Search results

In their influential essay The Universal Survey Museum, Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach show that the museum as a public institution emerged along with the modern state and has since then been "the site of a symbolic transaction between the visitor and the state". The museum, through its strategies of selecting, contextualising and displaying artifacts, decides which parts of the past are commemorated and how history is represented. It also functions as a site of social rituals and as a stage for political performance, delivering visual and spatial experience to its visitors and communicating certain values and beliefs through that experience. Influenced by discourse theory (Michel Foucault), cultural studies (Edward W. Said) and social liberation movements, this political notion of museum became a central concern of the new museology in the 1980s3 and enabled critical re-thinking of the communicative power of museum displays, as well as the museum's function in the society. To summarize, one may say that the situation of post-communist memory politics in Lithuania is paradoxical. On the one hand, the remains of communist culture are still carefully collected and displayed. On the other hand, the subjects of the communist past – the narratives and images that do not fit into the simple scheme of victim and criminal or of resistance and oppression – remain unrepresented. The questions about what the daily environment or the lifestyle of common Soviet citizens looked like or about the effect of Soviet propaganda, modernist ideology and utopias on these people remain unanswered. In short, the communist past, as a complex and contradictory history of modernity, remains untold in Lithuanian museums of history. According to French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, the political narrative of history or memory politics is essentially selective; it "remembers" certain events of the past and "forgets" others. "[.]

In their influential essay The Universal Survey Museum, Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach show that the museum as a public institution emerged along with the modern state and has since then been "the site of a symbolic transaction between the visitor and the state". The museum, through its strategies of selecting, contextualising and displaying artifacts, decides which parts of the past are commemorated and how history is represented. It also functions as a site of social rituals and as a stage for political performance, delivering visual and spatial experience to its visitors and communicating certain values and beliefs through that experience. Influenced by discourse theory (Michel Foucault), cultural studies (Edward W. Said) and social liberation movements, this political notion of museum became a central concern of the new museology in the 1980s3 and enabled critical re-thinking of the communicative power of museum displays, as well as the museum's function in the society. To summarize, one may say that the situation of post-communist memory politics in Lithuania is paradoxical. On the one hand, the remains of communist culture are still carefully collected and displayed. On the other hand, the subjects of the communist past – the narratives and images that do not fit into the simple scheme of victim and criminal or of resistance and oppression – remain unrepresented. The questions about what the daily environment or the lifestyle of common Soviet citizens looked like or about the effect of Soviet propaganda, modernist ideology and utopias on these people remain unanswered. In short, the communist past, as a complex and contradictory history of modernity, remains untold in Lithuanian museums of history. According to French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, the political narrative of history or memory politics is essentially selective; it "remembers" certain events of the past and "forgets" others. "[.]

In their influential essay The Universal Survey Museum, Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach show that the museum as a public institution emerged along with the modern state and has since then been "the site of a symbolic transaction between the visitor and the state". The museum, through its strategies of selecting, contextualising and displaying artifacts, decides which parts of the past are commemorated and how history is represented. It also functions as a site of social rituals and as a stage for political performance, delivering visual and spatial experience to its visitors and communicating certain values and beliefs through that experience. Influenced by discourse theory (Michel Foucault), cultural studies (Edward W. Said) and social liberation movements, this political notion of museum became a central concern of the new museology in the 1980s3 and enabled critical re-thinking of the communicative power of museum displays, as well as the museum's function in the society. To summarize, one may say that the situation of post-communist memory politics in Lithuania is paradoxical. On the one hand, the remains of communist culture are still carefully collected and displayed. On the other hand, the subjects of the communist past – the narratives and images that do not fit into the simple scheme of victim and criminal or of resistance and oppression – remain unrepresented. The questions about what the daily environment or the lifestyle of common Soviet citizens looked like or about the effect of Soviet propaganda, modernist ideology and utopias on these people remain unanswered. In short, the communist past, as a complex and contradictory history of modernity, remains untold in Lithuanian museums of history. According to French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, the political narrative of history or memory politics is essentially selective; it "remembers" certain events of the past and "forgets" others. "[.]

This essay focuses on the period of the Khrushchev Thaw which signifies the process of liberalisation and modernisation of Soviet life and culture as well as significant changes in the aesthetic values of the visual arts. The main reforms in painting of that period were influenced by a critical approach towards the doctrine of socialist realism which had prevailed in Soviet art since 1934 and a rehabilitation of early modernist visual language which was unacceptable during the years of the Stalinist regime. As defined by Zhdanovist culture policy, a form in socialist realist art was supposed to be "objective", figurative and mimetic though the contents of this art was actually based on a "performative mimesis" (not a referential one).1 The modernist mode of representation, by contrast, allowed the celebration of the "subjective" individuality of an artist and was ruled by the (utopian) imperative of (self)-expression. An encounter of these two different artistic ideologies – socialist realism and modernism – in official Soviet painting of the Thaw was significant politically and aesthetically. Like many, at first sight neutral, purely aesthetical practices, the shift of artistic language was involved in the game of power and control and resonated within the socio-cultural context of the period. The essay is aimed at an analysis of how modernist visual language replaced socialist realism in Lithuanian propaganda painting in the 1960s and a discussion of its political meanings.

