Tekstura: Russian Essays on Visual Culture - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226951243 ISBN 13: 9780226951249

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1993

Synopsis

Fascinated by the myth of the Russian avant-garde and scornful of official art, the West has been selective in its engagement with Russian visual culture. Yet how do contemporary Russian scholars and critics themselves approach the history of visual culture in the former Soviet Union?

Taking its title from a Russian word that can refer to the 'texture" of life, painting, or writing, this anthology assembles thirteen key essays in art history and cultural theory by Russian-language writers. The essays erase boundaries between high and low, official and dissident, avant-garde and socialist realism, art and everyday life. Everything visual is deemed worthy of analysis, whether painting or propaganda banners, architecture or candy wrappers, mass celebrations or urban refuse.

Most of the essays appear here in English for the first time. The editors have selected works of the past twenty years by philosophers, literary critics, film scholars, and art historians. Also included are influential earlier essays by Mikhail Bakhtin, V. N. Voloshinov, and Sergei Eisenstein. Compiled for general readers and specialists alike, Tekstura is a valuable resource for anyone interested in Russian and Soviet cultural history or in new theoretical approaches to the visual.

About this title

About the Author:

Lev Manovich is Professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego. His book "The Language of New Media" (MIT Press, 2001) has been hailed as "the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan."

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0226951243
• ISBN 13: 9780226951249
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 264