Page 37 - Studio International - September 1973

author of these and of another publication Vladimir they began to arrange a number of returned to the country to find happiness away
Mirkontsa (Worldbackwardness) was influential exhibitions. from the big city. This was the first major work
Kruchenykh. He admitted that A Game in Larionov accompanied the Burliuks to Hylea, published by the Russian avant-garde writer to
Hell began in the style of a lubok. It described near the Black Sea in 19o9. It was there that they make use of free verse.
a card game between devils and sinners in hell. developed a primitivist style, with the Soon after the 'Knave of Diamonds'
The first poem in Old Time Love is a parody incorporation of Russian folk art and in exhibition, Kulbin began to write about the art
of love poetry written by provincials, mixed opposition to western styles. of children and pre-historic men in the same
with deliberately chosen clichés, melancholy The most important exhibition organized by context as nature. The main area that attracted
nineteenth-century languor and non-aesthetic these artists was the 'Knave of Diamonds' Russian futurist poets in their effort to create
details. The style of these writings resulted from exhibition in 191o. The association had been primitivism was childhood, but some of
discussions centred around art exhibitions and founded the previous year by a group of Khlebnikov's longer poems were set in an
was an interpretation of the same spirit as that painters of Cézannist tendencies. Falk, Exter, imaginary Slav stone-age, while others are
of the pictures. Other devices used by poets Burliuk, Larionov, Goncharova and Malevich reminiscent of graffiti, cave art and Russian
included the use of odd pages, some handwritten were among them. Work by French cubists folk-lore.
and some repetition of printed text upside down. was also included in the 1910 exhibition and The Burliuks lived in Chernyanko, formerly
Religious folk poetry was imitated and French art increased its influence in Russia. part of ancient Greek 'Hylaea'. The brothers
incorporated with blasphemous and erotic Exchanges were made also with the Blaue called themselves Hylaeans and the group was
material. Reiter and Die Brücke groups in mutual soon joined by Mayakovsky and Kruchenykh.
David Burliuk, who began studying art at exhibitions. Though they were primitivists they adopted
Kazan:in 1899, was impressed by Tolstoy's Associated with primitivism and folk art cubist tendencies in painting and poetry and
categories of art. In 19o3 he went to Munich was the ideal of country life. Vasily Kamensky's later became known as cubo-futurists. But their
and later studied in Paris. When he went to Zemlyanka (The Mud Hut), which he sources were also in symbolist poetry. They had
Moscow in 1907 he met Larionov, Goncharova described as a new kind of novel, was written a wide interest in Slav mythology and David
and Alexandra Exter, and with his brother in 1910-11. It was the story of a man who Burliuk's work was inspired by Scythian,
16 19

16 N. Pirosmanashvili 19 A Umed Singh
Georgians eating and drinking Shooting Tigers c. 1790
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
17 N. Pirosmanashvili
Tavern Sign 20 Henri Rousseau
Tropical Storm with a Tiger 1891
18 Henri Rousseau Photo courtesy of the Trustees, National Gallery,
Portrait of the Writer Pierre Loti London
Kunsthaus, Zurich

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