Description:
"'Our Native Antiquity' Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Culture of Russian Modernism is one of those works whose theme seems to lie in plain view, but, until the appearance of this study, remained unnoticed... It introduces essential correctives to the history of national-cultural self-consciousness.... the author's achievement is outstanding. [It] allows one to present modernism not only as a revolution of ideas and aesthetic tastes, but as a transformation of the symbolic 'habitat, ' with an entire gamut of new sensations accompanying this radical restructuring of the cultural ecology." --Boris Gasparov, Ab Imperio
-- "Ab Imperio"Review Quotes: "Russian modernism's aesthetic orientation sought to expand 'in time, ' not only 'in space.' Instead of geographically exploring the 'found' traditions of primitive cultures (as in the cases of Picasso or Gauguin), Russian modernists drilled through the layers of time to reach their own native land. In this compelling book, Michael Kunichika persistently returns to nineteenth-century history, poetry, and aesthetics, as well as to the origins of the discipline of archaeology in Russia, as he subtly reads modernist poetry, prose, visual works, and film. Kunichika's original perspective on the subject--and how he conceptualizes it--will have major implications for our understanding of some of the most significant aesthetic and political developments in Russian modernism and beyond."--Nina Gurianova, Professor of Slavic Studies, Northwestern University