Socialist Art Research Articles

Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

Remembering the Herero-Nama Genocide in Namibia

Intimacy and Darkness: Feminist Sensibility in (Post)socialist Art

This article assembles feminist articulations scattered across art histories and theories of Eastern and Central Europe, in order to reveal their potential, not only for foregrounding postsocialist feminist perspectives, but also for enriching the vocabulary and expanding temporal geographies of transnational feminist debates. By attending to intuitive, latent, reluctant, proto-, para-, unofficial and soft feminisms, this article establishes a peculiar feminist sensibility that is attuned to Central and Eastern European women artists’ approaches to everyday, embodied and affective experiences via the critical endorsement of intimacy and darkness.

The Golden Age of History Painting of the People's Republic of China (1949–1966): Origins, Searches, Achievements

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, paintings of the history genre were considered mainly as a tool for implementing state tasks. The golden age of Chinese history painting was between 1949 and 1966. During this period, the political demands of the authorities, whose primary focus was on the themes of the revolutionary struggle, the most important historical events and characters, contributed to the active development of history painting, which became one of the foundations of the fine arts of China. The characteristic features of the golden age of Chinese history painting were, on the one hand, the popularisation of painting as an art form and, on the other hand, the predominance of dominating positions of realism over the traditional styles of Chinese painting. It is noted that during this period, two main plots became widespread: scenes of socialist construction and historical events of the revolution. Since 1950, Chinese fine art had been under the powerful influence of Soviet art. The PRC borrowed the system of higher art education from the Soviet Union. Numerous Soviet publications on the history and theory of art, textbooks, and critical articles were translated into Chinese. Owing to large-scale exhibitions of Soviet art, Chinese masters began to study the works of Soviet socialist realism, which created the basis for the "creation of socialist art". Due to cultural exchange with the Soviet Union, the oil painting technique became widespread in China as well as a new creative method - realism, recognised as the main direction of Chinese painting. Considerable merit in the formation of new principles of Chinese painting belongs to the work of Soviet professors who taught Chinese artists in oil painting at the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing. Among them, we especially note K.Maksimov, a famous Soviet artist and professor at the Moscow Surikov State Art Institute. In addition, in the USSR in 1952, the first group of Chinese students was sent to study at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture by order of the Chinese government. It should be noted that later, in their homeland, they headed the leading art universities in China. Thus, outstanding works of Chinese history painting on social and revolutionary themes appeared, which immediately began to be regarded as innovative, taking a dominant place in exhibitions and permanent expositions of new museums that were actively created during this period in the PRC. The spread of the theory of Soviet socialist realism accelerated the development of oil painting in the PRC. It contributed to the fact that realism became the main direction of painting in the second half of the 20th century.

Utopia in a Package? Digital Media Piracy and the Politics of Entertainment in Cuba

Following the 1959 revolution, the Cuban state nationalized media outlets on the island and has controlled them ever since. Since 2010, however, this monopoly has been threatened by the paquete (package), one terabyte of pirated digital media collected by independent Cuban entrepreneurs and circulated through informal distribution networks across the island using flash drives and hard drives. Combining archival and textual analysis with ethnographic research, this article analyzes how the legacy of state socialism gave distinctive shape to experiences and perceptions of digital media piracy. I show how the state's history of contravening international copyright provided justification for piracy and how cultural producers and consumers worked to reconcile revolutionary aspirations for socialist art with the influx of global entertainment and the rise of new forms of local cultural production, especially advertising, enabled by the paquete. In so doing, this research challenges media archaeology's Euro-American focus and shows how alternate media histories can lead to different understandings of key questions in media studies, including the links between copyright, entertainment, and modernity.

