UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Writing and the 'Subject' Greve, C. Publication date 2004 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Greve, C. (2004). Writing and the 'Subject'. Pegasus. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:07 Oct 2021 55 POETRY OF THE FUTURE, VARVARAA STEPANOVA'S VISUAL POETRY,, 1918-1919 Itt is clear from the previous chapter that the outbreak of the First World War saww a change in the Moscow avant-garde art and literary scene. Il'ja Zdanevic andd Aleksej Krucenych had left for the Caucasus and though the former never returnedd to Moscow, Krucenych returned in 1922. At the same time, Michail Larionovv and NataTja Goncarova had left for Paris to work with the Djagilev ballet,, and Ol'ga Rozanova had died in 1918. Furthermore, new aesthetic sy- stemss and ideas had emerged from the early cubo-futurist avant-garde. A mile- stonee in the transformation of the Russian avant-garde was the "0-10, the Last Futuristt Exhibition of Pictures" (December 1915) where Kazimir Malevic ex- hibitedd his black square for the first time and proclaimed a new art movement, suprematism.. Another important movement had already surfaced in 1913 with Vladimirr Tatlin's counter-reliefs (three-dimensional objects made of diverse materialss such as glass, wood, and metal). These reliefs initiated the works of non-utilitariann constructions.1 A third factor in the development of a second avant-gardee movement was the participation of new young artists such as Alek- sandrr Rodcenko, Varvara Stepanova and Aleksej Gan who were not rooted in anti-symbolistt confrontation. They were strongly influenced by both Malevic andd Tatlin, but at the "lOja gosudarstvennaja vystavka: Bespredmetnoe tvor- cestvoo i Suprematism" ("10th State Exhibition of Non-Objective Art and Supre- matism")) held in Moscow in April 1919, took sides with Tatlin. A couple of yearss later, they were to found the First Working Group of Constructivists, whichh marked the appearance of constructivism as a new major avant-garde movementt in post-revolutionary Russia. Off the constructivists, Varvara Stepanova remains known primarily as a typo- graphicall and textile designer and as the wife of Aleksandr Rodcenko, famous forr his photomontages and graphic designs. At the age of 18, Stepanova had 163 3 WRITINGG AND THE 'SUBJECT' movedd to Moscow from Kazan' to continue her art studies and in 1915-17 be- camee acquainted with cubo-futurist art and poetry. At this point in time, cubo- futurismm as a major movement in art and poetry was already a closed book. However,, the work of Rozanova and Krucenych had a strong impact on Ste- panovaa and inspired her own production of handmade books and %aum' poetry. Stepanovaa began to write t(aum' poetry in 1917 and produced a couple of hand- madee books and single pages with brighdy colored designs intertwined with handwrittenn letters. In Stepanova's books, all elements of the preceding avant- gardee book-production are found. However, these books also represent the grad- uall development of a new relationship between word and image. Stepanova'ss books were made in the short and tumultuous period just after the Octoberr Revolution. Next to the development of already initiated individual artisticc projects, the Revolution posed new questions to artists and poets, name- ly,, how they felt about the new socio-political situation and how they should respond.. Varvara Stepanova took an active part in discussions between indi- viduall artists and also in the new state institutions for the arts. In this chapter, I willl show how the production of handmade books and the writing of %aum' po- etryy inscribed itself in the aesthetic development following the October Revolu- tion.. This chapter is not to mark the beginning of the end of the avant-garde movementt and the handmade and handwritten books, but rather to present yet anotherr approach to this phenomenon referred to by David Burljuk, Vasilij Kamenskijj and Vladimir Majakovskij as the Third Revolution of the Spirit.2 Varvaraa Stepanova's books are still fairly inaccessible, a fact which is due to theirr nature as (mostly) unique, single hand-colored pages or as extremely rare, handmadee books of limited number. The books Rfny chomle (1918), Zigra ar (1918),, and Globolkim (1918),3 consist of single pages with color poetry and were neverr published. Yet another book of poems with a similar design has recendy beenn reproduced under the tide J ad' (Poison) (original version