The end of the avant garde - painting and sculpture - David Elliot
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NarKomPros = People’s Commissariat of Education – HQ of new trends

Old avant-garde artists attempt to choose subject matter than transformed political and social realities – during collectivization Lenigngrad artists – ambiguously blank faces peasantry, flat depressed, landscapes – Pioneers must look ahead not upwards

Magnitostroi of art – power, size reflecting aims FFYP

Ways in which a picture can reflect a social relationship?

1. Socialist  realism – emphasis on workers, not elites or political leaders, trying to promote perceived social relationships of workers being important and the most important people in society.
2. Germans – pure, sportsmen and women as important – positive and negative art – accentuate positive by showing how Arian, athletic the ideal – exclusion of degenerate artists – like Jews – Nazis did not destroy degenerate art of modernism – instead juxtaposition against purer forms – linking, by juxtaposition, degenerate arts with individuals and groups within societies.  See social relationships want to be generated – associate degenerate arts with pictures of deformed children etc – framing value judgment on Jews, modernism against easy visual icons of art- visual image for view.
3. The painting itself – patronage social relationship – see German architect’s paintings change from more modern dynamic to more stable Nazi like – we see change in aims, objectives and patronage is art – ultimate influence art?  Bring back to Rousseau and his forms of freedom – autonomy of art etc.
4. Role of the abstract – how can abstract picture possibly reflect a social relationship?  Very fact abstract painting taken for granted – ignoring fact that picture is in itself a social relationship – expression symbolism, metaphor, meaning onto audience – takes place verbal communication and is therefore social relationship is abstract a cover because social relationship not strong enough to visually represent your ideas?

Other Notes in this Category

1. Aspects of Art and Power in the third Reich
2. Battle for Art - David Elliot
3. Hobsbawn
4. The end of the avant garde - painting and sculpture - David Elliot

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