Performing Working-Class Masculinity in Soviet Western Borderlands: The Case of Latvian 'Tough Style' Paintings

• In Event: East and South European Masculinities: From Imperial Patriarchy to Liberating Queerness

Abstract

The paper will address the established canon of masculinity in Soviet Latvian painting in the late 1950s and 1960s. This canon represented the working class people (usually men) in their hard work, combining the demands of socialist realism and some influences of modernist painting. The period saw a departure from that style that opened new patterns of more diverse representation of men when "white collar" professionals could be represented as heroes of socialist work. These representations grew more diverse in both form and content sometimes even approaching flamboyance.

Authors

• Karlis Verdins, Art Academy of Latvia (Latvia)

• Janis Ozolins, Art Academy of Latvia (Latvia)