Socialist Realism

[Kléber]

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/2929/socialistrealism.jpg

discuss.

"The only conflict that is possible in Soviet culture is the conflict between good and best"

Socialist Realism (http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/visual_arts/painting/index.htm)

http://www.library.yale.edu/slavic/microform/images/Zhdanov.GIF

Zhdanov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Zhdanov), Zhdanov Doctrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhdanov_Doctrine)

"The 1946 resolution of the Central Committee was directed against two literary magazines, Zvezda and Leningrad, which had published supposedly apolitical, 'bourgeois,' individualistic works of the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko and the poet Anna Akhmatova. Earlier some critics and literary historians were denounced for suggesting that Russian classics had been influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Molière, Lord Byron or Charles Dickens."

"In February 1948, he initiated purges in the musical area, widely known as a struggle against formalism. Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian and many other composers were reprimanded during this period."

"He died in 1948 in Moscow of heart failure; Nikita Khrushchev recalled in Khrushchev Remembers that Zhdanov could not control his drinking, and that in his 'last days,' Stalin would shout at him to stop drinking and insist that he drink only fruit juice."

http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/visual_arts/painting/exhibits/socialist-realism/peoples-love.jpg

[Invincible Summer]

I actually like Socialist Realism, as well as all the art found in propaganda posters of the USSR, Maoist China, etc. I don't get where all the hate comes from

[bcbm]

gross

[Kléber]

Most of the hate comes from the fact that anything which didn't meet the very strict guidelines of Socialist Realism was banned. As an artistic movement it enforced traditionalist, nationalist, and sexist themes. The strongest female characters in Socialist Realist movies always have some stereotypical handicap. And if you're lucky to see someone from a national minority, the most they do is grunt and smile.

Following the 1917 revolution, the USSR had strong futurist and modernist art movements and a burgeoning culture of modern film and music replete with one of the world's most vibrant jazz scenes, but this was all crushed under the heel of Socialist Realism.

That said, I love Soviet and Chinese art from the Socialist Realist period too, there was a lot of opening after the mid-50's and artists always found ways to play a critical role in spite of the stifling censorship.

[bcbm]

futurism is just as disgusting as socialist realism. i appreciate that there was some measure of artistic freedom and exploration following 1917, but it was quickly suppressed. i've always been interested by crimethinc's suggestion that the world might be much more interesting had lenin stayed in the west and the dadaists run the russian revolution.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Didn't futurism have a significant fascist streak, as well? I seem to remember something of that sort being mentioned in my Art History class, in between naps.

[Tyrlop]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJKtDfj6UAw
Soviet union had a lot great art. as culture man i accept. i like the art from early soviet union, photomontage, cubism, are the favourits.:lol:

[bcbm]

Didn't futurism have a significant fascist streak, as well? I seem to remember something of that sort being mentioned in my Art History class, in between naps.

yep

[Os Cangaceiros]

Thought so. I don't remember much from that class. I do remember that the section on art in the Soviet Union was very brief. Mostly it focused on that statue featuring the male and female proletarians, hammer and sickle in hand, advancing into their bright socialist futures...I can't remember what it's called, though.

Western art was a lot more interesting. Hell, I even think that the classical religious paintings and artwork were a lot more interesting.

[RedStarOverChina]

My dad's a painter with a lot of Soviet influence. For me, Soviet Socialist realism has been much more influential than Chinese Maoist art forms.

When I was going to school in China, art works associated with Culture Revolution have gone seriously out of fashion. Art textbooks were still dominated by Soviet Socialist Realism. My favorite painting of all times is still Rapin's Volga Boatmen. It still evokes a lot of emotion for me.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/a/ae/20061015223230%21Ilia_Efimovich_Repin_%281844-1930%29_-_Volga_Boatmen_%281870-1873%29.jpg

Yeah, I know, I'm old fashioned.


In Highschool here in Canada, I did a project on this painting, and got over 90% on it.

People with little knowledge of Soviet Socialist Realism can still relate to it, to me, that is the ultimate goal in art.

[Tyrlop]

Western art was a lot more interesting. Hell, I even think that the classical religious paintings and artwork were a lot more interesting.
Racist. bullshit. i've ever heard. :trotski:

[RedStarOverChina]

I wouldn't go as far as call him a racist, but that does demonstrate his lack of understanding of other art traditions---Something all of us are guilty of, to varying degrees.

[Red Commissar]

I don't mind Socialist Realism, the problem comes in when the artist is restricted to only doing that. By its practice it was often mandated by the state for the purpose of trying to form an ideological cohesion among the people.

There are other ways one can portray the struggles of the common man, the working class, than by a narrowly defined mode of art. So yes, particularly when they were seen in practice some were empty and stupid.

[Comrade B]

Now with painting, you don't even have to go through the inconvenience of editing out Trotsky!

