M HKA Ensembles

Other

Collection: Collection MHKA, Antwerp.

Artistic production in the Soviet Union operated as a great advertising machine. The obliteration of creative individuality and the triumph of totality is represented par excellence by the so-called ‘бригадный метод’ (collective artistic method) which reached its peak in the mid-1940s to 1950s. The work of such brigades was based on the principle of division of labour. Often monumental in their scale, socialist realist artworks were created not primarily for museums, but for mass dissemination. The artworks, reproduced in huge quantities as lithographs and postcards, were thus available in the most remote corners of the USSR. Such reproductions often became part of the traditional ‘красный уголок’ (which can be literally translated from Russian as ‘red corner’). Initially derived from the orthodox tradition of icon corners for worship, in Soviet times such spaces, allocated for ideological work, were decorated with red cloth and communist paraphernalia.