Sots art

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Sots art (or Sotz art). A type of Unofficial art practised in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s in which the officially sanctioned style of Socialist Realism was undermined by treating its conventions in an ironic or mocking way (the term derives from the Russian for Socialist Realism—Sotsialisticheskiy Realism). Among the best-known exponents of this kind of work were Erik Bulatov (1933– ) and the team of Komar and Melamid: Vitaly Komar (1943– ) and Alexander Melamid (1945– ). Bulatov often combined conventional, naturalistic images with vivid, poster-like inscriptions, relating his work to both Pop art and Conceptual art, while Komar and Melamid have typically used a mock-heroic style in their paintings: ‘they combine pity, tenderness and disgust, a complex assortment of attitudes which are then readdressed to what they identify as a mad, brutal, terrifying but also dear motherland, the Soviet state. They painted Stalin among antique columns and draperies, accompanied by a semi-naked muse … they designed an “advertisement” for Coca-Cola quoting (apparently) Vladimir Lenin, in the manner of official Soviet posters’ ( Aleksandr Yakimovich in Matthew Cullerne Bown and Brandon Taylor, eds., Art of the Soviets, 1993). Such works led to Komar and Melamid being expelled from the Moscow Union of Artists for ‘distortion of Soviet reality and deviation from the principles of Socialist Realism'. They left the Soviet Union in 1977 and settled in the USA, becoming American citizens in 1988. Edward Lucie-Smith writes that ‘What made Komar and Melamid famous was the skill with which the parodied the Soviet style at its most kitsch … In the western world the paintings appealed because they allowed the audience to have its cake and eat it—to enjoy the traditional skills of the artists while at the same time relishing the ironic comedy of the imagery’ (Art Today, 1995).

Sots art (or Sotz art). A type of Unofficial art practised in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s in which the officially sanctioned style of Socialist Realism was undermined by treating its conventions in an ironic or mocking way (the term derives from the Russian for Socialist Realism—Sotsialisticheskiy realism). The best-known exponents of this kind of work are probably Vitaly Komar (1943– ) and Alexander Melamid (1945– ), who work together as Komar and Melamid. After being expelled from the Moscow Union of Artists for ‘distortion of Soviet reality and deviation from the principles of Socialist Realism’, they left the Soviet Union in 1977 and settled in the USA, becoming American citizens in 1988.