Style as a Reflection of Ideology of the Authorities

One aspect of style is its conformity or opposition to the ideology of the dominant authorities. When new authorities want to emphasize their isolation from their predecessors, they use art and architecture as ideological propaganda, by creating a new style. A striking example is ideology in the so-called “Stalinist Empire”, and the architecture of Ukraine, Poland and Romania during the socialist period. The architecture did not demonstrate any continuity with previous styles and just tried to emphasize its non-identity with the “old world”. At the same time in the Soviet Union, for example, socialist art was not homogeneous and radically changed in accordance with the Communist party line – from the stage of Bolshevist ideology formation in the 1920s to Stalinist authoritarianism in the 1940s and early 1950s. Ingrowth of traditional culture into socialist ideology is examplified by China with a national version of postmodernism, in contrast to European postmodernism, completely devoid of irony and aimed at revealing the dominant ideology with traditional Chinese architectural techniques. At the same time, the foreign policy task is to promote Chinese culture in a somewhat simplified, “export” version, and within the country – to emphasize the historical continuity and sacredness of authorities.

The Representation and Agency of Artistic Interventions in Community in Mainland China

Based on immersive participatory observation of the curatorial practice of the 2019 OCAT exhibition Rural Construction through Art in Shenzhen, we identified two modes of community-based artistic interventions: a cultural “governance/capital” intervention deeply embedded in the social structure and a collective experimental art production intervention dissociated from the social structure. However, both forms of “production art” are essentially “unities of opposites” integrating incorporation and resistance, consistent with the socialist art policy of promoting the flourishing of all types of arts. Though the aesthetic divide between “art for society’s sake” and “art for art’s sake” positions these artistic interventions in different places in society, we argue that the domain of Chinese contemporary art is shifting away from the studio and toward scenes, events, experience, and dialogue. The approach of “the era of mass art” also means that “art-as-resistance” is being legitimized as “art-as-incorporation” in a subtle but unremitting way.

The Place of Socialism in African Art

The Place of Socialism in African Art

Building North Korean Art: Pen Varlen/Pyŏn Wŏllyong and Ethnic Networks amid the Cold War

This article scrutinizes the roles of mobile individuals in the geopolitical formation of North Korean art in the mid-1950s. The networks of Pen Varlen (1916–1990), a visitor from the Soviet Union, and his colleagues in North Korea exemplify how the international travels and connections of these ethnic Korean artists reconfigured postcolonial Korean art to construct a new socialist art. The article examines how the codes of Soviet Socialist Realism became transferable, communicable, and adaptable by Pen and his circle in North Korea and how their relation to the Soviet Union shaped a new identity for national art.

The Role of Artists' Collectives in Producing State Socialist Art in 1950s Romania the Bottom-Up, Pragmatic Professionalization of State Commissions

This article analyzes the collective basis of the establishment of the Socialist Realist model of production for the fine arts in Romania in the early 1950s. It discusses the unstudied case of the “artists' collectives” (of production) together with other collective forms, such as the collective studios and the guiding commissions. This is an archive-based study of cultural institutionalism of socialist regimes, based on the analysis of under-explored archival sources such as those of the Romanian Artists' Union (UAP) or the Artistic Fund (FP). Focusing on two specific case studies, those of the artists' collectives “Progressive art” and “Th. Aman”, both founded in 1951, it provides more context to the establishment of the socialist model in Romania. The article finds the state assumed definition of art considered the artist as a simple executioner, and the “artists' collectives” participated in eradicating the individuality of the artist, one of the goals of the new socialist model.

Introduction to “A Conversation between Chinese Artists and Mexican Painter David Alfaro Siqueiros”

Abstract In October 1956, the Mexican muralist David Siqueiros traveled Beijing and engaged in two dialogues with artists from the Chinese Artists’ Association. His visit came at an inflection point in China’s foreign and cultural policy. As Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated, China used cultural diplomacy to cultivate relationships with unaligned countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. China’s cultural policy mirrored this shift by relaxing its adherence to Soviet-style Socialist Realism and promoting new stylistic practices, including a revival of ink painting techniques. This policy shift re-animated a debate among Chinese artists over the best mode of representation for socialist art, with one side arguing that Soviet-style Socialist Realism was the only acceptable style, and the other advocating for the reform of Chinese ink painting techniques. Within this context, Siqueiros’s criticism of Soviet artists and his advice to follow Chinese stylistic traditions set off a rich discussion on new approaches to Socialist Realism within China.

