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Exploding Tongues: Language, Art, and the Russian Avant-garde

Mirskontsa - Nude (page 18)

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CoaRse CaLIBration 72 ARTS 227 "Introduction to Letterpress Printing" (Pedersen) and CSLC134/RUSN334 "Exploding Tongues" (Gilman) structured_gallery 2017-05-26T12:45:21-07:00
During the middle third of the Spring, '17 Semester, two classes at Occidental College (ARTS 227 "Introduction to Letterpress Printing (Pedersen) and CSLC 134 / RUSN 334 "Exploding Tongues: Language, Art and The Russian Avant-Garde") collaborated on a book making project, with printed submissions of text and design compiled in a miscellany volume, Exploding Tongues: NthOlogy, inspired by the Russian Avant-garde.

Through creative making of their own collaborative book, students explored historical literary phenomena, such as "zaum," or "trans-sense" language, a nullification or distortion of meaning through invented words, as well as visual abstraction, neo-primitivism, "Rayism," "Suprematism," "Prouns," and other visual innovations that manifest as illustrations and cover and page designs. Students took inspiration from the authors, artists and book designers from the early years of the Avant-garde, when visual and verbal "abstraction" developed simultaneously.

A century's distance from the creative ferment of the Avant-garde has given time to literary scholars and art historians to sort out radical innovations in verbal and visual cultures as if they were discrete phenomena. Time, also, has separated complex creative processes that transpired between people working in close partnership and common purpose into individuated lines of authorial credit. The scholarly impulse to conceive of cultural history on the model of scientific discovery is not, however, well-suited for understanding the ambiguous work processes and products of this brief historical moment.

As Aleksei Kruchenykh, whose "Dyr bul shchyl" (1912) is generally acknowledged as the first instance of "zaum" poetry, explained in a letter to A.A. Shemshurin, the visual and verbal elements of his book art, produced with collaborators such as Mikhail Larionov, or his wife Ol'ga Rozanova, are inextricably confused [for more on "Dyr bul shchyl" and its publication history, see Dexter Blackwell's case study on this site]:
Many have noticed that the genius of external beauty is highest of all, so that if anyone likes best of all the way, say, Te li le is written (from the painterly aspect) but not its meaning (toothless meaning, of which, by the way, there is none in zaum’ either), then it seems that such a reader is right and not a ruffian at all.
The word (letter), of course, has undergone a great change here; perhaps it has even been replaced by painting, but what does a “drunkard of paradise” care about all this prose? And I have already met persons who bought Te li le without understanding anything about dyr-bul-shchyl but who admired its painting.
On the matter of instantaneous writing:
1. The first impression (by correcting it 10 times we lose it and perhaps therefore lose everything).
2. By correcting, thinking over, polishing, we banish chance from art that in a momentary art of course occupies an honored place, by banishing chance we deprive our works of that which is most valuable, for we leave only that which has been experienced and thoroughly acquired, and all of the life of the unconscious goes to pot!
-Alexei Kruchenykh
Course readings and discussions were informed by Gerald Janecek's pioneering works on zaum, and the Russian Avant-garde artist book, as well as Nancy Perloff's most recent contribution to the topic, both of whom address the integrated nature of multimodal, collaborative arts. An "intellectual" grasp of the matter is not sufficient, however, for deep understanding. To jolt student researchers of the Avant-garde from any of their own automatic assumptions about art and literature, a hands-on, creative unit of zaum poetry writing, illustration and book-making, allowed an opportunity to view and reconstruct cultural historical processes, as it were, inside-out.
The 'Deliberate Woman/Nude' in MirsKONtsa (1912) and Pomada (1913) In their groundbreaking 1912 text, MirsKONtsa [WorldBACKwards], poets Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov collaborated with painters Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov to produce a text towards the heart of linguistic 'meaning' through opening-up new possibilities within a literary-artistic item. These texts were unique for several reasons; primarily, though, their handmade quality and collaborative stylistic produced an entirely alternative model for the representation of language.

MirsKONtsa is noted for its odd drawings, multiple and diverse copies, and its use of zaum [transrational] poetry. However, MirsKONtsa, is also marked by a prevalence of oftentimes-nude female forms. Perhaps in keeping with the Neo-Primitivist tradition (Perloff 2) that existed within Russian Futurism, MirsKONsa is littered with images of the naked woman. The figures in MirsKONtsa are notable in three thematics: Firstly, the female figures across the images do not look directly out at the reader-- their glances are slanted or attending some other image; Secondly, there is a repeated presentation of the 'woman' with the 'natural' and the 'woman' and the 'supernatural/angelic'; and Thirdly, there are no figures with openly observable genitals, the only deliberate nudity is in the presentation of bare breasts.

