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theses

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Western-established dichotomy between style and ideology, embodied by modernism and realism, was dominant. This dichotomy tended to suppress, marginalize or ostracize realism in the Soviet Union by reducing it to the leftist political project. This dissertation presents a critical reassessment of realism in the Soviet Union by challenging its representation as a monolithic phenomenon through the analysis of hyperrealism in the 1970s and 1980s. My analyses of Ando Keskküla, Jaan Elken, Semyon Faibisovich and Sergei Sherstiuk’s hyperrealist artworks, based on Yuri Lotman's semiotic theory of culture, show the influence on their artistic production of the social and cultural system of signs of the Soviet society, as displayed in architecture, means of transport, and housing, along with the artist’s personal agenda. Rather than the idealized conditions promoted by official doctrine, these artists adopted a unique strategy to subvert the predominant Socialist realist political rhetoric by representing the actual conditions of decay and collapse of Tallinn and Moscow’s urban environment as a powerful metaphor for the existential condition of alienation and seclusion experienced by the population in the last years of the Soviet era. While Keskküla, Elken, Faibisovich, and Sherstiuk remained committed to a figurative style they also tested and broadened the boundaries of realism, by breaking its rules through means and visual strategies which included the concepts of mimesis, original creativity, the artists’ agency, use of quotation and technical reproduction. In doing so, they problematized the discourse on the perception of reality in a totalitarian society, while introducing a critical third way distinct from the socialist realism and the formalist praxis of non-conformist artists of their time.

ETD_10230

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-kr8p-jq89

ETD doctoral

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