Hyperallergic Reads the Russian Futurists

The Getty Research Institute has launched a new website that invites users to surf through four Russian futurist art books and encounter ten zaum poems by Russian futurist poets and painters. In person, the books are delicate and well-worn by time; the Getty's new digital interface allows researchers, experts, and newcomers alike to explore as enthusiastically as they please. Hyperallergic's Claire Voon writes, "The website, which features ten poems to explore from four books, launches to accompany Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art, a publication by curator Nancy Perloff released last year." Let's start there:

These poems, written by Alexei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov, feature a new language invented by Russian Futurist painters and poets: zaum, which translates into “beyond the mind,” escapes logical meaning but emphasizes the sonic power of words. Like their texts, the accompanying visuals are also often elusive, suggestive of a narrative but still clinging to abstraction.

“Recurring verbal, visual, and vocal references to the folklike and the primitive, reversibility and mirror forms, the fourth dimension, and apocalypse dominate the artistic expression of these books,” as Perloff writes in her introduction. “Moreover, futurist poets and painters intended their books to be heard as well as read.”

Continue at Hyperallergic.