Product Description
Russian avant-garde books made between 1910 and 1934 reflect a vivid and tumultuous period in that nation's history that had ramifications for art, society, and politics. The early books, with their variously sized pages of coarse paper, illustrations entwined with printed, hand-written, and stamped texts, and provocative covers, were intended to shock academic conventions and bourgeois sensibilities. After the 1917 Revolution, books appeared with optimistic designs and photomontage meant to reach the masses and symbolize a rational, machine-led future. Later books showcased modern Soviet architecture and industry in the service of the government's agenda. Major artists adopted the book format during these two decades. They include Natalia Goncharova, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, the Stenberg brothers, Varvara Stepanova, and others. These artists often collaborated with poets, who created their own transrational language to accompany the imaginative illustrations. Three major artistic movements, Futurism, Suprematism, and Constructivism, that developed during this period in painting and sculpture also found their echo in the book format. This publication accompanied an exhibition of Russian avant-garde books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. All of the books in the exhibition and this publication are part of a gift to the Museum from The Judith Rothschild Foundation.

Edited by DeborahWyeandMargit Rowell. Essays by Jared Ash, Gerald Janecek, Nina Gurianova, Margit Rowell and Deborah Wye.

Clothbound, 304 pages, 594 color and 62 halftone illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A book for designers
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.

Excellent!!!!!
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.

A Wealth of Illustration
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.

The Russian Avant-Garde book, 1910Ð1934
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 finallyreverted 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 ofpoetsÕ 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. ... Read more

Product Description
Gorgeous, well-researched, large art book devoted to collecting contemporary Russian art of all kids, including paintings, lacquerware, icons. Scores of color illustrations, many full-page. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Must have
This is a must have volume for anyone interested in post Revolutionary Soviet Impressionism or Socialist Realism.The Tkachev brothers are extremely well known.This volume has a huge number of fantastic plates exhibiting their works, as well as detailed information about these artists and their lives.This should be a piece in every serious collection. ... Read more

Product Description
This book, which is about Russian craftsmen and their work, will tell you how sculptural miniatures are modeled from wood, bone and clay, and how exquisite objects are fashioned from birchbark, and how the lacquers of Palekh, Mstera and Fedoskino are made. ... Read more

Product Description

Russian Folk Art surveys the traditions, styles, and functions of the many objects made by Russian peasant artists and artisans. Placing the objects within the settings in which folk artists worked -- the peasant household, the village, and the local market -- Alison Hilton discusses the principal media artists employed and the items they produced, from dippers and goblets to clothing and window frames. Emphasizing the balance between time-honored forms and techniques and the creativity of individual artists, the book explores how images and designs helped to form a Russian esthetic identity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Abundantly illustrated with examples from Russian museums, Russian Folk Art is a treasure for anyone interested in Russian culture.

Customer Reviews (1)

Brilliant edition
This is an absolutely stunning edition. 288 color images of superior quality representing the best artists of this period. ... Read more

Product Description
How did a country with such a tormented past bring such stunning works of art into being? America's leading Russian historian, W. Bruce Lincoln, finds answers in a land uniquely suspended between East and West, past and future, sacred and secular, and in its suppressed artists' creative search for identity and inner freedom under tyranny.Examining Russia's masterpieces through the prism of its social and political history, Between Heaven and Hell synthesizes accounts of music, painting, architecture, literature, iconography, ballet, and cinema into a gripping saga. Transforming exhaustive archival research into a passionate story, this gorgeously illustrated volume brims with the silent mysteries of Byzantine Christianity, the dazzling Imperial splendor of the czars, and the poignant return of brutalized exiles to their homelands. The roster of artists--Pushkin, Tolstoy, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Kandinsky, Pavlova, Chagall, Pasternak--carries straight through to the contemporary ordeals of Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky. A fabulous gift for Russophiles, history buffs, and connoisseurs of all the arts, Between Heaven and Hell shows how the collision of social contradictions, imported art forms, and creative genius gave birth to the quintessential Russian experience.Amazon.com Review
This slim volume tackles an overwhelming subject: 1,000 years of Russian achievements in the arts, from medieval ikons to the novels of Tolstoy to the films of Eisenstein. Much has been written about the subject over the years, but Lincoln poses himself a slightly different task: to depict not so much the history of Russian arts as the history of the country's "artistic experience," including the "social and political forces" that shaped artistic creation. Author of such histories as Romanovs and Nicholas I, Lincoln ably provides the context such a task requires. Unfortunately, Lincoln's purple prose can sometimes be distracting. No one ever seems to merely wear a medal, they wear it "proudly"; a building is not simply painted turquoise when it can be "brilliant" turquoise. Here, for instance, is Lincoln on the music of Rimsky-Korsakov: "Oceans churned, storms thundered, the sun sparkled in wintry forests, and in the new warmth of spring nightingales sang and golden fish leaped from crystal streams." Overall, however, Lincoln's marriage of history and the arts is a happy one, demonstrating how the peculiarly Russian tension between East and West and between politics and the arts helped produce artistic works that were both uniquely beautiful and uniquely Russian. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

