El Lissitzky
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, known as El Lissitzky, was a Russian artist, photographer, typographer and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for the Soviet Union, his work influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, he experimented with production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design. Lissitzky's entire career was laced with the belief that the artist could be an agent for change summarized with his edict, "das zielbewußte Schaffen". Lissitzky, of Lithuanian Jewish оrigin, began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture in Russia; when only 15 he started teaching, a duty he would maintain for most of his life. Over the years, he taught in a variety of positions and artistic media and exchanging ideas, he took this ethic with him when he worked with Malevich in heading the suprematist art group UNOVIS, when he developed a variant suprematist series of his own and further still in 1921, when he took up a job as the Russian cultural ambassador to Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements during his stay.
In his remaining years he brought significant innovation and change to typography, exhibition design and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim for his exhibition design. This continued until his deathbed, where in 1941 he produced one of his last works – a Soviet propaganda poster rallying the people to construct more tanks for the fight against Nazi Germany. In 2014, the heirs of the artist, in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum and leading worldwide scholars on the subject, the Lissitzky Foundation was established in order to preserve the artist's legacy and to prepare a catalogue raisonné of the artist's oeuvre. Lissitzky was born on November 23, 1890 in Pochinok, a small Jewish community 50 kilometres southeast of Smolensk, former Russian Empire. During his childhood, he lived and studied in the city of Vitebsk, now part of Belarus, spent 10 years in Smolensk living with his grandparents and attending the Smolensk Grammar School, spending summer vacations in Vitebsk.
Always expressing an interest and talent in drawing, he started to receive instruction at 13 from Yehuda Pen, a local Jewish artist, by the time he was 15 was teaching students himself. In 1909, he was rejected. While he passed the entrance exam and was qualified, the law under the Tsarist regime only allowed a limited number of Jewish students to attend Russian schools and universities. Like many other Jews living in the Russian Empire, Lissitzky went to study in Germany, he left in 1909 to study architectural engineering at a Technische Hochschule in Germany. During the summer of 1912, Lissitzky, in his own words, "wandered through Europe", spending time in Paris and covering 1,200 kilometres on foot in Italy, teaching himself about fine art and sketching architecture and landscapes that interested him, his interest in ancient Jewish culture had originated during the contacts with a Paris-based group of Russian Jews led by sculptor Ossip Zadkine, a lifetime friend of Lissitzky since early childhood, who exposed Lissitzky to conflicts between different groups within the diaspora.
In 1912 some of his pieces were included for the first time in an exhibit by the St. Petersburg Artists Union, he remained in Germany until the outbreak of World War I, when he was forced to return home through Switzerland and the Balkans, along with many of his countrymen, including other expatriate artists born in the former Russian Empire, such as Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall. Upon his return to Moscow, Lissitzky attended the Polytechnic Institute of Riga, evacuated to Moscow because of the war, worked for the architectural firms of Boris Velikovsky and Roman Klein. During this work, he took an active and passionate interest in Jewish culture which, after the downfall of the antisemitic Tsarist regime, was experiencing a renaissance; the new Provisional Government repealed a decree that prohibited the printing of Hebrew letters and that barred Jews from citizenship. Thus Lissitzky soon devoted himself to Jewish art, exhibiting works by local Jewish artists, traveling to Mahilyow to study the traditional architecture and ornaments of old synagogues, illustrating many Yiddish children's books.
These books were Lissitzky's first major foray in book design, a field that he would greatly influence over the course of his career. His first designs appeared in the 1917 book, Sihas hulin: Eyne fun di geshikhten, where he incorporated Hebrew letters with a distinctly art nouveau flair, his next book was a visual retelling of the traditional Jewish Passover song Had gadya, in which Lissitzky showcased a typographic device that he would return to in designs. In the book, he integrated letters with images through a system that matched the color of the characters in the story with the word referring to them. In the designs for the final page, Lissitzky depicts the mighty "hand of God" slaying the angel of death, who wears the tsar's crown; this representation links the redemption of the Jews with the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. An alternative view asserts that the artist was wary of Bolshevik internation
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin. This was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art, he wanted'to construct' art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements, its influence was widespread, with major effects upon architecture, graphic design, industrial design, film, fashion and, to some extent, music. The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko in 1917. Constructivism first appears as a positive term in Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920. Aleksei Gan used the word as the title of his book Constructivism, printed in 1922. Constructivism was a post-World War I development of Russian Futurism, of the'counter reliefs' of Vladimir Tatlin, exhibited in 1915.
