Art during communism?

Question

I am having a hard time finding information on this. I heard this from one person but have never heard about it since so maybe you guys can help me.

anyway, a while ago in communist russia (I think it was russia) they wanyed to prove to other countries that they were capable of producing citizens that were very talented in the arts - they wanted to disprove the thought that they were all mindless communists or something...

so the story goes that they had people that became fantastic painters or fantastic at the piano, ect...

does anyone have any information of a communism taking this sort of approach at all?

Answer 1

Diego Rivera was a communist painter who visited the USSR

Answer 2

No there wasn't this approach at all.  Art had to serve the people, and to do that it had to adopt an approach called Socialist Realism.  In practice this meant formulaic sculpture, paintings, literature and music.  This approach was made mandatory from 1932 onwards.

See:

http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/visu...

http://www.korpanyuk-art.com/

Surprisingly the US DID adopt that approach - The Abstract Expressionists - Rothko, Jackson Pollock and others were directly funded by the CIA

See:

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/0...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/cumming...