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[THE DEATH OF ART - SEVERE CRITICISM OF SOVIET ART] Gipertrofiya iskusstva [i.e. Hypertrophy of Art]

Miklashevsky, K.

Item #2751

St. Petersburg: Academia, 1924. 80 pp. 20,4x14 cm. In original publisher’s printed wrappers. Very good. Tears at the edges. With a loosely inserted ex-libris of the Soviet physician Vladimir Arkharov (1907-1997).

Scarce. 1 of 2,000 copies. First book edition. The text was first printed in the first issue of the magazine “Russkiy sovremennik” [i.e. The Russian Contemporary] in 1921. Text in Russian.
A provocative philosophical manifesto and scathing critique of the Soviet art world written by the renowned theatre researcher and director Konstantin Miklashevsky (1885-1943). The book’s publication in 1924 caused irreparable damage to Miklashevsky’s reputation within Soviet artistic circles and ultimately contributed to his decision to emigrate permanently from the USSR in 1925.
In the book, the author argues that modern art had entered a deep crisis and was rapidly losing its independent meaning under the pressures of politics, ideology, and industrial culture. In contrast to the dominant Soviet view of art, Miklashevsky develops the idea that art is diminished when it is reduced to a tool of propaganda, utilitarian production, or purely technical construction. A major focus of the book is a critique of the post-revolutionary Russian avant-garde, especially the Constructivist and LEF movements. Miklashevsky discusses figures such as Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, Aleksei Gastev, and Boris Arvatov, arguing that they effectively replaced artistic creation with industrial and ideological projects. He presents Constructivism not as a genuine technical breakthrough, but as an aesthetic imitation of engineering culture. According to Miklashevsky, real industrial creation belongs to engineers, while avant-garde artists merely produce ornamental versions of technical reality. He concludes the book with a call for a temporary “pause” in the consumption of art, believing that contemporary culture had absorbed art too deeply into practical life and thereby stripped it of its intrinsic value.
The publication of the book provoked severe criticism from the contemporary Soviet art world and later came to be regarded as one of the most sensational and controversial works on art of its period.
Konstantin Miklashevsky was a prominent Russian art historian, director, and theorist who served as a critical bridge between the aestheticism of the Silver Age and the radical upheavals of the early Soviet era. An expert in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque, he authored the definitive 1914 study La commedia dell’arte, which remains a foundational text in theater history. Though deeply embedded in St. Petersburg’s intellectual circles, Miklashevsky became a defiant “counter-voice” against the post-revolutionary avant-garde. His controversial 1924 book, Hypertrophy of Art, dismissed Constructivism as a pathological overdevelopment of form and an aesthetic “masquerade.” This intellectual friction with state ideology eventually led to his permanent emigration to France in 1925, where he continued his scholarly work under the pseudonym Constant Mic until his death in Paris.

Overall, one of the most controversial Soviet works on art.

Price: $350.00