Socialist Realist Painting

Soviet socialist art is one casualty of the U.S.S.R.'s collapse that might have remained unremarked without this book. While monolithic Stalinist portraits are missed by no one, Bown examines the many manifestations of socialist realism, from its 18th-century forebears, through its intellectually charged, if politically constrained, developments through Gorbachev's time. Varying rules of form and content were enforced to fortify socialist ideology and optimism, with even the unsentimental Stalin manipulating the persuasive, moralizing powers of art. Bown's theme of the political obsession with art is indeed fascinating. Abstraction, Fauvism, C zanne, Picasso and Matisse were all censored by the ideology police until Khrushchev's thaw, an immeasurable privation for artists and public alike. Despite censorship, and the dependency of artists' livelihoods on state endorsement, many revelatory works, showing both exciting innovation and real stylistic flair, emerged within these predominantly figurative genres. The 530 plates (346 in stunning color) of this carefully considered selection include many unfamiliar works from both museums and private collections, making it a commendable and collectable oversized edition. The sole detracting feature is the author's transliterations from the Russian: for example, his insistence on using ""Shagal"" seems a bit supercilious, when the artist preferred to sign himself as ""Chagall."" His versions are no more faithful to Russian pronunciation, and are disconcerting to readers accustomed to the ""norm."" (May)