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Articles John E. Bowlt David Burliuk, the Fa- Ther Of ARTICLES JOHN E. BOWLT DAVID BURLIUK, THE FA- THER OF RUSSIAN FUTURISM The poet Boris Lavrenev has left the following description of his friend and mentor, David Davidovich Burliuk: "The thickset, clumsy, and shortleg- ged David Burliuk, putting his inseparable lorgnette to his eye, stood before his superb, rather Impressionist landscapes hung all over the walls of his stu- dio, and ... smirking, said that you won't get much glory or capital today by following classical traditions and serious painting, and that you have to stup- efy the bourgeoisie and the philistine with the cudgel of novelty." During the heyday of Russian Cubo-Futurism (ca. 1912-ca. 1916); Burliuk certainly wielded the cudgel of novelty and many were bruised by it. Perhaps that is one reason why people have tended to avoid direct confrontation with Bur- liuk and why, even today, he is known more as a barrack-room lawyer, a "hooligan of the palette,"2 rather than as an original painter and poet and an astute critic. No history of twentieth-century Russian culture can be written without substantial reference to the life and work of David Burliuk, and there is no question that the Russian avant-garde-the experimental movements in art and literature of the 1910s and 1920s-would have developed quite as dra- matically if Burliuk had not undertaken his many creative and organiza- tional activities. As his fellow Futurist, Vasilii Kamenskii, once said: "The name of David Burliuk was, and always is, an international name, like the sun in the heavens."3 Put more succinctly, he was, as Vasilii Kandinsky called 1. B. Lavrenev, "V kanun prazdnika," Color and Rhyme (Hampton Bays, N.Y.), No. 57 (1964), p. 49. 2. David Burliuk used these words with reference to the nineteenth-century Realists Konstantin Makovskii and Ivan Aivazovskii in his first published manifesto, i.e., "Golos Impressionista-v zashchitu zhivopisi" (1908). Translation in J. Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism 1902:1934 (New York: Viking, 1976), pp. 10- 11. 3. Letter from V. Kamenskii to David Burliuk dated 23 Jan. 1927. Published in D. Burliuk, Entelekhizm (New York. M. Burliuk, 1930), p. 3. him, the "Father of Russian Futurism."4 Burliuk was in close personal and artistic contact with the major poets and painters of his time such as Natal'ia Goncharova, Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Mikhail Larionov. Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Maiakovskii. Many of them such as Gonchar- ova and Larionov fell out with this boisterous individual, but others. not least Maiakovskii, retained a life-long fondness for him. Burliuk organized and/or contributed to many of the important Futurist happenings-art exhib- itions, polemical debates, poetry recitations, publishing enterprises-and he himself was a man of inexhaustible energy, assuming the role of poet. painter. theorist, rhetorician, and impresario to the full. In spite of this impressive record, the "cast iron" Burliuk5 enjoys an un- certain position in our contemporary appreciation of the avant-garde. Little serious research has been undertaken on Burliuk's career, few publications have been devoted to him, and leading specialists in Russian Cubo-Futurism at best communicate equivocal opinions as to the artistic worth of Burliuk's output.6 Nikolai Khardzhiev, the Soviet critic, has provided positive commen- tary on Burliuk's poetical experiments in the book Poeticheskaia kul'tura Maiakovskogo,7 whereas Vladimir Markov, author of the invaluable Russian Futurism, has condemned Burliuk as a "provincial who can hardly camou- flage his old-fashioned poetic culture with superdaring 'innovations.' who drowns in the banal while trying to be original."'8 Justly, or unjustly, Burliuk has earned the reputation, at least in the West. of showman, charlatan, and self-seeker. Certainly, he was all these things. 4. This unlikely statement is ascribed to Kandinsky in the exhibition catalog Oils, Wa- tercolors by David Burliuk (New York: 8th Street Gallery, 1934), p. 3. Burliuk often re- peated this, even expanding it to "Father of Russian Proletarian Futurism" (Entele- khizm, p. 1). 5. Kamenskii is reported to have once given a lecture in Moscow entitled "The Cast- Iron Burliuk." SeeMoskoi,skie mastera (Moscow, 1916), p. 99. 6. The following publications, dedicated to Burliuk, should be mentioned, even though the information they provide is not exhaustive: David Burliuk. Catalog of exhibi- tion at J. B. Neumann, New York, 1925; K. Dreier, Burliuk (New York: Soci6t6 Ano- nyme, 1944); David Burliuk. (1882-1967): Selections from Various Periods. Catalog of exhibition at the ACA, New York, 1967;David Burliuk: 55 YearsofPainting. Catalog of exhibition at the Lido Galleries, Long Beach and New York, 1962;David Burliuk: Years of Transitiorz, 1910-1931. Catalog of exhibition at The Parrish Art Museum, Southhamp- ton, New York, 1978; F. Ingold, "Die einzige Kunst der Gegenwart. Eine vergessene De- klaration von David Davidovic Burljuk," in Peter Brang et al., eds., Schweizerische Bei- trade zum VII. Internationalen Slavistenkongress in Warschau, August 1973 (Zurich: C. J. Biicher, 1973), pp. 5 1-64. 7. N. Khardzhiev and V. Trenin, Poeticheskaia kul'tura Maiakovskogo (Moscow : Is- kusstvo, 1970), passim, 8. V. Markov, Russian Futurism: A History (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1968), p. 60. .
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