Background on Soviet Art
Socialist realism was the officially sanctioned style of art that
dominated Soviet painting for 50 year's beginning in the early 1930s.In
the history of art,attempts to control and make use of the artist for the
furtherance of the social good have inevitably met with deficulties. The
artists reality often does not please,nor enlighten or instruct.Social or
philosophical test have been applied to art since Plato's time.Despite
the fact that the artist as deviant may be largely a romantic creation of
the nineteenth century. It seems clear that artist have never relished
direction from philosophers,patrons or public.The icon came to Russia
by way of orthodox christianity. It has been said that " if Byzantium was
preeminent in giving the world theology expressed in words.Theology
expressed in image was given preeminently by Russia, Each icon
reminded man of god's continuing involvement in human affairs. The
veneration of the icon brought the people together. The " collective
memory " of Russia was daily plumbed for corroborative evidence of
ancient events.
The confrontation with poland represented the first frontal conflict of
ideas with the west.Moscow defeated the poles and crushed their
attempt to establish a polish Tsar in Moscow. The Russian artists strong
feeling of kinship with the obligation to his people is not new. Joseph
Vladimirov an iconographer of the seventeenth century found it
necessary to defend the artist choice of style. At that time the arts were
supported by those who had the money.Russian artist began to go
abroad to study. One of the best-known genre painters was A.O.
Orlovsky,the son of an irnkeeper who worked not only with the brush
but with the paint of match."The Last Day of Pompei" by karl Bruellow
get great success with the public.Alexander Ivanov,who was a friend of
Gogol epitomizes another turn in Russian art in the middle of
nineteenth century. The prophetic cast of Russian art had to find
another arena or perish by the nineteenth century religion had became
a "cursed question " among the intelligentsia.In 1862 young painters
refused to enter the painting contest.These angry young men were to
be come the Peredvizhniki,the wanderers so called because the were to
forsake academic painting entirely. Ilya Repin was the leader of the
wanderers.
If the motto of the world of art had been "Art for Art's Sake".
Malinovsky embodied the principle of " Art for the Proletariats
Sake".Constructivism "real materials in reak space " was achieved by
Vladimir Tatlin.Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Gorcharova led the
futuristic school. Marx and Engels described the social function of art
and relationship between art and politics. Concerning himself with the
social questions raised by art.Lenin, in 1905 declared in his famous
article " Party Organisation and Party Literature ".The article became
the basis for the control of the arts after the new regime solidified.
Admittedly in the revolutionary and civil war period the poster with its
combined visual and communicative character. By 1931 socialist
direction of the creative arts had been consolidated and a lexicon
evolved for those who would follow it.In the Soviet view, then Art is not
solely an image of man's intellectual perceptions but must serve as an
image of the state as well.Reality for the artist in the west is based
upon individual perception and free choice in the form of expression.
Socialist realism is an art of the Ideal-The Marxist ideal.It represent
moral good in terms every man can understand, which means that its
form is limited to the photographic or naturalistic portrayal of man and
his environment.
