Sculpture in Socialist Realism—Soviet Patterns and the Polish Reality

Socialist realism was more than just a trend in art. It was also, and perhaps predominantly, a method of educating the new post-revolutionary society in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In socialism, the state became the commissioner, consumer, and critic of art, treating it as a major propaganda tool. It is thus not surprising that the socialist realism patterns were imposed on artists working in those countries which found themselves in the Soviet sphere of influence after the end of the Second World War. In Poland, which was the Soviet Union’s closest neighbour and one of the larger countries in the post-war “Eastern Bloc”, socialist realism was the only permitted creative method in the years 1949–1956. The ideologists of the new art assigned a special role to sculpture, which, next to posters and murals, was considered the most socially accessible form of artistic expression due to the possibility of placing it in public space. Monuments as material carriers of ideology were used as an expression of power, but they also marked the places of strengthening collective identity. During the period of socialist realism in Poland, sculptural activity followed the main three directions: heroic, portrait, and architectural–decorative. Therefore, this paper aims to present theoretical and ideological assumptions relating to socialist sculpture and their confrontation with realisations in Poland during the period of the Soviet artistic doctrine. The paper also presents the aesthetic paradigms of socialist sculptures and their relationships with the canons of European art, and, for Poland, also with the native art, mainly sacral.

The formation of the art of socialistic realism in Mongolia: the main stages, the role of the Russian art school

Статья посвящена стилю социалистического реализма в изобразительном искусстве Монголии. Выделены основные этапы становления и факторы его формирования: революционные события и утверждение идеологии социализма; поддержка нового направления правительством Монголии, а также влияние российской художественной школы. Показана роль Российской академии художеств, Института им. И.Е. Репина, Института им. В.И. Сурикова в обучении и передаче художественных традиций и навыков монгольским художникам. Отмечено своеобразие монгольского варианта стиля соцреализма, синтезировавшего приемы и методы российской школы живописи с народными формами художественного творчества и буддийским искусством; показана непреходящая значимость и востребованность данного стиля в современном искусстве Монголии. Охарактеризовано творчество ведущих монгольских художников, и проведен искусствоведческий анализ ряда произведений. The article is devoted to the style of socialistic realism in the fine arts of Mongolia. The main stages of formation and factors of its formation are highlighted: revolutionary events and the establishment of the ideology of socialism; support of the new authorities of Mongolia, as well as the influence of the Russian art school. The role of the Russian Academy of Arts, the I.E. Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov in teaching and transferring artistic traditions and skills to Mongolian artists is shown. The peculiarity of the Mongolian version of the style of socialist realism, which synthesized the techniques and methods of the Russian school of painting with folk forms of art and Buddhist art, is noted; the enduring importance and relevance of this style in the contemporary art of Mongolia is shown. The work of leading Mongolian artists is characterized and an art history analysis of a number of works is carried out.

Hans Sedlmayr (1896–1984): Structural Approach and Pre-Modern Values

The prevailing part of art historians, critics and theoreticians from the mid-1950s even until today feels related to the means of expression of the modernist art trends from the last decade of 19th c. until the end of 1960-s. Modernism has become a sacred text, whose complexity should be interpreted, but not criticized. Sedlmayr’s conception of art is built on moral, religious, aesthetic and political grounds, which are the very reason for the actuality of his works – both in the specialized sphere of art history and in the wider public debate on values. That is why I will analyse his structural approach mainly in relation to his anti-modern conception of art. This is the task of this study. Sedlmayr’s effort to turn art history into a “strict science” is an independent part of his scientific pursuit; it is in relation, but is not subordinate to his conception of modern art. Those publications of his are discussed but only in the specialized literature on history of the methods in humanities, while his conception against modern art acquires an exceptional popularity. Because of that reason his theoretic contribution to the study of art remains in a penumbra. I argue that Sedlmayr’s conception has the following coinciding points with the official understanding of art in the time of socialism: – A denial to estimate art with aesthetic criteria, which the ideologists of socialist realism define as formalism, and Sedlmayr as aesthetism; – In socialism art should represent a positive ideal; Sedlmayr calls this ideal “human measure”; – Art should habituate to morals; – A conviction that the modern art from the end of 19th c. on is decadent; – A criticism against the “dehumanization” of art.

