Monthly Archive: May 1999

Matthew Cullerne Bown, Socialist Realist Painting. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. xvii + 506 pp. (75.00 Hardcover)

The art of soviet socialist realism like that of Fascist Germany, has been inextricably linked to to ideological (totalitarian), rather than aesthetic, considerations by scholars and critics. Both Russian and Western art historians have codified this connection to such an extent that almost any discussion of Soviet artists or their works invariably turns to the political and social implications of cultural events rather than a consideration of the art itself. In Socialist Realist Painting, Matthew Cullerne Bown attempts … Read more

Karl Gernot Kuehn: Caught. The Art of Photography in the German Democratic Republic, University of California Press, 1997.

The title of this extensive documentation of 45 years of GDR-photography by Karl Gernot Kuehn (Caught) already refers to the two principal intentions of this book: to present a detailed analysis of how political pressure and constraint shaped photography (and photographers) in the former GDR, how they “caught” the artists in the act, but also to document what it was that these artists themselves “caught” with their camera, once again with special emphasis on the relationship between photography and … Read more