This essay focuses on the period of the Khrushchev Thaw which signifies the process of liberalisation and modernisation of Soviet life and culture as well as significant changes in the aesthetic values of the visual arts. The main reforms in painting of that period were influenced by a critical approach towards the doctrine of socialist realism which had prevailed in Soviet art since 1934 and a rehabilitation of early modernist visual language which was unacceptable during the years of the Stalinist regime. As defined by Zhdanovist culture policy, a form in socialist realist art was supposed to be "objective", figurative and mimetic though the contents of this art was actually based on a "performative mimesis" (not a referential one).1 The modernist mode of representation, by contrast, allowed the celebration of the "subjective" individuality of an artist and was ruled by the (utopian) imperative of (self)-expression. An encounter of these two different artistic ideologies – socialist realism and modernism – in official Soviet painting of the Thaw was significant politically and aesthetically. Like many, at first sight neutral, purely aesthetical practices, the shift of artistic language was involved in the game of power and control and resonated within the socio-cultural context of the period. The essay is aimed at an analysis of how modernist visual language replaced socialist realism in Lithuanian propaganda painting in the 1960s and a discussion of its political meanings.

This essay focuses on the period of the Khrushchev Thaw which signifies the process of liberalisation and modernisation of Soviet life and culture as well as significant changes in the aesthetic values of the visual arts. The main reforms in painting of that period were influenced by a critical approach towards the doctrine of socialist realism which had prevailed in Soviet art since 1934 and a rehabilitation of early modernist visual language which was unacceptable during the years of the Stalinist regime. As defined by Zhdanovist culture policy, a form in socialist realist art was supposed to be "objective", figurative and mimetic though the contents of this art was actually based on a "performative mimesis" (not a referential one).1 The modernist mode of representation, by contrast, allowed the celebration of the "subjective" individuality of an artist and was ruled by the (utopian) imperative of (self)-expression. An encounter of these two different artistic ideologies – socialist realism and modernism – in official Soviet painting of the Thaw was significant politically and aesthetically. Like many, at first sight neutral, purely aesthetical practices, the shift of artistic language was involved in the game of power and control and resonated within the socio-cultural context of the period. The essay is aimed at an analysis of how modernist visual language replaced socialist realism in Lithuanian propaganda painting in the 1960s and a discussion of its political meanings.

The cluster "Disintegration of Communism and Post-Communist Transformations" joins scholars working in the fields of history, social sciences, political sciences, art and literature studies, researching society of Soviet and Post-Soviet periods. The academic group of researchers aims at consistent interdisciplinary analysis of the processes of disintegration of communism, national liberation movements and post-communist transformations in Lithuania and East Central Europe, relating the areas of social history, culture and political development. The main research topics include the processes of disintegration of the Soviet system; functioning of culture under the communist regime and post-communist transformations; changes in social identities and collective representations; development of civil society and political culture; national liberation movements and transition to democracy; transformations of social mentality.

The cluster "Disintegration of Communism and Post-Communist Transformations" joins scholars working in the fields of history, social sciences, political sciences, art and literature studies, researching society of Soviet and Post-Soviet periods. The academic group of researchers aims at consistent interdisciplinary analysis of the processes of disintegration of communism, national liberation movements and post-communist transformations in Lithuania and East Central Europe, relating the areas of social history, culture and political development. The main research topics include the processes of disintegration of the Soviet system; functioning of culture under the communist regime and post-communist transformations; changes in social identities and collective representations; development of civil society and political culture; national liberation movements and transition to democracy; transformations of social mentality.

The cluster "Disintegration of Communism and Post-Communist Transformations" joins scholars working in the fields of history, social sciences, political sciences, art and literature studies, researching society of Soviet and Post-Soviet periods. The academic group of researchers aims at consistent interdisciplinary analysis of the processes of disintegration of communism, national liberation movements and post-communist transformations in Lithuania and East Central Europe, relating the areas of social history, culture and political development. The main research topics include the processes of disintegration of the Soviet system; functioning of culture under the communist regime and post-communist transformations; changes in social identities and collective representations; development of civil society and political culture; national liberation movements and transition to democracy; transformations of social mentality.