The fuck would we want that for?
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Capitalistic Products Being More Colorful
Was the so called "free world" more colorful than the proto-Communist nations, or was that western propoganda?
Is there anyway for a future Communist society to have flash, style, and color? On the other hand, would it have to look like some set of 1984?
The fuck would we want that for?
I don't think there would be any hindrances to people's creativity in a communist society.
I don't see why a communist society, which I would assume wouldn't place much importance on an "official" look for buildings and property, wouldn't allow it's citizens to paint art and colors all over their cities.
I can see why you would say the eastern bloc socialist countries come off less colorful, they either actually were less colorful or perhaps we just buy into what western media shows which tend to be less colorful. Either way I don't view a lot of the vibrant colors seen in big metropolitan areas as much better, as all the advertisements can be very stressful and distracting. It would be wonderful if there was more art for arts sake around instead.
Kill the bosses!
Kill the shepherds!
Kill the priests!
Save the sheep!
After the revolution, the streets will be a riot...
... of colours!
But seriously, I don't see why we can't combine the grand and awe-inspiring with the lively and organic. They work at different scales after all, so it should be possible to combine the two approaches in the same architecture.
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Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains - Karl Marx
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller
The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Check out my speculative fiction project: NOVA MUNDI
That color and flash is to get you to buy a product, including the high use of the color red. I buy the blah looking "generic" products which usually taste and work just as good as the highly advertised brands.
My feeling without the need for advertising there would be no need for flash and color to trick people into buying expensive advertised products over affordable generics.
Generic products rule!
Let's occupy the world.
Holy crap! Were is this? I need to go there!
... of colours!
No but seriously, things were just grey back then everywhere. I think it must be the hatred of the capitalist system that stopped proto-communist states of using colors in the same way.
"But we anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselfs" - Errico Malatesta ("Anarchism and Organization")
"It is very well imaginable that man can get a communist dictature, which takes care that the needs of the stomach are provided, but that thereby freedom still by far isn't for everyone. That's why the struggle shouldn't just be against private property, but against authority too." - Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis ("Van christen tot anarchist ")
One thing about observational accounts of both the Russian and Spanish revolutions is that they tend to describe the amazing amount of decorating people do as well as the ammount and multitude of posters and images that people put up. Of course May 68 and the protest movements in the 1960s/70s as well as international anti-imperialist struggles of that era are famous for their propaganda-art as well as inspiring insurgant and avant-guard movements in the arts not specifically or explicitly connected to political content or specific movements.
Of course US propaganda I grew up with portrayed the USSR and Eastern Block countries as grey and stifflingly uniform and bland. Some images from the 1980s seem to support that, but I couldn't really say what it really would have been like and if there would have been a noticible difference between "communist countries" and similar countries that developed rapidly in the 20th century at the same time - many capitalist countries had housing programs of bland uniform high-rises not much different from what US propaganda showed Russian or East German housing blocks to be like.
But any drab uniformity in public space in Eastern Germany or Russia was not the result of communism or socialism, but of an organization of society which saw little importance in this. The goal of hosuing was just to provide housing so that there could be a stable labor supply, not so that people could create nice environments for themselves. The goal of public art, much like in capitalist countries, was in service of the ruling order and ideas they use to justify that order. So in capitalist countries we have monuments to national heroes and advertisments everywhere whereas Russia might have had statues of WWII heroes and Lenin and whatnot. Socialist-realist art doesn't look too different in form or content than a coke billboard from that time period - service to the nation, rather than purchases will ensure your blonde smiling children with a good and happy life.
So I think it's really a question of what kind of role does art/design play in life and what interests guide how we plan public space. In capitalism it's generally local governments managing use of space and helping companies divide up our cities in profitable ways. For public space this means opening up areas for advertisments and getting rid of organic community art as well as steet-art in favor of art and statues which will aid gentrification and help developers flip the property they bought and built new condoes on - graffiti will lower their poperty value, people sleeping on the street will lover their property value, and so in cities, this is generally the day-to-day guideing logic of public space.
