Тоталитарное искусство

by Igor Golomstock, Игорь Голомшток

Книга является первой попыткой анализа тоталитарного искусства сталинского Советского Союза, гитлеровской Германии и муссолиниевской Италии, сделанного бывшим гражданином СССР, ныне живущим в Великобритании, где книга и вышла впервые в 1990 г.

Genres: Art, History, Politics, Nonfiction, Reference, Russia

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is less intimidating than it appears to be. Totalitarian states have a complex historiography, and they can be difficult to talk about without establishing clear parameters. Thankfully, Igor Golomstock has done this. His topic is exclusively the art produced by (and for) totalitarian states. In addition, his writing is mercifully free of jargon. This is not a book of art criticism; it is an examination of what makes art totalitarian. At its core, it is a quest for a working and consistent definition of totalitarian culture as it existed in the mid-Twentieth Century.

I was surprised at how relevant this topic is with respect to our current era. Golomstock masterfully examines how anti-establishmentarian art (and culture) is essential to the larger project of totalitarian government. Idealistic artists and idealistic politicians work hand-in-glove as creative destruction (avant-garde movements in the early decades of the last century, for example) gives way to the glorification of the new and the young (e.g., Futurism); all the while, both parties tacitly accept their roles as social engineers, beholden to a patriotic fervor that grows to eclipse the primacy of the individual (or “art for art’s sake”). Eventually, artists who happily worked in the service of political goals become unwitting instruments of the people for whom politics was always paramount: the autocrats.

Conservatism is ultimately the destination. The art of totalitarian culture consistently resolves itself into a utilitarian realism, leeched of complexity and individuality.

This is a powerful and important book. The forces at play in the last century have not abandoned us in this one. They are still with us, they are still operative, and they are still dangerous.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first major section of 'Totalitarian Art' ['The Process'] is superb. Golomstock, a Russian (previously Soviet) art historian gives a level-headed account of how radical modernism instigated and then fell victim to forms of realism more suitable for fascist and communist regimes.

His primary concern, however, proves to be polemical. It is important to understand the context of the book. Published in the West in 1990, Golomstock undoubtedly is frustrated and angry about his own experiences under the Soviet system.

Authored in Russian as a product perhaps of 'perestroika', Golomstock's book becomes highly political with a particular mission - to suggest, radically in Russian contexts, that Soviet, Nazi and Fascist Art mirrored each other perfectly.

The difficulty with the book is how to separate the solid and well-researched narrative from this second level of emotional 'ressentiment' at a collapsing regime. Fortunately we are helped in this by Golomstock re-telling his story as polemic in his second section ['The Product'].

His core concept is one of of Totalitarian Art as a distinctive style that represents a type of governance in opposition to the liberal freedoms taken for granted in the West. The sub-text is a deliberate denigration of the Soviet system by indicating that it and Nazi modes of art were just 'variants'.

Incidentally, China is barely covered, despite the title, being treated as a mere variant (in turn) of Stalinist Socialist Realism. It is simply used in the book to demonstrate further that there is a type of art called Totalitarian Art that is, implicitly, degenerate and uninteresting except as pathology.

Nearly a quarter of a century on, the historically grounded theses within the book stand up well but the polemic less so. Pro-Western 'liberal' prejudice (he was active in the dissident movement) weakens the argument as soon as it starts to try and feed the prejudices of cultural elites.

This is not to say that Golomstock is at all wrong about the similarities between regimes' artistic systems nor that they did not consciously play off each other as tools of political control but only that he strikes this reader as polemically selective in making his point.

If we return to the first section (descriptive historical narrative) the book is impressive. The most important finding is that the seeds of the later 'totalitarian' mind-set were to be found in futurism and Russian modernism.

I can strongly recommend this narrative to anyone with romantic ideas about the inevitable link between avant-garde art and individual liberation. Rather, what we see are avant-garde individualists trying to impose their authority on the collective. Many of their views could be very unpleasant.

Cultural debate was live in all these regimes in their early days but not in that simple equation of the modern being liberal and so good and realism being retrograde and at the root of 'tyranny'. Goebbels himself clearly preferred expressionism to realism and simply gave way under pressure.

In the end, the decision to go with realism (and so with forms of imperial realism in art and heavyweight neo-classical architecture) is not that far distant from similar choices within Western empires during their rise rather than decline.

The difference is one of neurosis. The new regimes lived in fear and anxiety in the knowledge of far more powerful empires wishing to clip their wings and the possibility of overthrow from below after preceding periods of street violence or civil war.

Golomstock wins his argument that structural similarities of regime result in similarities in artistic production yet neo-classical imperial pomposity can be found at the heart of the British and American as much as insecure Nazi and Soviet empires.

The imperial preference for neo-classicism reached new levels of the bombastic in the dictatorships while propaganda required that populations understand precisely the messaging that Western empires had had years to inculcate through relatively stable education.

Italian cultural policy under fascism was also not quite as totalitarian as the theory might want us to believe. Mussolini had more justification than most for using classical forms, modernist themes could continue in propaganda as 'Italian style' and a private art market could continue.

