AVANT-GARDE, KITSCH AND LEFTIST IDEAS

Text topic: Studies

Text author: Мирјана Радојичић

The subject of this text is the relation between art and politics as it was practiced at the time of the rise of the European political Left, above all in the regions of the pre-war and post-war USSR. The thesis defended in the text is that all the totalitarian social-political systems form, in principle, a uniform attitude to arts as a powerful potential media for the promotion and transmission of their ideological and political messages, which mostly brings artistic creations to the verge of kitsch if not to its very centre. The other part of the thesis deals with events on the ex-Yugoslav post-war political and art scene, highlighting its specific features, especially those contained in the fact that kitsch was present on that scene rather as an (anti)-style of political life – above all of the language of the ruling politics of the time – than as a non-art.