SEMINAR NOTES:DICTATORSHIP AND PROPAGANDA//OUGD401

-Russian Revolution, led by Lenin 1917 'Peace, bread and land'
1917-1921 Russian civil war: Reds (Revolutionary Bolsheviks) vs. (Anti-Revolutionary Imperialists)
Bolsheviks wanted to over throw the government.

-Propaganda:Colectively standing together, as one-has a bigger impact, power of the every man
-Symbolic red symbolises Bolsheviks, Communism.

Propaganda: 1917-mid 1920's: intense artistic experimentation
eighty per cent illiteracy
-The Russian Constructivists - leading Avant-Garde Artistic group
The aim of constructivists was 'of achieving the communistic expression of material structures'.  ('The programme of the first working group of Constructivists' 1921 quoted in Lodder (1983) Russian constructism, London & Yale, p.94)

-1921 Lenin's new economic policy= consumer goods needed
Stepanova & Popova- First state Textile Factory, Moscow
1952 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs.

Rodchenko-
The Constructivists- Aim: '...achieving the communistic expression of material structures'.  Lenin New economic Policy 1921.  Rodchenko (right) presents himself modern, futuristic, a labourer trying to show there is no distinction between me and the people.
Stalin bans modern art, late 1920's onwards - Socialist Realism
ART IS PRISONER OF POLITICS

Needed designers but did not want to associate with 'art school' so Decree 394 (1962):
'...about industrial equipment and consumer goods quality improvement by artistic engineering methodology implementation.'
SUMMARY:
-Revolution = new opportunity for art to progress
-Constructivists desire to make art useful
-Aim that art should help 'construct' new society
-Use of new techniques and abstract aesthetic
-By end of 1920s artistic freedom curtailed
1934 Stalin decrees 'Socialist Realism' only