Socialist Art 9


Monument of 1962 very directly reflects Mukhina’s work, challenging traditional Indonesian sculpture in its open body positions and modern dress revealing muscle and flesh. It tested the Indonesians technically and financially – Sukarno sold his personal car to help with the costs – but it remains central in Jakarta today. Soviet influence impacted art


practices throughout the Asia-Pacific region in many ways, especially the idea that everyone, particularly


‘workers, farmers and soldiers’, would have access to the arts. Te art schools in the USSR in the late 1920s decreed that 60% of places were to be for the working classes, 30% for farmers and the rest for the former upper classes. Te USSR was the first government to stipulate such ideas, edicts that were copied directly in Communist Asia – China, Vietnam, North Korea – but also had an impact in Australia. Te Community Arts Board of the Australia Council was founded on the ideal of access for all, a criterion contentiously overriding the assessment of ‘quality.’ Celebration of


‘women’s’ work, community art classes, access in working spaces like factories, and in country or regional areas, public art, and the employment of arts officers by local councils are all children of Soviet practices. Collective practices, where individuals set their own interests as secondary to the group, originate literally from the Soviets. Political posters are a highlight of the response, usually in places like Australia including a good dose of iconoclasm. Ann Newmarch (1945-2022) humourously applied Mao’s dictum about women’s equal place with a family snap of her aunt on holiday holding up her husband. Socialist Realism has been


expressed in many ways. An important part was the grand history painting, particularly learnt by the Chinese, who were keen for images to tell the story of their new People’s Republic. Russian academicians, like Aleksandr Gerasimov’s (1881-1963) portrait


of Stalin


Voroshilov on the walls in Moscow,


and General of the


Kremlin, now in the Tretyakov Gallery


depict an


idealised leadership, literally looked up to as they stand solidly together gazing out over Moscow towards


‘destiny’. In China, works like Shen Jaiwei’s (b 1948) Standing Guard for our Great Motherland were similarly recognised for their capacity to tell a tale of strength and determination. In a work highly praised by Madame Mao, again we literally look up to two soldiers transformed into generic heroes gazing out across the border river towards the (at that time) hostile Soviet Union. Posters and visual magazines


made in the USSR, encouraged from the time of the Revolution and created by artists like Aleksandr Rodchenko (1881-1956), and El Lissitzky (1880-1941) spread widely, especially in China, with huge print runs in both places. Tey adapted traditional imagery – the folk print and papercut – often combining word and image, with pared down colours, and simplified lines, while adding exaggerated heroic figures with clenched fists and glaring eyes that have become icons of Chinese art. Japan has an interesting role in this,


with its own Communist Party under pressure from its military command before the Second World War. However, the government recognised the power of Soviet graphic imagery and used it to convey a very different political agenda. FRONT magazine, produced to


1950s featuring


to Doi Moi personal,


in the 1980s, human-scale


imagery with small works often of domestic or pastoral scenes. Tese works are frequently painted in watercolour, using the techniques learnt from their School of Paris colonial-era teachers. Te Communist Vietnamese


understanding of the emotive power of the arts is seen in the role of soldier- artists


during the Vietnam


FRONT, Japan, No 1-2, 1942, Navy Issue, lithograph, 41.5 x 19 cm


(American) War against the capitalist West. One of these artists remembered: ‘Te morale was high. We soldier-artists felt thrilled with our task, witnessing the battle. On the other hand, our troops felt honoured at having soldier-artists in the company, our drawings glorified their sacrifice and even their death’. Te countries of Southeast Asia


mostly had access to Socialist Realism through China with artists unusually using its power, to critique rather than glorify the status quo. Indonesian Semsar Siahaan (1952-


Women Hold Up Half the Sky! by Ann Newmarch (1945-2022), Australia, 1978, screenprint, 80 x 56 cm, courtesy the artist’s estate


support the Greater East Asia Co- Prosperity Sphere during the War, follows the Soviet USSR in Construction graphic masterpiece (by Rodchenko and others) in its use of angled views, text and image, duo- tones and bled edges, but with a further


refinement seen in ukiyo-e


printed portraits. And the quality of the production is a notch higher. As has been noted, Socialist


