Page 34 - Studio International - December 1974

(Left) Oscar Rabin
(Below Left) Volodya Nemukhin
(Below) Volodya Nemukhin
Still life with cards on a wooden box
(Opposite page right) D. Plavinsky
(Far right) Dmitri Krasnopevtsev
(Right below) Painting by D. Plavinsky

regulating the artistic life of the country. training or not, does not belong to the Union function — the function of creative control. It
First, an ideological function. A person and does not work in some State institution, he selects the works for an exhibition, it nominates
joining the organization automatically accepts falls out of the working-class category and steps the jury to select the works of an exhibition.
its statutes, where, among other things, it is into the legal position of a parasite. From this Almost all exhibition galleries in the country
stated that a member must strictly adhere to follows, according to Soviet laws, that are property of the Union and it publishes two
the principles of social realism in his work, that, administrative forms of coercion can be applied of the three main journals of art, on the pages
through his art, he must help to educate the against him, from forcing him to take any kind of which its critics carry through its artistic
working masses in the spirit of communism and of work, to expulsion from his town to the policy.
promote the building of socialism, and so on. remotest parts of Russia. It goes without saying With the creation of this organization, the
The non-observance of these ideological dogmas that outside the Union, the artist is legally and Soviet artist found himself caught in an
gives formal right of expulsion from the Union, in practice deprived of the possibility to live by ideological trap: the acceptance of the principles
placing the artist in a special legal position. For his profession. For the Union fulfils a third, an of social realism became a condition for
the Union fulfils a second, a legal, function: economic, function. Under the conditions of membership of the Union of Artists, and this
membership of the Union alone gives the artist the Soviet system, this organization is the sole membership meant a condition and right to
the legal right to occupy himself in his official customer of art and distributor of professional activity. However, this system of
profession, in a manner that a university diploma material goods. Any private dealings, including regulation became insufficient, as the leadership
gives this right to a gynaecologist or a dentist. the artist selling his own work, are penalized by of the Union is formally elected and under
If an artist, whether he has received special law [11. Finally, the Union fulfils a fourth pressure from approximately eight thousand
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