scholarly journals After zero hour: States as “custodians of universal human culture,” or “guardians of advanced art”

Muzikologija ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Melita Milin
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Post War

The emergence of radically new, avant-garde movements in German music and throughout Western Europe after WW2 has often been seen as expressing a strivings to create on a tabula rasa, in order to create distance from the horrors of the recent past. In the countries of the communist bloc, the imposed ideology of socialist realism also created a sharp break, similar to that in the West, except that Zero Hour was conceived in quite a different fashion, as a move in the opposite direction from Western modernism. The case of post-war music in Yugoslavia is examined under the light of the fact that the country did not belong to either bloc.

Modernism, Functionalism, and Tradition: The Music of Friedrich Goldmann

Tempo ◽  
1995 ◽  
pp. 27-30
Author(s):  
Alastair Williams
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Past ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Socialist Politics

The current reappraisal of tradition, along with an interest in a music that deals with concrete emotions and which has a direct appeal to audiences, sounds a certain resonance with the aesthetic doctrines that prevailed in the former communist bloc. A sense of history is vital to socialist politics, but the availability of a symphonic tradition to Soviet composers after a break with that heritage suggests a state of posthistoire; a condition normally associated with postmodernism. The postmodernist reappraisal of the past is anticipated by, for example, Shostakovich's complex and sometimes ironic relationship to the symphonic tradition. Conservative traditionalism in the East maintained to be a critique of high modernist principles; in the West, ironically, a turn to tradition is now put forward as an alternative to the same rationalist modernism. At the moment when the achievements of the historical avant-garde and of high modernism have become fully available to the former Eastern Europe, the former Western Europe is engaged with the reappraisal of tradition. Even where a modernist music did develop in Eastern Europe – as, for example, it did in Poland – it was followed by a move back to more traditional techniques. The consequence of this inclination is that composers such as Górecki and Pärt, who employ traditionally-based expressive languages, have shot onto centre stage. The point is that composers from the former communist bloc have already encountered many of the issues that now preoccupy some contemporary composers in the capitalist West.

From Reconstruction to ‘Leisure Society’: Free Time, Recreational Behaviour and the Discourse on Leisure Time in the West German Recovery Society of the 1950s

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Schildt
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
German Society ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Expert ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
Industrial Standards ◽  
Second World

Little more than a decade after having lost the Second World War, the society of the western part of Germany, the Federal Republic, had changed fundamentally in the eye of the observer. The economic expert Henry C. Wallich was not the only one to speak of the ‘German miracle’. Not only had the previously achieved industrial standards long been regained and surpassed, but also a boom had set in – as in all of Western Europe – which came to an end only in the 1970s. Simultaneously, both economy and society had been modernised in the process of reconstruction. The transition to a new stage of modernity, ‘society in affluence’, was discussed animatedly. The emergence of new leisure lifestyles in particular was considered a mark of present times. However, in current reviews it is often forgotten that the West German society of the 1950s was to a far greater extent determined by continuity with the interwar period and by the consequences of the war and post-war years than a first glance at the spectacular novelties suggests.

scholarly journals Dialogue East/West in the Russian Avant-garde and Poetics of Primitive

2021 ◽  
pp. 201-227
Author(s):  
Nataliya Zlydneva ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Art ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Third ◽  
Official Ideology ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
East West

The essay examines interrelation between the motif and the poetics in the visual arts, specifically,as it concerns the East / West motif and the style of primitivism in the Russian art of the twentieth century. It discussesvarious forms and meanings of this theme as presented in the works of M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, and P. Filonov. Two models are shown: the early historical avant-garde and the avant-garde of the late 1920s. If at the beginning of the century, the style is contingent on the plot and focuses mainly on the theme of the East, the primitivism of the next decade develops in the context of the Western Europeanturn towards documentary in art and therefore addresses the theme of the West. The third model describes the painting of the early 1930s when the appeal to the East, required by the order of the official ideology, gave rise to a form of primitivism as a way to escape from the pressure of socialist realism (Vasnetsov, Volkov). Conclusion: in relation to the topic East / West, primitivism acted as geopoetics of a kind, generating new meanings. Inherent dualism of the Russian culturefound a correspondence in primitivism as a borderline type of poetics.

scholarly journals Red Trauma: Aleksander Kobzdej’s Informel and the Challenge of Stalinist Past

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiktor Komorowski
Keyword(s):  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Polish Art ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
War Art

This article investigates the relation between Socialist realism and Polish ‘matter painting’. By taking a closer look at the use of red hue developed by Aleksander Kobzdej for his informel compositions, it attempts to uncover psychological challenges Polish post-war artist had to face trying to emancipate from the Socialist tradition. A major work that only distantly approaches the topic of psychological stigma came to light along with the exhibition Nowoczesni a Socrealizm, which took place at the Starmach Gallery in Krakow in 2000. A more developed argument in this matter can be found in Tomasz Gryglewicz’s paper ‘Co zawdzięcza sztuka polska PRL-owi?’ in which he pointed out that the success of Polish ‘matter painting’ was based on the fact that Polish artists managed to preserve the pre-war ideas of Polish structuralism and colourism from the trauma of war and Stalinism. This alleged success became the input of Polish ‘matter painting’ in the development of European post-war art. This article offers an alternative argument to the one presented by Gryglewicz as it points to the fact that the unique character of the Polish art of the 1960s comes not from the ability to rebuild the pre-war avant-garde tradition, but rather from the ability to challenge the distress caused by the Stalinist past.

