Stephen White

Bio: Stephen White is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: White (horse). The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 38 citations.

Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction: Sara F.'s Kosher Pork Note on Transliteration 1. Antireligious Propaganda and the Transformation of Jewish Institutions and Traditions 2. From Illiteracy to Worker Correspondents: Soviet Yiddish Amateur Writing 3. Amateur Local Yiddish Theaters 4. Soviet Yiddish Songs as a Mirror of Jewish Identity 5. Soviet in Form, National in Content: Russian Jewish Popular Culture Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Urbanotopia and the frontier : reaching heights before the crash in Moscow and New York at the end of the 1920s

Abstract: My dissertation investigates, at its broadest level, the visualization of the future city in Moscow and New York at the end of the 1920s. In particular I examine two imaginative designs executed in the form of "paper architecture." One proposition was delivered by Georgii Tikhonovich Krutikov, a Soviet student of architecture, who in 1928 presented a diploma project called Gorod budushchego (City of the Future), and the other model was suggested by Hugh Ferriss, an architectural Tenderer, in his book entitled The Metropolis of Tomorrow, published in 1929.1 want to discover the circumstances that prompted these two architects to suggest intriguing concepts of the ideal city, in which both authors employed similar metaphors, associated with height and a skyward trend applied to urban space. Evidently their projects announced novel ways to rethink the form of a modern city, but why is the improbable concept of " f l y i ng " such an important part of Krutikov 's gorod, and why does Ferriss's metropolis evoke mountainous formations? What were the conditions at play at the end of the 1920s that prompted both architects to propose such eccentric visions? Since Krutikov's professional debut coincided with the Communist Party's adoption of Stalin's First Five-Year-Plan (October 1928 December 1932), and Ferriss's publication concurred with the Wal l Street Crash inl929, my interest leads me to reevaluate these two projects according to issues and ideas residing outside of aesthetics

