Breaking the Rules

This volume explores the creative transformation which shook the foundations of European culture during the first four decades of the twentieth century—a revolution which encompassed fields as wide-ranging as visual art, theatre, literature, photography, design, music, and architecture. Breaking the Rules brings these distinct movements together for the first time in order to explore the rich tradition of exploiting the printed medium that helped to define the creative change of the age—and foster our contemporary understanding of avant-garde culture.
Breaking the Rules draws upon the British Library’s unrivalled collection of artists’ books, manifestos, little magazines, literary manuscripts, sound recordings, and posters from across Europe in order to explore the rapid exchange of ideas through printed matter that marked the avant-garde movement—and led to its presence in cities as diverse as London, Brussels, Munich, Zurich, Florence, Rome, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Prague, Tbilisi, Budapest, and Belgrade, among others. Including remarkable items like the notebooks and corrected proofs of Finnegans Wake and excerpts from an oral history interview with David Gascoyne recalling the Surrealist group in 1935 Paris—all beautifully reproduced with over ninety full-color images—as well as articles about more than thirty European and Russian cities describing their location’s particular significance to the avant garde, this volume is essential reading for anyone fascinated by the power of change inherent in the printed image and word.