DOI article:
Kodres, Krista: Toward a new concept of progressive art: Art history in the service of modernisation in the late socialist period: an Estonian case
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52521#0217
Krista Kodres
TOWARD A NEW CONCEPT OF PROGRESSIVE ART:
ART HISTORY IN THE SERVICE OF MODERNISATION
IN THE LATE SOCIALIST PERIOD AN ESTONIAN CASE
I should begin by recalling a well-known incident from the Khrushchev
Thaw period in Soviet history because of its remarkable illuminating capac-
ity: it reveals a paradox description of a cultural era when certain ideas and
things were simultaneously allowed and prohibited1. This event took place in
1962. A scandal erupted in the central Moscow exhibition space, the Manege.
Artworks that demonstrated movement away from the Stalinist artistic doc-
trine of Socialist Realism to Modernism were on display; these were works
by artists who had not been exhibited in the USSR for decades. The main
protagonist of the Manege exhibition, however, was a VII] Nikita Khrushchev
himself, whose visit ended with him shouting at the modern art idiom and
lambasting modernist formalists as "pederasts".2 But there was nothing to
be done; Khrushchev himself had, in the mid-1950s, opened the door to the
modern world and he was no longer able to close it entirely He might have
been disappointed, but the Thaw was already in action.
My paper deals with one of the Helds of renewal back then - socialist art
history, which, according to the Soviet understanding, comprised part of the
"ideological held"3.1 will discuss the modernisation of art history based on the
example of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (Estonian SSR), where art
historians were forced to accept the Soviets' centrally constructed Marxist-Len-
1 The research for this article was supported by the state research grant of the Estonian
Republic "Historicizing art: Knowledge production in art history in Estonia amidst chang-
ing ideologies and disciplinary developments" (PUT788; 1.01.2015—31.12.2018).
2 M. Bernstein, Vana kaev. Mälestusteraamat [Old Well. Book of Mémoires], Tartu
2009, pp. 242-244.
3 A. lÜTaMÖOK, "UpoTUB n^eauncTüraecKoro MCKTO/LKOBai-ma pasBMTna ucKyccTBa"
[A. Shtambok, Protiv idealistitsheskovo istolkovanija razvitija iskusstva / Against the ide-
alistic interpretation of the development of art], McKyccmeo [Iskusstvo] 1950, 5, p. 56.
TOWARD A NEW CONCEPT OF PROGRESSIVE ART:
ART HISTORY IN THE SERVICE OF MODERNISATION
IN THE LATE SOCIALIST PERIOD AN ESTONIAN CASE
I should begin by recalling a well-known incident from the Khrushchev
Thaw period in Soviet history because of its remarkable illuminating capac-
ity: it reveals a paradox description of a cultural era when certain ideas and
things were simultaneously allowed and prohibited1. This event took place in
1962. A scandal erupted in the central Moscow exhibition space, the Manege.
Artworks that demonstrated movement away from the Stalinist artistic doc-
trine of Socialist Realism to Modernism were on display; these were works
by artists who had not been exhibited in the USSR for decades. The main
protagonist of the Manege exhibition, however, was a VII] Nikita Khrushchev
himself, whose visit ended with him shouting at the modern art idiom and
lambasting modernist formalists as "pederasts".2 But there was nothing to
be done; Khrushchev himself had, in the mid-1950s, opened the door to the
modern world and he was no longer able to close it entirely He might have
been disappointed, but the Thaw was already in action.
My paper deals with one of the Helds of renewal back then - socialist art
history, which, according to the Soviet understanding, comprised part of the
"ideological held"3.1 will discuss the modernisation of art history based on the
example of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (Estonian SSR), where art
historians were forced to accept the Soviets' centrally constructed Marxist-Len-
1 The research for this article was supported by the state research grant of the Estonian
Republic "Historicizing art: Knowledge production in art history in Estonia amidst chang-
ing ideologies and disciplinary developments" (PUT788; 1.01.2015—31.12.2018).
2 M. Bernstein, Vana kaev. Mälestusteraamat [Old Well. Book of Mémoires], Tartu
2009, pp. 242-244.
3 A. lÜTaMÖOK, "UpoTUB n^eauncTüraecKoro MCKTO/LKOBai-ma pasBMTna ucKyccTBa"
[A. Shtambok, Protiv idealistitsheskovo istolkovanija razvitija iskusstva / Against the ide-
alistic interpretation of the development of art], McKyccmeo [Iskusstvo] 1950, 5, p. 56.