Creating life

About this book

Russian modernists viewed art as a creative force destined to create not artistic texts, but life itself, and viewed life as an artistic creation. Originating in Russian Symbolism of the 1890's, these views continued into the 1920's and 1930's, informing Futurism and early Soviet culture and influencing socialist realism. Growing out of the Nietzschean and neo-Kantian roots of European modernism, the notion of "life-creation" (Zhiznetvorchestvo) was shaped by the apocalyptic tendency of Russian culture, as reflected in the thought of Vladimir Solov'ev and Nikolai Fedorov. "Life-creation" was not limited to deliberate aesthetic organization of behavior; it was an aesthetic utopia that informed public and private projects for reorganizing the world - from human personality, interpersonal relations, and the body to society at large.