''Universal War'' (Russian: ВсеЛенская Война Ъ) is an

artist's book Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that engage with and transform the form of a book. Some are mass-produced with multiple editions, some are published in small editions, while others are produced as one-of-a-kind o ...

Aleksei Kruchenykh Aleksei Yeliseyevich Kruchyonykh (; 9 February 1886 – 17 June 1968). Original name at birth ( Ukrainian: Олексій Єлисейович Кручений) also romanized Kruchenykh due to confusion about , was a poet, artist, and theo ...

published in

Petrograd Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

at the beginning of 1916. Despite being produced in an edition of 100 of which only 12 are known to survive,MOMA online; Universal War
/ref> the book has become one of the most famous examples of

Russian Futurist Russian Futurism is the broad term for a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism", which espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, ...

book production, and is considered a seminal example of

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

art from the beginning of the twentieth century. Published at the height of Russian involvement in

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

(see Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive), the book attempts to echo the chaos and destruction of the war with the chaos and disruption of collage techniques new to the Russian Avant-Garde at the time, and opens with the bleak prophecy "Universal War will take place in 1985". Shortly after the book was published, Kruchenykh left Petrograd to live in a hut in

the Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, incl ...

to avoid the draft.

"One of the most outstanding merits of the album- a dadaist work in the fullest sense- is its successful realization of Kruchenykh's concept of collage as an artistic method transcending mere technique and capable of metaphorically expressing the 'discordant concordance' of the age."

The book is an early attempt to link

zaum () are the linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and language creation of Russian Cubo-Futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh. Zaum is a non-referential phonetic entity with its own ontology. The language con ...

poetry (often translated as 'transrational' or 'beyonsense' poetry) with 'zaum' images. In the foreword, Kruchenykh refers to the book as 'Poetic zaum shaking the hand of the pictorial zaum'. ''Universal War'' is often erroneously credited as a collaboration between Kruchenykh and his wife, the artist

Olga Rozanova Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova (also spelled Rosanova, Russian: Ольга Владимировна Розанова) (22 June 1886 – 7 November 1918, Moscow) was a Russian avant-garde artist painting in the styles of Suprematism, Neo-Primitivis ...

. Whilst the pair often collaborated on artist's books-including ''A Game In Hell'' (1914) and ''Transrational Boog'' (1915)- most authorities now consider the work to be by Kruchenykh alone. A series of similar collages – also credited to Kruchenykh – in the book ''1918'' was published in

Tiflis Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი, ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), ( ka, ტფილისი, tr ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), largest city of Georgia ( ...

(Tbilisi) in January or February 1917, whilst Rozanova was still in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

and the

Verbovka Village Folk Centre Verbovka or Verbovka Village Folk Center was an artisan cooperative in the village of Verbovka founded by Natalia Davidova in the Ukrainian province of Kyiv. Natalia Davidova, one of the founders and the head of the Kyiv Folk Center, was an Avan ...

working for Malevich and, later, Izo Narkompros.

The emergence of Russian futurist books

Kruchenykh had been a member of the

Gileia Russian Futurism is the broad term for a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism", which espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, ...

poets' group in Moscow that had published ''A Slap In the Face of Public Taste'', a manifesto/provocation, an early

Succès de scandale ''Succès de scandale'' ( French for "success from scandal") is a term for any artistic work whose success is attributed, in whole or in part, to public controversy surrounding the work. In some cases the controversy causes audiences to seek o ...

that helped to establish

Futurism Futurism ( ) was an Art movement, artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the ...

in Russia. He left Gileia in 1912 to join the rival

Donkey's Tail Donkey's Tail (, Romanized: Osliniy khvost) was a Russian artistic group created from the most radical members of the Jack of Diamonds group. The group included such painters as: Mikhail Larionov (inventor of the name), Natalia Goncharova, Kazim ...

group, which was founded by the

Cubo-Futurist Cubo-Futurism () was an art movement, developed within Russian Futurism, that arose in the early 20th-century Russian Empire, defined by its amalgamation of the artistic elements found in Italian Futurism and French Analytical Cubism. Cubo-Futur ...

painter

Mikhail Larionov Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov (; – May 10, 1964) was a Russian avant-garde painter who worked with radical exhibitors and pioneered the first approach to abstract Russian art. He was founding member of two important artistic groups Knave ...

. Each of the members would collaborate with Kruchenykh on his next three artist's books; ''A Game In Hell'', ''Worldbackwards'' and ''Old-Time Love''. These three publications set the tone for a radical deconstruction of the book format:

"If Kruchenykh had consciously set out to dismantle (nowadays we might say "deconstruct") the legacy of Johannes Gutenberg, it is unlikely that he could have done it more completely....In a series of remarkable book works of 1912 to 1920, Kruchenykh and his collaborators challenged this legacy in an unprecedentedly complete way, step-by-step departing from our European expectations about what a twentieth century book should be," (Gerald Janecek, quoted in ''The Russian Avant-Garde Book'')

''Universal War'' in Russian literature

''Universal War'' was an atypical book for Kruchenykh, since despite training as an artist, he usually only supplied the poetry for his books. This allowed collaborating artists such as Natalya Goncharova,

Kazimir Malevich Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (

and

unusual levels of freedom to integrate their pictures with his hand-written words. ''Universal War'' featured his own collages, in an abstract style Kruchenykh referred to as 'Non-Objective'. The series of collages run parallel to the poetry printed on the first two sheets. Germany is depicted as a belligerent spiky helmet with its shadow, a black panther, fighting Russia. The book starts with two pages of poems, under the headline "Universal War will take place in 1985" with page references to associate them with specific images. These poems are followed by 12 related collages, consisting of coloured sheets of card-mostly dark blue, but interspersed with grey, white and pink sheets- with various other papers and fabrics stuck to the sheets. Whilst the copies are similar, they show subtle differences.

