Traumfabrik Kommunismus/Dream Factory Cummunism

by Groys, Boris; Hollein, Max

• ISBN13: 9783775713283
• ISBN10: 377571328X
• Edition: Bilingual
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Distributed Art Pub Inc

Summary

The all-encompassing mass culture we know today had its beginnings in the years between the wars, with its main avenue being the reproduction and circulation of images via media such as posters and movies. The totalitarian movement of that time succeeded in making radical use of these new opportunities for the consistent transformation of culture, even to the point of instrumentalizing traditional media such as painting and sculpture. The centrally organized Soviet mass culture of the Stalin period is an excellent example of such a highly effective propaganda machine. Starting with late realistic works by Kazimir Malevich, this book presents a macrocosm of Soviet art in the Stalin era -- still little-known in the West -- as a unified aesthetic phenomenon transcending individual media. Later works of Sots Art, which view the aesthetics of a totalitarian regime more critically, provide a running visual commentary. The works by contemporary Russian artists such as Erik Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, and Komar & Melamid mark the chasm that separates us from this art today both aesthetically and politically. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 6
Utopian Mass Culture	p. 20
Illustration Section I: Posters, Documentaries	p. 39
Socialist Realism: Factory of the New Man	p. 64
The Collectivization of Modernism	p. 85
The Heroic Myth in Socialist Realism	p. 106
The Will to Knowledge: Models for the Reception of Soviet Art in the West	p. 125
Illustration Section II: Paintings, Drawings, Photography, Sculptures	p. 145
The Wagon Let's Go Girls! Installation by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov	p. 250
Collective Daydreaming	p. 256
The Kinetic Icon in the Work of Mourning: Prolegomena to the Analysis of A Textual System	p. 280
Illustration Section III: Feature Films	p. 305
Georg Baselitz in Conversation with Boris Groys	p. 312
Ilya Kabakov in Conversation with Boris Groys	p. 328
Chronology	p. 344
Biographical Notes on the Artists	p. 359
Works in the Exhibition	p. 438
Selected Bibliography	p. 450
List of Abbreviations	p. 452
Authors	p. 454
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