A Conversation between Chinese Artists and Mexican Painter David Alfaro Siqueiros

Abstract In October 1956, the Mexican muralist David Siqueiros traveled Beijing and engaged in two dialogues with artists from the Chinese Artists’ Association. His visit came at an inflection point in China’s foreign and cultural policy. As Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated, China used cultural diplomacy to cultivate relationships with unaligned countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. China’s cultural policy mirrored this shift by relaxing its adherence to Soviet-style Socialist Realism and promoting new stylistic practices, including a revival of ink painting techniques. This policy shift re-animated a debate among Chinese artists over the best mode of representation for socialist art, with one side arguing that Soviet-style Socialist Realism was the only acceptable style, and the other advocating for the reform of Chinese ink painting techniques. Within this context, Siqueiros’s criticism of Soviet artists and his advice to follow Chinese stylistic traditions set off a rich discussion on new approaches to Socialist Realism within China.

The Art of Resistance: Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century by Allyson Fiddler

 Reviews Allen’s conceptualization, crucially, supports the established ideas of periodization while also challenging and differentiating the monopoly of these ideas through his selection of case studies and split chapters. Second, the selection of films is a refreshing mix of the canonical and films that so far have received little or no academic attention, organized in well interwoven and thematically cross-referenced chapters. Most of all, Allen appreciates the artistic complexity of these films as the contributions of directors who believed in socialism and socialist art as contributors to a better humanity. is allows him again to prove that reading these films and artworks as merely a reproduction of political ideology or as examples of life under a dictatorship would be to disregard their aesthetic complexity. Instead, he demonstrates that laying greater emphasis on the aesthetic and the struggle to create something entirely new under difficult conditions is the appropriate approach to doing these films justice. Or, in Allen’s words: [T]hroughout its history, East German cultural policy oscillated between two poles: on the one hand, the desire to portray itself as the contemporary embodiment of a long-established tradition of German classical humanism; and, on the other, as the realization of a new kind of political entity that had broken with the bourgeois traditions of the pre-war period and was committed to a modern, internationalist form of socialism. In part, the polemical character of many of the cultural debates that took place over the forty years of the GDR’s existence is a reflection of the impossibility of reconciling two such contradictory projects (p. ) U C D S E e Art of Resistance: Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century. By A F. New York and Oxford: Berghahn. .  pp. £. ISBN ––––. Allyson Fiddler’s excellent new book e Art of Resistance, ‘the first large-scale study of the creative work of protest against the ÖVP–FPÖ coalition’ of the early s (p. ), examines the range of artistic and cultural responses to the entry of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), then led by Jörg Haider, into the Austrian coalition government in , aer the party obtained its hitherto largest ever share of the vote (. per cent) in the  general election (p. ). In , as Fiddler traces, the FPÖ had polled  per cent of the vote and ended up being a very minor coalition partner with the then Sozialistische Partei Österreichs. e much larger share of the vote in  and openly xenophobic policies of the party gave the international community much more cause for concern, leading to diplomatic sanctions against Austria by the EU, Israel, and the United States (p. ). Inside Austria , a wave of protests sprang up almost immediately following the  elections, which persisted until the coalition’s demise in . An important precedent had already been set here with the Waldheim affair of the late s. e generation of artists and intellectuals that protested against the election of former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim to the presidency of Austria in , on account of his deception regarding his Nazi past, is widely regarded as having been instrumental MLR, .,   in the formation of a civil society in Austria (see Dagmar C. G. Lorenz: ‘e Struggle for a Civil Society and Beyond: Austrian Writers and Intellectuals Confronting the Political Right’, New German Critique,  (), –). Indeed, many of the protagonists of the  protests would be closely involved in the protest movements in Austria at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fiddler’s study examines not only works by well-known authors and artists, such as the Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek, Robert Menasse, Christoph Schlingensief, and Marlene Streeruwitz, but also those of others who are less familiar. Fiddler’s book stands out for the range of works in different media that she discusses . ese include acts of everyday protest (demonstrations, speeches, graffiti, dance, etc.), as well as literary texts, films, and dramas. e Introduction and first chapter set the political context in which these various cultural responses to the Austrian Wende occurred, before proceeding to detailed analyses of texts, films, and forms of protest. e majority of the works analysed were...

