8 Socialist Art S


oviet Socialist Realism and Art in the Asia-Pacific examines the history and


significance of Russian Socialist Realism for Asian art – and extends to the experience in Australia. It argues for its importance socially in this region and as an art movement poses the question, if this was the case, why has it been written out of art historical thinking? Te issue is increasingly being researched in individual countries about their own art, especially in China, but this is the first cross-regional analysis of this impact. Te book evaluates how the policies


and practices of art developed by the Soviets have influenced in the Asia- Pacific region, then addresses the art itself, first from 1917 until the decades after the Second World War, followed by the new era of protest from around 1970 to today, focused particularly on China, Vietnam, the two Koreas, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia. Te text demonstrates how each society adopted and adapted the Russian example to create some of the most important imagery of recent history. It was imagery central to the creation of


local identity, transforming the


heroic, nationalistic, ideologically driven, generic ideals of Socialist Realism established in Russia. Joseph Stalin was no great lover of


the arts, unlike his Communist leader peers, but he recognised their power to stir his people’s souls in pursuit of his political goals to change culture more broadly. Stalin and the writer Maxim Gorky are both credited with defining, in 1934, the new style that would promote this: a style called Socialist Realism, socialist in content and realist in style. One of the burdens this new style


had to bear in the capitalist West in later years was that it was labelled as formulaic, static and unfeeling. Te irony of this position was that its purpose was the opposite. It was meant to be an expression ‘saturated with ideas and feelings,’ wrote Lenin’s arts colleague Anatoly Lunacharsky. Such words were


repeated under


Stalin with his arts leader, Andrei Zhdanov, saying artists must be ‘able to show our heroes … to catch a glance at our tomorrow’. Beyond a dislike of Cubism and similar movements, how they achieved this was surprisingly elastic: the definition of style was never further specified. Te book follows the support and


successful promotion of this art internationally by the Soviets, in events like the 1937 International Fair in Paris, success that prompted increasing alarm in the UK, leading, as their website has said, as a counter- measure to the establishment of the British Council. Post-Second World War, the success of Soviet cultural activities led the Americans to establish the United States Information Service, and in turn their cultural institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, promoted American abstract and conceptual art internationally. Te Cold War provided the


context for discrediting Socialist Realism in the ‘first’ world. Western art historiography provided the means to do this. It identified four criteria. First, it applied the Western- driven concept of connoisseurship, with the idea of fine and poor ‘taste’, positioning Socialist Realism as ‘bad taste’, or kitsch. Second, it contrasted Enlightenment ideas of elite individual genius with Socialist Realism’s


apparent disregard for


individualistic creative processes. Tird, the related idea of popular (mass) visual art and Socialist


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Realism’s focus on mass popularity was discredited;


and fourth, it


critiqued any role of the state in art’s creation, specifically, the paramount role of the state in Socialist Realism and its apparently automatically deleterious effect on the quality of the work produced. All this needs closer evaluation. An aspect of this involves looking at the impact of the word


‘propaganda’, which only from the First World War, took on a negative meaning in the West (in the East it still is benign) in relation to how Socialist Realism should be perceived. Tis also should be examined – Napoleon reining in his wild-eyed stallion,


propagated through


engravings, is as much a fiction as any Socialist Realist painting. Beyond this is the art. If it had no


strength as art, no one would care, but the style’s spread and impact through the Asia-Pacific highlights that this is not the case. Contrary to Western thinking, it was the visual power of this work describing an idealised new world that has stirred countless millions throughout the last century in the Asia-Pacific. Let us look at some examples. Vera


Mukhina (1889-1953) created the Worker and Farm Woman in 1937 for the International Fair in Paris for Stalin,


representing the USSR


(Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), competing with what Hitler was organising to represent Germany. It is huge, 24 metres high, the size of an six storey building, made by a


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Olympia, Identity with Mother and Child by Semsar Siahaan (1952-2005), Indonesia, 1987, oil on canvas, 139.5 x 289 cm, collection of the National Gallery Singapore, courtesy of the National Heritage Board, Singapore


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The Second Coming by Sanggawa (established 1995), the Philippines, 1994, oil on canvas, 207 x 619 cm, collection of the Singapore Art Museum


SOVIET SOCIALIST REALISM AND ART IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC


by Alison Carroll


The Cold War provided the context for discrediting


Socialist Realism


Welcome Monument by Henk Nangtung (1921-91) and Edhi Sunarso (1932-2016), Indonesia, 1962, bronze, six metres high, Jalan Thamrin, Jakarta. Photo: IVAA Collection, Yogyakarta


woman, yes, in the new material of stainless steel, yes. Besides its subject matter and its recognisable human form (its ‘realism’), it had the subtext demonstrating new emancipation for women and experimentation with new technologies. More than that is its artistic strength, recognised by the press at the time as ‘the greatest


work of sculpture of the 20th century’. In


far-away Indonesia, the


Communist Party had grown to be the third largest in the world. Leading artists like Hendra Gunawan (1918- 1983) and Sudjojono (1913-1985), later elected to parliament, were members, and were sent to the USSR and East Germany respectively on


cultural tours. President Sukarno himself went to Moscow in 1956 and was so impressed that he brought back both ideas and literal Russian sculpture (the Farmer Statue is one example) to his new post- Independence capital, Jakarta. Henk Nangtung (1921-1991) and Edhi Sunarso‘s (1932-2016) Welcome


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