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Explore the major changes and continuities in the economic and social experiences of Soviet citizens in the USSR following World War II through an examination of Soviet art. Discover how the Soviets sought to combine the arts with their economic and political ideologies and the connections between artistic changes and political shifts in the same time period.
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Guiding Question Analyze major changes and continuities in the economic and social experiences of Soviet Citizens in the USSR in the period following WWII.
Station Assignment • Answer the following as you look through the slides: • How did the Soviets seek to combine the arts with their economic and political ideologies? • What connections did the changes in later Soviet art have with political changes in the same time period? Try to be specific.
Soviet art can be divided into two basic periods: Early Avant-garde & Socialist Realism
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: 1917 - 1928 Avant-garde: cultural activity that is experimental and innovative, pushing the boundaries of the status quo. Malevich, The Mower
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: Many radical Russian artists living and studying in France and Germany were influenced by Avant-garde art movements such as Dada and Cubism. Popova, Spatial Movement, 192?
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: Most of these artists were communists and returned to Russia after the revolution. Their intent: to use their radical art & design to help create a radical new communist society. Lissitzky, New Soviet Man, 1924
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: They designed posters for the movement employing modernist design. Rodchenko, Poster, 1925
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: They designed posters for the movement employing modernist design. Rodchenko, Portals, 192?
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: They made films with strong communist messages. Their films used bold, avant-garde compositions and they invented many innovative techniques such as montage. The great Russian film maker, Eisenstein
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: They designed clothing, housing, household items, etc. for the proletariat. They wanted their designs to be affordable, mass-produced and, above all, Modern-looking! Rodchenko wearing “workers’ clothes” of his own design
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: The most ambitious project of this period was Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International. Tatlin, “Monument to the Third International”, 1919
Background: Early Soviet Avant-garde: Tatlin’s tower was never built; there wasn’t enough steel in all of Russia after the Revolution to build it! Only a model was built and only this photograph is what survives of this audacious plan! Tatlin, “Monument to the Third International”, 1919
Background: Stalin’s rules for Art: Soviet Art had to be: 1. Proletarian: art relevant to workers and understandable to them; 2. Typical: scenes of everyday life; 3. Realistic: in the optical realism sense; 4. Partisan: supportive of the aims of the State and Communist Party; Cover for a textbook on architecture at Vkhutemas
Background: Soviet art went from this: Abstract, Modernist, Avant-garde and radical; Tatlin, “The Sailor”
Background: To this: Realistic, propagandistic, sentimental; similar in style to 19th century movements such as Romanticism and Neoclassicism. This style became known in the West as ‘Socialist Realism’ Mukhina, “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman”, 1937
Background: Socialist Realism Artists not meeting any of the 4 rules of Socialist Realism were in danger of being censored (at best), or worse, being sent to forced labour camps or outright killed under Stalin’s regime. “Roses for Stalin”, Boris Vladimirski, 1949
Background: Socialist Realism Because it was primarily propaganda, Socialist Realism imaged a world of happy workers, all pitching-in to push forward Soviet society to that utopian worker’s paradise. Even in times of famine and war, the images were positive and up-beat.
Background: Socialist Realism (This can still be seen in the Socialist Realism of North Korea) Even in times of famine and war, the images were positive and up-beat.
Background: Socialist Realism “Anthem of People’s Love”
Period of De-Stalinization A portrait by Anatoly Zverev, a Soviet non-conformist painter in the 1950’s and 1960’s who experimented with abstractionism.
Background: Socialist Realism “Lenin in Study”, 1930 Socialist Realism was the dominant style of Russian art until the late 1980’s when, under Gorbachev, rules were loosened.
Station Assignment • Answer the following as you look through the slides: • How did the Soviets seek to combine the arts with their economic and political ideologies? • What connections did the changes in later Soviet art have with political changes in the same time period? Try to be specific.
