The Theater of Moving Sculpture in the Era of Historical Avant-Garde

The article explores the phenomenon of marionettes and the practice of their use in realizing the avant-garde ideas of the early 20th century aimed at creating an all-encomassing work of art that would blur the boundaries between art and life. The research focuses on the creative practices of Italian Futurists, Swiss Dadaists, the Bauhaus School, and artists of the Russian diaspora and the young Soviet Union, all of whom shared an interest in the marionette as a self-contained piece of art with a different potential for constructing a new art. This interest resonated with the ideas of innovative theatre directors who advocated replacing live actors with puppet performers, as well as with the evolving societal attitude toward the world of childhood, since children viewed life's events from a different perspective and perceived in them the possibility for social change. The selected corpus of works is analysed with respect to the quality of execution and preservation, development and transformation of the avant-garde aesthetics of the first third of the 20th century. The article further examines the influence of Soviet Russia's ideological program on shaping a new "standard" for a marionette. The findings suggest that the Futurists and Dadaists almost simultaneously took a step toward constructing an abstract marionette form grounded in geometry, elements of Cubism and the "mechanical" movement of the puppet. The Bauhaus School introduced additional constructivist elements into its models drawing on the school's experiments in "mechanical" and spatial ballets. However, most marionettes created by various artistic associations were not devoid of figuration; the artists did not seek to replace imagery with symbolism. In post-revolutionary Russia the images of marionettes in puppet theatres had to be readily understood by audiences, prompting artists to emphasize expressiveness, sculptural qualities, and realism while allowing certain elements of the grotesque to convey the content of the play clearly. Therefore, it is only natural that the innovative ideas of individual masters did not receive a proper response and remained largely unappreciated.