Customer Reviews

The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934

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This companion volume to a major MoMA exhibition is a treasury for graphic designers and bibliophiles, but it also provides a fascinating portrait of artists who began by spitting in the eye of the bourgeosie, became zealous stalwarts of the revolution, and finally reverted to the status of outsiders, as StalinÕs apparatchiks snuffed out every trace of invention. The earliest work has a child-like spontaneityÑcrude sketches on cheap paper illustrating tiny editions of poetsÕ work. ThereÕs a gradual shift to abstraction in the work of such masters as El Lissitsky and Rodchenko, and finally a slide into the banality of socialist realism. A fascinating portrait of artistic struggle and defeat.

The book is rich in showcasing and reproducing the Russian Avant-Garde books. In some, it included reproduction of contents of some of the books. For those who miss the exhibition from which this book springs forth, it is a wonderful and well-documented catalog.

The book also contains the exhibition's division of the Soviet book era into three different times, each accompanied by one or several essays. Like any good book, it is also preceded by a general discussion of bookarts, and the difference between livre d'artiste and artist's book.

To the contemporary eyes, some of the books featured may not be anything special, but by putting them in context of the time, one will see the daring nature and the revolutionary spirit of these books and their makers.

This is a hefty volume a large thick 8vo, which is worth every penny spent on it. It's a visual delight, and jam-packed with alot of images, you will not be disappointed.

This book is the best anthology of Constructivist design I have seen.
But if you want good reproductions of Constructivist painting than this book is not for you.