Reframing Avant‐Garde Texts as Visual Objects

Abstract

This review essay assesses six early Soviet avant‐garde texts that recently were republished by the European University Press in St. Petersburg. These volumes include incredibly exact, high‐resolution reprints of seminal avant‐garde texts with historical commentary and analytic essays, which offer new insight into the illustrated books’ contributions to the socialist project. This essay describes those contributions and their implications for our current understanding of the visual function of early Soviet poetry. It aims to open space for a discussion of the particular material visuality of avant‐garde books and other static visual objects within contemporary debates about the meaning of text and image in Soviet visual culture.