Z. S. Strother - Vladimir Markov and Russian Primitivism: A Charter for the Avant-Garde

VLADIMIR MARKOV AND RUSSIAN PRIMITIVISM

Hailed as a brilliant theoretician, Voldemrs Matvejs (best known by his pen name Vladimir Markov) was a Latvian artist who spearheaded the Union of Youth, a dynamic group championing artistic change in Russia, 191014. His work had a formative impact on Malevich, Tatlin, and the Constructivists before it was censored during the era of Soviet realism.

This volume introduces Markov as an innovative and pioneering art photographer and assembles, for the first time, five of his most important essays. The translations of these hard-to-find texts are fresh, unabridged, and authentically poetic. Critical essays by Jeremy Howard and Irna Buinska situate his work in the larger phenomenon of Russian primitivism, i.e. the search for the primal. This book challenges hardening narratives of primitivism by reexamining the enthusiasm for world art in the early modern period from the perspective of Russia rather than Western Europe. Markov composed what may be the first book on African art and Z.S. Strother analyzes both the text and its photographs for their unique interpretation of West and Central African sculpture as a Kantian play of masses and weights. The book will appeal to students of modernism, orientalism, primitivism, historiography, African art, and the history of the photography of sculpture.

Jeremy Howard is Senior Lecturer, School of Art History, University of St Andrews, UK

Irna Buinska is Curator, Latvian National Museum of Art, Latvia

Z.S. Strother is Riggio Professor of African Art, Columbia University, USA

STUDIES IN ART HISTORIOGRAPHY

Series Editor: Richard Woodfield,
University of Birmingham, UK

The aim of this series is to support and promote the study of the history and practice of art historical writing focusing on its institutional and conceptual foundations, from the past to the present day in all areas and all periods. Besides addressing the major innovators of the past it also encourages re-thinking ways in which the subject may be written in the future. It ignores the disciplinary boundaries imposed by the Anglophone expression art history and allows and encourages the full range of enquiry that encompasses the visual arts in its broadest sense as well as topics falling within archaeology, anthropology, ethnography and other specialist disciplines and approaches. It welcomes contributions from young and established scholars and is aimed at building an expanded audience for what has hitherto been a much specialised topic of investigation. It complements the work of the Journal of Art Historiography.

IN THE SAME SERIES

Mariette and the Science of the Connoisseur in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Kristel Smentek

The Expressionist Turn in Art History

A Critical Anthology

Edited by Kimberly A. Smith

British Romanticism and the Reception of Italian Old Master Art, 17931840

Maureen McCue

A Theory of the Tache in Nineteenth-Century Painting

ystein Sjstad

Victorian Perceptions of Renaissance Architecture

Katherine Wheeler

Alois Riegl in Vienna 18751905

An Institutional Biography

Diana Reynolds Cordileone

In appreciation of Varvara Bubnova, who kept alive the work and memory of Vladimir Markov Voldemrs Matvejs

Vladimir Markov. Dogon female figure. Photographed in the Muse dEthnographie du Trocadro, Paris, 1913. From Iskusstvo Negrov (1919), pl. 58. Current location unknown.

A Charter for the Avant-Garde

Jeremy Howard

University of St Andrews, UK

Irna Buinska

Latvian National Museum of Art, Latvia

and

Z.S. Strother

Columbia University, USA

ASHGATE

Jeremy Howard, Irna Buinska and Z.S. Strother 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Jeremy Howard, Irna Buinska and Z.S. Strother have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Vladimir Markov and Russian primitivism : a charter for the avant-garde / By Jeremy Howard, Irna Buinska and Z.S. Strother.

pages cm. -- (Studies in art historiography)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-3974-1 (hbk) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-3975-8 (ebook) -

ISBN 978-1-4724-3976-5 (epub) 1. Primitivism in art--Russia (Federation)

--Historiography. 2. Markov, Vladimir, 1877-1914. 3. Photography of art.

I. Markov, Vladimir, 1877-1914. Works. Selections. English.

N6988.5.P7V59 2015

709.2--dc23

2014033421

ISBN 978 1 4724 3974 1 (hbk)
ISBN 978 1 4724 3975 8 (ebk-ePDF)
ISBN 978 1 4724 3976 5 (ebk-ePUB)

Z.S. Strother, Irna Buinska and Jeremy Howard

Jeremy Howard

Irna Buinska
Translated from Russian by Jeremy Howard and Ronald Meyer

Z.S. Strother

Irna Buinska
Translated from Russian by Jeremy Howard

Jeremy Howard

Translated and annotated by Jeremy Howard

Translated and annotated by Jeremy Howard

Translated and annotated by Jeremy Howard

Translated by Jeremy Howard

Annotated by Z.S. Strother and Jeremy Howard

Translated by Jeremy Howard

Annotated by Jeremy Howard and Z.S. Strother

With a note on authorship by Z.S. Strother and Irna Buinska

Frontispiece

Note on Images

1 Introduction to Matvejs, Markov and Primitivism

2 The Treasure-House of World Beauty: Markov and Russian Primitivism Writ Large

3 Markovs Development as a Theoretician

4 The Politics of Face in the African Art Photography of Vladimir Markov

5 Markovs Legacy: Photographs for Art of Northern Asia

9 Iskusstvo Negrov, with a Memoir by Varvara Bubnova and Foreword by Levkiy Zheverzheev

10 On the Principle of Weightiness in African Sculpture

None of Markovs original glass negatives survive, nor do any prints that he made himself. His friend Krlis re ordered a number of photographic prints made from the original glass negatives. These precious images may be found in the Latvian National Library and Information Centre of the Latvian Art Academy; however, they are in poor condition due to the quality of chemicals available at the time. Several of these images illustrate Markovs work in museum storerooms, under difficult conditions, and demonstrate how he used sheets of paper to provide a neutral backdrop for the object. A number of the most interesting surviving photos were restored by the photographer Georgijs Jemejnovs in the mid-1990s at the request of Irna Buinska in order to appraise Markovs work as a photographer. These include .