Hannah Strassburger, University of California, Los Angeles
This paper reflects the culmination of an independent studies course on totalitarian art in Europe. It compares Nazi Germany’s critique of degenerate art with the Soviet Union’s critique of formalism and each regimes’ response to modern art in National Socialism and Socialist Realism, respectively. Examining official state art depicting peasantry, a genre culturally significant to both Germany and Russia, exposes the underlying ideals governing art and the mechanisms of power trying influence public opinion and propagate a totalitarian political structure. The state sanctioned styles that result are nearly identical to one another, and best described as kitsch. It is what Igor Golomstock describes in his book totalitarian art as the “totalitarian aesthetic.” Despite their supposed ideological opposition to one another, this shared aesthetic betrays the inner likeness and totalitarian structure of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
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Published: Wednesday, November 5, 2014
