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In the Soviet Union, and later in Maoist China, theories of mass artistic appeal were used to promote the Revolution both at home and abroad. In Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy they asserted the putative grandeur of the epoch. All too often, art that served the Revolution became "total realism," and always it became a slave to the state and the cult of personality, and ultimately one more weapon in the arsenal of oppression. Igor Golomstock gives a detailed appraisal of the forms that define totalitarian art and illustrates his text with more than two hundred examples of its paintings, posters, sculpture, and architecture, and includes a powerful comparative visual essay which demonstrates the eerie similarity of the official art of these very different regimes.
In 1939, a ten-year-old Igor Golomstock accompanied his mother, a medical doctor, to the vast network of labour camps in the Russian Far East. While she tended patients, he was minded by assorted 'trusty' prisoners – hardened criminals – and returned to Moscow an almost feral adolescent, fluent in obscene prison jargon but intellectually ignorant. Despite this dubious start he became a leading art historian and co-author (with his close friend Andrey Sinyavsky) of the first, deeply controversial, monograph on Picasso published in the Soviet Union. His writings on his 43 years in the Soviet Union offer a rare insight into life as a quietly subversive art historian and the post-Stalin diss...
In this study of the art of Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the author describes the way the avant-garde and modernistic movements of the early 20th century, which sought to create new artistic forms of mass appeal, were quickly expropriated by dictatorial regimes.
Totalitarian Art achieves nothing less than a thorough and serious comparative study of the official art of Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Kim Jong-Il's North Korea, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In the Soviet Union, and later in Maoist China, theories of mass artistic appeal were used to promote the Revolution both at home and abroad. In Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy they asserted the putative grandeur of the epoch. All too often, art that served the Revolution or the new millennial society became "total realism," and always it became a slave to the state and the cult of personality, and ultimately one more weapon in the arsenal of oppression. Igor Golomstock gives a detailed appraisal of the forms that define totalitarian art and illustrates his text with more than two hundred examples of its paintings, posters, sculpture and architecture, and includes a powerful comparative visual essay which demonstrates the eerie similarity of the official art of these very different regimes.
This work considers aspects of the art and architecture of the Soviet Union during the turbulent period of 1917 to 1922, covering a broad range of art, some modernist, some anti-modernist, but all to some degree guided by (and sometimes coerced by) the apparatus of the over-arching state.
Halfin exposes the inner struggles of Soviet Communists to identify themselves with the Bolshevik Party in the 1920s and 1930s. Combining the analysis of autobiography with the study of Communist psychology and sociology and the politics of Bolshevik self-fashioning, Halfin provides new insight into the preconditions of the Great Purge.
How did the Eastern European and Soviet states write their respective histories of art and architecture during 1940s–1960s? The articles address both the Stalinist period and the Khrushchev Thaw, when the Marxist-Leninist discourse on art history was "invented" and refined. Although this discourse was inevitably "Sovietized" in a process dictated from Moscow, a variety of distinct interpretations emerged from across the Soviet bloc in the light of local traditions, cultural politics and decisions of individual authors. Even if the new "official" discourse often left space open for national concerns, it also gave rise to a countermovement in response to the aggressive ideologization of art and the preeminence assigned to (Socialist) Realist aesthetics.
Up to now the culture of the Stalin period has been studied mainly from a political or ideological point of view. In this book renowned specialists from many countries approach the problem rather 'from inside'. The authors deal with numerous aspects of Stalinist culture such as art, literature, architecture, film and popular culture. Yet the volume is more than a mere collection of studies on special issues. It is an inquiry into the very nature of a certain type of culture, its symbols, rites and myths. The book will be useful not only for students of Soviet culture but also for a wider audience.
The Art Firm explores the seemingly unorthodox alliance of the arts, management, and marketing. Art firmsas avant-garde enterprises and arts corporationshave existed for at least two hundred years, using texts, images, and other types of art to create corporate wealth. This book investigates how to apply the methods artists use in creating value to the methods more traditional managers use in running their businesses. Guillet de Monthoux offers a crash course in aesthetics from Kant to Gadamer, showing how aesthetic management and metaphysical marketing can create value. Using case studies of successful art managers from Richard Wagner to Robert Wilson, the author illustrates the creative roleso central to value-making in contemporary economiesperformed by aesthetic play in art firms. Along the way, Guillet de Monthoux points out how responsible aesthetic management and marketing can eradicate the problems of banality and totality, the two capital sins of an art-based economy.
This survey sets state, civic, commercial, church, private and other murals in their historical and cultural contexts. The book covers work by over 400 artists and numerous murals never previously documented or illustrated.