Breaking the Rules

The New St Pancras Eurostar Terminal

I took this photo last week and already things have changed - there is a large red crane in front of it this morning. I had wanted to contrast this with a picture of the interior of our gallery for Breaking the Rules in a sort of competition as to who is going to finish first. The new terminal was one reason we wanted to do the exhibition in the first place - and for a while there were lots of trains potentially in the exhibition - I think we are down to the Cendrars/Delaunay 'Prose of the Trans-Siberian' and a Russian photomontage book cover. We had even thought of reviving the title 'All Change'. 'A Slap in the Face' was another possibility until the Estorick Collection used it first - I quite liked the idea of getting somebody in the gallery to slap visitors in the face.  We did some quick market testing on visitors to the popular 'London in Maps' exhibiition:

Breaking the Rules 9 1st choice 2 2nd choice

Tango with Cows 4 1st 2 2nd ('sounded like an academic trying to be clever')

World in Reverse 3 1st, 5 2nd

Manifesto 2 1st, 0 2nd

Speed and Noise (1 1st, 2 2nd)

So Breaking the Rules it was. It's easy to get pedantic on rules! What rules did the avant garde break? Don't you need rules so you can break them? Did the avant garde create their own rules? Is conformity the new rule-breaking? etc.

But the title also references typography - the type-high strips of metal used in printing - and after 'Blast', 'Dada', El Lissitsky and Rodchenko graphic design certainly wasn't the same again. Type-high and rules reminds me of the book artist, Ken Campbell, who used letterpress and nearly every printmaking process to print and overprint books that broke the rules Ken Campbell's Broken Rules. The revival in interest in and production of the artist's book in the last twenty years may have something to do with the book being liberated from being the sole carrier of information. (But how does that relate to the Russian Futurists in the 1910s challenging traditional notions of what a book should be, but at the highpoint of print culture ??)

I have drifted off the Eurostar subject. I would still like to get twenty or so people together for one of the first arrivals with those signs you see in the arrivals halls of airports etc. held by car drivers and greeters, but this time with the names of the avant garde on the card: 'Apollinaire', 'Ball', 'Breton', 'Tzara', 'Schwitters' etc.

Meeting with the graphic designer

On Friday morning I took part in a very interesting workshop with EPS/Outsell on the switch point from hard-copy publications to electronic - which genres change first, when and how dramatic are the changes etc. Is it useful to look beyond the pattern of publication to changes in authorship - what effect will the shift to electronic have on writers?

This debate is very germane to 'Breaking the Rules' - the underlying principle is that 1900-37 saw the most favourable conditions for the printed format - a rich world economy (at least until 1915); cheap and readily available printing technology that could utilise photography; an avant garde denied traditional outlets - such as official salons, galleries etc. But film and broadcasting lie in the wings to take over from print as the primary means for the communication of information. Meanwhile the avant garde make the most use of the printed format - manifestos, flyers, posters, artists' books, little magazines, printed music etc. Dada, for example, is primarily a paper and print movement.

I move on to a meeting with the exhibitions team, Alan, Geraldine and Janet, and Kevin from the designers, AKA. We are finalising the graphics panels - there are people and isms, cities and a walkthrough chronology. At this late stage we are trying to simplify them but with the visitor's experience upmost. I ask Kevin if we can use a photo of the original model for the blog. Here it is, though we have moved on quite a lot since then (click the thumbnail to see a larger version).

Breaking the Rules: are there any left to break?

Welcome to our new blog about the British Library's forthcoming Breaking the Rules exhibition. Featuring the latest news about the exhibition itself - as well as comment, opinion and behind the scenes insights - this is a space to discuss all sorts of issues and questions raised by the exhibition's theme.

Breaking the Rules opens on 9 November at the British Library in St Pancras, London NW1. If you're a postgrad studying in the creative arts, you can join our Facebook group and enter our great competition.

So why not subscribe to the blog feed and tell the curators what you think? What does the term 'Avant Garde' mean to you now, in the 21st century? Indeed are there any rules left to break?

About Breaking The Rules

The 'Avant Garde' movement is traditionally associated with Paris and Berlin, but this exhibition explores the rapid exchange of ideas and the presence of the Avant Garde in many European cities - including London, Brussels, Leiden, Munich, Weimar, Zurich, Vienna, Florence, Milan, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Cracow, Prague, St Petersburg, Moscow, Tbilisi, Belgrade, Bucharest and Budapest. ‘Avant Garde’ is a French term meaning vanguard, and refers to people or works that are novel or experimental, particularly with respect to art, culture and politics. The term encompasses a variety of artistic styles and each is traditionally regarded as a movement in itself - Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, Suprematism, Constructivism and Surrealism. Breaking the Rules brings these movements together for the first time and explores common themes and the creative transformation which took place, as well as the continuing impact of the Avant Garde on contemporary culture.

The Avant Garde was characterised by its exploitation of the printed medium and Breaking the Rules draws upon the British Library’s unrivalled collection of literary manuscripts, sound recordings, flyers, posters, manifestos, artists’ books, and photobooks from across Europe, complemented by loans from other European museums and collections. Star items include Marinetti’s futurist experiment with words, type and visual text, Zang Tumb Tuum, the Burliuk Brothers’ Tango with Cows and the notebooks and corrected proofs of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.