Greve C. Writing and the 'subject': image-text relations in the early Russian avant-garde and contemporary Russian visual poetry

Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Pegasus, 2004. — 355 p. — ISBN: 90 6143 292.The study discusses how the materiality of writing – the text as image – is generating meaning. In this, the concept of faktura – central to the early Russian avant-garde theories of art and poetry – encompasses the materiality of painting/mark and the composition of paint/marks on the canvas/page. It is, moreover, an index pointing to the painting/writing subject; it is a special deictic mode of painting/writing. The handwriting of the Russian avant-garde books, the poetics of handwriting, and the way handwriting is represented in poetry emphasize the way the subject (the speaking and the viewing/reading subject) manifests itself in the material mark on the page. The study shows how this indexical reference to a ‘subject’ is manipulated and used as a mask through which a writer/painter can perform a certain ‘subject’. Through analyses of the various levels on which the ‘subject’ is represented in the early as well as the contemporary avant-garde, it becomes clear that the ‘subject’ is an unstable category that can be exposed to manipulation and play. Handwriting is performing as a signature (as an index), but is at the same time similar to the signature of a subject (an icon) and a verbal construct (symbol).Writing the image: The early avant-garde book
Writing as an "imagetext" in the poetic universe of Velimir Chiebnikov
Minimalism and play in Aleksej KruCenych's Caucasian books, 1917-1918
Poetry of the future, Varvara Stepanova's visual poetry, 1918-1919
Palimpsests. Visual poetry by Ry Nikonova and Sergej Sigej