dates from 1919).4 Thee poems are written or painted directly onto the page in between or on patchess of bright colors, whereas Toft (1919) appeared as a book very similar to thosee produced by Krucenych during his Caucasian period. In Toft, no color is used;; there are merely simple, grid-like illustrations by Rodcenko. This book 164 4 POETRYY OF THE FUTURE, VARVARA STEPANOVA'S VISUAL POETRY wass published and a number of copies still exist. Out of all the books of this period,, Varst (1918/19) is distinctive because it is typewritten.5 Veryy different from these books and single hand-colored manuscript pages are thee illustrations for Aleksej Krucenych's play Gly-Gly (1919) and the book Gaust fabafaba (1919).6 These two books contain collage elements, and Gaust caba uses newspaperr as the basis for handwritten poems or collages. Evgenij Kovtun re- producedd this book in its entirety in the book From Surface to Space (1974). Apart fromm this reproduction and a few single pages, three copies of Gaust caba are knownn to exist today.71 have had the fortune to study one of these, the copy heldd at the Moscow Literary Museum and to reproduce some pages. I have also beenn able, for the first time, to compare this copy with the two hitherto repro- ducedd copies and to study the book in detail. Evgenij Kovtun's article *Varvara Stepanova'ss Anti-Book', which accompanied the reproduction of Gaust caba in FromFrom Surface to Space, is still the only substantial article written about the book. Withh the analysis in this chapter, I will cast new light on some aspects of the bookk unnoticed by Kovtun and to challenge his notion of the "anti-book". Seenn in a post-revolutionary context, the handwritten text acquires new mean- ing.. It is no longer merely a negation of communication and a self-reflexive cri- tiquee of the prosaic word, but also a new language of revolution: the language off the posters, and graffiti on the walls in the streets and in the squares of the city.. Aleksej Krucenych (who, though not actually present in Moscow to wit- nesss the events he describes) characterizes this shift in the following way: ECAHH AO peBOAiouHH GyAeTAHHe AepHtaAH Kypc Ha nyÖAHKy ayAHTopHH, TOO c nepB&ix >Ke AHCH peBOAiomm OHH IICAHKOM BHIHAH Ha yAHiry, B TOA- rry,, CAHAHO> C paöoHHMH MaccaMH. ByAeTAflHe Ha 3a6opax, pHAOM c rrpa- BHTeAbCTBeHHMMHH ra3CTaMH, paCKAeHBaAH CBOH B03BaHHfl H Ü03MM, CTHXHH H KapTHHH. (1996: 100) (Iff before the revolution, the Men of the Future headed for the public of audito- riums,riums, then from the very first days of the revolution, they exclusively went out on thee streets, into the crowd; they blended in with the working masses. The Men of thee Future pasted their appeals and poems, verses and pictures onto the fences nextt to the government's newspapers.) 165 5 WRITINGG AND THE 'SUBJECT' Inn the article 'From Faktura to Factography', Benjamin Buchloh claims that a profoundd paradigmatic change took place in post-1920 Russia: the modernist avant-garde'ss concern for the self-reflexive pictorial and sculptural production wass abandoned and replaced by a concern for productivist practices (1987: 80). Thiss shift was gradually taking place in the period dating approximately from 19199 to 1922 and is clearly reflected in Stepanova's statement 'On Construc- tivism'(1921): : Experimentall cognition, as "active thought", as the action of the contem- poraryy epoch (rather than contemplation), produces an analytical method inn art that destroys the sacred value of the work as a unique object by lay- ingg bare its material foundations [...] The formal approach is opposed to spiritualityy and ideas, and the work is transformed into an experiment, a formm of laboratory work. (Lavrent'ev 1988a: 173-74) Thee contrast between the contemplative self-reflexive artistic approach and the productivistt professional approach is evident. However, as Buchloh emphasizes, thesee constructivist objects differ little from the "self-reflexive verification and epistemologicall critique" of the modernist paradigm. Therefore, a crisis was graduallyy recognized within this paradigm. In the 1920s, this art failed to address thee audience of the new society, it was "a crisis of audience relationships, a mo- mentt in which the historical institutionalization of the avant-garde had reached itss peak of credibility, from which legitimation was only to be obtained by a re- definitionn of its relationship with the new urban masses and their cultural de- mands"" (Buchloh 1987: 88).