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From pre-war years in Paris to the end of the 1920s in Kyiv, Ukrainians or artists from Ukraine produced some of the world's greatest avant-garde art and made major contributions to painting, sculpture, theatre, and film-making. This book tells their story and explores the roots of their inspiration.
List of contents
AcknowledgementsIntroduction: The ¿Historic¿ Avant-Garde of 1910¿1930
Forging the European Connection
1. Kyiv to Paris: Ukrainian Art in the European Avant-Garde, 1910¿1930
Politics and Painting
2. Politics and the Ukrainian Avant-Garde
3. Political Posters 1919¿1921 and the Boichuk School
4. Jews in the Artistic and Cultural Life of Ukraine in the 1920s
5. National Modernism in Post-Revolutionary Society: Ukrainian Renaissance and Jewish Revival, 1917¿1930
Artists in the maelstrom: Five Case Studies
6. David Burliuk and Steppe as Avant-Garde Identity
7. Kazimir Malevich¿s Autobiography and Art
8. Vadym Meller and Sources of Inspiration in Theatre Art
9. Ivan Kavaleridze¿s Contested Identity
10. Dziga Vertov¿s Enthusiasm, Kharkiv and Cultural Revolution
The Avant-Garde in Today¿s Cultural Memory
11. Remembering the Avant-Garde
Bibliography
About the author
Myroslav Shkandrij is Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba. His previous books include Ukrainian Nationalism, Jews in Ukrainian Literature, and Russia and Ukraine. He has curated exhibitions on the avant-garde in the 1920s and written extensively on twentieth-century Ukraine.
Summary
Many of the greatest avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century were Ukrainians. This book traces the avant-garde development from its pre-war years in Paris to the end of the 1920s in Kyiv. It includes chapters on the political dilemmas faced by this generation, the contribution of Jewish artists, and the work of emblematic figures.
Additional text
“Myroslav Shkandrij’s collection of essays addresses the
discomfort with films like Enthusiasm and artists like Vertov in Ukraine today.
Remembering the avant-garde is now contested: Were they a tragic executed renaissance,
as Iurii Lavrinenko argued? Fellow travelers of a violent political project?
True believers or artists simply trying to make a living? This ‘contested
memory’ lies at the heart of Shkandrij’s book.”
—Mayhill C. Fowler, Stetson University, Harvard Ukrainian
Studies
