ART AND REVOLUTION/ART AND POLITICS : THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Contemporary artists all over the world are currently engaging with politics.
But there are precedents where artists reflected and defined the cultural language for some of history’s great turning points. This course looks at the art, music, and literature that evolved from several major revolutions and the responses to them.

The years prior to the 1917 Russian Revolution saw some of the most avant garde practices in Europe. The overthrow and assassination of the monarchy and the ensuing Civil War in Russia were also played out in art. Artists were encouraged to embrace Communism by moving away from bourgeois traditions of painting in oil towards graphic design and collaborative authorship. This session traces the co-option of artists such as Tatlin, Rodchenko, and El Lissitsky by the party and how the poetry of Aleksandr Blok and his contemporaries caught the mood. It also looks at the subsequent shift to Soviet Socialist Realism under Stalin and the sidelining of art for art’s sake.

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