A study of the Socialist Realist aesthetic focusing on the
artist Aleksandr Deineka. Â Dislodging the avant-garde from
its central position in the narrative of Soviet art, Collective
Body presents painter Aleksandr Deineka’s haptic and corporeal
version of Socialist Realist figuration not as the enemy of
revolutionary art, but as an alternate experimental aesthetic that,
at its best, activates and organizes affective forces for
collective ends. Tracing Deineka’s path from his avant-garde
origins as the inventor of the proletarian body in illustrations
for mass magazines after the Revolution through his success as a
state-sponsored painter of monumental, lyrical canvases during the
Great Terror and beyond, Collective Body demonstrates that
Socialist Realism is best understood not as a totalitarian style,
but rather as a fiercely collective art system that organized art
outside the market and formed part of the legacy of the
revolutionary modernisms of the 1920s. Collective Body accounts for
the way the art of the October Revolution continues to capture
viewers’ imaginations through the sheer intensity of its
evocation of the elation of collectivity, making viewers not only
comprehend but also truly feel socialism, and retaining the
potential to inform our own art-into-life experiments within
contemporary political art. Deineka figures in this study not as a
singular master, in the spirit of a traditional monograph, but as a
limited case of the system he inhabited and helped to create.
Â
General
Imprint: |
University of Chicago Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
March 2024 |
First published: |
2024 |
Authors: |
Christina Kiaer
|
Dimensions: |
279 x 216mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
352 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-226-82716-2 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-226-82716-X |
Barcode: |
9780226827162 |
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