John McEwen
Figurative V Abstract
Vitebsk: The Life of Art
By Aleksandra Shatskikh (Translated by Katherine Foshko)
Yale University Press 432pp £30
Under Communism this book could not have existed. Today the work of the Russian modern art pioneers it discusses is devoutly memorialised. Yet the change is still recent enough to make it easy to understand the warm critical reception Vitebsk (which largely concerns the period 1917–22) received in Russia and Israel in 2001, and the ‘wonderful letters’ the author was sent by descendants of those mentioned. Now, translated and updated, it enters the art-historical mainstream.
In the years immediately following the Russian Revolution, the provincial city of Vitebsk was briefly one of the world’s artistic hotspots. Sudden change was nothing new in its 1,000-year history: a western location, equidistant from St Petersburg and Moscow, ensured its geopolitical importance as a vital trade link with Europe
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk