Northwestern University

Office for Research

Promoting, Facilitating, and Enhancing Research at Northwestern University

• Information for: 
• Faculty & Researchers
• Research Administrators
• Industry & Government
• Students & Postdocs

• Home
• About
• Administrative Offices
  • Animal Care and Use Committee
  • Center for Comparative Medicine
  • Institutional Review Board
  • Office for the Protection of Research Subjects
  • Office of Research Development
  • Office for Research Information Systems
  • Office for Research Integrity
  • Office for Research Planning, Finance and Communications
  • Office for Research Safety
  • Office for Sponsored Research
• Centers
  • University Research Centers
  • School-based Centers
  • Research Centers at Medical Affiliates
• Committees
• eResearch Tools
  • eIRB
  • ISIS
  • Roles and Responsibilities
• Policies
• Publications
• Shared & Core Facilities

Soviet Realism: The Ignored Segment of Modern Art

When scholars and critics analyze modern art, they typically use the standard model of binary oppositions: modernism/realism, avant-garde/kitsch, art/propaganda, and nonart/masterpiece. But according to Christina Kiaer, art history, these categories prevent serious consideration of socialist realism, the official standard for art in the Soviet Union.

Kiaer's current book project, Socialist Realism and the Incarnation of Soviet Ideology, focuses on painter Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) as a case study to produce a post-Cold War model of art history that adequately comprehends this missing genre as a part of the history of modern art.

Soviet artists in the early 1930s -- including Deineka -- shifted from using avant-garde to more realist forms in their work. This is usually interpreted as a sign of surrender to the demands of the government-imposed style of socialist realism that was being developed at the time.

After examining archival, museum, and primary source research into Deineka's career and the Soviet art system, however, Kiaer challenges the explanatory power of totalitarian coercion. Instead, she finds that in both his own personal and public life and in the painted bodies that filled his canvases, Deineka endeavored earnestly to live up to the modern Soviet ideal of the New Soviet Person. Deineka was a producer of ideology, a creator of socialist realism as much as he was a victim of it.

Kiaer argues that Deineka, like many other original and committed social realist artists, successfully incarnated the Soviet version of the dream of modernity in a visual language that can be considered modern -- if the concept of modern art is redefined.

Research Home  |  Research Administrative Offices  |  research@northwestern.edu

Office for Research   633 Clark Street, Evanston, IL 60208-1108   |   847-491-2101

The Office for Research promotes, facilitates and enhances research at Northwestern University.

© 2007-2009 Northwestern University | World Wide Web Disclaimer | University Policy Statements