Socialist Realist Painting

Rating:
Summary: Superb... beautiful book
Review: Excellent reproductions, fascinating paintings, excellent scholarship by Mr. Bown. I also highly recommend all his other books on Russian / Soviet art.

Rating:
Summary: Encyclopaedic, demanding from the reader's point of view
Review: This book is a throughly history of the art of painting in Russia and the USSR from the point of view of the Realist school of painting that began to exist in the 2nd. half of the XIXth. century and, after the October 1917 Revolution, vied for supremacy with the Futurist school about the right to represent the socialist political project in form and content. The book examines the supramacy of Socialist Realism in the field of visual arts since Stalin's rise to absolute power until the demise of the USSR.

The book is encyclopaedic in both narrative and visual terms, since it combines an exahaustive historical account with an astounding array of 1st rate reproductions, taken from all corners of the former Soviet Union.The main shortcoming of the book would be only that, since it dwells not only in the history of Socialist Realist painting as such, but also of its ideological politic foundations (superbly examined) the books requires a prospective reader that has not only a general interest in the relationship between Art and Politics, but also an specific interest in both Soviet and Marxist studies. It's, nonethless, this interdisciplinary aspect that makes for much of the work's charm.