There’s no need to ask yourself what would life be like under a totalitarian regime, to be culturally and artistically oppressed to such an extent that the freedom of expression is replaced by a centrally fabricated ideal of art. There’s no need to ask yourself, because it happened in countries all around the world throughout the 20th century and it’s power still lingers on in the 21st Century.
Igor Golomskstock’s Totalitarian Art is a portrait of that oppression and the result is an interesting one. Focusing on a comparison between the art of the totalitarian regimes in Stalin’s Russia, Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy Golomtock pieces together how they worked and how they are still overbearingly awe inspiring to this day.
If you’ve read Alone in Berlin or seen Inglorious Bastards then you will have picked up on the grandiose rhetoric of the Nazi propaganda machine. However, there are plenty of countries that still have very limited artistic and political freedom of expression and it is for this reason that Igor Golomstock’s Totalitarian Art is so important.
Totalitarianism put socialism back significantly by creating a pervasive history in which the two are intertwined and inseparable. The beautiful idea of working together for the good of all got leached by iron clad rule, bloody communist revolutionary conceptualisation, foolish miscalculations and the artistic and political coverup that was deployed by totalitarian regimes to mask their crumbling walls.
In Totalitarian Art, Igor Golomstock brings together more than two hundred paintings, sculpture, architecture and posters to show the obvious thematic and form based similarities between the art produced under the different regimes. Born out of totalitarian control, oppression and the need for artistic weaponry the strong visualisation of Totalitarian art is discussed in detail by Golomstock.
Released on 24th June 2011 in hardback.
