Italian Futurism and Russia

Author(s): Susan P. Compton

Source: Art Journal, Vol. 41, No. 4, Futurism (Winter, 1981), pp. 343-348
Published by: College Art Association
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Italian Futurismand Russia
Susan P.
Compton
The
highly
creative
group
of Futurists which
flourished in Russia from
1912 onward s,
re-
mained
comparatively
little-known in Western
Europe
even
though
Moscow and St.
Petersburg
were not
culturally
isolated in the
early years
of
the
century. Only
one Russian Futurist illustra-
tion was
published
in the Italian
journalLacerba,
a
print by
Mikhail Larionov
reprod uced
without
explanation
in
April
1915.1
Although given
a
new
title,
Sold ier's
Venus,
it was one of a series
of Venuses that he had mad e in d ifferent
styles
three
years
before
(Fig. 1).2
The characteristic choice of a
neo-primitive
image
of a nud e to
represent
Russian Futurism
in
Italy
illustrates the d ifference between these
two branches of the movement.
Groups
of Rus-
sian
avant-gard e
writers and artists had at first
ad opted
the
neologismbud etlyanstvo, using
the future tense of the Russian verb "to be" to
convey
the id ea of "future
people"
without bor-
rowing
the
Europeanised
word Futuristi. The
label "Futurist" was
given
to them
by
critics in
1913,
and artists and writers thereafter
accepted
the
d esignation
while
continuing
to insist on the
"Russianness" of their
enterprise.
Like Italian
Futurism, bud etlyanstvo
re-
jected
the immed iate
past,
but unlike
Futurism,
it was d escribed as "the creation of new
things,
grown
on the
magnificent
trad ition of Russian
antiquity."3
Thus Larionov's
image
of Venus
d epend ed
both on the work of a
contemporary
Georgian primitive artist, Pirosmanishvili,4
and
on a
stylised
cat taken froma trad itional folk-
art wood cut.5
Bud etlyanstvo
Russian Futurists
asserted the
importance
of
primitive
art for
present-d ay art,
often
making
such
simplistic
and literal
borrowings.
In
contrast,
one
might
recall Boccioni's word s: "Our
primitivism
is
the extreme climax of
complexity
whereas the
primitivism
of
antiquity
is the
babbling
of
simplicity.6
Nevertheless,
there were similarities between
Russian and Italian Futurism. A
d escription
of
Fig.
1 Mikbail
Larionov, KatsapsKaya Venus,
1912, d rawing. Reprod uced by
E.
Eganbyuri,
Nataliya
Goncharova. Mikhail Larionov
(Moscow, 1913).
a Futurist
evening
held in Moscow in October
1913 (by
which d ate the word Futuristi had
been
ad opted
for the
poster) suggests d epen-
d ence on Italian
precursors.
There were
"spe-
cially painted
screens"7 on the
stage, presum-
ably
like those that had been
d epicted
in a
caricature of an Italian Futurist
evening
in
1911.8 Likewise the tour of
provincial
cities
und ertaken
by
three Russian Futurist
poets
in
the winter of 1913-14
was based on Italian
prototypes, again conveyed vivid ly
in a carica-
ture fromMarinetti's
magazine Poesia, d ating
fromas
early
as 1909.9 On this tour
Vasily
Kamensky gave
a lecture entitled
"Aeroplanes
and Futurist
Poetry."
He had been a well-
known stunt
pilot, appearing
in air shows
throughout Europe
and in his lecture he d e-
scribed
aeroplanes
as a
"symbol
of universal
d ynamism," borrowing
the term
d irectly
from
Italian Futurism.
Furthermore,
it is d oubtful that Russians
would have
begun publishing
manifestoes with-
out Italian
prototypes.
The
word ing
of the first
Moscow
manifesto,
A
Slap
in the Face
of
Public Taste?1
(published
in
January 1913),
d epend ed
on Marinetti's found ation
Manifesto
of
Futurismthat had anted ated it
by nearly
four
years.
The id ea of
publicisingA
Slap
with
a leaflet
bearing
a
photograph
of the main
signatories
was closer still to the
aggressive
stance of Marinetti and his followers. But there
were
d ifferences,
not
only
in content but also
in
presentation.
The Russians
published
their
manifesto in a
specially d esigned
and
printed
book rather than in a
newspaper. They
used
sackcloth for the
cover, stencilling
the title
with a kind of
lettering
more
usually
found in
the
d ockyard s,
on bales
wrapped
in
sacking
for
shipment.
Their intention was to overturn
the trad ition of fine
printing typical
of earlier
Russian
avant-gard e publications.
1
In
contrast,
the first translation
by
a Russian
Futurist
group
of an Italian d eclaration had
been concealed in a
conventional-looking jour-
nal six months
before,
when the St.
