"Nothing is powerful enough to stand in the way of art. Whatever artistic merit the [Soviet 'realist'] canvases have stays as a permanent part of them, and the propagandistic aspect disappears as the context — the political context — disappears. All that’s left, in some sense, is the pure art and the craftsmanship. At some point, some of the paintings I have are just very realistic renditions of working-class people. All the propaganda is disappearing, so it’s very interesting to have those artifacts around.... I have studied totalitarianism for a very long time, and... I’ve always tried to read history as a perpetrator rather than as a hero or a victim. And I’m very interested in trying to understand why these ideas have such a grip on people...."
Said Jordan Peterson, interviewed by Tyler Cowan, about his big collection of high-quality Soviet-era propaganda art. When asked about his relationship with his wife, one of the things Peterson says — along with "Well, I really like my wife" — is:
I think she has to put up with a lot because my life has always been strange, I would say. First of all, she had to put up with the fact that I bought 300 pieces of Soviet-era art. People were calling her and saying, “What’s up with Jordan? It’s like he’s bought 300 pieces of Soviet art. There’s something that’s a bit off about that.” Which was definitely true, but she’s willing to take the risks and she trusts what I’m doing....
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51 comments:
There was no Pin Up art in the Soviet times.
Sad.
If he'd had the chance to buy Leninist-era art in big lots, he'd be a very rich man right now.
The first thing I thought of in regards to his statement is that the word "wins" is wrong. In a head-to-head competition, propaganda wins over art. What JP is saying is that art lasts longer than propaganda.
The second thing I thought of was pyramids. All of the art of the ancient world was originally propaganda.
Good point of his regarding West vs. Communism being "playable" vs. "non-playable" with one small caveat. Communism is playable using one methodology only - revolution. It's natural entropic tendencies and orthodoxy to its economic system allow revolution to be its sole restructuring mode. The revolution is never over. The entropy is never over either. In communism, you should feel blessed if you actually get a chance to tear it all down AND start all over again. Blessed because usually it just ends as a never-ending cycle of tearing everything down.
It's like playing a video game with infinite lives where you get killed constantly on level 1. There's no investment and you certainly can't 'save your game'. Hardly surprising every generation comes up with a new class of these idiots that want to start again at level 1, they're playing the game with your 'infinite' lives.
We all know who we mean...
...The gotta break a few eggs people...
You're the egg
There was probably a lot of the stuff going at fire-sale prices in places like Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and the Czech Republic. Lots of heroic statuary going cheap. Most of the Third Reich stuff, which shared a similar aesthetic, was probably destroyed.
Nothing is powerful enough to stand in the way of art.
That's any empty statement.
Lots of stuff stands in the ways of art. Plain old destruction, for example. Time, to be philosophical.
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
I specifically alluded to "tearing everything down" because incidentally that is precisely what has occurred to the "art" that supposedly beats "propaganda"
Russia is filled with 'Soviet Art Cemetaries' where statues, monuments etc. from that era sit growing moss specifically because the art and the propaganda were judged 'inseparable'.
JP can collect this stuff mostly because only people like him and the West are fascinated by it whereas so many from the former Soviet and Warsaw pact knew exactly what the hell it was when it went up in the first place.
The only soviet era art that does survive are mostly war memorials from WWII.
So I disagree. Art didn't win at all. Propaganda won because it wasn't art to begin with. JP hasn't lived somewhere where he had to stare at a 20ft Lenin statue spouting stone-carved nonsense for 40 years. It fascinates him. Very few others.
In Soviet Russia, art gazes at you.
Wasn't there some Obama official who was castigated for having (reproductions of?) Soviet era art in his house?
I wish I was able to afford some of the wonderful post-modern soviet art. I've seen some really fantastic pieces in museums in Europe, though almost none here or in the UK.
I understand that a lot of our diplomatic staff came home with important works purchased for pennies. /envy
-=XC
The churches and palaces of Europe are crammed with Propaganda art.
Art is just framed communication, with the framing pointing to a claim of separation of the communication from the quotidian world on grounds aesthetic or of signification.
Art can be bad, in the way all communication can be, on grounds aesthetic or of meaning.
Propaganda is just one man's idea of bad purpose. Kitsch is just one man's idea good aesthetics in a bad purpose. Irony is to value Kitsch highly so as to invert its purpose by putting the original frame into a new frame.
The idea of "Art" defeating "Propaganda" is just bad Platonism.
Tricky.
A lot of Soviet-era art IS powerful.
But so was a lot of Nazi art and imagery.
Both were at service to a political force of destruction.
But, if you like Nazi uniforms, then you're a Nazi.
If you like Soviet art, then you're a nuanced thinker with a dispassionate eye.
