Fast forward : the aesthetics and ideology of speed in Russian avant-garde culture, 1910-1930 / Tim Harte.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harte, Tim.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Avant-garde (Aesthetics)--Soviet Union--History--20th century.

Avant-garde (Aesthetics).

Speed in art.

Speed in literature.

Experimental poetry, Russian--History and criticism.

Experimental poetry, Russian.

Motion pictures and the arts--Soviet Union--History--20th century.

Motion pictures and the arts.

History.

Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

xii, 318 pages, 8 pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, [2009]

Summary:

Life in the modernist era not only moved, it sped. As automobiles, airplanes, and high-speed industrial machinery proliferated at the turn of the twentieth century, a fascination with speed influenced artists-from Moscow to Manhattan-working in a variety of media. Russian avant-garde literary, visual, and cinematic artists were among those striving to elevate the ordinary physical concept of speed into a source of inspiration and generate new possibilities for everyday existence.

Although modernism arrived somewhat late in Russia, the increased tempo of life at the start of the twentieth century provided Russia's avant-garde artists with an infusion of creative dynamism and crucial momentum for revolutionary experimenta- tion. In Fast Forward Tim Harte presents a detailed examination of the images and concepts of speed that permeated Russian modernist poetry, visual arts, and cinema.

His study illustrates how a wide variety of experimental artistic tendencies of the day-such as rdquo;rayism "in poetry and painting, the effort to create a" transrational" language (zaum') in verse, and movements seemingly as divergent as neo-primitiv-ism and constructivism-all relied on notions of speed or dynamism to create at least part of their effects.

Fast Forward reveals how the Russian avant-garde's race to establish a new artistic and social reality over a twenty-year span reflected an ambitious metaphysical vision that corresponded closely to the nation's rapidly changing social parameters. The embrace of speed after the 1917 Revolution, however, paradoxically hastened the movement's demise. By the late 1920s, under a variety of historical pressures, avant-garde artistic forms morphed into those more compatible with the political agenda of the Russian state. Experimentation became politically suspect and ab- stractionism gave way to orthodox realism, ultimately ushering in the socialist real-ism and aesthetic conformism of the Stalin years.

Contents:

Part 1 Avant-Qarde 'Poetry in Motion

1 Urban Poets on the Move 33

2 The Accelerating Word 67

Part 2 Visual Arts of Acceleration

3 Light Speed: Rayism in Russia 101

4 "Hurry! For tomorrow you will not recognize us" : Suprematism and Beyond 129

Part 3 Fast Motion Pictures on the Soviet Screen

5 Early Soviet Cinema: Tricks and Kinesthetics 161

6 Soviet Cinema's Great Leap Forward 191.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780299233242

0299233243

9780299233235

0299233235

OCLC:

317462457

Publisher Number:

40017312110