshov, Sobranie
range and close-up shots, and an emphasis on sochinenii v trekh tomakh, pedagogika
smooth frame transitions to convey differences (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987), 1:418–20.
between the “actual” and “dream-induced” 23. Lev Kuleshov, “O zadachakh khudozhnika
v kinematografe” (1917), in Sobranie sochinenii
realities lived by Taras. In its subject matter v trekh tomakh, 1:30–31; Lev Kuleshov,
and elements of slapstick, the film resembles “O ssenariiakh” (1917), in ibid., 1:34; Lev
Kuleshov, “Znamia kinematografii” (1922),
Charlie Chaplin’s films, in particular Soldiers in ibid., 1:38–45; and Lev Kuleshov, “Spravka
Arms, which was released in 1918, a year before o naturshchikakh” (1922), in ibid., 1:46–50.
24. Lev Kuleshov, “Prakticheskie raboty
Taras’s Dream. Like the Russian film, Soldiers nad montazhem i nabliudeniia” (1922), in
Arms tells the story of a soldier, which at the Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, 1:41–45.

218
end is revealed to be his dream. Chaplin’s film might have been screened
in Moscow shortly after its release. Chaplin was widely admired by West-
ern Dadaists and Russian artists and filmmakers. Kuleshov, in particular,
expressed his admiration in writing. For him, what made the actor stand
out was Chaplin’s extraordinary ability to “demonstrate the deportment
of a person in various aspects of his life by means of his relationships to
things, to objects,” rather than by “the elementary portrayal of emotion
communicated facially.”21 In 1924, the Kuleshov Collective even wrote a
letter to Chaplin, calling him their “teacher” in the way he managed to
“precisely and clearly delineate every movement and positioning of the
actor in relation to an exacting and harmonious montage” and explain-
ing to him the principles of the work they had elaborated on the basis of
his method.22
Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks pp. 224–225

was the first film the Kuleshov Collective made following this method.
Different from Taras’s Dream in that it used a more refined satire as op-
posed to slapstick, it was also the first film directed by Kuleshov with
his collective and according to the principles of his theory. The plot of
the film is rather simple: Mr. John West, the president of the YMCA,
arrives for an extended stay in Moscow. He comes there with a skewed
image of the Bolsheviks as unwashed and murderous savages, an image
propagated by the American media. Upon his arrival, he is promptly set
up by a group of swindlers who extort money from him by playing on
his fear of the Bolsheviks. Through a series of hilarious tricks, the group
succeeds in fleecing the naive American of large amount of cash. This
merciless robbery is stopped only through the intervention of a real Bol-
shevik, represented by a benevolent Cheka commander. At the end of the
film, the transformed Mr. West enthusiastically promotes Bolshevism in
a letter to his beloved wife.
Although the goal of the film was properly comic—to ridicule a clue-
less American for his foreignness—the presentation of the comedy was
tailored to the properties of the cinematic medium as formulated by
Kuleshov in his writings. From his first texts on film, written in 1917,
Kuleshov propagated the uniqueness of cinema as an artistic medium.
He argued this point in a series of articles on the roles of designers, writ-
ers, photographers, and actors in film.23 A photographer had to give up
his monopoly on reproducing reality in a single picture to a film editor, a
specialist on montage—an art of “assembling” separate filmed pieces, in-
cluding the splitting of individual scenes into separate elements and their
skillful juxtaposition, with the editor’s effort to adjust the filming to the

219
 viewer’s perception and on a harmonious tran- Lev Kuleshov
sition of shots.24 Kuleshov completely redefined Taras's Dream, 1919

the role of film actors, asserting that “while the

theatre is unthinkable without actors, the cin-
ema does not need actors, . . . but requires mod-
els instead.”25 Because film works with reality
as material by creatively transforming it into a
work of art, in cinema, it is “wrong to ‘perform’
a script; the thing to do is to place the characters
in certain situations . . . in such a manner that
the character is perceived not as an actor play-
ing a part but as a model, a genuine type fitting
the setup, and then the events he lives through
can be played.”26 Thus, the only way for a film
actor to look authentic on the screen is to dis-
play genuine individuality. Any theatrical role-
acting would look contrived and false.
In keeping with the principles stated in the
Kuleshov Collective’s letter to Chaplin, this dis-
play of individuality required rigorous training.
For actors, this meant possession of complete
control over their facial and gestural expressions
at any moment of the shooting and awareness
of the camera recording their every move.27 A 25. Kuleshov, “Spravka o
naturshchike,” 47.
good sense of the training received by actors in
26. Ibid.
pp. 208, 214 Kuleshov’s workshop can be gained from his de- 27. See “Pis’mo L. V. Kuleshova
scription of its graduation requirements: “Upon Charl’zu Chaplinu” (1924).

220
Varvara Stepanova
Charles Chaplin Turning Somersault,
1922

221
 graduation, a model must meet the following re-
quirements: 1) to have the capacity to control the
body and face muscles consciously and promptly
retain the director’s plastic assignments; 2) to
have the necessary skill to solve, unassisted, any
plastic problems arising from the scenario or
the directorial assignment; . . . 4) to have a good
knowledge of the specific traits of his or her face
and body in terms of photogenicity, depending
on the particular light and movement.”28 In
practice, this translated into repeated rehears-
als to hone the actor’s every move and expres-
sion and adjust it to the technical possibilities
of camera recording. While watching Mr. West, 28. Lev Kuleshov, “Programma
kinematograficheskoi eksperimental’noi
one is captivated by the rapidity of action, the masterskoi po klassu naturshchikov” (1923),
changing scenes, and the mechanical precision in Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, 1:95.
29. Shklovskii, “O rozhdenii
with which the actors portray their characters. i zhizni ‘Feksov,’” 92
Khokhlova, in particular, attracts attention with 30. Viktor Shklovskii, “O Dzhige Vertove”,
her incomparably rich facial mimicry and her in Antologiia, ed. Ushakov, 1:251–52.

angular figure, which she folds and unfolds ef- 31. Shklovskii, “Eizenshtein,” 74.
32. Iu. Tynianov, “O FEKSakh,” Sovetskii
fortlessly depending on the required movement ekran, April 2, 1929, 10, translated and
and the flow of action. reprinted in The Film Factory: Russian and
Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896–1939,
All of the films considered above are com- ed. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie
edies, using parody, eccentrism, and satire to (London: Routledge, 1988), 257–58.
make the audience laugh. At first glance, it 33. Richter traveled to Moscow to work on
Metal (1931–1933), a film about a workers’
might seem remarkable that at the birth of So- strike in an iron factory in Hennigsdorf,
viet cinema, comedy appears to have been the Germany. See Tupitsyn, Malevich and Film,
62–65. According to Marion von Hofacker,
only alternative to Vertov’s cinematic construc- Richter was prompted begin work on this
tivism. In his writings, Shklovsky wondered film, the only political feature of his career,
by the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.
about this phenomenon, questioning why it Marion von Hofacker, “Richter’s Films
was “eccentrism, filtered through Eisenstein, and the Role of the Radical Artist,” in
Hans Richter: Activism, Modernism, and
the FEKS, and partly Meyerhold, that created the Avant-Garde, ed. Stephen C. Foster
new devices for the art of the post-October pe- (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998),
122–59. Richter met Eisenstein in 1929 in La
riod” and not any other current.29 Elsewhere, he Sarraz, Switzerland, at the 29th Congress
of Independent Cinema. See ibid.; and
remarked on the significance of parodic laugh- Travelling: Documents cinémathèque Suisse
ter for the development of the Soviet aesthetic, 55 (1979), dedicated to this congress.
because it contributed to conveying “tension in 34. Shklovsky begins his article on
Eisenstein by stating, “he shuns such
the social field, created by new phenomena.”30 words as ‘inspiration’, art” and continues,
He remarked in this respect that “to create “if he has anything ‘eccentric’ about him,
it’s the eccentricity of a new mechanism.”
his heroic style, Eisenstein had to go through See Shklovskii, “Eizenshtein,” 74.

222
his montage of eccentric attractions.”31 Iury Tynianov, a fellow formal-
ist critic, expanded on Shklovsky’s thought when he proposed that “an
elementary ‘comedy’ film,” on which the “adventures” of FEKS were
reared, still had “traces of cinema as an invention, elements of cinema,
which allow one . . . to examine, test, and handle that which the more
deferential but less intelligent regard as a taboo—the very essence of the
cinema as an art form. Here the FEKS invented what had hitherto been
their most valuable feature: freedom from genre, the optional nature
of traditions, and the ability to reconcile opposites.”32 Comedy allowed
Russian artists in theater and film to bare the device to the maximum,
reducing it to its basic building blocks. In this sense, it served the same
function in these performance arts as abstraction in painting.
As Dada was a fluid, open-ended international movement, it dis-
played many choices of aesthetic strategies, highlighting their division
according to political lines. Grosz and Heartfield, for example, who were
both members of the Communist Party, were close to the Russians in
that they used satire to ridicule capitalists as immoral warmongers and
money grabbers. The left-leaning Richter became interested in Eisen-
stein after the Russian director’s Strike and Battleship Potemkin were
released in the West. Richter worked on his own saga about a work-
ers’ strike in Moscow in the 1930s.33 Shklovsky’s “spirit of gaiety,” then,
can be traced not only in the early Soviet film but in the satirical and
pathos-oriented works of Dada artists who were inspired by the Soviet
directors. The difference in context set the frame for their work: Russian
artists and filmmakers were at pains to present themselves and everyone
involved in the creation of their films as regular “workers” at a film fac-
tory.34 Unless Dada artists consciously affiliated themselves with a cer-
tain communist collective or forms of collective production on behalf of
a left-leaning political cause, as Grosz, Heartfield, and even Richter did
to some extent, their frame of reference remained confined to a culture
in which difference and individuality was valued more than similarity
and collective action, making irony rather than eccentrism, parody, or
satire their artistic device of choice.

223
Lev Kuleshov
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West
in the Land of the Bolsheviks, 1924
225
ANARCHISM
AND THE
RUSSIAN
ARTISTIC
AVANT-GARDE
Olga Burenina-Petrova

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Cover of the book Mystery Bouffe by Vladimir
Mayakovsky, Petrograd, 1918
227
 As a political philosophy, anarchism began to
take shape at the dawn of the postromantic
era, as one of the manifestations of its charac-
teristic nihilism, in the works of Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, who declared that all property is
“theft,” and Mikhail Bakunin, who rejected all
forms of hierarchical power, be they divine or
human, collective or individual. Interest in an-
archist teachings on the part of artists began
in 1910–1916 with the manifestos of Italian and
Russian futurists and, especially, of Zurich
Dadaists. Many definitions of Dadaism echo
the characteristics of anarchism and freedom
expounded by Bakunin in his work Statism
and Anarchy. Bakunin lived in Switzerland
from 1872 to 1876 and published this work
his main theoretical treatise on anarchism, in
Zurich in 1873. The founders of Dadaism who
met in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 and
were familiar with Bakunin’s work—Tristan
1. Karin Huser, Eine revolutionäre Ehe
Tzara, Hans Arp, Marcel Janco, Hugo Ball— in Briefen: Die Sozialrevolutionärin
were drawn to Bakunin’s anarchism, first and Lidija Petrovna Kotschetkowa und
der Anarchist Fritz Brupbacher
foremost, by its rebellious spirit and its power (Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 2003).
of negation. Ball began to write a book on Ba- 2. Regarding Stirner’s influence on
kunin, using materials from the library of the Duchamp, see Allan Antliff, “Anarchy,
Politics, and Dada,” in Making Mischief:
Zurich anarchist, physician, and writer Fritz Dada Invades New York, ed. Francis
Brupbacher, with the intent of showing how M. Naumann, Beth Venn, and Todd
Alden (New York: Whitney Museum
the program of Dadaism parallels the theo- of American Art, 1996), 212.
retical views of the great rebel.1 (He never 3. Leon Trotsky uses the phrase
“shift of power” in his book My Life
finished it, however.) (1930); see the chapter “Lenin’s
In the Dadaists’ work, anarchist negation Death and the Shift of Power.”
was aimed at dismantling hierarchy and thus 4. M. A. Iziumskaia, “Nemetskie dadaisty
i Rossiia: puti vzaimodeistviia,” in Rossiia-
at the destabilization of the genres and con- Germaniia: kul’turnye sviazi, iskusstvo,
ventions of art. Marcel Duchamp’s Dadaist literatura v pervoi polovine dvadtsatogo
veka: materialy nauchnoi konferentsii
experiments are even more complex in this re- “Vipperovskie chteniia-1996,” ed. I. E.
gard: In Bottle Dryer or Hedgehog (1914), Pre- Danilova (Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi
muzei izobrazitel’nogo islusstva
lude to a Broken Arm (1915), Fountain (1917), im. Pushkina, 2000), 52–53.
and other works he called “readymades,” he 5. Nikolai Khardzhiev, “Poeziia i zhivopis’:
rannii Maiakovskii,” in K istorii russkogo
transposed objects from the space of non-
avangarda / The Russian Avant-Garde
art into the space of art for the first time in (Stockholm: Hylaea Prints, 1976), 24.

228
art history. By abolishing aesthetic hierarchy, and with it the mimetic
principle in art, Duchamp’s “readymades” blurred the lines between
intellectual and physical labor and, in general, radically changed artistic
practice. Such “deflation” of the object was largely shaped by the influ-
ence on Duchamp of Max Stirner’s book The Ego and His Own, which
he had read in the summer of 1912.2 While Stirner’s “ego” liberates the
world in order to make it its own property, Duchamp’s “fountain/urinal”
was intended to show that a painted copy cannot represent an object
better than it represents itself by the fact of its existence. Duchamp’s
readymades are as much a center of the universe as the empirical per-
sonality is for Stirner, whose philosophy elevates it to the status of the
only and absolute reality.
The time frame of Russian anarchism is marked by the February
Revolution of 1917 and by the events of 1921–1924. The leader and prin-
cipal theorist of anarchism, Petr Kropotkin, died in February 1921, and
the leadership of the anarchist movement split into several groups that
existed until Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924 and the “shift of power.”3
From 1917 to 1924, philosophical-aesthetic movements that synthe-
sized anarchism and the artistic practice of the avant-garde emerged:
the pananarchism of the brothers Abba Gordin and Wolf Gordin; the
anarcho-universalism of Apollon Karelin; the anarcho-biocosmism of
Aleksandr Sviatogor (the pseudonym of Aleksei Agienko), Aleksandr
Iaroslavsky, and Pavel Ivanitsky; the radical anarchism of rebel artists
whose aesthetic was similar to Dadaism and whose circle revolved
around the Anarchy (Anarkhiia) gazette. While the prerevolutionary
print periodicals of Russian anarchism were mostly authored by an-
archist theorists themselves, the postrevolutionary period saw the in-
volvement of avant-garde artists in the movement, along with the theo-
rists/activists of anarchism. The book Sounds by anarchist sympathizer
Vasily Kandinsky, published in Munich in 1912, had a strong influence
on Dadaist poetry. That the Dadaists published Kandinsky’s writings
in the magazine Dada and invited him to appear at the Cabaret Voltaire
in 1916 was no accident. Poems from his book were recited at the last
Dadaist soirée, held in Zurich in April 1919.4
In scholarly literature, Nikolai Khardzhiev was the first to notice the
proximity of anarchism and the avant-garde when he wrote that “anar-
chic mutiny and the overthrow of all authorities” were “equally charac-
teristic of both French and Russian” avant-gardes.5 Indeed, the anarchist
dialectic of negation and the acknowledgment of individual authority
turned out to be completely in tune with the avant-garde revolutionary/

229
 nihilistic passion to get rid of all spiritual values and to “throw Pushkin,
Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, etc. etc. etc. off the Steamboat of Modernity.”6
The diary of the artist Varvara Stepanova contains the following en-
try, dated 1919: “Russian art is as anarchistic in its principles as Russia
is in its spiritual path. We have no schools, and each artist is a creator,
each is original and drastically individual, whether he is an innovator, a
synthesizer, or a realist.”7 Stepanova’s comment refers first and foremost
to prerevolutionary avant-garde artists who felt profound sympathy for
the anarchist worldview. Furthermore, the thinking and artistic experi-
ments of most of the artists and poets included in this exhibition were
formed under the influence of various types of anarchism.
In turn, the theory and practice of postrevolutionary anarchism in
1917–1924 received considerable support from the ideological state-
ments, the artistic and aesthetic theoretical commentary on issues of
art and the art world, and the manifestos and declarations of a particular
group of these artists that appeared from September 1917 to April 1918
in the pages of the newspaper Anarchy, published by the Moscow Fed-
eration of Anarchist Groups.8 The editor-in-chief of Anarchy was the
anarchist-communist Vladimir Barmash. Initially, the editorial office
was located at 12 Moronov Lane (Krymsky Bank). The first seven issues
of Anarchy had the subhead “Social literary anarchist gazette,” under-
scoring its connection to literary and artistic circles. Starting with issue
no. 8, the gazette was declared to be the official organ of the Moscow
Federation of Anarchist Groups. After issue no. 10, the gazette briefly
went on hiatus, then resumed publication in March 1918. By then, its
editorial offices were located in the “Anarchy House”—the headquarters
of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups (6 Malaia Dmitrovka).9
In late March, the newspaper moved again; its last editorial office
was at 1 Nastasinsky Lane.10 The “Poets’ Café” that opened in Moscow
immediately after the October Revolution, in December 1917, was in the
same building, at the corner. The anarchists were frequent visitors. On
March 15, 1918, the Futurists’ Gazette (Gazeta futuristov)—only one issue
of which ever came out—published “The Manifesto of the Flying Federa-
tion of Futurists” by David Burliuk, Vasily Kamensky, and Mayakovsky,
which declared that futurism, as an aesthetic continuation of anarchism,
calls upon art to separate itself from the state, come out into the streets,
and shut down the Academy of Arts, a state institution. According to
the manifesto, the Third Revolution, which the authors called a “Revo-
lution of the Spirit,” would free human beings from the shackles of old
art. The Third Revolution was a revolution of the anarchist movement

230
6. David Burliuk, Aleksei Kruchenykh, v gazete ‘Anarkhiia’” (1918), in Kazimir Anonymous
Vladimir Maiakovskii, and Viktor Malevich, Stat’i, manifesty, teoreticheskie David Burliuk, Vladimir
[Velimir] Khlebnikov, “Poshchechina sochineniia i drugie raboty: 1913–1929, 5 Mayakovsky, and
obshchestvennomu vkusu,” in Poeziia vols. (Moscow: Gileia, 1995), 1:330–32. Andrei Shemshurin,
russkogo futurizma, ed. V. N. Sazhin (Saint 10. The last issue of Anarchy (no. 99), Moscow, 1914
Petersburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo was published on July 2, 1918. A few
“Akademicheskii proekt,” 1999), 617. weeks earlier, on April 12, 1918, Barmash
7. Varvara Stepanova, Chelovek ne mozhet was arrested by Moscow Cheka (The
zhit bez chuda (Moscow: Sfera, 1994), 73. All Russian Emergency Commission
8. For more on the role of this newspaper for Combating Counter-revolution and
in artistic and literary circles, see Ol’ga Sabotage) at “Anarchy House” during the
Burenina-Petrova, “Filosofiia anarkhizma crackdown on anarchists in Moscow. It
v russkom khudozhestvennom avangarde happened as follows: On April 11, an urgent
i ‘zamknutye konstruktsii’ Daniila meeting of Cheka was held in Moscow, and
Kharmsa,” in Kharms-Avangard: materialy the decision was made to start disarming
mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii the anarchists in the early morning hours
“Avangard v deistvii i otmiranii”: k stoletiiu of April 12. Tanks and armored personnel
so dnia rozhdeniia poeta, ed. Kornelija vehicles were dispatched to take control
Icin and Radko Neschkovic (Belgrade: of the buildings occupied by anarchists.
Izdatelstvo filologicheskogo fakul’teta, The anarchists fought back as best they
2006), 96–102; and Nina Gurianova, The could. At the “Anarchy House” on Malaia
Aesthetics of Anarchy: Art and Ideology in Dmitrovka, they used machine guns to
the Early Russian Avant-Garde (Berkeley: fire from the windows and the rooftops
University of California Press, 2012). of adjacent buildings. After the anarchists
were arrested, the Cheka announced
9. The description of the launch of Anarchy the closing of Anarchy. Shortly after
and the locations of its offices is based on the Moscow raids, the Bolsheviks also
the materials from A. D. Sarab’ianov, “Stat’i smashed all the other anarchist parties.

231
 and, consequently, of the pro-anarchist artistic
avant-garde.
Nonetheless, Aleksandr Rodchenko, in
his statement addressed to the Futurists’
Gazette (Gazeta futuristov), regarded Burliuk,
Kamensky, and Mayakovsky as insufficient
“anarcho-rebels” and dubbed their publication
a “gazette of three futurist dictators” and its
three publishers “the Bolsheviks of futurism”
and “the statists of futurism.” He contrasted
them to those he called “more than futurists”:
Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Olga
Rozanova, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin,
Aleksei Morgunov, Nadezhda Udaltsova,
and Liubov Popova.11 In this way, he drew a
boundary between artistic anarchism, linked
to Dadaism both philosophically and aestheti-
cally, and futurism as it had developed before
the Revolution.
In his message “To Comrades Anarchists,”
Rodchenko expresses the conviction that the
spiritual union of anarchism and art (and thus
the Revolution of the Spirit as well) is possible
only thanks to his artistic brothers in arms:
“And we are coming to you, beloved comrades,
anarchists, instinctively recognizing in you our
hitherto unknown friends! . . . The present be-
longs to artists who are the anarchists of art.”12
A short while later, in 1919, Rodchenko
graphically depicted the call for a Revolution
11. Aleksandr Rodchenko,
of the Spirit in the hand-drawn poster Rejoice, “Gazeta futuristov,” Anarkhiia,
Today the Revolution of the Spirit Is Before You! no. 31 (March 30, 1918): 4.
12. Aleksandr Rodchenko,
“Tovarishcham anarkhistam,”
Rejoice today the Revolution of Spirit Anarkhiia, no. 29 (March 28, 1918): 4.
is before you 13. See David Burliuk, Vasilii
Kamenskii, and Vladimir Maiakovskii,
Listen to us,
“Manifest letuchei federatsii
who have cast off futuristov,” Gazeta futuristov, no. 1
the centuries-old shackles (1918): 1; emphasis in original.
14. This club existed for only
of the photographic a week because the premises
of cliché had to be vacated after all.

232
 of subject
We
are Russian
Columbuses of art
Discoverers of new paths
Of creativity
Today
Is our triumph.

The anarchist artists were convinced that the foremost requirement of

their time was support for the primary postulate of anarchism and thus
the total opposition of art to state power:

We demand the recognition of:

I. The separation of art and state.
The abolition of patronage, privilege, and control
in the sphere of art. Down with diplomas, titles,
official posts and ranks.13

After the October Revolution, one of the key postulates of anarchism—a

new attitude toward property—was fulfilled as well. In postrevolutionary
times, the first Russian translations (one by E. and I. Leontiev, another
by F. Kapeliusha) of Proudhon’s 1840 treatise What Is Property? became
a source for multiple interpretations by anarchists of Proudhon’s ideas
of property, and for a number of practical actions as well. After the Oc-
tober Revolution, anarchists—influenced by Proudhon, who posited that
“property is theft” because it contradicts justice and because not one
conception that would justify it can be found in the history of ideas—
declared all forms of property to be illegitimate and consequently arro-
gated to themselves the right to seize premises, mostly ones belonging
to wealthy entrepreneurs. Thus, in March 1918, Mayakovsky, Kamensky,
and Burliuk, who shared anarchist beliefs about property, occupied the
premises of a Moscow restaurant where they planned to start a club for
“creative individual anarchism.”14 Also in 1918, Nikandr Turkin’s film Born
Not for the Money was released. The script, based on Jack London’s novel
Martin Eden, was written by Mayakovsky, who incorporated many auto-
biographical elements. He moved the setting from Oakland to Moscow
and changed the names of characters. The story revolves around the lives
of the futurists and the Poets’ Café, where, as the story progresses, Maya-
kovsky, Kamensky, and Burliuk appear, essentially playing themselves

233
 Evgeny Slavinsky
Still from Nikandr Turkin’s film Born Not for the Money
(David Burliuk and Vladimir Mayakovsky), 1918

234
 and reading their own poetry.15 The film is be- p. 234

lieved to be lost; however, photographs made

during the filming by operator Evgeny Slavin-
sky have been preserved. One of them shows
15. Vladimir Maiakovskii, Ne dlia deneg
rodivshiisia, transcribed libretto as told by the start of the story, against the backdrop of
L. A. Grinberg and Vladimir Maiakovskii, the wall paintings at the Poets’ Café.16
Polnoie sobranie sochinenii v 13 tomakh
(Moscow: GIKhL, 1958), 11:481. Also in 1918, Vsevolod Meyerhold staged
16. The Poets’ Café was decorated by Mayakovsky’s Mystery Bouffe. Written by p. 237
Burliuk, Georgy Iakulov, Valentina
Khodasevich, Aristarkh Lentulov, Mikhail Mayakovsky for the first anniversary of the
Larionov, and Natalia Goncharova. October Revolution and included among cel-
17. Three years later, Meyerhold included ebratory events by the Central Bureau for the
a reworked version of the play in the
repertory of the Moscow Theater of the Organization of Festivities to Commemorate
RSFSR Original (Teatr RSFSR pervyi). the Anniversary of the Revolution, Mystery
In this second version, the play was
produced in several Russian cities in 1921. Bouffe, which premiered on November 7, im-
A 1921 issue of the newspaper Theater mediately drew the attention of audiences to
Messenger (Vestnik teatra) published some
information on Mayakovsky’s reading of the “ultra-anarchism” of the play and its stag-
the second version of the play and on the ing.17 Meyerhold was Mayakovsky’s codirector,
reaction of some Soviet government and
Communist Party officials. The “Debates” while Malevich did the stage design (now lost).
section reports, “Comrade Karpinskaia: Mayakovsky, who played several parts in the
The play has been read to us in entirely
different form, its first version was very production—“Just a man,” Methuselah, and one
different. I can only welcome this play; it
has futurism and anarchism and so forth,
of the devils18—and instantly transformed him-
but they have been completely toned down, self, demonstrated more circus-like than theat-
and the last two acts even make a good
impression. However, the first version of
rical methods onstage, methods he had learned
the play, before the revisions, was full of both from Vitaly Lazarenko, who also played a
ultra-anarchism and we couldn’t approve
it as suitable for the proletariat.” In Vestnik
devil in the production, and from Meyerhold
teatra, no. 83–84 (February 22, 1921): 18. At himself. Lazarenko’s trick of instantly changing
the same time, Aleksandr Granovsky staged
Mystery Bouffe on the premises of the First
his appearance and voice could be traced back
State Circus on Tzvetnoi Boulevard as a to Meyerhold’s transformations; Meyerhold, in
special production for the delegates of the
Third Congress of the Comintern who
turn, took his cue from the transformations of
were visiting Moscow. Representatives Leopoldo Fregoli, Ugo Uccelini, and Otto Fran-
of the world proletariat watched a
production in German, translated by Rita
kardi, as well as Charlie Chaplin. The play’s lo-
Reit and performed by actors from Moscow cations—Act I. The entire universe; Act II. The
theaters who were fluent in German. The
libretto, which Mayakovsky wrote for the
Arc; Act III, Scene 1: Hell / Scene 2: Paradise
production program booklet, stated that / Scene 3: The Promised Land—were concep-
Mystery Bouffe is a “miniature of the world
within the walls of a circus.” Maiakovskii, tualized in such a way that the final scenes of
Polnoie sobranie sochinenii, 2:359. gaining the Promised Land were associated for
18. Mayakovsky essentially had to the audience with the advent of an anarchist
improvise the roles of “Mafusail,”
“Simply a Man,” and one of the “devils,” world. As for the power of the Bolsheviks, the
because the actors scheduled to 1918 version associated it, to a greater degree
perform these roles did not show up
for the premier of Mystery Bouffe. than the 1919 version, with the tableau of Hell. p. 237

235
 Starting in 1917, anarchism turned from Vladimir Mayakovsky
Stage and costume design for Mystery
a philosophical/theoretical discourse and a Bouffe, Seven Pairs of Good, 1919
political program into a kind of aesthetic and
Vladimir Mayakovsky
psychology of artistic creativity. It was pre- Stage and costume design for Mystery
cisely as artistic anarchy—above all, nonselec- Bouffe, Seven Pairs of Evil, 1919

tion, the rejection of the structural principle

of organizing texts, the mixing of phenomena
and problems of disparate levels, the estab-
lishment of absolute equivalency between
nonequivalent phenomena—that anarchism
was interpreted by artists who wrote for the
newspaper Anarchy, which, from the moment
of its launch, played an active role in postrev-
olutionary Moscow.19 Anarchy was particu-
larly supportive of the Left Federation of the
Moscow Trade Union of Painters, which was
chaired by Tatlin, with Rodchenko as secre-
tary.20
Manifestos and statements by avant-garde
artists were regularly published in Anarchy in
the “Creative Art” section, the very name of
which was an allusion to Bakunin’s thesis, set
forth in his 1842 work Reaction in Germany, 19. For more explanation of the
“The joy of destruction is a creative joy!”21 The term nonselection, see Douwe
Wessel Fokkema, Literary History,
“Creative Art” section, which featured articles Modernism, and Postmodernism
on art, literature, and theater, appeared in An- (Amsterdam: Benjamin, 1984).
archy starting with the publication of critic 20. Artists also made political statements
in the pages of Anarchy. Thus, after the
and artist Aleksei Gan’s article “Proletkult” existence of separate federations within
in issue no. 14, arguing that culture-building trade unions was abolished, the June 27,
1918, issue of Anarchy, no. 95, published
was possible only thanks to the “association of the text of “The Resolution of the Left
geniuses and personal initiative.”22 Federation at the General Meeting of
the Trade Union of Painters,” signed by
Also telling is a statement titled “We Want,” federation chairman Tatlin and secretary
by the artist Udaltsova. Rejecting the power of Rodchenko, strongly protesting the
abolition of federative divisions.
old art, she turns not simply to art but to action 21. The club of “creative individual
and “labor,” thus paraphrasing Bakunin, who anarchism” may also have drawn its
name from this Bakunin thesis.
wrote in 1840, “Real life is action, and only ac-
22. Aleksei Gan, “Proletkul’t,”
tion is real life.”23 Anarkhiia, no. 14 (March 8, 1918): 4.
23. Quoted from A. Koyré,
Mystiques spirituels et alchimistes
We do not want rich patrons.
du XVIe siècle allemand (Paris:
We do not want critics biased in our favor. Gallimard, “Idées,” 1955), 138.

