M HKA gaat digitaal

Met M HKA Ensembles zetten we onze eerste échte stappen in het digitale landschap. Ons doel is met behulp van nieuwe media de kunstwerken nog beter te kaderen dan we tot nu toe hebben kunnen doen.

We geven momenteel prioriteit aan smartphones en tablets, m.a.w. de in-museum-ervaring. Maar we zijn evenzeer hard aan het werk aan een veelzijdige desktop-versie. Tot het zover is vind je hier deze tussenversie.

M HKA goes digital

Embracing the possibilities of new media, M HKA is making a particular effort to share its knowledge and give art the framework it deserves.

We are currently focusing on the experience in the museum with this application for smartphones and tablets. In the future this will also lead to a versatile desktop version, which is now still in its construction phase.

Ensemble: MONOCULTURE – Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism was an artistic phenomenon and 'creative method' of the Soviet Union. Introduced as a doctrine of the single creative method in 1934 during the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, it was applied to all spheres of artistic endeavour. Often characterised simply as a style, it hardly fits into such category due to the obvious lack of a clearly articulated artistic language, or rather, the consistent erasure of any formal stylistic features. The relation of Soviet Realism to previous realistic traditions in art and to reality itself is also complicated. Aimed to present an analysis of “reality in its revolutionary development” and establish “a culture of the masses that had yet to be created”, it was primarily oriented not toward the Soviet reality of the time, but the bright Socialist future. This utopian aspiration and the belief in the transformative potential of art and strong collective spirit, makes Socialist Realism a total and totalitarian aesthetical-political project, or, as put by theorist Boris Groys – Stalin’s gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). Deeply rooted in communist ideology, Socialist Realism was not simply its product, but the very means of production. This makes it an example of a unique propagandist strategy.

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Works

>Portrait of Gorky / Cover of Krasnaya Niva Magazine, 1930.Periodical.

>Anatoly Lunacharsky, "Socialist Realism", 1933.Article, 29.5 x 21 cm.

>Osip Beskin, "Formalism in Painting", 1933.Article, magazine, 25 x 18 x 1.5 cm.

>15 years of Artists of the RSFSR (1917 - 1932), 1933.Book, 17.5 x 12.5 cm.

>Verbatim Record of the Speeches at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, 1934.Book, 26.5 x 18 x 3.5 cm.

>Mikhail Sholokhov, "Virgin Soil Upturned", 1935.Book, 20.5 x 14.5 x 5cm.

>Nikolai Ostrovsky, "How the Steel was Tempered", 1935.Book, 17.5 x 13 x 2.5 cm.

>Mass-Produced Reproductions of Soviet Paintings.Other.