What is interesting is the occasion for what I will call the 'deliberate nude/woman' in MirsKONtsa. This 'deliberate nude/woman' is noted as such because the existence of such a figure in a work that seeks to come to the limit/rule of sound-images necessarily must fit in the system. Initial insights about a 'worldbackwards' represented through a tetrad of artists center on the linkage between a naive eroticism--one that barely even attempts to call the reader into seduction, let alone sexual fervor--and sound. Following this linkage, the consideration of the sound of the sensual-- especially as it relates to the natural and the supernatural-- becomes ground for analysis. Further questions on these images lead into the deeper intentions of the artists. One of the first obvious questions is simply, who painted these women-figures? Was it Natalia Goncharova or her late-in-life husband Mikhail Larionov? Was the Dryad painted in collaboration with the poetic text, or does the figure exist in complete distinctness from language?

MirsKONtsa is not the only book of zaum poetry to feature nude women. In Kruchenykh and Larionov's 1913 Pomada [Pomade], the nude woman is again a unique figured occasion in the text. However, the women of Pomada are not as deliberately visible as they are in MirsKONtsa. In the famous poem-painting 'dyr bul shchyl,' there is a nude woman hidden in what simply appears to be scratch marks and scribblings on the page. This nude is the only figure in either MirsKONtsa and Pomada to seemingly expose their genitals. It is notable that in alternative versions of 'dyr bul shchyl,' Kruchenykh's soon-to-be wife Olga Rozanova altered the image of the nude woman to produce an image seemingly more in line with female representations in MirsKONtsa. Later on in the Pomada and in contrast to the "urban prostitutes" (Perloff 75) 'dyr bul shchyl,' a peasant woman with her breasts exposed carries a basket or some other burden. As Pomada lengthens the image of the woman-as-figure becomes more oblique and it begins to discern the sex of the figure at all. In the final image of what appears to be a woman figure, the defining motif of these female nude becomes itself obscured. Is this figure-in-horror exposing their breasts, or do they raise their arm to their chest in quiet exclamation?

Citations:

Perloff, N. (2016). Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art. Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. 2, 74-75.
Sound-Image Shape: Nudes, Demons, and Zaum Poetry Mirskontsa is noted for its arresting drawings, multiple and diverse copies, and its use of zaum "transrational" poetry. However, Mirskontsa, is also marked by a prevalence of oftentimes-nude female forms. In direct accordance with the Neo-Primitivist tradition that existed within Russian Futurism, Mirskontsa is littered with images of naked women. The figures in Mirskontsa are notable in three thematics: Firstly, the female figures across the images do not look directly out at the reader-- their glances are slanted or attending some other image; Secondly, there is a repeated presentation of the 'woman' with the 'natural' and the 'woman' and the 'supernatural/angelic'; and Thirdly, there are no figures with openly observable genitals, the only deliberate nudity is in the presentation of bare breasts.

I will call this eccentric occasion the signification of the 'deliberate nude/woman.' This 'deliberate nude/woman' in Mirskontsa is noted as such because the existence of such a figure in a work that seeks to come to the limit/rule of sound-images necessarily must fit in the system. Initial insights about a 'worldbackwards' represented through a tetrad of artists center on the linkage between a naive eroticism--one that barely even attempts to call the reader into seduction, let alone sexual fervor--and sound. Following this linkage, the consideration of the sound of the sensual-- especially as it relates to the natural and the supernatural-- becomes ground for analysis. Notably, Natalia Goncharova (who late in life would marry the Rayonist Mikhail Larionov) was the artist for each of these images. Further, the drawing of the goddess Diana is painted in collaboration with the poetic text, so that the figure does not exist in complete distinctness from language. The presence of spirits as seen in Mirskontsa and demons in other handmade texts deeply underscores the seriousness involved in the meaning-making endeavor of handmade books in the collective consciousness of the Russian Avant Garde--suggesting an uncharacteristic turn towards infinitude within a movement that appears to greatly privilege the finite. As a result, it is easier to understand the importance of handmade books as artifacts for the transformative reproduction of poetry/power.

These incidents of form (signified) meeting sound (poetry) recall a poetic style that was being developed simultaneously to the production of these texts: zaum poetry. Zaum, epitomized by Aleksei Kruchenykh, constitutes poetry at the margins. Written in defiance of any rationality, this poetry focused heavily on the "beyonsense" play of syllabic meaning-making. Zaum can be understood to function as the nudity of language-- an erotic system of sounding preterdetermined to communicate Nothing and Universality as fused and bound. This is notable in later representations of the feminine-as-nude, as most visible in the paintings of Kazimir Malevich in the late 1920's.

Upon examining the manifestos of those painters, poets, and writers from the time--specifically, Kruchenykh--a greater understanding of the almost sovereign female figure emerges. Kruchenykh's manifesto for Explodity, particularly expresses a need for a form of communication that exists both past and amongst traditional linguistic topographies. Echoing Nietzsche without deliberate reference, Kruchenykh suggests language-ing in a space past the death of the Old God, but still in its corpse. Otherwise said, in affect there is the the specter of Nietzsche's famous question: 'Supposing truth was a woman, what then?'

Regardless of the philosophical ends, explanations for the dominance of female figures in Mirskontsa might perhaps be well served with a more nuanced articulation of Neo-Primitivism in order to extrapolate these figures' sovereignty across handmade texts in the Russian Avant Garde.