Petersburg
Union of Youth had
published
the introd uction
to the
catalogue
of the Italian Futurist exhibition
that travelled in Western
Europe d uring
1912.12
Since this exhibition was not shown in
Russia,
most of the information about the
paintings
was available to the Russians
only
at second
hand ,
in black-and -white
photographs.
In
spite
of
this,
in 1913 Larionov commented on a
d ifference between Italian Futurist and French
Cubist
painting.
He contrasted the concern for
structure of the latter with the attention to
narrative of the former.13 As an
example
of how
he
may
have arrived at such a
view,
a
photograph
of a
painting
of a Seated Woman
by Picasso,
reprod uced
in the Munich almanac DerBlaue
Reiter,'4 can be contrasted with Boccioni's
painting
The
Laugh (Laughter)
illustrated in
the
catalogue
of the
Berheim-Jeune
exhibi-
tion.15 Both
publications
were well-known to
Russian Futurist artists. Larionov's choice of
the word "narrative"
suggests
that he read
into Italian Futurist
paintings
more than sim-
ply
the "state of mind " that the artists had
Winter 1981 343
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hoped
to
convey.
Boccioni's
title, given
as Le Rire
(Laughter)
in the Bernheim-Jeune catalogue,
must have
especially
interested Russian Futurists. Their
poet
Velimir Khlebnikov had used the word as
the
starting point
for a
poempublished
in a
pre-Futurist miscellany
as
early
as 1910. He
had
built-up
his Incantation
by Laughter'6
by stringing together twenty-two
transforma-
tions of the Russian word smekh
("laughter"),
structuring language
in a new
way.
This
early
example
of an innovative
linguistic
d evice
points
the
way
to
parallel pictorial experiments,
since
restructuring
was basic to both Russian Futurist
poetry
and
painting.
To this
end ,
artists borrowed fromItalian
Futurism(as well as French
Cubism),
but
ad apted
the
foreign
id eas to their own end s. For
instance, Nataliya
Goncharova
painted
Town at
Night (Fig. 2)'7
after she had stud ied Russolo's
Memories
of
a
Night
in
photographic repro-
d uction.'8
Although
a
pastiche
of the Italian
Fig.
3 Larionov,
Portrait of a Fool.
Reprod uced by Eganbyuri, Nataliya
Goncharova.
Mikhail Larionov
(Moscow 1913).
Fig.
2
Nataliya Goncharova,
Town at
Night
Present location
unknown, reprod uced by
Eganbyuri, Nataliya
Goncharova. Mikhail
Larionov
(Moscow, 1913).
composition,
her Town at
Night
was
only
a
step
toward s a Russian version of Futurism. Con-
temporary
with
it,
but
anted ating
it
slightly,
is
the
magnificent
Washerwomen (now
in the
Tretyakov Gallery),'9
which is
typical
of the
peasant subjects
that Goncharova loved to
paint.
The houses in the
background
share some of
the same d istortions that she used in Town at
Night,
while in the
foreground
she ad d ed to
the
ground
and to the skirts of the women
extra lines that are
only
in
part representational.
The lines in Washerwomen are forerunners
of the
rays
which became the characteristic of
her own and Larionov's
Rayist style,
which
they promulgated
in the booklet
Luchizm,
printed
at the time of their
Target
exhibition
held in Moscow in
April 1913.20
The
rays
are
even more obvious in Goncharova's Green
and Yellow Forest21 a
slightly
later canvas
than Town at
Night. They
could
easily
be
confused with Italian Futurist "lines of
force,"
d escribed in the
1912
catalogue
introd uction:
It is
theseforce
lines that we must d raw in
ord er to lead back the work of art to true
painting.
We
interpret
nature
by rend ering
these
objects upon
the canvas as the
begin-
nings
or the
prolongations
of the
rhythms
impressed upon
our
sensibility by
these
very objects.22
Moreover,
the
subject-matter
of two of the
earliest
Rayist paintings,
Goncharova's Cats
and Larionov's Glass
(both
in the
Guggenheim
Museum) ,23 was taken froma much d iscussed
painting
shown in 1912. It was Severini's Black
Cat, based ,
it was
said ,
on the
story by Ed gar
Allen Poe.24 But the
short, rad iating
lines used
by
both Russian artists were not intend ed to
prolong
"the
rhythms impressed
on our sensi-
bility." Rather,
Larionov intend ed
line,
and
above all
color,
to reach the
spectator d irectly.
Rayism
was a
pseud o-scientific theory, making
use of the
physiological
fact that the brain acts
as
intermed iary
to make "sense" of the
light
rays emanating
from
objects. By painting
all
the
crossing rays
of
light
that enter the
eyes,
Larionov was
attempting
to make a new "real-
ity." Parad oxically
it was more
"objective"
in
its
d epend ence
on retinal
images,
while
appear-
ing
to be
non-objective
on his canvas. Thus his
theory
d iffered fromthe Italian "lines of force."
