Aleksandra Aleksandravičiūtė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/DIS/2014.6.10
The article deals with stylisation, a massive phenomenon typical and symptomatic of Lithuanian culture and art, including painting, printmaking and sculpture in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The aim of the article is to analyse how plastic possibilities, peculiarities and structural traits of visual art conditions are represented and read. The stylisation is discussed as an opposition to the naturalism of plastic language and as a narrative in post-war Soviet art, evidence and a symbol of the modernity of the creative practice and a manifestation of national identity. Laconic composition and reduced forms are characteristic of artworks stylised after examples of folk art. This, in turn, results in a reduced plot, typical figures and a narrowed circle of meanings.
Not every image surrenders to the stylisation of such kind, i.e., to a unanimous stylistic order of form. It is particularly unfavourable to the portrait genre. Urban lifestyle, psychological and social traumas, boredom, perversion or daily life were among the subjects to be avoided in Lithuanian art in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Specific details of the image and a documentary narrative would have broken the decorative consistency of the usual stylised composition. The analysis of the stylisation phenomenon supports the hypothesis that the plastic form or medium of an artwork, in other words, the visual language and its communication system that have become naturalised in a certain historical epoch, affects the entire visual thinking of the time and contributes to establishing certain clichés and canons of representation. Media and forms at the disposition of artists indirectly encourage them to employ certain ideas, leaving the rest aside. Therefore, the control of images was due to ideological censorship and the established ‘stylised’ plastic language that was not appropriate for certain ideas, subjects and mental images.
Keywords: Soviet art, modernism, stylisation, mental images, printmaking