The term itself would be invented by the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo, who developed an industrial, angular style of work, while its geometric abstraction owed something to the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich. Constructivism as theory and practice was derived from a series of debates at the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow, from 1920 to 1922. After deposing its first chairman, Wassily Kandinsky, for his'mysticism', The First Working Group of Constructivists would develop a definition of Constructivism as the combination of faktura: the particular material properties of an object, tektonika, its spatial presence; the Constructivists worked on three-dimensional constructions as a means of participating in industry: the OBMOKhU exhibition showed these three dimensional compositions, by Rodchenko, Karl Ioganson and the Stenberg brothers. The definition would be extended to designs for two-dimensional works such as books or posters, with montage and factography becoming important concepts.
As much as involving itself in designs for industry, the Constructivists worked on public festivals and street designs for the post-October revolution Bolshevik government. The most famous of these was in Vitebsk, where Malevich's UNOVIS Group painted propaganda plaques and buildings. Inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky's declaration'the streets our brushes, the squares our palettes', artists and designers participated in public life during the Civil War. A striking instance was the proposed festival for the Comintern congress in 1921 by Alexander Vesnin and Liubov Popova, which resembled the constructions of the OBMOKhU exhibition as well as their work for the theatre. There was a great deal of overlap during this period between Constructivism and Proletkult, the ideas of which concerning the need to create an new culture struck a chord with the Constructivists. In addition some Constructivists were involved in the'ROSTA Windows', a Bolshevik public information campaign of around 1920; some of the most famous of these were by the poet-painter Vladimir Vladimir Lebedev.
The constructivists tried to create works that would make the viewer an active viewer of the artwork. In this it had similarities with the Russian Formalists' theory of'making strange', accordingly their main theorist Viktor Shklovsky worked with the Constructivists, as did other formalists like the Arch Bishop; these theories were tested in theatre with the work of Vsevolod Meyerhold, who had established what he called'October in the theatre'. Meyerhold developed a'biomechanical' acting style, influenced both by the circus and by the'scientific management' theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Meanwhile, the stage sets by the likes of Vesnin and Stepanova tested Constructivist spatial ideas in a public form. A more populist version of this was developed by Alexander Tairov, with stage sets by Aleksandra Ekster and the Stenberg brothers; these ideas would influence German directors like Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator, as well as the early Soviet cinema. The key work of Constructivism was Vladimir Tatlin's proposal for the Monument to the Third International which combined a machine aesthetic with dynamic components celebrating technology such as searchlights and projection screens.
Gabo publicly criticized Tatlin's design saying, "Either create functional houses and bridges or create pure art, not both." This had caused a major controversy in the Moscow group in 1920 when Gabo and Pevsner's Realistic Manifesto asserted a spiritual core for the movement. This was opposed to the utilitarian and adaptable version of Constructivism held by Tatlin and Rodchenko. Tatlin's work was hailed by artists in Germany as a revolution in art: a 1920 photograph shows George Grosz and John Heartfield holding a placard saying'Art is Dead – Long Live Tatlin's Machine Art', while the designs for the tower were published in Bruno Taut's magazine Fruhlicht; the tower was never built, due to a lack of money following the revolution. Tatlin's tower started a period of exchange of ideas between Moscow and Berlin, something reinforced by El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg's Soviet-German magazine Veshch-Gegenstand-Objet which spread the idea of'Construction art', as did the Constructivist exhibits at the 1922 Russische Ausstellung in Berlin, organised by Lissitzky.
A Constructivist International was formed, which met with Dadaists and De Stijl artists in Germany in 192
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
The Moscow School of Painting and Architecture was one of the largest educational institutions in Russia. The school was formed by the 1865 merger of a private art college, established in Moscow in 1832, the Palace School of Architecture, established in 1749 by Dmitry Ukhtomsky. By the end of the 19th century, it vied with the state-run St. Petersburg Academy of Arts for the title of the largest art school in the country. In the 20th century and architecture separated again, into the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow and the Moscow Architectural Institute; the Palace School of Architecture goes back to the classes of Dmitry Ukhtomsky that operated in 1749-1764. Twenty years, the classes were reinstated by Matvey Kazakov, in 1804 acquired the title of Kremlin College Palace School of Architecture. Graduates were awarded the title of Architect's Assistant and had to earn their own licenses through work. Art Classes; the private art college was established in 1832 by Egor Makovsky and A. S. Yastrebilov as Classes of Nature, renamed Art Classes in 1833.
