Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art
by: Perloff, Nancy

Hardcover. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 199 pages. The artists' books made in Russia between 1910 and 1915 are like no others. Unique in their fusion of the verbal, visual, and sonic, these books are meant to be read, looked at, and listened to. Painters and poets--including Natalia Goncharova, Velimir Khlebnikov, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Mayakovsky--collaborated to fabricate hand-lithographed books, for which they invented a new language called zaum (a neologism meaning 'beyond the mind') that was distinctive in its emphasis on 'sound as such' and its rejection of definite logical meaning. At the heart of this volume are close analyses of two of the most significant and experimental futurist books: Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards) and Vzorval' (Explodity). In addition, Nancy Perloff examines the profound difference between the Russian avant-garde and Western art movements, including futurism. Still sealed in publisher's shrinkwrap.