FORMATION OF THE NEW HERO IMAGE IN RUSSIAN ART OF THE 1920’S AND 1930’S

The art of the Soviet era attracts more and more attention of researchers and the public year by year. The exhibitions held over the past decades in Russia and abroad, the published monographs dedicated to works of art of the era and particular artists, the international creative contacts in cultural field — all of that has introduced previously unknown works into art history studies, which has allowed to re-evaluate the objectives and tasks of the art of the period and the development of the artistic process in general. That is why it is of great interest to study the ways the plastic arts formed and developed in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The 1917 revolution in its foundations had not just a change in social and political reality, but also a change in the very essence of man. The new era demanded a new hero, shaped his appearance in its works. The soviet man, thought of as a new man, became a fundamentally new object of art. If the 1920’s became the time of the search in proletarian art and the flourishing of avant-gardism, then in the 1930’s the objective of art in building the lifeworld of a new man began to be understood much narrower and stricter, and this Man who perceives art began to be described as a “normal” (that is, average, “ordinary”) consumer of cultural tradition. The “New Man” in the plastic arts of the 1920’s and 1930’s was formed as the new hero of society; avant-garde artists sought his originality in the images of generalized and abstract aviators, peasants, women; artists of socialist realism began to form the images of “typical” heroes of the time (military men, athletes, rural workers, scientists) as new “Renaissance people”, equally ready for work and defense. At the same time, two main tendencies, two directions that correspond to the two tasks of socialist realism, clearly lie in the image of the “new” Soviet man: the depiction of reality (that is, the new Soviet man that really exists) and the depiction of the ideal (that is, the ideal man).

The constitution of the academic accordion art in the Moldavian SSR in the period 1940–1960

With the annexation of Bessarabia to the USSR, the process of professionalization of accordionists, convering all levels of artistic education in the country, is influenced by the evolution of performing arts in Eastern Europe (especially Russia, Belarus, Ukraine). The academic bases are consolidated by illustrious pedagogues, such as Iziaslav Birbraier, Valentin Zagumionov (I. Birbraier’s student), Ivan Folomkin (one of the first graduates of the Gnesin State Musical-Pedagogical Institute in Moskow) and others. Durind the years 1940–1960, the establishment of the accordion interpretive art in the Moldavian SSR was directly conditioned by the massive ideologization of the ex-Soviet cultural space, which largely blurred the national identity aspect in the accordion academization process. Based on the classical-romantic aesthetics „adjusted” by the doctrine of socialist realism, the professionalization of Bessarabian instrumentalists is distinguished by a prominent conservatism compared to other accordion schools of that period, such as German, Danish, Czech etc. (we refer primarily to the compositional domain). Even if in this time segment the accordion failed to fully integrate into the „family” of European academic instruments, taking into account some areas (organological, compositional, pedagogical, interpretive) that needed to be intensely perfected, the first postwar decades can still be considered the reference point for establishing the academic status of chromatic harmonics in the Moldavian SSR

The Georgian period of the filmmaker Otar Ioseliani

The creation of the film director Otar Ioseliani has a significant role in the evolution of Georgian cinematographic art. Since the 1950s, Ioseliani had been active in RSS Georgia, and since the 1980s, thanks to ideological circumstances, he continued his work as a filmmaker in France. Ioseliani imposed himself through a special style in the detection and cinematic expression of the negative parts of everyday life. That is why most of his films were not accepted by Soviet film critics, acclaiming them as negative works that did not fit the Soviet reality and lifestyle. Those works corresponded more to the conditions of critical realism than to socialist realism - the dogma of the totalitarian regime. As arguments for these ideas will serve the analysis (thematic, ideational background, cinematic expression, etc.) of Otar Ioseliani’s films from the Georgian period, starting with the bachelor’s thesis Watercolor (1958) and continuing with the films that became known to the general public: November, The Last Leaf, Pastoral, Once Upon a Time there was a Blackbird.