For Soviets, Nazis and eventually Chinese, the situation was different because the revolutions that brought them to power were not (in essence) mere coups waiting to happen (as in Italy) but attempts to impose order on chaos - economic desperation and civil war or the memory of it.

A great deal of what we see in all cultures is largely a function of the role of official patronage and short but important bursts of deliberate direction at points of crisis. In this sense, though qualitatively different, the West is less different from the Rest and the Rest is a little more free than we are told.

It could be argued that any intelligent observer of modern Western Art should be able to see a soft version of what was going on in the dictatorial regimes now being carried on through both corporate and state (gallery) sponsorship of the arts, guiding artists into careers as 'liberal totalitarians'.

What is going on might be softer and appear more free but the graduates of arts schools in the West are much closer to the position of graduates of Soviet art schools than is comfortable - no jobs for non-socialist realist artists in the one or for illiberal non-diversity artists in the other.

Art is not some free force outside the social. Artists have to eat and, while there is always the artist who expresses a distinctive existential personal vision, the commercial viability of a personal vision depends on a particular ideology of acceptance shared by collectors and 'cultured' bureaucrats.

Abstract expressionism was famously promoted by the Cold War American State as an imperial riposte to social realism. It was taken up by individualist liberals and capital as an expression of regime cultural aspiration as much as Nazi heroism and Soviet collectivism took up realism.

On the one side, art was not for the masses (after all, they had comics, films and TV) but for a self-conscious elite that defined itself by a trickle- down faux appreciation of brand names and art works which the bulk of the recipients probably barely comprehended. It did assure status though.

On the other side, art, collectively for the masses and notionally paid for by them through forced savings, had to be comprehensible and to offer emotional rewards such as hope and aspiration. The Western middle classes could revel in existential despair because they already had the goods.

In other words, whether the production of Pharoahs, the Catholic Church, Goebbels or the 'art market', art structures itself around the flow of patronage. Golomstock's complaints (made more clearly in the second half) are those of a middle class liberal angry at a system that failed for him.

He is certainly not unjustified in this anger. Sovietism like National Socialism and Fascism proved disastrous economically and so socially. They did not deliver the goods but the 'Art' that is part of the package is simply an excrescence here (much as the 'cultured' may loathe that idea).

We have been entrained to accept the endless row of saints from a totalitarian Catholic Church and to honour the individualists and movements that fed Western economic modernisation because of a particular narrative that also tells us to despise the works in this book.

Hitler was wrong about 'degenerate art' but he may not have been entirely wrong (scandal!) about the subtly degrading effect on society of narcissistic individualism that decades later, having passed through Fluxus, gives us what passes for culture today.

It was all very exciting and leaves a body of work which ultimately outclasses anything produced by the dictatorships but a) it has reached a hiatus in which the eco-political or diversity rant is all that is left to the prize winner and b) it neglects what was good artistically in those dictatorships.

The refusal to look at the 'totalitarians' with a non-political eye at their often effective expression of dynamic social emotions like pride in the collective, self-sacrificing heroism in the common good and sentiment directed at the future strikes this reader as a sign of fear.

The construction of a certain type of society leads to the construction of a certain type of art but you do not need to be a Jesuit to learn to appreciate Caravaggio or Giotto. The denial of the best in totalitarian art is like fearing saints' images in case the priests take over.

The book is well provided with illustrations although most are poor reproductions in black and white with only some in glorious colour but even these illustrations help make the point that some work under the dictatorial cosh (or guidance) was excellent within a realist tradition.

Some, of course, is execrable but then so is some of the stuff that gets shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Golomstock also seems to wilfully ignore a lot of art in these regimes that was not political, concentrating on the totalitarian big ticket prizes where the piper's patron was most in evidence.

There is also an a-historical sense of the conditions and context for illiberal 'totalitarian' solutions to maintaining order in already broken societies which, of course, these regimes were to break further. Again, the Art is a logical symptom (as Golomstock might agree) but not central to the problem.

The problem was the fact of regime control in the face of enmity and dissent. Dissent was not a matter of a few excitable and opinionated people on social media but of complete breakdown when most people desperately wanted stability. The Art simply followed that requirement.

In short, a very valuable, perhaps important, book, 'Totalitarian Art' opens the eyes to the origins and structure of art patronage and production under dictatorial regimes although its either/or good/evil attempt to compare West and the Dark Side stands up less well.

On balance, we might prefer the West because it seems to have worked with less misery (though actually that may be debatable to the intelligent historian taking the long view) but that preference does not justify the outright dismissal of alternative means of artistic expression.

If Soviet and Nazi culture were built ultimately on lies (which they were), they were not unique in this. The entire Western artistic tradition was built on a magical idea of a supernatural deity and contemporary art built on simplistic abstract theories.

The dictatorial regimes were execrable because they did serious damage to their own people and then exported that damage through war or occupation. Our regime is slowly doing damage to much of its own population today and now exporting damage in support of its own ideology.

Art is the creature of politics as politics is of economics and belief. The decline of Western Art is merely a reflection of the collapse of the West's own already limited moral compass and intellectual integrity just as Totalitarian Art arose from political cultures of resistance, fear and magical thinking.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

The good example of how to write books about art.