Sots Art

Not to be confused with Socialist 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 in the early 1970s 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.

My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love by Dmitri Vrubel on Berlin Wall, 1991

Stalin Monument In The Hague by Komar and Melamid

Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid are credited with the invention of the term "Sots Art"; in an analogy with the Western pop art movement, which incorporated the kitchy elements of the Western mass culture, sots art capitalized on the imagery of the Socialist mass culture.

According to Arthur Danto, Sots Art's attack on official styles is similar in intent to American pop art and German capitalist realism.

Artists

• Grisha Bruskin
• Eric Bulatov
• Vitaly Komar
• Alexander Kosolapov
• Igor Novikov (painter)
• Alexander Melamid
• Dmitri Prigov
• Leonid Sokov

Further reading

• Regina Khidekel, It’s the Real Thing: Soviet Sots-art and American Pop-art. Minnesota University Press, 1988
• Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde, Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.,1999, ISBN 978-1881616917