Artlog

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√¢‚Ǩ‚Äù1917 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”). The exhibition traces the avant-garde’s use of the materials of their book art√¢‚Ǩ‚Äùimagery, language and its sounds, design, graphic technique√¢‚Ǩ‚Äùto convey humor, parody, and an intriguing ambivalence and apprehension about Russia’s past, present, and future.