236
237
 We do not want to be privileged.
We do not want to squelch either those who came
before us or those who are coming after us.
We want the right to creativity—to labor.
We want equality and freedom in art.24

In her declaration, Udaltsova rejected the power of wealthy art patrons

and hence refused financial support from the powerful. Art, Udaltsova
affirmed, is free precisely because it belongs to no one and is not bought
or sold. The machinery of the state had forcibly turned art into property.
That is why Udaltsova sought for art forms that would make freedom
visible and realizable, would resist the inertia and conventionality of the
formation of meanings. Udaltsova’s statement echoes a collective article
published in Anarchy much earlier by Gan, Morgunov, and Malevich,
entitled “The Tasks of Art and the Role of the Stranglers of Art,” which
radically extended Gan’s statements in “Proletkult” on the role of a union
of independent geniuses in culture-building:

At this moment when the old way of life is being radically broken, when
everything new and young is seeking to find its form and declare its “I,”
the dead are crawling out of their graves and trying to get their cold
hands on everything that is alive. The social revolution has broken the
shackles of capitalist slavery but has yet to break the old tablets of aes-
thetic values. And now, when we are embarking on new construction,
on the building of new cultural values, it is essential to preserve our-
selves from the poison of bourgeois vulgarity. . . . Get out of the way,
butchers of art! Gout-ridden old men, you belong in the cemetery. . . .
Go away, all of you who drove art into the cellars. Clear the path for the
new forces!25

Morgunov also made his own individual statements in Anarchy against

state diktat in art: “Enough asking the state for counsel and hope! Any
state authority is the butcher of art!”26 In the article “The Vicious Circle,”
he dubs artists who are unwilling to compromise with power “anar-
chist artists” and “great utopians” who are ripping art out of the “vicious
circle” of a history founded on power and violence.27
In his articles for Anarchy, “To the Statists of Art” and “In the State
of the Arts,” Malevich urged, “Seek a new consciousness and stop be-
ing slaves of things”28 and, describing the state as a ship that “never
leaves the Ladoga Ocean and enters the boundless expanse,”29 spoke out

238
 definitively against state control of art: “In art,
there must be no state.”30
Malevich was the first to try to develop an
anarchist model by means of the visual arts.
The black square motif first arose during his
collaborative work with Mikhail Matiushin pp. 32–33,
44–45
and Kruchenykh on the staging of the opera
Victory over the Sun in 1913. In the opera, the
budetliane—people of the future—conquer the
sun thanks to the black square. The conquest
of the sun by the square symbolizes the over-
throw of closed totalitarian constructions: El-
emental anarchist creativity overcomes pas-
sive nature and breaks through to the future.
In 1915, at 0,10: The Last Futurist Exhibition
of Painting, Malevich presented his painter-
ly version of Black Square, which signaled a
transition to objectless art and consequently,
along with the elimination of “things,” ideally
represented the elimination of statism. Futur-
ism, according to Malevich, cannot fully expli-
24. Nadezhda Udal’tsova, “My khotim,”
cate the freedom of creative work, and must
Anarkhiia, no. 38 (April 7, 1918): 4. therefore be supplanted by suprematism: “But
25. Aleksei Gan, Aleksei Morgunov, futurism’s efforts to produce painterly plas-
and Kazimir Malevich, “Zadachi
iskusstva i rol’ dushitelei iskusstva,” tics as such were not crowned with success:
Anarkhiia, no. 25 (March 23, 1918): 24. it could not separate from objectness in gen-
26. Aleksei Morgunov, “K chertu!”
Anarkhiia, no. 30 (March 29, 1918): 4.
eral and only destroyed objects for the sake of
27. Aleksei Morgunov, “Zakoldovannyi achieving dynamic movement.”31
krug,” Anarkhiia, no. 35 (April 4, 1918): 4. The square that destroys objectness itself
28. Kazimir Malevich, was, for Malevich, also an embodiment of
“Gosudarstvennikam ot iskusstva,”
Anarkhiia, no. 53 (May 4, 1918): 4. the image of the black banner, the anarchists’
29. Kazimir Malevich, “V gosudarstve main emblem.32 In his short essay, “Toward a
iskusstv,” Anarkhiia, no. 54 (May 9, 1918): 4.
New Frontier,” Malevich writes, “The banner
30. Ibid.
31. Kazimir Malevich, “Ot kubizma k
of anarchy is the banner of our Self, and our
suprematizmu: novyi zhivopisnyi realizm,” spirit, free as the wind, will stir our creative
in Kazimir Malevich, Stat’i, 1:29.
powers in the vast expanse of our soul.”33 The
32. The Black Banner was, for instance,
the title of the magazine founded Black Square largely established the repre-
in 1910 in Geneva by the anarchist sentational paradigm for anarchism in art,
I. S. Grossman (Roshchin).
since, while shedding the old representational
33. Kazimir Malevich, “K novoi grani,”
Anarkhiia, no. 31 (March 30, 1918): 4. logic, it offered the spellbinding possibility of

239
 endless quests for freedom in art. For Malevich, anarchism was a spe-
cial world at the center of which was a free elemental force—that is,
a supremely mobile, multidimensional, plastic potential world whose
laws allow play with changeable forms and meanings. In his theoreti-
cal and artistic experiments, Malevich clearly relied on Bakunin-type
anarchism and on Stirner’s individualism. According to Malevich, the
rejection of the state and its destruction in the name of a religion of art
that refuses union with any form of state power appeared to be the only
possible attitude of the real artist toward the state. The square, which
eschews the concepts of up/down and left/right, as well as traditional
representation, became the ideal visual embodiment of anarchist el-
emental freedom. While it is isomorphic to a certain hypothetical frag-
ment of the universe, it nonetheless does not refer to an image of the
whole with which Malevich associated statehood but exists by itself, in
its own enclosed space, and symbolizes “the thing in itself.” Thus, Black
Square can be regarded not only as a symbol of the Russian avant-garde
but as a sign of the anarchist equilateral society, which is not subordinate
to any wholeness or statehood.
After the crackdown on anarchism in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and
other Russian cities, a group of rebel artists, although deprived of their
mouthpiece, continued to influence others who leaned toward anar-
chism. The Moscow group of Nothingists (nichevoki), which lasted for
about two years in 1920–1921, not only took a keen interest in European
Dadaism but was guided in its aesthetics by the anarchists’ radical un-
derstanding of art and culture. In 1921, Boris Zemenkov, Elena Nikolaeva,
Aetsy Ranov, Riurik Rok, Oleg Erberg, and Sergei Sadikov published a
“Decree on the Separation of Art and State” in the Dog’s Box almanac. In
it they declared “the state to be incompetent in matters of managing the
preparation, inventorying, distribution, and oversight of the production
of art.”34 Like many anarcho-futurists, they saw art as always linked to
the established power structures. Therefore, they called for liberation
from all the art that came before, which was to be thrown away into the
Dog’s Box.35
Most of the articles published in Anarchy can be boiled down to the
idea that the interests of art cannot be the same as the interests of the state
and thus to the rejection of state power in any form. This rejection was
understood by these painters as liberation both from retrograde academi-
cism and from the hierarchy it engendered, and therefore as the abolition
of the canonical power of the norm that dictates hierarchy—a norm that
can be represented by a literary subject, by the possibility of creating an

240
 image of the whole, by color, by object represen-
tation, and so on.36
One of the key publications in Anarchy was
the “Letter to Comrade Futurists,” a text by
Baian Plamen, who accused not only the au-
thorities but the futurists of statism and of sell-
ing out to the authorities—that is, of abandon-
ing the main principle of futurism, the essence
of which is, “Rebellion in art, revolution in
artistic creativity. Anarchy in poetry, in paint-
ing, in sculpture, in tragedy. Anarchy in art.”37
One can detect a typological resemblance be-
tween Plamen’s text and the Dada manifesto
issued in Berlin in April 1918. For the Dadaist
signatories, including Huelsenbeck and Tzara,
expressionism, on which the artists of the new
era had pinned huge hopes, had failed to justify
those expectations, had become irrelevant, and
34. See "Decree on the Separation
of Art and State," on p. 298 of
was to be swept away by Dadaism and its strat-
the present catalogue. egy of universal negation: “Has expressionism
35. The “Dog’s Box” is the negative fulfilled our hopes for an art that would inject
model of the artists’ café “Stray Dog,”
which existed from December 31, into our veins the fire of the essence of being?
1911, until March 3, 1915, at no. 5 NO! NO! NO!”38
Mikhailovskaia Square in Petrograd.
Like the Dadaists, Plamen posits the con-
36. In 1917–1918, anarchism successfully
competed with Bolshevism. Thus, in sistent destruction of any and all aesthetics.
1917, rallies by artists protesting state Dadaists declared, “The Dadaists are nothing,
control over art were held in Moscow and
Petrograd. Participants in the Moscow rally, nothing, nothing; undoubtedly, they will ac-
held on the premises of the Salamonsky
complish nothing, nothing, nothing.” For an-
Circus, spoke against the creation of a
government agency charged with oversight archo-futurism as interpreted by Plamen, any
of the arts. At the rally in Petrograd,
held at the Mikhailovsky Theater, a
aesthetic was counteranarchy if only because
resolution against the establishment it rests on confirmed and fixed rules. His ar-
of a ministry of the arts was adopted
following a report by Ilia Zdanevich. While
ticle is the manifesto of a movement that nev-
these rallies did not espouse anarchist er took proper form—apparently because any
slogans, the participants’ statements and
the resolution on Zdanevich’s report
structure and cataloging relies on authority,
were of a clearly anarchist nature. which the group of anarchist painters rejected
37. Baian Plamen, “Pis’mo as a matter of principle.
tovarishcham futuristam,” Anarkhiia,
no. 27 (March 26, 1918): 4. After Malevich, a visual model of an anar-
38. Richard Huelsenbeck, “Dadaistisches chist society that destroys the statist myth was
Manifest” (1918), in Dada Almanach,
developed by Rodchenko and Stepanova. As a
ed. Richard Huelsenbeck (Berlin:
Erich Reiss, 1920), 35. frequent contributor to Anarchy, Rodchenko

241
 published a programmatic article, “The Dyna-
mism of the Surface” (a month before his first
solo exhibition, held in May 1918 in the club
of the Left Federation), in which he argues for
the possibility of constructing surfaces of any
length and depth, “layering” surface elements
on each other: “By projecting vertical sur-
faces painted with the appropriate color and
intersecting them with lines directed deeply
inward, I reveal that color serves only as a con-
ditional means of distinguishing the surfaces
both from each other and from the indicators 39. Aleksandr Rodchenko,
of depths and intersections.”39 “Dinamizm ploskosti,” Anarkhiia,
no. 49 (April 28, 1918): 4.
In his article “Be Creators,” Rodchenko
40. Aleksandr Rodchenko,
takes as his starting point Bakunin’s thesis that “Bud’te tvortsami,” Anarkhiia,
destruction is a form of creation: “To you who no. 61, (May 17, 1918): 4.
41. In 1920, Mayakovsky autographed
are in power, to you who are victors, I say: Do his book I Love for Stepanova with the
not stop on the path of Revolution, keep going inscription, “To the fierce Stepanova
with tender feelings.” Rodchenko’s
forward, and if the limitations of your party or nickname at home was “Anti,” which he
agreements stand in the way of your life-cre- sometimes also used as a pseudonym.
See, for instance, his article under this
ativity, break them; be creators, do not be afraid pseudonym, “Tak podnimites’ zhe,”
to lose something, for the spirit of destruction Anarkhiia, no. 43 (April 21, 1918): 4.
is also the spirit of creation, and your revo- 42. On the connection between anarchism
and the color black in Rodchenko’s work,
lutionary march will give you the strength of see Leonid Geller, “Zrenie utopii, zrimost’
creative inventiveness, and bright will be your anarkhii,” in Rossica Lublinensia II.
Literatura. Mit. Sacrum. Kultura, ed. Maria
path of revolutionary creativity.”40 Cymborska-Leboda and Witold Kowalczyk
Stepanova never wrote for Anarchy. How- (Lublin: Wyd. UMCS, 2002), 183–90.
43. Nikolai Kulbin associated the first letter
ever, after meeting Rodchenko in late 1914 as of his name, K, with the color black, thus
a student at the Kazan Art School, she became simultaneously coding his sympathy for
anarchism: “Language arts are the totality
(in 1916) not only his life companion but a of verbal organisms, of verbal indivisibles.
loyal comrade-in-arms. Her diary note on the Each consonant has its own color: R for red
(gore, war, rancor, misfortune), J for yellow
anarchic nature of Russian painting was a re- (desire, jealousy, yearning), S for blue, Z for
sponse to the atmosphere in which both were green, H for gray, G for black-yellow, K for
black.” See Nikolai Kul’bin, “Chto est’ slovo
immersed.41 In her early poetry album, To the (II-ia deklatarsiia slova kak takovogo,” in
King of My Dreams and Imaginings, dedicated Russkii futurizm. Teoriia. Praktika. Kritika.
Vospominaniia, ed. V. N. Terekhina and A.
to Rodchenko, she refers to her beloved as P. Zimenkov (Moscow: Nasledie, 1999), 45.
“the black king.” One of Rodchenko’s means 44. Stepanova, Chelovek ne
of affirming anarchism was a passion for the mozhet zhit bez chuda, 88–89.
45. Iurii Tynianov, “Ob osnovakh
color black.42 His series “Black on Black,” pre- kino,” in Poetika. Istoriia literatury.
sented in 1919 at the exhibition The 10th State Kino (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 335.

242
Exhibition: Nonobjective Creation and Suprematism together with other
black color abstractions, was not only a polemical rejoinder of sorts to
Malevich’s White on White but another visual affirmation of the anar-
chist emblem: the black banner.43 Stepanova wrote in her diaries, “In
the ‘black,’ he gave what the West dreamed of: a genuine easel painting
taken to its ultimate point.”44 Her admiration for the “black” canvases
was rooted in her sympathy for anarchist color symbolism. All these
nonobjective compositions convey the atmosphere of the primeval state
of humanity, which can be regained through anarchy.
By the early 1920s, Rodchenko’s and Stepanova’s artistic anarchism
began to manifest itself on deeper levels. Consider the photograph
titled Wandering Musicians—the first double portrait of the two art- p. 244

ists, dated 1921. In the background of this photographic portrait are

Stepanova’s works from the “Figures” series created in 1920–1921. p. 102
However, the artists do not look like demiurges. Rather, they reserve to
themselves the humbler role of “coauthors” of the material. Stepanova’s
and Rodchenko’s postures look as artificial and figurative as the pos-
tures of the little stick figures on the walls of their workshop. Taking
their cue from the “Figures,” the artists demonstrate the constructive
basics of the human body, as if laying themselves flat on the surface.
Several important techniques used by the author of this photodu-
et—Rodchenko, who affirms anarchism in his work—are in evidence.
First, the anarchist way of thinking explicates the very fact of turn-
ing to photography, which, as Iury Tynianov writes, “exaggerates the
individual features of a type to the millionth degree and thus actu-
ally creates the effect of ‘non-resemblance.’” 45 Thus, according to
Tynianov, the photographic frame underscores the fact that individu-
ality is the only reality, subject to nothing and no one. For Rodchenko,
what also matters is that the photographic frame removes the hierar-
chy characteristic in, for instance, academic painting. Everything that
happens to be within the frame is important. Thus, the photograph,
unlike the painting, removes the division into primary and secondary
subjects.
A year later, Rodchenko created a montage self-portrait based on
the Wandering Musicians photoduet. In it, he demonstrates the con-
structivist principle of the development of labor into art by cutting out
his own image and then connecting it to a wheel and a cogwheel. Rod-
chenko’s turn to industrial art, to spatial and optical projects involving
household objects, fabrics, covers, and so on, was, among other things,
a nod to anarchism. The program of “industrial art” took shape as a

243
244
 program of “everybody’s art.” That is, art was
to develop through the effort of all workers,
not just specially trained persons. Thus, the
theory of “industrial art” as a universal form
of creativity that would prospectively edge out
all established art genres was consonant to an-
archist notions about the possibility of a soci-
ety not divided into the specially trained and
those under their command. Those connected
to elite art accessible to a small privileged mi-
nority of society have power. “Our painting,”
wrote Stepanova, “should be taken out to the
streets, to fences and rooftops.”46
Just as Duchamp’s views were shaped by
Aleksandr Rodchenko the relativism and solipsism of Stirner’s phi-
Self-Portrait, 1922
losophy, in which the individual is the only
reality and something has value only insofar
as it serves the self, Rodchenko was a devout
reader of Stirner’s The Ego and His Own and
Anonymous
Wandering Musicians (double a follower of the ideas set forth in that book.47
portrait of Aleksandr Rodchenko Rodchenko explicated his interest in Stirner’s
and Varvara Stepanova), 1921
philosophy in the epigraph to his essay “The
Rodchenko System” (1919). “At the foundation
of my work I placed nothing.”48 Next to this
statement by Stirner is one from Kruchenykh’s
play Gly-Gly—where, incidentally, the bude-
tliane heroes are given the names of Khleb-
nikov and Malevich—“Paints are disappearing,
everything is mixing up black,” thus empha-
sizing the significance of anarchist color sym-
bolism for Rodchenko’s artistic system while
simultaneously placing Kruchenykh on the
46. Stepanova, Chelovek ne same level as Stirner, the theorist of anarchism,
mozhet zhit bez chuda, 85.
and the poet Whitman and the philosopher
47. “I decide what is right for me;
except for me there is no right,” the Weininger, who were close to anarchism in
German philosopher asserted. See their views.
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein
Eigentum (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam Gly-Gly was published in 1918 with Ste- pp. 246–247
jun. GmbH Verlag, 1981), 208. panova’s “black” collages as illustrations. The
48. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Opyty
dlia budushchego (Moscow:
title of one of them, Soot and Smoke, doubles
Grant Publishing, 1996), 66. the symbolism of the color black. The black

245
 Varvara Stepanova
Illustration for Gly-Gly by Aleksei
Kruchenykh, 1918

geometric figures in the composition Every-

thing Revolves evoke black sails—another
anarchist symbol, from the manifesto, The
Trumpet of Martians: “Flap, black sails of
time!”49 The “woman with golden eyes” con-
veys the process of the disappearance of the
object. Whereas Kruchenykh’s play had “real”
members of the avant-garde as its dramatis
personae, Stepanova’s illustrations hint at the
artistic mannerisms of rebel painters such as
Malevich, Rozanova, and Popova. Thus, those
artists too became characters in the play.
The connection between Rodchenko’s Self-
49. Velimir Khlebnikov, Mariia Siniakova,
Portrait (1922) and the anarchist worldview Bozhidar, Grigorii Petnikov, and
can also be seen in the fact that it has been Nikolai Aseev, Truba marsian: poeziia
russkogo futurizma, ed. V. N. Alfonsov
interpreted as a critical response to Tatlin’s and S. R. Krassitskii (Saint Petersburg:
pp. 78, 245, 249 Tower (Monument to the Third International). Akademicheskii proekt, 1999), 624.

246
Varvara Stepanova
Illustration for Gly-Gly by Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1918

247
 In Rodchenko’s view, the construction of mon-
uments is a process that literally demolishes
the individual’s self. Building monuments to
literary greats or to the theoreticians of anar-
chism is akin to death since it presupposes the
loss of individuality, of one’s own self: “May
all monuments disappear! . . . Why these ab-
surd bronze idols, why these ridiculous pup-
pets—perhaps made by talented people? You
may say: It’s sculpture, it’s art; but you tell me:
can art be made to order, made to fit a theme,
a standard, a size? Of course not! . . . When
something is commissioned by tsars, party
leaders, or the people, what you get is a made-
to-order work—but not art.”50 Rodchenko also
hotly disputed the Hegelian idea of a spiral,
which Tatlin made not only the decisive fac-
tor in constructing the visual and material
environment (along with other geometric
constructions: the hyperbole and the parab-
ola), but also a metaphor for the dialectic of
historic movement toward the absolute.51 The
silhouette of the artist seated atop a wheel in
his Self-Portrait seeks the geometrism of the
straight line.
The polemics with Tatlin—who, from Rod-
chenko’s point of view, represented the pow-
ers that be—are also reflected in the pages of
Anarchy. On the one hand, Rodchenko was
fiercely opposed to the Petrograd Arts Section
of the People’s Commissariat for Education
(Narkompros) extending its activity to Mos-
cow: “A new commissariat: a commissariat
for the arts. . . . They want to organize art in
50. Aleksandr Rodchenko,
accordance with a political party program. . . . “O pokoinikakh,” Anarkhiia,
Do the Moscow bosses and the St. Petersburg no. 52 (May 4, 1918): 4.
51. On the idea of the spiral in Tatlin’s
‘terrorists’ really believe that setting up an of- work, see Vladimir Tatlin: Leben.
fice with blank forms and stamps marked ‘Left Werk. Wirkung. Ein internationales
Symposium, ed. Alexander Flaker and
art’ is enough to make the routine disappear, Jürgen Harten (Cologne: DuMont
to make rigidity disappear, to make slavery Buchverlag, 1993), 469-74.

248
Anonymous
Vladimir Tatlin in the documentary film
Exhibition of Paintings of the Petrograd
Artists of All Trends, 1923

249
 and chains for the new art disappear? . . . The rebel artist, the anarchist
artist will never agree to this new kind of hidden compromise, this new
kind of exploitation and stifling of art.”52 On the other hand, he also con-
demned Tatlin, who had been appointed the Moscow commissar for the
art section. Rodchenko writes, “Look: here’s an aquarium, and artists
that we ourselves have chosen are respectably swimming inside it, but
we are separated by thick glass. . . . How horrible for us is such a victory.
Dress up in rags and rejoice: One of us has indeed become the chosen
and the authority.”53
Tatlin, in his response in Anarchy to Plamen’s “Letter to Futurists,”
asserts that “in order for the spirit to become anarchic,” it is necessary to
create “well-equipped art depots where the artist’s psychic machinery
could receive appropriate repairs.”54 His statements, with advice to art-
ists to “improve the eye,” do not contain radical anarchist theses on the
destruction of state and property. And yet, Tatlin’s views fit quite well
into the anarchist paradigm. Tatlin saw an anarchic revolutionary spirit
both in anarcho-universalism (in particular, in the theories of Karelin,
who allowed the possibility of cooperating with the Bolsheviks since
state power was going to make itself obsolete after the victory of the
revolution) and in pananarchism. Roughly from the end of the 1917, the
Gordin brothers’ theories constructed first the architectonic of panan-
archism, then of universalism, and finally of “Soviet anarchism,” which
took a moderate stance toward state power and recognized the idea of a
global Communist revolution. In the stories, fairytales, and poems writ-
ten by the Gordins, one can sense the coexistence of all these models
rather than the priority of one of them. The second and third issues of
Anarchy published the Gordins’ sonnets which aestheticized freedom
and anarchy. In the sonnets, artistic creativity is shown as a process
that simultaneously destroys the objects of its creation as a completed
whole.55 The Gordins wanted to build both a united anarchist society and
a global anarchist social network. To this end, Wolf Gordin attempted
in 1918 to create an artificial language called AO, a kind of universal lan-
guage of a united anarchist community. In 1923, he wrote “The Grammar
of the Pan-methodological Language AO,” in which he formulates the
general grammatical rules of the language of future humanity—the lan-
guage of neologisms. Gordin wrote his “Grammar” under the pen name
“Beohbi,” a transparent reference to Khlebnikov’s poem “Bo-beh-oh-bee
Is the Lipsong” (1908–1909). Gordin’s “universal language” was close to
the linguistic experiments of Khlebnikov’s transrationalism while also
echoing the language games in the work of the Dadaists.56

250
 Tatlin’s Tower was conceived as a kind of
architectural embodiment of pananarchism,
which would reunite humanity divided during
the construction of the Tower of Babel. Like the
AO language as an embodiment of the world
tree and the foundation of the universe, the
enormous radio masts that crowned Tatlin’s
52. Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Novyi
construction were to become the foundation
komissariat (khudozhestvennaia of a global network for storing and transmit-
kollegiia),” Anarkhiia, no. 43 (April 21,
1918): 4. The visual arts section of the
ting information. German Dadaists understood
People’s Commissariat of Education Tatlin’s works as a genuine revolution in art.
was established by a decree of the State
Commission on Education on May 22, 1918.
In the photograph of Georges Grosz and John
Even earlier, on January 29, 1918, the artist Heartfield holding a placard that reads, “Art is
David Shterenberg was appointed head of
the visual arts section by a decree of the
dead / Long live the new machine art of TAT- p. 122

commissariat. The section’s arts board LIN.” Tatlin is greeted as a genuine Dadaist
comprised Shterenberg, Natan Altman,
Nikolai Punin, and Sergei Chekhonin, as
artist.57 Nonetheless, Rodchenko interpreted
well as Mayakovsky and Osip Brik. A short spiral-like construction as an image of state
time later, a similar board, with the same
prerogatives as the Petrograd one, was set
power and state control in art and contrasted
up in Moscow. Its members were Tatlin it to his own montage construction of geomet-
(deputy director of the visual arts section
and the board chairman), Morgunov, ric lines and circles.
Malevich, Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia, For Stepanova and Rodchenko, the geomet-
Udaltsova, Rozanova, and Kandinsky.
ric line, like other closed geometric forms, was
53. Anti, “Tak podnimites’ zhe,” 4.
See also Rodchenko’s brief article in a primary factor in any type of construction,
Anarkhiia, no. 50 (April 30, 1918), in which including art. In his 1921 text “On the Line,”
he criticizes Morgunov and Tatlin for
“climbing” into “cushy commissariats.” Rodchenko writes, “The line is the first and
54. Vladimir Tatlin, “Otvechaiu na last, both in painting and in any construction
‘pis’mo k futuristam,’” Anarkhiia,
no. 30 (March 29, 1918): 4.
at all. The line is the path of passing through,
55. Abba Gordin and Wolf movement, collision, edge, attachment, join-
Gordin, “Sonety,” Anarkhiia, no. ing, sectioning. Thus, the line conquered ev-
3 (September 25, 1917): 2.
56. On the typological kinship of
erything and destroyed the last citadels of
transrationalism and Dadaism, see painting—color, tone, texture, and surface. The
the collection Zaumnyi futurizm i
dadaizm v russkoi kul’ture, ed. Luigi
line crossed out painting with a red cross.”58
Magarotto, Marzio Marzaduri, and Furthermore, for Stepanova and Rodchenko,
Daniela Rizzi (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991).
the line (like other closed constructions) was
57. In 1922, paraphrasing this slogan
by Grosz and Heartfield, Aleksei Gan a geometric sign signifying the negative in the
called for “death to art” in his book Hegelian dialectic of historical development.
Konstruktivizm] (Tver’, 1922), 18.
Closed constructions become, in the works
58. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Experiments
for the Future: Diaries, Essays, Letters, of Stepanova and Rodchenko, an “optimal
and Other Writings, ed. Alexander N.
projection” (Aleksandr Flaker’s term) of anar-
Lavrentiev, trans. Jamey Gambrell (New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005), 113. chism, a graphic model of an anarchist society

251
 that is not subject to any state power whatsoever.59 Stepanova’s visual
poetry from the collections Zigra ar and Rtny khomle—whose titles are
anagrams not only of the second part of the pseudonym of the artist
V. Agarikh but of the word anarkhism, and whose contents echo the
p. 280 Dadaists’ language experiments—is rich with imagery of closed forms.
Stepanova’s drawings and collages dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, an an-
pp. 207, archist loner who does not recognize the laws of authority, is also made
218, 221
of closed constructions.
In the context of the work of anarchist artists in 1917–1924, yet another
key figure stands out: El Lissitzky. While not a member of the group of
rebel artists who were published in Anarchy, he was nonetheless friendly
with them and shared their anarchist views of art. When he was in Ger-
many in 1922–1925, Lissitzky worked with Kurt Schwitters, Arp, Raul
Hausmann, and Tzara. He also participated in the Congress of Dadaists
and Constructivists in Weimar in September 1922. The contact with Dada
artists was mutually influential. In particular, one can see parallels be-
tween Lissitzky’s exhibition designs in the 1920s and Schwitters’s Mer-
p. 255 zbau. In 1924, Lissitzky made Self-Portrait by photographing his hand
clutching a caliper against the backdrop of millimeter-lined graphic pa-
per, then overlaying the hand with his own photographic portrait from
another negative—an example of the organo-poetics of anomalous bodili-
ness. What, then, is the meaning of the anomaly presented in this pho-
tomontage?
First, the artist depicted two fragments of the human body: the hand
and the head. The use of fragments is a departure from the canonical
norm, signaling the incorrectness of text in relation to all canonical
genres that lay claim to completeness and wholeness. Therefore, the
depiction of the hand and the head as fragments of the body in this mon-
tage already belongs to the organo-poetics of anomaly. The human body
parts that are captured here and that occupy a significant part of the
visual surface ultimately become autonomous “excerpts” from the art-
ist’s body. Yet, fragmentation also produces further deformation. The
overlaying of two body parts (hand and head) engenders an entirely new
body. We are looking at a new, bodiless corporeality created by mon-
tage—or, to use a concept from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the
phenomenal body, we are observing a “potential body” of the human
being of the future.60 The hand loses its ordinary meaning as a human
extremity and a symbol of human labor. The hand here is not an object
or a sum of objects but a new anatomical formation: a hand that ac-
quires vision. The eye from the artist’s face is visible through his palm.61

252
 The meaning of a “hand that acquires vision”
can be understood if we take Edmund Hus-
serl’s interpretation of the body as a starting
point. In contrast to the classical philosophy
of the body, Husserl draws attention to the fact
that there are two kinds of body: the physical
body and the experiencing subject. The sub-
ject/object body, which Husserl ponders in
his treatise “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,”
overcomes the dichotomy between “self” and
“the other” and penetrates spheres inacces-
sible to reflexive analysis. In Lissitzky’s Self-
Portrait, the “hand that acquires vision” is a
place where the material (the hand itself ) in-
teracts with the contemplative (the eye). This
image illustrates new horizons of the artist’s
experience—the experience that results from
the mutual interaction of his mobile bodily
activity directed at the outside world and the
simultaneous impact of the outside world
on him.62 By depicting an anomalous hand—
a hand with an eye—Lissitzky tries to over-
come the subject-object dichotomy so typical
of classic philosophy of the body. His montage
composition represents the metaphorical im-
age of a magical or carnival-like, grotesque (in
the Bakhtinian sense) body in which antino-
59. See the chapter “Optimal’naia
proektsiia” in Aleksandr Flaker, mies are removed. Such an anomalous hand is
Zhivopisnaia literatura i literaturnaia perceived as perfect, and the artist who pos-
zhipovis’ (Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2008).
60. Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
sesses it as a creator of new culture. The artist
Phénoménologie de la perception who has overcome—in the sense of Stirner’s
(Paris: Gallimard, 1945).
three-part dialectic—both the realistic stage
61. Compare this to the Maurits
Cornelis Escher’s graphic drawing of childhood, with its materialistic limitations,
Hand with Reflecting Sphere, where and the weakness of youth, with its idées fixes
the hand, deformed on a glass
orb, produces a new optic. of ideologies and religions becomes, in Self-
62. See also Martin Heidegger: “The Portrait, a true Dadaist constructor. Acquir-
hand both gives and receives, and ing personal self-government, the construc-
not only things; it also gives itself,
and receives itself with the other tor symbolizes the concluding part of Stirner’s
hand.” Martin Heidegger, Was
three-part dialectic: He is genuinely free from
heißt Denken? (Frankfurt: Vittorio
Klostermann, 2002), 18–19. all internal and external limits.