How about "300 Years of Artistic Life in Russia"?
Hmmm. The first 700 years of the 1000 that Lincoln references in his subtitle are covered in only the first 55 pages of the book. I know that everyone's more interested in post-Petrine Russia, but let's be honest and call those first 55 pages an Introduction and rewrite the subtitle.
That said, Lincoln really has a grasp on Russian culture. I can't really complain about his understanding. However, he seems torn between understanding, for example, what Russian iconographers were doing and some kind of progressive, western ideas that he uses to judge the iconographers. If I could talk to Lincoln about it, I would advise him to go back and pull his editorial comments and leave the book as an explanation and not a western critique.

An mostly complete examination
It skimps quite a bit on Russia's musical history but otherwise rates excellent and exhaustive in its examination of Russian culture. A little dry at times, and often focuses more on breadth than depth, giving some insight into Russian history, a lot of insight into Russia's visual arts and art patrons, and a good analysis of the books thesis, one why Russia's has been suspended between, "Heaven and Hell," although it does not exhaustively examine the theme of the title.

Intersting Perspective on a Great Nation
Bruce Lincoln has chosen a very apt title to describe Russian history and culture.On one hand Russia has been plagued with an often violent history and tyrannical rulers.On the other Russians have adapted to the cultures of their invaders and the cultures they absorbed through their own invasions.This process has enabled Russians to develop an amazing cultural and intellectual heritage that should be envied by the entire world.I bought this book to help me understand Russian music - which I find to be among the most beautiful ever written - and film for a research project on Eisenstein.I found the approach very useful in understanding a this great film director given the political nature / and purpose of his films.However, the book will enlighten your understanding of the 19th century literary greats Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and particularly Gogol.
It is suitable for the expert of Russian studies as well as the novice - so long as you can appreciate great art as well as the failures and the achievements of man.Ochin Khorosho

a unique approach!
Once past the Introduction, which is so laden with copious details of the lurid opulence of the coronation of Nicholas II and Alexandra that the effect is almost soporific, this is a marvelous history of Russia's immense cultural heritage.For a single-volume history of an epic thousand years, it's rich with nugget after nugget of genuine scholarship and understanding about a seemingly infinite panoply of artistic riches.Lincoln not only covers all the arts- architecture, painting, music, literature (his revelations of Gogol are alone worth the price of the volume!), he exquisitely realises an integration of his subject into a fine general history of Russia.Catherine the Great is given rather short shrift, not much meat there, but the chapters on the Romantic period and the rise of Realism are fascinating and meticulous crafted.This is history writing Richard Pipes can only dream of- readable, deep, authentic, and beautifully attuned to genuine literary merit.I recommend this book to anyone interested in a comprehensive history of Russian arts. It's intelligent, beautifully paced, and not burdened by unnecessary digression.Russiaholics, of course, will eat it up!

Excellent introduction
I purchased this book, hoping that I would be provided an overall introduction to Russia's cultural history.With the PBS two series THE FACE OF RUSSIA and THE HERMITAGE, and this book, I can now further explore individual aspects of the geography of Russia's culture.I especially enjoyed the early parts of the book.It left me wishing to read more on Kiev, Novgorod, and early Moscovite history.I want to congratulate the author on his excellent work here.Well-written with good footnotes, it makes the culture and history easily accessible for the beginner.The only thing that seemed to be missing was a good bibliography. But that is nitpicking of an otherwise outstanding work.This should be a guide for any who wish to write cultural histories of other nations.Again congratulations Mr. Lincoln.Your work is much-appreciated. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of short stories by Anton Chekhov contains The Lady with the Dog, Ward No. 6, The Black Monk, Anna on the Neck, The House with the Mezzanine, and In the Ravine. This is a dual-language book with the Russian text on the left side, and the English text on the right side of each spread. The texts are precisely synchronized. A great book for learning both languages while reading Russian classic masterpieces. ... Read more

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This book contains The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoy's afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. This is a dual-language book with the Russian text on the left side, and the English text on the right side of each spread. The texts are precisely synchronized. A great book for learning both languages while reading a Russian classic masterpiece. Translated by Professor Leo Wiener, and Louise and Aylmer Maude; verified and corrected by Alexander Vassiliev. ... Read more

