Breaking the Rules

More (or less) on the Mastheads

I sent Kevin the slimmed down chronology yesterday, and he sent the pdfs back this morning. They are looking good but I think i need to slim them down by another 50%. There's a map and a quote on each - for the decades covered by the show - it's amazing how the borders changed in this period. The map needs to be at a height it can be read but the panels are a little busy - so maybe the quotes should go right to the top.

Have an hour with Geraldine and Alan finalising the People and Isms panel texts - we are still having trouble getting photographs for some figures - Theo Van Doesburg, for example, though I know there are group photographs with him (and Nellie for that matter) in. City photographs have been difficult too - I suggest we send a curator with a 30s box Brownie camera to take some period photos!

After a Content Strategy meeting (part of the day job), there's a message from Exhibitions. There's a problem with the Legacy section(s) - in fact it's an old problem: do we incorporate or have a separate section? - we ended up having both, but now we are moving back to incorporation: Counterblast with Blast, the Sex Pistols T-Shirt with Apollinaire etc. There's also a room problem in one of the Paris cases - so we agree to move Facile into the photo-books case, perhaps where it should have been all along.

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.