253
 Sergei Sharshun
Nikolai Berdiaev, ca. 1921–1922

The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev,

who lived in Berlin in 1922–1924 and published
several of his works there, wrote in 1946 that
“the Russian pathos of freedom was more
connected to a principled anarchism.”63 Thus
he repeated a point often argued by the rebel
painters in the era of anarchist utopias. The im-
age of the era that united Dadaism and anar-
chism was given an unexpected and witty ren-
dition in Sergei Sharshun’s Dadaist drawings,
pp. 203, 254 made in Berlin in 1921–1922, of Berdiaev and
Tzara, both of whom he knew personally. The
Russian philosopher of freedom and anarchy
and the leading theorist of Dadaism are repre-
sented in such a way that, for all their external
divergence, they nonetheless demonstrate a
resemblance. Thus Sharshun gives Dada and
anarchism the status of phenomena from the
63. Nikolai Berdiaev, “Russkaia ideia:
same category. Osnovnye problemy russkoi mysli
XIX i nachala XX veka,” in O Rossii
i russkoi filosofskoi kul’ture: filosofii
russkogo posleoktiabr’skogo zarubezh’ia
(Moscow: Nauka, 1990), 171.

254
El Lissitzky
Self-Portrait, illustration in the journal
Gebrauchsgraphik, 1928

255
PRIMARY TEXTS
Anonymous
Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova,
and Ilia Zdanevich, Moscow, 1913

258
 ILIA ZDANEVICH
NATALIA GONCHAROVA
AND EVERYTHINGISM,
1913

Truly brief was the reign of futurism. But a great deal was accomplished.
Just as the soul always dances on the eve of a dizzying endeavor, so futur-
ism made the impossible possible. And who could have thought that—after
all the unheard-of brazen stunts, the trampled values, the transformation
of a brain into an airplane, the beauteous revelations and riots—something
even more impossibly brazen, crushing, and riotous would come, some-
thing that would make no distinction between futurism and its enemies
and throw everyone into the same heap of herd-like mindlessness.
You are always blind, deaf, and utterly ignorant until the rocks come
crashing down on you. But there’s nothing to be done. Your attachment
has blindfolded you with a handkerchief and stopped your ears with dirty
cotton. . . . To begin with, let us cast aside several words and related con-
cepts: the words time, space, new, old, and everything that follows from
them. There is no audience but this one, no time but the present. I have in
my head a series of books of diverse contents and a series of works to some
of which we will now turn. These books and works contain judgments of
art, which boil down to this: art grows and falls, artworks age, knowledge
is transmitted from generation to generation, etc.; in other words, art lives
in history. From these assumptions, one deduces several valuable laws: Art
is based primarily on aesthetic emotion, which changes along with the
evolution of its bearer. Therefore, if the combination of certain esthetic
norms can be defined as style, one can assert that the more conservative
and hidebound an environment is, the more constant the style of the state
of the ancient world, the state of the most constant styles. With progress
and the acceleration of development, styles change faster and faster; to-
day, they rise and fall by the hour. To establish a fixed style for our time
is impossible. This is the sort of curious thing they write in those little
books. And then they also write that the more hidebound the environ-
ment, the slower its development, the less one generation differs from the

Il'ia Zdanevich, excerpts from “Nataliia Goncharova i vsechestvo,” lecture presented November
5, 1913, Moscow, in State Russian Museum, Archive of the Department of Manuscripts, Fond 177.

259
 next, the sooner new masters are recognized, the less intense the struggle
for recognition and the hostility to innovators, the stronger and more du-
rable authorities are. In ancient times, there was no notion of innovators
at war with the crowd; in our time, every new direction is met with more
and more hostility. This past spring, you attacked us at the Polytechnic
Museum1—one of the first instances of fisticuffs over aesthetics. Then: the
more hidebound the environment, the more stable tradition is; hence, the
less need [for] the theoretical study of art, the less theory and individuality,
and vice versa. Then: the more hidebound the environment, the more ho-
mogeneous aesthetic beliefs are, the more art belongs to the entire people,
the fewer parties and cells; and vice versa. Conclusion: in our time, there
can be no stable style, no school, no tradition, no truly universal popular
art. Conclusion: ours is a time of cross-breeding and ephemeral styles, of
theory, of differentiation in art. For ours is a time of speed and progress,
dizzying and hasty.
The books in which these historical laws of art are formulated have
been written by me and have never existed. Their precepts are strictly logi-
cal and scientific; they are the creed of futurism, which grew out of them
and has rested on their foundation. But futurism never suspected that its
creed and its logic could be thrown out the window; that both common
sense and lack of common sense could be replaced by yet another principle
that mocks both common sense and its absence.
There is nothing but this audience and nothing but the present. Yet our
gaze pierces the walls like X-rays and takes possession of the world; our
thoughts stand guard over it and pass judgment on its evolution. We create
the time and the place. There are many worlds beyond this audience, many
hours beyond this hour. But no further. Do not return to new paths. We af-
firm that time exists just like space exists, but there are no relations within
them. Relations are created by human beings, and the distant can become
near while the near can become distant. There is no historical perspective,
no perspective or space as such. There are only systems created by human
beings. To wage war against the past is absurd because there is no past. To
aspire toward the future is absurd because there is no future. The future
can become the past and vice versa, time and place are human material
created for better construction, and the master can use this material any
way he pleases. Such is the foundation of everythingism [vsechestvo]. . . .
Everythingism is a special school of mastery; it makes war against the past
senseless and thus overthrows futurism. But it is not related to any par-

1. A reference to a fight at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow during the “Target” debate on the
subject “East, Nationality and West,” which took place on March 23, 1913.

260
ticular aesthetic; thus, it does not conflict with the belief that the boot is
still more beautiful than Venus,2 women are still contemptible, etc. That is
beside the point, since these are not the tasks of mastery as such. But one
can be an everythingist [vsek] without espousing such beliefs. Whether
the master is a woman-hater matters not. Whether he regards the public
as sheep matters not. Only his mastery matters. Futurism’s main flaw was
not its beliefs, many of which are valuable and are still being affirmed,
but in the dilution of mastery by everyday concerns, moods, and so forth.
This is a serious problem among the French. As for our St. Petersburg and
Moscow poets, those lowlife camp followers have completely forgotten
mastery. They seemed, and seem, extravagant and rebellious only by dint
of the stupidity of their audiences, even though their rebellions never made
any difference.

2. Zdanevich’s lecture “About Futurism” was presented at the “Target” debate on March 23, 1913,
at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow and involved the demonstration of a boot. This is how it
was reported in the press: “Displayed on the screen, an image of Venus de Milo; displayed by the
lecturer, a worn-out old boot. ‘Now, here’s Venus. Why is she beautiful? Because that’s what we’ve
been taught. The beauty of the boot is greater because it is autonomous, because one is not aware of
it.’ The young man stands there for a long time with the boot in his hands, while the audience is in
an uproar. ‘Get this boot out of here! To hell with the boot!’ ‘Traveling salesman!’ There is whistling,
stamping of feet, wild yelling; finally, he is forced to put the boot away.” “Sovremennyi bashmak i
Venera (Disput ‘Mishen’),” Golos Moskvy, no. 70 (March 27, 1913): 5.

261
 Anonymous
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, illustration in the
newspaper Nov, January 26, 1914

262
 ILIA ZDANEVICH TO
FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI,
1914

D[ear] S[ir],
Regrettably, I am presently in the South, far away from Moscow, and un-
able to attend your conference or to say publicly what needs to be said
about your visit. I have to resort to writing a letter, and since this is an open
letter that affects more than just the two of us, I am sending a copy to the
editors of the newspaper Russkie vedomosti [Russian News].1
My friend, peintres, M-me Gontcharoff [Goncharova], Larionoff [Lari-
onov], Le-Dentu [Le Dantiu] et moi, were among the first to preach fu-
turism in Russia, and I believe we contributed in no small measure to its
epidemic spread in our day. Futurism was dear to us as the only direction
that art truly needed, and, setting the interests of art above everything else,
we fought for futurism. But the very same interests of art, the need for its
renovation compared to recent past, forced us last year to break away from
futurism—above all, because it no longer satisfied our artistic demands and
turned out to be in need of a radical transformation in order to be at least
somewhat compatible with the growth of artistic culture.
At present, we accept futurism only as a necessary historical stage. But
your current propaganda, your current tactics, futurism in the form in
which you propagandize it now—that I not only do not accept but regard
as simply destructive to art, as a complete surrender of the position you
used to hold, a surrender in the name of academicism, so that your futur-
ism is now no more than a mask and, if you will, is more academic than
the academy itself. And if the name of futurism is to be applied only to the
ideology and tactics wh[ich] you currently espouse, forgetting the broad
and anti-a[ca]demic futurism the way it used to be when it was born, it will
have to be said that futurism was born yesterday and only yesterday, only as
a ghost of unrealized possibilities—it doesn’t matter why—and abandoned
fortresses.
January 23, 1914, Tiflis

Department of Manuscripts of the State Russian Museum, f. 177, ed. kr. 66, l. 2-2ob.

1. Because Marinetti stayed in Russia longer than planned, the meeting between Zdanevich and
Marinetti did take place.

263
 Olga Rozanova
Composition, 1915

264
 OLGA ROZANOVA
THE BASIS OF THE NEW
CREATION AND THE
REASONS WHY IT IS
MISUNDERSTOOD, 1913

For the majority of the public nurtured by pseudo artists on copies of na-
ture, the conception of beauty rests on the terms “Familiar” and “Intel-
ligible.” So when an art created on new principles forces the public to
awaken from its stagnant, sleepy attitudes crystallized once and for all, the
transition to a different state incites protest and hostility since the public
is unprepared for it. . . .
The disgusting roars of laughter at exhibitions of the leading trends can
be explained only by a reluctance to be educated.
The bewilderment at pictures and titles expressed in technical lan-
guage (directrix, color instrumentation, etc.) can be explained only by
crass ignorance. . . .
Only modern Art has advocated the full and serious importance of such
principles as pictorial dynamism, volume and equilibrium, weight and
weightlessness, linear and plane displacement, rhythm as a legitimate di-
vision of space, design, planar and surface dimension, texture, color corre-
lation, and others. Suffice it to enumerate these principles that distinguish
the New Art from the Old to be convinced that they are the Qualitative—
and not just the quantitative—New Basis that proves the “self-sufficient”
significance of the New Art. They are principles hitherto unknown that
signify the rise of a new era in creation—an era of purely artistic achieve-
ments.
—The era of the final, absolute liberation of the Great Art of Painting
from the alien traits of Literature, Society, and everyday life. Our age is to
be credited with the cultivation of this valuable world view—an age that
is not affected by the question of how quickly the individual trends it has
created flash past.

Olga Rozanova, excerpts from “Osnovy novogo tvorchestva i prichiny ego neponimaniia,” Soiuz
molodezhi, no. 3 (March 1913): 14–22, in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt
(New York: Viking Press, 1976), 102–10.

265
 After elucidating the essential values of New Art, one cannot help not-
ing the extraordinary rise in the whole creative life of our day, the unprec-
edented diversity and quantity of artistic tends.
Messrs. art critics and veterans of the old art are being true to them-
selves in their fatal fear of what is beautiful and continually renewing it-
self; they are frightened and tremble for the little caskets of their meager
artistic achievements. In order to defend publicly this pitiful property and
the positions they occupy, they spare no effort to slander the Young Art
and to arrest its triumphant procession. They reproach it further with
frivolity and instability.
It is high time that we realized that the future of Art will be assured
only when the thirst for eternal renewal in the artist’s soul become inex-
haustible, when wretched individual taste loses its power over him and
frees him from the necessity of continually rehashing. . . .
Each moment of the present is dissimilar to a moment of the past, and
moments of the future will contain inexhaustible possibilities and new
revelations!
How can one explain the premature spiritual death of the artists of the
Old Art, if not by laziness?
They end their days as innovators before they are barely thirty, and
then turn to rehashing.
There is nothing more awful in the World than repetition, uniformity.
Uniformity is the apotheosis of banality.
There is nothing more awful in the World than an artist’s immutable
Face, by which his friends and old buyers recognize him at exhibitions—
this accursed mask that shuts off his view of the future, this contemptible
hide in which are arrayed all the “venerable” tradesmen of art clinging to
their material security!
There is nothing more terrible than this immutability when it is not
the imprint of the elemental force of individuality, but merely the tested
guarantee of a steady market.
It is high time that we put an end to the debauch of critics’ ribaldry and
confessed honestly that only “Union of Youth” exhibitions are the pledges
of art’s renewal. Contempt should be cast on those who hold dear only
peaceful sleep and relapses of experience.

266
Olga Rozanova
Cover design for the book Transrational
by Aleksei Kruchenykh and Aliagrov
(Roman Jakobson), 1915

267
 Ivan Puni
0,10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting, 1915

268
 IVAN PUNI AND
KSENIA BOGUSLAVSKAIA
LEAFLET, 1915

1) An object is the sum of real units, a sum that has a utilitarian purpose.
(Utility is the purpose of the sum of real elements to depict
something. Example: a certain sum of elements is a stone, another
man, etc.)
2) The substance of an object (reality) and the being of an object like a
chair, a samovar, a house, etc., are not the same thing.
A) Freedom of the object from meaning, the destruction of utility.
B) A picture is a new conception of abstracted real elements, deprived of
meaning.
3) 2 × 2 is anything you like, but not four.
C) (The aesthetic thing in itself.)
An object (a world) freed from meaning disintegrates into real elements—
the foundation of art.
B. 2) The correlation of elements discovered and revealed in a picture is a
new reality, the departure point of the new painting.

Ivan Puni and Kseniia Boguslavskaia, leaflet, distributed in 0,10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of
Painting (Petrograd, 1915), in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, ed. and trans. John Bowlt (New York:
The Viking Press, 1976), 112.

269
 Vladimir Tatlin
Cover of the book The Monument to the Third
International by Nikolai Punin, 1920

270
 NIKOLAI PUNIN
APARTMENT NO. 5,
1930s

In Apartment No. 5, isms were condemned once and for all; no one used
them as a cover for one’s work. The only ones that were ever mentioned
were terms that had actual meaning and that one could not do without:
impressionism, futurism, cubism.
When Malevich brought suprematism along with the 0,10 exhibition,
no one was tempted by the new “ism” simply because it was new. The time
of futurism had passed. None of us wanted to ride at a gallop while lopping
off the heads of clay dolls without slowing down. . . .
Our search was not for something new; it was for means to capture
reality, ways to grab it in a vice grip without tormenting it or being
tormented by it—by its convulsions and its groans, by its agony on the
canvas. Artists needed a sharp eye and a well-trained hand and a hunter’s
keen senses, agility, and habits. The beast was a terrifying one, and no one
expected or wanted mercy after a missed shot or a nonlethal wound. There
was a severity in everything that was done then: people were serious and
honest. We were all insanely tired of the imprecision of aestheticism and
just as tired of the swift-footed experimentation of futuristic derby races.
We were looking for art that would be sturdy and simple, as simple as it
could be in those years of transition and upheaval. . . . We cherished the
present—or, at the very least, none of us wanted to get ahead of our time
or peer over people’s heads; we were not tempted by poses. . . . And we
believed that our art was simple, comprehensible, and needed. We had
believed it earlier, in 1915, and we believed it later, in late 1916, when we had
already moved on to cubism and even to Tatlin’s constructivism, because
each of those was not an ism or a movement for us but only a method. War
had done its work; it came down between our lives in apartment No. 5 and
the “first futurist battles”; it ripped away from us pieces of the past that
should have belonged to us, shortening one part and lengthening another,
just like a candle shortens or lengthens shadows falling on a wall; and,
having changed the speed of the entire world, it laid underneath our lives

Nikolai Punin, excerpts from “Kvartira No. 5,” from the memoir Iskusstvo i revoliutsiia (1930s);
first published in Panorama iskusstva 12 (1989): 162–98.

271
 a sinister backdrop against which everything began to seem both tragic
and petty. We understood early on that the tactic, which the pioneers of
the futurist movement had used with stunning success, but also to excess—
épater les bourgeois—was harmful and inappropriate in the situation of
1915–1916. It was harmful because it inculcated the habit of viewing art
as scandal, removing the quality and the actual meaning of the creative
struggle; it was inappropriate because the “bourgeois” were already in
such shock from the war—that futurist marching across the planet in the
bloody shirt of never-ending sunsets—that it was simply foolish to try to
shock them further. And, by and by, we developed an ironic attitude toward
everything connected to the first futuristic campaign. . . . For the entire
duration of 1916, there was intensive work going on in apartment No. 5 on
comprehending the principles of “cubism.” Both under Tatlin’s guidance
and without it, but within the framework of solving the tasks he had set,
the apartment’s denizens sweated over the construction of spatial models,
over the selection of materials of different kinds, qualities, and forms. They
sawed and shaved, they cut and polished, they stretched and bent. Painting
was almost forgotten. The talk was only of contrasts, of combinations, of
tensions, of cross-sections, of textures. From the outside, this could all
look like a mania, but in reality it was the creative intensity of people who
thought their efforts would finally displace age-old canons and that a “new
Renaissance would arise.” . . . The war slowly rolled over into revolution.
When the revolution began, we do not know: The war never ended.

272
 KAZIMIR MALEVICH
2ND DECLARATION OF THE
SUPREMATISTS, FROM THE
“DECLARATIONS OF HUMAN
RIGHTS,” 1918

Let there be the nonobjective Suprematist world of phenomena.

Pulverized, the objects of Cubism as a system have lost their
elements.
The colored square section of the color mass engenders, in the minds of
many individuals, an impulse toward nonobjectness.
At every corner, backs flattened by the force of Suprematism’s laws lie
trembling with the bursting of muscles.
The grunting of voices, the stamping of feet—twisted, the throat hurls
its peculiar extravagances into the skulls of people of a different mettle.
We, the Suprematists, who have hurled a new law into the space of
structures, into the structure of rubble, whilst slicing through the breast
of space in endless motion, have broken free of the race.
The color of cross-section—the law of the guaranteed sign—is our dis-
tinction from the entirety of nonobjective pseudo-Suprematist numbers.
Now at each crossroads of backs [sic] is an aesthete-painted canvas of
pink and violet blossoms like feminine bloomers, corsets, and brassieres;
these canvasses show the inner essence of artists who have defected to
the new art from old and worn ways of painting.
To the banner of movement, they bring individualism under the mask
of the color of mediocre lines.
Behind us is heard the stamping of running feet, the steps of a cohort
of artists, enveloping in the resilient system of suprematist constructions.
Maimed by touch, flattened, they lie amidst the vulgar ramps of cof-
feehouses and theaters.

Kazimir Malevich, “2-ia deklaratsiia Suprematistov” (1918), from the project “Deklaratsii prav
cheloveka”; first published in Kazimir Malevich: proizvedeniia raznykh let. Stat’i. Traktaty. Manifesty
i deklaratsii. Proekty. Lektsii. Zapisi i zametki. Poeziia, ed. Aleksandra Shatskikh, vol. 5 (Moscow:
Gileia, 2004), 104–5.

273
 We are crowned by the consciousness of new intuitive cross-sections;
we move toward the new signs of real phenomena.
Our death and the death of things are united in the matter of cuneiform
writing. The world of matter disappears, divided by space.
We divide the division of the new path of movement, leaving the blue
cap of the sky like a lid on the skull of the old world.
The world, we preach, will be painted in colorlessness: the mad fire, the
color-thrower of burning colors, will reveal the hue of things amidst the
dome of the brain, being a sign of the new order.
But amidst the innumerable corridors of the mind, under the onslaught
of roiling forces, I already see a new image beyond the world of color.
Proudly, like a serpent in arc-like coils, it burst from the body into space;
it carries away the voices of new dotted lines; it moans like a trumpet amidst
abysses.
In the vortex of belts of moments, the intuition of new numbers and
sums will descend into the white center of color.
Sums without weight, volume, or color will lie at the foundation of the
first formations.

Anonymous
Kazimir Malevich in the documentary film
Exhibition of Paintings of the Petrograd Artists
of All Trends, 1923

274
 KAZIMIR MALEVICH
THE APPEAL OF KAZIMIR
MALEVICH TO THE
PROGRESSIVE ARTISTS
OF ITALY, 19191

You, who stood at the craters of Mt. Vesuvius and Mt. Aetna and flung at the
globe the language of sacrilege toward old relics! You, who spat on the altar on
yesterday’s sacred values of art, and the sun in your hands became a polished
brass basin so that the fingers of futurism banging against its bottom burst the
eardrums of the system of Beethoven, Wagner, Chopin!
You who turned inside out the skull of Holy Rome and exposed the grave-
yard of reason’s pitfalls, of the philistine logic of the maestros’ art.
The running footsteps of the old day was drowned out by futurism; the
instant clang of the wheels of the express train formed the rhythm of the new
musical ear that holds thousands of orchestras of the moving noises of things.
Your call flattened the old day on its back, and the new morning was lit up
by the brass basin of new wisdom.
Now, electrical wires have been stuck into the forehead of the earth, and
the arcs of futuristic speed are growing.
Everywhere, the banners of rebellion have been affirmed, and just as you
were calling once, we are calling upon you to raise a new blaze of art’s banners.
Blow into the trumpets of Vesuvius and Mt. Aetna! Shout from the tops
of radio and telegraph towers! Send words of steel-reinforced concrete, and
crisscross the lining of the sky with multicolor projector beams!
Let the grinding of teeth on old jawbones turn to dust—in our whistle and
whirlwind, in our victorious global dance.
We, your northern friends, amid snows and stars glittering in the cold,
amid the noise and roar of factories, have restored the world citadel of art and
planted the banner of international forces.
We are waiting for you to build an international base for the world ex-
presses of art amid the Southern heat, and to plant a banner in the throats of
Mt. Vesuvius and Mt. Aetna.

Kazimir Malevich, “The Appeal of Kazimir Malevich to the Progressive Artists of Italy” (1919), in
N. I. Khardzhiev, “‘Internatsional iskusstva’: iz materialov po istorii Sovetskogo iskusstva,” in Stat’i
ob avangarde, vol. 1 (Moscow: RA, 1997), 258–59.
1. Written for the unpublished magazine “International of Art,” 1919.

275
 Aleksandr Rodchenko
Untitled (Change of
Milestones), 1922

276
 ALEKSANDR
RODCHENKO
TO ARTISTS-
PROLETARIANS,1918

We—are the proletarians of the brush! Creator-martyrs! Oppressed artists!

We—are the inhabitants of cold attics and damp cellars!
We, who carry the blazing fire of creativity, walk hungry and barefoot!
We, who do not have the opportunity to create, are giving our best en-
ergy and time to earn the means for a miserable subsistence.
We, whose position is worse than the oppressed workers, for we—both
work for our subsistence and create our art at one and the same time!
We, who are cooped up in kennels, often without either paint or light,
on the time for creative work.
Proletarians of the brush, we must come together, we must organize a
“free association of oppressed artist-painters” and demand bread, studios,
and the right to exist.
Enough!
The art patrons oppressed us, they forced us to fulfill their whims. . . .

Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Khudozhnikam-proletariiam,” Anarkhiia, no. 41 (April 11, 1918), trans.

Jamey Gambrell, in Aleksandr Rodchenko: Experiments for the Future, Diaries, Essays, Letters and
Other Writings (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005), 82.

277
 Aleksandr Rodchenko
Line and Compass Drawing, 1915

278
 ALEKSANDR
RODCHENKO
RODCHENKO’S
SYSTEM, 1919

At the foundation of my work I placed nothing.

Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own

Paints are disappearing—everything

is mixing up black.
A. Kruchenykh, Gly-Gly

The collapse of all “isms” in painting was the beginning of my ascent.

To the toll of the funeral bells of colorist painting, the last “ism” is laid
to eternal rest here, the last hope and love collapse, and I leave the
house of dead truths.
Synthesis is not the engine, the engine is invention (analysis).
Painting—is the body, creativity—the spirit. My work—is to create the
new out of painting, so look at my work in action. Literature and philo-
sophy are for specialists in this work, but I—am an inventor of new
discoveries deriving from painting.
Christopher Columbus was not a writer or a philosopher, he was only
a discoverer of new countries.

Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Sistema Rodchenko,” in X Gosudarstvennaia vystavka: bespredmetnoe

tvorchestvo i suprematizm (Moscow, 1919), trans. Jamey Gambrell, in Aleksandr Rodchenko:
Experiments for the Future, Diaries, Essays, Letters and Other Writings (New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 2005), 84.

279
 Varvara Stepanova
Cover of Rtny Khomle:
Nonobjective Poetry by Varvara
Stepanova, 1918

280
 VARVARA STEPANOVA
NONOBJECTIVE
CREATION, 1919

The ordinary “cultured” spectator who is slow to evolve in his understand-

ing of new achievements finds it difficult to keep up with the development
of the nonobjectivists, for they move along a revolutionary path of new
discoveries and have behind them the transitional attainments of futurism
and cubism. But if we accept “continuity” as an axiom, then nonobjective
creation becomes the logical and legitimate consequence of the preced-
ing stages of painterly creation. However, the same spectator—not being
corrupted by pictorial subject matter and not being “cultured” enough to
demand always and everywhere figurativeness in art—should, through his
feeling and uncorrupted intuition, conceive this creation as a new beauty,
the beauty of explosion, the beauty of painting’s liberation from the age-old
curse: from subject and depiction of the visible.
In nonobjective creation you will not find anything “familiar,” anything
“comprehensible,” but don’t be put off by this, grow fond of art, understand
what it is to “live art,” and don’t just investigate it and analyze it, don’t just
admire it casually, don’t just search for intelligible subjects in it or depic-
tions of themes you like. . . .

Varvara Stepanova, excerpts from “Bespredmetnoe tvorchestvo,” in X Gosudarstvennaia vystavka:

bespredmetnoe tvorchestvo i suprematizm (Moscow, 1919), in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, ed.
and trans. John E. Bowlt (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 141–42.

281
 Ilia Zdanevich
Poster for a performance by Kruchenykh,
Zdanevich, and Terentiev in Borjomi,
Georgia, 1919

282
 ILIA ZDANEVICH,
ALEKSEI KRUCHENYKH,
IGOR TERENTIEV, AND
NIKOLAI CHERNIAVSKY
MANIFESTO
OF THE “41°,” 1919

Company 41° unifies left-wing Futurism, and affirms transreason as the

mandatory form for the embodiment of art.
The task of 41° is to make use of all the great discoveries of its con-
tributors, and to place the world on a new axis.
This newspaper will be a haven for happenings in the life of the
company as well as a cause of constant trouble.
Let’s roll up our sleeves.

I. Zdanevich, A. Kruchenykh, I. Terent’ev, and N. Cherniavskii, in the newspaper 41° (Tiflis, 1919) in
Russian Futurism through Its Manifestoes, 1912–1928, ed. and trans. Anna Lawton and Herbert Eagle
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 177.

283
 Ivan Kliun
Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1925

284
 ALEKSEI KRUCHENYKH
IN LOCKSTEP WITH THE MARCH
OF TIME (FUTURISTS AND
THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION), N. D.

The frontlines of the budetliane1 war for new art became, from the very
start, one of the points of the general assault of societal forces on the bas-
tions of autocracy, on the landowner-capitalist society with all its super-
structures, with its religion and art.
We declared war on the fat-assed sculpture that flattered the crowned
oppressors, on the syrupy art and literature that transformed the flabby,
ruddy-faced, bloated flesh of Mr. Moneybags and his “missus” into Mitro-
fan of Belvedere and Queen Ortruda.2
The wrapping paper and wallpaper of our first collections, books, and
declarations were our attack on the pompous vulgarity of philistine ribbed
paper in gold-leaf binding, with their stuffing of nice quiet boys, languidly
ailing pearls, and drunken lilies.
Over the fences of the tombs of thick journals, over the cordons of
the academies, smashing the shop-windows of the institutions of beauty,
accompanied by the warning whistles of the bank-owned yellow press,
we entered the stage and faced a living audience that yearned for a breath
of fresh air. We consciously linked our anti-aesthete “slaps in the face” to
the struggle for the destruction of the environment that had nurtured the
hothouses of Acmeism, Apollonism, . . . So what if we only ripped the flags
and emblems from the well-fed mansion of the shopkeepers. It was still
an insult, a mutiny. And that’s exactly how our explosive work was seen
by the police state. The yellow press hounded us, openly and shamelessly
acting as informants: there they are, the rioters! The censors defaced our
books with pockmarks of ellipses and blank spaces. Policemen stood at the
ready behind our backs during debates . . .
Everyone knows how [Vladimir] Mayakovsky, that “drummer of the
Revolution,” welcomed October 1917. For him, as for other Moscow fu-
turists, there was not even a question of “whether to accept it or not.” . . .

