CFP: Socialist Realist Art: Production, Consumption Aesthetics

SOCIALIST REALIST ART: PRODUCTION, CONSUMPTION, AESTHETICS
An International Conference, sponsored by the Center for Baltic and East
European
Studies, Södertörn University, Stockholm, in collaboration with the Museum
of Modern
Art, Stockholm

Stockholm, 19-20 October 2012

Since the early 1990s, there has been a striking growth of interest in the
legacy of Soviet
Socialist Realist art, which has reshaped our understanding of it in
fundamental ways. A
substantial body of research has demonstrated that the method of Socialist
Realism was a
highly creative and diversified cultural arena that was both heterogeneous
in its pictorial
strategies and often conflicted and ambivalent in its representations of
the social and political
messages of the day. Yet the label 'totalitarian' continues to influence
the ways in which
Soviet art is interpreted and contextualised, limiting our understanding of
Socialist Realism
and obstructing its integration into a broader narrative of
twentieth-century art.

In the proposed conference we seek to examine the interests and influences
which contributed
to the development of Socialist Realism as a diverse and contested field of
art from the 1930s
to the 1980s. Participants will be invited to focus on aspects of Socialist
Realist fine art
production, evaluation and consumption in order to consider the ways in
which artistic
conventions of pictorial representation were established, adapted and
transformed to reflect
the changing nature of the Soviet project. This approach will facilitate a
shift away from the
tendency to draw conclusions about Socialist Realism based on a limited
number of canonical
works of art and acclaimed artists, and will encourage a reappraisal of the
diversity and
originality of creative output in its formal, stylistic and geographical
variations.

Please see the attached CFP for further information.

For general questions and further information, please contact Mark Bassin
([email protected]).
Please submit proposals via email to Oliver Johnson (
[email protected])

-- 
Dr Oliver Johnson
Russian and Slavonic Studies
University of Sheffield
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield S3 7RA, UK

+44 (0)114 2227404



-- 
Dr Oliver Johnson
Russian and Slavonic Studies
University of Sheffield
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield S3 7RA, UK

+44 (0)114 2227404

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