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Mayakovsky. An Universal Answer to the Note-Writers
Avant-garde Center on Shabolovka
2018
2018
This exhibition explored Vladimir Mayakovsky’s communication with his audience and how he was perceived by a broad spectrum of Soviet readers in the 1920s.
For Mayakovsky, immediate reaction and direct engagement with his listeners were of utmost importance. Over the course of his life, he collected nearly 20,000 notes with questions and comments from the audience during his performances across various cities. He had planned to publish a book titled "A Universal Answer to the Note Writers," for which he had selected and transcribed these notes, leaving gaps where he intended to insert his responses. The bound notebooks containing these drafts, intended for his never-published book, were exhibited for the first time, alongside original audience notes from various Russian archives and the State Literary Museum.
This remarkably preserved record of dialogue between the poet and his 1920s audience is of great significance, as it exemplifies a form of direct interaction that parallels modern communication between authors and their readers—a dynamic now facilitated by the transparency of the internet and social media.
The exhibition’s curators constructed "universal portraits" of Mayakovsky’s listeners, representing the most striking social archetypes of the 1920s, as shaped by mass culture of the era. These figures—students and Rabfak (workers' faculty) attendees, "Chekists" (members of the Soviet secret police — ChK), clerks, workers, "NEPmen" (entrepreneurs of the New Economic Policy era), and former intelligentsia—engaged in dialogue with the poet, writing him notes.
The exhibition space was transformed into an improvised auditorium, where the audience, on one side, expresses its opinions through notes, while on the other, Mayakovsky himself appears—listening, debating, merging with the masses yet simultaneously standing in opposition to them.
For Mayakovsky, immediate reaction and direct engagement with his listeners were of utmost importance. Over the course of his life, he collected nearly 20,000 notes with questions and comments from the audience during his performances across various cities. He had planned to publish a book titled "A Universal Answer to the Note Writers," for which he had selected and transcribed these notes, leaving gaps where he intended to insert his responses. The bound notebooks containing these drafts, intended for his never-published book, were exhibited for the first time, alongside original audience notes from various Russian archives and the State Literary Museum.
This remarkably preserved record of dialogue between the poet and his 1920s audience is of great significance, as it exemplifies a form of direct interaction that parallels modern communication between authors and their readers—a dynamic now facilitated by the transparency of the internet and social media.
The exhibition’s curators constructed "universal portraits" of Mayakovsky’s listeners, representing the most striking social archetypes of the 1920s, as shaped by mass culture of the era. These figures—students and Rabfak (workers' faculty) attendees, "Chekists" (members of the Soviet secret police — ChK), clerks, workers, "NEPmen" (entrepreneurs of the New Economic Policy era), and former intelligentsia—engaged in dialogue with the poet, writing him notes.
The exhibition space was transformed into an improvised auditorium, where the audience, on one side, expresses its opinions through notes, while on the other, Mayakovsky himself appears—listening, debating, merging with the masses yet simultaneously standing in opposition to them.
Curators
Aleksandra Selivanova
Marina Krasnova
Exhibition Design
Kirill Ass
Nadya Korbut
Aleksandra Selivanova
Marina Krasnova
Exhibition Design
Kirill Ass
Nadya Korbut
