Section: Book

Dream Factory Communism: The Visual Culture of the Stalin Period.

Boris Groys, Oksana Bulgakova, Katya Djogot, Hans Günther, Annette Michelson, Alexander Morosov and Martina Weinhart.

The mass culture of the Stalin era also left its mark on the art of the period-in posters and films, but no less in painting and sculpture. This book presents striking examples along with commentaries upon them from works of recent Soz Art.

The all-encompassing mass culture we know today had its beginnings in the years between the wars, with its main avenue being the reproduction and circulation of images via media such as posters and movies. The totalitarian movements of that time succeeded in making radical use of these new opportunities for the consistent transformation of culture, even to the point of instrumentalizing traditional media such as painting and sculpture. The centrally organized Soviet mass culture of the Stalin period is an excellent example of such a highly effective propaganda machine. Starting with late realistic works by Kazimir Malevich, this book presents a macrocosm of Soviet art in the Stalin era-still little-known in the West-as a unified aesthetic phenomenon transcending individual media. Later works of Sots-Art, which view the aesthetics of a totalitarian regime more critically, provide a running visual commentary. The works by contemporary Russian artists such as Erik Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, and Komar & Melamid mark the chasm that separates us from this art today both aesthetically.

Essays by Boris Groys, Oksana Bulgakova, Katya Djogot, Hans Günther, Annette Michelson, Alexander Morosov and Martina Weinhart ~Introduction by Max Hollein.

Artists featured: Isaak Brodski, Aleksander Deineka, Aleksander Gerasimov, Gustav Klutsis, Valentina Kulagina, Aleksander Labas, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Kliment Redko, Aleksander Rodchenko, Erik Bulatov, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Komar & Melamid and others.

References

Boris Groys is professor of Philosophy and Art Theory at the Academy for Design in Karlsruhe, Germany and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University. He has written and edited a number of books, including The Total Art of Stalinism. Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 1992) and Dreamfactory Communism (ed. with Max Hollein, Frankfurt a.M.: Hatje Cantz, 2003)