Question by AnimeAddict: What type of Art is Socialist Realism?
Can anyone also tell me some examples of it when Stalin was in power of the USSR?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Spellbound
Socialist Realism is realistic art that emphasises the industrial, the workers and the collective – rather than the individual or the natural landscape.
However, it also showed the leader – whether Stalin, Khrushchev or Brezhnev – often solving complex economic or engineering problems, to the amazement of the experts!
Most of it is really very dull – although there are some very good pieces. It was nothing like the amazing artistic explosion that followed the October Revolution.
Artists that couldn’t work within the new framework were also refused money and exhibition space for their works. Some, like Rodchenko, managed to walk the line between approval and censorship – he focused on photography after 1932, but still managed to cause a furore for some of his works – like Pioneer Girl. Others, such as El Lissitsky, found their commissions drying up until they adopted the official style. Others, notably Kandinsky, moved abroad whilst others – such as the brilliant poet Mayakovsky committed suicide in despair
See:
Art Under Stalin – M Cullerne Bown
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation – Alexei Yurchak
http://www.russianartgallery.com/index.php?page=images&style_id=10&num=56&prev=0&next=0&PHPSESSID=0694e54de21d7cd9364bc809aa86f944
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