An ad vanced
example
is his
Rayism, Lad y
Sea
Beach of
early 1914,
which fulfills the word s
of his 1913 manifesto, Rayists
and Futurists:
"With this
begins
the true liberation of
painting
and its own life in accord ance
only
with its
own
laws,
a self-sufficient
painting,
with its
own
forms,
colour and timbre."25
However, although pictures
such as
Lad y
Sea
Beach (tod ay prosaically
called Red and Blue
Rayism)
26 and Brown and Yellow
Rayism27
represent
a
fully non-objective
extreme of
Rayism, they
evolved from
land scape.
An ear-
lier
example
of a
Rayist land scape,
in which
boats can still
clearly
be
recognized , points
to
Larionov's
stud y
of Cezanne. It is a
picture
now
in the Russian Museumin
Leningrad 28
for
which Cezanne's
Brid ge
over the
Pool, formerly
in the Moscow collection of Ivan
Morozov,
seems to have
provid ed
a
starting point.29
Larionov
acknowled ged
his rather
unexpected
d ebt
by d escribing
Cezanne as an artist with
"such keenness of
sight
that he could not
help
noticing
the reflex
rubbing,
as it
were,
of a
small
part
of one
object against
the reflected
rays
of another."30
Clearly then,
the clustered
rays
of Luchizmhad other anteced ents than
simply
Italian Futurist "lines of force."
Yet another
path
that Larionov followed in
the evolution of
Rayism
can be found in the
history
of a
picture
on view at the recent
exhibition in
Philad elphia,
his Portrait
of
a
344 ArtJournal
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of
Duchamp's
Nud e
Descend ing
a
Staircase,
while the
grind ing
wheel is close to his
Coffee
Grind er
(reprod uced
in Gleizes and
Metzinger's
seminal
book,
Du
cubisme).40
Malevich took
the
extraord inary
d etails of the knife
grind er's
hand s fromFernand
Leger's Stud y for
Three
Portraits
(now
in the Milwaukee Art
Center);
it had been shown in Moscow the
year
before.41
The
fragmentation
of the
picture
into
roughly
geometric
elements
may
recall Severini's The
Boulevard ,
which
suggests
that this was one of
the
photographs
that the artist Alexand ra Exter
brought
back to Russia fromher
regular
visits
to Paris and
Italy.42
Despite
a
superficial
resemblance to the
work of other
artists,
Malevich's
Knife
Grind er
reveals a
profound und erstand ing
of trad itional
techniques
of
d rawing
and
composition.
There
seems to be more than a coincid ental
similarity
with the basic
principles
set out in a
wid ely
circulated textbook for art
stud ents,
Charles
Blanc's Grammaire d es arts d ud essin.43 In
Fig.
4
Larionov, Drawing. Reprod uced by Eganbyuri, Nataliya
Goncharova. Mikhail Larionov
(Moscow, 1913).
Fool.31 A
photograph
of this
picture
was in-
clud ed in a book about the artist
published
in
1913 (Fig. 3), showing
it
looking
rather d if-
ferent fromits
present
state. This
photograph
reveals the
relationship
of the
original portrait
to a
d rawing reprod uced
in the same book.32
The
d rawing (Fig. 4)
is in a
style
d erived from
French Cubism: the head is red uced to
planar
form,
with
rays
used
simply
as extensions of
geometricised
elements. It was an
experiment
in a
style
that Larionov
quickly rejected .
He
even went so far as to alter the
appearance
of
Portrait
of
a Fool: the
painting
as it is
tod ay
is
no d oubt the
original,
but the artist has ad d ed
fine
d iagonal
lines which serve to make the
head less read able. He obscured the contours
in ord er to "liberate"
painting
in the
way
he
d escribed in his theoretical
writings.
Confusingly,
the Portrait
of
a Fool in its
final version looks more like an Italian Futurist
work than the
original
version d id . But when
he exhibited it in Paris in
1914,
Larionov
d escribed
Rayism
as "the ceaseless and intense
d rama of the
rays
that constitute the
unity
of all
things,"33
a subtle d ifference from"lines of
force." Yet in
spite
of these
theories,
visitors to
Larionov and Goncharova's Paris exhibition
must have noticed connections between their
work and that of Italian Futurists. Larionov's
recently completed
Boulevard Venus34
may
even have been intend ed as a Russian "answer"
to such a
picture
as Balla's
GirlRunning
on a
Balcony35
of 1912.
