In studies of the twentieth-century avant-garde, scholars have
already identified particular formal devices that play a crucial,
dominant role. These include cubist dissection of an object and the
analysis of motion in Italian Futurism, as well as such devices as the
shift (sdvig) of Russian Cubo-futurism, one which led to formal as
well as semantic experiments in literature and painting. My paper will
examine another such key feature that has not thus far received much
attention—the avant-garde gesture. By gesture here is meant an
avant-garde act, which precedes any theorizing, provoking the public
to respond to new forms of artistic expression. These gestures
effectively express an avant-gardist position in relation to a
traditional view of art as well as to reality. The gesture is in each
case radical and has an element of theatricality. The main goal of the
paper is to establish a genealogy of the avant-garde gesture and to
argue that it appears in various avant-garde movements regardless of
their national origin. The paper follows the avant-garde gesture from
first, the Italian Futurist manifestoes, through Russian Futurism
(here the principal example is the Futurist opera