The Emergence of Russian Futurist Books
Kruchenykh had been a member of the Gileia group in Moscow that had published A Slap In the Face of Public Taste, a manifesto/provocation, an early Succès de scandale that helped to establish Futurism in Russia. He left Gileia in 1912 to join the rival Donkey's Tail group. 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
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