SOCIALIST REALISM

Social Realism Vs. Socialist Realism

(Beginning in the 1920s)

   Social Realism is a term used to describe visual and other realistic art works which chronicle the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and are critical of the social environment that couses these conditions. Social Realism should be seen as a democratic tradition of socially prompted artists of liberal or left-wing conviction. Social Realism fully presents an international phenomenon, rooting in Realism of the 19th century.

   Social Realism was broadly accepted during the depression in 1930s in United States. The government used art to sell its political programs during the 30s and 40s. President Roosevelt sought to use the power and resources of the federal government to help those in need during the depression. His administration's decision had a precedent in Mexico, where the revolutionary government that took control in 1921 employed artists to help forge a national cultural identity. The American painters Ben Shahn, Leon Bibel, and the Mexican painters (muralists)José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera are all examples of Social Realists.

   In Paris, shortly after the end of the WWII, many artists of left-wing focused on depicting the dramatic conditions of working-class lives, their social plight, but workers, builders, men and women, capable of building a better world. In that group were Pablo Picasso, Eduard Pignon, Andre Fougeron, Fernand Leger, Paul Rebeyrolle, Bernard Buffet, and Francis Gruber.

   Social Realism was especially common in communist countries. Social Realism appears differently, but it always utilizes a descriptive or critical realism as form.

   Social Realism was linked with and often confused with Socialist Realism.

   Socialist Realism is Soviet artistic doctrine, realistic in its nature which has a purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism. It was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934, and later by allied Communist parties worldwide. New role of art in Soviet society defined that successful art depicts and glorifies the proletariat's struggle toward socialist progress. The art produced under socialist realism is realistic, optimistic, and heroic. Its purpose was education in the spirit of socialism. Its practice is marked by strict adherence to party doctrine and to conventional techniques of realism. A similar approach was also enforced for a time in the People's Republic of China during the rule of Mao Zedong or in Albania during the rule of Enver Hoxha. After the death of Stalin in 1953 some relaxation of strictures was evident. Today, arguably the only country still focused on these aesthetic principles is North Korea.

   Socialist Realism has been widely condemned as stifling to artistic values. Czeslaw Milos, writing in the introduction to Sinyavsky's On Socialist Realism, describes the products of socialist realism as "inferior", ascribing this as necessarily proceeding from the limited view of reality permitted to creative artists.