Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism

 "To me propaganda is a holy word."

Ben Shahn

The Social Realist political movement and artistic explorations flourished primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, the time of global economic depression, heightened racial conflict, the rise of fascist regimes internationally, and great optimism after both the Mexican and Russian revolutions.

Social Realists created figurative and realistic images of the "masses" , the term that encompassed the lower and working classes, labor unionists, and the politically disenfranchised. American artists became dissatisfied with the French avant-garde and their own isolation from greater society, which led them to search for a new vocabulary and a new social importance; they found their purpose in the belief that art was a weapon that could fight the capitalist exploitation of workers and stem the advance of international fascism.  

Key Ideas

Social Realism , an international art  movement, refers to the work of painters, printmakers. photographers and filmmakers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working class and the poor; socialist realists are critical of the social structures which maintain these conditions. 

Theme 1 

Social Realists envisioned themselves to be workers and laborers, similar to those who toiled in the field and factories, often clad in overalls to symbolize unity with the working classes, the artists believed they were critical members of the whole of society, rather than elites living on the margins and working for the upper crust. 

Theme 2

While there was a variety of styles and subjects within Social Realism, the artists were united in their attack on the status quo and social power structure. Despite their stylistic variance, the artists were realists who focused on the human figure and human condition. Social Realists built on the legacies of Honore Daumier, Gustave Courbet and Francisco Goya in their politically changed and radical social critiques. 

Theme 3

While modernism is most often considered in terms of stylistic innovation. Social Realists believed that the political content of their work made it modern. Social Realists turned away from the painterly advancements of the School of Paris. 

William Gropper

Committed to Marxism and communism, William gropper drew vast numbers of illustrations for such radical publications as the New Masses and the Communist Party's Workers. Wanting to reach the greatest number of working people, Gropper and others created prints and graphics for radical magazines, which were easy to distribute. Here, Gropper engaged the revolutionary visual rhetoric of the monumental, triumphant worker who both ideologically and physically dominates the puny clerics and capitalists in the lower left corner. 

Cover image for the New Masses
1933.
William Gropper

Aaron Douglas

Song of the Towers
1934
Aaron Douglas

A member of the Communist Party, this is Douglas's fourth panel from a serie covering the transition between human slavery and modern industrial enslavement; the final, fifth panel was to show Karl Marx amongst African- American workers leading them to a better proletarian future. Yet his triumph is fleeting, as the industrial cog on which he stands will carry him back into the depths of the city and society; industrialism and mechanization are not friends of the American worker. 

Beyond the man's reach, in the far distance, stands the Statue of Liberty symbolizing the unfulfilled promises of universal freedom. Song of the Towers showcases Douglas's signature style of concentric, radiating circles that are punctured by bold silhouetted figures.

Isamu Noguchi

Death (Lynched figure)
1934
Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Noguchi's early sculptural works dedicated to social concerns, which align with the artistic Left, art often overlooked in deference to his abstract statuary and furniture design. As compared to other Social Realist, Noguchi employed a more modernist vocabulary instead of particularizing the figure and its facial features. Considered a major early piece by Noguchi, Death testified to the artist's progressive racial views and strong social commitment, which position the sculpture within the concerns of Social Realism. In terms of form, the sculpture is unusual since Noguchi suspended the figure above the ground on a metal armature. Noguchi created this sculpture for a 1935 exhibition organized by the NAACP to protest the national rise in lynching and also to pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt to enact legislation prohibiting such vigilante violence; Roosevelt did not. Cuncurrently, the communist arts and cultural organization known as the John Reed Club held its own anti- lynching exhibition. While Noguchi's sculpture was well received, some critics reacted harsly to it, revealing their own racism by claiming the artist was not native born and, in one instance, referring to the "a little Japanese mistake. "


Hugo Gellert

The Working Day; Struggle for a Normal Day Repercussion of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries
1934
Hugo Gellert
Lithoghraph

By reproducing Marx in mass-distributed magazines, Hungarian-born Hugo Gellert sough to grain a wider audience among the working class and perhaps rattle the nerves of upper class society. Social Realists most often romanticized and idealized the figure of the male worker; Gellert's is a prime example of this trend. Here, Gellert renders a Caucasian laborer and an African-American laborer standing back to back. The men stand strong, fused together as if a unit, and are shown wearing workers' overalls, which reveal their muscular arms. Their taut bodies, their position of being pressed together, along with their rather phallic tools, a pick and a wrench, create a homoerotic quality to the image. Images of physically strong working men were prevalent throughout Social Realist works in order to present labor as invincible against Capital.

L. S. Lowry

Laurence Stephen "L. S." Lowry  was an English artist. Many of his drawings and paintings depict Pendlebury, Lancashire, where he lived and worked for more than 40 years, and also Salford and its surrounding areas.

Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts of North West England in the mid-20th century. He developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figures often referred to as "matchstick men". He painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death.

Due to his use of stylised figures and the lack of weather effects in many of his landscapes he is sometimes characterised as anaïve (art) "Sunday painter", although this is not the view of the galleries that have organised retrospectives of his works.

A large collection of Lowry's work is on permanent public display in The Lowry, a purpose-built art gallery on Salford Quays named in his honour. Lowry rejected five honours during his life, including a knighthood in 1968, and consequently holds the record for the most rejected British honours. On 26 June 2013 a major retrospective opened at the Tate Britain in London, his first at the Tate, and in 2014 his first solo exhibition outside the UK was held in Nanjing, China.

Equally you could say contemporary film directors such as Shane Meadows (he was born in England. He is a director and writer, known for This Is England (2006), Dead Man's Shoes (2004) and 24 7: Twenty Four Seven (1997)) and Ken Loach (he is an English film and television director. He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialism, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness (Cathy Come Home) and labour rights (Riff-Raff and The Navigators)) document a social realism in modern day.