51

Srminar 6 Culture of the XX th century

1. The Sperit of the Epoch: Modernism, Socialist Realism

2. Theatre

3. Cinema

4. Painting

5. Literature (main trends, mainrepresentatives)

• the 1^st half of the 20^th century

• Shistdesiatnyky

• Diaspora literary activity

The text to read:

The Spirit f the Epoch: Modernism and Sosialist Realism

Modernism. An international movement in literature and art that emphasized the sense of a radical break with the past and the possibility of a transformed world. Emerging at the end of the nineteenth century as a rejection of realism and populism, it experimented with new literary and artistic forms, often under the influence of photography, film, and new technologies. Non-traditional materials were often used in architecture and sculpture, such as new metal alloys, glass, and synthetic plastics. The focus in literature and art was often on subjective perceptions and on the inner psychological conflicts and complexes of the urban intelligentsia. Depictions of individual personalities often included the eccentric, the taboo, and the deranged. Modernism coincided with and reflected the rapid growth of capitalist production and the rise of strong feminist, political, and national movements.

Central and East European modernism in the years 1880–1913 is often viewed as encompassing the “isms”: impressionism, symbolism, cubism, abstractionism, futurism, and expressionism. A second wave of modernism appeared in the years 1914–30, which was strongly influenced by radical political movements in Europe and sometimes identified itself as the cultural avant-garde of these movements. It was closely associated with the futurists, constructivists, expressionists, and surrealists of the post-First World War years.

Painters and sculptors from Ukraine were very heavily involved in the artistic revolution that swept Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century. Many spent time in Western Europe, particularly in Paris, in the prewar years, among them Vadym Meller, Alexander Archipenko, Alexandra Ekster (Exter), Mykhailo Boichuk, David Burliuk, Sofiia Levytska, Aleksandr Shevchenko, Vladimir Tatlin, N. Altman, and D. Shterenberg. Some, like Oleksa Hryshchenko (Alexis Gritchenko, A. Grischenko), Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo (Michel Andreenko), and K. Redko came to Paris after the war, and several of them settled there permanently. Other prominent exponents of modernism in Ukrainian art were Oleksandr Bohomazov, Anatol Petrytsky, Vasyl Yermilov, Viktor Palmov, Pavlo Kovzhun, Vasyl H. Krychevsky, Mykola Butovych, Halyna Mazepa, and Petro P. Kholodny. Some of the leading figures in the international avant-garde identified themselves as Ukrainians, among them Burliuk, the “father” of futurism in the Russian Empire, Archipenko, the maker of cubist sculptures, Kazimir Malevich, the creator of suprematist art, and Tatlin, known for his constructivism. Some of these artists were interested in provocatively flouting convention; others, in exploring the machine aesthetic and the use of new materials, still others, in utopian and visionary projects.

Ukrainian modernism was distinguished by its use of color (both Ekster and Sonia Delauney, who originally came from Ukraine, did much to introduce bright colours into Western cubism and modern design) and its special feeling for texture. Another particularly strong Ukrainian modernist feature was the interest in primitivism, the direct, powerful, and simple as expressed in folk creativity or ancient traditions. In Ukrainian architecture modernism was manifested in the revival of a Ukrainian national style in the projects of Vasyl H. Krychevsky, Konstantin Zhukov, Oleksander Tymoshenko, and Ivan Levynsky, and in the constructivism of Vladyslav Horodetsky, Petro H.Yurchenko, Yevsevii Lipetsky, S. Kravets, and others.

After the Second World War, modernism dominated in Ukrainian émigré art, particularly in the United States and Canada, in reaction to socialist realism, the only artistic method sanctioned in the USSR. Strongly influenced by abstraction and the simplified forms of modern design, a modernist esthetic can be seen in the works of Liuboslav Hutsaliuk, Myron Levytsky, Edvard Kozak, Roman Kowal, Arcadia Olenska-Petryshyn, Jurij Solovij, Konstantin Milonadis, Volodymyr Makarenko, and other émigré artists, and in the architectural projects of Radoslav Zuk and V. Deneka.

