 | Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-Garde Subjects: Russian literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Avant-garde (Aesthetics) -- Russia (Federation) -- History -- 20th century; Literature Experimental -- Russia (Federation) -- History and criticism; Arts Russian -- 20th century; Voice in lite; Winner, 2015 International Research Society in Children's Literature (IRSCL) Book Award Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-Garde offers a new approach to the Russian avant-garde. It argues that central writers, artists, and theorists of the avant-garde self-consciously used an infantile aesthetic, as inspired by children's art, language, perspective, and logic, to accomplish the artistic renewal they were seeking in literature, theory, and art. It treats the influence of children's drawings on the Neo-Primitivist art of Mikhail Larionov, the role of children's language in the Cubo-Futurist poetics of Aleksei Kruchenykh, the role of the naive perspective in the Formalist theory of Viktor Shklovsky, and the place of children's logic and lore in Daniil Kharms's absurdist writings for children and adults. This interdisciplinary and cultural study not only illuminates a rich period in Russian culture but also offers implications for modernism in a wider Western context, where similar principles apply. SARA PANKENIER WELD is an assistant professor of Russian in the Department of Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. |