Aleksei Kruchenykh, excerpts from “V nogu s epokhoi (Futuristy i Oktiabr’),” in Aleksei Kruchenykh,
K istorii russkogo futurizma: vospominaniia i dokumenty (Moscow: Gileia, 2006), 138–46.
1. Throughout this text Kruchenykh uses this neologism that the Russians coined to distinguish
themselves from the Italian futurists. 2. References to a satirical line from Aleksandr Pushkin and a
1909 novel by Fedr Sologub.—Trans.

285
 [Velimir] Khlebnikov’s attitude toward those events is clear from his
poem “October on the Neva” (1917–1918).
“In these days,” he wrote, “there is a strange pride in the sound of the
word bolshevichka.”3
Khlebnikov’s pre-October behavior was interesting as well, with the
poet’s eccentricity and his affinity for popular, carnivalesque buffoonery
on full display.
“Is there one person who doesn’t find [Aleksandr] Kerensky ludicrous
and pathetic?” Khlebnikov would ask under the provisional government.
He saw Kerensky as a personal insult and kept inventing projects that
would “destroy” him, as the impractical fantasist he was. For instance:
l Have toymakers make squeaky little imps with the head of Mrs.
Insect-in-Chief. (Khlebnikov persistently referred to Kerensky as
“Alexandra Fedorovna,” the name of the deposed Tsarina.) “It’s go-
ing to be a huge hit,” Velimir would say. “Mrs. Kerensky sulks and
dies squeaking.”
l Make a Mrs. Kerensky effigy and carry it in a solemn procession
to the Field of Mars, where she will be put down near the common
grave and whipped soundly enough that her cries will be heard by
those who died in February with her name on their lips. (Khleb-
nikov called this a “bewhipping”—as in “beheading”—to underscore
the solemnity of the proceedings.)
l And, finally, the third and most radical project for Kerensky’s
“overthrow” was to have one of the members of the then-insepar-
able trio of Khlebnikov, Dm[itry] Petrovsky, and [Grigory] Petnikov,
selected by drawing lots, go to the palace, call Kerensky out into the
hallway, and slap his face in the name of Russia.
. . . Of course, Khlebnikov did not limit himself only to sarcastic gibes at the
provisional government. He dreamed of taking to the barricades with the
workers. But he was too absent-minded and ill-fit for combat, and his friends
could not allow him to join the fray. It’s not even that he was courageous;
he somehow lacked any sense of awareness of danger. In the days of the
October Revolution in Moscow, where he had moved from St. Petersburg,
he calmly showed up in the most dangerous spots, amid street battles and
shooting, observing these happenings with intense interest. This behavior
was all the more reckless since, in that environment, he often became ob-
livious to what was around him, completely absorbed in his creative plans.

3. “Female Bolshevik.”—Trans.

286
 Here’s how V[asily] Kamensky describes the work of the budetliane in
Moscow in the first days after the October Revolution:
Stubborn, vulgar rumors were openly going around: the Bolsheviks
will stay in power “no more than two weeks.” The fact that “the
futurists were the first to recognize Soviet power” cost us many
supporters.
Those people were now gaping at us with undisguised horror and
revulsion, as if we were wild-eyed lunatics who, like the Bolsheviks,
had “no more than two weeks left.”
Even some good friends actually stopped saying hello to me, so as
not to come under suspicion of Bolshevism after those prophesized
“two weeks.”
And some openly said, “Oh, you crazy people, what are you doing?
Listen, another two weeks, and they’ll hang you right next to the
Bolsheviks, you poor wretches!”
But we knew very well what we were doing.
What’s more: using our broad influence on progressive young
people, we led our young army toward the path of October’s vic-
tories.
(The Path of the Enthusiast)4
But what’s the threat of the gallows! The October hurricane swept away
all the barriers that had stood in the way of new art. The field had been
cleared, and the budetliane rushed in without hesitation, rolled up their
sleeves, and set to work on a huge task. We had to “give a march” to the re-
volution’s soldiers and arm millions with a battle song that would mobilize
the masses and lift them up in a surge of joy. The mastery of the poet and
the artist had to give sound and color to the first revolutionary triumphs,
to the harsh days of battles and privations. Mayakovsky clearly formulated
these tasks in his “Orders to the Army of the Arts.”
Budetliane put tremendous energy into carrying out these slogans, put
forth by the spirit of the time. This was possible not only because they
welcomed the revolution at once but because they instantly found their
own place in it.

4. V. Kamenskii, “Put’ entuziasta,” in V. Kamenskii, Sochinennia: reprintnoe vosproizvedenie izdanii

1914, 1916, 1918 s. prilozhenien, ed. M. Ia. Poliakova (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), 522.

287
 Sergei Gorodetsky and Velimir Khlebnikov
Spinny-spin-spin, anniversary book dedicated
to Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1920

288
 ALEKSEI KRUCHENYKH
DECLARATION NO. 6
ON THE ARTS TODAY
(THESES), 1925

3) The painting has croaked. It made the journey from the monumental-
ism of antiques and bedrooms to the here-and-now of the streets (that’s
where the demand was): the poster, the placard, the photomontage. From
the aestheticism of the mansion to the square and the factory worksta-
tion. The painters abolished by Lef ran off to AKhRR [the Artists’ Asso-
ciation of Revolutionary Russia]—a hybrid of a vat of blood and a bucket
of shoe polish, of bad photography and oleography, of the paralytic and
the para-academic. AKhRR tries to be “scary” but succeeds only in being
boring and laughable. . . . Rotting somewhere in some back yard are the
World of Art crowd and the candy Blue Roses.
4) CINEMA. The public has been thoroughly corrupted by Deaf-Mute
Cinema. Instead of a shock-work style, it has given us broken necks; instead
of powerful gestures, clownish slaps in the face.
As an art form, cinema is still in the future.
But even now, where it uses the techniques of Lef (speed, shift, “cross-
fade,” double exposure, sharp montage), the Mute beats the mumbling acs
[academicians].
The business of art is to invent and implement (standard, synthesis)
the appropriate technique. The material will be provided in abundance
by life around us.
Only the technique (form, style) makes the face of the era. (The maudlin
song technique, Gypsy or academic, will make any revolutionary song suit-
able for a private study. The Lef technique will make even laboratory work
revolutionary.)
That is why it is a question of EITHER academicism OR Lef—and no
BASTARDS . . .
Moscow, October 1925

A. Kruchenykh, excerpt from “Deklaratsiia no. 6 o segodniashnikh iskusstvakh (tezisy),” in Aleksei

Kruchenykh, K istorii russkogo futurizma: vospominaniia i dokumenty (Moscow: Gileia, 2006), 312–13.

289
 L. Nikitin
Cover of the book Art and Classes by
Boris Arvatov, 1923

290
 BORIS ARVATOV
SPEECH CREATION
(ON “TRANSRATIONAL”
POETRY), 1923

W hen the works of the “transrationalists” [zaumniki] (Khlebnikov and

Kruchenykh) first appeared, both the public and the vast majority of schol-
ars received them as:
(1) a hitherto unprecedented fact;
(2) a fact possible only in poetry;
(3) a phenomenon of purely phonetic nature
(sound play, “a collection of sounds”);
(4) a phenomenon of decay of poetry and poetic language;
(5) a novelty with no independent, positively organizational
meaning; i.e., something pointless.
. . . “Zaum’” (“the transrational”) is usually seen as a “collection of sounds,”
and if it is acknowledged to have any formal meaning, it is only a musical,
acoustic one. The “transrational” turns out to be an abstract phonetical com-
position. This alone should have excluded “transrational” forms from the
category of sound forms, since language in any manifestation has three insep-
arable and necessary aspects: phonetics, morphology/syntax, and semantics.
And yet we speak of “transrational” language and speech forms. Indeed, the
problem of “transrational” itself would never have arisen if it was not a fact of
language. The “transrational” is interesting precisely because it is not a mere
combination of sounds (recitative, melody, vocal music) but a spoken form
that has social applications (verse, conversations, the ecstatic ramblings of
religious sectarians, the “cooing” of lovers, etc.)—that is, a form of language.
The critics’ main error is this: Any human action is carried out in a very
specific environment and is entirely dependent upon it. That is, any singular
phenomenon has its function defined by the presence of a general, collective,
legitimized stereotype of similar phenomena. In the same way, any spoken/
sound composition is inevitably perceived in the context of the present lan-
guage system and thus enters it as a new element, obeys all its norms, and
turns out to be effective solely because we associate it with accustomed forms
of our speechmaking.
B. Arvatov, excerpts from“Rechetvorchestvo (po povodu “zaumnoi” poezii),” Lef, no. 2 (April–
May 1923): 79–91.

291
 In this sense, no purely phonetic form exists or can exist. This or that
combination of sounds is inevitably connected to the familiar meanings of
these sounds and similar combinations, with analogous morphemes, etc.
That is why the “transrational” is not a phonetic phenomenon but a phon-
ological one ([Roman] Jakobson’s term), or even a morphological one. . . .
In other words, transrational forms share the qualities of the language
system to which they are attached. They are complete speech facts, formally
no different from existing linguistic material. To emphasize this, I put “trans-
rational” in quotation marks: speech that is completely senseless, completely
beyond sense, is impossible. An individual is the product and crystallized
form of the collective, and all its activity is social: The “incomprehensible”
murmurs of someone half asleep and the babbling cries of a lunatic are just as
social as an ordinary conversation about the weather. The only difference is
the degree to which we understand it—a quantitative rather than qualitative
difference (parents understand their children’s “transrationality” far better
than other people). . . .
Kruchenykh defines transrational forms as forms with an indeterminate
meaning; it would have been more accurate to say “indeterminate purpose.”
This definition is . . . entirely correct, but insufficient. A negative definition
circumscribes but does not “define.” The principal and positive element of
“transrational” is the innovative nature of its forms. Any “transrational”
introduces unusual constructions into the system of practical language,
taking it beyond the boundaries of “pleasant” cliché. . . . “Transrational” is
everything that adds to the general mass of verbal constructions in everyday
use new constructions that have no precise communicative function. (Cheka
is not a “transrational” word, since it has a fixed “object” meaning, not ne-
cessary for carrying out its specific utilitarian tasks.) Thus understood, pure
“transrationality” is only an extreme expression of speech creation taken
to its outer limits. . . . From this point on, I will speak not of “transrational”
but of compositional speech creation as a universal phenomenon that in-
cludes pure “transrational” as an element. I use the phrase “compositional
speech creation” as a phenomenon distinct from “communicative speech
creation,” which produces linguistic forms that have already acquired a pre-
cisely fixed purpose in practical language (Boborykin’s “intelligentsia,”1 the
modern “Sovdep,”2 etc.). By contrast, compositional speech creation has no
practical fixed place and, superficially, seems to be its own purpose. The
main forms of such speech creation are literature and all kinds of everyday
“wordplay” (see above).

1. The Russian journalist and essayist Petr Boborykin introduced the word intelligentsia into the
Russian language as a term for the class engaged in intellectual activity.—Trans. 2. An abbreviation
for soviet deputatov, or “Council of Deputies.”—Trans.

292
 We may ask what social meaning compositional speech creation, partic-
ularly of the everyday kind, may have.
Any language system has two aspects: content and the forms in which that
content is bound. Language is the living, fluid energy of society, which evolves
together with and depending on the latter. But like any energy, language can
find a social use only when it acquires “commonly understood”—that is, firmly
fixed—skeletal forms, when it solidifies into unchanging constant crystals.
Naturally, such social clichés deaden language, make speech energy static,
and are thus in obvious contradiction with the need of language to evolve.
The evolutionary tendencies of language clash with the petrification of its
forms and force a breakthrough past these forms—their breakdown, altera-
tion, or at least partial shift. However, for forms to change at all, to be capable
of being changed, they absolutely must have one quality: plasticity. On the
other hand, practical forms of speech that require clear definitions do not
allow for any freedom or “plasticity,” which is the same thing. Utilitarian-
ism always demands strictly fixed constructions. And so bourgeois society
spontaneously and unconsciously achieves plasticity of construction outside
strictly utilitarian acts: in punts, witticisms, sayings, “illustrative” metaphors,
and so on. From this everyday mass speech creation are born millions of new
constructions, forms, neologisms, new roots, etc., etc. This entire newly cre-
ated supply of turns of speech that still lack a precise, objective usage enters
the sphere of practical action, undergoes a meticulous spontaneous selection,
and works as a kind of “reserve army” of language from which new practical
forms are drawn—forms of what becomes communicative rather than com-
positional speech creation. . . . Thus, poetry has always been nothing less than
an experimental laboratory of speech creation. But until futurism came along,
this social role of poetry was not consciously understood; it remained hidden
under the fetishized cover of poetic canons and other “intellectualisms.” Ex-
perimentation happened spontaneously, chaotically, partially.
The historic significance of the “transrationalists” lies precisely in the fact
that for the first time, this always-existing role of poetry has been revealed
by the form of the creative work itself. The “transrationalists” laid bare, and
began to do openly and consciously, what had been done unconsciously
before them. This expanded the sphere of creativity, its methods, and the
sum of its achievements. Poets became conscious organizers of linguistic
material. Simultaneously, the boundaries of speech creation collapsed. The
poet was no longer bound by inescapable traditional norms, and freedom of
experimentation—that sole condition of purposeful organizing activity—was
achieved. That many of Khlebnikov’s inventions were made by him outside
the poetical canon and offered in their pure form as experiments is no ac-
cident (see, for instance, his essay about neologisms formed from the word
“to fly” in the collection A Slap in the Face to Public Taste).

293
 NOTHINGISTS
DOG’S BOX, OR THE
WORKS OF THE
CREATIVE BUREAU
OF NOTHINGISTS
IN 1920–1921

INTO THE DOG’S BOX

Introduction
Our method of picking a title was inspired by Dadaists. They themselves
complain that “Dada means nothing!” Our path is almost the same as
theirs. They have to go right, we have to go left.
Or the other way round!
Our choice was guided by just. Just like that. We liked the combination
of two words, hence Dog’s Box.
It is compiled as an accessible guide to the home study of Nothingism.
“How you yourself can become a Nothingist in the shortest possible
time, without resorting to medicines or costly mechanical devices such
as the Spanish boot,” etc., etc.
The material is an operative summary of snatches from a grandiose
cinematographic shoot under the general title, “12 months of struggle
for the dictatorship of Nothingism over the arts.”
“The Dog’s Box” has been manufactured for purposes of undermining and
demoralizing fine literature, in accordance with the resolution of Creative of
Bureau of Nothingists of December 5, 1920.
Moscow, September 25, 1921. Khitrov Market, Soviet Water-Boiler.

Excerpts from Nichevoki. Sobachii iashchik ili trudy tvorcheskogo biuro nichevokov v techenie 1920–
1921, vypusk pervyi, ed. S. V. Sadikov (Moscow: “Khobo,” 1921).

294
 DECREE ON THE NOTHINGISTS OF POETRY
In the name of the Revolution of Spirit, we declare:
1. Any poetry that does not offer an individual approach to creativity, that
does not define a special worldview and sense of the world possessed only
by the individual, that does not deal with the inner meaning of phenomena
and things (meaning is nothing from the standpoint of matter), of both
objects and words, is at this point in time, starting in August 1920,
ANNULLED

2. Persons caught trafficking in annulled units of poetry or forging units of

Notpoetry (Nothingist Poetry) will be subject to trial by the Revolutionary
Tribunal of Nothingists, composed of Boris Zemenkov, Riurik Rok, and
Sergei Sadikov.
3. It is time to forcibly purge poetry of traditional and artisanal-poetic,
dung-like elements of life, in the name of collectivization of the entire be-
ing of the universal spirit and of the Mask of Nothing. This spirit does not
exist for materialists and cliché-bound idealists: For them, it is Nothing.
We are the first to raise the bricks of rebellion for Nothing.
WE ARE NOTHINGISTS.

4. The Nothingist sees in clear focus the modern crisis in the realities and
perceptions of the world: the crisis is in ourselves, in our spirit. In poetical
works, this crisis can be solved through refinement of image, of meter,
rhythm, instrumentation, and ending. (The only currently viable school of
poetry, Imaginism,1 is viewed by us as a partial method.) Refinement will
obliterate art and destroy it, reduce it to nothing and lead it into Nothing.
Our goal: the refinement of poetical works in the name of Nothing. It is
to take the verbal fabric and embroider upon it the experience of oneness
with the world and insight into it, into its image, color, smell, taste, etc.
Thus, Everything takes its beginning from Nothing. The means of repres-
entation through the formula n + 1 (where n = the element of representation
until this point in time and 1 = the new representation) must bring us to the
equation n + 1 = ∞; that is, Nothing: the purpose of eternity = Nothing. Hence:
5. In poetry, there is nothing; only Nothingists.
6. Life is heading toward the realization of our slogans:

1. Imaginism was founded in 1918 in Moscow by a group of poets that included Anatoly Mariengof,
Vadim Shershenevich, and Sergei Esenin, who wanted to distance themselves from the futurists.

295
 Anonymous
Nothingists: Dog’s Box, 1923

296
 Write nothing!
Read nothing!
Say nothing!
Print nothing!
Creative Bureau of Nothingists: Susanna Mar, Elena Nikolaeva, Aetsy
Ranov, Riurik Rok, Oleg Erberg
Chief Secretary: Sergei Sadikov
Rostov-on-the-Don, August 1920
The present decree was signed on April 17, 1921, in Moscow by the ex-
pressionist Boris Zemenkov, who joined the Russian Encampment of
Nothingists and became a member of the Creative Bureau of Nothingists
(TvorNichBuro).

DECREE ON PAINTING

In the name of Nothing!

In the name of the Liberation of the Uniqueness of Human Personality,
we declare:
1. Because empirical culture must move from the sphere of matter to the
sphere of spirit, any work of art that expresses itself outside the aesthetic
laws of correlation but directly demonstrates with its form and content,
the artist’s possession of a spiritual path, is considered permitted until
further notice.
2. Every work of art based on the principles of discrediting art acquires
market value only upon being presented to the Nothingists’ Revolution-
ary Tribunal for the purpose of considering its fitness for relevant patents
confirming its authenticity.
3. All forms of art not covered by paragraphs 1 and 2 of this decree are
annulled as of the date of its publication.
4. From the moment of the publication of this decree, every citizen has a
duty, on pain of being charged as an accomplice, to immediately report to
the Nothingists’ Revolutionary Tribunal any sightings of theories, opin-
ions, or artworks disseminated with the purpose of preserving art’s au-
thority and value.
Note: All products of thought that serve the above-mentioned criminal pur-
poses must be immediately confiscated while their owners must be subjec-
ted to disciplinary reeducation through the ideas of Nothing.

297
 5. In order to combat the degradation of the tangibility of our environment,
admission to any museum, exhibition, or art storeroom without an appro-
priate pass issued by the Nothingist Revolutionary Tribunal is considered
unacceptable.
On behalf of the TvorNichBuro,
Extraordinary Nothingist of Art, Boris Zemenkov
This decree issued on July 4, 1921
Moscow, Simonov Monastery

DECREE ON THE SEPARATION OF ART AND STATE

1. Declared today is the full separation of art and state.

2. As part of the orderly enforcement of this decree, we declare the state
to be incompetent in matters of managing the preparation, inventorying,
distribution, and oversight of the production of art.
3. The entire system of management, preparation, inventorying, distribu-
tion, and oversight of production units of art is entirely transferred, upon
the determination of current stocks and remainders, to the TvorNichBuro.
4. All registrations of artworks undertaken by the state with the purpose
of determining their value are no longer mandatory for anyone as of June
3 of this year.
5. The resolutions in Points 1 through 4 should be considered valid only
with the signatures and seal of the TvorNichBuro and the Secretariat of
the Russian Encampment of Nothingists.
6. This Decree is to be translated into all the world’s languages, sent to all
national associations and agencies of state authority, and presented to the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Large and Small Soviets of
People’s Commissars, and the next congress of the Comintern.
TvorNichBuro: Boris Zemenkov, Elena Nikolaeva, Aetsy Ranov, Riurik Rok,
Oleg Erberg
Chief Secretary: Sergei Sadikov
Address to the Dadaists
“Dada ne signifie rien!”
“That’s right:
‘Requiem Aeternam,’ you will write.”

298
 RUSSIA’S NOTHINGISTS TO THE WEST’S DADA

Upon the marked cards of the map of Old Europe, we throw down:
“Long live the last International of the ‘Dada of Light!’”
In our time, when every “new” art shamelessly begs for a slap in the face
from creative Sadism,
When the crumbling bars of charlatanism are no longer able to protect
poetry from the lynch mobs of a hell-bent reality—we will not rise up in
defense of the slandered Homer.
Because that too, like many other holy relics, has only one destination left:
the sausage of World Nothingism.
We say: “There is nothing in art.”
Our only creed is the ink-and-pen program of verbal terror.
To someone’s gentle, “Art is ahead of life, art teaches us . . .”—we club them
over the head.
We sound the alarm: “Watch out, citizens! Art is still safe!”
And furthermore: We know the value of our mastery. Once born, we inev-
itably perish, struck down by the rocks of our works, not made by human
hands.
To be translated into all the languages of the globe.
TvorNichBuro
Moscow, April 7, 1921.

299
 John Sraubenz
Vladimir Mayakovsky and Osip Brik, Berlin, 1923

300
 VLADIMIR
MAYAKOVSKY
AND OSIP BRIK
OUR LINGUISTIC
WORK, 1923

We work on the organization of language sounds, on the polyphony of the

rhythm, on the simplification of verbal constructions, on the accuracy of
verbal expressiveness, on the manufacture of new thematic devices.
All this work for us is not an aesthetic end in itself, but a workshop for the
best expression of the facts of the contemporary era.
We are not priest-creators, but master-executors of the social demand.
Our practice printed in Lef is not “absolute artistic revelations,” but
examples of work in progress.
Aseyev. Experiment in linguistic flight into the future.
Kamensky. Wordplay in all of its resoundingness.
Kruchenykh. Experiment with the use of jargon phonetics to give form
to antireligious and political themes.
Pasternak. Use of dynamic syntax to fulfill the revolutionary task.
Tretyakov. Experiment with march constructions to give an organiza-
tion to revolutionary anarchy.
Khlebnikov. Achievement of maximal expressiveness by means of con-
versational language cleansed of all previous poetic elements.
Mayakovsky. Experiment with polyphonic rhythm in narrative poems
with broad social scope.
Brik. Experiment with laconic prose on a contemporary theme.
Vittfogel. Experiment with communist agit-skits without the usual im-
perialistic craziness of revolutionary mysticism.

V. V. Mayakovsky and O. M. Brik, “Nasha slovesnaia rabota,” Lef, no. 1 (1923): 40–41, in Russian
Futurism through Its Manifestoes, 1912–1928, ed. and trans. Anna Lawton and Herbert Eagle (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1988), 202–3.

301
 Aleksandr Rodchenko
Cover of the journal Lef, no. 2, 1923

302
 LEF
DECLARATION:
COMRADES,
ORGANIZERS
OF LIFE!, 1923

Today, the First of May, the workers of the world will demonstrate in their
millions with song and festivity.
Five years of attainments, ever increasing.
Five years of slogans renewed and realized daily.
Five years of victory.
And—
Five years of monotonous designs for celebrations.
Five years of languishing art.

So-called Stage Managers!

How much longer will you and other rats continue to gnaw at this the-
atrical sham?
Organize according to real life!
Plan the victorious procession of the Revolution!

So-called Poets!
When will you throw away your sickly lyrics?
Will you ever understand that to sing praises of a tempest according to
newspaper information is not to sing praises about a tempest?
Give us a new Marseillaise and let the Internationale thunder the march
of the victorious Revolution!

So-called Artists!
Stop making patches of color on moth-eaten canvases.
Stop decorating the easy life of the bourgeoisie.
Exercise your artistic strength to engirdle cities until you are able to
take part in the whole of global construction!

“Tovarishchi—formovshchiki zhizni!,” Lef, no. 2 (April–May 1923): 3–4, in Russian Art of the Avant-
Garde, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 199–202.

303
 Give the world new colors and outlines!
We know that the “priests of art” have neither strength nor desire to
meet these tasks: they keep to the aesthetic confines of their studios.

On this day of demonstration, the First of May, when proletarians are

gathered on a united front, we summon you, organizers of the world:
Break down the barriers of “beauty for beauty’s sake”; break down the
barriers of those nice little artistic schools!
Add your strength to the united energy of the collective!
We know that the aesthetics of the old artists, whom we have branded
“rightists,” revive monasticism and await the holy spirit of inspiration, but
they will not respond to our call.
We summon the “leftists”: the revolutionary futurists, who have given
the streets and squares their art; the productivists, who have squared ac-
counts with inspiration by relying on the inspiration of factory dynamos;
the constructivists, who have substituted the processing of material for the
mysticism of creation.
Leftists of the world!
We know few of your names, or the names of your schools, but this we
do know—wherever revolution is beginning, there you are advancing.
We summon you to establish a single front of leftist art—the “Red Art
International.”

Comrades!
Split leftist art from rightist everywhere!
With leftist art prepare the European Revolution; in the U.S.S.R.
strengthen it.
Keep in contact with your staff in Moscow (Journal Lef, 8 Nikitsky
Boulevard, Moscow).

Not by accident did we choose the First of May as the day of our call.
Only in conjunction with the Workers’ Revolution can we see the dawn
of future art.
We, who have worked for five years in a land of revolution, know:
That only October has given us new, tremendous ideas that demand
new artistic organization.
That the October Revolution, which liberated art from bourgeois en-
slavement, has given real freedom to art.
Down with the boundaries of countries and of studios!
Down with the monks of rightist art!
Long live the single front of the leftists!
Long live the art of the Proletarian Revolution!

304
Varvara Stepanova’s sports clothing
and Aleksandr Rodchenko’s designs
for insignia for the state airline Dobrolet
Double page of the journal Lef, no. 2, 1923

305
 Sergei Senkin
Illustration for the journal Young Guard, 1924

306
 VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY
LENIN AS A
DECANONIZER, 1924

Lenin’s style is characterized, in particular, by the absence of incantation.

Every speech or article seems to start from scratch. There is no pre-
set terminology; it appears only in the middle of each piece, as a specific
product of the analytical work.
Lenin’s arguments with his opponents—be they enemies or fellow party
members—usually begin a debate on “words”—an assertion that words
have changed.
As for the “element of language,” which Lenin understood quite well,
he had a peculiar attitude toward it that could be described as ironic push-
back.
“I would very much like, for instance, to take several gostrests1 (as we
say in that beautiful Russian language [Ivan] Turgenev praises so highly)
and show how we can manage a business” (“The Principal Tasks of the
Party under NEP,” p. 137). Here, the irony seems to be directed at the coin-
age gostrest.
But here’s another example.
“Of this, we are unaware; there is still a remnant of Communist smug-
ness, or comsmugness, as we’d say it in that same great Russian language”
(ibid., p. 139). Fascinatingly, in this instance, the word is created before
our very eyes, even as it is deliberately shown to be in conflict with the
“element of language”—which, actually, exists for the sole purpose of being
in conflict with it.
The formula, when it appears in Lenin’s agit-work as an agitator, is
constructed in a way that keeps it from becoming fixed.
Lenin despises people who have memorized books. The essence of his
style is to bring revolutionary rhetoric down to earth, to replace its tradi-
tional words with everyday synonyms.
In this sense, Lenin’s style lies close, in its principal technique, to that
of Leo Tolstoy. Lenin opposes naming; each time, he establishes a new re-

Viktor Shklovskii, excerpts from“Lenin kak dekanonizator,” Lef, no. 1 (1924): 53–56.

1. State trusts.—Trans

307
 lationship between word and object, without naming things and without
making the new name stick. . . .
DO NOT TRADE IN LENIN!

The following announcement has appeared in our newspapers:

“ANNOUNCEMENT:

BUSTS OF V.I. LENIN

plaster, patina, bronze, marble, granite

LIFE-SIZE OR DOUBLE-LIFE-SIZE

made from the original, authorized for reproduction and distribution by

the Commission on Preserving the Eternal Memory of V. I. LENIN
MADE BY THE SCULPTOR

S. D. MERKULOV

OFFERED BY STATE PUBLISHING

for government offices, party and professional organizations, cooperatives,

etc.
EACH UNIT IS AUTHORIZED

can be viewed and ordered

at the Department of COMMERCIAL PUBLISHING, Moscow, Rozhdestvenka, 4
Illustrated brochures will be mailed free of charge upon request.
UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION AND COPYING WILL BE PROSECUTED UNDER
THE LAW.”

We are against this.

We agree with the railway workers of the Kazan Railroad who asked an
artist to design their club’s Lenin Room with no busts or portraits of Lenin,
saying, “We do not want icons.”
We insist:
Do not turn Lenin into a cliché.
Do not print his portraits on posters, tablecloths, plates, tea mugs, or cigar
holders.
Do not bronze Lenin.
Do not take away his living step, his humanity, which he was able to pre-

308
serve even as he steered history.
Lenin is still our contemporary.
He is still among the living.
We need him as a living man, not a dead man.
That is why:
Learn from Lenin but do not canonize him.
Do not create a cult in the name of a man who spent his entire life fighting
against all sorts of cults.
Do not trade in objects of this cult.
Do not trade in Lenin!