He
might
be accused of
stealing
an Italian Futurist
subject,
a
person
in
movement. But
although
Balla had
investigated
physical movement,
Larionov could
equally
be
said to be
following
in the
footsteps
of Marcel
Duchamp's pictures
of a Nud e
Descend ing
a
Staircase36 or even of
Kupka's
Woman
Picking
Flowers.37
In
Paris, however,
the full context of Boule-
vard Venus could not be seen. The
d rawing
on
which Larionov had based the
painting
was not
exhibited ,
for it had been mad e for a book of
poems (Fig. 5)
(Le Futur
by
K.
Bol'shakov)
that had been confiscated
by
the censor. In
Moscow,
Boulevard Venus no d oubt seemed
to rival the work of Kazimir Malevich. The
juxtaposition
of Larionov's
lithograph
with Male-
vich's
d rawing
of a Woman
Reaper (Fig. 6),
both
figures d ating
from
1913,
d emonstrates
the d ifference between their
positions.
Malevich
had broken with Larionov at the
Target
exhibi-
tion, shortly
afterward s
writing scornfully
about
Rayism
to a friend : "all these sticks of Larionov's
and others are an
easy thing."38
One of the earliest and finest of Malevich's
1913
pictures
was his
Knife Grind er,
subtitled
Principle of Gleaming.39
Like Larionov's Bou-
levard Venus it is an
original interpretation
of
id eas culled from
many
d ifferent
sources,
d emonstrating
the
variety
of
borrowings
mad e
by
Russian Futurists. The
flight
of
steps
d own
the
right
hand sid e of the canvas is reminiscent
rgg. 2
Laronov, ultnograppJrom
K Bol'shakov's Le Futur
(Moscow, 1913).
this
nineteenth-century classic,
Blanc often
referred the read er to the
Egyptian style.
This
would have
appealed
to Russian Futurists as an
historical
example
of artists
making
a d eliberate
choice to create
images
that were a conscious
equivalent
of
reality
rather than a truthful
likeness.
(Blanc
said that
although Egyptians
were
capable
of realistic
d epiction,
which can
be seen in their
animals,
the
style they ad opted
for
figures
was a d eliberate d eviation from
imitative
truth.)44
An illustration fromBlanc's treatise
gives
an
"example
of
repetition
of movement in the
Egyptian style" (Fig. 7).
It shows a
profile
figure hold ing
a baton in one hand and a
rope
attached to a
sheep
in the
other, repeated
five
times,
one
profile
behind the
other, reced ing
into the shallow
plane
of the
background .
Winter 1981 345
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Fig.
6 Kazimir
Malevich,
Woman
Reaper
1913,
d rawing. Reprod uced
in The Three
(St. Peterburg,
September 1913).
Such an id ea is the basis of Malevich's
Knife
Grind er,
whose left
leg
is shown in
profile,
repeated
five times. His
torso,
seen fromthe
front,
find s a
counterpart
in another
d rawing
in Blanc's
treatise,
an
Egyptian king
shown
sitting
in
profile
with his should ers
facing
the
viewer in a
squared -up d iagram.45 Although
the
squaring-up
d emonstrated the unit of mea-
surement chosen
by
the ancient
Egyptians,
it
also resembles the method
trad itionally
used
by Western, acad emically
trained artists to
scale-up
their
d rawings;
Malevich
has,
as it
were,
subverted this acad emic
method , by
his
use of a
slipped grid
in the
Knife
Grind er.
Accord ing
to
Blanc,
the
purpose
of
repetition
went
beyond
the
pragmatic;
it was a means of
making
a formof
religious
art. As he wrote:
"This
persistent repetition belongs
to a sublime
ord er of
things;
of each
step
it makes a
proces-
sion,
of each movement a
religious emblem,
of
each
pantomime
a sacred
rhythm."46 During
1913,
Malevich and several of his Russian
Futurist friend s
increasingly
d emonstrated their
intention to create a new kind of
spiritual art,
based on the notion of a
"higher
intuition."47
Malevich was
apparently
not the
only
Russian
Futurist to make use of Charles Blanc's book.
When the libretto of the
opera Victory
over the
Sun was
published
in December
1913,
on the
back cover was
reprod uced
a
d esign by
David
Burliuk in which the
repetition
of the horse's
legs
and
profile
resembled Blanc's illustration
(Fig. 8).
But
just
as there are
many possible
interpretations
of the
Knife Grind er,
so there
are
many
connections for David Burliuk'sMan
and Horse. It is one of a series of his
composi-
tions
showing
a horse from
many
d ifferent
points
of the
compass,
a
play
on the Cubist
id ea of
portraying multiple view-points.48
There
is even a link with
primitivism,
for his
pictures
are
composed
of
shapes
that recall the
pieces
of
gummed paper
fromwhich a child
might
create a
picture.
