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EN:
If
he does this he 's already official.
RS:
How did you sell your work abroad?
PARTISAN REVIEW
EN:
I was one of the initiators of the Salon for the Sale of Art Objects.
In
principle, the salon was created in order to receive hard currency.
But the trade organization ran up against ideology and, in essence,
the same conservatives [as those who run the Academy of Fine Arts
and the Union of Artists] gained power there and set up a veto. Thus,
the international salon was tran formed into an ideological body,
not an institution for free trade. Therefore, though I had more
commissions than anybody else, I sold less than anybody else. When
people from the West made agreements with me for a large sum, the
Artistic Council protested and specified a lesser sum despite the
wishes of the trade organization which wanted to get more hard
currency. This was done so that I did not become a factory of hard
currency, hard currency which was indispensable to the government.
RS:
Does Socialist Realism exist, and in what way is it meaningful to
the Soviet public?
EN:
I must say there is an excellent study by Siniavsky,
What is
Socialist Realism?
But this study is an ironic dream of a Soviet
functionary. Perhaps under Stalin, elements of such a Socialist
Realism did exist. But in reality Socialist Realism doesn't exist;
instead there is conformity. To
be
a Socialist Realist is to be like
everybody else. Therefore, Socialist Realism can change but in the
direction of general stylistic features. Gradually Socialist Realism
begins to take in elements of Western art forms as well, but, as a rule,
not of personality but of general features, the worst and most banal
features of various international salons because any kind of personal–
ism is inimical.
It
is possible to take this thought to the point of
absurdity when all Socialist Realists will become banal modernists.
At that point an excell ent realist will be labelled a bourgeois
bastard, bastard in the sense of illegitimate.
RS:
This is a trifle flip , but it must be terribly boring for Socialist
Realist artists.
EN:
Everybody is bored: those who put in the orders, those who execute
them, and those who have
to
look at them. Boredom is a form of
patriotism.
RS:
In
his book
Art and Revo lution,
John Berger contends that the
Soviets regard their artists as prophets and themselves as "subjects of
prophecy." Do you agree?
If
so, what special significance does art
have in the Soviet Union? And how does this relate to the concept of
official art?
