Book Description
In a book that will change perceptions of early abstract art and of Kazimir Malevich, one of the first and most extreme of abstract artists, the author explores the Russian painter`s completely unprecedented geometric style and offers a new way to look at his works. John Milner analyzes the inspirational sources, methods, and meanings of Malevich`s art of geometry, showing that it was based on an elaborate system of space and proportion. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Great Leap Forward
Although we associate Piet Mondrian as the father of abstract geometric art, a somewhat earlier pioneer, paralleling his development through Cubism, was Malevich. This book may have its central thesis of describing the influence of the old Russian spatial measure of the arshin, 16 of which consist a vershok, but what is more important to this reader is how Russian artists learned what was happening in Paris, with the Impressionists and later the Cubists, and how the solid tones of Paul Gauguin brought forth Malevich's producive experiments in geometric conical solids of Suprematism, that in turn was reduced to the radically minimalistic black square on white square canvas. From this single element, the subsequent proportional arrangements of square, rectangle, and line elements upon the canvas offered psychological studies of form and space. As so well described, the importance of rich Russian merchant collectors of contemporary novel art and the exhibition of these work cannot be underestimated. In the turbulent times of late Czarist and early Bolshevik Russia, artists were far from the Parisian center of innovation, but from this backwater came a new vision: pure abstraction of forms. The book is a tad dry in prose, with perhaps too much emphasis on the author's pet concepts of measure and proportion, but the information on the artistic development of this pioneer painter is exceedingly worthy. ... Read more

Book Description
The early decades of the 20th century saw unprecedented cooperation between the performing and visual arts. Painters and other visual artists working in a variety of avant-garde styles, such as Cubism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Constructivism, and Futurism, worked in the world of theater and dance throughout Europe, creating masterpieces inspired by the explosion of creativity in the performing arts, from the ballets of Diaghilev and Balanchine to the plays of the Russian Meierkhol'd and Futurists such as Marinetti, and operas by the likes of Wagner and Offenbach. It was this burst of integration that led to the formulation of the idea of the "Total Art Creation," (a term coined by Wagner), and enriched both the theater and the visual arts. This handsome volume, published on the occasion of a major exhibition at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid, examines these avant-garde experiments in fusion between the arts with extensive color illustrations by virtually every major painter of the period: artists like Picasso, Kandinsky, Leger, and others, as well as in-depth essays on several of the performing art forms and the ways they involved visual artists in their production. ... Read more

Book Description
Rather than limit the minimal to being a type of visual art, the curators of Minimalisms: A Sign of the Times conceive of the minimal as a way of life, as a spirit that impregnates nearly the whole of modern culture and its surroundings. After an exhaustive overview of classic Minimalist works by Dan Flavin, Frank Stella, Agnes Martin, Carl Andre, and Elsworth Kelly, Minimalisms looks further, at artworks by Andreas Gursky, Candida Hoffer, Richard Serra, Jean-Marc Bustamante, and Gunther Forg, architecture by Peter Zumthor, Dominique Perrault, Claus En Kaan, and Rafael Moneo, furniture designs by Donald Judd and Shiro Kuramate, and fashion designs by Anni Albers, Donna Karan, and Issey Miyaki. Linking them all is a simplicity of form and ornament, a technical precision, and the essential and concrete nature of structure. ... Read more

Book Description
This splendid celebration of the illustrated book as an art form begins with remarkable works produced in France by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin at the end of the 19th century, and traces the international development of the modern illustrated book to the last decade of the 20th century. Major artists of the modern movement, among them Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, turned to the "illumination" of poems, classical literature, and their own writings to make books that are now collectors' objects, luxuriously produced. Such limited editions have continued to be produced alongside other types of artists' books aimed at a much larger audience. The more available artists' books have served a different purpose, often expressing aesthetic and political principles, in the hands of such artists as Kasimir Malevich, Marcel Duchamp, Ed Ruscha, Joseph Beuys, and Barbara Kruger. Accompanying texts consider the historical background, complex relationships between artists and book manufacturers, technical constraints, and recent changes. ... Read more

