Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910-1917 at the Getty Research Institute

[Allison Pultz]

November 12, 2008

Dear Colleague,

It is with great pleasure that we announce the opening of the
exhibition:

"Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910 - 1917"
November 18, 2008-April 19, 2009
Getty Research Institute Exhibition Gallery
Curators: Nancy Perloff with Allison Pultz

Drawing principally from the Getty Research Institute's superb
collection of Russian modernist books, "Tango with Cows: Book Art of the
Russian Avant-Garde, 1910-1917"  brings into focus a brief, but
tumultuous period when Russian visual artists and poets, including
Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, Alexei
Kruchenykh, and Velimir Khlebnikov, challenged Symbolism and
revolutionized book art. They fabricated pocket-sized, hand-lithographed
books and juxtaposed primitive and abstract imagery with a transrational
poetry they called zaum' ("beyonsense"). This exhibition traces the
avant-garde's use of the materials of their book art - imagery, language
and its sounds, design, graphic technique - to convey humor, parody, and
an intriguing ambivalence and apprehension about Russia's past, present,
and future.

Our new website --
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/tango_with_cows/index.html --
will go live on November 18, 2008.  It features a curator's essay, time
line, and links to four books in an exciting page-turning format that
incorporates translations, audio recordings, and interpretive
highlights.

Some books can already be viewed in pdf format in our digitized library
collection:
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/digitized_collections/russian_avant-garde/pdfs.html


We hope that you will have the opportunity to come see the exhibition,
visit our website, and even attend one of the related events described
below.

Best regards,


Nancy Perloff
Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Collections
Getty Research Institute
1200 Getty Center Drive  Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA  90049-1688
nperloff at getty.edu
(310) 440-7462

"TANGO WITH COWS: BOOK ART OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE, 1910-1917"
RELATED EVENTS:

CURATOR LED TOURS
Tuesday, November 18 - 10am, led by Allison Pultz
Tuesday, November 18 - 3:30pm, led by Nancy Perloff

No reservation necessary. Please meet at the GRI Plaza Lobby.

PERFORMANCE
Explodity: An Evening of Transrational Sound Poetry
February 4, 2009
Reception and Gallery Viewing: 5:00 - 6:45 p.m., GRI Exhibition
Gallery
Performance: 7:00 - 8:45 p.m., Museum Lecture Hall

Performances by Christian Bök, Steve McCaffery, and Oleg Minin of
Russian Futurist zaum' ("beyonsense") poetry and of contemporary sound
poetry, with an introduction by Gerald Janecek.

SYMPOSIUM
The Book as Such in the Russian Avant-Garde
February 5, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Museum Lecture Hall

This one-day symposium brings together scholars and artists in fields
from art history to literature to explore the Russian avant-garde's
revolution of the book. Talks and a roundtable address the deliberately
crude materials, the newly invented zaum' language, and the verbal and
visual tensions between parodic humor and apocalypse, the primitive and
the urban, the sacred and the profane. Speakers will consider the
influence of the Russian avant-garde on visual poetry and the aesthetics
of book production in the later decades of the twentieth century.

To make a reservation, please visit www.getty.edu/research or call
(310) 440-7300


  

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