In 1843 the classes were incorporated as the School of Painting and Sculpture of the Moscow Art Society. In 1865, the Palace School was incorporated into School of Sculpture; the School was unique in Imperial Russia, being a private college in a country were education was state-managed. Its diplomas were ranked inferior to those of the Academy of Arts; the School failed. After the October Revolution of 1917, the school was transformed in 1918 into the Second Free State Art Workshop. Art workshops disintegrated. In 1939, Igor Grabar launched the new college of fine arts, which acquired the name of Surikov Institute in 1948. Architectural education concentrated around VKhUTEMAS and MVTU and was organized into the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1933. More democratic in comparison with the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, the school played an important role in developing Russian national realistic art in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Admissions were based on artistic merits, allowing students without formal high school diplomas.
For example, Konstantin Melnikov joined the School at the age of 15, having only two years of primary education. Melnikov completed a diploma in Arts after 9 years of training and a diploma in Architecture three years later. One of the leader instructors of sculpture was Sergei Volnukhin. Notable alumni of the school include Léopold Survage, Igor Babailov, Vasily Perov, Alexei Savrasov, Illarion Pryanishnikov, Vladimir Makovsky, Isaac Levitan, Alexei Stepanov and Konstantin Korovin, Abram Arkhipov, Mikhail Nesterov, Anna Golubkina, Sergey Konenkov, Boris Korolev, Feodor Rojankovsky, Aleksey Korin and Alexandru Plămădeală; the official papal portrait artist, Natalia Tsarkova, is an accomplished alumna of the institute and has painted portraits of numerous other celebrities. Shortly after coming to Rome, Tsarkova, a devout Orthodox Christian, was asked to paint a portrait of Pope John Paul II in 2000 for his 80th birthday. In April 2012, ahead of Pope Benedict XVI's 85th birthday, she presented to him a handsomely illustrated children's book about him and a fish, "The Mystery of a Small Pond".
A study of 100 architects working in Moscow in 1890s-1910s by Maria Naschokina shows that more than half of them graduated from the School. The fact that most School graduates lacked a full state diploma was a major drawback in state employment, but irrelevant for the private clients that dominated construction market in Moscow. Thus, architectural profession in Moscow and Saint Petersburg were divided between graduates of the Moscow School and the Saint Petersburg schools; the students had to demonstrate professional achievement during their education and were rated according to their graduate assignment. The best, earning a Large Silver medal, were rewarded with an official title of an Architect, sufficient for private order and state employment; the next tier, with a Small Silver medal, received a construction management license, sufficient for taking private orders but not state jobs. The rest had to return with new graduate projects; as an alternative, they could apply to the Imperial Academy and complete the courses at Saint Petersburg.
There were few moves in the opposite direction. Some, like Ilya Bondarenko, completed training overseas. Fyodor Schechtel was expelled from the School in 1878 and acquired the license only in 1894; these difficulties extended architectural training, from admission to professional license, to 10–15 years and more. There were, rare exceptions like Ivan Mashkov, who earned a license at the age of 19 and completed his first projects at the age of 23. Other notable alumni include: Il
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were centralized; the country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Minsk, Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, it spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, steppes and mountains; the Soviet Union had its roots in the 1917 October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which had replaced Tsar Nicholas II during World War I. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed by a treaty which legalized the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian and Byelorussian republics that had occurred from 1918. Following Lenin's death in 1924 and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s.
Stalin committed the state's ideology to Marxism–Leninism and constructed a command economy which led to a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization. During his rule, political paranoia fermented and the Great Purge removed Stalin's opponents within and outside of the party via arbitrary arrests and persecutions of many people, resulting in at least 600,000 deaths. In 1933, a major famine struck the country. Before the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, after which the USSR invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk; the territories overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Soviet Union.
