Sots Art

Often referred to as “Soviet Pop Art”, Sots Art or Soc Art (Russian: Соц-арт, short for Socialist Art) originated in the Soviet Union during the period dubbed the "Era of Stagnation", under Leonid Brezhnev's leadership (1964-1982) as a reaction against the official aesthetic doctrine of the state— socialist realism, which was marked by reverential depictions of workers, peasants living happily in their communes. The goal of Sots Art was to fight against the bureaucratic manipulation and state propaganda by deconstructing myths and stereotypes from the previous art movement as well as how official art limited artists expression. Sots Art often portrayed taboo subjects as an opposition to the communistic regime. According to Arthur Danto, Sots Art's attack on official styles is similar in intent to American pop art and German capitalist realism. Both of those movements took the mass media and popular culture of the time and made it into art pieces that convey an anti-capitalist view. This idea is then mimicked in Sots Art as artists took the art style popular during the “Era of Stagnation” and used it to protest this limitation on artists freedom of expression.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Sots Art”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Sots Art is artistic movement as a reaction against socialist realism, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