ARTMargins Online

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Tagged: socialist realism

ARTMargins Online: Book Reviews

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 by Raino Isto ·

Towards New Frameworks for Albanian Art History? Ermir Hoxha’s Socialist Realism in the Albanian Style

Ermir Hoxha, Socialist Realism in the Albanian Style: The Liberalization Period and the Communist Legacy in Contemporary Albanian Art. Tirana: West Print, 2023. 180 pp.

Ermir Hoxha’s Socialist Realism in the Albanian Style suggests an intriguing question: are there productive art historical connections between the so-called “liberalization period” (the late 1960s through 1973) in Albanian art and the ways that contemporary artists have looked back on Albanian Socialist Realism in the decades following the end of state socialism in the country in 1991? Hoxha, a professor at the University of Arts in Tirana, has made an undeniable contribution to … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Forum

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 by Constanze Fritzsch, Magdalena Moskalewicz, Jitka Šosová, Gregor Taul ·

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

a view of the gallery with plaster sculptures in the foreground and a gray wall behind with paintings

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Jonida Gashi ·

Open Archive: A Review

Open Archive (Arkivi i Hapur), National Gallery of Arts, Tirana, September 18, 2020 – Ongoing.

The advent of the coronavirus pandemic seems to have sparked a surge in archival-minded exhibitions in museums (and other kinds of art spaces) the world over, a trend that was especially noticeable in the aftermath of the first wave of the pandemic during the summer of 2020. Many of these shows have been permeated by a sense of “getting back to basics,” as it were. This is not surprising, given that the coronavirus pandemic has put into question the ability of museums to perform the … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Caterina Preda ·

The Role of the Romanian Artists’ Union in the Production of State Socialist Art

During the establishment of the new socialist regime in Romania, “in order for visual artists to be it was felt necessary to create a new form of organization, a new organism that [would] become an active factor in the work of culturalization of the masses, and for the development of creation.”(“Introductory remarks for the future Country Conference of the Romanian Artists’ Union (UAP) of the Romanian Popular Republic (RPR),” File 1/1950, Fund UAP, The Central National Archives of Romania (ANIC), f. 1.) This article is an adaptation of part of a forthcoming book about the role of the … Read more

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ARTMargins Online: Articles / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Raino Isto ·

“Criticism Should Open Up Horizons for the Future”: The Albanian Union of Writers and Artists and the Status of Art Criticism in the People’s Republic of Albania

This article presents part of the history of the Union of Writers and Artists—the official organ devoted to literature and the fine arts in the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania—and examines (in an incomplete way, of course) the contours of art criticism produced in accordance with official doctrine in Albania, especially in the 1970s decade. Like much Socialist Realist criticism, the output of the Union of Writers and Artists was frequently formulaic, but it also offered a field for artists working beyond the visual (and the union’s critics were almost invariably also practicing artists) to navigate Albanian art’s place vis-à-vis … Read more

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ARTMargins Online: Articles / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Johana Lomová ·

Forms of Involvement: The Czechoslovakian Artists’ Union and Its 1964 Congress

During the past decade, contemporary artists in Central and Eastern Europe have renewed their interest in Artists’ Unions, and have begun to self-organize.(This article is based on a study by Johana Lomová and Karel Šima, “Sjezd Svazu československých výtvarných umělců v roce 1964. Poznámky k úspěšnosti performance,” (The Conference of the SČSVU in 1964. Notes on the Success of One Performance) in Umění a revoluce (Art and Revolution), ed. Johana Lomová and Jindřich Vybíral (Praha: UMPRUM 2017), 512–545.) After years of what scholar Piotr Piotrowski termed “anti-communism,”(Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (London: … Read more