Art History最新文献

This special issue of Art History critically revisits the often-overlooked institutional circulations of art and art professionals, exhibitions, and other forms of cultural production within the Communist sphere from the late 1940s to its peak in the early 1960s during de-Stalinization, and eventual departure by the 1980s from the international ambitions of a ‘socialist’ globalism. As this collection of essays underscores, while the promise of ‘friendship’ and ‘solidarity’ in socialist internationalism offered a variety of transnational opportunities for art and artists, at the same time these complex concepts were also dependent on an unevenness of power, and not necessarily only with the Soviet Union. ‘Red Networks: Post-War Art Exchange’ emphasizes the contributions of the artists, art critics, and cultural administrators in state-socialist networks to the worldwide modernization of art after the Second World War through to contemporary art's global turn in the 1990s.

The portable mural Venceremos (We Will Win, 1959) by Guatemalan-born Rina Lazo (1923–2019) draws rarely seen parallels between the United States’ imperialist actions in North Korea and Guatemala during the 1950s. Using tactics and strategies of modern Mexican muralism, which she learned as an assistant to Diego Rivera, Lazo attempted to encourage Guatemalans to follow the North Korean example to overcome the US. This essay considers the qualities of Venceremos as a portable mural. As a work in progress, Venceremos functioned as a passport that allowed Lazo and her partner, Mexican artist Arturo García Bustos, to travel to Asia and Europe through the network of socialist nations in the 1950s. After its purchase by a Mexican politician in 1960, Venceremos was considered lost and remained out of view until 2010. This purchase functioned as an act of censorship that thwarted the revolutionary agency of Venceremos for half a century.

This essay examines an understudied history of reciprocal art exhibitions between Cairo and Moscow during the Cold War period. It focuses on the work of Gamal El Sagini, Inji Efflatoun, and Hamed Owais, and sets out their role in forging new networks of revolutionary art in the Soviet Union. By addressing how post-colonial art was received and utilized in Soviet Russia, this article uncovers the extent of Soviet cultural engagement with Egypt, the African national liberation struggles, pan-Arabism, and international solidarity amongst the Second and Third Worlds more broadly. Offering a more complex reading of the processes behind Soviet involvement in the utopian project of socialist worldmaking, this essay argues for the need to assess critically Soviet claims to anti-imperialism, peace, international solidarity, and friendship. It discusses the role of art in these processes, and addresses the changing definitions of realism, nationalism, and humanism in the socialist world, making a contribution to alternative understandings of post-war figuration.

In the 1960s through the 1970s, and afterwards, a number of Vietnamese artists travelled to the Soviet Union to study at prestigious Soviet art and film academies. While Vietnamese artists did not develop a considerable body of work that can match the grandiose works of socialist realism under Josef Stalin, some artists did work in a socialist realist style that merged academic oil painting styles with local themes. This essay examines the work of Vũ Duy Nghı̃a (1935–2022), Lê Huy Tiếp (b. 1950) and Đào Châu Hải (b. 1955), who studied in the Soviet Union during this period and integrated various painting methods, styles and techniques into their art works. The legacy of Soviet–Vietnam relations is a still largely understudied field. While archival sources are difficult to access, the essay relies on interviews with two of the living artists. It looks into the significance of studying in the Soviet Union for these art workers, and assesses the impact that it had on the development of Vietnamese culture overall.