School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemAn examination of the significance of Soviet Socialist Realist art and practice in the Asia Pacific region( 2016)The aim of this research has been to investigate the impact of Soviet Socialist Realist art and practice in the Asia Pacific region. It has resulted in a number of findings. The first is that Soviet innovation in the practice of art has influenced the organisation of visual art in the region to a degree not previously acknowledged. This Soviet arts organisational focus is analysed through a number of effective and enduring strategies, as well as through a number of ideological innovations. The thesis compares the implementation of these practices throughout the Asia Pacific region. The second finding is that the Soviets, and, later, the Soviet-inspired Chinese, had significant impact on the art produced throughout the Asia Pacific region from the early years of the twentieth century until today, again previously unacknowledged across such a broad temporal and spatial span. The Soviet influence on art in China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia in the period after the late 1960s is argued to be of particular significance for the outcomes in those places and in contemporary art more broadly. Comparisons of particular artworks are made, as well as a distinction been social realism, focused on the suffering of the disadvantaged, and Socialist Realism, a triumphant glorification of the ‘workers, farmers and soldiers’. An analysis of the local adaption of Soviet art in the outcomes in each place is given, deemed critical for the success of this ideology and style. The question throughout this analysis is why, if this influence is so extensive and significant, has it not been acknowledged as part of ‘global’ art history? The ideological and geo-political struggle of the Cold War between Communism and capitalism, experienced over the century, is central. Soviet Socialist Realism was a target of Western art historians, and when the ideology and style was adopted further East, these positions extended there as well. The thesis analyses the literal and metaphorical interweaving of image and text, as well as the interweaving of art and politics. It is what has been written about this art by people who wanted so much to come from it, and the way their words seep into the images themselves, that adds to the richness of the area.