309
 ROMAN JAKOBSON
LETTERS FROM
THE WEST. DADA, 1921

The word dada expresses the internationality of the movement,” Huelsen-

beck writes. The very question “What is Dada?” is itself un-dadaistic and
sophomoric, he also notes. “‘What does Dada want?”—Dada doesn’t want
anything. “I am writing a manifesto and I don’t want anything . . . and I
am on principle against manifestoes, as I am also against principles,” Tzara
declares.
No matter what you accuse Dada of, you can’t accuse it of being dis-
honest, of concealment, of hedging its bets. Dada honorably perceives the
“limitedness of its existence in time”; it relativizes itself historically, in its
own words. Meanwhile, the first result of establishing a scientific view of
artistic expression, that is, the laying bare of the device, is the cry: “The old
art is dead” or “Art is dead,” depending on the temperament of the person
doing the yelling. The first call was issued by the Futurists, hence “Vive le
futur!” The second, not without some stipulations, was issued by Dada—
what business of theirs, of artists, is the future?—“A bas le futur!” So the
improviser from Odoevsky’s story, having received the gift of a clarity of
vision which laid everything bare, ends his life as a fool in a cap scrawling
transrational verses. The laying bare of the device is sharp; it is precisely a
laying bare; the already laid-bare device—no longer in sharp confrontation
with the code (à la langue)—is vapid, it lacks flavor. The initially laid-bare
device is usually justified and regulated by so-called constructive laws,
but, for example, the path from rhyme to assonance to a set toward any
relationship between sounds leads to the announcement that a laundry
list is a poetic work. Then letters in arbitrary order, randomly struck on
a typewriter, are considered verses; dabs on a canvas made by a donkey’s
tail dipped in paint are considered a painting. With Dada’s appeal, “Dilet-
tantes, rise up against art,” we have gone from yesterday’s cult of “made
things” (say, refined assonance) to the poetics of the first word let slip
(a laundry list). What is dada by profession? To use an expression from

Roman Iakobson, “Pis’ma s zapada Dada,” Vestnik teatra, no. 82 (February 8, 1921): 3–7, trans. Stephen
Rudy in Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910–1930, ed. Timothy
O. Benson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 359–63.

310
Anonymous
Lili Brik, Osip Brik, Roman Jakobson, and Vladimir
Mayakovsky, Bad Flinsberg, Germany, 1923

Moscow artistic jargon, the Dadaists are “painters of the world.” They have
more declarations than poems and pictures. And actually in their poems
and pictures there is nothing new, even if only in comparison to Italian and
Russian Futurism. Tatlin’s Maschinenkunst, universal poems made up of
vowels, round verses (Simultaneism), the music of noise (Bruitism), Prim-
itivism—a sort of poetic Berlitz:

311
 Meine Mutter sagte mir verjage die Hühner
Ich ober kann nicht fortjagen die Hühner.
(Tzara)
Finally, paroxysms of naive realism: “Dada has common sense and in a
chair sees a chair, in a plum—a plum.”
But the crux of the matter lies elsewhere, and the Dadaists understand
this. “Dada is not an artistic movement,” they say. “In Switzerland Dada
is for abstract [nonobjective] art, in Berlin—against.” What is important is
that, having finished once and for all with the principle of the legendary co-
alition of form and content, through a realization of the violence of artistic
form, the toning down of pictorial and poetic semantics, through the color
and texture as such of the nonobjective picture, through the fanatic word
of transrational verses as such, we come in Russia to the blue grass of the
first celebrations of October and in the West to the unambiguous Dadaist
formula: “Nous voulons nous voulons nous voulons pisser en couleurs
diverses.” Coloring as such! Only the canvas is removed, like an act in a
sideshow one has grown tired of.
Poetry and painting became for Dada one of the acts of the sideshow.
Let us be frank: poetry and painting occupy in our consciousness an excess-
ively high position only because of tradition. “The English are so sure of the
genius of Shakespeare that they don’t consider it necessary even to read
him,” as Aubrey Beardsley puts it. We are prepared to respect the classics
but for reading prefer literature written for train rides, detective stories,
novels about adultery, that whole area of “belles-lettres” in which the word
makes itself least heard. Dostoevsky, if one reads him inattentively, quickly
becomes a cheap best seller, and it is hardly by chance that in the West
they prefer to see his works in the movies. If the theaters are full, then it
is more a matter of tradition than of interest on the part of the public. The
theater is dying: the movies are blossoming. The screen ceases bit by bit to
be the equivalent of the stage; it frees itself of the theatrical unities, of the
theatrical mise en scène. The aphorism of the Dadaist Mehring is timely:
“The popularity of an idea springs from the possibility of transferring onto
film its anecdotal content.” For variety’s sake the Western reader is willing
to accept a peppering of self-valuable words. The Parisian newspaper Le
Siècle states: “We need a literature which the mind can savor like a cocktail.”
During the last decade, no one has brought to the artistic market so much
varied junk of all times and places as the very people who reject the past. It
should be understood that the Dadaists are also eclectics, though theirs is
not the museum-bound eclecticism of respectful veneration, but a motley
cafe chantant program (not by chance was Dada born in a cabaret in Zurich).
A little song of the Maoris takes turns with a Parisian music hall number, a

312
sentimental lyric—with the above-mentioned color effect. “I like an old work
for its novelty. Only contrast links us to the past,” Tzara explains.
One should take into account the background against which Dada is
frolicking in order to understand certain of its manifestations. For ex-
ample, the infantile anti-French attacks of the French Dadaists and the
anti-German attacks of the Germans ten years ago might sound naive and
purposeless. But today, in the countries of the Entente there rages an almost
zoological nationalism, while in response to it in Germany there grows the
hypertrophied national pride of an oppressed people. The Royal British
Society contemplates refusing Einstein a medal so as not to export gold to
Germany, while the French newspapers are outraged by the fact that Ham-
sun, who according to rumor was Germanophile during the war, was given
a Nobel Prize. The politically innocent Dada arouses terrible suspicion on
the part of those same papers that it is some sort of German machination,
while those papers print advertisements for “nationalistic double beds.”
Against this background, the Dadaist Fronde is quite understandable. At
the present moment, when even scientific ties have been severed, Dada is
one of the few truly international societies of the bourgeois intelligentsia.
By the way, it is a unique Internationale; the Dadaist Bauman lays his
cards on the table when he says that “Dada is the product of international
hotels.” The environment in which Dada was reared was that of the ad-
venturistic bourgeois of the war—the profiteers, the nouveaux riches, the
Schieberen, the black marketeers, or whatever else they were called. Dada’s
sociopsychological twins in old Spain gave birth to the so-called picaresque
novel. They know no traditions (“je ne veux même pas savoir s’il y a eu des
homes avant moi”); their future is doubtful (“à bas le futur”); they are in
hurry to take what is theirs (“give and take, live and die”). They are ex-
ceptionally supple and adaptable (“one can perform contrary actions at
the same time, in a single, fresh breath”); they are artists at what they do
(“advertising and business are also poetic elements”). They do not object
to the war (“still today for war”); yet they are the first to proclaim the cause
of erasing the boundaries between yesterday’s warring powers (“me, I’m
of many nationalities”). When it comes right down to it, they are satisfied
and therefore prefer bars (“he holds war and peace in his toga, but decides
in favor of a cherry brandy flip”). Here, amid the “cosmopolitan mixture of
god and the bordello,” in Tzara’s testimonial, Dada is born.
“The time is Dada-ripe,” Huelsenbeck assures us. “With Dada it will
ascend, and with Dada it will vanish.”

313
 SERGEI SHARSHUN
MY PARTICIPATION
IN THE FRENCH DADA
MOVEMENT, 1967

I made my first acquaintance with the French Dadaists in Barcelona in 1916.

I organized an exhibition of my paintings, which allowed me to recon-
nect or connect with the Parisian Boheme.
Among them was Otho Lloyd, with whom I had spent two years study-
ing at the cubist Académie La Palette. He considered himself the nephew
of Oscar Wilde. He was married to the Russian artist Olga Sakharova.1
Also in Barcelona was the poet Maximilien Gauthier later an art critic.
(He too had a Russian wife.) He was the editor-in-chief of the journal 391,
published by the Bohemian snob Francis Picabia, who had by then moved
from Barcelona to New York; after four issues the journal stopped publish-
ing (but was later revived).
Then, Otho Lloyd’s brother Arthur Cravan, whose Dadaist life was the
subject of much discussion in Paris, arrived. He was planning to turn all of
Barcelona upside down. Not long after, his life ended tragically.
Also living in Barcelona was the painter Marie Laurencin, who had
married a German artist before the war.
After my return in Paris, I was present at the Dadaist showing at the
Salle Gaveau.2 After that, I sent a drawing to Francis Picabia by mail.
Later, I ran into him at Povolotsky’s Russian bookstore, where a Dadaist
exhibition was being prepared.3
Someone asked him for permission to attend the opening. Then I mus-
tered the courage to do the same. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Sharshun.”
“You can come, your drawing is printed in the journal.”
At the opening of the exhibition, Jean Cocteau was “exposing” the Pa-
risians to jazz band music.
In response, Tristan Tzara—not a creator but a destroyer, the man who
truly inspired Dadaism—spent a long time honking a vehicle horn by his
ear at deafening volume.

Sergei Sharshun, “Moe uchastie vo frantzuskom dadaisticheskom dvizhenii,” Almanakh Vozdushnye puti
5 (1967).
1. Olga Sakharova was a painter and a graphic artist. In 1917–1924, she belonged to the circle of the
international avant-garde journal 391. 2. The Dada festival was held at the Salle Gaveau on Rue La
Boétie in Paris on May 26, 1920. It was one of the Dadaists’ most scandalous actions. 3. The Picabia
exhibition at Povolotsky’s shop (Galerie Povolotsky) was held from December 10 to December 25, 1920.

314
Man Ray
Sergei Sharshun in His Studio, 1925

I started coming to Picabia’s Sunday gatherings dressed in a Russian

army uniform dyed black.
Once, Picabia lamented that he hadn’t found a partner for sneaking
across the Spanish border during the war.
“I wouldn’t have said no to that, mon vieux!” I blurted out. There fol-
lowed an awkward silence, which Picabia finally broke with a brief excla-
mation of approval.
Another time, someone mentioned Einstein. “Einstein . . . isn’t that so?”
Picabia responded. That was the end of it.
Once or twice, the “young ones” played cards. One of them, when losing,
would take out his wallet, hold it open, and then hide it again.
The composers [Francis] Poulenc and [Georges] Auric were frequent visi-
tors.
By then, I had published my first printed work: the poem “Foule im-
mobile” [The Immobile Crowd], kindly edited by Philippe Soupault and
illustrated by six of my own drawings.
Once, I showed several of my drawings. Cocteau declared that only
[Georges] Braque could draw like that. I did not find it appropriate to give
him one of them as an expression of gratitude for such a comment; but an-
other time he made drawings, merrily and mockingly scattering them across
the table, of dozens of scenes from the love life of a sophisticated couple,
and I asked his permission, not without embarrassment, and took five or
six of them.

315
 But then Picabia invented the painting-collage L’oeil cacodylate [The
Cacodylic Eye].
A blank canvas about one-and-a-half meters high, with the title “L’oeil
cacodylate” scrawled at the very top and an eye painted in the lower right
part, was set up in the reception hall, to be filled with the signatures of
fashionable celebrities.
Everyone signed politely.
The Napoleonic Tzara, however, handled it differently. He wrote, “I
consider myself very . . .” (the phrase was completed in another part of the
canvas: “likeable”). Of course he signed off with a huge flourish, then glued
an aspirin pill onto the canvas and drew an index finger. (Usually, he would
draw a revolver next to his signature.)
The honor was soon offered to me as well, fairly early on; the canvas
was still more or less empty.
Like all of humanity in those days, I was, of course, “delighted” by the
Bolshevist revolution and was hoping to go to the Paradise on Earth.
A quiet man by ethnicity and heritage, and therefore little-noticed (I
was tolerated only for my “looks” and external appearance), I probably
surprised everyone by outlining a fat “S. Charchoune” right underneath the
eye, then, to the left of it, a vertical “Sharshun,” Mongolian-style, and under-
neath it all, in a descending slanted line, “Soleil Russe” [The Russian Sun].
The anarchist snob Picabia seemed rather perplexed by my stunt, say-
ing, “This will get me in trouble.”
However, he probably soon calmed down: as the painting filled with
signatures, my exclamation was lost in the general mass.
Although someone did tell me that he saw my painting L’oeil cacodylate
at the restaurant Boeuf sur le toit [Bull on the Roof ], which had acquired the
work.
A retired major (commandant) who also left his signature advised me to
offer my services as an interpreter to an author who was planning to make
a flight along the Russian borders.
I went to see him at the Issy-les-Moulineaux airport, but the job had
already been filled.
“Give my greetings to Lenin,” Roland Dorgelès told me sardonically. “I
most certainly will,” I replied.
“Give [Henri] Gilbeaux a trashing for me,” said Tzara.
Picabia asked Isadora Duncan for her signature, and she expressed in-
terest in finding out through me how to travel to Russia.
I was slightly acquainted with one particular Bolshevik Party member
and, after making inquiries with him, went with Picabia to see Duncan.
This led to her “vulgar” marriage to [Sergei] Esenin.

316
 On Thursdays, I also visited the La Certa coffeehouse near the Grand
Boulevards, which served as a gathering place for Dadaists (other than
Picabia). Once, “[Pierre] Drieu de la Rochelle. showed up. However, I was
present only as a silent observer/eyewitness; the regulars hardly even knew
the sound of my voice.
While preparing for the arrival of the German artist Max Ernst in Paris,
Tzara organized an exhibition of his work at the bookshop Au san Pareil.
He asked me to come to such-and-such place, on such-and-such day, at
such-and-such hour.
Ernst’s paintings were being hung for display.
The only ones present were André Breton, Philippe Soupault, Benjamin
Péret, Jacques Rigaut, and me.
Breton, who had walked from the Latin quarter to Etoile, passing dozens
of bakeries on the way, asked the owner of the bookshop, who was involved
in the arts, to bring him “a croissant.”
He took this in stride and quickly brought one for each of us.
Such is the tradition of the relationship between master and apprentice.
The six of us (including the owner) had our photograph taken for the
press.
A while later, an exhibition of Dadaist antiart was organized at the gal-
lery of the Comédie des Champs-Élysées theater—and, of course, there was
also an antiliterary performance.
I exhibited The Virgin Mary of Salpingite, composed of the only sculp-
ture I had made in my life—the small, wooden futuristic sculpture The
Dance—with shirt collars and neckties hung on it and around it.
Overhead, there was paper tape glued all along the cornice under the
ceiling, covered with exclamations and sayings.
I wrote in Russian, “I’m here!”
One of the evening’s numbers was a performance by an itinerant fa-
ience pottery repairman whom Tristan Tzara had brought over, and who
squeaked out a professional-quality song on a pipe.
Also performing was my friend Valentin Iakovlevich Parnakh, the Rus-
sian poet and dancer; he lay down on the table and danced to music by
jerking and bouncing.
In the third number, four or five participants, led by Frenkel, walked
single file through the hall past the public, and each solemnly received a
gift from the author: a match.
I felt that I should participate in this and joined at the back of the line,
but I was told in a whisper to leave the group, and so I went backstage.
The walls of the corridor that led to the hall were covered with Dadaist
magazines, almost all published by Tzara.

317
 I went in there “during the show.”
One of the movement’s hangers-on, the one who had so conscien-
tiously paid his gambling debts, was ripping the magazines down shout-
ing, “Boche!”4
I don’t remember how I met Marcel Duchamp, who never attended any
gatherings. He was favorably disposed toward me.
Then, once again, Tristan Tzara told me to come to the hall of the So-
ciété Savante.5
I had often attended Russian social gatherings, which took place in that
hall, selling (without much success) émigré books.
The security guards were surprised to see me among “these gentlemen.”
This time, the planned event was the “Trial of Barrès.”6 Participants
donned white doctor’s gowns and four-cornered black caps.
I was given the role of calling witnesses. Picabia was sitting in the audience.
The chairman, Andre Breton, would turn to me and ask me to call a wit-
ness—for instance, Monsignor Giuseppe Ungaretti. I would go to the door
that led to the hall and call out, “Signor Giuseppe Ungaretti!” Or “bring
the “German Unknown Soldier,” and I’d call out, “der Unbekannte Soldat!”
(The French public saw this universalism as Dadaist.)
André Gide, who was then collecting material for his novel Les faux-
monnayeurs [The Counterfeiters] and who, I think, attended the trial, called
his heroes’ little magazine Fer à repasser [The Clothes Iron], borrowing it
from one of my drawings for the poem “La foule immobile.”
I don’t like drawing, but Tzara asked me to illustrate his poem “Coeur
à gaz” [The Gas Heart], and I gave him 7 or 8 drawings.
However, Max Ernst’s drawings were unquestionably better.
Eventually, Tzara had in his possession several of my drawings and
paintings, which he intended to get published in magazines in several
countries. (They all ended up being lost.)
As the commander of the Dadaist army, he had, of course, no compunc-
tion about building his Nietzschean career on the “dead bodies” of others.
From Michel Samouillet’s work Dadaïsme à Paris [Dadaism in Paris],
published in 1965, I learned that Tzara had issued leaflets signed with my
name, that he had reissued 25 copies of “Foule immobile,” and that he had
used my name whenever he needed to.
Such things were common practice in those days.

4. French slur for “German.” 5. “Learned Society.” 6. The “Trial of Maurice Barrès” (May 13, 1921)
was one of the key theatricalized actions of the Dada movement, held at the Hall of the Learned
Society. Auguste-Maurice Barrès was a French nationalist writer whose work and extremist ideology
during World War I were at odds with the “new spirit” of Dada. Participants in the trial included
well-known Dadaists as well as Sergei Sharshun and Sergei Romov.

318
 At the time, there were two émigré groups on Montparnasse: “The
Gatarapak” and “The Chamber of Poets.” The latter was created by the
aforementioned V. Ia. Parnakh. It was made up of five people: G. S. Evan-
gulov (the founder), A. S. Ginger, M. Talov, and me.
The refugee tradition of holding benefit events flourished.
I called mine “Dada-lyr-can” (lyricism, Dadaist-style chirping) and
asked the Dadaists to participate.7
For that event, I wrote a booklet on Dadaism, which I had printed later
in Germany in a batch of 1,500 or 2,000 copies, intending to take it back
to Russia with me. But because of the collapse of the deutschmark I was
unable to collect it and could only “extract” a few copies from the printing
shop (I don’t have a single copy for reissuing it).
Some Dadaists read their works, including Paul Éluard, who recited his
both in the “common” and in the inverted sense.
An American Dadaist who had just arrived from New York—I think it
was Nicholson—recited several German poems by the sculptor Hans Arp.
Members of the audience deemed it wise to express their protest with
weak booing.8 A few weeks later, nearly all of those in attendance were
in Berlin.
Finally, in 1921 I started to take action to realize my plan to go back to
Russia and came to Berlin, but after 14 months, obeying instinct, returned
to Paris.
During that time, Dadaism had run out of steam.
Picabia and Tzara had exhausted themselves and lost the fighting spirit.
The throne of newly created surrealism had been occupied by A[ndré]
Breton, who had rewarded all of his allies with red cards.
For that reason, I did not renew my contacts with any of my former
friends.
Personal discipline was enough for me. My involvement with Dadaism
happened only because I was so young.
P.S. Several of my drawings were reproduced in Manomètre and Merz.
Not a single one of my texts was published. Only on one occasion did
Tzara inform me at Café Certa that he was gathering material for a Dadaist
poetry collection. But the submissions deadline had expired the day before.
Out of sheer naïveté, when I got home I sent him something by pneu-
matic post.

7. The event was held on December 21, 1921, at the Café Caméléon. 8. Paul Éluard, in a letter to
Tristan Tzara (January 4, 1922), described this evening as follows: “You have probably heard about
Sharshun’s soiree. The most swinish of Russians had boredom reflected in their eyes.” Quoted in
Samouillet, Dada in Paris, p. 279.

319
LIST OF Anonymous
Ilia Zdanevich, 1912
Anonymous
Vasily Kamensky,
Tiflis, ca. 1917
Gelatin silver print

WORKS Gelatin silver print

11.2 x 8.6 cm
Kazan, 1914
Gelatin silver print
14 x 9 cm
Archives Iliazd
Archives Iliazd 13 x 8.5 cm France
France The State p. 182
p. 22 Mayakovsky
Museum, Moscow Anonymous
Anonymous 29866 Leaflet to the Russian
Mikhail Larionov, p. 173 citizens about the fall
Natalia Goncharova of the provisional
and Ilia Zdanevich, Anonymous government
Moscow, 1913 Vladimir Tatlin, and Bolsheviks
Berlin, 1914 seizing power, 25
Gelatin silver print
Gelatin silver print October, 1917
16.8 x 21.2 cm
37 x 29.5 cm Letterpress
Archives Iliazd
Russian State 15.9 x 13.9 cm
France
Archives of Archivo Lafuente
p. 258 Literature and Art 010990/000
f. 2089, op. 2, ed.
Anonymous khr. 31, l. 1
David Burliuk, Anonymous
p. 125 Multiple portrait of
Vladimir
Mayakovsky, and Gustav Klutsis, 1917
Anonymous Gelatin silver print
Andrei Shemshurin, “Easter at Futurists”
Moscow, 1914 8.5 x 13.5 cm
and “Tramway
Private Collection
Gelatin silver print V” illustration in
p. 70
12 x 18 cm the journal Blue
The State Journal, no. 12, 1915
Anonymous
Mayakovsky Offset
Multiple portrait
Museum, Moscow 30 x 22 cm
of Marcel
10925 The State Museum of
Duchamp, 1917
p. 231 Contemporary Art-
Gelatin silver print
Costakis Collection
(printed 2018)
Anonymous 2 objects AB059
20 x 33 cm
Filippo Tommaso and CDA-0145
Courtesy of Francis
Marinetti in Moscow, pp. 35–36
M. Naumann Fine Art
illustration in the
Anonymous p. 71
newspaper Nov,
January 28, 1914 “0,10: The Last
Futurist Exhibition Anonymous
Offset Cover of Final
19 x 28.5 cm in Petrograd,”
illustration in Dissolution: Dada
The State Manifesto by
Ogonek, no. 1, 1916
Mayakovsky Walter Serner,
Printed 2018
Museum, Moscow Hannover, 1920
Russian State Library
BG-1914/101 Letterpress
p. 42
22 x 14.5 cm
Anonymous The State
Anonymous
Filippo Tommaso Gustav Klutsis Mayakovsky
Marinetti, illustration as a soldier in Museum, Moscow
in the newspaper the Latvian rifles И-784
Nov, January 26, 1914 detachment, 1917
Offset Gelatin silver print Anonymous
29 x 30 cm 14 x 8.7 cm Cover of the book
The State Private Collection Zaum by Aleksei
Mayakovsky Kruchenykh, 1921
Museum, Moscow Anonymous Ink and color
BG-1914/102 Ilia and Kirill pencil on paper
p. 262 Zdanevich, 18.3 x 15.7 cm

321
 The State Mayakovsky Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous
Museum, Moscow Lili Brik, Osip Brik, Leaflet of the group Vladimir Mayakovsky
33345(40) Roman Jakobson, Nothingists, ca. 1924 and David Burliuk,
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Letterpress New York, 1925
Anonymous Bad Flinsberg, 18 x 18 cm Gelatin silver print
Leaflet of the Germany, 1923 The State Mayakovsky 13.5 x 11.5 cm
manifesto Dada Raises Gelatin silver print Museum, Moscow The State Mayakovsky
Everything, Paris, 1921 13.6 x 8.7 cm 9844 Museum, Moscow
Letterpress The State Mayakovsky p. 191 И-929
27.5 x 21 cm Museum, Moscow
The State Mayakovsky Anonymous Anonymous
31000
Museum, Moscow Leaflet of the group Aleksandr Rodchenko,
p. 311
Nothingists, ca. 1924 and Varvara
10691
Letterpress Stepanova, and Olga
Anonymous
18 x 18 cm Rodchenko, in an
Anonymous Nothingists: Dog’s
The State Mayakovsky impromptu action
View of Ivan Puni’s Box, 1923
Museum, Moscow ca. 1925 
exhibition in Der Letterpress
9843 16 mm film
Sturm Gallery, 24.3 x 15 cm
p. 191 transferred to DVD,
Berlin, 1921 The State Mayakovsky b/w, silent, 21”
Gelatin silver print Museum, Moscow Private Collection
18.5 x 24 cm Anonymous
28155(543)
Private Collection Leaflet of the group
p. 296 Anonymous
p. 130 Nothingists, ca. 1924
Arp with naval
Anonymous Letterpress
monocle, 1926
Anonymous Page from the journal 19 x 22.5 cm
Gelatin silver print
Wandering Musicians The State Mayakovsky
Clarté, no. 39, with (printed 2018)
(double portrait of Museum, Moscow
Maurice Pirijianine’s Stiftung Arp e.V.,
Aleksandr Rodchenko 9845
review of The Bearded Berlin/Rolandswerth
and Varvara Heart soiree, “Le p. 138
Anonymous
Stepanova), 1921 Dadaisme boxeé par
Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Gelatin silver print les siens” [Dadaism Anonymous
Valentina
23.5 x 16.5 cm is boxing with Vasily Ermilov in
Khodasevich, Elza his studio with an
Private Collection itself ], 13 July 1923
Triolet, Klara Goll, advertising design
p. 244 Letterpress Ivan Goll, and Robert for “Read Books” by
29 x 22.7 cm Delaunay (left to
Anonymous Archives Iliazd France Valerian Polishchiuk
right), Paris, 1924 (left), ca. 1926
Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Gelatin silver Gelatin silver
Berlin, 1922 Anonymous
print (postcard) print, ca. 1926
Gelatin silver print View of Pavel 9 x 13.8 cm (printed 2018)
22 x 16.2 cm Mansurov’s exhibition The State Mayakovsky
The State Mayakovsky Central State
in the Museum of Museum, Moscow Archives, Museum
Museum, Moscow Artistic Culture, 11144 of Literature and
11222 Leningrad, 1923 p. 144 Arts of Ukraine
Gelatin silver print
p. 118
Anonymous 23.5 x 17.5 cm Anonymous
Exhibition of Private Collection Ilia Zdanevich Anonymous
Paintings of the p. 84 performing as David Burliuk, n.d.
Petrograd Artists of live painting The Cut-and-pasted
All Trends, 1923 Anonymous Triumph of Cubism papers, gold paint,
16 mm film David Burliuk, in the Banal Ball, and pencil on paper
transferred to DVD, New York, 1924 Paris, March 1924 13.7 x 13.5 cm
b/w, silent, 32” Gelatin silver print Gelatin silver print Russian State
Russian State 13.5 x 8.6 cm 18 x 13 cm Archives of
Documentary Film The State Mayakovsky Archives Iliazd France Literature and Art
and Photo Archive, Museum, Moscow p. 166 f. 1334, op. 1, ed. khr.
Krasnogorsk 32086 1085, ll. 109–110
pp. 84, 249, 274 p. 151 p. 154

322
Anonymous Natan Altman, Natalia Hans Arp Lithograph
Proletariat of Goncharova, Nikolai In front of the 33.5 x 23.7 cm
the World Unite: Kulbin (cover), Schwitters’ house Vladimir Dahl Russian
Organization of Kazimir Malevich, in Hannover (left State Literary Museum
Production Victory over and Olga Rozanova to right: Helma GLM KP 12210/21
a Capitalist Structure Cover and illustrations Schwitters, 
Lithograph for the book unidentified, Kurt Ksenia
17.9 x 45.5 cm Explodity by Aleksei Schwitters, Nelly Boguslavskaia
The State Museum Kruchenykh, Saint van Doesburg, Theo Dressmaker,
of Contemporary Art- Petersburg, 1913 van Doesburg, and El illustration for the
Costakis Collection Lissitzky, with Ernst portfolio October
Lithograph
139.80-244 Schwitters), 1922 1917–1918: Heroes
17.8 x 12.4 cm
pp. 104–105 Gelatin silver print and Victims of the
Archivo Lafuente
4.5 x 6.5 cm Revolution by Vladimir
006848/000
Anonymous Archivo Lafuente Mayakovsky, 1918
p. 29
Scenes from 005687/000 Lithograph
World War I p. 136 33.7 x 24 cm
Natan Altman
documentary, n.d. Vladimir Dahl Russian
Cover and illustrations Arseny Avraamov State Literary Museum
16 mm film for the book Lenin:
transferred to DVD, Symphony of Factory GLM KP 12210/24
Drawings, Saint Sirens, composed to
b/w, silent, 6’08” Petersburg, 1921 celebrate the fifth Ksenia
Russian State 23.4 x 19.1 cm anniversary of the Boguslavskaia
Documentary Film
Lithograph October Revolution, Kulak, illustration for
and Photo Archive,
Archivo Lafuente performed in the portfolio October
Krasnogorsk
006920/000 Baku in 1922 and 1917–1918: Heroes
p. 94 Moscow in 1923 and Victims of the
Anonymous
28’10” Revolution by Vladimir
Untitled (First Room/
Natan Altman Published by Mayakovsky, 1918
Ceiling), n.d.
Russia: Work, 1921 ReR Megacorp, Lithograph
Watercolor and
Charcoal on paper London, 2008 33 x 24.2 cm
graphite on paper
mounted on mahogany Courtesy Miguel Vladimir Dahl Russian
37.7 x 57.8 cm
98.2 x 49.3 cm Molina Alarcón, State Literary Museum
The State Museum of
State Tretyakov Universitat Politècnica GLM KP 12210/22
Contemporary Art-
Gallery, Moscow de València
Costakis Collection Ksenia
C207-258 ЖC-696
p. 110 Ksenia Boguslavskaia
Boguslavskaia, Ivan Merchant,
Anonymous Puni, Vladimir illustration for the
Untitled (First Iury Annenkov
Cover of the Kozlinsky, and portfolio October
Room), early 1920s. Sergei Makletsov 1917–1918: Heroes
Watercolor and journal Modern
Cover of the portfolio and Victims of the
graphite on paper West, no. 3, 1923
October 1917–1918: Revolution by Vladimir
37.9 x 57.6 cm Saint Petersburg/
Heroes and Victims of Mayakovsky, 1918
The State Museum of Moscow: s.e.
the Revolution, 1918 Lithograph
Contemporary Art- Lithograph
Lithograph 33 x 23.5 cm
Costakis Collection 26.8 x 18.5 cm
35 x 53 cm Vladimir Dahl Russian
C205-259 Archivo Lafuente Vladimir Dahl Russian State Literary Museum
p. 104 006981/000 State Literary Museum GLM KP 12210/23
GLM KP 12210/1
Samuil Adlivankin Hans Arp Ksenia
Cover of the book Cover of the journal Ksenia Boguslavskaia
Songs for Workers by Die Wolkenpumpe, Boguslavskaia Study for Banker,
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Hannover, 1920 Banker, illustration for illustration in the
Moscow, 1925 Letterpress the portfolio October portfolio October
Letterpress 23.4 x 15.5 cm 1917–1918: Heroes 1917–1918: Heroes
18.1 x 13 cm The State Mayakovsky and Victims of the and Victims of the
Archivo Lafuente Museum, Moscow Revolution by Vladimir Revolution by Vladimir
007018/000 И-785 Mayakovsky, 1918 Mayakovsky, 1918

