The Modem art center had advertised the Szocreál show since mid-summer, and it was in its last weeks. So it was lucky that I got to see this great art center and a couple of their well-curated shows.
This exhibition features paintings from 1945 - 1955, rendered by Hungarian artists using the Soviet model of realist painting. You can say they were either boosting morale and awareness of communal progress, or grinding out propaganda - whichever you prefer.
The paintings exhibit subtle stylistic differences that aren't apparent at first blush. When looked at as exponents of a movement, the aesthetic seems bound by a determined but tacky sense of purpose. There is seemingly no modernist bourgeois influence in any of these works. Many of these artists, like Jószef Csaki-Maronyák with his Pioneer Celebrating Her Grandfather, seemed to be content taking their technique from mid-19th Century masters.
However, others adopted more modern approaches to painting. I saw many a facial-feature abstraction a lá Edward Hopper, some draughtsmanship in parallel with that of Thomas Hart Benton, and one so (unintentionally) strange it looked like something from a David Lynch vision.
Still, the byword of this exhibition was: Kitsch. Garish and kitschy. Interesting that when an artist feels the need to subvert his vision and originality, the first thing to go into the toilet is a good color palette. Most of the artists here employed the confused, garish color palette of the hack landscape painter.
One redeeming aspect of the work of these artists is how they paint women. Despite the latent impressionist influences in this show, there were no anorexic Degas dancer-types here. All the gals in these paintings and sculptures were healthy strapping lassies, which I found completely to my taste. More than once I was licking my chops looking at those strong arms and sturdy legs built to carry forward the burden of the proletariat for 1000 years. Not nearly enough of this breed of hot female in Socialist art, though. Clearly the propaganda ministers missed the boat with this aspect of rallying the proletariat. Now you know the real reason the wall came down.