Poetic and pictorial Zaum

Zaum poetry attempted to “…lead the artist far beyond the restraints of socially sanctioned patterns and the vice of national vocabularies" and, whilst similar to Marinetti's insistence on the

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

nature of words, Kruchenykh insisted that Zaum was a liberation from meaning as well as form.

ruchenykhdescribed the new logic of zaum as ‘broader than sense’, a logic that liberated words, letters and sounds from their ‘submission to meaning’ as defined by conventional three-dimensional logic.

The poems are short, and are filled with onomatopeiac syllables; Page 2—''Battle Between Mars and Scorpio''

appetite pegasus
appendicitus
grabz
chachen
respact
herself
female
tuningfork

Page 3—''Explosion of a Trunk''

with the queue full of whips
cuts the stone with vengeance
hil ble faes
och fi ge

In the preface Kruchenykh claimed that the collages were born of the same source as transrational language- 'the liberation of creation from unnecessary conveniences (through non-objectiveness)'. He cited the style as originating with Rozanova, and taken up by Malevich under 'the rather uninformative name' of

Suprematism Suprematism () is an early 20th-century art movement focused on the fundamentals of geometry (circles, squares, rectangles), painted in a limited range of colors. The term ''suprematism'' refers to an abstract art based upon "the supremacy of p ...

. In fact, the Russian avant-garde were well aware of Kandinsky's experiments with

Abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a Composition (visual arts), composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. ''Abstract art'', ''non-figurative art'', ''non- ...

. Kandinsky, a Russian living in Munich, regularly returned to Russia, and had contributed to ''A Slap In The Face Of Public Taste'' with a poem from ''Klänge'', an artist's book of sound poetry placed in tandem with abstract woodcuts, published in Munich, 1912. Another seminal artist's book, '' La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France'' by

Blaise Cendrars Frédéric-Louis Sauser (1 September 1887 – 21 January 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars (), was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the European ...

and another Russian,

Sonia Delaunay Sonia Delaunay (; 14 November 1885 – 5 December 1979) was a French artist born to Jewish parents, who spent most of her working life in Paris. She was born in the Russian Empire, now Ukraine, and was formally trained in Russia and Germany, be ...

, had been exhibited in Russia in late 1913, and similarly linked colourful abstract images with concrete poetry. The work pre-dates Hans Arp's similar experiments with abstract collages done for the Cabaret Voltaire, an early

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

venue, although it's not known if the two men were aware of each other's works.

Exile

Unlike the Italian futurists, the attitude of the Russian futurists to the

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

and the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

were at best ambiguous- Kruchenykh, like Kamensky, dodged the draft by retiring to a wooden hut in the Caucasus sometime in 1916.Russian Futurism: a History, Markov, MacGibbon & Kee, 1969, p336 By 1917, he had moved to the newly independent (if short-lived),

menshevik The Mensheviks ('the Minority') were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. Mensheviks held more moderate and reformist ...

-controlled

Democratic Republic of Georgia The Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG; ka, საქართველოს დემოკრატიული რესპუბლიკა, tr) was the first modern establishment of a republic of Georgia (country), Georgia, which exist ...

, and became a member with

Ilia Zdanevich Ilia Mikhailovich Zdanevich ( ka, ილია ზდანევიჩი, (April 21, 1894 – December 25, 1975), known as Iliazd ( ka, ილიაზდ), was a Georgian-Polish and French writer, artist and publisher, and an active participan ...

and Igor' Terent'ev of the

group 41°, centered at the Fantastic Cavern, an underground cabaret in downtown

. The scattering of artists during the revolution effectively brought

Cubo-Futurism Cubo-Futurism () was an art movement, developed within Russian Futurism, that arose in the early 20th-century Russian Empire, defined by its amalgamation of the artistic elements found in Italian Futurism and French Analytical Cubism. Cubo-Futur ...

to an end, to be replaced by

constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in the Soviet Union in t ...

. There are copies of ''Universal War'' in

MOMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York, and in the Costakis collection.

Notes

References

*Markov, Vladimir; ''Russian Futurism: a History'', MacGibbon & Kee, 1969 *Gurianova, Nina; ''Exploring Colour: Olga Rozanova and the early Russian Avant-Garde 1910-1918'', Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2000 *Margrit Rowell & Deborah Wye, ed.; ''The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910-1934'', MoMA Publications, 2002 *Rainer Michael Mason; ''GUERRE · S , trois suites insignes sur un thème · 1914-1916 , Natalija Gontcharova, Ol’ga Rozanova, Aleksej Kruchenykh'', Genève, Cabinet des estampes, 2003 Paris, Adam Biro, 2003
Universal War, An Online Version on MOMA Online
*"Kruchenykh, Aleksei"; essay by Humphreys, Grove Art Online

External links

Almost the whole of ''Universal War'' online at MOMA Online
* ttp://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/collect/yo/fh775-e.html ''A Game In Hell'', second edition 1914, by Kruchenykh, Malevich and Rozanovabr>''A Little Duck's Nest . . . of Bad Words'', An artist's book by Rozanova and Kruchenykh, 1913, + brief biography''Transrational Boog'' by Kruchenykh and Rozanova, 1915
{{Italic title Artists' books Abstract art Russian avant-garde Collage Russian Futurism Futurist book art Russian art