Images for the new generation: Soviet illustrated children's books, 1918--1936.
Item
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Title
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Images for the new generation: Soviet illustrated children's books, 1918--1936.
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Identifier
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AAI3135590
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identifier
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3135590
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Creator
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Rosenfeld, Alla.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Rose-Carol Washton Long
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Date
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2003
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History | Education, Art | Education, Early Childhood
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Abstract
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This dissertation investigates illustrated children's books in Soviet Russia during the period from 1918 to 1936. During that time, many prominent avant-garde artists produced innovative and highly experimental children's books. In the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, children's books played an important political role in the new Soviet society, aiming at an audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The Bolshevik regime regarded children's books as major vehicles for transmitting Soviet ideology and influencing the new generation.;By addressing the complex relationships among the Soviet state, artists, and public, this dissertation explores how the close ties between art and politics of the time manifested in the design for children's books. The dissertation also demonstrates how abstract/realist nexus in children's book design was paralleled by a significant development toward a greater abstraction in the fine arts of the time. In seeking to address these concerns, my approach is informed by a variety of sources: aethetics, education, psychology, sociology, and literature.;Chapter One provides a brief overview of the development of children's literature in Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. It describes the conflict over fairy tales, which some of the educators of the 1920s condemned as an obstruction to the introduction of the proletarian child to the real issues of everyday life. Chapter Two explores how children's book illustrations reflected contemporary tendencies in painting towards geometric abstraction. Chapter Three demonstrates how the genre of "production book" became one of the most important spheres of practical work for a number of Constructivist artists. It also examines the use of photography in children's books. Chapter Four focuses on issues of figuration and abstraction in Soviet children's books.;The bulk of the research for this dissertation derives from a careful examination of hundreds of published illustrated children's books and mock-ups. Soviet illustrated children's books of the 1920s---30s are now rarities, and only a limited number of copies have survived in various libraries all over the world. This interdisciplinary dissertation integrates original Russian archival research, recent work in Soviet cultural and social history, and theoretical studies of children's literature.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