Book Description
Russian avant-garde books made between 1910 and 1934 reflect a vivid and tumultuous period in that nation's history that had ramifications for art, society, and politics. The early books, with their variously sized pages of coarse paper, illustrations entwined with printed, hand-written, and stamped texts, and provocative covers, were intended to shock academic conventions and bourgeois sensibilities. After the 1917 Revolution, books appeared with optimistic designs and photomontage meant to reach the masses and symbolize a rational, machine-led future. Later books showcased modern Soviet architecture and industry in the service of the government's agenda. Major artists adopted the book format during these two decades. They include Natalia Goncharova, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, the Stenberg brothers, Varvara Stepanova, and others. These artists often collaborated with poets, who created their own transrational language to accompany the imaginative illustrations. Three major artistic movements, Futurism, Suprematism, and Constructivism, that developed during this period in painting and sculpture also found their echo in the book format. This publication accompanied an exhibition of Russian avant-garde books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. All of the books in the exhibition and this publication are part of a gift to the Museum from The Judith Rothschild Foundation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A book for designers
This book is the best anthology of Constructivist design I have seen.
But if you want good reproductions of Constructivist painting than this book is not for you.

Excellent!!!!!
This is a hefty volume a large thick 8vo, which is worth every penny spent on it. It's a visual delight, and jam-packed with alot of images, you will not be disappointed.

A Wealth of Illustration
The book is rich in showcasing and reproducing the Russian Avant-Garde books.In some, it included reproduction of contents of some of the books.For those who miss the exhibition from which this book springs forth, it is a wonderful and well-documented catalog.

The book also contains the exhibition's division of the Soviet book era into three different times, each accompanied by one or several essays.Like any good book, it is also preceded by a general discussion of bookarts, and the difference between livre d'artiste and artist's book.

To the contemporary eyes, some of the books featured may not be anything special, but by putting them in context of the time, one will see the daring nature and the revolutionary spirit of these books and their makers.

The Russian Avant-Garde book, 1910Ð1934
This companion volume to a major MoMA exhibition is a treasury for graphic designers and bibliophiles, but it also provides a fascinating portrait of artists who began by spitting in the eye of the bourgeosie, became zealous stalwarts of the revolution, and finallyreverted to the status of outsiders, as StalinÕs apparatchiks snuffed out every trace of invention. The earliest work has a child-like spontaneityÑcrude sketches on cheap paper illustrating tiny editions ofpoetsÕ work. ThereÕs a gradual shift to abstraction in the work of such masters as El Lissitsky and Rodchenko, and finally a slide into the banality of socialist realism. A fascinating portrait of artistic struggle and defeat. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

non-nonsubjective review
This book might be hard to get, but it's well worth your money & effort.Malevich was one of the most venerable artists of the 20th century for his unflinching avant-garde & geometrical, logical pioneering.He was known for his Russian futurism & cubism when he conceived Supremetism, geometrical abstraction so named because of the sepremacy of emotion over all other considerations -- & unveiled his new painting, the Black Square.The art world immediately sighed, disappointed as he had expected.From there he ventured later paintings of subjects such as the sound of metallic objects & magnetic fields.It's all extremely architectonic, & in this book he has plates of diagrams & calculations he used to find the finished paintings in addition to the finished paintings themselves.& his writing is fascinating.The way he wrapped his mind so entirely around ideas is very exciting. ... Read more

Book Description
The extraordinary painting Black and White: Suprematist Composition (1915) by Kasimir Malevich (1879-1935) lies at the center of this compact volume. Recent conservation work has helped scholars to understand this single work better, and its story will help readers understand both the history of twentieth-century art and the process of keeping it in good health. Black and White was examined with optic and electron microscopes, spectroscopy and mass spectrometry, and, after having spent years rolled up, it was flattened on a vacuum table, after which loose paint around the edges was consolidated with tools as basic as a heated spatula and glue. But don't try this at home. Dr. Andrei Nakov, a pioneering Malevich expert and the author of Malevitch ecritsand Kazimir Malewicz: Catalogue raisonne writes about the history of the painting in an essay accompanied by 30 color plates. ... Read more

Product Description
El mundo no objetivo establece los fundamentos teóricos del suprematismo y del arte no figurativo en general, no a partir de la abstracción de la realidad empírica, sino de un sentimiento antecedente y originario.La obra fue publicada en alemán por la Bauhaus en 1928 en una bella edición diseñada por Lazlo Moholy-Nagy a partir del manuscrito en ruso de 1922, que fue traducido, revisado y acortado considerablemente por El Lissitzsky y Alexander von Riesen. El original ha permanecido inédito hasta el año 2000, cuando fue publicado por la editorial moscovita Hylaea.La presente edición, la primera en español, se basa en la versión alemana; en buena medida una obra colectiva que ha influido decisivamente sobre el desarrollo del arte moderno y contemporáneo hasta nuestros días. ... Read more