During the early 1900's, Russia was having a revolution. This revolution changed the entire world and Russia especially. One such change was the paintings of Russia. This movement that originated as a french term was called the avant-garde, which literally means "vanguard." A vanguard is, in this case, a term used to describe people, in this case painters, who create styles and ideas ahead of their time; those who are the first to try out a new style. At the time of this movements awakening the Communist party took over Russia and began to spread its propaganda. The communist party wanted use art to help them achieve their goals of total control of their citizens. SO they encouranged pro-communist/Russian art while srictly banned paintings from anywhere else. They wanted people to be proud of their nation and culture. Here is one painting that is quite interesting:
The Dancing Soldiers
By: Mikhail Larionov
The Dancing Soldiers is a painting that has a russian, and slightly communist, feel to it. It's definatly not clear, unless one can read Russian, but there are three men and a dog. One man is dead drunk and is playing the accordionwhile the other two are cursing and playing cards. Although a realistic scene it's in an unrealistic setting. The 2-D plane makes it appear a bit as if the objects, including the people, are floating. Also the faces and figures of the people and objects are strange and distorted. And for some reason there is a horse in the background, which doesn't exactly make sense with the scene. The characteristics of this painting are completely Russian. There is a fauvistic color style here with only colors of Russian folk-art. Larionov actuall encouraged other Russian artists to stop copying western forms and styles. He wanted them to look towards traditional Russian styles and take bits and peices from there to create their works. However, maybe what Larionov really wanted to do was to show people the life of Russian soldiers. I mean come on, these guys aren't exactly living well. Yet he used purly Russian styles to appease, there's Mike's favorite word, the communist government so that he could get his art published.
It is interesting how the avant-garde or "vanguard" movement descried people and their culture. I think these paintings are important in order to see the nation's nature and culture at that time period. I definitely agree with you that this painting has a completely Russian feel to it, in which it also shows characteristics of communism.
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