Seduced by Socialist Realism: Art of Post-1989 Leningrad

• In Event: Liberation from Socialist Realism or Its Transformations?: Literature and Other Arts in the Late Soviet Period

Abstract

Let’s make Russian art beautiful again, — declared Timur Novikov when he established the New Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad. But just how beautiful was Russian art before that? And what kind of beauty did Novikov have in mind then? This paper will explore artists’ focus on “beauty” during the transitional period of the 1980-1990s, and specifically will consider the legacy of Socialist Realism in visual arts in the late Soviet Union. As a case study, I look at the return to neo-academic aesthetics within the circle of Timur Novikov and the New Academy of Fine Arts. I argue that the revitalization of “Russian beauty” in contemporary art––in various contexts realized as a return to the canon in visual art (e.g., figurativeness and classical forms) and in literature (e.g., the revival of prosody, the lyrical hero, and the author’s socio-political position) –– functioned as an artistic impulse for the re-establishment of conservatism in Russian society.

Author

• Liana Battsaligova, Oberlin College