Vladimir Mayakovsky: Across Media
Vladimir Mayakovsky (Russian, 1893–1930) is perhaps best known as the de facto poet laureate of Revolutionary Russia—his “mouth,” as he wrote, “the working class’s megaphone” [1]. He was a charismatic figure who wielded his personal magnetism through live performances and through the new media of his time—film, radio, print reproduction—to reach the widest possible audiences.
This presentation of posters, books, journals, product packaging, and photographs provides an overview of a prolific, protean figure committed to the Revolution and to the future it promised. Through these materials, Mayakovsky is seen to extend the purview of the poet to the public realm and to traverse multiple roles: not only poet, but also playwright, director, artist, sloganeer, editor, essayist, and children’s book author. In addition, these documents attest to his remarkable collaborative efforts with artists and intellectuals, including Grigorii Bershadsky, Lily (née Kagan) Brik, Osip Brik, Aleksei Gan, Boris Ignatovich, Nikolai Il’yin, Gustav Klutsis, Valentina Kulagina, Aleksei Levin, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Ivan Maliutin, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Nisson Shifrin, Dmitrii Shostakovich, Varvara Stepanova, and Sergei Tretiakov.
Mayakovsky was a public figure and mass-media superstar avant la lettre, whose image as a proletarian poet was carefully orchestrated both during his lifetime and after his untimely death at thirty-seven by suicide. For an overview of the poet’s life and work, see Bengt Jangfeldt, Mayakovsky: A Biography (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2014). For a wealth of primary documents, see the online offerings of The State Museum of V. V. Mayakovsky in Moscow.
Note: Mayakovsky’s words—excerpts from his poetry as well as advertising and poster slogans—translated from the original Russian into English are presented here in bold type. These translations have been drawn from standard published sources, including Magdalena Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman, and Peter Galassi, Aleksandr Rodchenko (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1998); Michael Almereyda, Night Wraps the Sky: Writings By and About Mayakovsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008); Vladimir Mayakovsky, Pro Eto/That’s What (Todmorden: Arc Publications, 2009).
Actor / Playwright / Director
Mayakovsky starred in three films in 1918. No footage is known to survive from Not Born for Money (see poster below), but fragments exist from Fettered by Film and Lady and the Hooligan.
Artist / Sloganeer (ROSTA Windows)
Day and Night ROSTA. Write and draw. Made about three thousand posters and six thousand captions.
[Vladimir Mayakovsky, I, Myself (1922), as translated in Almereyda 2008, p. 161]
“Advertising-Constructor”
During the New Economic Policy, Aleksandr Rodchenko created advertisements under the title “Reklam Konstruktor” (Advertising-Constructor), often with texts by Mayakovsky.
Recounting their collaborative work under the rubric of “Reklam Konstruktor” (active 1923–1925), Rodchenko noted:
“We made as many as fifty posters, up to 100 signs, packaging, wrappers, lighting, advertising, advertising pillars, illustrations in magazines and newspapers. […] [A]ll of Moscow was covered with our ads. All the kiosks of Mossel’prom, all the signs, all the posters, all the newspapers and magazines were filled with them. We had completely conquered Moscow and completely shifted, or rather, changed, the old, tsarist-bourgeois-Western style of advertising for the new Soviet.”
[Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Working with Mayakovsky” (1939), as translated in Aleksandr Rodchenko: Experiments for the Future. Diaries, Essays, Letters, and Other Writings (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2005), pp. 238, 247.]
