An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook by Sara Pankenier Weld

Abstract

Reviewed by: An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook by Sara Pankenier Weld Larissa Rudova (bio) Sara Pankenier Weld. An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook. John Benjamins Publishing, 2018. In the 1920s and early 1930s Soviet children's literature was charged with the task of bringing up the young generation in the spirit of communism. Picturebooks in particular became indispensable in "translating" communism to very young children and explaining to them such new concepts as, for instance, revolution, collectivism, internationalism, socialism, class struggle, and industrialization. In a playful manner, these books, illustrated by experimental revolutionary artists, frequently carried direct political and didactic messages. By now this early Soviet picturebook culture is almost entirely forgotten, but, as Sara Pankenier Weld explains in her new study, An Ecology of the Russian Avant-Garde Picturebook, what makes these picturebooks important and unique is their position and role in the "dynamic of literary ecology within a context of censorship" (2). Although the Soviet avant-garde picturebook has been formerly discussed in Evgeny Steiner's seminal monograph, Stories for Little Comrades: Revolutionary [End Page 136] Artists and the Making of Early Soviet Children's books (published in English in 1999), late Mikhail Karasik's Udarnaya kniga sovetskoi detvory. Fotoillyustratsiya i fotomontazh v knige dlya detei i yunoshestva 1920–1930kh godov (The "Shock-Work book" for Soviet Children. Photo-illustration and Photomontage in Books for Children and Youths in the 1920s and 1930s, published in 2010), and a number of notable art catalogs and articles, Weld's book brings new depth and theoretical sophistication to our understanding of the short but artistically rich life of the avant-garde picturebook. Most importantly, Weld's methodological approach is inspired by the natural sciences. She presents the evolution of the Soviet avant-garde picturebook as a period of "punctuated equilibrium" (1), a concept borrowed from evolutionary biology, which refers to a more steady state after a period of vigorous biological development or here, of creative activity in the context of political and ideological pressure. This pressure, exerted above all by the state censorship, contributed prominently to the special "ecology" of the avant-garde picturebook. Weld argues that initially the Bolshevik Revolution produced an "ecological niche" that stimulated creativity and innovation, but with the changing political course toward conservatism and control over the arts, the "natural habitat" of the avant-garde picturebook began to decline and came to an end (4). Weld's interest in naturalistic methodology led her to challenge the provocative claim by the prominent art historian Boris Groys that the phenomenon of social realism that came to dominate Soviet culture from 1934 until the end of the USSR was born from the spirit of the avant-garde. In Weld's view, Stalinist art was a product of "unnatural development" imposed artificially from above rather than a result of the "organic evolution" of art (5). Throughout her study, Weld convincingly demonstrates how naturalistic theoretical models help us elucidate the fate of the avant-garde picturebook. Ultimately, censorship derailed and smothered its dynamic development through "unnatural selection" and the creation of a hostile environment. In the heyday of revolutionary art in the 1920s many avant-garde authors and artists saw in children's literature a refuge from increasing political pressure and an opportunity to further their experimentations. Yet, as Weld points out, censorship was becoming ubiquitous, and avant-garde picturebook creators had to turn to "adaptive strategies" and "protective camouflage" (13) to maintain their ecological niche. One such strategy was the use of Aesopian language, which permitted communication of ambiguous messages otherwise unacceptable in literature for adults. Aesopian language, whose significance in the Russian literary context was illuminated by Lev Loseff in his influential monograph, On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature (1988), plays a prominent role in shaping Weld's ecological argument. Spanning the entire period of "punctuated equilibrium" [End Page 137] in the evolution of avant-garde picturebooks, she finds in them numerous manifestations of Aesopian language. For instance, in her discussion of Dva tramvaya (Two Tramcars, 1925), written by the prominent modernist poet Osip Mandelstam and illustrated by the artist Boris Ender, Weld reveals how a seemingly innocent children...