323
 Ink and white Mikhail Le Dantiu Sofia Dymshits- Vasily Ermilov
paint on paper Igor Severianin’s Tolstaia Memorial board
33.3 x 24 cm March to Berlin, 1914 Cover of the Gorki, 1924
Vladimir Dahl Watercolor and journal The Gelatin silver print
Russian State graphite on paper International of Art (printed 2018)
Literary Museum 26.2 x 42.2 cm (unpublished), 1919 Central State
GLM KP 7309/1 Vladimir Dahl Cut-and-pasted Archives, Museum
p. 98 Russian State papers and gouache of Literature and
Literary Museum 25 x 16 cm Arts of Ukraine
Osip Brik GLM KP 46627 p. 93
Russian State
Scrapbook “Dada,” p. 30
ca. 1923–1924 Archives of
Literature and Art Vasily Ermilov
Cut-and-pasted
Robert Delaunay f. 665, op. 1, ed. Memorial board Marx
papers and gelatin
Vladimir Mayakovsky, khr. 36, l. 1 and Lenin, 1924
silver prints, ink-and-
Paris, 1922 p. 107 Gelatin silver print
pencil drawings
Autolithograph (printed 2018)
27.5 x 21.9 cm
The State 12.6 x 10.3 cm Sergei Eisenstein Central State
Mayakovsky The State Mayakovsky Glumov’s Diary Archives, Museum
Museum, Moscow Museum, Moscow (conceived as part of Literature and
10595 13148 of the adaptation Arts of Ukraine
pp. 10, 122, 126, of Aleksandr p. 73
168, 169, Robert Delaunay Ostrovsky’s 1868
Tristan Tzara, 1923 Nikolai Evreinov
comedy Enough
Karl Bulla Oil on cardboard Storming of the
Stupidity in Every
Mikhail Matiushin, 104.5 x 75 cm Winter Palace, 1920
Wise Man, which
Aleksei Kruchenykh, Museo Nacional 35 mm film
he realized at
and Kazimir Centro de Arte transferred to DVD,
the Proletcult
Malevich, 1913 Reina Sofía b/w, silent, 8’03”
Theater), 1923
Gelatin silver print AD00372 Russian State
35 mm film
17.8 x 23.8 cm p. 167 Documentary Film
The State Mayakovsky transferred to DVD,
and Photo Archive,
Museum, Moscow Sonia Delaunay b/w, silent, 5’
Krasnogorsk
И-708 Design for a tennis National Film
p. 31 dress, 1924 Foundation of Aleksandra Exter
Gouache and pencil Russian Federation Cover of the book
David Burliuk on cardboard p. 213 Picasso’s Environs
Cover of the book 31 x 23 cm by Ivan Aksenov,
Burliuk Shakes Museo Nacional Boris Ender Moscow, 1917
Woolworth Building’s Centro de Arte Reina Karl Liebknecht, 1919 Letterpress
Hand, New York, 1924 Sofía. Extended Oil on canvas 27.1 x 20.9 cm
Letterpress Loan from Pedro and 100 x 69 cm Archivo Lafuente
22.5 x 15.5 cm The Nizhny Tagil Art
Ary Altamiranda, 006900/000
The State Mayakovsky Museum, provided
Panama, 2010
Museum, Moscow with assistance from
DO01215 Petr Galadzhev
P-5414 the State Museum
p. 166 Cover of the book
and Exhibition Coiler by Viktor
Charles Chaplin
Sonia Delaunay Center ROSIZO Shklovsky, 1920–1929
Shoulder Arms, 1918
Design for a costume 484-X Paper, ink, pen
35 mm film
with umbrella, 1925 p. 114 and photomontage
transferred to DVD,
b/w, silent, 36’’ Gouache and pencil (Printed 2018)
(extract 2’45”) on cardboard Vasily Ermilov State Central Cinema
Roy Export S.A.S. 33 x 22.5 cm Untitled Museum, Moscow
Museo Nacional (Composition with p. 138
Giorgio de Chirico Centro de Arte Reina Letters), ca. 1920
Iliazd, ca. 1927 Sofía. Extended Gouache on paper Petr Galadzhev
Ink on paper Loan from Pedro and 54.6 x 36.5 cm Cover of the journal
25.5 x 19.5 cm Ary Altamiranda, Collection V. Spectacles, nos. 73,
Private Collection Panama, 2010 Tsarenkov 74, 77, 1924
France DO01216 p. 118 Letterpress

324
25 x 17 cm Paris, 1920 papers, watercolor, Ilin (Nal)
The State Mayakovsky Lithograph and ink on paper Futurism in a
Museum, Moscow 25.5 x 16.6 cm 41 x 29.2 cm Village, 1914
10796 (1,2,3) Archivo Lafuente Museo Thyssen- Watercolor on paper
006919/000 Bornemisza, Madrid 30.5 x 25.2 cm
Petr Galadzhev p. 142 570 (1978.6) Vladimir Dahl
Cover of the book p. 127 Russian State
One Minute, 1,000 Natalia Goncharova Literary Museum
Episodes, 10,000,000 Ilia Zdanevich as Raoul Hausmann GLM KP 754
Faces, 100,000 Angel, ca. 1921 Cover of the journal p. 27
Kilometers by Ink and pencil Der Dada, no. 2,
Vilbur Gress, on paper Berlin, 1921 Valentin Iustitsky
Moscow, 1925 36 x 25.5 cm Letterpress Painterly Construction
Letterpress Private Collection 29 x 23 cm with Wire, early 1920s
17.5 x 13 cm France The State Mayakovsky Oil and wire
Archivo Lafuente p. 147 Museum, Moscow on canvas
007019/000 10896 70 x 62 cm
Natalia Goncharova The Saratov State
Irakly Gamrekeli, and Ilia Zdanevich John Heartfield Art Museum named
Beno Gordeziani, Program for Olympic Cover of the journal after A. N. Radischev,
H2SO4 Group Ball, July 1924 Der Dada, no. 3, provided with
Cover and Letterpress Berlin, 1921 assistance from
illustrations for 64 x 25 cm Letterpress the State Museum
the journal H2SO4, Private Collection 23.5 x 15.5 cm and Exhibition
Tiflis, no. 1, 1924 France Center ROSIZO
The State Mayakovsky
Letterpress p. 166
Museum, Moscow СГXМ КП-11677
31.7 x 23.8 cm ВЖ-105
И-786
Archivo Lafuente Sergei Gorodetsky and p. 113
006982/000 Velimir Khlebnikov
John Heartfield
p. 192 Spinny-spin-spin, Vasily Kamensky,
Cover of the book
anniversary book David Burliuk,
150,000,000 by
Efim Golyshev dedicated to Aleksei Vladimir Burliuk
Vladimir Mayakovsky,
String Trio, ca. Kruchenykh Tango with Cows:
Prague, 1924
1914–1925 Watercolor on paper Ferro-concrete
Lithograph
13’33” and manuscript, 1920 Poems by Vasily
21.4 x 13.5 cm
Moscow State 31 x 23 cm Kamensky, 1914
Tchaikovsky IVAM, Institut
Russian State Letterpress on
Conservatory Valencià d’Art
Archives of wallpaper
Literature and Art Modern, Generalitat 20.5 x 20 cm
Natalia Goncharova, f. 1334, op. 1, ed. 1997.063 (Código The State Mayakovsky
Sigizmund khr. 252, ll. 1–24 4315) Museum, Moscow
Valishevsky, Kirill pp. 178, 288 p. 128 28155(1974)
Zdanevich, Ilia p. 39
Zdanevich et al. Naum Granovsky Richard Huelsenbeck
Cover and Cover of the book Cover of the book Vasily Kamensky
illustrations for Lidantiu as a Beacon En avant Dada: Tiflis: Ferro-concrete
the book To Sofia by Ilia Zdanevich, Die Geschichte Poem, 1917
Georgievna Melnikova: Paris, 1923 des Dadaismus Cut-and-pasted
The Fantastic Cut-and-pasted [Forward Dada: The papers, lithograph
Tavern, Tiflis, 1919 papers history of Dadaism], 28.8 x 37.8 cm
Letterpress 19.3 x 14.4 cm Hannover/Leipzig/ The State Mayakovsky
18 x 13.7 cm Archivo Lafuente Vienna/Zurich, Museum, Moscow
Archivo Lafuente 006951/000 Poaul Steegemann 11332
006908/000 p. 195 Verlag, 1921
Letterpress Vasily Kamensky
Natalia Goncharova George Grosz 23 x 15 cm Cover of the journal
Cover of the book Tatlinesque The State Mayakovsky My Journal, no. 1, 1922
The City: Verses by Diagram, 1920 Museum, Moscow Letterpress
Aleksandr Rubakin, Cut-and-pasted 11113 37 x 28 cm

325
 Vladimir Dahl State Art Museum negative, 1918 Gustav Klutsis
Russian State named after P. M. (printed 2018) Spatial Construction,
Literary Museum Dogadina, provided 12 x 9 cm 1921
GLM KU 4764 with assistance from Private Collection Lithograph
the State Museum 20.5 x 13.7 cm
Vasily Kandinsky and Exhibition Gustav Klutsis Vladimir Dahl
Kandinsky, Center ROSIZO Design for the Russian State
Moscow, 1918 Zh-460 billboard Storm: Strike Literary Museum
Letterpress p. 48 on Counterrevolution, GLM KP 48568
30.9 x 21 cm ca. 1918
Archivo Lafuente Ivan Kliun Gelatin silver print Gustav Klutsis
006901/000 Cover and 11 x 18 cm Cover of the book
Velimir Khlebnikov Private Collection All-Russian Union of
illustrations for the
Roman Jakobson p.14 Poets, Moscow, 1922
book The Secret Vices
reads “Incantation Letterpress
of Academicians
by Laughter” (1908– Gustav Klutsis 18 x 12.4 cm
by Ivan Kliun,
1909), a poem by Red Man, 1919–1920 The State Mayakovsky
Aleksei Kruchenykh,
Velimir Khlebnikov Pencil on paper Museum, Moscow
Recorded 1954 52” Kazimir Malevich,
Moscow, 1916 28.5 x 16 cm 28155(3652)
Published by ReR Private Collection
Megacorp, London, Letterpress
p. 102 Gustav Klutsis
2008 20.5 x 17.7 cm
Design for Sport
Courtesy Miguel The State Mayakovsky
Gustav Klutsis Suit, 1922
Molina Alarcón, Museum, Moscow
Construction Linocut on paper
Universitat 28155(930)
(City), 1920 25.2 x 16.2 cm
Politècnica State Tretyakov
Gelatin silver print
de València Ivan Kliun
17 x 17.5 cm Gallery, Moscow
Aleksei Kruchenykh,
Private Collection ГPC-5683
Velimir Khlebnikov 1925
Radio of the Watercolor and
Gustav Klutsis Gustav Klutsis
Future, 1921 pencil on paper
Electrification of the Design for
Re-creation 2006 38.5 x 30.5 cm
Entire Country, 1920 Propaganda
CD, 3’45” The State Mayakovsky
Gelatin silver print Kiosk, Screen,
Published by ReR Museum, Moscow
18 x 11.5 cm and Loudspeaker
Megacorp, London, 10907
Private Collection Platform, 1922
2008 p. 284 p. 81 Watercolor, ink,
Courtesy Miguel
and graphite on
Molina Alarcón, Ivan Kliun Gustav Klutsis paper
Universitat Untitled (Aleksei Untitled, ca. 1920 32.9 x 24 cm
Politècnica Kruchenykh), 1925 Oil on canvas, The State Museum
de València Watercolor, charcoal, double-sided of Contemporary Art
and pencil 50 x 32.5 cm Costakis Collection
Nikolai Khodataev
26.6 x 21.9 cm The State Mayakovsky 108.78-187
Interplanetary
The State Museum of Museum, Moscow
Revolution, 1924
Contemporary 11478 Gustav Klutsis
35 mm film
Art Costakis pp. 108–109 Design for
transferred to DVD,
b/w, silent, 8’ Collection Propaganda Stand
National Film 91.78-441 Gustav Klutsis (Agit-prop for
Foundation of p. 176 Cannon Fodder, 1921 Communism of the
Russian Federation Gelatin silver print proletariat of the
Gustav Klutsis from a glass plate whole world), 1922
Ivan Kliun Design for the negative, 1921 Ink and gouache
Self-Portrait with billboard Storm: Strike (printed 2018) on paper
a Saw (Nonobjective on Counterrevolution 12 x 9 cm 26.5 x 17.2 cm
Composition), 1914 for the Fifth Congress Private Collection The State Museum
Oil on canvas of Soviets, 1918 p. 60 of Contemporary Art
71 x 62 cm Gelatin silver print Costakis Collection
The Astrakhan from a glass plate 113.78-144

326
Gustav Klutsis Gustav Klutsis 21 x 15 cm and papers
Design for Radio- Untitled, ca. 1922 The State Mayakovsky 29.5 x 4.3 cm
Orator, no. 7, 1922 Cut-and-pasted Museum, Moscow Private Collection
Gouache, ink, and papers and watercolor 12132 (6), 11898, p. 91
pencil on paper on paper 11903, 11904, 11902,
26.9 x 17.7 cm 4.5 x 8 cm 11900, 11901 Gustav Klutsis
The State Museum Vladimir Dahl Cover of the book
of Contemporary Art Russian State Gustav Klutsis Lenin’s Language:
Costakis Collection Literary Museum Lenin’s Call, 1924 Eleven Devices of
CC-0384/G. GLM KP 48573 Gelatin silver print Lenin’s Speech by
Klutsis-/C623-292 from a glass plate Aleksei Kruchenykh,
Gustav Klutsis negative, 1924 Moscow, 1925
Gustav Klutsis Untitled, ca. 1922 (printed 2018) Letterpress
Double Self- Cut-and-pasted 12 x 9 cm 18 x 13.6 cm
Portrait, 1922 papers and watercolor Private Collection The State Mayakovsky
Cut-and-pasted on paper Museum, Moscow
gelatin silver prints 4.5 x 8 cm Gustav Klutsis 10753
10.5 x 11 cm Vladimir Dahl Lenin’s Slogan, 1924
Gelatin silver print Gustav Klutsis
Private Collection Russian State
17 x 12 cm Klutsis and Valentina
Literary Museum
Private Collection Kulagina in
Gustav Klutsis GLM KP 48572
various impromptu
International, 1922
Gustav Klutsis actions, 1925
Ink, gouache, and Gustav Klutsis
Various designs Cut-and-pasted
pencil on paper Untitled, ca. 1922
for children gelatin silver prints
27.1 x 17.8 cm Cut-and-pasted
books, 1924 34.5 x 24.5 cm
The State Museum papers and watercolor
Cut-and-pasted Private Collection
of Contemporary Art on paper
gelatin silver prints
Costakis Collection 4.5 x 8 cm
29 x 20 cm Gustav Klutsis and
110.78-167 Vladimir Dahl Sergei Senkin
Private Collection
p. 78 Russian State Front (Senkin)
Literary Museum Gustav Klutsis and back (Klutsis)
Gustav Klutsis GLM KP 48571 We Do Not Need covers of the book
Radio-Orator, 1922 Hysterical Bursts, We In Memory of Fallen
Lithograph Gustav Klutsis Need a Measuring Leaders, Moscow, 1927
10.5 x 8.5 cm Untitled, ca. 1922 Walk, 1924 Lithograph
Vladimir Dahl Cut-and-pasted Gelatin silver print 35 x 27 cm
Russian State papers and watercolor 18 x 12 cm Centro de
Literary Museum on paper Private Collection Documentación,
GLM KP 48566 4.5 x 8 cm Museo Nacional
Vladimir Dahl Gustav Klutsis, Centro de Arte Reina
Gustav Klutsis Russian State Aleksandr Rodchenko, Sofía, Madrid
Spatial Construction, Literary Museum Sergei Senkin CDB.188678 FL 1422
1922 GLM KP 48570 Cover and Nº Reg. 188678
20.5 x 15 cm illustrations for the
Lithograph Gustav Klutsis book Young Guard, Gustav Klutsis
Vladimir Dahl Illustration Moscow, 1924 February Revolution,
Russian State (unpublished) for Letterpress early 1920s
Literary Museum the History of the 24.9 x 17 cm Gelatin silver print
GLM KP 48569 VKP(b), 1924 Archivo Lafuente 16 x 11 cm
Gelatin silver print 014541/000 Private Collection
Gustav Klutsis 16 x 12 cm p. 96
Spatial Construction, Private Collection Gustav Klutsis
1922 p. 72 Boris Kulagin, Gustav Klutsis
Lithograph Gustav Klutsis, and October Revolution,
11.2 x 9.5 cm Gustav Klutsis Valentina Kulagina in early 1920s
Vladimir Dahl Illustrations for various impromptu Gelatin silver print
Russian State the journal Young actions, 1925 21 x 14 cm
Literary Museum Guard, 1924 Cut-and-pasted Private Collection
GLM KP 48678 Lithograph gelatin silver prints p. 97

327
 Gustav Klutsis portfolio October 1083, ll. 1–72 24.8 x 34.6 cm
Cover of the book 1917–1918: Heroes The State Mayakovsky State Tretyakov
Kruchenykh Is and Victims of Museum, Moscow Gallery, Moscow
Alive! by Aleksei the Revolution 10886 PC-2896
Kruchenykh, Boris by Vladimir p. 75 p. 105
Pasternak, Sergei Mayakovsky, 1918
Tretiakov, David Lithograph Aleksei Kruchenykh Ivan Kudriashov
Burliuk et al., 1925 23.5 x 33.6 cm each Page from a scrapbook Portrait of a Young
19 x 14 cm Vladimir Dahl with Osip Brik’s Lady: Nonobjective
Russian State Russian State portraits, 1922–1932 Composition, ca. 1919
Archives of Literary Museum Cut-and-pasted Oil on canvas,
Literature and Art GLM KP 12210/9; papers and prints, double-sided
Библиотека РГАЛИ GLM KP 12210/11; pencil, and watercolor 67.5 x 50.5 cm
Ж-66/91920 GLM KP 12210/13; on paper The Vyatka Art
GLM KP 12210/12; 23 x 35 cm Museum named
Gustav Klutsis GLM KP 12210/8 Russian State after V. M. and A. M.
Untitled, early 1920s Archives of Vasnetsovs, provided
Cut-and-pasted Victory over the Literature and Art with assistance from
gelatin silver prints Sun, opera by f. 1334, op. 2, ed. the State Museum
and papers Aleksei Kruchenykh khr. 124, ll. 1–8, and Exhibition
12.7 x 9.6 cm (libretto), Kazimir 8а, 9–53Aleksei Center ROSIZO
The State Museum Malevich (design), Kruchenykh p. 101
of Contemporary Art and Mikhail
Matiushin Sound poem
Costakis Collection Valentina Kulagina
(music), 1913 Winter, 1926
C356-744 Dynamic City, 1923
Re-creation by CD, 2’40”
p. 90 Lithograph after
Robert L. Benedetti Published by
Gustav Klutsis’
and Douglas ReR Megacorp,
Gustav Klutsis painting Dynamic
Cruickshank, 1981 London, 2008
Kruchenykh Reads City, 1919
Super-8 transferred Courtesy Miguel
His Poetry, ca. 1925 26.4 x 18.4 cm
to DVD, color, Molina Alarcón,
Gelatin silver print The State Museum
sound, 45'02" Universitat
16.1 x 12 cm of Contemporary Art-
Courtesy Robert Politècnica de
The State Mayakovsky Costakis Collection
Benedetti València
Museum, Moscow Inv. 101. 78
26018 Aleksei Kruchenykh Aleksei Kruchenykh
p. 82 Cover and Page from Valentina Kulagina
illustrations for the Kruchenykh’s Cover of the book
George Kobbe book Universal War, scrapbook, n.d. Transrational
Cover of the Die Petrograd, 1916 Cut-and-pasted Language by Aleksei
Dadaistische Cut-and-pasted printed papers, ink, Kruchenykh, 1925
Korruption [The papers and letterpress and pencil on paper Letterpress
Dadaist corruption] 22.5 x 33 cm 22 x 35 cm 18.5 x 14 cm
by Walter Petry, The State Mayakovsky Russian State Archivo Lafuente
Berlin, Leon Hirsche Museum, Moscow Archives of 007021/000
Verlag, 1920 28155(5259) Literature and Art p. 178
Letterpress pp. 64–65 f. 334, op. 1, ed. khr.
21 x 15.5 cm 1084, ll. 13–16 Lev Kuleshov
The State Mayakovsky Aleksei Kruchenykh, p. 75 Taras's Dream, 1919
Museum, Moscow Kirill Zdanevich, 35 mm film
И-787 Vasily Kamensky Ivan Kudriashov transferred to
1918, Tiflis, 1917 Design for the DVD, b/w, silent,
Vladimir Kozlinsky Cut-and-pasted decoration of a (extract 10’54”)
Producer papers and lithograph motorcar for the First National Film
Motorist 26 x 38.5 cm Anniversary of the Foundation of
Priest Russian State October Revolution Russian Federation
Railwayman Archives of in Moscow, 1918 pp. 220–221
Sailor Literature and Art Watercolor and
Illustrations for the f. 1334, op. 1, ed. khr. graphite on paper

328
Lev Kuleshov 8 x 10.6 cm Moscow, 1913 El Lissitzky and
Design for the journal Russian State Archives Lithograph Kazimir Malevich
Cine-Photo, no. 1, 1922 of Literature and Art 18.8 x 15.3 cm Title page of the book
Cut-and-pasted f. 2679, op. 1, ed. Archivo Lafuente On New Systems in
gelatin silver prints, khr. 158, l. 4 006822/000 Art, Vitebsk, 1919
ink, and white paint p. 214 Lithograph
24.2 x 26 cm Mikhail Larionov
23.5 x 18.5 cm
Russian State Lev Kuleshov Cover and
Archivo Lafuente
Archives of The Extraordinary illustrations for the
book The Sun by 006905/000
Literature and Art Adventures of Mr. p. 39
f. 2679, op. 1, ed. Vladimir Mayakovsky,
West in the Land of
Moscow, 1923
khr. 239, ll. 1–3 the Bolsheviks, 1924 El Lissitzky
Lithograph
p. 208 35 mm film “The New Man,” from
17 x 13 cm
transferred to DVD, Archivo Lafuente Figurines: The Three-
Lev Kuleshov’s b/w, silent, 94’ 006952/000 Dimensional Design of
Workshop (extract 19’40”) the Electro-mechanical
Petr Galadzhev, 1923 National Film Mikhail Larionov Show “Victory over
Gelatin silver print Foundation of Poster for The Grand
7 x 11 cm the Sun”, 1920–1923
Russian Federation Ball of Transvestite- Lithograph
Russian State Archives pp. 224–225 Transmental Artists,
of Literature and Art 53.5 x 45.6 cm
Paris, 1923
f. 2679, op. 1, ed. Stedelijk Museum
Lev Kuleshov Lithograph
khr. 134, l. 3 Amsterdam
The Death Ray, 1925 22.2 x 27.5 cm
Archivo Lafuente A 40295(1-12)
35 mm film
Lev Kuleshov’s 007472/000 p. 157
transferred to DVD,
Workshop p. 142
b/w, silent, extract 22”
Boris Barnet, El Lissitzky
National Film
Valentina Lopatina, El Lissitzky Cover of Figurines:
Foundation of
Vladimir Fogel, Cover design for the The Three-
Russian Federation
Aleksandra book The Spent Sun by Dimensional Design of
pp. 2–3 Konstantin Bolshakov,
Khokhlova, and the Electro-mechanical
Petr Galadzhev (left Moscow, 1916 Show “Victory over
Mikhail Larionov Ink on paper
to right), 1923 the Sun”, 1920–1923
Man, 1913 17.2 x 12.8 cm
Gelatin silver print Lithograph
Ink and pencil The State Museum
8.4 x 11.2 cm 53.5 x 45.6 cm
Russian State Archives on paper of Contemporary Art
13.7 x 10.2 cm Stedelijk Museum
of Literature and Art Costakis Collection
Vladimir Dahl Amsterdam
f. 2679, op. 1, ed. 441.80-388
Russian State A 40295(1-12)
khr. 158, l. 1
p. 208 Literary Museum El Lissitzky
GLM KP 11701/4 Cover of the book El Lissitzky
p. 25 The Spent Sun by “The Old,” from
Lev Kuleshov’s
Konstantin Bolshakov, Figurines: The Three-
Workshop
Mikhail Larionov Moscow, 1916 Dimensional Design
Petr Galadzhev,
Cover and Letterpress of the Electro-
Averbakh, Veintrop
illustrations for the 23 x 17.3 cm mechanical Show
(left to right), 1923
book Pomade by Archivo Lafuente “Victory over the
Gelatin silver print 006888/000
7 x 11 cm Aleksei Kruchenykh, Sun”, 1920–1923
Russian State Archives Moscow, 1913 Lithograph
El Lissitzky and 53.5 x 45.6 cm
of Literature and Art Lithograph Kazimir Malevich
f. 2679, op. 1, ed. 15.6 x 10.9 cm Stedelijk Museum
Title page of the book
khr. 134, ll. 5–6 Archivo Lafuente Amsterdam
On New Systems in
006824/000 Art, Vitebsk, 1919 A 40295(1-12)
Lev Kuleshov’s Lithograph
Workshop Mikhail Larionov 24.4 x 20.7 cm El Lissitzky
Aleksandra Cover and IVAM, Institut “Troublemaker,” from
Khokhlova and Petr illustrations for the Valencià d’Art Figurines: The Three-
Galadzhev, 1923 book Half-Alive by Modern, Generalitat Dimensional Design of
Gelatin silver print Aleksei Kruchenykh, 1994.014 (Código 18) the Electro-mechanical

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 Show “Victory over El Lissitzky Lithograph and 20 x 13.8 cm
the Sun”, 1920–1923 “Part of the letterpress Archivo Lafuente
Lithograph Mechanical Setting,” 33 x 33 cm 006935/000
53.5 x 45.6 cm from Figurines: The Archivo Lafuente
Stedelijk Museum Three-Dimensional 006922/000 El Lissitzky
Amsterdam Design of the Electro- Tatlin Working on
A 40295(1-12) mechanical Show El Lissitzky the Monument to the
“Victory over the Cover of the book Third International,
El Lissitzky Sun”, 1920–1923 A Suprematist Story illustration in the
“Sportsmen,” from Lithograph about Two Squares book Six Tales with
Figurines: The Three- 53.5 x 45.6 cm in 6 Constructions, Easy Endings by
Dimensional Design of Stedelijk Museum Berlin, 1922 Ilya Ehrenburg,
the Electro-mechanical Letterpress Berlin, 1922
Amsterdam
Show “Victory over Letterpress
A 40295(1-12) 28.5 x 22.5 cm
the Sun”, 1920–1923 21 x 14.5 cm
Archivo Lafuente
Lithograph IVAM, Institut
El Lissitzky 006933/000
53.5 x 45.6 cm Valencià d’Art
“The Terrified,” from
Stedelijk Museum Modern, Generalitat
Figurines: The Three- El Lissitzky
Amsterdam 1993.168 (Código 2119)
Dimensional Design of Cover design for
A 40295(1-12) p. 125
the Electro-mechanical the journal Broom,
El Lissitzky Show “Victory over no. 3, Berlin/
El Lissitzky
“Gravediggers,” from the Sun”, 1920–1923 New York, 1922 Cover and
Figurines: The Three- 53.5 x 45.6 cm Watercolor and illustrations for the
Dimensional Design of Stedelijk Museum ink on paper book For the Voice by
the Electro-mechanical Amsterdam 10.6 x 13.5 cm Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Show “Victory over A 40295(1-12) The State Museum of Moscow/Berlin, 1923
the Sun”, 1920–1923 Contemporary Art- Letterpress
Lithograph El Lissitzky Costakis Collection 18.8 x 13.3 cm
53.5 x 45.6 cm “Announcer,” from C500-391 Archivo Lafuente
Stedelijk Museum Figurines: The Three- p. 161 006957/000
Amsterdam Dimensional Design of
A 40295(1-12) the Electro-mechanical El Lissitzky and El Lissitzky
Show “Victory over Ilya Ehrenburg Cover of the journal
El Lissitzky the Sun”, 1920–1923 Cover of the Broom, vol. 4, no. 3,
Title page from Lithograph magazine Veshch- Berlin/New York,
Figurines: The Three- 53.5 x 45.6 cm Gegenstand-Object, February 1923
Dimensional Design of Stedelijk Museum no. 1–2, Berlin, 1922 Letterpress
the Electro-mechanical Amsterdam Letterpress 33.5 x 23 cm
Show “Victory over A 40295(1-12) 31 x 23.5 cm Archivo Lafuente
the Sun”, 1920–1923 Archivo Lafuente 007578/015
Lithograph El Lissitzky 006936/000
53.5 x 45.6 cm “Budetliane El Lissitzky and
Stedelijk Museum El Lissitzky Hans Richter
Strongman,” from
Amsterdam Cover of the
Figurines: The Three- Cover of the
A 40295(1-12) journal G: Material
Dimensional Design of catalogue The First
zur elementaren
El Lissitzky the Electro-mechanical Russian Exhibition,
Gestaltung, no. 1,
“Globetrotter Show “Victory over Berlin, 1922
Berlin, July 1923
in Time,” from the Sun”, 1920–1923 Letterpress Letterpress
Figurines: The Three- Lithograph 22.8 x 15.1 cm 45.4 x 59.5 cm
Dimensional Design of 53.5 x 45.6 cm Archivo Lafuente Stedelijk Museum
the Electro-mechanical Stedelijk Museum 006926/000 Amsterdam, gift of
Show “Victory over Amsterdam p. 128 Elaine Lustig Cohen
the Sun”, 1920–1923 A 40295(1-12) KBA 967(1-4)
Lithograph El Lissitzky and
53.5 x 45.6 cm El Lissitzky Olga Forsch El Lissitzky
Stedelijk Museum Cover of the magazine Ravvi, Berlin, Cover of the book Das
Amsterdam Wendingen, vol. 4, no. Skify, 1922 entfesselte Theater
A 40295(1-12) 11, Amsterdam, 1921 Letterpress [Unleashed theater]

