Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde and Cultural Experiment

Abstract

Note on transliteration, Russian place names, and dates Contributors Introduction John E. Bowlt and Olga Matich Part I. Life Creation: The Search for a New Body: 1. The transfiguration of cannibals: Fedorov and the Avant-Garde Irene Masing-Delic 2. Body beautiful: the artistic search for the perfect physique John E. Bowlt 3. Remaking the bed: Utopia in daily life Olga Matich Part II. Scientific Discovery and Cultural Innovation: 4. Media fantasies and penetrating vision: some links between X-rays, the microscope, and film Yuri Tsivian 5. Tsiolkovsky as a moment in the prehistory of the Avant-Garde Michael Holquist 6. Toward an exact aesthetics: Pavel Florensky and the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences Nicoletta Misler 8. Development or rebuilding: views of academician T. D. Lysenko in the context of the late Avant-Garde Boris Gasparov Part III. Word and Image: Manipulating Semiotic Systems: 9. The sacred profaned: image and word in the paintings of Mikhail Larionov John E. Malmstad 10. The profane made sacred: the theology of the Oberiu declaration Sarah Pratt Part IV. Socialist Realism as Radical Experiment: 11. The birth of socialist realism from the spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde Boris Groys 12. Dmitrii Furmanov's Chapaev and the aesthetics of the Russian Avant-Garde Ronald Vroon 13. Platonov, socialist realism, and the legacy of the Avant-Garde Thomas Seifrid 14. Eisenstein's poetics: dialogical or totalitarian? Alexander Zholkovsky Postscript: the Avant-Garde and the retrospectives as players in the evolution of Stalinist culture Katerina Clark Notes Index.