Ed,
It would be insightful also to somehow judge the corrosive influence of the 'market'
on the creativities of "Western" artists. How many have been lost to wasting their
energies and creativity in designing effective advertisements for the ever expanding
advertising industry!
>>> Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/25/98 03:01 >>>
Ray,
I did not mean to put down the technical abilities or culture of Russians.
What they have achieved and are capable of is enormous. Nevertheless, I
would continue to argue that creativity and experimentation were squeezed
out of the arts during the seventy-year period of communist rule. Vitaly
Shentalinsky wrote as follows when, in the 1980s, he began search for "lost"
Russian writers: "About two thousand writers were arrested in the years
after 1917 and roughly one and a half thousand of them did not survive,
meeting their deaths in the camps and prisons. These figures are not
complete, of course. For the time being, it is impossible to verify them. As
Akhamatova said: 'I would like to recall them all, name by name, but the
list has been taken, there's nowhere to find out.' The circumstances and
dates of their deaths have either been concealed or falsified; there are
large gaps in their official biographies; and the information cited in
encyclopedias and textbooks is incorrect." (Arrested Voices) Painters
either had to get out or toe the line and produce the monstrosities we know
as "Stalinist art". I am not arguing about technical skill. Stalinist
painters were undoubtedly as skilled as many of the painters of the west -
perhaps even more so. However, I would argue that they were not allowed to
be as creative. Seven decades of squeezed creativity would, I believe, have
a stunting effect on a society.
Best regards,
Ed Weick