Or a college professor.
And if you go around carrying pictures of chairman Mao...
I am Laslo.
We all know who we mean...
...The gotta break a few eggs people...
You're the egg
Or, as Sergio Leone so elegantly put it: "Duck you sucker!"
Is he walking around in a modern Che T-Shirt or just buying historical artifacts? I think when you consider the two options; you see a significant difference between liked and studied.
Lenin wrote "Imagine." Lennon gave it some pretty piano chords.
I am Laslo.
Nazi Germany had some good art too. Does anyone collect it? What about Fascist Italy?
Take my wife . . . please.
Nazi Germany had some good art too. Does anyone collect it? What about Fascist Italy?
The Propagandist with a gun in his pocket ALWAYS wins over the art guy with a paintbrush.
Man has always been religious. And there's always been religious art of some sort - even if its poetry.
State run propaganda art is a new thing, although the rich and powerful have always gotten themselves painted and had the Royal family glorified in plays (cf: Shakespeare).
Surely the best Soviet era art is Worker and Parasite.
That's a very interesting interview. Well worth reading all the way through.
"What about Fascist Italy?"
They were quite good at this.
https://ideologicalart.com/fascism/fascism-gallery/
And they were "modern" indeed - look up Fascist Futurism
https://hiddencause.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/italian-futurism-from-cubism-in-motion-to-fascisms-official-style/
https://hiddencause.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/bruchetti-fascist-synthesis.jpg
"A lot of Soviet-era art IS powerful. But so was a lot of Nazi art and imagery. Both were at service to a political force of destruction.
But, if you like Nazi uniforms, then you're a Nazi. If you like Soviet art, then you're a nuanced thinker with a dispassionate eye. Or a college professor."
I think you misunderstand.
In the series "Justified" we're introduced to a character who collets Hitler paintings. Everyone mocks him, in a manner similar to the way you just mocked Petterson. When we are finally showm his collection of Hitlers, its in the form of 50 glass jars each containing ashes. The guy is travelling the world buying up Hitler's creations so he can destroy them forever.
In his lectures, Jordan Peterson often raises the same complaint you do about how anything remotely associated with the Nazis is scorned, but wearing a Marxist Che shirt is "hip", even though the Marxists have exterminated hundreds of millions compared to Hitler's six million.
Peterson doesn't collect Soviet Art because of some nuanced appreciation of Marxism.
The Spanish Nationalists - Falange were not terribly good at art. Almost all the local talent worked for the reds. The reds won the propaganda battle going away, especially in the global media.
Moreover the Nationalists were nationalist. Their emphasis was on their own people, their own side, speaking to Spanish people of Spanish things. The rest of the world and its views were irrelevant. Consider the Carlists -
http://carlistswarsandmuchmore.blogspot.com/p/carteles-de-la-guerra-carlista.html
However, the battle-battle did not depend, that much, on global propaganda wars, but much more on marksmanship with the Spanish 7mm Mauser.
People are visual creatures. That said, art is propaganda.... No Comment.
I have listened to a great many Jordan Peterson videos and podcasts and I would have expected that by this point I would have heard all of his ideas, but that's not the case. He continues to produce intriguing new thoughts or reveal old thoughts that I hadn't heard before.
This is a veritable feast of ideas and I may listen to it again I enjoyed it so much. The most immediately relevant part is his thinking about reforming or replacing the universities. That deserves prolonged discussion.
But the whole religion/ideology/narrative set of ideas are probably more fundamentally important, and something I've been struggling to understand, and there was something there for a moment that almost came clear to me.
Speaking of ideas that deserve more discussion, I suspect most people missed, certainly I did, the real significance of the Boghossian/Lindsay 'hoax'. See A Massive Hoax Exposes Social Justice in Academia (Full Interview).
The part that people are missing is that in order to pull this off they had to understand and imitate current academic far-left ideology. These 'fake' papers were accurate statements about what the academic far-leftists believe. Almost everything in them is an echoing of what 'real' papers say.
Nazi Germany had some good art too. Does anyone collect it?
Not openly. But there was no stigma driving a Volkswagen Beetle in the 60´s. Quite the opposite, it was considered hip.
There's a passage in Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in which two gulag inmates, Markovich and Bulnovsky, briefly discuss the merits of "Battleship Potemkin". Bulnovsky is less impressed by the film than Markovich, pointing out that the maggot-ridden side of beef that sparks the mutiny wasn't realistic. Markovich, however, doesn't consider Einsenstein's exaggerated maggots important. Between the two Soviet realism is embraced and dismissed in the space of a few words. Bulnovsky wants more of it, Markovich is indifferent. Realism must serve the story, he insists. However, neither questions role art as propaganda in their current predicament as zeks at the very bottom of the Soviet pecking order.
soviet propaganda art is so ugly. I can't imagine wanting to see it on a daily basis on my home.