Russian Futurists
evid ently
preferred
the version
reprod uced here,
for it
was also used on the
poster ad vertising
Futurist
theatre
performances
in
1913.49
In a d iscussion of the links between Russian
and Italian
Futurism,
Burliuk's Man and Horse
illustrates an id ea central to the Italian Futurists:
"Thus a
running
horse has not four
legs,
but
twenty,
and their movements are
triangular."50
It could also be
argued
that Burliuk had stolen
his horse froma caricature that
appeared
in
the Parisian
journal Comoed ia,
when the Ital-
ian artists' Technical
Manifesto of
Futurist
Painting
was
printed
there in
May 1910.51
The truth is that
every possible interpretation
is
right:
the essence of Russian Futurismwas
Zaum,
an invented word which
painters
and
poets
used to d escribe an
alogical, intentionally
transrational
approach. (Malevich
subtitled
his
Knife
Grind er
"Zaumnyi
realism" in an
exhibition
catalogue
in November
1913.)
The
splitting-up
of
parts
which is such a
feature of Burliuk's Man and Horse illustra-
tions was a
counterpart
to the verbal
experi-
ments that Russian Futurist
poets
were
making.
When Marinetti
finally
visited Moscow and St.
Petersburg early
in
1914,52
he clashed with
Russian Futurists over their attitud e to
poetry.
The
d ispute
was
fully
record ed
by
the Russian
Futurist
poet
Bened ikt Livshits in his memoirs.53
Marinetti was shown the
hectographed
book
Te Li Le in St.
Petersburg,
but he
apparently
could not und erstand the Russian
poets'
at-
tempt
to alter the structure of
language by
creating mad e-up
word s.54 The
example
of
poetry
that Marinetti recited in
Russia,
his
Zang
Tumb Tumb,55 seemed to themstill to
be too
onomatopoeic.
In
comparison
with the
visual
poetry
as well as the
linguistic
inventive-
ness of Russian Futurist
page-poems,
the Ital-
ians seemed less ad venturous. The Russian
approach
is well illustrated
by
a
page
from
World backward s, published
as
early
as No-
vember
1912
(Fig. 9).
In
spite
of the
d isagreements,
Marinetti's
journey
to Russia was not without influence.
For
instance,
when the text of Vlad imir
Mayakov-
sky's Traged y56
was
published
in
March,
the
typography
owed a consid erable d ebt to that of
Zang
Tumb Tumb. Russian Futurists also at-
tempted
to unite and become more interna-
tional
by prod ucing
a
FirstJournalofRussian
Futurists,
which was intend ed to have
foreign
contributors.57 On the Italian
sid e,
an interna-
tional exhibition of Futurists was
organized
in
Rome in
April 1914,
a few weeks after Mari-
netti's Russian visit.58
Yet,
even at that exhibi-
tion,
the few Russian contributions
emphasized
the d ifference between a Russian and Italian
approach.
An
example
is a work
by
Nikolai
Kul'bin,
who chose to send the
original
d raw-
ing
for the cover of a zaumFuturist
book,
Explod ity (Fig. 10),
which had been
pub-
lished in
July 1913.
The outbreak of war later in
1914
halted
further
attempts
to establish
links,
with one
rather
surprising exception. Although
Larionov
had written a
polemical
letter to the
press
on
the occasion of Marinetti's visit to
Moscow,
uphold ing
the
ind epend ence
of Russian Futurists
fromthe
Italian,59
his was the
only
Russian
contribution to
appear
in Lacerba. The neo-
primitive image (see Fig. 1)
d iscussed at the
beginning
of this article was
printed
there in
the
year
that he and Goncharova left Russia.
They
became well-known in the West for their
theatre
d esigns,
but
they
d id not
immed iately
lose touch with Futurism. In 1917 Larionov
showed work in the Rome stud io of Anton
Giulio
Bragaglia.60
Little is known about this
exhibition, though
it raises
questions
about
continuing
connections between Italian and
Russian Futurism. In
conclusion, however,
there
is no d oubt that the
pragmatic Rayist
theories
346
ArtJournal
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Fig.
7
Example
of
repetition
of Movement in the
Fig.
8 David Burliuk, Man and
Horse, print
Egyptian Style, from
C.
Blanc,
Grammaire d es fromA
Trap forJud ges
2
(St. Petersburg, 1913).
arts d u
d essin,p. 441.
Fig.
9 A.
Kruchenykh
(?),
poemfrom
World backward s
(Moscow, 1912).
that Larionov had
promulgated
in the
heyd ay
of Russian Futurism
provid ed
an
impetus
for
the
d evelopment
of Constructivism after the
political
revolutions of
1917.
Susan P.
Compton
is a scholar
of
the
Russian
avant-gard e.
Her
stud y ofRussian
books,
The World
Backward s,
Russian
Futurist Books
1912-16,
was
published
in
Lond on in 1978.
