| Summary/Abstract |
The relationship between art and politics was in many ways uniquely important in communist spaces, where the totalising experience of the communist state and ideology needed to be built quickly and emerge in a way that would completely control the visibility of ‘change’. Not unlike the post-communist transition experience, the communist experience was also dominated by an ethos of aggressive social change and progress. Measuring both change and progress was instrumental to the communist state, and art – especially propaganda art – played an essential role in instigating, legitimising and rendering change visible. From posters, to public statues, to rising industrial platforms and communist blocs, to new avenues and massive public infrastructure projects, the ‘artist’ – whether an architect, painter, plastic artist, performer or poet – was an essential ‘tool’ in the ideological arsenal of the communist state. It is thus not surprising that any serious study of politics in the post-communist context needs to take the question of ‘art’ and ‘aesthetics’ seriously.
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