Article published in:

Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde
Edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 5] 2015
► pp. 111–136

Chapter 5. The square as regal infant

The avant-garde infantile in early Soviet picturebooks

Sara Pankenier Weld | University of California, Santa Barbara

This chapter focuses on geometric regions that serve as shared “picture primitives” in Russian avant-garde art and early Soviet picturebooks for children to highlight the interrelatedness between the infantile art of the avant-garde and avant-garde work that actually involves an infantile audience. Examining work with infantile aspects by Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Vladimir Lebedev, Weld uses an interdisciplinary approach to juxtapose their work to children’s drawings, children’s perception, and children’s cognition to gain insight into their use of geometry and perspective and to raise new questions about the origin and impact of the avant-garde style.

Published online: 29 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.5.06wel

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