Fig.
10 Nikd ai
Kul'bin, lithographed
cober
of
Explod ity,June 1913.
Notes
1 M.
Larionov,
La Venere d el
Sold ato, reprod uced
inLacerba,
vol.
III,
no. 15 (1915), p. 125.
2
See,
for
example, Venus, 1912 (Leningrad ,
Russian
Museum); reprod uced
in Paris-Moscou
1900-30,
ex. cat. (Centre Georges Pompid ou,
Paris, 1979), p.
106.
3 Quoted
in
English
in the
ind ispensable
work
by
V.
Markov,
Russian Futurism: a
History
(Lond on, 1968), p. 28; original
source
given:
"Vel. Khlebnikov -osnovatel'
bud etlyan...,"
Kniga irevolyutsiya,
no. 9-10 (1922) p.
25.
4 For
reprod uctions,
see K.
Zd anevich,
Niko
Pirosmanishvili
(Tbilisi, 1965).
5 For
example,
Kot
kazansky,
um
astrakhansky;
print reprod uced by
A.
Shkarovsky-Raffe,
The
Lubok, 17th- 18th
century
Russian Broad -
sid es
(Moscow, 1968), plate
28.
6
Quoted
without source
by
M.
Kozloff, Cubism/
Futurism(Lond on
and New
York, 1974), p.
128.
7 B.
Livshits,
The One and a
Half-Eyed Archer,
trans.
J.
Bowlt
(Nestonville, Mass., 1977), p.
149.
8 U.
Boccioni,
in UnoDuee
Tre, 17
June 1911;
reprod uced by
A.
d 'Harnoncourt,
Futurism
and the International
Avant-gard e (Phila-
d elphia, 1980), Figs. 2,
47.
9 Reprod uced by
M.
Martin,
Futurist Art and
Theory
1909-1915
(Oxford , 1968), p. 44,
Plate ii.
10 Poshchechina obshchestvennomu
vkusu,
Moscow. Like so
many
Russian Futurist
publi-
cations it
appeared
without a d ate
printed
on
it,
but
every
book
passed by
the censor was
registered
in
Knizhnaya letopis'
where the
d ate is 7-14
January 1913. The cover is
reprod uced by
S.
Compton,
The World Back-
ward s, Russian Futurist Books 1912-16
(Lond on, 1978),
Plate
i(e), opp. p. 32.
11 This is
particularly
true of the
journal pub-
lished
by
the World of
Art,
see
reprod uctions
of
covers in V.
Petrov,
Le Mond e Artiste
(Moscow,
1975), pp.
16- 19.
12 Obshchestvo khud ozhnikov
'Soyuz
molod ezhi'
No. 2
(St. Petersburg, 1912).
The cover is
reprod uced by J. Bowlt,
Russian Art
of
the
Avant-gard e: Teory
and Criticism 1902-34
(New York, 1976), p.
24.
13
M.
Larionov, "Luchistskaya zhivopis," Oslinyi
khvost i mishen
(Moscow, 1913),
trans. in
Bowlt,
Russian
Art, pp. 93 -100.
141 amind ebted to Peter
Vergo
for the information
that the Picasso was
wrongly
titled
by Kand insky
or
Marc;
the title
appeared
in French as La
Femme a la mand olin au
piano.
See also
notes to the illustrations
by
K. Lankheit in The
Blaue
ReiterAlmanac,
ed . W.
Kand insky
and
F. Marc
(Lond on, 1974), p.
268 and
photo-
graph opp. p. 59.
15 The
catalogue listing
and
photographs
are
reprod uced by
D.
Gord on,
Mod ern Art Exhi-
bitions 1900-16
(Munich, 1974),
vol.
i,
pp. 896-903.
16
Reprod uced by Compton,
The World Back-
ward s, p. 14; original
source
Stud iya Impres-
sionistov,
ed . N. Kul'bin (St. Petersburg, 1910),
p.
47.
17 The
present
location of this
picture
is unknown.
It was
reprod uced
in a book written und er a
pseud onymby
I.
Zd anevich,
which
provid es
invaluable d ocumentation on the artist's
early
work: E.
Eganbyuri, Nataliya
Goncharova.
MikhailLarionov
(Moscow, 1913).
18 See
Gord on,
Mod ern
Art,
vol.
2, Fig. 900.
19 Reprod uced
in color in Paris-Moscou,
p.
106.
20 The
subsequent back-d ating
of the
pamphlet
by
Larionov has
proved
harmful to his
reputa-
tion,
for the
d evelopment
of
Rayism(the cor-
rect
English
translation of
Luchizm,
of which
Winter 1981 347
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Rayonnisme
is the
French)
is
historically
comprehensible only
as a reaction to his in-
creasing knowled ge
of Western
European
d evel-
opments.
