Political art in Russia

Political art in Russia

Politics as a part of human life is connected with all other spheres of social life, including art. The interweaving of these seemingly opposite areas is a topic for numerous discussions and often opposing assessments. It is obvious that many creative individuals will always be in the service of the state, and for the state this is one of the ways of interacting with people.

In different eras

Aesthetically minded people expressed their political preferences through art, which presupposes, on the one hand, the presence of “pure” art, excluding ideology, and on the other, works with political overtones. In the 18th century, a new chapter in Russian history opened. After the reforms carried out by Peter I, including in the field of culture, the official art, portrait genre, primarily the representative ceremonial portrait, developed.

The artists created idealized majestic images of rulers, leaders, warriors and commanders

Emphasizing the strength and power of the state. In the middle of the 19th century, two different attitudes towards art were formed in Russian culture: the aesthetic theory of “pure art” and the work of civilian artists who were directly involved in social and political life. Thus, the leading Russian masters of critical realism of the second half of the 19th century saw themselves as public figures, critics denouncing the existing system, defended their positions.

Official Soviet art

inseparable from the national component and the life of the people, is characterized by the enormous role of ideology. Despite the political “pressure”, works of ideological content were of great importance in the formation of the social and aesthetic consciousness of people. When in 1934, at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, Maxim Gorky formulated the basic principles of socialist realism, a new era of Soviet art began, with tighter ideological control and the propaganda of the socialist system.

The masters were divided into two opposite groups: artists of the official direction, who performed commissioned works in the understandable language of socialist realism, and artists of alternative art, who embodied the figurative symbolic perception of modernity. The latter broke through the Iron Curtain in the 1970s and abandoned canonical socialist realism. Nevertheless, art developed in the direction required for the state.

The practice of state orders and thematic exhibitions was expanding. At the same time, it was not easy in the USSR to become a participant in one or another exhibition: in order to get into the coveted list of exhibitors, one had to please with the plot, the size of the picture, even the name. There is a story when one of the Soviet Moscow artists, who was not admitted to the exhibition with his new work on the theme of the demonstration (after its completion, the pioneer children carry rolled posters over their shoulders, slogans, banners), changed its name. So the picture “They saw Stalin!” was included in the exhibition.

Creativity and politics

Reflecting the relationship between people, social communities, their participation in the affairs of the country, region, city, are undoubtedly linked just like emergency water damage restoration corona ca for water damage. In the 21st century, concern for universal human values, including by means of the visual arts, is one of the important issues of politics.

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