330
by Aleksandr Tairov, El Lissitzky Gestaltung, no. 4, Kazimir Malevich
Potsdam, 1923 Pelikan Carbon March 26, 1926 Cover of the book
Letterpress Paper, 1924 Letterpress Victory over the Sun,
25 x 18 cm Gelatin silver print 45.4 x 59.5 cm Saint Petersburg, 1913
Archivo Lafuente 17.9 x 12.9 cm Stedelijk Museum Letterpress
006956/000 Russian State Amsterdam 23.5 x 16.6 cm
Archives of KBA 967(1-4) The State Mayakovsky
El Lissitzky Literature and Art Museum, Moscow
First Kestner portfolio f. 2361, op. 1, ed. El Lissitzky 28155(2063)
Proun, prints nos. 1, khr. 5, l. 19 Self-Portrait,
2, 3, 5, 1919–1923 p. 160 illustration Kazimir Malevich
Lithographs
in the journal Cover of the book
60 x 43 cm each El Lissitzky and
Stedelijk Museum Gebrauchsgraphik, The Three by Velimir
Kurt Schwitters
Amsterdam 1928 Khlebnikov and
Cover of the journal
A 40294(1-6) 30 x 22.5 cm Aleksei Kruchenykh,
Merz, no. 8–9:
p. 158 Offset Saint Petersburg, 1913
Nasci, Hannover,
Russian State Lithograph
April/July 1924
El Lissitzky Letterpress Archives of 18.8 x 17.6 cm
First Kestner 30.5 x 23.5 cm Literature and Art Archivo Lafuente
portfolio, Proun Archivo Lafuente f. 1334, op. 2, ed. 006835/000
Room, 1919–1923 005449/003 khr. 313, l. 1
Lithograph p. 255 Kazimir Malevich
p. 133
60 x 43 cm Costume design
Stedelijk Museum El Lissitzky Arthur Lurie for Victory over the
Amsterdam Our March, 1918 Sun, Budetlianin
Design for the
A 34494 Piano piece Strongman, 1913
cover of the book
Transrational accompanied Pencil on paper
El Lissitzky
by Aleksei by a reading of 16.2 x 8 cm
Hans Arp, 1924
Kruchenykh, 1925 Mayakovsky’s poem Vladimir Dahl
Gelatin silver print
Gouache and “Our March” Russian State
22 x 33.5 cm
ink on paper 5’6” Literary Museum
Russian State
16.4 x 12.6 cm Deutschlandradio GLM KP 11701/7
Archives of
Literature and Art Stedelijk Museum Kultur-Capriccio p. 44
f. 1072, op. 2, ed. Amsterdam
khr. 357, ll. 87–88 4.2001 (594) Paul Mak (Pavel Kazimir Malevich
p. 133 p. 178 Ivanov) Design for the curtain
Mikhail Larionov, 1914 for the opera Victory
El Lissitzky El Lissitzky and Ink on paper over the Sun, 1913
Kurt Schwitters, 1924 Hans Arp 22 x 19.7 cm Pencil on paper
Gelatin silver print Die Kunstismen / Les Vladimir Dahl 8.8 x 8 cm
18.2 x 11.8 cm ismes de l’art / The
Russian State Vladimir Dahl
Russian State Isms of Art: 1914–1924,
Literary Museum Russian State
Archives of Zurich, 1925
GLM KP 4012 Literary Museum
Literature and Art Letterpress
GLM KP 11701/6
f. 1334, op. 1, ed. 26.5 x 20.5 cm
Kazimir Malevich p. 33
khr. 1581, l. 1 Centro de
Alogic Composition,
p. 133 Documentación,
design for Victory over Kazimir Malevich
Museo Nacional
Centro de Arte Reina the Sun (Budetlianin Stage design
El Lissitzky
Sofía, Madrid Strongman), 1913 for Victory over
Pelikan Carbon
Paper, 1924 RESERVA 2232 Pencil on graph paper the Sun, 1913
Gelatin silver print Nº Reg. 123335 10.2 x 11.5 cm Pencil on paper
12.8 x 12.9 cm p. 94 Stedelijk Museum 11.2 x 12.3 cm
Russian State Amsterdam, on loan Vladimir Dahl
Archives of El Lissitzky from the Stichting Russian State
Literature and Art Cover of the Khardzhiev Literary Museum
f. 2361, op. 1, ed. journal G: Material 4.2001 (122) GLM KP 11701/5
khr. 5, l. 17 zur elementaren p. 32 p. 32

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 Kazimir Malevich swelling so they don’t and Exhibition Kazimir Malevich
Curtain design for feel so good,” 1914 Center ROSIZO Cover of the book
the opera Victory Lithograph СГXМ КП-10959 First Series of Lectures
over the Sun, 1913 55 x 37.5 cm Ж-1089 by Nikolai Punin,
Ink over pencil The State Mayakovsky p. 57 Petrograd, 1920
on transparent Museum, Moscow Letterpress
white paper И-709 Kazimir Malevich 22.6 x 15.1 cm
11.8 x 10.5 cm p. 63 Suprematism: Archivo Lafuente
Stedelijk Museum Square on a Diagonal 006918/000
Amsterdam, on loan Kazimir Malevich and Surface, 1915
from the Stichting Vladimir Mayakovsky Pencil and ink on Pavel Mansurov
Khardzhiev “An Austrian went graph paper Beer-Painterly
4.2001 (016) to Radziwill and 15.4 x 11 cm Formula, 1922
p. 45 landed right on a Stedelijk Museum Oil and tempera
peasant woman’s Amsterdam, on loan on cardboard
Kazimir Malevich pitchfork,” 1914 from the Stichting 76.5 x 27 x 7 cm
Alogic Composition 3 Lithograph Khardzhiev Private Collection
(study for the painting 39 x 52 cm 4.2001 (020) p. 111
An Englishman in The State Mayakovsky p. 52
Moscow), 1914 Museum, Moscow Filippo Tommaso
Pencil on paper 29161 Kazimir Malevich Marinetti
16 x 9 cm Three Irregular Der Futurismus,
Kazimir Malevich Quadrangles, Berlin, 1922
Stedelijk Museum
(designer) ca. 1915–1916
Amsterdam, on loan Letterpress
Pencil on graph paper
from the Stichting and Vladimir 29.4 x 23.1 cm
17.3 x 20.7 cm
Khardzhiev Mayakovsky (text) The State Mayakovsky
Stedelijk Museum
4.2001 (014) “What a rattle, what Museum, Moscow
Amsterdam, on loan
p. 41 a thunder from 10693
from the Stichting
the Germans near
Khardzhiev
Kazimir Malevich the Łomża” 1914 Filippo Tommaso
4.2001 (053)
Cover of the book Lithograph Marinetti
p. 55
A Game in Hell by 39 x 52 cm Letter to Ilia
Aleksei Kruchenykh The State Mayakovsky Zdanevich, June 1922
Kazimir Malevich
and Velimir Museum, Moscow I the Apostle of New 28.4 x 22.6 cm
Khlebnikov, Saint И-719 Concepts in Art, 1916 Private Collection
Petersburg, 1914 Pencil, black crayon, France
Lithograph Kazimir Malevich and gouache on paper p. 24
18.7 x 14 cm (designer) 26.5 x 15.1 cm
Archivo Lafuente and Vladimir Stedelijk Museum Filippo Tommaso
006881/000 Mayakovsky (text) Amsterdam, on loan Marinetti
“Wilhelm’s Merry- from the Stichting Manifestos of
Kazimir Malevich Go-Around,” 1914 Khardzhiev Italian Futurism,
War, 1914 Lithograph 4.2001 (147) Moscow, 1914
Pencil on paper 39 x 52 cm p. 43 Letterpress
9.8 x 9.7 cm The State Mayakovsky 25.8 x 18 cm
Stedelijk Museum Museum, Moscow Kazimir Malevich Archivo Lafuente
Amsterdam, on loan 12682 Cover of the journal 006884/000
from the Stichting p. 63 The International of
Khardzhiev Art (unpublished), Vladimir Mayakovsky
4.2001 (018) Kazimir Malevich ca. 1919 Cover of the book
p. 63 Four Squares, 1915 Cut-and-pasted Mystery Bouffe by
Oil on canvas papers and lithograph Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Kazimir Malevich 49 x 49 cm 25.8 x 20 cm Petrograd, 1918
(designer) The Saratov State Stedelijk Museum Letterpress
and Vladimir Art Museum named Amsterdam, on loan 24.5 x 18.5 cm
Mayakovsky (text) after A. N. Radischev, from the Stichting The State Mayakovsky
“Look, look, near provided with Khardzhiev Museum, Moscow
the Vistula: The assistance from 4.2001 (124) 28155(213)
German bellies are the State Museum p. 106 p. 227

332
Vladimir Mayakovsky Audio, 4’57” Letterpress 35.3 x 33.1 cm
Poster for Mystery Vladimir Dahl 19.3 x 13.5 cm The State Mayakovsky
Bouffe, 1918 Russian State Archivo Lafuente Museum, Moscow
Lithograph Literary Museum 006961/000 28261(12)
91 x 73.5 cm
The State Mayakovsky Vladimir Mayakovsky Sergei Makletsov Petr Miturich
Museum, Moscow ROSTA, no. 630, Laborer Cover of the book
10966 “America gets Landowner Zangezi by Velimir
concessions from  Telegraphist, Khlebnikov,
Vladimir Mayakovsky us,” November 1920 Illustrations for the Moscow, 1922
Soviet Alphabet Lithograph portfolio October Lithograph
by Vladimir 105 x 78 cm 1917–1918: Heroes 23.7 x 16 cm
Mayakovsky, 1919 The State Mayakovsky and Victims of Archivo Lafuente
Museum, Moscow 006937/000
Watercolor and the Revolution
И-676 p. 178
lithograph by Vladimir
p. 128
19.5 x 24.4 cm Mayakovsky, 1918
László Moholy-
The State Mayakovsky Vladimir Mayakovsky Lithographs
Nagy (with artist’s
Museum, Moscow ROSTA, no. 525, 33.5 x 24 cm autograph to Vladimir
28155(285) “Do you want to Vladimir Dahl Mayakovsky)
p. 99 free yourself from Russian State Untitled, 1922
the burden of war,” Literary Museum Gelatin silver print
Vladimir Mayakovsky November 1920 GLM KP 12210/4; 22.5 x 17 cm
Stage and costume Lithograph GLM KP 12210/7; The State Mayakovsky
design for Mystery 102 x 88 cm GLM KP 12210/5 Museum, Moscow
Bouffe, Seven Pairs The State Mayakovsky 11133
of Evil, 1919 Museum, Moscow Ruvim Mazel p. 160
Cut-and-pasted И-738 Cover of the book
papers, fabric, About Kursk, Aleksei Morgunov
watercolor, and pencil Vladimir Mayakovsky Komsomol, Flying, Aviator’s
75.2 x 161.3 cm ROSTA, no. 836, “We Chaplin, Germany, Oil, Workroom, 1913
Vladimir Dahl have made a delivery Fifth International, Gouache on canvas
Russian State to Don Basin up etc., by Vladimir 50.5 x 36 cm
Literary Museum to 17 December,” Mayakovsky, Moscow, The State Museum of
GLM KP 11760/6 January 1921 Krasnaia nov’, 1924 Contemporary Art-
p. 237 Lithograph 18 x 13.3 cm Costakis Collection
110 x 82 cm Archivo Lafuente 159.78-226
Vladimir Mayakovsky The State Mayakovsky 006983/000 p. 49
Stage and costume Museum, Moscow
design for Mystery 9297 Mikhail Menkov Aleksei Morgunov
Bouffe, Seven Pairs Tramway 6, 1914 Composition, 1915
Vladimir Mayakovsky Pencil, watercolor,
of Good, 1919 Oil on canvas
ROSTA, no. 870, and gouache on
Cut-and-pasted 82 x 51.5 cm
“Crisis in Europe,” cardboard
papers, watercolor, The Samara Regional
January 1921 47.9 x 31.8 cm
ink, and pencil Art Museum,
Lithograph Stedelijk Museum
75.8 x 159.1 cm provided with
112 x 83 cm Amsterdam, on loan
Vladimir Dahl The State Mayakovsky assistance from from the Stichting
Russian State Museum, Moscow the State Museum Khardzhiev
Literary Museum 9298 and Exhibition 4.2001 (570)
GLM KP 11760/5 p. 128 Center ROSIZO
p. 237 p. 51 Aleksei Morgunov
Vladimir Mayakovsky Study for The Barber
Vladimir Mayakovsky Cover of the book Petr Miturich Set Off for the
An Extraordinary Mayakovsky Gallery: Cover of the book Bathhouse, 1915
Adventure Which Those I Have Never Our March by Watercolor and
Befell Vladimir Seen by Vladimir Vladimir Mayakovsky, gouache on paper
Mayakovsky in a Mayakovsky, Petrograd, 1918 31.9 x 22.8 cm
Summer Cottage, 1920 Moscow, 1923 Letterpress Stedelijk Museum

333
 Amsterdam, on loan Oil on canvas Liubov Popova Ivan Puni
from the Stichting 77.8 x 70 cm Stage design for Poster for the
Khardzhiev The Nizhny Tagil Art Earth in Turmoil by exhibition 0,10:
4.2001 (291) Museum, provided Sergei Tretiakov, The Last Futurist
p. 41 with assistance from Meyerhold Theater, Exhibition of
the State Museum Moscow, 1923–1924 Painting, 1915
Aleksei Morgunov and Exhibition Cut-and-pasted Lithograph
Composition no. Center ROSIZO gelatin silver 37.3 x 27.6 cm
1, 1916–1917 345-X
prints and printed Russian State
Oil on canvas p. 50
papers and gouache Archives of
71 x 62 cm on plywood Literature and Art
The Krasnodar Francis Picabia
Cover of the 49 x 82.7 cm f. 2089, op. 2, ed.
Regional Art Museum The State Museum of khr. 15, l. 4
named after F. A. journal 391, no. 1,
Barcelona, 1917 Contemporary Art- p. 268
Kovalenko, provided
Letterpress Costakis Collection
with assistance from Ivan Puni
37.2 x 27.1 cm 204.78/88
the State Museum
Centro de p. 74 Relief, 1915
and Exhibition
Documentación, Oil and painted
Center ROSIZO
Museo Nacional Vsevolod Pudovkin wood on canvas
p. 56
Centro de Arte Reina and Nikolai 64.5 x 81 cm
Aleksei Morgunov Sofía, Madrid Shpikovsky Centre Pompidou,
Cover of the RESERVA P1-1 Chess Fever, 1925 Paris, Musée national
journal The Nº Reg. 115540 35 mm film d’art moderne /
International of Art transferred to DVD, Centre de création
(unpublished), 1919 Francis Picabia b/w, silent, 28’ industrielle, donation
Watercolor on paper Cover of the journal The Blackhawk of Mme. Xénia
Russian State 391, no. 8, Zurich,
Films Collection Pougny in 1966
Archives of February 1919
AM 1493 S
Literature and Art Letterpress
Ivan Puni p. 59
f. 665, op. 1, ed. 43.6 x 27.2 cm
Cover of the book
khr. 35, l. 1 Archivo Lafuente
001458/003 Futurists: Roaring Ivan Puni
Parnassus by David Composition
L. Nikitin
Francis Picabia and Burliuk, Velimir (The Understanding
Cover of the book Art
Sergei Sharshun Khlebnikov, Igor Court), 1915–1916
and Classes by Boris
Arvatov, Moscow/ Cover of the journal Severianin, Aleksei Pencil on paper
Petrograd, 1923 391, no. 14, Paris, 1920 Kruchenykh et al., 16.7 x 11.8 cm
Letterpress Letterpress Saint Petersburg, 1914 The State Museum of
23.8 x 16 cm 49 x 32.2 cm 20.6 x 16.3 cm Contemporary Art-
Archivo Lafuente Centro de Letterpress Costakis Collection
006979/000 Documentación, Archivo Lafuente C295-141
p. 290 Museo Nacional 006886/000 p. 55
Centro de Arte Reina p. 174
Varsanofy Parkin Sofía, Madrid Ivan Puni
(Mikhail Larionov) RESERVA P1-1 Ivan Puni Composition, 1916
and K. Khudakov Nº Reg. 115540 Barber, 1915 Pencil and ink
(Ilia Zdanevich) Oil on canvas on paper
Cover and Francis Picabia after
83 x 65 cm 48 x 34.5 cm
illustrations for the Marcel Duchamp,
Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou,
book Donkey's Tail Dada Picture by
Marcel Duchamp: Paris, Musée national Paris, Musée national
and Target, Moscow,
L.H.O.O.Q., illustration d’art moderne / d’art moderne /
Ts. A. Miunster, 1913
on the cover of the Centre de création Centre de création
Lithograph
30.6 x 23.6 cm journal 391, no. 12, industrielle, donation industrielle, donation
Archivo Lafuente Paris, March 1920 of Mme. Xénia of Mme. Xénia
006834/000 Letterpress Pougny in 1966 Pougny in 1966
55.6 x 38 cm AM4329P AM3448D
Vera Pestel Archivo Lafuente p. 47 p. 52
Still Life with 001458/005
Red, 1915–1916 p. 21

334
Ivan Puni 20.2 x 15.1 cm Centre de création Aleksandr Rodchenko
Study for Red Army Centre Pompidou, industrielle Cover design for the
Soldier, illustration Paris, Musée national Dation, 1994 book Tsotsa by Aleksei
in the portfolio d’art moderne / AM 1994-394 (3586) Kruchenykh, 1921
October 1917–1918: Centre de création p. 152 Cut-and-pasted
Heroes and Victims industrielle papers and colored
of the Revolution Dation, 1994 Klement Redko pencil on paper
by Vladimir AM 1994-339 Uprising, 1924–1925 17.8 x 13.8 cm
Mayakovsky, 1918 p. 141 Oil on canvas Private Collection
Pencil and ink 170.5 x 212 cm
on paper Man Ray State Tretyakov Aleksandr Rodchenko
33.8 x 23.7 cm Mikhail Larionov, Gallery, Moscow Cover design for the
Vladimir Dahl 1923 ЖC-5009 book Transrational
Russian State Gelatin silver print pp. 120–121 by Aleksei
Literary Museum (printed 2018) Kruchenykh, 1921
GLM KP 7309/5 Centre Pompidou, Hans Richter Cut-and-pasted
p. 98 Paris, Musée national Rhythmus 21, ca. 1921 printed papers,
d’art moderne / 16 mm film colored pencil, and
Ivan Puni Centre de création transferred to video linocut on paper
Laundress industrielle (Digital Betacam 18.5 x 13.2 cm
Worker AM 1994-393 (2445) and DVD), b/w, The State Mayakovsky
Mistress p. 142 silent, 3’25” Museum, Moscow
Red Army Soldier Museo Nacional 28155(2091)
Bureaucrat Man Ray
Centro de Arte
General, Raoul de Roussy and Aleksandr Rodchenko
Reina Sofía
Illustrations for the Marcel Duchamp, Cover design for the
AD04968
portfolio October Man Ray’s workshop, book Tsotsa by Aleksei
1917–1918: Heroes Paris, 1924 Kruchenykh, 1921
Aleksandr Rodchenko
and Victims of Gelatin silver print Cut-and-pasted
Line and Compass
the Revolution (printed 2018) color papers
Drawing, 1915
by Vladimir Man Ray Trust 18 x 14 cm
Ink on paper
Mayakovsky, 1918 1573 The State Mayakovsky
25.1 x 20.4 cm
Lithographs Museum, Moscow
Man Ray Private Collection
33 x 24 cm each 28155(5237)
Sergei Sharshun in p. 53
Vladimir Dahl
Russian State His Studio, 1925 Aleksandr Rodchenko
Gelatin silver print Aleksandr Rodchenko Cover of the journal
Literary Museum
(printed 2018) Line and Compass Cine-Photo, no. 1, 1922
GLM KP 12210/19;
Centre Pompidou, Drawing, 1915 Letterpress
GLM KP 12210/14;
Paris, Musée national Ink on paper 29.6 x 22.1 cm
GLM KP 12210/20;
GLM KP 12210/17; d’art moderne / 25.1 x 20.4 cm Private Collection
GLM KP 12210/18; Centre de création Private Collection p. 214
GLM KP 12210/16 industrielle p. 278
p. 98 AM 1994-393 (2616) Aleksandr Rodchenko
p. 315 Aleksandr Rodchenko Narkompros, 1922
Ivan Puni Construction no. 92 Cut-and-pasted
Untitled (Hunger Man Ray (on Green), 1919 printed papers
Plate), ca. 1918 Living room of Oil on canvas on paper
Gelatin silver print Katherine S. Dreier 73 x 46 cm 26.8 x 17.5 cm
12 x 18 cm with works of The Vyatka Art The Pushkin State
The State Mayakovsky David Burliuk, Museum named Museum of Fine
Museum, Moscow Marcel Duchamp, after V. M. and A. M. Arts, Department of
HB-1813 Pablo Picasso, Vasnetsovs, provided Private Collections
p. 131 New York, 1927 with assistance from КП-391870/
Gelatin silver print the State Museum МЛК ГР 2142
Man Ray 11.3 x 9.2 cm and Exhibition
Sergei Sharshun, Centre Pompidou, Center ROSIZO Aleksandr Rodchenko
ca. 1922–1925 Paris, Musée national p. 115 Detective, 1922
Gelatin silver print d’art moderne / Cut-and-pasted

335
 printed papers, Aleksandr Rodchenko Aleksandr Rodchenko Aleksandr Rodchenko
gelatin silver prints, Circus, 1923 Maquette for Cover of the journal
and ink on paper Cut-and-pasted illustrations for Lef, no. 1, 1924
29.4 x 41 cm printed papers About This, a Letterpress
The Pushkin State on paper book by Vladimir 22 x 14.5 cm
Museum of Fine 35 x 25 cm Mayakovsky, 1923 Centro de
Arts, Department of Private Collection Cut-and-pasted Documentación,
Private Collections printed papers and Museo Nacional
КП-391903/ Aleksandr Rodchenko gelatin silver prints Centro de Arte Reina
МЛК ГР 2176 on cardboard Sofía, Madrid
Cover of the journal
pp. 116–117 35.2 x 22 cm CDB.173118 REVIIA 1
Lef, no. 2, 1923
The State Mayakovsky CDB.173120 REVIIB 1
Letterpress
Aleksandr Rodchenko Museum, Moscow
23 x 15.2 cm
Self-Portrait, 1922 И-1108 Aleksandr Rodchenko
Centro de
Cut-and-pasted Cover design for the
Documentación, Aleksandr Rodchenko
printed papers journal Lef (with
Museo Nacional Maquette for
and gelatin silver a portrait of Osip
Centro de Arte Reina illustrations for
prints on paper Brik, unpublished),
18.5 x 15 cm Sofía, Madrid About This, a
CDB.173118 REVIIA 1 1924
Private Collection book by Vladimir
CDB.173120 REVIIB 1 Gelatin silver print,
p. 245 Mayakovsky, 1923
pp. 127, 302, 305 gouache, and pencil
Cut-and-pasted
24 x 18 cm
Aleksandr Rodchenko printed papers and
Aleksandr Rodchenko The Pushkin State
Type of a Female gelatin silver prints
Cover of the book Museum of Fine
Convict, 1922 on cardboard
About This by Arts, Department of
Cut-and-pasted 35.2 x 22 cm
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Private Collections
printed papers The State Mayakovsky
Moscow, 1923 КП-391904/
on paper Museum, Moscow
МЛК ГР 2176
27 x 17.5 cm Letterpress И-1105
p. 138
The Pushkin State 23 x 16 cm
Museum of Fine Archivo Lafuente Aleksandr Rodchenko
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Arts, Department of 006968/000 Poems about
Revolution by Cover of the journal
Private Collections
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Book about Books,
КП-391869/ Aleksandr Rodchenko
Moscow, Krasnaia no. 1–2, Moscow,
МЛК ГР 2141 Cover of the journal
nov’, 1923 April 1924
p. 90 Lef, no. 3, 1923
17.5 x 13.3 cm Cover of the journal
23.5 x 15.8 cm
Aleksandr Rodchenko Archivo Lafuente Book about Books, no.
Letterpress
Untitled (Change of 006966/000 3, Moscow, May 1924
Centro de
Milestones), 1922 Cover of the journal
Documentación, Book about Books,
Cut-and-pasted Museo Nacional Aleksandr Rodchenko
printed papers Varvara Stepanova no. 5–6, Moscow,
Centro de Arte Reina June 1924
on paper posing for a
Sofía, Madrid Cover of the journal
27 x 18 cm poster, 1924
CDB.173118 REVIIA 1 Book about Books,
Private Collection Gelatin silver print
CDB.173120 REVIIB 1 no. 7–8, Moscow,
p. 276 30 x 23.8 cm
Private Collection July 1924
Aleksandr Rodchenko Letterpress
Aleksandr
Rodchenko and Cover of the book Aleksandr Rodchenko 25 x 17 cm each
Varvara Stepanova Mayakovsky Smiles, Family Games (from Archivo Lafuente
Cover design for the Mayakovsky Laughs, top to bottom: Boris 006987/001;
journal Lef, no. 2, 1923 Mayakovsky Mocks by Shvetsov, Varvara 006987/002;
Cut-and-pasted Vladimir Mayakovsky, Stepanova, Maria 006987/003;
printed papers Moscow/Saint Shvetsova, Aleksandr 006987/004
and gelatin silver Petersburg, 1923 Rodchenko), 1924
prints on paper Letterpress Gelatin silver print Aleksandr Rodchenko
20.3 x 28.8 cm 17.6 x 13 cm 34.5 x 14.7 cm Cover of the book
Private Collection Archivo Lafuente Private Collection Mess Mend or a
p. 89 006967/000 p. 91 Yankee in Petrograd by

336
Jim Dollar (Marietta Slobodskoy Museum- 10954(10); 10954(4); Robert Sennecke
Shaginian), Moscow, Exhibition Center 10954(9) Hannah Höch and
nos. 3, 5 & 9, 1924 p. 46 pp. 66, 67 Raoul Hausmann at
Letterpress the First International
18 x 12.5 cm each Olga Rozanova Kurt Schwitters Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920
Archivo Lafuente Cover design for the Plates 2, 3, 4, 5 from Gelatin silver print
006984/001; book Transrational by Merz 3, Merz Portfolio: (printed 2018)
006984/002; Aleksei Kruchenykh 6 Lithos, 1923 Berlinische Galerie,
006984/003 and Aliagrov (Roman Lithographs Berlin’s Museum
Jakobson), 1915 55.4 x 44.3 cm each of Modern Art
Aleksandr Rodchenko Cut-and-pasted Stedelijk Museum BG-FS 077/94.4
Cover of the book papers on paper Amsterdam
Through the Russian A 4677(1-6)2; A Sergei Sharshun
18.8 x 13.8 cm
Revolution by Albert 4677(1-6)3; A 4677(1- Poster design for
The State Mayakovsky
Rhys Williams (New 6)4; A 4677(1-6)5 the exhibition of
Museum, Moscow
York, 1921), Moscow/ p. 159 Elena Gringof and
11406
Leningrad, 1925 Sergei Sharshun,
p. 267
Letterpress Kurt Schwitters Galerie Dalmau,
22 x 15 cm Cover of the journal Barcelona, 1916
Olga Rozanova
Archivo Lafuente Merz, no. 11, Hannover, Gouache and
Composition, 1915 ink on paper
007025/000 November 1924
Cut-and-pasted 35.7 x 28.3 cm
papers on paper Letterpress
Aleksandr Rodchenko 29 x 22 cm IVAM, Institut
Cover of the book My 12.2 x 9.7 cm Valencià d’Art
The State Mayakovsky Archivo Lafuente
Discovery of America by Modern, Generalitat
Museum, Moscow 005449/004
Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1996.004 (Código 5019)
Leningrad/ 11632
Sergei Senkin
Moscow, 1926 p. 264 Sergei Sharshun
City, ca. 1920
Letterpress Bibi, 1921
Cut-and-pasted
18.5 x 14 cm Olga Rozanova Ink and pencil
papers on paper
Archivo Lafuente Cover of the book on paper
70.4 x 52 cm
007144/000 Transrational Book by 20.9 x 26.9 cm
State Tretyakov
p. 151 Aleksei Kruchenykh Centre Pompidou,
Gallery, Moscow
and Aliagrov (Roman Paris, Musée national
PC-12378
Olga Rozanova Jakobson), 1916 d’art moderne / Centre
The Devil and the p. 86
Lithograph de création industrielle
Speech Makers, Saint 21.8 x 19.7 cm AM 1981-628
Sergei Senkin
Petersburg, 1913 The State Mayakovsky p. 164
Lithograph Construction, 1920
Museum, Moscow Ink, pencil, and
22.8 x 16.8 cm 28155(5239) Sergei Sharshun
Archivo Lafuente gouache on paper The Fortune
p. 176 26.1 x 20.5 cm
006844/000 Dancer, 1922
Russian State Archives Charcoal and
Olga Rozanova of Literature and Art
Olga Rozanova ink on paper
Cover and Illustrations f. 1334, op. 1, ed.
Cover of the book 100.3 x 71.2 cm
for the book War by khr. 896, ll. 1–2
Te Li Le by Aleksei Centre Pompidou,
Aleksei Kruchenykh, p. 77
Kruchenykh Paris, Musée national
Petrograd, 1916
and Velimir d’art moderne /
Linocut Sergei Senkin
Khlebnikov, 1914 Centre de création
Hectograph print 41.5 x 32.5 cm Illustrations for the industrielle, Legacy
23.1 x 16 cm approx. each. journal Young Guard, of the artist 1976
The State Mayakovsky The State Mayakovsky Moscow, 1924 AM 1976-606
Museum, Moscow Museum, Moscow Lithographs p. 165
11109 10954(6); 10954(7); 22 x 15 cm
10954(13); 10954(14); The State Mayakovsky Sergei Sharshun
Olga Rozanova 10954(1); бф98445; Museum, Moscow Tristan Tzara,
In the Street, 1915 10954(11); 10954(8); 12127 (1); 12131; ca. 1921–1922
Oil on canvas 10954(12); 10954(3); 12130; 12128 Ink and graphite
101 x 77 cm 10954(5); 10954(2); pp. 93, 306 on paper