Realism can be a flexible style. Te Vietnam National Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi privileges its own form of Socialist Realism produced from the


2005) painted his Olympia during Suharto’s regime, and the Filipino collective Sanggawa (established 1995) made Te Second Coming just after Marcos had left. Tey are two very large, grand history paintings, full of political message, humour and intent. Te first refers to the Manet painting of the Parisian prostitute refigured as the blonde tourist in Bali fawned over by officials while the people starve. Te second comments on the failings of the powerful Catholic Church, here epitomised by the arrival of Pope John Paul in Manila. Te artists wrote: ‘Religion and entertainment then became the prevalent theme … Whatever was happening in Manila back in 1994 and early 1995 – the Miss Universe brouhaha; the Pope’s record-


1980s and 1990s, relatively recently, but what of today? Is this art still relevant? Te Chinese say it is alive and well – witness the imagery made for the 100th anniversary celebration of the Chinese Communist Party in 2021: socialist in content, with the bravura and theatrical dramatisation of earlier grand set pieces. Te same occurs in places like Indonesia. Te


last Documenta


The 3 July and 24 July Proclamations are Chairman Mao’s Great Strategic Plans! Unite to strike surely, accurately and relentlessly at the handful of class enemies, China, 1968, lithograph, 105.5 x 75.5 cm, Tianjin Fine Arts Publishing House, Landsberger Collection, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam


breaking crowd on his second visit; the EDSA anniversary [of Marcos’s overthrow and “People Power”] celebration which preceded a fraud- laden election; the rise to power of Mike Velarde’s El Shaddai, a religious organisation that sayss liking money is not at all a sin; and through it all sin, sin, and more sin with the good Cardinal hogging the political limelight as usual – these events


became fodder for more


gawang editoryal (editorial artworks). Te murals tend to hold up a mirror to Philippines society, asking the people to confront and laugh at their demigods, so they may discover their real voice from within’. Tese works were made in the


exhibition in Germany, in 2022, was about collectivism, curated by the Indonesian group Ruangrupa (established 2000) and including the Yogyakarta collective Taring Padi (established 1998), whose work fulfils all the Socialist Realist criteria. Tey made a series of images, a set of which is now in the Queensland Art Gallery collection, in the left-wing medium of woodcuts, 250 cm high, from 2003, depicting the common people, including protestors carrying the sign ‘build solidarity between workers and oppressed people’. Tis year in Australia, now-


Sydney-based Shen Jiawei (who painted Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland, which Madame Mao commended) has created a huge work


on the history of


Communism, celebrated in a new documentary film winning at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, where it is described as a ‘parable of the history of Communism in the style that has established him as one of the world’s great history painters’. Socialist Realism is part of the


• Soviet Socialist Realism and Art in the Asia-Pacific is published by Routledge, ISBN 9781032661308, £135


history of the Asia-Pacific region. It should be known, celebrated where it is merited, and placed it in its rightful context.


New Books on Contemporary Art in Asia


Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland by Shen Jiawei, China, 1974, oil on canvas, 189 x 159 cm, courtesy Long Museum Collection Shanghai and the artist


Art in Hong Kong Portrait of a City in Flux Enid Tsui Hot Topics in the Art World published in association with Sotheby’s Institute of Art


‘A nuanced interrogation of Hong Kong’s evolving art scene ... essential reading for those seeking deeper insights into the city’s artistic transformation.’


Worker and Kolkhoz Woman by Vera I Mukhina (1889-1953), USSR, 1937, stainless steel, 24.5 m high


– Xiaowen Zhu, Director of esea contemporary, Manchester and British Council Arts and Creative Economy Advisor


Power, Politics and the Street Contemporary Art in


Southeast Asia After 1970 Iola Lenzi


‘Iola Lenzi has condensed a lifetime’s research into a scholarly yet highly readable panorama of Southeast Asian art — the perfect introduction to this fascinating world.’


– Tash Aw, Novelist and critic


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ASIAN ART | WINTER 2024


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