mia moraru’s Reviews > Art and Politics: Between Purity and Propaganda > Status Update

'...only in an abstract and theoretical sense can purity be viewed as an artistic quality, because the meaning of an artwork depends on many different layers of interpretations.'

the new monuments in former communist countries often strikingly resemble each other; even poor countries don't skimp out on $$$ for them. 'their presence and festive inauguration are part of their political function: legitimizing a new political system or even a new nation, as well as the creation of a new sense of national bonding.'
not necessarily indicative of the nation's actual unity/political cohesiveness

post-fall of eastern bloc, diff countries/cities dealt w public monuments in a variety of ways - removal, replacement, creative appropriation, put in museums, left undisturbed, destroyed.
oftentimes, these sites were used in the 'invention of tradition.'
uzbekistan: Timur is their national symbol, statue of him on horseback in Tashket (used to me Marx), yet Timur is not even related to the uzbeks and was sadistic.

'Because of their "timeless" presence, in the long run monuments go unnoticed; they become a silent part of the everyday public environment, devoid of meaning.' however... 'A regime change questions the universality of existing monuments.'

'[Kara] Walker seems to imply that in a world where human relations are defined in terms of ownership and entitlement, no one escapes the violating and dehumanizing consequences.'
*nuance*~~~~

'...cultural-minority artists face two opposing pitfalls. When they comply with the demands of mainstream art and the international art market, they are expected to shake off their 'cultural provincialism,' but when they dismiss the universalist claims of the official art world, they tend to be pressured by their own community to conform to a static and normative sense of cultural identity...'

"Art is a part of our total responsibility for the world. Otherwise I don't see why we should make art." (ai weiwei)

cultural revolution -- complete break w the past/artistic traditions. 1957 'Anti-Rightist Campaign' against bourgeois influences in chinese society (for ex, euro infl.).
more nuanced with indigenous technique of *guohua*. those artists started to adapt to demands of art 'for the people/CCP', -- for ex. added Mao's poetry to a still life or titling a landscape 'Chairman Mao's Native Soil' (lowkey goes hard).

post wwii cold war era — modern art in usa was elitist/not appreciated by masses for a while, but was exported by the cia & state department in order to change everyone’s opinion of usa as imperialist racist etc, and this honestly worked esp in europe.
soviets saw modern art as decadent/bourgeois, socialist realism was the norm.
then science + tech started to become benchmark of progress + comp btwn nations

‘In the Soviet Union Picasso was identified as a bourgeois decadent artist; at international festivals, on the other hand, he was honored with the Stalin Peace Prize and other tokens of recognition. In the United States Picasso was celebrated as one of the spiritual fathers of ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ modern art, it to conservative critics and the FBI he was a subversive communist.’