Toward a New Concept of Progressive Art: Art History in the Service of Modernisation in the Late Socialist Period. An Estonian Case

The paper deals with renewal of socialist art history in the Post-Stalinist period in Soviet Union. The modernisation of art history is discussed based on the example of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (Estonian SSR), where art historians were forced to accept the Soviets’ centrally constructed Marxist-Leninist aesthetic and approach to art and art history. In the art context, the idea of progressiveness began to be reconsidered. In previous discourse, progress was linked with the “realist” artistic method that sprang from a progressive social order. Now, however, art historians found new arguments for accepting different cultures of form, both historical and contemporary, and often these arguments were “discovered” in Marxism itself. As a result, from the middle of 1950’s Soviet art historians fell into two camps in interpreting Realism: the dogmatic and revisionist, and the latter was embraced in Estonia. In 1967, a work was published by the accomplished artist Ott Kangilaski and his nephew, the art historian Jaak Kangilaski: the Kunsti kukeaabits – Basic Art Primer – subtitled “Fundamental Knowledge of Art and Art History.” In its 200 pages, Jaak Kangilaski’s Primer laid out the art history of the world. Kangilaski also chimed in, publishing an article in 1965 entitled “Disputes in Marxist Aesthetics” in the leading Estonian SSR literary journal Looming (Creation). In this paper the Art Primer is under scrutiny and the deviations and shifts in Kangilaski’s approach from the existing socialist art history canon are introduced. For Kangilaski the defining element of art was not the economic base but the “Zeitgeist,” the spirit of the era, which, as he wrote, “does not mean anything mysterious or supernatural but is simply the sum of the social views that objectively existed and exist in each phase of the development of humankind.” Thus, he openly united the “hostile classes” of the social formations and laid a foundation for the rise of common art characteristics, denoted by the term “style.” As is evidenced by various passages in the text, art transforms pursuant to the “will-to-art” (Kunstwollen) characteristic of the entire human society. Thus, under conditions of a fragile discursive pluralism in Soviet Union, quite symbolic concepts and values from formalist Western art history were “smuggled in”: concepts and values that the professional reader certainly recognised, although no names of “bourgeois” authors were mentioned. Kangilaski relied on assistance in interpretation from two grand masters of the Vienna school of art history: Alois Riegl’s term Kunstwollen and the Zeitgeist concept from Max Dvořák (Zeitgeist, Geistesgeschichte). In particular, the declaration of art’s linear, teleological “self-development” can be considered to be inspiration from the two. But Kangilaski’s reading list obviously also included Principles of Art History by Heinrich Wölfflin, who was declared an exemplary formalist art historian in earlier official Soviet historiography. Thaw-era discursive cocktail in art historiography sometimes led Kangilaski to logical contradictions. In spite of it, the Primer was an attempt to modernise the Stalinist approach to art history. In the Primer, the litmus test of the engagement with change was the new narrative of 20th century art history and the illustrative material that depicted “formalist bourgeois” artworks; 150 of the 279 plates are reproductions of Modernist avant-garde works from the early 20th century on. Put into the wider context, one can claim that art history writing in the Estonian SSR was deeply engaged with the ambivalent aims of Late Socialist Soviet politics, politics that was feared and despised but that, beginning in the late 1950s, nevertheless had shown the desire to move on and change.

The transnational ‘memorialization’ of monumental socialist public works in Eastern Europe

This article analyses how three types of artistic memorialization of monumental socialist public works transform these into examples of socialist modernism in Eastern Europe. First, it tackles the issue of rendering socialist architecture visible through the Socialist Modernism online platform. Second, it focuses on the collection of documentary proofs by six documentary photography projects in Eastern Europe. Finally, it looks at how four contemporary artists in Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic are resignifying socialist art in their artistic practices. Analysed from a perspective of transnational cultural memory practices, these three artistic endeavours contribute to a shared approach to the monumental socialist public works in the region. I argue that some of these strategies lead to a unified, depoliticized, decommunized memorialization of the socialist art of Eastern Europe.