The post-war division of Europe into capitalist and communist halves would lead to increased tensions with the United States-led Western Bloc, known as the Cold War. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the de-Stalinization; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during Khrushchev's rule, among the many factors that led to his downfall in 1964. In the early 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed with the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In 1985, the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika, which caused political instability. In 1989, Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist governments; as part of an attempt to prevent the country's dissolution due to rising nationalist and separatist movements, a referendum was held in March 1991, boycotted by some republics, that resulted in a majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the union as a renewed federation.
Gorbachev's power was diminished after Russian President Boris Yeltsin's high-profile role in facing down a coup d'état attempted by Communist Party hardliners. In late 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union met and formally dissolved the Soviet Union; the remaining 12 constituent republics emerged as independent post-Soviet states, with the Russian Federation—formerly the Russian SFSR—assuming the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and being recognized as the successor state. The Soviet Union was a powerhouse of many significant technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus; the country had the largest standing military in the world. The Soviet Union was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states and possessed the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, it was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
The word "Soviet" is derived from a Russian word сове́т meaning council, advice, harmony and all deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti, related to Slavic věst, English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or", or the Dutch weten. The word sovietnik means "councillor". A number of organizations in Russian history were called "council". For example, in the Russian Empire the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905. During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union, which he named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. Stalin resisted the proposal, but accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name of the newly proposed sta
Moscow House of Photography
Moscow House of Photography is a Russian museum, part of Multimedia Art Museum, which maintains a large collection of old and contemporary Russian photographic masterpieces and organizes festivals and large-scale projects. The museum collection compiles masterpieces of the Russian photo art, including works by Alexander Grinberg, Max Penson, Alexander Rodchenko and Dmitri Baltermants; the Moscow House of Photography actively supports modern Russian photographers and artists. Official website
May Day
May Day is a public holiday celebrated on 1 May. It is an ancient Northern Hemisphere spring festival and a traditional spring holiday in many cultures. Dances and cake are part of the festivities. In the late 19th century, May Day was chosen as the date for International Workers' Day by the Socialists and Communists of the Second International to commemorate the Haymarket affair in Chicago. International Workers' Day can be referred to as "May Day", but it is a different celebration from the traditional May Day; the earliest known May celebrations appeared with the Floralia, festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, held on 27 April during the Roman Republic era, the Maiouma or Maiuma, a festival celebrating Dionysus and Aphrodite on an unknown date in May every three years. The Floralia opened with theatrical performances. In the Floralia, Ovid says that goats were released as part of the festivities. Persius writes that crowds were pelted with vetches and lupins. A ritual called the Florifertum was performed on either April 27 or May 3, during which a bundle of wheat ears was carried into a shrine, though it is not clear if this devotion was made to Flora or Ceres.
Floralia concluded with competitive events and spectacles, a sacrifice to Flora. According to the 6th century chronicles of John Malalas, the Maiouma was a "nocturnal dramatic festival, held every three years and known as Orgies, that is, the Mysteries of Dionysus and Aphrodite" and that it was "known as the Maioumas because it is celebrated in the month of May-Artemisios". During this time, enough money was set aside by the government for torches and other expenses to cover a thirty-day festival of "all-night revels." The Maiouma was celebrated with splendorous offerings. Its reputation for licentiousness caused it to be suppressed during the reign of Emperor Constantine, though a less debauched version of it was restored during the reigns of Arcadius and Honorius, only to be suppressed again during the same period. A May festival celebrated in Germanic countries, Walpurgis Night, commemorates the official canonization of Saint Walpurga on May 1st, 870.. In Gaelic culture, the evening of April 30th was the celebration of Beltane, the start of the summer season.
First attested in 900 AD, the celebration focused on the symbolic use of fire to bless cattle and other livestock as they were moved to summer pastures. This custom continued into the early 19th century, during which time cattle would be made to jump over fires to protect their milk from being stolen by fairies. People would leap over the fires for luck. Since the 18th century, many Roman Catholics have observed May – and May Day – with various May devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary In works of art, school skits, so forth, Mary's head will be adorned with flowers in a May crowning. 1 May is one of two feast days of the Catholic patron saint of workers St Joseph the Worker, a carpenter, husband to Mother Mary, surrogate father of Jesus. Replacing another feast to St. Joseph, this date was chosen by Pope Pius XII in 1955 as a counterpoint to the communist International Workers Day celebrations on May Day; the best known modern May Day traditions, observed both in Europe and North America, include dancing around the maypole and crowning the Queen of May.
