Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)

Hubert van den Berg: Lajos Kassák, the Viennese Edition of MA and the “International” of Avant-Garde Journals in the 1920s

Hubert van den Berg

LAJOS KASSÁK, THE VIENNESE EDITION OF MA AND

THE “INTERNATIONAL" OF AVANT-GARDE JOURNALS IN THE 1920S

The movements we nowadays tend to call “historical" or “classical avant-garde” were in many respects Europe-wide phenomena with a global outreach and a profound transnational character. This holds true in particular for Constructivism1 with its manifold roots - in Russia, Holland, Switzerland and several others countries - already going back to the period of the First World War. Whereas the war impeded international exchange until 1919, in the first half of the 1920s, constructivist-minded artists throughout Europe and beyond started to connect. In present-day terms, one might say that a constructivist network emerged, with artists corresponding with each other, meeting and exhibiting together and showing their allegiances in a plethora of “little magazines” throughout Europe and beyond propagating geometrical-abstract “new art” in one way or another.

“A KIND OF INTERNATIONAL”

The transnationality of the constructivist network had several dimensions. Not only could partaking artists be found throughout Europe as well as around the globe - outside Europe notably in the Americas and Japan - transcending national, state, cultural and linguistic boundaries. Many of these artists lived a rather nomadic life themselves. However, many travelled not only themselves from country to country, but sent also their journals - their main means of communication - internationally around as well. Moreover, manifestos, programmatic texts, samples of poetry, typographic experiments and 1

1 The following contribution elaborates on previous publications, in particular: Hubert van den Berg, ‘Übernationalität’ der Avantgarde - (Inter-)Nationalität der Forschung, Hinweis auf den internationalen Konstruktivismus in der europäischen Literatur und die Problematik ihrer literaturwissenschaftlichen Erfassung [‘Supranationality’ of the avant-garde - (Inter-)national- ity of research, Reference to the international Constructivism in European literature and the problem of its literary-scientific research], in Wolfgang Asholt-Walter Fähnders (eds.), Der Blick vom Wolkenkratzer, Avantgarde - Avantgardekritik - Avantgardeforschung [The view from the skyscraper, Avant-garde-avant-garde critique-avant-garde research], Rodopi, Amster- dam-Atlanta, 2000, 255-291. Idem, Mapping Old Traces of the New, For a Historical Topography of 20th-Century Avant-Carde(s) in the European Cultural Field(s), Arcadia, 41/2., 2006, 331-351. Idem, Expressionism, Constructivism and the Transnationality of the Historical Avant-Garde, in Idem-Lidia Gfuchowska (eds.), Transnationality, Internationalism and Nationhood, European Avant-Garde in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Peeters, Leuven-Paris-Walpole, 2013, 23-42. General references concerning the historical avant-garde, transnationality and Constructivism can be found here.

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