There's also more ambitious public art initiatives with city funding involved, but then again this is largely a gift to developers and creating "vibrancy zones" in urban areas. In San Francisco, major companies in the financial district are required to put in corporate art when they do any developments - I think if they don't then they are taxed and that money goes towards funding public art. But again, on the surface this might seem like it's not in corporate interests, but it is actually just in general corporate interests, even though it may rub some induvidual companies the wrong way. Rather than having a tax on business to ensure that municipal funding for art is available, this has been privitized and so the city gets its "vibrancy" in terms of being able to talk about how beautiful downtown is and how new developments "beutify" the city, and corporations still get the autonomy to use those funds how they want rather than turn them over to the city which might accidentally hire a communist to paint a bunch of city murals like S.F. did with Diegeo Rivera in the 1930s.
In a revolutionary society (as backed up by the examples from revolutions in the past and how they sparked a flourishing of public art and new arts and community murals) public space would be there for our own enjoyment, not for property values, not for propaganda from a single regime or a multitude of capitalist firms. I think as soon as people are able (and probably a little before that) the transformation of public space into something more pleasing, more inviting (since capitalist urban spaces are all about preventing people from stopping, milling, or sitting), and more beautiful. Communities would be able to decide if they will just permit people to do what they want, or organize some kind of committee for repainting and doing maintainance and bringing in art and so on.
The west always complained that the east was bland, but the the west has so many chain restaurants and stores. Isn't that just a form of "colorful" blandness? It would be nice to see local flavored stores and restaurants.
Eastern Europe wasn't a grey wasteland, all doom and gloom as it is stereotyped in Western popular culture ( for example the Eurotrip part when they go to Slovakia ).
It tends to be cold and winterish once you start pressing into Eastern Europe and Russia- it's just a matter of geography. I'm sure these countries are just as "grey" now as they were under any form of socialist government. As for the arts, there was an enormous level of artistic output under the eastern bloc and other socialist countries. Socialist Realism as an art movement, for example, reshaped how millions of people saw and interpreted the world through literature, painting, and music (or a combination of those)- the same can be said for various art movements launched during the GPCR in China.
tl;dr- Western stereotypes
我们的原则是党指挥枪，而决不容许枪指挥党.
Socialist Realism is uniformly terrible. Mao's understanding of art is fucking terrible.
Either you believe in art for art's sake, or your opinion on art doesn't matter.
Everything doesn't have to be all serious and political. Fantasy and imagination isn't necessarily reactionary.
Why? Are you just going to blurt a sentence without any actual facts to back it up or do you have a reason for saying this? Either way, your not winning me over with your stunning display of argumentative skills. Regardless of your assertions, socialist realist writers, painters, and other artists continue to be celebrated in the former eastern bloc and internationally more than 20 years after the collapse of the USSR, and regardless of your subjective view of the socialist realist movement as terrible, it barely takes any artistic merit to see that the movement itself was at the very least far from uniform. Do you even know what socialist realism is?
Well this is incredibly ironic- your understanding of Mao, of art, and of his understanding of art seems to be fucking terrible. As a Maoist, no, I don't believe in art for art's sake because, as Mao said:
If you're positing that only believing in art for art's sake is a worthwhile venture then you're at best willfully ignorant, at worst a completely naive and blind fool to the total socio-economic-cultural nature of human civilization. You can create art without being reactionary/revolutionary- but disavowing any movement aimed at furthering revolutionary culture and ideals for being politically motivated is going just as far as saying that all art not politically motivated is worthless and futile.Originally Posted by Chairman Mao
If that's what you want to say, but its coming off as your ill-informed and lackluster opinions on ANYTHING don't matter.
That's a pretty ignorant thing to say. How many soc-realist works have you even read?
Gorky's Mother terrible? Quiet flows the Don terrible?
Not to mention the movies.
That's pretty funny in the context, because Mao himself certainly was an artist. Perhaps not a great one but still.