Fading in popularity since the late 20th century is the tradition of giving of "May baskets," small baskets of sweets or flowers left anonymously on neighbours' doorsteps. In the late 20th century, many neopagans began reconstructing some of the older pagan festivals and combining them with more developed European secular and Catholic traditions, celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival. Traditional English May Day rites and celebrations include crowning a May Queen and celebrations involving a maypole, around which dancers circle with ribbons. Morris dancing has been linked to May Day celebrations; the earliest records of maypole celebrations date to the 14th century, by the 15th century the maypole tradition was well established in southern Britain. The spring bank holiday on the first Monday in May was created in 1978. In February 2011, the UK Parliament was reported to be considering scrapping the bank holiday associated with May Day, replacing it with a bank holiday in October coinciding with Trafalgar Day, to create a "United Kingdom Day".
Unlike the other Bank Holidays and common law holidays, the first Monday in May is taken off from schools by itself, not as part of a half term or end of term holiday. This is because it has no Christian significance and does not otherwise fit into the usual school holiday pattern. May Day was abolished and its celebration banned by Puritan parliaments during the Interregnum, but reinstated with the restoration of Charles II in 1660. 1 May 1707, was the day the Act of Union came into effect, joining England and Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. In Oxford, it is a centuries-old tradition for May Morning revellers to gather below the Great Tower of Magdalen College at 6 am to listen to the college choir sing traditional madrigals as a conclusion to the previous night's celebrations. Since the 1980s some people jump off Magdalen Bridge into the River Cherwell. For some years, the bridge has been closed on 1 Ma
Genre
Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. Genre is most popularly known as a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or inferred conventions; some genres may have rigid adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility. Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, actors were restricted to their genre under the assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best.
In periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art; because art is a response to a social state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings. Genre suffers from the ills of any classification system, it has been suggested that genres resonate with people because of the familiarity, the shorthand communication, as well as because of the tendency of genres to shift with public mores and to reflect the zeitgeist. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the borrowed nature of the conventions, admiration has grown. Proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation and evolution of the codes; the term genre is much used in the history and criticism of visual art, but in art history has meanings that overlap rather confusingly.
Genre painting is a term for paintings where the main subject features human figures to whom no specific identity attaches – in other words, figures are not portraits, characters from a story, or allegorical personifications. These are distinguished from staffage: incidental figures in what is a landscape or architectural painting. Genre painting may be used as a wider term covering genre painting proper, other specialized types of paintings such as still-life, marine paintings and animal paintings; the concept of the "hierarchy of genres" was a powerful one in artistic theory between the 17th and 19th centuries. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a central role in academic art; the genres in hierarchical order are: History painting, including narrative religious mythological and allegorical subjects Portrait painting Genre painting or scenes of everyday life Landscape and cityscape Animal painting Still life A literary genre is a category of literary composition.
Genres may be determined by literary technique, content, or length. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as either adult, young adult, or children's, they must not be confused with format, such as graphic novel or picture book. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined with subgroups; the most general genres in literature are epic, comedy and short story. They can all be in the genres poetry, which shows best how loosely genres are defined. Additionally, a genre such as satire might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre but as a mixture of genres, they are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. In popular fiction, divided by genres, genre fiction is the more usual term. In literature, genre has been known as an intangible taxonomy; this taxonomy implies a concept of containment. The earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history can be traced back to Aristotle.
Gérard Genette, a French literary theorist and author of The Architext, describes Plato as creating three Imitational genres: dramatic dialogue, pure narrative, epic. Lyric poetry, the fourth and final type of Greek literature, was excluded by Plato as a non-mimetic mode. Aristotle revised Plato's system by eliminating the pure narrative as a viable mode and distinguishing by two additional criteria: the object to be imitated, as objects could be either superior or inferior, the medium of presentation such as words, gestures or verse; the three categories of mode and medium can be visualized along an XYZ axis. Excluding the criteria of medium, Aristotle's system distinguished four types of classical genres: tragedy, epic and parody. Genette continues by explaining the integration of lyric poetry into the classical system during the romantic period, replacing the now removed pure narrative mode. Lyric poetry, once considered non-mimetic, was deemed to imi