337
 12 x 8 cm Ink and graphite Museum, Moscow Poetry by Varvara
Fundación MAPFRE on paper И-468 Stepanova, 1918
Collection 12 x 8 cm p. 170 Gouache on paper
FM000268 Fundación MAPFRE 23.3 x 18.5 cm
p. 203 Collection Antonina Sofronova Private Collection
FM000263 Cover design for the
Sergei Sharshun book From the Easel Varvara Stepanova
Nikolai Berdiaev, Sergei Sharshun to the Machine by Cover of Rtny
ca. 1921–1922 Ornamental Cubism, Nikolai Tarabukin, Khomle: Nonobjective
Ink and graphite 1922–1923 Moscow, 1923 Poetry by Varvara
on paper Oil on canvas Letterpress Stepanova, 1918
12 x 8 cm 24 x 34 cm 23 x 15.6 cm Gouache on paper
Fundación MAPFRE Private Collection The State Mayakovsky 23.3 x 17.8 cm
Collection pp. 162–163 Museum, Moscow Private Collection
FM000264 10775 p. 280
p. 254 Sergei Sharshun
Back cover of the John Sraubenz Varvara Stepanova
Sergei Sharshun journal Merz, Vladimir Mayakovsky Illustration for
Portrait: Dada no. 7, Hannover, and Osip Brik, Zigra-Ar by Varvara
Drawing, November 1924 Berlin, 1923 Stepanova, 1918
ca. 1921–1922 Letterpress Gelatin silver print Gouache on paper
Ink and graphite 20.5 x 24 cm 10 x 14.7 cm 23.5 x 18 cm
on paper Stedelijk Museum The State Mayakovsky The Pushkin State
12 x 8 cm Amsterdam Museum of Fine
Museum, Moscow
Fundación MAPFRE 1994.7.0251(1-14)05 Arts, Department
8498
Collection of Private Collections
p. 300
FM000262 Maria Siniakova КП-391788/
Cover of the book Varvara Stepanova МЛК ГР 2060
Sergei Sharshun Oi konin dan okein! Illustration for
Self-Portrait as by Nikolai Aseev’s,
Gly-Gly by Aleksei Varvara Stepanova
Devil, ca. 1921–1922 Moscow, 1916
Kruchenykh, 1918 Gaust Chaba, 1919
Ink on paper Cut-and-pasted
Cut-and-pasted Cut-and-pasted
12 x 8 cm papers
papers and ink papers on newspaper
Fundación MAPFRE 20.2 x 16 cm
on paper 27.5 x 17 cm
Collection The State Mayakovsky
15.5 x 11 cm Private Collection
FM000265 Museum, Moscow
p. 141 28115(1261) Private Collection
p. 246 Varvara Stepanova
Sergei Sharshun Evgeny Slavinsky Nonobjective
Female Portrait, Still from Nikandr Varvara Stepanova Poems, 1919
ca. 1921–1922 Turkin’s film Born Not Illustration for Color pencil
Ink and graphite for the Money (David Gly-Gly by Aleksei and text on paper
on paper Burliuk and Vladimir Kruchenykh, 1918 23 x 18.4 cm
12 x 8 cm Mayakovsky), 1918 Ink on paper Private Collection
Fundación MAPFRE Gelatin silver print 15.5 x 11 cm
Collection 21.9 x 15.9 cm Private Collection Varvara Stepanova
FM000267 The State Mayakovsky p. 247 Gaust Chaba, 1919
Museum, Moscow Cut-and-pasted
Sergei Sharshun И-466 Varvara Stepanova papers on newspaper
Four-page journal p. 234 Illustration for 27.5 x 17 cm
Transportation- Gly-Gly by Aleksei Private Collection
Dada, July 1922 Evgeny Slavinsky Kruchenykh, 1918
Letterpress Still from Nikandr Ink on paper Varvara Stepanova
14.2 x 27.5 cm Turkin’s film 15.5 x 11 cm Nonobjective
Archives Iliazd France Born Not for the Private Collection Poems, 1919
Money (Vladimir Color pencil a
Sergei Sharshun Mayakovsky), 1918 Varvara Stepanova nd text on paper
Portrait: Dada 14.8 x 9.6 cm Illustration for Rtny 23 x 18.4 cm
Drawing, 1922 The State Mayakovsky Khomle: Nonobjective Private Collection

338
Varvara Stepanova Varvara Stepanova aluminum, and zinc Vladimir Tatlin
Torso, 1920 Props design for 78.8 x 152.4 x 76.2 cm Construction of the
Ink on paper Vitaly Zhemchuzhny’s Annely Juda Fine model of Tatlin’s
29 x 22 cm Evening of the Book Arts, London Monument to the
Private Collection (The heroes of old MC0082W Third International
p. 103 books), 1924 (left to right: Sofia
Gelatin silver print Vladimir Tatlin Dymshits-Tolstaia,
Varvara Stepanova 23.4 x 17.5 cm Painterly Relief Tatlin, Tevel
Figure, 1921 Private Collection (in the exhibition Shapiro, and Iosif
Ink on paper Moscow Artists to Meerzon), 1920
43 x 30.5 cm Varvara Stepanova Victims of War), 1915 Gelatin silver print
Private Collection Gelatin silver print 9.8 x 13.3 cm
Poster for Vitaly
p. 102 24.3 x 18 cm The State Museum of
Zhemchuzhny’s
Russian State Contemporary Art -
Evening of the
Varvara Stepanova Archives of Costakis Collection
Book, 1924
Cover of the journal Literature and Art CDA-0234
Gelatin silver print f. 998, op. 1, ed.
Cine-Photo, no. 2, 1922 16 x 12.5 cm khr. 3623, l. 2 Vladimir Tatlin
Letterpress Private Collection Stage design for
29.6 x 22.1 cm
Vladimir Tatlin Zangezi by Velimir
Private Collection Varvara Stepanova Counter-relief, 1915 Khlebnikov, Museum
p. 218 Props design for Gelatin silver print of Material Culture,
Vitaly Zhemchuzhny’s 15.5 x 11 cm Leningrad, 1923
Varvara Stepanova Evening of the Russian State Gelatin silver print
Costume designs Book (Red imps Archives of 18 x 13.2 cm
for the play Death of
disarm Aleksandr Literature and Art Russian State
Tarelkin by Aleksandr
Kirensky), 1924 f. 998, op. 1, ed. Archives of
Sukhovo-Kobylin
Gelatin silver print khr. 3623, ll. 8–9 Literature and Art
for Vsevolod
18 x 24 cm f. 3070, op. 1, ed.
Meyerhold
Private Collection Vladimir Tatlin khr. 1615, l. 1
Theater, 1922
p. 119 Cover of the book p. 68
Color pencil and
The Monument to the
gouache on paper Third International by
Vladimir Tatlin Solomon Telingater
36 x 44.5 cm, Nikolai Punin, 1920 Cover design for the
37 x 45.8 cm Painterly Relief,
ca. 1914 28 x 21.9 cm book Zudo by Aleksei
Private Collection Letterpress Kruchenykh, 1922
p. 119 Leather and
metal on wood Centro de Watercolor and
63 x 53 cm Documentación, ink on paper
Varvara Stepanova Museo Nacional 21.5 x 30.5 cm
Charles Chaplin State Tretyakov
Centro de Arte Reina Russian State
Turning Gallery, Moscow
Sofía, Madrid Archives of
Somersault, 1922 Ж-1295
RESERVA 2714 Literature and Art
Ink and pencil p. 58
p. 270 f. 1334, op. 1, ed.
on paper khr. 1318, ll. 1–2
15.8 x 12.9 cm Vladimir Tatlin Vladimir Tatlin
Private Collection Cover of the pamphlet Construction of the Igor Terentiev
p. 221 Vladimir Evgrafovich model of Tatlin’s Cover design for
Tatlin, 1915 Monument to the the book Obesity
Varvara Stepanova Letterpress Third International of Roses by Aleksei
Cover of the journal 31 x 24.5 cm (left to right: Iosif Kruchenykh,
Cine-Photo, no. 3, 1922 The State Mayakovsky Meerzon, Tevel Tiflis, 1918
Letterpress Museum, Moscow Shapiro, and Letterpress
29.5 x 22 cm 10776 Tatlin), 1920 20 x 14.7 cm
The Pushkin State Gelatin silver print The State Mayakovsky
Museum of Fine Vladimir Tatlin 14.9 x 10.2 cm Museum, Moscow
Arts, Department of Complex Corner- The State Museum of 28155(5236)
Private Collections Relief, 1915 Contemporary Art -
КП-391647/ Reconstruction by Costakis Collection Igor Terentiev
МЛК ГРП 27 Martin Chalk, 1982 CDA-0233 Three Archbishops
p. 207 Paint, iron, p. 78 (Aleksei Kruchenykh,

339
 Ilia Zdanevich, and crayon on paper Tristan Tzara and a collage
Igor Terentiev), 1919 35 x 21.4 cm Untitled, May 1931 of records
Ink on paper Collection Ildar Ink on cardboard 60 x 48 cm
22.4 x 27 cm Galeyev 24.5 x 31.5 cm The Saratov State
Russian State p. 187 Private Collection Art Museum named
Archives of France after A. N. Radischev,
Literature and Art Igor Terentiev p. 171 provided with
Cover of the book assistance from
f. 1334, op. 1, ed. khr.
Zudo by Aleksei Nadezhda Udaltsova the State Museum
288, ll. 66–70, 70а
Kruchenykh, ca. 1923 Red Figure, 1919 and Exhibition
p. 182
Cut-and-pasted Oil on canvas Center ROSIZO
papers on ruled paper 70 x 70 cm СГXМ КП-1097
Igor Terentiev BZh-106
33.2 x 20.5 cm The State Rostov-
Cover of the book p. 112
Collection Ildar Iaroslavl Architectural
The Cherubim Are
Galeyev and Art Museum
Whistling by Igor Ilia Zdanevich
Terentiev, 1919 Preserve, provided
Tristan Tzara Indecent Flyer, ca. 1917
Letterpress with assistance from Letterpress
Letter to Ilia the State Museum
25 x 18 cm Zdanevich on 15.5 x 24 cm
The State Mayakovsky and Exhibition Private Collection
Dada stationary Center ROSIZO
Museum, Moscow “Movement Dada,” France
Zh-136
28155(3787) 17 February 1922
p. 100 Ilia Zdanevich
Ink on paper
Igor Terentiev (cover) 20.9 x 27.3 cm Indecent Flyer, ca. 1917
Sigizmund Letterpress
and Kirill Zdanevich Private Collection
Valishevsky 13.5 x 21 cm
(illustrations) France
Untitled (Ilia Private Collection
17 Nonsense p. 147
Zdanevich lecturing France
Instruments by Igor
donkeys), 1915
Terentiev, 1919 Tristan Tzara
Ink on paper Ilia Zdanevich
Letterpress Envelope for
19 x 23.5 cm Cover of the book
17 x 13.5 cm a letter to Ilia
Private Collection Fact by Igor Terentiev,
The State Mayakovsky Zdanevich, 1924
France Tiflis, 1919
Museum, Moscow Ink on paper
14.4 x 11.5 cm p. 26
28155(3788) Letterpress
Archives Iliazd France 17.4 x 14 cm
218 Dziga Vertov
Igor Terentiev Cine-Truth, Archivo Lafuente
Cover of the book p. 147 006906/000
no. 14, 1923
Treatise on Total 35 mm film p. 184
Tristan Tzara
Obscenity by Igor transferred to DVD,
Letter to Ilia Ilia Zdanevich
Terentiev, Tiflis, b/w, silent, 14’
Zdanevich, 1924 Cover of the book
1919–1920 (extract 6’ 57”)
Ink on paper Easter Island by Ilia
Letterpress National Film
13.4 x 21.1 cm Zdanevich, Tiflis, 1919
21.9 x 17 cm Archives Iliazd France Foundation of
Archivo Lafuente Letterpress
Russian Federation
21.2 x 17.5 cm
006907/000 Tristan Tzara Archivo Lafuente
Seven Dada Dziga Vertov 006909/000
Igor Terentiev Manifestos Cine-Truth, no.
Self-Portrait, ca. 1920 (autographed by Tzara 21 (dedicated to Ilia Zdanevich
Watercolor, ink, and to Ilia Zdanevich in Lenin), 1925 Poster for a
pencil on paper November 1924: “To 35 mm film performance by
50.5 x 35 cm Ylya Zdanevitch with transferred to DVD, Kruchenykh,
Collection Ildar all the sympathy of b/w, silent, 23' Zdanevich, and
Galeyev Tristan Tzaranov), Lobster Films Terentiev in Borjomi,
p. 186 Paris, 1924 Georgia, 1919
Letterpress David Zagoskin Letterpress
Igor Terentiev 19 x 15.5 cm Construction, 106 x 69.5 cm
Untitled, 1923 The State Mayakovsky 1921–1922 Private Collection
Cut-and-pasted Museum, Moscow Oil on canvas France
papers, pencil, and 10690 mounted on board, p. 282

340
Ilia Zdanevich Ilia Zdanevich Kirill Zdanevich Cover of the journal
Poster for Ilia Poster design for a Cover and illustrations Literature and the
Zdanevich’s lecture conference on the for the book Learn Rest, no. 1, Tiflis, 1924
New Schools in Russian avant-garde, Artists by Aleksei Cut-and-pasted
Russian Poetry, 1921 November 28, 1922 Kruchenykh, papers on paper
Letterpress Ink on paper Tiflis, 1917 21.6 x 17.2 cm
20.4 x 15.4 cm 32 x 25 cm Lithograph Archivo Lafuente
Archives Iliazd France Private Collection 23.8 x 19.2 cm 007318/000
p. 148 France Archivo Lafuente p. 192
p. 148 006656/000
Ilia Zdanevich p. 185 Kirill Zdanevich
Leaflet for Ilia Ilia Zdanevich Aleksei Kruchenykh,
Zdanevich’s lecture Poster for Ilia Kirill Zdanevich and n.d.
in Café Caméléon, Zdanevich’s lecture Sigizmund Valishevsky Ink and pencil
Paris, April 16, 1922 “Berlin and Its Cover of the book on paper
Letterpress Hack Job,” 1923 Learn Artists by 28.3 x 21.5 cm
14.6 x 22 cm Handwritten Aleksei Kruchenykh, Russian State Archives
Private Collection 50.2 x 32.5 cm Tiflis, 1917 of Literature and Art
France Private Collection Lithograph f. 1334, op. 1, ed.
France 22.5 x 18 cm khr. 1085, l. 178
Ilia Zdanevich Inv. Number: 16
The State Mayakovsky
Cover of the journal Museum, Moscow
The Bearded Heart, no. Ilia Zdanevich
33345(1) OTHER WORKS
1, Paris, April 1922 Program for
REPRODUCED IN
Letterpress Transrational Ball,
Kirill Zdanevich THE CATALOGUE
22.5 x 14.1 cm Paris, February 1923
Cover and illustrations
Archivo Lafuente Letterpress
for the book Record Anonymous
005686/000 17.5 cm in diameter
of Tenderness: Life of Mikhail Larionov, 1913
Private Collection
Ilia Zdanevich by Igor Gelatin silver print
Ilia Zdanevich France
Terentiev, Tiflis, 1919 14 x 9.7 cm
Poster for Ilia Letterpress Vladimir Dahl Russian
Zdanevich’s Ilia Zdanevich
Poster for 13.8 x 15.2 cm State Literary Museum
lecture “41°,” Paris, p. 34
Transrational Ball, 1923 The State Mayakovsky
May 12, 1922
Letterpress Museum, Moscow
Lithograph Anonymous
31.5 x 16 cm 28155(3790)
53.4 x 44 cm
Private Collection View of El Lissitzky’s
The State Mayakovsky
France Kirill Zdanevich propaganda board
Museum, Moscow
p. 195 Cover of the book “The Factory
10934
A. Kruchenykh the Workbenches
p. 199
Ilia Zdanevich Magnificent by Igor Await You” in
Leaflet for The Bearded Terentiev, 1919 front of a factory
Ilia Zdanevich
Heart soirée, 1923 Letterpress in Vitebsk, 1920
Poster design for a
conference on the Letterpress 21 x 17 cm Gelatin silver print
Russian avant-garde, 26 x 20.3 cm Vladimir Dahl Russian 30 x 32.8 cm
November 28, 1922 IVAM, Institut State Literary Museum Russian State Library
Watercolor on paper Valencià d’Art GLM KP 50858/2831 p. 77
26.5 x 20.5 cm Modern, Generalitat p. 185
Private Collection 1995.136 (Código 3984) Anonymous
France p. 149 Kirill Zdanevich Congress of
Untitled, 1922 Constructivists and
Ilia Zdanevich Kirill Zdanevich Ink on paper Dadaists, Weimar,
(designer) and Sergei Composition, 1916 21.2 x 156 cm September, 1922
Romov (editor) Ink on paper Russian State Archives Participants: far
Cover of Strike, 22.5 x 18.2 cm of Literature and Art left: Max Burchartz
February 1922 Russian State Archives f. 2563, op. 1, ed. (carrying son); back
Offset of Literature and Art khr. 113, l. 1 row, from left: Lucia
16 x 24.6 cm f. 1334, op. 1, ed. Moholy-Nagy, Alfred
Archives Iliazd France khr. 482, l. 1 Kirill Zdanevich Kémény, and László
p. 25 and H2SO4 Group Moholy-Nagy; third

341
 row above the poster, Boguslavskaia, and
El Lissitzky (checked unknowns, ca. 1922
cap); second row: Nelly Gelatin silver print
van Doesburg, Theo Bibliothèque nationale
van Doesburg (with de France
poster in hat), Tristan p. 137
Tzara (gloved and
manacled), Werner John Schiff
Graeff (with stick), and David Burliuk’s
Han Arp (on ground) Forces of Spring,
Gelatin silver print 1922 [location 
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin unknown] from
Inv. no. 7599 Katherine S. Dreier’s
p. 136 private collection,
ca. 1945–1946
Kazimir Malevich Black and white
Composition with photograph
Mona Lisa (Partial Yale University
Eclipse), ca. 1914–1915 Art Gallery.
Oil, collage, and Purchase, Director’s
pencil on canvas Discretionary Funds
62 x 49.3 cm p. 153
The State Russian
Museum, St. John Schiff
Petersburg David Burliuk’s Eye
p. 54 of God, 1923–25 from
Katherine S. Dreier’s
Man Ray private collection
A Dada alliance (top ca. 1945-1946
row, left to right: Paul Black and white
Chadourne, Tristan photograph
Tzara, Philippe Yale University
Soupault, and Sergei Art Gallery.
Sharshun; bottom Purchase, Director’s
row, left to right: Paul Discretionary Funds
Éluard, Jacques Rigaut, p. 155
Mick Soupault, and
Georges Ribemont-
Dessaignes), Paris,
November 1921
Gelatin silver print
(printed 2018)
Centre Pompidou,
Paris, Musée national
d’art moderne / Centre
de création industrielle
AM 1987-883
p. 140

Ivan Puni (Scrapbook)

Tristan Tzara (left)
with two unknowns,
ca. 1922
Gelatin silver print
Bibliothèque
nationale de France
p. 202

Ivan Puni (Scrapbook)

Viktor Shklovsky,
Ivan Puni, Ksenia

342
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFÍA
CULTURE AND SPORTS

Minister Director PUBLIC ACTIVITIES

Íñigo Méndez de Vigo y Montojo Manuel Borja-Villel
Director of Public Activities
ROYAL BOARD OF TRUSTEES Deputy Director Ana Longoni
OF THE MUSEO NACIONAL and Chief Curator
CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFÍA João Fernandes Head of Cultural Activities
and Audiovisual Program
Honorary Presidency Chema González
Deputy Director
Their Majesties the King of Management
and Queen of Spain Michaux Miranda Head of the Library and
President Documentation Centre
Assistant to the Director Bárbara Muñoz de Solano
Ricardo Martí Fluxá
Carmen Castañón
Vice President Head of the Study Center
Óscar Fanjul Martín DIRECTOR’S OFFICE Carlos Prieto
Members
Head of Office DEPUTY DIRECTORATE
Fernando Benzo Sainz MANAGEMENT
Nicola Wohlfarth
José Canal Muñoz
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Head of Press
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COLLECTIONS Resources Department
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Secretary
EDITORIAL ACTIVITIES
Carmen Castañón Jiménez
Head of IT Department
ADVISORY COMMITTEE Head of Editorial Activities Sara Horganero
Alicia Pinteño
María de Corral López-Dóriga
Fernando Castro Flórez
Marta Gili
This catalogue is published to coincide with the exhibition Russian
Dada 1914–1924, organized and held in the Museo Nacional Centro
de Arte Reina Sofía from June 6 to October 22, 2018.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
© of this edition, Museo Nacional
Curator Catalogue edited by Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2018
Margarita Tupitsyn Margarita Tupitsyn and the © Essay Margarita Tupitsyn
MNCARS Editorial Activities essays, Victor Tupitsyn, Natasha
MNCARS Kurchanova, Olga Burenina-Petrova
Head of Editorial Activities and translations,
Head of Exhibitions
Alicia Pinteño BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Teresa Velázquez

Exhibition Coordinator Editorial Coordination © all the other texts, their authors
Sofía Cuadrado Mafalda Rodríguez © of the photos, their authors
Leticia Sastre Teresa Ochoa de Zabalegui © Natan Altman, Hans Arp, Serge
Charchoune, Nathalie Gontcharova,
Management George Grosz, The Heartfield
Natalia Guaza Translations
Community of Heirs, Valentina
From Russian to English
Management Assistant Kulagina, Michel Larionov, Filippo
Cathy Young, 23–255,
María Inés Álvarez Tommaso Marinetti, Laszlo
259–263, 271–275, 285–299,
Moholy-Nagy, Francis Picabia,
307–309, 314–319
Registrars Jean Puni, Alexander Rodchenko,
Clara Berástegui From Spanish to English Kurt Schwitters (Merz), Varvara
Raquel Esteban Philip Sutton, 7–13 Stepanova (VARST), Man Ray
Iliana Naranjo Trust, VEGAP, Madrid, 2018
David Ruiz Copyediting and Proofreading © The Burliuk Foundation, 2018
Christopher Davey © Pracusa, 2018
Conservation
Eugenia Gimeno Images Documentation ISBN: 978-0-262-53639-4
(Conservator in charge) Alexia Oviedo (The MIT Press)
Blanca Guerra
ISBN: 978-84-8026-573-7
Pilar Hernández
Graphic Design (MNCARS)
Mikel Rotaeche
tipos móviles NIPO: 036-18-017-2
Juan Antonio Sáez
Juan Sánchez L.D.: M-13383-2018
Production Management
Exhibition Design Julio López Library of Congress Control
Estudio María Fraile Number: 2018938300
Plates
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PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS

Archives Iliazd France: 21, 147, 148, 166, 182, 258. The Astrakhan State Art Museum
named after P. M. Dogadina, provided
Archivo Lafuente: 21, 29, 39, 94, 133, 136,
with assistance from the State Museum
142, 151, 174, 178, 184, 192, 195, 290.
and Exhibition Center ROSIZO: 48.
A. Rodchenko and V. Stepanova Archive: 53,
The Krasnodar Regional Art Museum
89, 91, 119, 218, 221, 244, 245, 246, 247.
named after F. A. Kovalenko, provided
Biblioteca Museo Nacional Centro de Arte with assistance from the State Museum
Reina Sofía, Madrid. Photos: Joaquín Cortés and Exhibition Center ROSIZO: 56.
and Román Lores: 94, 127, 270, 302, 305.
The Moscow Film Archive: 2, 3.
Bibliothèque nationale de France: 137, 202.
The Nizhny Tagil Art Museum, provided
Central State Archives, Museum of Literature with assistance from the State Museum
and Arts of Ukraine: 73, 93, 118. and Exhibition Center ROSIZO: 50, 114.
Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. The Pushkin State Museum of
RMN-Grand Palais: 140, 142, 315 / Photos Fine Arts, Department of Private
Georges Meguerditchian: 52, 141, 164, 165/ Collections: 90, 116,117, 138, 207.
Photo Guy Carrard: 152 / Photo Philippe
The Samara Regional Art Museum,
Migeat: 59 / Photo Jacqueline Hyde: 47.
provided with assistance from the State
Fundación MAPFRE Collection. Photos Museum and Exhibition Center ROSIZO: 51.
Fernando Maquieira: 141, 203, 254.
The Saratov State Art Museum named
François Mairé Collection: 21, 24, 148, after A. N. Radischev, provided with
149, 258. Photos Gerard Dufresne: 26, assistance from the State Museum and
147, 166. Exhibition Center ROSIZO: 57, 112, 113.
Galeyev Gallery: 186, 187. The State Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow:
IVAM, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern: 125. 10, 31, 39, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 82, 99, 122, 126, 128,
131, 137, 144, 151, 160, 166, 168, 169, 173, 176,
Lorenzelli Arte, Milano. Photo: Andrea Lazzari: 111. 191, 195, 227, 231, 262, 264, 267, 284, 296, 311.
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina The State Museum of Contemporary Art-
Sofía, Madrid. Photos Joaquín Cortés Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki: 35–36, 49,
and Román Lores: 166, 167. 55, 74, 78, 90, 104, 105, 108–109, 161, 176.
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid: 127. The State Rostov-Yaroslavl Architectural
Private Collection Margarita Tupitsyn: and Art Museum Preserve: 100.
70, 72, 81, 84, 91, 96, 97, 102, 130. The State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg: 54.
Russian State Archive of Literature and The Vyatka Art Museum named after V.
Art: 25, 68, 75, 77, 107, 125, 133, 154, 160, M. and A. M. Vasnetsovs, provided with
178, 182, 208, 214, 255, 268, 288. assistance from the State Museum and
Slobodskoy Museum-Exhibition Center: 46. Exhibition Center ROSIZO: 101, 115.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow: Vladimir Dahl Russian State Literary
58, 86, 105, 110, 120, 121. Museum: 25, 27, 30, 32, 33, 34, 44, 98, 184, 237.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam: 32, 41, 43, Yale University Art Gallery.
45, 52, 55, 63, 106, 157, 158, 159, 178. Photo: John Schiff: 153, 155.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, is especially grateful to the cura-
tor of the exhibition, Margarita Tupitsyn, for her dedication and help with every
aspect of the project.
Our gratitude to the following individuals and institutions without whose collabo-
ration and cooperation neither the exhibition nor the catalogue would have been
possible:
Annely Juda Fine Arts  u Archives Iliazd, France  u Archivo Lafuente  u The
Astrakhan State Art Museum named after P. M. Dogadina  u Bauhaus Archiv
Museum für Gestaltung u Berlinische Galerie, Berlin u California Institute of The
Arts u Central State Archives, Museum of Literature and Arts of Ukraine u Centre
Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle u
Colecciones Fundación Mapfre, Madrid  u D. G. de Bellas Artes y Patrimonio
Cultural (MECD)  u Embassy of the Russian Federation in Madrid  u Francis M.
Naumann Fine Art, New York u IVAM, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Generalitat u
Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles u Moscow Museum of Modern Art  u
Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory u National Film Foundation of Russian
Federation  u Man Ray Trust  u Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid  u Russian
State Archives of Literature and Art  u Russian State Documentary Film and
Photo Archive  u Slobodskoy Museum-Exhibition Center  u Sotheby’s, London  u
State Central Cinema Museum u Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam u The Krasnodar
Regional Art Museum named after F.A. Kovalenko u The MIT Press, Cambridge u
The Museum of Modern Art, New York u The Nizhniy Tagil Art Museum u The
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Department of Private Collections  u The
Samara Regional Art Museum u The Saratov State Art Museum named after A. N.
Radischev  u The State Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow  u The State Museum and
Exhibition Center ROSIZO, Moscow u The State Museum of Contemporary Art-
Costakis Collection  u The State Rostov-Yaroslavl Architectural and Art Museum
Preserve  u The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow  u Vladimir Dahl Russian State
Literary Museum, Moscow  u The Vyatka Art Museum named after V. M. and A.  M.
Vasnetsovs
And specially to those who have supported the project in various ways: u Larisa
Alekseeva u Anna Ashkinazi u Erika Babatz u Reto Balmettler u Robert Benedetti u
Yanina Beloshapkina u Kathy Carbone u Roger Conover u Pilar Corchado u Emily
Cushman  u Ildar Galeyev  u Paul Galloway  u Elena Gasparova  u Régis Gayraud  u
Margarita Godina u Alejandro Ituarte Climent u Larissa Ivanova u Dmitry Karpov u
Ekaterina Khokhlova u Tanja Keppler u Aleksandr Lavrentiev u Matteo Lorenzelli u
François Mairé u Miguel Molina u Erik Nurgaleev u José Luis Rodríguez Muñoz u
Julia Sadovnikova u Piper Severance u Vladimir Tsarenkov
As well as those who wish to remain anonymous

COLLABORATE

With the Support of Abertis

This

C A M E O FF
T HE P R ES S
I N M A DR I D
I N M AY
352
THE MIT PRESS
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
http://mitpress.mit.edu
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