Written by an avant-garde musician, this book confirms the typical critical attitude of the musical avant-garde towards classical theories. But it must be immediately said that the book does not deal with Theory of Harmony but only with Harmony. It is about the concept that in the field of music theory and didactics is used as an implicit foundation for so many behaviours and precepts. In these pages we do not analyse the musical mechanisms but the conceptual mechanisms. It examines whether the preceptual discourse in music is meaningful or not, and what contradictions and consequences it entails. The essay, written in the form of thoughts, phrases, aphorisms, often crosses over into existential fields and is undoubtedly the testimony of a situation into which we are ourselves drawn.

“The title is symbolic: the Shiite archer, representing the Asian creator, galloping on the border between the Western and Eastern worlds, his face turned towards the immense East (the Russian multinational empire, Persia, China, Japan, India), with only half an eye observing what comes from the West. The meaning of the metaphor is clear, perhaps arguable, but deliberately provocative: Russian avant-garde art exists in itself; it finds the necessary forms, the creative inspiration, on its own terrain”. Benedikt Livšic's memoirs, which cover a crucial period of artistic development in Russia, are of fundamental importance in the reconstruction of the epic of the expressive revolution of the first two decades of the twentieth century. Introduction by Jean Claude Marcadé.

This book is the English translation of the artist’s writings first published in 1985. In line with the work system adopted by Mario Merz, the transcription of the texts does not maintain a chronological order, but identifies three moments of typological distinction in which different referential identities emerge in the development of the writing.

“Voglio fare subito un libro” (I want to make a book right now) is a collection of published and unpublished texts written by Mario Merz up to 1985, in which the dialogue between the ’forces’ of art and those of literature erupts at times luxuriantly and brilliantly and at times harshly and critically; it is concentrated or dispersed in various topics that flow through the pages like a river in flood. The poetic freedoms that Mario Merz appropriates in the act of writing are interwoven with suggestions and references to his art. An art managed on the basis of inventions: of architectural structures (the progression of tables, spirals or the better-known igloos...), of pictorial constructions (which have developed since the birth of Merz the artist), on the natural cyclical and numerical development of the elements (the application of Fibonacci’s numerical progression), on the use of materials rejected by society (broken glass, old newspapers...), on strategic statements (“Se il nemico si concentra perde terreno, se si disperde perde forza”, “Objet cache-toi”, “Città irreale…”) which are included in his works as axioms and emerge as traces in the reading of this book.” Harald Szeemann

“Just as we saw a moment ago, even before opening it, this volume offered a shape and a colour: a green square immediately evokes a gaming table and it is here that I am now going to arrange the various and changing faces of a solitaire”. Giulio Paolini, author of this artist’s book, guides the reader through his works from the beginning, introducing him to a more “strictly personal” knowledge of his enigmatic work. In addition to a rich bibliography, the book includes historical texts by the artist and others that have never been published before.

This collection includes the writings of the German artist, born in Munich in 1880, who founded Der Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky around 1911. The writings, arranged chronologically from 1910 to 1915, comprise articles and notes on art theory and politics, texts that appeared in Der Blaue Reiter Almanac and writings from the war period in which Marc was a volunteer participant from 1914 to March 1916, the date of his death. These writings are a very important key to understanding the panorama of European art in the age of the avant-garde, the fundamental climate for the artistic development of our century. Permeated with important issues (the rejection of Renaissance perspective, the importance of synthesis and constructiveness in composition, the expressive value of Kandinsky and the ‘savages’, the relationship between art and science, popular art and the visual value of art, the transcendent meaning of war, the future of Europe), the narrative is always oracular and visionary. The deep philosophical content, which links in with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, the polemic with Tolstoy’s aesthetics and the intensity of expression make it meaningful and moving. The selection is completed by a commemoration written by Wassily Kandinsky on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the author’s