Oldal 442 [442]
440
Liudmila Limanskaya
verbal wit and the history of caricature, he showed that they have in common the
ability to enliven instantly the concealed symbolic codes of language.
Similarly, if we compare the visual symbols that represented wisdom, truth and
heroism in art and literature in the 1930s—1950s and their grotesque reinterpreta¬
tion in Sots Art in 1970, we see that the same symbols have exactly the opposite
meaning. As described above, mimicry, gestures and poses canonised in socialist
realism as symbols of wisdom and rightness become symbols of deceit, aggres¬
sion and totalitarianism in postmodernism culture. The ironic layer is present in
V. Komar and A. Melamid’s Lenin Candlestick (1992) (Fig. 197), in the reinterpre¬
tation of A. Gerasimov’s Portrait of Lenin on a Rostrum by V. Komar, and A. Mela¬
mid’s Lenin in a Mask of George Washington (2001) (Fig. 198). The transformation
of images of socialist realism into grotesque and caricature reflects the striving of
contemporary society for emotional release in order to free itself from tension built
up by totalitarian ideology (Limanskaya & Shvets 2014: 715). A socialist realist
dislike of the aesthetic values of the avant-garde is ironically presented in L. Sokov’s
sculpture Lenin and Giacometti (1989). This piece presents an ironic and witty
comment to the irresolvable conflict of different artistic ideologies.
‘The socialist realist images of the ‘builders of communism are treated as a uto¬
pia-spawned social myth in postmodernism art, much like the myth of consump¬
tion in pop art. Sots Art artists used well-known semiotic codes and iconographic
schemas from socialist realism and pop art images to achieve collages, such as the
work by Alexander Kosolapov, who combined in his works the images of Lenin,
the Worker and the Collective Farm Girl with the pop art symbol Mickey Mouse
(Fig. 199; see also Kosolapov 2005). Paradoxical combination of traditional images
provokes laughter and emotional release, because they are easily recognised.
Mythological images of socialist realism, based on a personified belief in
miracles that will happen in the bright future of communism, were subject to
reinterpretation and de-sacralisation. Replacement or distortion of elements of
visual stereotypes does not prevent the viewer from automatically recognising them.
Ironic experiments of doubling the visual and semiotic codes, which turns the
stereotypes of the Soviet and postmodern cultures into interchangeable mass cul¬
ture products, such as, for example, the hybrid of Lenin and Mickey Mouse dem¬
onstrates. The process of doubling semiotic codes is a psychosocial phenomenon,
and as such it reflects the individual and society’s need for emotional relaxation.
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