Can Man Live Without Wonder?
by Varvara Stepanova Reviewed by Youry Nazarov It would not be an exaggeration to say that this book compiled of texts by the Russian avant-garde artist Varvara Stepanova entitled “Man Cannot Live Without Wonder” can easily become one of the best readings about this period published during the last five years. The secret is very simple: the book happened to be not one of those rather bulky volumes with numerous essays, commentaries, highly theoretical articles, that we were used to in the art- history. That book is just a very concentrated life story. The desire to live through the life of the main hero—Varvara Stepanova, the wife of the famous avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko—keeps you on alert during all of the 304 pages of the book. Sometimes even you may forget that you are reading a book of documents of the Russian Avant-Garde and feel that you are deeply involved into the fate of the people described here. The well-known artists like Malevich, Kandinsky, Tatlin, and a l
