Has there ever been a dictatorship that hasn't ****ed up the arts?

[Buck Birdseed]

Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Khomeini did it. Park Chung He did it. Pinochet did it.

You name the dictator and I can name you a country where the arts have stagnated, regressed, turned to puerile, simple-minded propaganda and where all new forms of expression have been driven underground.

What I'm wondering is, has there ever been a dictatorship that has not effectively killed off real progress in the arts? Even patently apolitical progress? The one example I can think of is the Soviet Union up until the formation of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1932, but even there it was hardly recieved warmly and apparently Lenin hated Malevich et al, and the avant garde were slowly but surely pushed out of public life.

[lord of the mark]

Re: Has there ever been a dictatorship that hasn't ****ed up the arts?

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Khomeini did it. Park Chung He did it. Pinochet did it.

You name the dictator and I can name you a country where the arts have stagnated, regressed, turned to puerile, simple-minded propaganda and where all new forms of expression have been driven underground.

What I'm wondering is, has there ever been a dictatorship that has not effectively killed off real progress in the arts? Even patently apolitical progress? The one example I can think of is the Soviet Union up until the formation of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1932, but even there it was hardly recieved warmly and apparently Lenin hated Malevich et al, and the avant garde were slowly but surely pushed out of public life.

define dictatorship.

Otherwise, Id give you Napoleon, David springs to mind (INCLUDING the propagandistic stuff) and I guess a whole lot more that I cant think of off the top of my head.

[realpolitic]

Italy under Muscilini? He was interested in bringing back the culture of Rome, while this may have been limiting, they did have some interesting ideas.

[Spiffor]

Louis XIV did promote the arts quite considerably. Also, France produced quite a few artists during the entire 19th century, despite the country being democratic for only two short years prior to 1871.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Louis XIV did promote the arts quite considerably. Also, France produced quite a few artists during the entire 19th century, despite the country being democratic for only two short years prior to 1871.

I have to assume Buck is excluding traditional monarchies here, or it becomes too easy.

[Buck Birdseed]

Yeah, I mean the traditional monarchies were fairly okay - maybe it's the precence of a secret police that tends to stigmatise and scare off good artists?

Mussolini did approve some fairly cool architecture, I'll give you that. The Casa Del Fascio was and is excellent.

[Nubclear]

People who think the arts were completely killed in the Soviet Union aren't entirely correct.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
Yeah, I mean the traditional monarchies were fairly okay - maybe it's the precence of a secret police that tends to stigmatise and scare off good artists?.

You think traditional monarchies never had secret police?

How could we forget these people?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana

And I think even the French had secret police before the revolution, though not nearly that extensively - no link, i member reading in Charles Tilly somewhere.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
People who think the arts were completely killed in the Soviet Union aren't entirely correct.

Do you have an oppinion on Neo Rauch?

[RGBVideo]

define dictatorship.

After that, define "****ed up"

the art produced by third reich was much more talented than the one produced by weimar republic

[Fake Boris]

Difficult to objectively compare the artistic merit of productions from two different eras... but the Weimar Republic still saw the rise of German expressionism in cinema, for instance. This alone is a major artistic feat of the 20th century.

[Flip McWho]

It's not so much that dictatorships are opposed to the arts. They're just opposed to the arts that don't match their own view.

[General Ludd]

Yeah, it's about censorship not outright opposition to all art.

Plato would censor all art that does not foster what he considers positive human traits. Hitler would censor art that does not glorify germany and his social order, and Stalin would censor art that does not follow social realism and glorify industry.

[Sir Og]

It can easily be argued that a lot of dictators have actually helped art.

As people have already pointed out dictators oppose some artists while encouraging others (very often more than those being restricted). It is also impossible to quantify which art is better.
Also artist always find a way to put their message through the censorship.
For Bulgaria for exmple I am sure that the "dictatorship era" movies will not be bettered in the next 50 years if ever.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Difficult to objectively compare the artistic merit of productions from two different eras... but the Weimar Republic still saw the rise of German expressionism in cinema, for instance. This alone is a major artistic feat of the 20th century.

I rather suspect VJ isnt a fan of expressionism in any medium, or of Dadaism, or of Bauhaus architecture. Thats the only way I can make any sense of his post.