Soviet Realism celebrated the cult of mass murderer Joseph Stalin
Art in service to the state is not art but propaganda.
The role of art is to steep the viewer in a transcendent space.
Propaganda aims at buttressing a narrow political and social agenda.
Totalitarian regimes always follow a strategy of using art to spread their ideological message in order to soften the landscape for radical social programs.
The twentieth century affords us three classic examples of totalitarian regimes that harnessed the arts in an effort to influence the private sphere: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Mao’s China.
Each regime was a socialist movement whose programs were designed to maximize state control over its citizens.
Artists in Germany, The Soviet Union and China who complied with the state were richly rewarded. Those artists who did not go along with the program were denied funding, made outcasts, and often declared criminals, deserving the harshest penalties.
The Soviet Gulag was filled with artists who refused to become tools of the state.
Nazi Germany used concentration camps to punish degenerate—code for Jew—artists.
Mao “reeducated” and murdered millions; we will never know how many dissident Chinese artists were massacred.
Currently, the Arab world is awash in state supported art that is steeped in Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial.
In a cartoon from Oman, Jews are depicted as blood thirsty Nazis.
The state art produced under these regimes is at best junk, at its worst, propaganda aimed at justifying oppression and genocide.
I have always been suspicious of the NEA.
Why does the state support artists?
Why not plumbers or carpenters?
The Obama administration, in its drive to achieve maximum control over our lives, is spreading its tentacles over an all too willing and compliant arts community.
Right before Rosh Hashana, I was informed by my good friend, John Note, Editor-in-Chief of Big Hollywood, that an important story would be breaking at Big Hollywood and Big Government, both the brainchild of Andrew Breitbart.
It is now unfolding and you should be aware of it.
Look, this NEA scandal does not have the sexy veneer of the ACORN story, but make no mistake about it, Obama’s attempted partnership with the arts is an arrogant overreach of government power that a free society must not tolerate.
Click here for the story.
American Democrat-Socialist Art, in service to the cult of Barack Obama.
Better late than never, here’s the Slow-Fast Edition of Haveil Havalim.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
11 Comments
Thanks for mentioning HH!
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I never did understand the attraction between charismatic left wing politicians and ‘the arts community’. It’s been going on here in Australia for 40 years.
Rock and roll, for instance, I figure to be about strength, independence, standing up for yourself when all around are howling you down – hence, I’d've thought it’s default political position libertarian. Yet in Australian and US elections, most people I knew were gushing all over Rudd and Obama. It really was embarassing.
Seems for most people it’s about latching onto a authority figure and expecting them to love you.
I’m gonna go play my guitar. Not in any quietly contemplative manner, either.
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Government controlled art is by definition not art, just shrill propaganda designed to overpower and undermine the humanity of the masses.
BTW, the painting of Stalin is: “Roses for Stalin”, by Soviet hack Boris Vladimirski, 1949.
Just Photoshop Obama into the frame and the composition will fly for the Obama worshiping Democrats.
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That trash all lacks SOUL and CONVICTION, though it probably doesn’t lack actual conVICTS… How DID Stalin meet his end, anyway? Just askin’.
The painting you show looks like it was done by Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light.” (If you love his work, I don’t mean to offend… but Vermeer it ain’t.)
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Oops — that should be “if one knew where to look for them.”
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First, a disclaimer: I have no background in art.
An observation: in the painting, Stalin is surrounded by blond kids and is embracing one. But his expression appears to be forbidding, and directed toward the dark-haired boy in the back, who is a little apart from the group. This boy, the only child in the painting who is not offering Stalin a gift, embracing him or smiling at him, appears to be meeting Stalin’s somewhat threatening gaze with a less-than-worshipful expression of his own.
I believe it was Prokofiev who wrote music that contained anti-Communist “codes” if one knew where to look for him. Perhaps he wasn’t the only artist who did so?
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Bill, you’re exactly right about statist art lacking something. It has to do with why Plato banished poets from his Republic.
Robert, who’s that in the color painting – David Axelrod? (Funnily enough, another Alexrod (Pavel) was a leading pre-Bolshevik Russian Marxist.)
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GOP will retake seats in the house….and take away federal funding for the NEA which is as it should be. The whole thing is embarrassing….sheeesh!
As Duchamp predicted anyone can call themselves “artists” nowadays….I’m a sidewayz thinker…Maybe I can get at the New Dept. Of Alternative Thinking proposed by the geniuses in the White House…lol..
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Robert – I have been thinking most of the day since my initial post here – **why** is government-subsidized art inherently on a lower level that art created spontaneously?
Perhaps even this question isn’t right; as the great artists from 100s of years ago – had benefactors that allowed them to create the things that the world considers timeless and even divinely-inspired.
Government-sponsored art is intrinsically stale – made to glorify the state.
I will have to watch mny DvD of The Lives of Others again – few people in this country have seen it, much less heard of it, but it depicts life in the former East Germany pretty accurately, I believe.
It concerns a group of artists – writers and actors – who are trying to exist in an environment that that the state brutally restricts – The movie opens with a play that you know Arthur Miller didn’t write. It stinks.
Johnny mentioned Leni Reifenstahl – her cinematography is – if I am not mistaken – considered brilliant – but she is also remembered chiefly as a propagandist, not an artist.
It is a question not easily answered but I am still thinking about it.
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Robert, being in Hollywood you know there are probably a lot of “artists” that are just aching to be Obama’s Leni Riefenstahl. They just know that if they make the next Redacted or In the Valley of Elah their genius will be recognized and they will be invited to the WH to sit at Obama’s feet. Oh, praise the One. MGM will change it’s motto to “Art For Obama’s Sake.” Where is today’s Dalton Trumbo to expound on the greatness of our leader?
Oh well, we had cash for clunkers so now we can have cash for turkies. I can see C4T on the marquees now! Where was this program when Stop-Loss was released?
Speaking of Trumbo, PBS is showing an episode of American Masters about him tonight and I wonder if it will reveal what a true skunk he was instead of glorifying him. Actually, I think I already know.
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State supported “art” always lacks a certain “something” – inspiration? I can’t really put my finger on it. Two examples I have seen – the Berlin stadium – left alone from the bombing because the allies thought that it would be used to hold German prisoners – you see statues of Nazi-glorified art of the human form – they looked to me like caricatures – overly muscular -
Then I saw the celebrated tile work in the Moscow subway. It is celebrated because every station has a different theme. This was made in the 1930s, at the height of Stalin’s killings.
But you know it is still communist-funded clap-trap. You know, peasants in the field during the harvest sort of thing.
I am with you though why should the government be funding “artists”? Have you ever noticed that government funded artists seem to produce mediocre – or “controversial” “art”?
Controversial in this instance means absolutely nobody – outside the “art world” – thinks it is anything but trash.
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