The life of an artist was not easy in Russia in 1917. That year, the Bolsheviks seized power, dethroning the royal family. Over the years, artistic liberty gradually grew lower and lower as the new socialist era began.
Stocks of snow white Chinese teapots soon became an artist-favorite to express the utopian ideology of the hopeful new era, pushing art even further into the realm of propaganda.
While artists tried expressing their own revolutionary ideas and thoughts through this new fancy porcelain art style, it must be noted that these artworks were generally out of reach of the public hand.
”They were too rare, too experimental,” Birgit Boelens of the Hermitage Amsterdam tells BBC Culture. ”The individual pieces are of such a high quality that it took too long to mass produce them.”
Eventually, artistic freedom hit its lowest point during the 30’s. ”Everything really changes in the beginning of the 30s when artists themselves come under real pressure because there is no independent artistry any more,” ‘ said Dr. Sjeng Scheijen, historian and guest curator of the Hermitage exhibition.
When the socialist movement was shown to be a machine for famine and executions, the visions of idealized socialist artworks were shattered and the teapot art died out. But the survival of these amazing pieces still leaves us with a representation of their time.
“We appreciate these pieces so much,” says Scheijen. ”The positive thing about this exhibition is we gave them, after all these years, a voice.”
Stocks of snow white Chinese teapots soon became an artist-favorite to express the utopian ideology of the hopeful new era, pushing art even further into the realm of propaganda.
While artists tried expressing their own revolutionary ideas and thoughts through this new fancy porcelain art style, it must be noted that these artworks were generally out of reach of the public hand.
”They were too rare, too experimental,” Birgit Boelens of the Hermitage Amsterdam tells BBC Culture. ”The individual pieces are of such a high quality that it took too long to mass produce them.”
Eventually, artistic freedom hit its lowest point during the 30’s. ”Everything really changes in the beginning of the 30s when artists themselves come under real pressure because there is no independent artistry any more,” ‘ said Dr. Sjeng Scheijen, historian and guest curator of the Hermitage exhibition.
When the socialist movement was shown to be a machine for famine and executions, the visions of idealized socialist artworks were shattered and the teapot art died out. But the survival of these amazing pieces still leaves us with a representation of their time.
“We appreciate these pieces so much,” says Scheijen. ”The positive thing about this exhibition is we gave them, after all these years, a voice.”