Poetry & literature was a space for resistance during the cold war under the soviets. It could be oblique but powerful. Satire. Poetry. Bulgakov.
The Lives of Others is a great film.
Art does win out over propaganda, but not in time to save us from barbarism.
A few years ago I had to attend several mediations in Federal Court with the magistrate judge being an aficionado of Soviet memorabilia. Was kind of weird being hectored by a federal judge in his office full of Soviet art and memorabilia. Peterson, maybe the guy has some weirdness for this stuff, possibly the result of being a Canadian.
@Fen -
I was being a bit facetious, but alluding to the common point that 'everyone' hates Hitler, but no one on the Left has had to apologize for their affections for Stalin, Mao, etc etc.
As such, Nazi imagery is taboo, while Communist art is acceptable.
I wasn't criticizing Petersen -- I was mocking the Marxist professors who have wise 'nuance' - i.e., they are OK with communist propaganda with a huge death toll because they know True Communism hasn't been tried yet.
I am Laslo.
The Soviets took and repurposed stuff that was there, or was coming up new at the time.
The continuity is interesting. Maxim Gorki was Maxim Gorki, before and after, but his will was, after a struggle, under new management.
Highly reccommend "Natashas Dance", Orlando Figes
An overview and history of the remarkable flowering of Russian culture, from the 18th century to post-Stalin.
Soviet era poster art is interesting on its own merit. I like the strong guys hitting gears with hammers and the tractor girls. Nothing is better than men under the spatter of hot iron in patriotic struggle to provide each his needs. Red Chinese images of guys and girls holding red books high are good also. I consider it high camp. These images are an indictment of the now irrelevant State.
Nazi Germany had some good art too.
Actually, I don't think it did. I think most of the artistic "talent" in Nazi Germany either left or lay low until it was all over, even artists of great fame such as the composer Richard Strauss kind of kept a low profile. Can anyone give any examples of great art (in the broad sense, not just then plastic arts) from the Nazi regime?
I agree that Fascist Italy was much more tolerant of modernist tendencies, & thus had many artists that continued to produce under the Fascist regime. The Soviets had a flourishing of modernist art right after the Revolution, which they then proceeded to quash in favor of socialist realism.
I think most of the artistic "talent" in Nazi Germany either left or lay low until it was all over
Not in film. Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will is considered a masterpiece by film buffs.
The SS had stylish uniforms. The were produced by Hugo Boss, an active member of the Nazi party as early as 1931.
I recall that fmr times correspondent and white house press secretary, jay carney, had a whole slew of soviet art, in their home
here's a sample:
https://www.businessinsider.com/soviet-propaganda-posters-jay-carney-2014-4
The interviewer should have asked him why he named his daughter after Mikhail Gorbachev.
Art has a way of calming my brain and thus influencing my thoughts, particularly Wassily Kandinsky's work. Miro, Picasso and Dali are not too shabby either. We also have original abstract artwork from some Midwestern artists that are wonderful. It is amazing what a creative mind can do.
Good propaganda art can be very effective.
its not propaganda, when they do it:
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2019/03/01/this-is-your-slogan-my-dude-redsteeze-calls-the-bulwark-out-for-sending-pro-choice-lib-to-own-the-cons-at-cpac/
Nazi Germany had some good art too. Does anyone collect it? What about Fascist Italy?
I had some Italian propaganda once. I cooked it al dente, added a little marinara sauce and ate it with a nice Chianti.
While at a Prague train station in '92 a sleeper had just pulled in from Moscow. All the sleeper cars had one of these screwed to the side next to the door. It had been painted over but it was still visible. Hammer and Spanner I think it's called. It looked cool.
" These images are an indictment of the now irrelevant State."
But the state is not irrelevant. In both cases, Russia and China, its the same state, with remarkable continuity, and still-great importance, its just that policies changed. With slight changes you could reissue any of these and they would still apply.
Anything off about them, to modern eyes, would be matters of style.
The difference from one state to another, or of one state of a state to another state of a state, in any suite of policies, is a matter of degree.
@Amexpat,
Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will is considered a masterpiece by film buffs.
Yeah, but that's about it. Even from Riefenstahl.
The Third Reich & high art just didn't hang together.
. . . and then somebody muttered “that fucking bastard!”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art
Laslo: "@Fen -
I was being a bit facetious... I wasn't criticizing Peterson"
My mistake. I wasn't sure who you meant, but I wrongly assumed when you mentioned professors you meant Peterson, because he is one. I apologize for wrongly accusing you of such.
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