A GROTESQUE, twisted, naked tigure is hanging upside COWI from a stake. He is being pierced will socals ov iwo cacculoners a man and a women, also naked except for thick leather belts and boots. Crowded around are the clothed figures and impassive faces of Red Army commissars. scene is very familiar. In atmosphere, if not in precise form, it is a crucifixion.
The painting is Alexander Makhov's Execution. Although the sevies -OT UnOTTICIal soviet artists vary widely, this scene is Lypical m us preoccupation with the grotesque it is almost a fantasy world - and with its evo cation of more or less explicit religious symbolism to repression in the Soviet Union.
In this respect Paul Kussell's very critical review of the exhibition does not go tar enough in discussing the explicitly reactionary content of many of the paintings. I suspect that, paradoxically, this is partly a product of the incorrect aesthetic framework in which ne sets his criticisms.
He maintains that what is wrong with Socialist Realism ('a sound revolutionary programme') is simply the degeneration of the Soviet non. me core or us cocaine 1s that there should be a party and state artsto gorv and uono e ine Yet. in sharo contrast attempt to advance the development of art as a means of com menting on reality.
which comrade Docials all.
Russell is correct to bring up, is not a method or a programme. issue is not 'political' painting, but the formation of particular ways of looking at reality. The basis of this must be Realism, not in the sense understood by Zhdanov and the Stalinist cultural policemen, but in opposition to rormansm (represented by most of the paintings in tnis exnibition) and watur alism (represented by Socialst The development of modern and Cézanne has provided the basis or such a avnamic Drescala tion of reality, an interpretation of Ine working and relationships o the real world. No prescriptions can be laid down for either the form or content of this Realism. The work of artists like Tatlin, Lissitsky and Malevich in the 1920s - abstract rather than figurative — would all fall within this definition.
Much ol the painting in unis exhibition is the mirror image of onca soviet are corte oned doctrines laid down by the Academy i suostures a supposcary classless formalism. The 'glorificanon or une proclarial become. the glorification of those ideoloRussian chauvinism which is so characteristic of Socialist Realism itself. This can be seen most clearly in Plavinsky's The Walls of Novgorod Only two artists consistently 2 DOLORER Comrade Russell says that the work of Ilya navakov would be ar nome mans Western collection of Pop art. 1 think not. he function of Pop art is an elevation of everyday objects to the status of art.
Kabakov uses a very similar style to question the nature and functions of these objects. The device of using captions to supplement the visual image, also favoured by Western Pop artists, becomes for Kabakov a way or caeng the object.
Most of his painting is trivial, if often very witty (particularly a senes or pamungs or a man In a shower). But his view of his own metnoa is valuable. il preters a dialogue, presupposing a correlation between the content of the painting and the perception of the spectator and vice versa. Painting and spectator have a foreknowledge of one another and a dialogue between them springs immediately, because it is a dialogue they have conducted before, albeit separately It is a pity that Ernst Neizvestny, the only artist of high international standing, is so tninty represented ptures, enough to convince us that he has a part to play in the struggle -or a sentine socialist art in ne Soviet Union, and a number of pen ane nk craw nes These two artists apart, pamungs are aisappomning and derivative, though an interesting document or me creas or arusu repression. In subject matter and style they are the solzhenitsyns of the visual arts, but without his talent. Igor Golomshtok's essay in the catalogue tries to play down the impact of Western influences on these painters. But many of the paintings are second rate copies of the major Western movements of recent years.
It snot surprising mal une formative period for many of these Dainters was ne nau pera usanon of the Krushchev years when WesLern an oclan to be exoned m Moscow and Leningrad. Oscar Rabin's The Chemise for ex ample, makes a specific acknowledgment to these exhibitions.
My conclusion, with the exception of one or two artists, would have to be the same as Paul Russell's. The low quality of the painting is a critique by default of the regime which finds it necessary to ban it.
The exhibition continues until 27 February at the Institute of ConTemporary Ars Nost HOuse ne