[Mälli]

For stalinists, this is realism. :laugh:

[Bilan]

Crap. Limited.
The artists were obviously talented, but such a limitation (And such a boring topic) is surely just horrendous.
I suppose it becomes a lot worse when you become conscious of the plethora of art movements in the West going on at the exact same time.

[Weezer]

Socialist realism is a very beautiful art form.

I would've preferred artistic freedom.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Racist. bullshit. i've ever heard. :trotski:

lol wut

[Revy]

http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/visual_arts/painting/exhibits/socialist-realism/peoples-love.jpg

oh would you look at that, the privileged state capitalist bureaucracy has come to this lavish theater. And Stalin's the show.

so boring, and ridiculous.

[GPDP]

The fact that Socialist Realism is now mostly used to mock communism says quite a bit about how out of fashion it is.

[Dimentio]

futurism is just as disgusting as socialist realism. i appreciate that there was some measure of artistic freedom and exploration following 1917, but it was quickly suppressed. i've always been interested by crimethinc's suggestion that the world might be much more interesting had lenin stayed in the west and the dadaists run the russian revolution.

Futurism - apart from the ideological insanities - is really an art form depicting the beauty of speed. I don't think it could be called disgusting in itself.

[Robocommie]

futurism is just as disgusting as socialist realism. i appreciate that there was some measure of artistic freedom and exploration following 1917, but it was quickly suppressed. i've always been interested by crimethinc's suggestion that the world might be much more interesting had lenin stayed in the west and the dadaists run the russian revolution.

To me, some of the best revolutionary art was the new wave of stuff that came out of the Mexican Revolution. Jose Posada, but others as well. In particular, the awakening of the identity with Mexico's Pre-Columbian roots is very cool.

[black magick hustla]

futurism is just as disgusting as socialist realism
some futurist stuff is really awesome, mayakovsky is really good:

Call To Account!
The drum of war thunders and thunders.
It calls: thrust iron into the living.
From every country
slave after slave
are thrown onto bayonet steel.
For the sake of what?
The earth shivers
hungry
and stripped.
Mankind is vapourised in a blood bath
only so
someone
somewhere
can get hold of Albania.
Human gangs bound in malice,
blow after blow strikes the world
only for
someone’s vessels
to pass without charge
through the Bosporus.
Soon
the world
won’t have a rib intact.
And its soul will be pulled out.
And trampled down
only for someone,
to lay
their hands on
Mesopotamia.
Why does
a boot
crush the Earth — fissured and rough?
What is above the battles’ sky -
Freedom?
God?
Money!
When will you stand to your full height,
you,
giving them your life?
When will you hurl a question to their faces:
Why are we fighting?


----
Back Home



Thoughts, go your way home.
Embrace,
depths of the soul and the sea.
In my view,
it is
stupid
to be
always serene.
My cabin is the worst
of all cabins -
All night above me
Thuds a smithy of feet.
All night,
stirring the ceiling’s calm,
dancers stampede
to a moaning motif:
“Marquita,
Marquita,
Marquita my darling,
why won’t you,
Marquita,
why won’t you love me …”
But why
Should marquita love me?!
I have
no francs to spare.
And Marquita
(at the slightest wink!)
for a hundred francs
she’d be brought to your room.
The sum’s not large -
just live for show -
No,
you highbrow,
ruffling your matted hair,
you would thrust upon her
a sewing machine,
in stitches
scribbling
the silk of verse.
Proletarians
arrive at communism
from below -
by the low way of mines,
sickles,
and pitchforks -
But I,
from poetry’s skies,
plunge into communism,
because
without it
I feel no love.
Whether
I’m self-exiled
or sent to mamma -
the steel of words corrodes,
the brass of the brass tarnishes.
Why,
beneath foreign rains,
must I soak,
rot,
and rust?
Here I recline,
having gone oversea,
in my idleness
barely moving
my machine parts.
I myself
feel like a Soviet
factory,
manufacturing happiness.
I object
to being torn up,
like a flower of the fields,
after a long day’s work.
I want
the Gosplan to sweat
in debate,
assignning me
goals a year ahead.
I want
a commissar
with a decree
to lean over the thought of the age.
I want
the heart to earn
its love wage
at a specialist’s rate.
I want
the factory committee
to lock
My lips
when the work is done.
I want
the pen to be on a par
with the bayonet;
and Stalin
to deliver his Politbureau
reports
about verse in the making
as he would about pig iron
and the smelting of steel.
“That’s how it is,
the way it goes …
We’ve attained
the topmost level,
climbing from the workers’ bunks:
in the Union
of Republics
the understanding of verse
now tops
the prewar norm …”

[Angry Young Man]

I actually like Socialist Realism, as well as all the art found in propaganda posters of the USSR, Maoist China, etc. I don't get where all the hate comes from

Its tedious conservatism?