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9780810129849

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This monograph presents a persuasive and important argument for the role of thechild in the aesthetics of the Russian avant-garde. Weld s study goeswell beyond her four main subjects Mikhail Larionov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, ViktorShklovskii, and Daniil Kharms and even beyond Russian art and literature to thenature of avant-garde art in general. It should therefore be of great interest to scholars and students of late imperial and early Soviet Russian culture, avant-garde art andliterature, and childhood studies and children s literature.Through meticulous scholarship, archival research, and close analysis, VoicelessVanguard demonstrates the importance of the child to Larionov s art, Kruchenykh sand Kharms s writings, and Shklovskii s literary and aesthetic theory. Slavic Review

With her illustrated monograph Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-Garde, Sara Pankenier Weld makes an original contribution to both the large and extensive field of Russian avant-garde studies, and the burgeoning field of the study of Russian and Soviet children's culture and literature. The book contains keen analysis of works, original material, and many insights that ought to be of interest also in a transnational, comparative perspective and in relation to the question of the child and primitivism in Western art. One might thus hope that the book will reach a broad audience of not only Slavists, but also art historians and readers with a general interest in children's culture and literature. --Barnboken: Journal of Children's Literature Research Pankenier Weld's impressive book contributes meaningfully to several areas of scholarly research: theory of European modernism and the avant-garde; children's literature and theories of childhood; and Russian literary theory and history. Finally, Voiceless Vanguard convinces the reader that 'infantilism is to be found almost everywhere [where] there is a modern aesthetic'. Weld takes the connection between children's art, writing and speech and the avant-garde's radical formal experiments to a new theoretical level. --International Research in Children's Literature

'My child could paint that!' is a dismissive remark about abstract painting you often hear, say, from a skeptical viewer encountering Kazimir Malevich's Black Square and its stark minimalism. Yet such skepticism toward modern art just might have a certain validity. As Sara Pankenier Weld compellingly argues in <i>Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantalist Aesthetic of the Russian Avant-Garde</i>, it was through the child's perspective that so many Russian avant-garde artists nurtured their originality and found their voice... Weld provides an insightful, well-researched approach to Russian avant-garde culture and its underlying emphasis on the child's perspective... [an] excellent, well-written study. --<i>The Russian Review </i></p>

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Sara Pankenier Weld is an assistant professor of Russian in the Department of Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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