KEM BYT\'? ("What to Become?") Vladimir Mayakovsky & Nisson Shifrin.

KEM BYT'? ("What to Become?")
An extremely rare Russian children�s book by Mayakovskij
Author	Vladimir Mayakovsky & Nisson Shifrin.
Publisher	Moscow: Gosizdata/ State Publishing House, 1929
Edition
Weight	120 gram
CF
Keywords	Constructivisme, Avant garde, Mayakovski, Mayakovsky, Shifrin, Futurisme, Soviet, Communisme, Rusland, Konstruktivizma
Booknumber	21066
Category's	Child & Youthbooks (Picture books) Art (Europe) Old & Rare (20th Century) Art (20th Century) Child & Youthbooks (20th Century) Art (Expressionism)
Large 8vo (19,2 x 22,7 cm). 10 unnumbered leaves. Pictorial stapled wrappers. Illustrated throughout with unframed coloured lithographic illustrations by Nisson Shifrin. Nisson (Nison) Abramovich Shifrin (Schriffine) (1892 � 1961) was a Ukrainian-Russian artist. He was a member of OST (Society of Easel Painters), like most of the 1920-30- generation of the Russian avant-garde and worked in the Constructivism-style. Shifrin was not only an illustrator, but also a graphic artist, avant-garde painter and theatre designer. Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovskiy (1893-1930) is considered one of the great modern Russian poets, a leading poet of the Russian Revolution and of the early Soviet period, a rebel against established taste and standards. Two of his plays, �The Bedbug� (1928) and �The Bathhouse� (1930), were banned temporarily because they dealt critically with the Soviet officials. Nevertheless, he was eulogized by Stalin (like Mayakovsky born in Georgia) and one of the few writers, who was allowed to travel abroad freely. On Stalin�s order, Mayakovskij�s �Collected Poetry� was published after his death in huge editions in the Soviet Union. In the 1910s he joined the Russian Futurist Movement, that attacked Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoi. Mayakovsky soon became its spokesman. After the Revolution, he founded the group LEF to fuse Futurist principles with the new Revolutionary goals. Between 1919 and 1921 he often collaborated with Aleksandr Rodchenko. In this period he designed posters, wrote short propaganda plays and texts for ROSTA (the Russian Telegraph Agency), produced political verses, agitprop poems and poem-marches, children's poetry, advertising slogans and commercial jingles for state enterprises, hoping in this way to reach a broad audience. In these texts he used slogans, mixed rhythm patterns, different typesetting styles, and neologisms. In the early 1920s the Bolsheviks became intolerant about avant-garde movements - Lenin did not like futurism � and a.o. Kandinky and Chagall emigrated to Western Europe. Mayakovsky founded the Dadaistic journal �LEF 1923� (together with Osip Brik, in 1923). In 1930, disappointed in love, alienated from Soviet reality, attacked by critics in the press, and denied a visa to travel abroad, Mayakovskij committed suicide by shooting himself. Kem Byt ? (What to become ?) presents nine possible professions to the child (carpenter, architect, physician, factory worker, locomotive engineer, tramway conductor, car driver, pilot, sailor). Mayakovskij tries to echo the noises of these different professional works in the verses and rhymes (see our illustrations). Therefore it was only logical that the work inspired several cartoons. But also movies - already as soon as 1931 the film �What Will You Be ? (Kem byt'?) � was produced, directed by Vitalii Zhemchuzhnyi. Text in Cyrillic. Publisher: Obrazcovaja Tip-Litografija, Gosigdata, Moskva. Front cover of our edition states �1929�. Although everywhere the date of publication of the 1st edition is mentioned as 1928, we are a bit doubtful about that date. There are early editions of this work from 1930, 1931 (stated to be the 3d edition) and 1932 (stated to be the 4th). Nowhere did we see an edition from 1929 and certainly not 1928, so we think that we have good reasons to believe that ours is the first edition. Anyhow, all pre-war editions of this book very rare. LOC, BM and NCC have only post-war editions. We could trace only 4 pre-war editions in Germany: The Berlin �Staatsbibliothek� mentions two (1931 and 1930; the last one possibly lost during the war) and the International Youth Library of M�nchen has 2 editions (1931 and 1936). The work was also exhibited at the MOMA Exhibition �The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934� (2002), Cat. 1004, but again, only a later edition. And likewise, No. 191 of the Getty Research Institute � �Russian Modernism�, is also a later edition. Covers bit soiled, staples rusty, a few small stains but in all a very well-kept copy of a nice �constructivistic� children�s book by two famous artists. .
Prijs	� 3250.00

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KEM BYT'? ("What to Become?")

Vladimir Mayakovsky & Nisson Shifrin.