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A comprehensive and detailed look at one of the centers of papier-mache lacquer miniature creation. Kholui, a 13th century town in Russia, first developed icon painters, then lacquer miniatures. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A monumental introduction to the different schools of Russian lacquer miniature.
A monumental introduction to the different schools of Russian lacquer miniature. It contains works by the artists of Palekh, Mstera and Kholui who creatively developed the artistic techniques of Russian icon-painting. It includes the different tradition of Fedoskino, with its roots in 18th-and early-19th-century classical Russian painting and Russian folk art. Lavishly illustrated with 254 full colour deluxe plates. 295 pages. Dual text in Russian and English. ... Read more

Product Description
Every so often, the organizers of an art exhibition attempt to address head-on issues of interest in the world of contemporary politics. Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change, 1890-1990 represents such an undertaking. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, countries and cultures under Soviet control suddenly opened up to the West. In the past few years, as information has begun to flow more freely, art historians have found themselves having to re-examine their subjects and concerns in the light of newly accessible information. Nowhere is this situation more apparent than in the study of Jewish artists in Russia. Until recently, books and catalogues written in the West have concentrated on work done by Russian Jewish artists in exile. Now, for the first time, an international group of scholars has been assembled to address the last hundred years of art produced by Jews living in Russia itself. Given the present state of research, Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change, 1890-1990 - which documents an exhibition organized by The Jewish Museum, New York - purposely proposes more questions than it answers. A lucid historical overview by historian Michael Stanislawski followed by seven thought-provoking essays by an international roster of art historians who address, in chronological sequence, the difficult, frequently uplifting history of Jewish art in Russia in the modern period. ... Read more

Product Description
"The Magic Carpet" by Russian-born Victor Vasnetsov depicts a man placidly hovering on an oriental rug, flanked by three owls, above an eerie, moonlit landscape. Painted in 1880, it evidences the influence that Russian fairytales (in which magic carpets figure heavily) had on Russian painters and illustrators of the time. These stories were not only, as is often thought, used in traditional crafts like lacquer work and embroidery. Nineteenth-century artists blended imagery from fairytales and legends with references to what was happening politically, economically and socially in Russia and the rest of the world--creating a unique picture of the Russian psyche. An engaging survey of an under-explored phenomenon, Russian Legends, Folk Tales and Fairy Tales includes more than 80 works by artists like Vasnetsov, Nicholas Roerich, Ivan Bilibin, Vasili Kandinsky, Elena Polenova and Michail Vroebel alongside summaries of the depicted fairytales. Some of the works included are book illustrations, others large paintings on canvas. A great resource for understanding how and why Russian artists utilized fairytale imagery, this book also serves as an introduction to the repeating themes and humor in the stories. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Do you need to dream?
Please, take some hours to read something that you cannot find in the market anymore! ... Read more

Product Description
This book addresses the lively artistic dialogue that took place between Russia and the West--in particular with the United States, Britain, and France--from the 1860s to the Khrushchev Thaw. Offering stimulating new readings of cross-cultural exchange, it illuminates Russia's compelling, and sometimes combative, relation with western art in this period of profound cultural transformation.

Russian Art and the West breaks new ground in the range of its material and its chronological span. Attending both to vanguard tendencies and to the official artistic institutions and practices of the tsarist and Soviet eras, it casts light on seminal developments little studied in western scholarship, while also providing new contexts for, and fresh insights into, the avant-garde of the early 20th century.

The book's eleven essays by leading experts on Russian art and design explore painting, architecture, and the decorative arts, considering not only the objects but also the patrons, audiences, exhibitions, and critical readings that together shaped national culture in an international context. Written in an accessible style and encompassing a variety of approaches, they collectively rethink conventional polarities and influences, and unpack the myths of separateness and isolation so often associated with artistic endeavor in late imperial or Soviet Russia.

This illustrated volume will appeal to students, scholars, and general readers seeking to understand the fuller context of Russian artistic culture during a remarkable century of social and political change. ... Read more

Product Description
The Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema is the first reference work of its kind in the English language devoted entirely to the cinema of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet period, including both the cinematic highlights and the mainstream. The cinemas of the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Latvia, are also represented with their most influential artists. Through a chronology, an introduction essay, a bibliography, and over 500 cross-referenced dictionary entries on filmmakers, performers, cinematographers, composers, producers, studios, genres, and outstanding films, this reference work covers the history of Russian and Soviet filmmaking from 1896 to 2007. ... Read more

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The author discusses how Russian art has evolved from icon painting through to Socialist Realism. He examines the work of approximately 50 contemporary artists, all of whom are living and working in the Soviet Union and conveys a general view of life in the USSR. Matthew Cullerne-Bown has written articles on Soviet art for "The Guardian" and for art journals. ... Read more