Product Code Database
OBERIU (Russian: ОБЭРИУ - Объединение реального искусства; English: the Union of Real Art or the Association for Real Art) was a short-lived avant-garde collective of Russian Futurist writers, musicians, and artists in the 1920s and 1930s. The group coalesced in the context of the "intense centralization of Soviet Culture" and the decline of the avant garde culture of Leningrad, as "leftist" groups were becoming increasingly marginalized.Kharms, Daniil. Today I Wrote Nothing. 2009, pp. 21-23.
Founded in 1927 by Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky, OBERIU became notorious for provocative performances which included circus-like stunts, readings of what was perceived as nonsensical verse, and theatrical presentations, such as Kharms's Elizabeth Bam, that foreshadowed the European Theatre of the Absurd. The presentations took place in venues ranging from theaters and university auditoriums to dormitories and prisons. The group's actions were derided as "literary hooliganism" in the ever-more conservative press of the late 1920s. It was chastised even more in the early 1930s, and many of its associates were arrested. The OBERIU has often been called "the last Soviet avant-garde."Jean-Phillipe Jaccard's book on Daniil Kharms.
The Russian artist Kazimir Malevich gave the OBERIU shelter in his newly created arts institute, letting them rehearse in one of the auditoriums. It is reported that he said to the young "Oberiuty" (as they are called in Russian): "You are young trouble makers, and I am an old one. Let's see what we can do." Malevich also gifted a book of his own ("God Is Not Cast Down") to founder Daniil Kharms with the relevant inscription "Go and stop progress!"
Though the group was held together for a while by common interest, some split away. Zabolotsky seems to have had a falling out with Vvedensky. In the 1930s Kharms and Vvedensky became more closely involved with a group of friends who met semi-regularly for what they called "conversations." Yakov Druskin, a Christian philosopher and music-theorist (he wrote on Bach, Schoenberg and Anton Webern), was a key member of this group. Druskin and his friend Leonid Lipavsky (a children's writer under the name of Leonid Savelyev, and an amateur mathematician and author of philosophical tracts) had known Alexander Vvedensky in high-school, and had become friends with Kharms and Zabolotsky as well. Lipavsky actually wrote down a number of the "conversations." Nikolay Oleynikov, an editor at the children's publishing house which had long employed the young poets of the OBERIU as writers and translators of children's literature, became part of this group by the mid-thirties.
This later grouping, which had no public outlet, is generally called the "chinari" (i.e. "the titled ones") group in Russian literary scholarship, though it is uncertain that they ever formalized a name for the group, nor that they called themselves "chinari" with any consistency. Thus, the names "OBERIU" and "chinari" are somewhat interchangeable in the scholarship. The borders between the two groups are (and were) permeable, and the only basic continuity is the presence of Kharms and Vvedensky.
|
|