A Slap in the Face of Socialist Taste: The Novel "Nikolai Nikolaevich" by Yuz Aleshkovsky As a Contestation of the Rules of Socialist Realism

Yuz Aleshkovsky wrote the novel „Nikolai Nikolaevich” in the 1970s. For a long time, the work was disseminated in samizdat and it appeared in print for the first time only in 1980. Composed under the censorship conditions of socialist realism dominant in the arts, this work violates strict taboos imposed on subjects related to sexuality and stylistic solutions which exclude sub-normative vocabulary. In many aspects, the composition of the novel resembles the pattern of the production novel. At the same time, the writer negate the values propagated in the art of socialist realism: the main character is a former pickpocket, who built a comfortable life for himself as a sperm donor in a laboratory and talks about his professional achievements in a language saturated with profanity and elements of criminal jargon. The plot of the work is based on an amalgamation of components characteristic of ideologized literary texts with elements that were unacceptable in such texts. The introduction into the novel of the theme of corporality, and human sexuality, which was a taboo topic in socialist realist literature, introduces a major dissonance and induces produces a comic effect.

Turandot Carla Gozziego na scenie Teatru Ludowego w Nowej Hucie

The cultural peculiarity of Nowa Huta, a city founded after World War II, resulted from the lack of any artistic habits of the young audience. It was the Ludowy Theatre which, since 1955, had been bearing the responsibility for shaping up the expectations of the spectators in the new district of Krakow [Cracow] – dynamically developing but still devoid of any cultural foundations. The team of Skuszanka soon gained recognition among critics and elevated the newly created institution to the rank of an equal partner in the nationwide cultural exchange. The image of the Ludowy Theatre as a centre of progressive and experimental art quickly became even more profound, since it looked modern compared to the rather monotonous background of Krakow's theatres at that time. Thus, it became an institution whose opening, coinciding with the symbolic date of the Polish October, inaugurates a new season of the theatrical research. The aim of this paper is to illustrate this phenomenon by describing and analysing the performance that many of the contemporary critics called the flagship spectacle of the Nowa Huta theatre, i.e. Princess Turandot by Carlo Gozzi, directed by Krystyna Skuszanka. This play, drawing on fairy-tale plots and colourful Italian folk comedies, became not only an expression of opposition to socialist realism, but also a harbinger of the future activities of this institution, and perhaps even a reflection of the condition of the Polish theatre at that time.

Artist of «troubled silence.» Mykola Bezdilny

The purpose of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of the paintings of the amateur artist of the period of socialist realism Mykola Bezdilny and to draw parallels with the professional art of the 1970s and 1980s. Methodology. Methods of systematization, art analysis, historical and comparative methods are applied. The scientific novelty is to identify the influence of centralized creative structures of the second half of the twentieth century for the self-realization of artists who acquired creative skills in their own way. In particular, the figure of the artist Mykola Bezdilny was chosen for the analysis as a bright representative of the amateur Ternopil region, who showed the ability to admire not only different genres and types of fine arts but also constantly analyze other interpretations of the painting, "try", "move" in technical and philosophical and aesthetic terms. The obtained results are important for further research of the problems of amateur and amateur fine arts in Ukraine. Conclusions. It is determined that M. Bezdilny, as a bright representative of socialist-realist amateur art, reached a high level of painting due to systematic work and interaction with professional painting. It focused on the true essence of the work, its depth, the transfer of harmony of nature, rather than the external beauty of the picture. Against the background of features that are characteristic of the work of many amateur artists and amateurs revealed a clear tendency of M. Bezdilny to his favorite plot, composition, constant change of sound of paint, attempts at impressionistic dynamic brushstroke, and complex color.