Mark W. Scala Livres

Cosmism emerged in Russia before the October Revolution and developed through the 1920s and 1930s; like Marxism and the European avant-garde, two other movements that shared this intellectual moment, Russian Cosmism rejected the contemplative for the transformative, aiming to create not merely new art or philosophy but a new world. Cosmism went the furthest in its visions of transformation, calling for the end of death, the resuscitation of the dead, and free movement in cosmic space. This volume collects crucial texts, many available in English for the first time, by the radical biopolitical utopianists of Russian Cosmism.

If artists at the onset of the 20th century hoped to grasp the apparently limitless possibilities of modernity, the 21st century has opened with a darker and more anxious perspective. Chaos and Awe maps the new consciousness emerging from our encounters with cyberspace, globalism, genetic engineering, and social media through the ever-renewable medium of painting. It's a wild and unpredictable ride into the new unknown. - Eleanor Heartney, art writer and contributing editor, Art in America and Artpress; author of Art & Today and coauthor of The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium