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Western Modernism Vs. Socialist Realism

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Western Modernism Vs. Socialist Realism It is well known that the Cold War was represented in the context of art by a conflict between modernist – or more precisely, abstract – art on the one hand, and figurative, realist – or rather, socialist realist – art on the other. When we speak about the Cold War, we usually have in mind the period after WWII. However, the 01/10 ideological conflict between abstract and realist art was formulated before WWII, and all the relevant arguments were merely reiterated later without any substantial changes. This essay will discuss and illustrate the genealogy and development of the conflict between the Western and Soviet concepts of art before and during the Cold War. Boris Groys ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFrom the Western side, the foundational document that formulated and theorized this conflict was Clement Greenberg’s famous essay The Cold War “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939). According to Greenberg, the avant-garde operates mainly by between the means of abstraction: it removes the “what” of the work of art – its content – to reveal its “how.” The avant-garde reveals the materiality of the Medium and the m s i artworks and the techniques that traditional art l a e used to produce them, whereas kitsch simply R Message: t s uses these techniques to produce certain i l a i effects, to make an impression on the primitive, c o uncritical spectator. Accordingly, the avant-garde S Western . s is proclaimed to be “high art,” and kitsch is v m deemed low art. This hierarchy within the art s i Modernism vs. n r system is related to a social hierarchy. Greenberg e d believes that the connoisseurship that makes a o M Socialist spectator attentive to the purely formal, n r e technical, material aspects of a work of art is t s e accessible only to those who “could command W Realism : leisure and comfort that always goes hand and e g s 1 y a hand with cultivation of some sort.” For o s r s G e Greenberg this means that avant-garde art can s M i r e hope to get its financial and social support only o h B t Ê from the same “rich and cultivated” people who d 9 n 1 a historically supported traditional art. Thus the 0 2 m r u avant-garde remains attached to the bourgeois i e d b 2 e ruling class “by an umbilical cord of gold.” m M e v ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊGreenberg believed that the art of socialist e o h n t realism (but also of Nazi Germany and fascist n — e e Italy) was also a version of kitsch. He understood 4 w 0 t 1 this art as work that addressed the uneducated e # b l r masses. Thus, socialist realism appears as a low, a a n r W bad form of art, mere visual propaganda – u d o l j o comparable to Western commercial advertising. x C u l e f Greenberg explains why it is still so difficult to h - e T include the art of socialist realism in the Western system of musealized art representation. In recent decades the art system has begun to include everything that used to seem aesthetically different – non-Western local cultures, particular cultural identities, etc. However, if we understand socialist realism as a version of kitsch, then it is not different in this sense of reflecting a non-Western cultural 11.14.19 / 17:26:52 EST 02/10 In 1938, Alphonse Larencic designed cells for captured Francoists that inspiredÊdisorientation, depression, and deep sadness.ÊPhotograph: Archivo Fotogrfico del Museo Extremeo e IberoamericanoÊde Arte Contemporneo, Badajoz, Spain. Published in Pedro G. Romero, Silo: Archivo F.X. (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa, 2009) 11.14.19 / 17:26:52 EST On October 23, 1940, Himmler visits the detention center on calle Vallmajor in Barcelona. Archive of La Vanguardia.ÊPhoto: Carlos Pérez de Rozas. Image from Pedro G. Romero, Silo: Archivo F.X. (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa, 2009).Ê 11.14.19 / 17:26:52 EST Francisco Infante, Projects of Reconstruction of the Star Sky,Ê1965–67. Gouache.ÊÊ 11.14.19 / 17:26:52 EST identity, such as Soviet identity. It is simply greatest when it remains subconscious. A good aesthetically low, aesthetically bad. Thus, one example of this strategy is the famous treatise by cannot treat socialist realism in the usual terms Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art of difference, cultural identity, inclusion, and (1911). For Kandinsky, every artwork influences aesthetic equality. In this sense, we are still the spectator not through its subject matter but living in an artistic situation informed by the Cold through a certain choice of colors and forms. War: the war between good and bad, between the Later Kandinsky states that “brainwork” needs to dispassionate contemplation of the medium and 05/10 “outweigh the intuitive part of creativity,” ending, the use of this medium for the propagation of perhaps, with “the total exclusion of messages and affects – the war between the ‘inspiration,’” so that future artworks are medium and the message. “created by calculation” alone.3 In other words, ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHowever, the interpretation of modernist, Kandinsky sees “high art” not as the and particularly abstract, art as purely thematization of a neutral medium but as having autonomous art manifesting human freedom its own operational goal – irrational, from all utilitarian goals is an ideological illusion subconscious influence on the spectator. The that contradicts the real history of the avant- biggest part of the treatise is dedicated to how garde and the goals of avant-garde artists. particular colors and forms can influence the Avant-garde artists also wanted to influence psyche of spectators and produce specific their audience, including an uneducated moods in them. That is why Kandinsky was so audience, but they did it in a different way interested in the concept of the compared to traditional artists. They understood Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). Here the their artworks not as representations of so- individual is placed not outside the artwork, or in called reality, nor as vehicles for ideological front of it – but inside the artwork, and totally m s messages, but as autonomous things – as real as i immersed in it. Such an artificial environment l a cars, trains, and planes. Not accidentally, avant- e can create a powerful subconscious effect on the R t garde artists mostly refrained from using the s spectator, who becomes a visitor to, if not a i l a term “abstract”; rather, they spoke about their i prisoner of, the artwork. c art as “real,” “objective,” “concrete” – in o ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊLet me now cite an interesting historical S . opposition to illusionistic traditional art. The s example of this strategy. In 1938, during the v avant-garde returned to the ancient Greek m Spanish Civil War, the French-Slovenian poet, s i n definition of art as techne, as the production of r artist, and architect Alphonse Laurencic used e artificial things. Speaking in Marxist terms, the d the ideas in Concerning the Spiritual in Art to o M avant-garde operated not on the level of decorate cells at a prison in Barcelona where n r superstructure but directly on the level of the e Republicans held captured Francoists. He t s material base. It did not send messages but tried e designed each cell like an avant-garde art W to change the environment in which people lived : installation. The compositions of color and form e g s y and worked. And avant-garde artists believed a inside the cells were chosen with the goal of o s r s G e that people would be changed by this new causing the prisoners to experience s M i r environment when they began to accommodate e disorientation, depression, and deep sadness. To o h B t to it. Thus, the artists of Russian constructivism, Ê achieve this, he relied on Kandinsky’s theories of d 9 n 1 German Bauhaus, and Dutch de Stijl hoped that a color and form. Indeed, later the prisoners held 0 2 m r the reduction, simplification, and geometrization u in these so-called “psychotechnic” cells did i e d b of architecture, design, and art would produce e report extreme negative moods and m M e rationalistic and egalitarian attitudes in the v psychological suffering due to their visual e o h n t minds of the people who would populate the new environment. Here the mood becomes the n — e urban environments. This hope was reawakened e message – the message that coincides with the 4 w 0 t later through Marshall McLuhan’s famous 1 medium. The power of this message is shown in e # b l formula “the medium is the message.” Here r Himmler’s reaction to the cells. He visited the a a n r W McLuhan professes his belief that the psychotechnic cells after Barcelona was taken u d o l j technology of information transmission o by the fascists (Laurencic was put on trial and x C u l e influences people more than the information f executed), and said that the cells showed the h - itself. One should not forget that McLuhan e T “cruelty of Communism.” They looked like initially explained and illustrated this formula Bauhaus installations and, thus, Himmler using examples from cubist paintings. understood them as a manifestation of ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThus, avant-garde artists shifted the work Kulturbolschevismus (cultural Bolshevism). In of influencing from the conscious to the fact, the military trial against Laurencic took subconscious level – from content to form.
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