시니컬 리얼리즘과 인민의 얼굴들, 몸

Cynical Realism is an idiom created consciously by Li Xianting, a Chinese contemporary art critic under a clear purpose of wanting to inform the Chinese art industry earnestly along with the creation of idioms like ''Political Pop Art'' and ''Gaudy Art''. The paths of these terms were mainly through magazines and the Venetian and Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil which were done in 1993, 1995 and 1997, and the works exhibited here were sold in each market of the world art since mid-2000. This led China''s contemporary art to enter the capitalist line, and virtual realism became the most “Chinese” part of Chinese contemporary art by selling it at the highest price. In particular, these cynical realism artists who were educated in the socialist era wanted to open a new socialist art in the post-socialist era were like li Wei, Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun, and Zheng Fanzhi. The characteristics are as follows. First, they focus on the ''face''. This confirms the status in which art was used in the last socialist period. It represents important symbols in post-socialist China by replacing the face of the present in the portraits of Mao Zedong. Second, ''family'' stands out as the identity of the individual and stands at the crossroads of ''people'', a member of the socialist era. This is read as a movement to push out the existence of ''workers, peasants, soldiers'' who existed only as constituent members of socialism in the past socialism, and to find their identity in the family members. Third, they pay attention to ‘emotion’ such as laughter or depression. This is also is in contrast to Mao''s expressionlessness. which was the face of a public hero during the socialist era. The face of the in the post-socialist era is just one person who is in the process of being happy. Especially, their emotions need attention because they are laughters and depressions that are pretended expressions rather than direct expressions. The post-Socialist “people” were now different from the positions of the socialist people. They have evolved into many classes, and in the present situation, the are actually in contact with the so called social lows after 2000.Thus, it can be said that the cynical realism is a realistic demonstration of the fact that the term people which was used in the socialism period, should be reconsidered.

스탈린 사후 사회주의 미술의 이상과 전략 - Б. В. 요간손 外, 최철준 外 역, 『제1차 전련맹 쏘베트미술가대회 문헌집』

스탈린 사후 사회주의 미술의 이상과 전략 - Б. В. 요간손 外, 최철준 外 역, 『제1차 전련맹 쏘베트미술가대회 문헌집』

Comparative analysis of socialist and bourgeois art in the social philosophical aspect

At the beginning of the XX century, bourgeois theorists of artistic culture declared dehumanization as one of the main features of the modernism art, one of the main tasks of the contemporary artists’ artwork. Getting to the scientific understanding of the complex and complicated phenomena of modern art culture, it is necessary to reveal not only the socio-economic reasons for their appearance; the philosophical prerequisites for the development of modern bourgeois art, the ideological orientation of its movements should be identified. In the article, the authors argue that modern bourgeois aesthetics objectively performs the opposite tasks: a) bourgeois art distracts artists and spectators from pressing issues of life, b) imposes ideals and tastes that are advantageous to the bourgeoisie, c) sow pessimism and disbelief in human forces. According to authors, as opposing the personality of society, bourgeois art contributes to the isolation of human from social problems, from issues and tasks of the struggle for a better future. The authors believe that the disclosure of the reactionary ideological essence for the many directions of modern bourgeois art enables a consistent Marxist aesthetic analysis of the content and form of artwork and the principles of bourgeois artists’ creativity. Naturally, the philosophical idealist teachings and aesthetic systems that make up the theoretical foundation of modern bourgeois art, embodied in its various directions not directly but indirectly. Only a Marxist analysis of artistic phenomena and techniques of artistic creation in their correlation with the creative method makes it possible to reveal the true interconnections of these phenomena and the essence of artistic techniques, makes it possible to detect and criticize scientifically based falsification ideas of bourgeois theoreticians of art.

