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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 reinterpretation 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, aggression and totalitarianism in postmodernism culture. The ironic layer is present in V. Komar and A. Melamid’s Lenin Candlestick (1992) (Fig. 197), in the reinterpretation of A. Gerasimov’s Portrait of Lenin on a Rostrum by V. Komar, and A. Melamid’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 utopia-spawned social myth in postmodernism art, much like the myth of consumption 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 culture products, such as, for example, the hybrid of Lenin and Mickey Mouse demonstrates. The process of doubling semiotic codes is a psychosocial phenomenon, and as such it reflects the individual and society’s need for emotional relaxation. References Bryson N. 1983. Vision and Painting: the Logic of the Gaze. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Freud $. 2005 = ®peiin 3. 2005. Tonkosanue cnosuderuü (Interpretation of Dreams’). Mocksa: CT]. Freud S. 2006 = ®peün 3. 2006. Illymxa 8 ee omnowenuu x beccosnamenvnomy (Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious’). Mocxsa: Hsnarensero Xapgecr. Gombrich E. 1960. Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon.