For a brief account see
Compton,
"Rayonism,
Mikhail
Larionov,"
in Abstrac-
tion: Toward s a
NewArt, Painting
1910 -20,
ex. cat. (Tate Gallery, Lond on, 1980), pp.
81 ff.
21
Stuttgart,
Stad tische
Galerie; reprod uced
in
color
by
C.
Gray,
The Great
Experiment
in
Russian Art
1863-1922 (Lond on, 1962),
p. 127,
Plate xii.
22 Galerie
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 5
February 1912;
English
translation fromExhibition
of
Works
by
Italian Futurist
Painters,
ex. cat. (Sackville
Gallery, Lond on,
March
1912); seeJ.C.
Taylor,
Futurism(New York, 1961), p.
128.
23
Reprod uced
and d iscussed
by
A.
Rud instine,
The
Guggenheim
Museum
Collection,
Paint-
ings
1880-1945 (New York, 1976),
vol.
i,
pp.
174 ff.,
and vol.
ii, pp.
446 ff.
24 See
Martin, FuturistArt, p. 99,
n.
2;
Severini's
Black
Cat, reprod uced
Plate
69.
25 Larionov d id not use the word
Futuristi,
but
entitled his manifesto Luchisti i Bud ushchniki
(see the d iscussion
opening
this
article);
see
"Luchisty
i Bud ushchniki.
Manifest," Oslinyi
khvost i mishen
(Moscow, 1913),
trans. in
Bowlt,
Russian
Art, pp.
87 ff.
26
Cologne,
Galerie
Gmurzynska;
colour
repro-
d uction as ad d end umto
Sotheby's
Lond on sale
catalogue
Twentieth
Century
Russian Paint-
ings, Drawings
and Watercolours 1900-30
(29
March
1973),
no. 17a.
27 Paris,
Private
collection;
color
reprod uction
in
W.
George,
Larionov
(Paris, 1966).
28
Reprod uced by Compton,
"The
Spread
of In-
formation in
Europe,"
Toward s a New
Art,
Essays
on the
Background
to Abstract Art
1910-20 (Lond on, 1980), p.
186.
29 Moscow,
Pushkin
Museum; reprod uced
and
d iscussed
by Compton,
Toward s a New
Art,
p.
187.
30 Larionov, "Luchistskaya zhivopis,"
in Bowlt,
Russian
Art, p. 98.
31 Larionov
may
have intend ed to obscure his
Portrait
of
a Fool for he ad d ed his initials
along
the
right-hand
sid e of the canvas. It is
reprod uced
in color as Blue
Rayonnism,
in
Gray,
Great
Experiment,
Plate
xi, p. 124;
to
see the
und erlying portrait,
turn the book once
to the left. The
painting
was
hung
in this
manner as Blue
Rayonism/Portrait of
a Fool
in 1980 at the Tate
Gallery,
Lond on in the
exhibition Abstraction: Toward s a New
Art,
Painting 1910-20,
no. 277.
32 E.
Eganbyuri, Nataliya
Goncharova. Mikhail
Larionov.
33 M.
Larionov,
"Le
Rayonisme Pictural,"
Mont-
joie!, Paris, 4/5/6 (1914), p. 15;
trans. in
Bowlt,
Russian
Art, p.
100.
34 Woman
Walking
on the
Boulevard , Paris,
Private collection. As La Venus d uBoulevard
it was no.
29
in the
catalogue
of the exhibition
Natalie d e Gontcharowa et Michel
Larionow,
held at the Galerie Paul
Guillaume, 17-30
June 1914;
it was there d ated
1912 and had
been first exhibited in December 1913 (Mir
Iskusstva, Moscow). Reprod uced
in Futurism
and the International
Avant-gard e, Fig. 19,
p.
21.
35 Milan,
Civica Galleria d 'Arte
Mod erna; repro-
d uced
by Taylor, Futurism, p.
60.
36 Nud escend ant un
escalier,
No.
1,
December
1911;
No.
2, January 1912. Both are in the
Philad elphia
Museumof
Art,
Louise and Walter
Arensberg Collection;
No. 2 was exhibited in
October
1912 at the Salon of the Section
d 'Or,
in Paris.
37 Paris,
Musee National d 'Art
Mod eme,
Centre
Georges Pompid ou; reprod uced
in Futurism
and the International
Avant-gard e, Fig. 15,
p.
20.
38 Letter to M.V.
Matyushin,
17
May 1913,
trans.
in K.S.
Malevich, TheArtist, Infinity, Suprem-
atism, Unpublished Writings 1913-33,
trans. X.
Hoffmann,
ed . T. And ersen
(Copen-
hagen, 1978),
vol.
v, p.
203.
