NEWS / GETTY TANGOS WITH COWS       Site map

13.11.2008 "Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910 - 1917" November 18, 2008-April 19, 2009 Getty Research Institute Exhibition Gallery Curators: Nancy Perloff with Allison Pultz Drawing principally from the Getty Research Institute's superb collection of Russian modernist books, "Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910-1917"  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"). This exhibition traces the avant-garde's use of the materials of their book art - imagery, language and its sounds, design, graphic technique - to convey humor, parody, and an intriguing ambivalence and apprehension about Russia's past, present, and future. Our new website features a curator's essay, time line, and links to four books in an exciting page-turning format that incorporates translations, audio recordings, and interpretive highlights. Some books can already be viewed in pdf format in our digitized library collection. We hope that you will have the opportunity to come see the exhibition, visit our website, and even attend one of the related events described below.   "TANGO WITH COWS: BOOK ART OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE, 1910-1917" RELATED EVENTS: CURATOR LED TOURS Tuesday, November 18 - 10am, led by Allison Pultz Tuesday, November 18 - 3:30pm, led by Nancy Perloff No reservation necessary. Please meet at the GRI Plaza Lobby. PERFORMANCE Explodity: An Evening of Transrational Sound Poetry February 4, 2009 Reception and Gallery Viewing: 5:00 - 6:45 p.m., GRI Exhibition Gallery Performance: 7:00 - 8:45 p.m., Museum Lecture Hall Performances by Christian Bök, Steve McCaffery, and Oleg Minin of Russian Futurist zaum' ("beyonsense") poetry and of contemporary sound poetry, with an introduction by Gerald Janecek. SYMPOSIUM The Book as Such in the Russian Avant-Garde February 5, 2009 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Museum Lecture Hall This one-day symposium brings together scholars and artists in fields from art history to literature to explore the Russian avant-garde's revolution of the book. Talks and a roundtable address the deliberately crude materials, the newly invented zaum' language, and the verbal and visual tensions between parodic humor and apocalypse, the primitive and the urban, the sacred and the profane. Speakers will consider the influence of the Russian avant-garde on visual poetry and the aesthetics of book production in the later decades of the twentieth century. To make a reservation, please visit www.getty.edu/research or call (310) 440-7300 « back to News archive print this page email this page