Julia Vaingurt: Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1920s, aesthetics, architecture, art, art history, avant-garde, biomechanics, body, cinema, communism, constructivism, design, literature, machine, politics, russia, science fiction, sexuality, socialism, soviet union, technē, technology, theatre
“In postrevolutionary Russia, as the Soviet government was initiating a program of rapid industrialization, avant-garde artists declared their intent to serve the nascent state and to transform life in accordance with their aesthetic designs. In spite of their professed utilitarianism, however, most avant-gardists created works that can hardly be regarded as practical instruments of societal transformation. Exploring this paradox, Vaingurt claims that the artists’ investment of technology with aesthetics prevented their creations from being fully conscripted into the arsenal of political hegemony. The purposes of avant-garde technologies, she contends, are contemplative rather than constructive. Looking at Meyerhold’s theater, Tatlin’s and Khlebnikov’s architectural designs, Mayakovsky’s writings, and other works from the period, Vaingurt offers an innovative reading of an exceptionally complex moment in the formation of Soviet culture.”
Publisher Northwestern University Press, 2013
SRLT series
ISBN 0810128942, 9780810128941
322 pages
via Sorin
Review: Boris Dralyuk (NEP, 2013), Tim Harte (Slavic Review, 2014).
PDF (updated on 2022-11-12)
See also the science-fiction film Aelita, Queen of Mars, dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924, 111 min, based on Tolstoy’s novel.
Comments (2)Martin Esslin: The Theatre of the Absurd (1961–)
Filed under book | Tags: · absurd, history of theatre, language, theatre
“In 1953 Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents – Beckett, Adamov, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others – shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understand one another. In 1961, Martin Esslin gave a name to the phenomenon in his ground-breaking study of these playwrights who dramatized the absurdity at the core of the human condition.
Over five decades after its initial publication, Esslin’s landmark book has lost none of its freshness. Authoritative, engaging, and eminently readable, The Theatre of the Absurd is nothing short of a classic: vital reading for anyone with an interest in the theatre.”
First published by Anchor Books, 1961
Second edition first published by Pelican Books, 1968
Third edition first published by Pelican Books, 1980
Review (Lionel Abel, Partisan Review, Summer 1962, pp 454-459)
Esslin’s article preceding the book (The Tulane Drama Review 4:4, May 1960)
PDF (1961 Anchor Books edition, 20 MB, no OCR, added 2014-5-3)
multiple formats (1972 Pelican Books reprint of the second edition [1968], 463 pp, at Archive.org)
PDF (1991 Penguin Books reprint of the third edition [1980], 480 pp, 58 MB, no OCR)
Sally Banes: Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance (1980/87)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1960s, 1970s, body, choreography, dance, theatre
“Sally Banes writes criticism with a dancer’s feel for dancing, a personal acquaintance with the choreographers she writes about, a solid knowledge of critical theory, and an awareness of the many relationships of post-modernism to the contemporary cultural context. Terpsichore in Sneakers is a first-rate contribution to our post-modern dance.
Banes restricts her discussion to ten choreographers: six members of Robert Dunn’s 1960-62 composition workshop (Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, David Gordon, Deborah Hay, Simone Forti), all but the last of whom were early members of the Judson Dance Theater, three second-generation Judson choreographers (Meredith Monk, Kenneth King, Lucinda Childs), and Doug Dunn, who performed with Rainer, Paxton, Brown, and Gordon in the Grand Union.” (from the review by Milton H. Snoeyenbos, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1980)
Originally published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1980
Publisher Wesleyan University Press, 1987
With a new Introduction
ISBN 0819561606
311 pages
Commentary (André Lepecki, Dance Theatre Journal, 1999)
EPUB
See also films and videos in UbuWeb’s dance section