What would culture and most notably the arts (design, cinema, music, literature, painting, etc) look like under communism, especially in comparison to what it might appear to be today?
Note that I'm not asking what you think of the arts as they existed in the USSR or the wider Eastern Bloc, so please don't just post socialist-realist paintings — well, unless you believe there would be a return to that trend in a future communist society.
Depends on what type of society we're talking about majorly different outcomes will happen over the slightest differences, which one are we talking about.
Mass appeal is what you want. What people don't like about contemporary and modern art is that it is alienating and they feel stupid for not getting it (when there is nothing to get). But then things like Banksy are mass appeal but has the same format as memes and falls short of proper propaganda.
Jonathan Rivera
More education = less need for stupid shit like Banksy
Matthew Ward
Brainlet-tier take tbqh Soviet artists were at the forefront of art pre-Stalin, the same shit was said about them by the petty-bourgeois critics in the West.
Easton Reyes
anyone who thinks the arts would not be more heavily repressed under communism than capitalism is lying to themselves capitalism can commodify anything. communism doesnt.
Nicholas Reyes
I would repress the fuck out of any capeshit movie
Charles Moore
Case and point on this topic is George Lucas' monologue about his freedom as a director. Quick rundown is that the limitation of not critiquing the Soviet state was MUCH less repressive than the requirements of American film investors.
Dylan Parker
Capeshit wouldn't even have to be repressed, no one actually wants to make that shit. Sure, fat retarded Americans enjoy it but anyone with even a modicum of talent hates them.
Luke Russell
George Lucas one is a sad parable. THX 1138 is such an overrated jam, he could have made so much more with his career
I had never thought about it that way. It makes sense… I mean, Tarkovsky films like Solaris or Stalker would have never been green-lit by Hollywood suits, not even during the American New Wave era.
Juan Young
Well. America made some pretty god tier stuff during those years, Tarkovsky would have never been green lit, but it doesn't mean that It would have existed anyway. Public sensibilities change from country to country. Soviet union would have never green lit the tales of alienations and violence of 70's American cinema, nor there would have been space for such tales in soviet union
Anthony Wood
Ironically, the aristocratic tendencies within the arts so favored by capitalists simply aren't compatible with the consumerist age, mob opinions on basically anything even mildly nuanced tend to be shit.
You're probably right there, Stalin's taste in art was incredibly bland and that style lingered. Now, even that considered the system was still less restrictive and many artists today still find the work produced by those Stalin commissioned very inspiring. I can't say too much about film but there a tons of painters, myself included, who find the work produced by the Soviet realists very personally relevant. Check out Denis Sarazin's stuff, for example.
What is there to get about Koons, Emin and Hirst please enlighten me
Evan Scott
I hope so.
Christian Butler
Not that guy but… it doesn't really make sense to approach post-modern art assuming you're going to "get" something. There is no "secret" to "unveil", conceptual works of art are designed to intrigue the audience and suggest introspection. By the way, just because someone defends post-modern art as a valid approach doesn't mean they absolutely love every last piece of it that was ever made. I never liked Koons, to me it just always felt like an endlessly rehashed Warholian commentary on consumer capitalism, without the imaginative nuance or formal qualities of Warhol.
If you want check out post-modern artists worth the trouble, I'd suggest figures like Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg or Ryoji Ikeda for example.
Juan Brown
I haven't read much about those guys in specific but it really feels like you cherry picked those, for example, Denis Sarazin's shit has already been posted above and he's barely like 25 right now, about as contemporary as you can get, and I wouldn't say his work is void of content.
Isaac Thomas
Sarazin's work doesn't really qualify as post-modern though, it has much more to do with modern movements like symbolism or impressionism.
Tyler Cox
That's what I criticized as a brainlet tier take, if you want to make it about post-modernism, Kara Walker's work is really neat.
We cannot know, it is not up to use to determine that. Just like a peasant in feudalism couldn't know what culture would be like under capitalism, so too we cannot know what it will be like under communism.
Nathan Wood
Koons is 100% post-ironic territory. His work is unironic endorsement of capitalism, pornography, and mass culture. Ditto for Hirst.
James James
I don't know to what degree it is "ironic" and honestly I don't really care. I mean, Warhol was also ambiguous about his own feelings towards capitalism yet he managed to produce a very interesting and influential body of work. The problem with Koons is that there is very little potential for insight, his MO for art creation is pretty much "take consumer goods and make them big". Hardly creative if you ask me…
Interestingly enough, Koons doesn't even contribute to actually making his own artworks. He comes up with an idea — such as "what if plastic flowers but larger lol" — and workers build it for him.
Jack Hughes
Post less and read more.
Owen Rivera
lil pump will be the forefront of the revolutionary vanguard
art would get better as it wouldn't be poisoned with profit seeking, corporate propaganda and lowest common denominator pleasing also i just love brutalist sculptures, some war memorials that got posted here were awesome
Nicholas Lopez
When workers are no longer alienated from what they produce, focus will turn to craft.
I imagine something similar to the Arts & Craft movement (many of those artists, like William Morris, were socialist). Everyday objects will be imbued with beauty, unlike much of the mass produced crap we have in a capitalist society.
Humans will live in accordance with nature.
Visual art, novels, music, and film will explore form as well as the existential condition (communism won't solve everything, natch).
There is nothing wrong with mass-produced art — see Bauhaus, Vkhutemas, De Stijl, etc. Communism will rely significantly on mass production to decrease working hours.