Modernism was also manifest in the productions of the Molodyi Teatr theater, the Berezil theater led by Les Kurbas, the Mykhailychenko Theater led by Marko Tereshchenko, the Zahrava experimental theater led by Volodymyr Blavatsky, and the émigré Theater-Studio of Y. Hirniak and O. Dobrovolska. It also had its expression in the 1920s in the films produced by the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration (VUFKU) studios in Soviet Ukraine (Oleksander Dovzhenko, Dziga Vertov), in the experimental films of Yevhen Slabchenko (Eugene Deslaw) in France, and in music.

Ukrainian literary modernism made its appearance at the turn of the century with the Lviv-based Moloda Muza group, who championed the idea of ‘pure art,’ and the Kyiv-based journal Ukraæns’ka khata. Mykola Vorony, an early theoretician of the movement, believed that modernism consisted of a change in thematic focus from the social to the psychological, of the enrichment of forms of versification, and of greater sophistication of metaphor. The movement dominated Ukrainian poetry after the publication of Pavlo Tychyna’s Soniashni klarnety (Sunny Clarinets, 1918) and Zamist’ sonetiv i oktav (Instead of Sonnets and Octaves, 1920). In the 1920s it was manifested in the radical poetic experiments of Mykhailo Semenko and Valeriian Polishchuk and in the poetry of Mykola Bazhan and other poets. Examples in prose include the impressionistic works of Vasyl Stefanyk and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, the psychological prose of Volodymyr Vynnychenko and, in the 1920s, Valeriian Pidmohylny, and the experimental prose of Mykola Khvylovy’s (Syni etiudy [Blue Etudes], 1923) and Leonid Skrypnyk’s (Intelihent [The Intellectual], 1929). Ukrainian literary modernism also produced strong women writers who expressed feminist concerns (eg, Lesia Ukrainka and Olha Kobylianska). In Ukrainian émigré literature, modernism was most apparent in the work of the interwar ‘Prague school’ of Ukrainian poets and the postwar New York Group of poets.

In the early 1930s the Soviet authorities repressed and then eradicated modernism and its exponents in both literature and the arts, demanding in its place a state-sanctioned form of populism that stressed the heroic gesture and loyalty to the Communist party. Most forms of modernist experimentation were denounced as ‘formalism,’ ‘psychologism,’ ‘bourgois nationalism,’ or ‘decadence.’ Not until the 1960s did a literary movement—the shistdesiatnyky— re-emerge in Ukraine that built on the gains made by modernists in the century’s first three decades.

Socialist realism. The only officially sanctioned so-called ‘creative method’ in Soviet literature and art from the early 1930s. The revolutionary poets of the late 19th century (G.L. Weerth, E. Pottier) and the Russian revolutionary democrats (Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Dobroliubov) were considered its forerunners. To a certain extent the title ‘revolutionary democrat’ was also applied, artificially, to Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, and Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky. Maxim Gorky is acknowledged as the writer who laid down the principles of socialist realism before 1917, and who was its leading practitioner in the early years of Soviet rule. Before its official adoption as the prescribed style the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Writers promoted their version of the form, ‘proletarian realism.’ The term socialist realism and its theoretical underpinnings were officially adopted by the First Congress of Writers of the USSR in August 1934, when the Soviet Writers' Union was established. Those active in other fields (theater, painting, sculpture, cinema, music) were also organized into single artistic unions, and also adopted socialist realism as the basic creative method.

According to the resolution of the first Writers' Union congress: ‘socialist realism demands a true, historical, and concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. The realism and historical concreteness of the artistic rendering of reality must be tied to the ideological re-education and training of workers in the spirit of socialism. Socialist realism guarantees the artist exclusive control over creative initiative, and choice of form, style, and genre.’ As applied, however, those principles had a very narrow meaning. The ‘true depiction of reality in its revolutionary development’ meant that literature and art were to serve as glorifying illustrations of the CPSU's policies, and to portray what was hoped for in such a way that it seemed real. Deviations into truly realistic portrayals of Soviet reality and its deficiencies were attacked as ‘slavishness to facts’ or ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.’ That response resulted in the formulation of such theoretical conceptions as the ‘varnishing of reality’ and the ‘theory of no conflict,’ that is, painting reality with a rosy hue.

