Page 38 - Studio International - September 1973

Polynesian, and pre-Columbian Mexican art as becomes clear that the pure body of language, work, the main body of which in now in the
well as by contemporary sign boards. It was in sound of the alphabet, is the name of various National Gallery of Georgia at Tiflis.
1913 that the Hylaeans became known as forms in space, the renumeration of the cases of One cycle of his pictures includes picturesque
cubo-futurists and henceforth any avant- its life.'4 and familiar types from old Tiflis, such as The
garde art form tended to be associated with He took various Russian words beginning Cook, Moucha and his Barrel and the Hurdy-
Futurism. with L to show that these words correspond to Gurdy Player. Some of these are reminiscent of
It was also in 1913 in Moscow that the his geometric formula : Soutine.
15-page pamphlet written by Khlebnikov and L - passage from the quantity of height, He also painted a series of animals including
Kruchenykh Slovo kak takovoe (The Word coinciding with the axe of movement, to the camels and a giraffe, though he never left
as Such) appeared, illustrated by Malevich and quantity of width, transversal to the trajectory of Georgia. These pictures are similar to
Olga Rozanova, being a mixture of manifesto movement. earthenware statues with which Georgian
and verse. The declaration derided poetry from Though James Joyce was attempting similar peasants decorate their houses. Others are
Pushkin to the symbolists and stated that as experiments, the Italian futurists were inspired by Georgian poets. Like Henri
thought and speech cannot catch up with the declaiming 'Parole in Liberta', simultaneous Rousseau, his subjects include exotic scenes
experience of inspiration the artist is free to poets in Paris and dadaists in various centres such as The Hunt in India, probably inspired in
express himself in common language, private were to experiment in ways that were similar to both artists by Persian or Indian miniatures.
language and language that does not have a those of Khlebnikov, none attempted to By comparison Rousseau's primitivism appears
definite meaning, that is transrational (zaum). penetrate the material world as much as the over-nice and Parisian whereas
Khlebnikov had studied painting in 1912 and Russians. In his poem Swan published in 1910 Pirosmanashvili's work is nearer to the tradition
made collages and free word zaumist pictures. Khlebnikov describes the revolt of objects of the lubok and the unsophisticated paint
At that time poets were concerned with noting against man: 'Man is the prisoner of the marks that the Russian avant garde admired.
the words of popular and folk songs. Goriely3 objects'. Khlebnikov tended to equate his As a painting support he generally used
describes how in Kharkov, at the corners of the poetry to plastic qualities rather than to music, black waxed canvas on to which he traced the
street, the blind `bandouristes' sang popular as did the Russian symbolists. Though part of contours of his subject. Then he painted the
songs and accompanied themselves on old one of his transrational poems suggests both : light parts in white, pinks and pale blues, usually
lips sang
stringed instruments. These singers were BOBEOBI finishing the picture in one sitting.
looks sang
surrounded by intellectuals who noted down VEOMI Meyerhold was concerned to revive a
eyebrows sang
every word of their forgotten poems. Amid such PIEED primitive spirit of the stage. He introduced this
a group of four or five persons with long hair, LIEEEI smiles sang tradition in 1910 when he produced Moliere's
dressed in yellow and violet trousers with their GSI-GSI-GSEO sang the chain.5 Don Juan and wrote that the academic theatre
faces painted geometrically in triangles and in In general the difference between Khlebnikov's of the Renaissance, unable to make use of the
blue or red squares one would find Khlebnikov. experiments and those of the west was his wish greatly extended forestage, removed the actor
Khlebnikov went further than Biely and to go to the primitive source both in nature and to a respectable distance from the public.
Balmont in his interest in irrational language. in his intuitive analysis of language, and to go Similar to the arena of a circus, pressed on all
He enquired into charms and conjurations of beyond the physical to a spiritual reality. sides by a ring of spectators, the forestage is
language of magic, the sacred languages of As well as having a cultural significance for brought near the public by Meyerhold so that
paganism, irrational language of popular speech, Russian artists some considered primitivism to not one gesture, not one movement, not one
asiatic poetry, prehistoric and primitive have a social meaning: glimpse of the actor should be lost in the dust of
languages. In Zangesi Khlebnikov accounted `Goncharov and I worked more on a peasant the backstage....6
for seven levels of words : I) recording of sound level. Every work of ours had a content which, Meyerhold led the revolt against the position
language of birds; 2) language of the gods; although expressed in primitive form, revealed of realism and naturalism in the theatre.
3) stellar language; 4) zaum language - level of a social concern. This was the basic difference Tairov expressed emotion by means of careful
thought; 5) decomposition of the word; between us and the Knave of Diamonds Group co-ordination of simplified movement, colour
6) phonetic recording; 7) mad language. which was working in the time of Cézanne.' and sound and Evreinov went to the extreme
Khlebnikov tried to discover the mother The expressive touches of Vrubel's work had of simplification:
language in the vocabulary of sorcerers, been transformed into rayonnism by Larionov. `When I utter the word theatre, the first idea
magicians and shamans. As an ornithologist, in Ancient Russia had been revived before 1900 that comes into my mind is a child or a savage
his youth he had published scientific works on through historical research but merely in a and all that is peculiarly creative in their
`Symbiosis and Metabiosis' but his interests change of subject matter. The movement transforming will. They are not grasping this
extended to the alchemy and the ritual language attempting to effect a return to the village during world .. .. . but they are replacing it with a freely
of primitive Siberian peoples. the last half of the nineteenth century possessed invented world .. .. . the attraction towards a
Zaum appears to have been only one of a political nuance - narodnichestva (all for the mask as the covering of the real I's'.7
Khlebnikov's experimental uses of language. people and by the people) and it was from that Primitivism with 2 special interest in its
Stellar language is an alphabet of concepts source that the socialist revolutionary party simplifying forms and revelation of inner
translated by him into geometric terms. Tatlin emerged. spiritual life decided the course for some of the
staged Khlebnikov's Zangesi in 1923 at the The first exhibition of the 'Donkey's Tail' most radical innovations in the arts this
Museum of Artistic Culture in Moscow group included work by the Georgian century. ..
presenting the alphabet of concepts in graphic self-taught artist and sign painter Niko
and geometric form: Pirosmanashvili (1862-1918) encouraged mainly 1See Vladmir Markov, Russian Futurism. Also Peter
3 - rotation of one point around another by Larionov. He painted pre-revolutionary Vergo 'A note on the chronology of Larionov's
early work' Burlington Magazine CXIV , 832, July
H - closed curve Georgian subjects, landscapes, village traditions, 1972.
L - fall of the ray on the hard surface animals, village beauties, people of all 'See Camilla Gray, Russian Art.
M - decomposition of a determinate professions and especially gatherings of 'Benjamin Goriely, Les pates dans la revolution russe,
(Gallimard, Paris, 1934) PP.
44-45.
quality into an infinitesimal quality drinkers sitting at a table. He had a difficult life °Ibid. pp. 25-26.
N - absence of points, clear field. but taught himself sign painting and travelled °Quoted Ibid. p. 185.
Khlebnikov concluded: about from village to village. In 1922 the poet °Quoted in Oliver M. Sayler, The Russian Theatre
(London 1923) pp. 209-21o.
`Thus from our point of view as thinkers, it I. Zdanevich and others began to collect his 'Quoted Ibid. p. 259.
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