scholarly journals Zaobchádzanie s obsahom o západnom plánovaní v československých architektonických časopisoch 1945–1970

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lívia Gažová
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Western World ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Nineteen Fifties ◽  
Post War

Architectural journals were, for their readers, architects and planners in the former Czechoslovakia, one of the few means of gaining information about Western planning in the post-war period. Despite the Iron Curtain, Czechoslovak planners were significantly influenced by contemporary discussions in the West. Analysis of the content of five major architectural journals from the period 1945–1970 proves that Czechoslovak urban planning discourse was not fully separated from the Western world, but was largely developed in contact with the West. The architectural magazines presented Western content in different genres. In the first years after World War II, the magazines used comprehensive studies based on Western projects and materials obtained mainly from organized excursions abroad. Later, with the introduction of the communist regime, the magazines included social critique, critique of cosmopolitanism, and brief articles based on selections from the foreign press. In the early nineteen-fifties, Soviet ideologybased parodies of Western planning appeared. After the rejection of socialist realism in the mid-fifties, the magazines included regular sections from the Western press and even reportage from abroad.

Searching for new Sources of growth. Are the Developing Countries Catching up with the Developed ones?

2015 ◽  
pp. 30-53
Author(s):  
V. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Gdp Per Capita ◽  
The West ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Divergence ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Relative Standing

This paper examines the trajectory of growth in the Global South. Before the 1500s all countries were roughly at the same level of development, but from the 1500s Western countries started to grow faster than the rest of the world and PPP GDP per capita by 1950 in the US, the richest Western nation, was nearly 5 times higher than the world average and 2 times higher than in Western Europe. Since 1950 this ratio stabilized - not only Western Europe and Japan improved their relative standing in per capita income versus the US, but also East Asia, South Asia and some developing countries in other regions started to bridge the gap with the West. After nearly half of the millennium of growing economic divergence, the world seems to have entered the era of convergence. The factors behind these trends are analyzed; implications for the future and possible scenarios are considered.

Squatting: The Fight for Decent Shelter, 1970s–1980s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Housing Needs ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.

Restating Classicist Monumentalism in Soviet Architecture, 1930s–early 1950s

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
William C. Brumfield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines the development of retrospective styles in Soviet architecture during the Stalin era, from the 1930s to the early 1950s. This highly visible manifestation of communist visual culture is usually interpreted as a reaction to the austere modernism of 1920s Soviet avant-garde architecture represented by the constructivist movement. The project locates the origins of Stalin-era proclamatory, retrospective style in prerevolutionary neoclassical revival architecture. Although functioning in a capitalist market, that neoclassical reaction was supported by prominent critics who were suspicious of Russia’s nascent bourgeoisie and felt that neoclassical or neo-Renaissance architecture could echo the glory of imperial Russia. These critics left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but prominent architects of the neoclassicist revival remained in the Soviet Union. Together with the Academy of Architecture (founded 1933), these architects played a critical role in reviving classicist monumentalism—designated “socialist realism”—as the proclamatory style for the centralized, neoimperial statist system of the Stalin era. Despite different ideological contexts (prerevolutionary and Stalinist), retrospective styles were promulgated as models for significant architectural projects. The article concludes with comments on the post-Stalinist—and post-Soviet—alternation of modernist and retrospective architectural styles.

scholarly journals Digitizing artist periodicals: new methodologies from the Digital Humanities for Analysing Artist Networks

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
Thomas Crombez
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Digital Archive ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
Post War

The research project Digital Archive of Belgian Neo-Avant-garde Periodicals (DABNAP) aims to digitize and analyse a large number of artists’ periodicals from the period 1950–1990. The artistic renewal in Belgium since the 1950s, sustained by small groups of artists (such as G58 or De Nevelvlek), led to a first generation of post-war artist periodicals. Such titles proved decisive for the formation of the Belgian neo-avant-garde in literature and the visual arts. During the sixties and the seventies, happening and socially-engaged art took over and gave a new orientation to artist periodicals. In this article, I wish to highlight the challenges and difficulties of this project, for example, in dealing with non-standard formats, types of paper, typography, and non-paper inserts. A fully searchable archive of neo-avant-garde periodicals allows researchers to analyse in much more detail than before how influences from foreign literature and arts took root in the Belgian context.

Family Structure and Proto-industrialization in Russia

1980 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Rudolph
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Household Structure ◽  
Marriage Pattern ◽  
The West ◽  
Unfree Labor ◽  
Family And Household ◽  
Major Factors ◽  
Previous Existence

The experience of Russia is examined to establish whether the area underwent a process of proto-industrialization comparable to that found in Western Europe. It is argued that the process did take place in this region, even with unfree labor, and served as the basis for much later industrial development. It is also argued that the Russian case differed a good deal from that found in the West. The major factors operating to make the pattern different include the previous existence of the “non- European” marriage pattern, marked differences in family and household structure, the relative immobility of labor, and the degree to which there were half-peasant, half-manufacturing households that dominated much of manufacture.

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