60p $1.50 PART 1 NATIONAL QUESTION IN SPAIN INTERNATIONAL Lessons of the General Strike 'THE PROGRAMME WE NEED' - IMG CONFERENCE DOCUMENT IT IS DIFFICULT to know what the art of a revolutionary democratic socialist state will be like. For the moment one can study the art or ine socialist bloc countries, where there are a number of styles and movements.
Yugoslavia, for instance, memorates stunning thirty by seventy foot aos race concrete ano alumoun sculpture. Poland holds an annual ics at Crackow, which is now the world's best display Cuba produces posters making use of the best of Western design, and has even issued a series of postage stamps reproducing the abstract painting and sculpture of notable artists (ironically no Western government has yet accorded these arusts - ineir own - such dIstinctive popular recognition). and Just as this attitude towards avant-garde art slavia. Poland and Cuba's more open society, so it comes as no surprise lo lind that the Soviet Union allows artists no latitude, institutions a cause due CacCu the formula of Socialist Realism.
GLORIFY The aim of Socialist Realism is to reflect and glorify the people and the state, by depicting workers at their labour, the successes of the Red Army, levements etc. It seeks to avoid tne bourgeois values and mystification Western dignified and sound revolutionary programme.
But - and this is the nub of the problem - the Soviet Union is a degenerated workers tions, its art cannot but reflect this degeneration. While it is true that a revolutionary artist's class duty is to glorify and uphold the proletariat, this duty in the Soviet Union is inextricably bound up with the patriotic duty state, and the nationalist duty of upholding Russian the result that Socialist Realism is but a passive reflection of selected aspects of Soviet society.
Art's potential for action and change is pointedly ignored; one only has to think o the dynamic and creative collective experiments of the Russian avant-garde painters between 1917 1924 or, more recently, the Paris students' stimulating poster campcomof OTHES visual European and American reflects Yugoschool-children's achstate and, critique by of glorifying the culture;
For debate.
inspiring and culture OSCAR RABIN - Still life with fish and Pravda 1968 (Oil on canvas).
So it is disappointing to find no sound or methodical critique of Soviet society in the exhibition of unofficial dissident Russian artists currently being held at the Institute NCIO of Contemporary Arts. At best this collection of mostly over-painted, muddled and indecisive artworks is Since Ene Government has chosen to publicise une issue by over-reacung some gently to an absurdly hysterical degree, ane in so colne nas towereone whole argument to a stunted level penal institutions.
Witness a reviewer in the Moscow a pendends! the majority of these works, one is Torced to diagnose inerr aurnors evil Intent resume trom tach nost Russian ities. draughtsman During one of the few tolerated Guest critic PAUL RUSSELL looks at the exhibition which crossed-out frontier posts proved too much for the censor, and the tapestry was removed. A pity tha the tapestry has not found its way Of the artists exhibiting, I liked Boris Sveshnikov's drawings best. Sveshnikov spent eight years in a labour camp, where he was free to draw what he wished. He produced surreal tragi-comic drawings depicting the irrational life which is so much a part of When Oscar Rabin lost his of ficial status as an artist he was Western shunted into a rundown Moscow suburb; here he incorporated the surrounding slums into his paintings, thereby earning further displeasure from the Moscow author •va Kabakov 1s a fine whose intellectual Pop art would be at home in any politicised situation (the expensive but well-documented catalogue gives a breath-taking, account o the running battles between the ar tists and the Moscow authorities).
naturav bourgeois canes and commentators are making politica capital out pointing to the necessity of sep arating art from politics. Militant artists and critics should use this opportunity to emphasise the need for a politicised visual arts pre cisely in order to combat the Soviet philistines and the cynics from the Part estab isamer more important, to rival drama ane terature in mer sorennaso Sumulating mass revolutionary consciousness The exhibition continues until 27 February at the Institute of Con Nach House
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Trotsky's Marxism
has recently opened in London. ОПРАВДА