Tagged: official art

Rereading Socialist Realism: Podcast on Comparative Perspectives on Socialist Art

In recent years, US scholarship has succeeded in establishing a new perspective on the art of the ex-GDR that overcomes the dichotomy between so-called “dissident art” on the one hand, and “official art,” on the other. Rather than cementing this dichotomy, scholars of this new trend in art historical research points out and study the interconnections and entanglement between official and non-official art. At the same time, they have developed a discourse that subjects the well-established narrative of Socialist Realism as the Great Other of 20th century art history to a long-overdue reevaluation.  Conferences such as “Was Socialist Realism Global? … Read more

cover of exhibition catalogue

Beyond the 3 Ts: Promote, Tolerate, Ban – Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary

Cristina Cuevas-Wolf and Isotta Poggi, eds., Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary (Getty Publications, 2018), 160 PP. 

The curators of the Getty Research Institute and The Wende Museum of the Cold War undertook a difficult task with an exhibition in Los Angeles, entitled Promote, Tolerate, Ban – Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary,(Eastern European regimes operating before 1989 were not, in fact, communist states. In my view, even the ‘state socialist’ adjective is inappropriate for the Kádár regime, especially since the mid-1960s, but the now increasingly common term ‘state capitalism’ is not yet Read more