39
New
Haven,
Yale
University
Art
Gallery.
When the
picture
was first exhibited at the
Target (April
1913)
it was subtitled
Printsip mel'kaniya.
The
word s, incomplete,
were inscribed on the
reverse of the
canvas;
see T.
And ersen,
Malevich
(Amsterd am, 1970), p.
89.
40 Albert Gleizes
and Jean Metzinger,
Ducubisme
(Paris, 1912);
the
painting
is now in the Tate
Gallery,
Lond on.
41 No. 117 in the Knave of Diamond s exhibition
held in
Moscow,
in
January 1912;
in the cata-
logue
the
picture
is subtitled Salon d 'Automne
1911. The
catalogue
is
reprod uced
in French
by
V.
Marcad e,
Le Renouveaud e L'art
pic-
tural
russe, 1863-1914 (Lausanne, 1971),
pp.
324 ff.
42 A. Nakov has d iscussed the role
played by
Exter
in his Axand ra Exter
(GalerieJean Chauvelin,
Paris, 1972);
Severini's Le Boulevard (now
in
the Estorick
Collection) was no. 34 at the
Bernheim-Jeune exhibition; reprod uced by
Martin, FuturistArt,
Plate 66.
43 Charles
Blanc,
Grammaire d es arts d ud essin
(Paris, n.d .; preface
d ated
1880). Although
I
have not traced a Russian
translation,
both
French and German books were
commonplace
in
pre-Revolutionary Russia,
since most ed u-
cated Russians read one or the other
language.
44 See
Blanc, Grammaire, p.
441.
45 Figure
d e Thoumes
III,
roi d e la d ix-huitieme
d ynastie, Blanc, Grammaire, p.
50.
46
Blanc, Grammaire, p.
440
(author's trans-
lation).
47 See
further, Compton,
"Malevich's
Suprema-
tism-The
Higher Intuition,"
The
Burling-
ton
Magazine,
vol.
cxvIII,
no. 881
(1976),
pp.
577-85.
48 These
prints
were first
published
in Sad ok
sud ei2
(St. Petersburg, February 1913).
49
Reprod uced by
A.
Nakov,
Malevitch Ecrits
(Paris, 1975), p. 35.
50 The sentence occurs in the
Technical Manifesto
of
Futurist
Painting (11 April 1910) and is
repeated
in the introd uction to the Berheim-
Jeune
catalogue;
both are
quoted by Taylor,
Futurism, pp.
125 and 127.
51
Reprod uced by Martin, FuturistArt, facing p.
46.
52 The
d ate(s)
of Marinetti's visit to Russia has
given
rise to much
argument,
but it has been
established that he
only
went there
once,
in
January-February 1914;
see C. d e
Michelis,
Ilfuturismo
italiano in Russia 1909-29
(Bari, 1973), pp.
17 ff.
53 Livshits,
The One and a
Half-Eyed Archer,
trans.
Bowlt, Chapter
7.
54 Cover and two
pages reprod uced
in color in
Compton,
The World
Backward s,
Plates
1(f),
12,
and 13.
55
Although Zang
Tumb Tumb had been d e-
claimed in Rome and Berlin as
early
as
February
1913,
the
precise
d ate of its
publication
is not
known. It was ad vertised in
Lacerba,
vol.
il,
no. 2
(15 January 1914) as "d i
prossima
pubblicazione"
and its
publication
was an-
nounced in Lacerba on 1 March soon after
Marinetti's Russian
trip. Although
Marinetti
arrived in Moscow on 26
January 1914,
the
Russian calend ar was thirteen
d ays
behind
that of Western
Europe.
So it was 26
February
in the West when he
gave
his final lecture in
Russia on
February 13.
56Pages reprod uced
in
Compton,
The World
Backward s, pp. 24, 49,
and 61.
57
Futuristy: Pervyi zhurnal russkikhfuturistov
1 -2
(Moscow, 1914). Fernand
Leger
is listed
among
the
foreign
contributors for further
issues,
but this was
finally
the
only
number to
appear.
58 The Russian artists who exhibited at this Es-
pozione
libera
futurista
internazionale at
the Galleria
Sprovieri
were
Kul'bin, Rozanova,
Exter,
and
Archipenko; catalogue reprod uced
by Gord on,
Mod er Art.
59 M.
Larionov,
Nov, vol.
29,
no. 1 (1914);
Italian translation
by
d e
Michelis, Ilfuturismo
italiano,
pp.
124
-
25.
60 Goncharova's work was shown with Larionov's
on this
occasion,
record ed
by
M.
Chamot,
Nathalie Gontcharova
(Paris, 1972), p. 131;
Miss Chamot has
kind ly
told me that she had
the information fromthe
artists,
who were in
Rome from
January
to
May 1917.
348 ArtJournal
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