Tango with Cows

[6] Either by accident or design,[3] Mayakovsky, Burliuk and Kamensky were on a poetry-reading tour of the southern provinces, and so missed Marinetti's visit to Moscow.

In any case, on that evening wild "liberated words" darted back and forth across the table, and soon the literary dispute degenerated into a nationalistic squabble that had little to do with poetry.'

The second group of 6 are arranged within diagonal grids, that evoke both the cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque,[8] and the moulds that are used to make reinforced concrete.

Kamenskii energetically involves his reader in a dialogue, an interaction, as if inviting him to come along.... [allowing] his reader-companion to wander, to get through the poem and make sense of it in his own way.

[10] Eschewing a traditional linear development, the poem instead evokes the view from an aeroplane overhead; "It is only when we recall Kamensky’s experience as an aviator that “Constantinople” makes sense.

The visually arresting, unreadable composition is a literal word-map depicting the city’s architectural features, inhabitants, and urban neighborhoods as experienced from overhead while looking down from an airplane.

Little-known beyond a small circle of Russian literary and cultural scholars, “Constantinople” is one of the earliest and most important examples of aviation’s vital role in transforming twentieth-century art."

The artists discarded customary book materials and printed Tango on cheap wallpaper as a parody of urban bourgeois taste.

[5] “From December 1913 to April 1914, the notoriety of the Cubo-Futurists reached its peak as Burliuk, Maiakovsky, and Kamensky toured 17 cities in the Russian Empire.

The appearance of the Futurists (they liked to wear gaudy waistcoats, sometimes painted animals on their faces and wore carrots in their lapels) and their ‘performances,’ which included drinking tea on stage under a suspended piano, drew packed audiences, scandalized many, but also won converts to the new art.” Dr. Shkandrij [15] The spat with Marinetti, intended to unify and strengthen the group, had the opposite effect; the Cubo-futurists were to split under the strain.

[3] Khlebnikov was the first to leave, retreating to Astrakhan to work on his dream of a Society of Globe Presidents; Livshits joined the army; Kruchenykh fled the revolution to the relative calm of Tiflis; David Burliuk eventually reached the USA.

Copies of Tango With Cows are held in a number of prestigious public collections, including MOMA, the Getty Center and the British Library.