This juxtaposition of autobiographical statements written in 1933 by Aleksandr Drevin and Nadezhda Udal'tsova, together with an introduction to their artistic careers and a select chronology designed to place them in the context of their times, is intended to show how early twentieth-century Russian art evolved in parallel to Western thought and artistic practice, taking into account contemporary developments in non-Euclidean geometry, physics, mathematics, the laws of perspective and the awareness of the impossibility of “realistically” representing spatial forms on a flat surface, which, at the time, were exercising many minds. The artists, though from very different backgrounds, were closely involved with one another, as husband and wife and as close colleagues in art. Their artistic course is traced through and beyond the experimental 1910s and 1920s.

The author discusses the life and work of Grigory Gidoni, artist-inventor of the early days of the Soviet Union. Nearly forgotten, Gidoni's works and ideas shed light on the spirit and the artistic and ideological atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. in the decades following the Revolution.

Throughout their history, Americans have utilized technology to convert wilderness to civilization. Much of this development has been historically described as “progressive.” The author examines one example of this—the reduction of the Michigan pineries in the nineteenth century—in detail in an effort to reconcile design advances with our changing perceptions of wilderness. The author also discusses the development of tools and design techniques together with the evolution of the environmental movement.