The Russian avant-garde book, 1910-1934

Abstract: design principles spread to the struc tures of architectural journals and also to those aimed at the trades. An easy-to-reference thumb index was includ ed in the 1927 catalogue Ail-Union Printing Trades Exhibition: Guidebook (p. 228) and wraparound covers with a bold photograph of a plentiful field of wheat pro vide inspiration in the journal Let's Produce of 1929 (p. 237). Interior page layouts, purposeful sequencing of pages, and devices like foldouts and cover flaps also ART ISSUES/BOOK ISSUES became tools for avant-garde artists to create myth and assert power in book formats. While such visual concepts and structures are typically exploited by artists to manip ulate the viewer's experience, they were used here expressly for government directives. Through the concep tual potential of photography and the principles of abstraction, artists succeeded in creating enhanced forms of representation that aggrandized Soviet power and accomplishments (pp. 238-45). While in the earlyion, artists succeeded in creating enhanced forms of representation that aggrandized Soviet power and accomplishments (pp. 238-45). While in the early teens artists had struggled to create a visual language that dispensed with conventional motifs and focused instead on a vital, new language of abstraction, artists in the 1930s used these abstract principles to create yet a new form of fictive representation. A Trajectory of Experience All the Russian books discussed and illustrated in this catalogue can be spread out together in an area the size of a classroom. By studying them, preferably in chrono logical order, one can begin to grasp some sense of this highly significant chapter in the art of the twentieth cen tury. The excitement of early avant-garde experimenta tion in the teens, the Utopian idealism of the post-revolu tionary years, and finally the militant power and oppres sion of the Stalinist regime, are all captured in these pages as a potent historical record. Through these books one has an intimate glimpse of an extraordinary trajec tory of artistic innovation and human experience. Books of all kinds have this power to offer oneto-one communication, but illustrated books offer the additional insights of the visual artist. Using the possibil ities inherent in printed pages bound together and issued in editions, artists have contributed a further dimension to the multifaceted story of modern art. Since these books are not as widely known and appreciated as other mediums of the visual arts, gathering them togeth er here not only offers a unique opportunity to broaden our understanding of the Russian avant-garde, but also underlines the fact that by breaking down hierarchies and seriously considering so-called minor art forms like illustrated books, unique insights can be drawn. The complexity of an historical period is truly revealed when as many as possible of its cultural artifacts are examined. NOTES 1 The term "illustrated book" is adopted here because it is the designation used by The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, where The Judith Rothschild Foundation gift of Russian books will reside. While those with a keen interest in books in which artists have been involved often disagree about termino logy relating to them, the Department uses "illustrated book" as an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of book formats. This essay on Russian books refers to some of the issues arising from variations in book terminology. 2 Gerald Janecek, Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism (San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 1996), p. 1. 3 Quoted in Patricia Railing, More About Two Squares/ About Two Squares, facsimile ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), p. 36. 4 In a large body of literature on the subject of illustrated books, several titles are recom mended for important overviews. Three that combine various book genres in their discussions are Riva Castleman, A Century of Artists Books (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1994); Carol Hogben and Rowan Watson, eds., From Manet to Hockney: Modern Artists' Illustrated Books (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1985); and Jaroslav Andel, The AvantGarde Book: 1900-1945 (New York: Franklin Furnace, 1989). Two titles that focus on the artists' books genre are Johanna Drucker, The Century of Artists' Books (New York: Granary Books, 1995) and Stefan Klima, Artists Books: A Critical Survey of the Literature (New York: Granary Books, 1998). 5 Lawrence Saphire and Patrick Cramer, Andre Masson, The Illustrated Books: Catalogue Raisonnd (Geneva: Patrick Cramer Publisher, 1994), p. 24. 6 Hogben and Watson, eds., From Manet to Hockney, p. 118. 7 A remarkable study from the 1970s that remains essential for information regarding the periodical format in the Dada and Surrealist periods is Dawn Ades's Dada and Surrealism Reviewed (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978). 8 John E. Bowlt, "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste: The Art of the Book and the Russian Avant-Garde," in Charles Doria, ed., Russian Samizdat Art (New York: Willis Locker and Owens, 1986), pp. 14-18. 9 Gerald Janecek, The Look of Russian Literature: AvantGarde Visual Experiments, 1900-1 930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 88. 10 Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism: A History! London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1969), p. 45. 11 Ibid., p. 338. 12 For a discussion of state pub lishing house activities, see Susan P. Compton, Russian Avant-Garde Books, 1917-34 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 20-26. 13 See Monica Strauss, "The First Simultaneous Book," Fine Print 13 (July 1987): 139-50. 14 Nancy Perloff and Eva Forgacs, Monuments of the Future: Designs by El Lissitzky (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998), p. 2. 15 Quoted in El Lissitzky 1890-1941 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Art Museums, 1987), p. 62. 16 Richard Hollis, Graphic Design: A Concise History (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997), p. 50; see also p. 20. For a page-by-page analysis of the design achievement of USSR in Construction, see Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, 1917-1946 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 166-213. 17 Margarita Tupitsyn, "Back to Moscow," in Tupitsyn, El Lissitzky; Beyond the Abstract Cabinet: Photography, Design, Collaboration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 43. 18 For a discussion of Surrealist illustrated books, see Renee Riese Hubert, Surrealism and the Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) and Robert Rainwater, "Au rendez vous des amis: Surrealist Books and the Beginning of Surrealist Printmaking," in Gilbert Kaplan, ed., Surrealist Prints (New York: Atlantis, 1997). 19 The subject of book texts as visual art in themselves has also been explored under the rubric of "visual poetry," which has its own body of literature. 20 Evgenii Kovtun, "Experiments in Book Design by Russian Artists," The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 5 (summer 1987): 54. A Game in Hell, hard work in heaven: Deconstructing 1 the Canon in Russian Futurist Books Nina Gurianova A Game in Hell, hard work in heaven our first lessons were pretty good ones together, remember? We nibbled like mice at turbid time In hoc signo vincesI 1 This poem, whose first line has, in retrospect, acquired symbolic importance, may be a key to understanding the major quest behind the poetics of the early Russian avant-garde. Written in 1920 by Velimir Khlebnikov and dedicated "To Alesha Kruchenykh," it refers to the first lithographed Futurist book, A Game in Hell, that Khlebnikov co-authored with Kruchenykh and published in 1912 (p. 70). In it the proverbial "Futurist devil," seen through the lens of dark irony and the grotesquerie of lubki (cheap popular prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), appears for the first time, playing with a sinner who has bet his soul in a card game. "A Game in Hell" and "hard work in heaven" are phrases that describe the first creative lessons for all Russian "Futurians," poets and painters alike, who learned to prefer riddles and paradoxes and ignore deter minism in life and art. They refrained from sinking into predictability, and although they existed in the "hell" of the quotidian, they refused to belong to it. Early Russian Futurism was one of the most resistant movements of the avant-garde: resistant to tradition and to any ideolog ical or aesthetic compromise. An awareness of history allowed the Russian Futurists, especially Khlebnikov, to perceive the rhythms of "turbid time" that exists beyond any defined goal or purpose, "without why," according to its own laws. They believed that one can break through to this experience only by means of "work" and "a game": in other words, by making art as if it were a game. The open space for this game was a new kind of art, and the fundamental condition for its existence was the maximal union of creativity and unbounded joy in the element of play (accidentally, there is one and the same word— igra—for "play" and "game" in Russian), with its vital energy and spontaneity. The poetics of play and chance manifested themselves in the aesthetics of the early Russian avant-garde as an anarchic method of making art without rules, not just a technique. The concept of the Futurist book emerged as a strong reaction against the creation of any absolute model, against any perception of art as an ordered, ra tional structure. It represents a constant deconstruction (or dis-konstruktsiia, as the Russian Futurist poet, artist, and theoretician David Burliuk put it in 1913) of the established canon, rather than a pure demolition of it. deconstruction is the opposite of construction, a canon can be constructive, a canon can be deconstructive. construction can be shifted or displaced. The canon of displaced construction. 2 This sequence of binary oppositions leads to affirmation through negation, and makes it clear to the A GAME IN HE

The Firebird and the Fox: Russian Culture under Tsars and Bolsheviks

Abstract: Showcasing the genius of Russian literature, art, music, and dance over a century of turmoil, within the dynamic cultural ecosystem that shaped it, The Firebird and the Fox explores the shared traditions, mutual influences and enduring themes that recur in these art forms. The book uses two emblematic characters from Russian culture - the firebird, symbol of the transcendent power of art in defiance of circumstance and the efforts of censors to contain creativity; and the fox, usually female and representing wit, cleverness and the agency of artists and everyone who triumphs over adversity - to explore how Russian cultural life changed between 1850 and 1950. Jeffrey Brooks reveals how high culture drew on folk and popular genres, then in turn influenced an expanding commercial culture. Richly illustrated, The Firebird and the Fox assuredly and imaginatively navigates the complex terrain of this eventful century.