“Sprawa realizmu w plastyce kształtującej”. Design i jego krytyka wobec realizmu socjalistycznego

This text concerns itself with Polish design and its criticism in the period of socialist realism (1949/50–1955). The title refers to a terminological proposal by Janusz Bogucki who looked for new terms for his work in the new system. The division into ‘pure’ and ‘usable’ arts was considered as an anachronism in socialism in which all artistic fields were to fulfil social functions. As optimal, the critic considered a division of arts into the ‘imaging’ (painting, sculpture, and graphic) and ‘formative’ (shaping human surroundings and public space – architecture, decoration and interior fittings, and objects of everyday usage). An intermediate ‘semi-imaging’ form was, for example, represented with a fabric or scenography. Bogucki defined the realism of a masterpiece as something that reflects reality by the use of means other than an image – it shapes and expresses reality. By avoiding unwanted associations with functionalism or constructivism, he showed ‘realistic’ features of objects and things: perspicuity, simplicity of composition, purposefulness and the appropriate usage of material and tools, breaking away from the pre-war ornamentation and avant-garde restraint of shapes. Masterpieces of ‘formative’ art were to fulfil the postulate of a national form; hence, the inspiration with a native tradition, folk art and handcraft was recommended. Crucial propagandistic slogans concerned popularization and ‘democratization’ of art connected with both creation and reception; industrial production pursuant to the models of professional artists as well as the working class, and folk and teen ‘collectives’ managed by them. Chosen institutions served popularization and democratization of socialist art. The 1952 Exhibition of Interior Architecture and Decorative Art and especially the criticism linked with it, regarding the assumptions of socialist realism and gradual abandoning the criteria of the doctrine from around 1954, are presented in this text. Reckoning with the method: during the public thaw (1956–1957), when categories of realism and national form were replaced with the imperative of modernity, constitutes a recapitulation.

СОВЕТСКИЙ СОЮЗ КАК «НОВАЯ ПЕРВОБЫТНОСТЬ». НЕОРТОДОКСАЛЬНЫЙ МАРКСИЗМ ИЕРЕМИИ ИОФФЕ

The article examines the “new primitive state” conception of the prominent Soviet art critic and culture expert Ieremia Ioffe. The problem of “primitive state revival” in socialist art and culture, designated by the theoretician, is considered in this work in the context of the history of the Russian religious and philosophical modernism, artistic avant-garde, art criticism historiography and western humanist thought of the XX century (Spengler, Benjamin, McLuhan). I. Ioffe’s utopic conception is estimated regarding his poststructuralist complex of ideas and the elements of “life philosophy” in his creative work.

A Spy in the House of Art: The Marxist Criticism of Anthony Blunt

Anthony Blunt's writings on the visual arts have not received as much scholarly attention as they deserve, not least because Blunt's reputation was seriously tarnished by the revelation that he had worked as a Soviet spy. This article examines the writings on art which Blunt produced under the influence of Marxism in the 1930s. Among its central concerns is Blunt's attitude towards the Soviet ideas about culture which did so much to shape British communist criticism between the wars. It is argued that Blunt's response to Soviet aesthetic orthodoxy was a curiously ambivalent one. On the one hand, Blunt went far beyond any other British writer in welcoming the Soviet belief that artists should take their instructions from the socialist state. On the other hand, while posing as an apologist for the Soviet doctrine of Socialist Realism, he was clearly unimpressed by existing examples of socialist art and seemed suspicious of the way in which Socialist Realism had been theorised by Soviet critics. His lukewarm response to Socialist Realism was expressed directly in his writings on contemporary painters and more obliquely in his historical work on the visual culture of the Renaissance. By the same token, in spite of trotting out formulaic condemnations of surrealism, abstraction and other modernist forms, Blunt was unhappy with the Soviet prohibition on modernism and found it difficult to conceal his belief that painters had much to learn from modern art. In the final analysis, Blunt's ambivalence towards Soviet theory gives his work a highly representative quality. Like many other British Marxist critics of his time, Blunt took Soviet ideas as his starting point but often developed them in unexpected and sometimes unorthodox ways. His work serves as a valuable reminder that British communist criticism between the wars was never merely a pale reflection of Soviet orthodoxy.