What is it about?

This book examines vivid examples of picturebooks published in the early Soviet period. It considers them in their broader context with attention to the pressures of politics and censorship, as well as art and innovation. It also uncovers hidden messages and implications in these picturebooks. The book argues that using models of ecology from natural history helps explain how picturebooks were shaped by these forces that directly affected their survival in a period of severe restrictions and increasing censorship.

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Why is it important?

This book applies new natural history and ecological models to understanding the relationship of art, literature, and censorship through the example of the Soviet period. It also uses focused word and image analysis to uncover hidden implications in the image and text of these striking picturebooks. In addition, it shows how they serve as artifacts that illuminate a bigger historical, artistic, and political context.

Perspectives

This book offers a close examination of these extraordinary, visually stunning, and rare picturebooks that were preserved only in select archives, libraries, museums, and private collections from a unique time of great tumult and changes. Censorship deprived audiences of them soon after their publication but, as their artistic influence around the world and recent attention by museums and a broader public have shown, they are striking art objects and worthy of more attention than they have received. This book attempts to give them the closer attention they deserve.

Sara Pankenier Weld
University of California, Santa Barbara

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This page is a summary of: An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook, January 2018, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/clcc.9.
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