Socialist realism's need to hide falsity of content gave rise to certain characteristics of style in all Soviet literature and art. In literature it was responsible for the presence of compendiums of useless information and statistical data, the use of artificial verbal ornamentation, the overuse of epithets and similes (even in the works of superior writers, such as Oles Honchar and Pavlo Zahrebelny), a decline in the lexicon to the level of journalistic vocabulary, a reliance on artificial pathos that dipped into sentimentality (in the novels of Mykhailo Stelmakh, the biographical narratives of Yukhym Martych), and a preponderance of didacticism and moralizing. In painting it resulted in excessive pathos, photographism (with gestures and motion depicted as if frozen by photographs), and the tendency to dwell on luxurious uniforms and interiors.

Changes in socialist realism occurred in step with changes in the regime. The initial programmatic resolution that guaranteed choice of form, style, and genre had no practical application. In its first period (1934–41) socialist realism's range in prose and painting was restricted to depictions of industrialization and collectivization (in painting, the focus was mainly on portraits and monuments to Joseph Stalin). Poetry was reduced to stilted odes to the Party and its leaders (eg, Pavlo Tychyna's Partiia vede [The Party Leads the Way] and Maksym Rylsky's Pisnia pro Stalina [Song about Stalin]). Music consisted of cantatas dedicated to the Party. During the Second World War art was mainly the patriotic poster and the satirical caricature, and literature was dominated by patriotic themes and publicistic style (eg, narratives and articles of Oleksander Dovzhenko). Gradually the theme of glorification of the Russian ‘big brother’ crept in, and it was intensified after the war. The theme reached a climax in the ‘unification celebrations’ of 1954. It was reflected in various genres and media: in prose, in works such as Natan Rybak's Pereiaslavs’ka rada (The Pereiaslav Council, 2 vols, 1948, 1953), and in painting, in Mykhailo Derehus's Pereiaslav Council (1952) and M. Khmelko's Forever with Moscow, Forever with the Russian People (1951–4). The theme remained constant in Ukrainian socialist-realist literature and art; only its intensity varied.

Socialist realism was enforced in literature and the other arts by means of repressions. In the 1930s over 300 writers were executed or otherwise prevented from publishing. Some painters, such as Anatol Petrytsky, survived the terror, but their works were destroyed (an extensive series of Petrytsky's portraits). Many others, including Mykhailo Boichuk, Sofiia Nalepinska, Vasyl Sedliar, and Ivan Padalka, were shot. Theater was also decimated in the name of the new form. The Berezil theater was liquidated, and its founder and director, Les Kurbas, died in a prison camp, as did its principal playwright, Mykola Kulish. Its major actors, such as Yosyp Hirniak, were imprisoned. Writers of the brief literary renaissance of the 1950s and 1960s were persecuted because of their deviations from the officially sanctioned method. Departures from the norm were labeled ‘formalism,’ ‘abstractionism,’ or ‘modernism’ and proscribed. In its last stage socialist realism was praised for its Party orientation and its ‘populism’ (narodnist). Those terms continued to be used as synonyms for devoted service to the interests of the Party. Socialist realism also demanded isolation from the literature and art of the West, with particular emphasis on the ‘revisionism’ of Western Communist critics (eg, R. Garaudy, Réalisme sans rivages).

Theoreticians of socialist realism based their writings on those of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin, various resolutions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the speeches of various Party leaders. A large body of writings created in several decades up until the 1990s consisted entirely of dogmatic pronouncements and tendentious interpretations of artificially chosen quotes from officially accepted works.

After the announcement of Perestroika and Glasnost in 1985, the dogmatic constraits of socialist realism have been widened. Indeed, reference to socialist realism has largely been avoided, especially since the breakup of the Soviet Union. With time, the use of this term practically disappeared in the contemporary art and literature of independent Ukraine.

Theater