The Construction of the New Man: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to draw the historical background of the New Man in Socialism from his beginning in the 1917 avant-garde circles after the October Revolution in Russia—specially in Vsevolod Meyerhold’s technique of typage—to its oversimplification as official aesthetic during the Stalin’s period and its adoption by the People’s Republic of China and the motivation behind it. The iconic and extremely codified images of the Socialist New Man are analyzed under the new light of the recent essays about art, which defy the traditional image among scholars of the style as monolithic and lackluster. The later part of the paper deals with the fading away of Socialist Realism during the 1980s as the Soviet bloc disintegrated and China evolved into a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics,” but persisted, applied adamantly, in North Korea, who exports it to African countries like Senegal or Namibia.

Keywords

art history / Socialist Realism / USSR / Russia / China / Asia

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Brill