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."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
A review of one of Bown's earlier books, Art Under Stalin (LJ 2/15/92), suggested that librarians wait for a more analytical view. As if in response, Bown has produced a massive theoretical and historical analysis of 20th-century Soviet painting. An independent British scholar, he conducted research in Moscow for this volume, which encompasses the turbulent political and cultural currents that affected art. Bown shows that influences on these paintings ranged from the 19th-century academic and "itinerant" styles, religious icons, controversial French Impressionism to the formalism of Post-Impressionism personality cults (especially Lenin and Stalin), utopian idealism, national folk art, themes of the Bolshevik Revolution and World War II, and concepts of narodnost ("art of the people") and partiinost ("party-mindedness"). Recommended for academic and public libraries for its insights into and illustrations of art unfamiliar to Westerners before the Soviet Union's collapse.?Anne Marie Lane, American Heritage Ctr., Laramie, WY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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