Authors

Oleg Minin¹;  ¹ Bard College, United States

Discussion

In this presentation I investigate the relationship between the early experimental trends in Russian art and caricature. This relationship may be best described as multifaceted encompassing not only caricatures and satirical cartoons as forms of media reception of domestic avant-garde practices, from neo-primitivist to Futurist and Cubist, but also the images generated within the avant-garde itself. The latter is best understood as self-referential parody stimulated by competition between various experimental literary and artistic groups. In particular, the focus is on caricatures and cartoons, which satirized the new avant-garde trends as Futurist, a term applied by the media to the experimental artists uniformly, without acknowledgment of formal differences, and as a negative definition. Laughing at the Futurists’ texts, art works and appearance, such caricatures appeared in a variety of print media in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the provinces throughout 1913-1914. Identified and discussed will be select images appearing in such period newspapers as Golos Moskvy, Rannee utro, Stolichnaia molva, Voskresnye vechernie novosti and Peterburgskaia gazeta. These caricatures will be evaluated both as factors contributing to what in critical literature has been described as “the succès de scandale” of the Russian avant-garde, and as historical records which help define the chronology and complexity of the avant-garde phenomenon. I will conclude with an examination of several extant examples of self-directed avant-garde laughter imparted through caricature and friendly satirical portraits (sharzhy) by the likes of Mikhail LeDantu and Vladimir Mayakovsky.