Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism

Abstract

Russian Modernists advanced a view of art as an active creative force destined for the creation not of artistic texts, but of life itself, and a view of life as an object of artistic creation. The contributors show that the Russian notion of 'life-creation' was by no means limited to deliberate aesthetic organisation of behaviour - it was an aesthetic utopia that informed public and private projects of the reorganisation of the world, from human personality, interpersonal relations, and body to society at large.