Изкуството на социалистическия реализъм като проект на държавата куратор
The Art of Socialist Realism as a Project of the State Curator

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the state’s policy in the management of Bulgaria’s art life in the late 1940s and the early 1950s. The characteristics of this policy were laid out in three party and state documents: Vulko Chervenkov’s report entitled “Marxian-Leninist education and the struggle on the ideological front”, delivered at the 5th Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party; the resolution adopted by the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party “On the situation and the immediate tasks of the State Academy of Fine Arts” and Chervenkov’s speech For the Party or against the Party in Fine Arts. These documents underlay the development of the conceptual art project of the state, the art of Socialist Realism, implemented by the agency of the normative art criticism. It was the authority that set the range of themes and storylines as well as the characteristics of the plastic language, i.e. the authorities were the project’s curator and co-author of the artists in their capacity of performers. Furthermore, the state was also a curator in the sense of a custodian, a guardian. The state masterminded the line of development both of the general processes and individual artists, restricting their right to personal aesthetic or moral position.

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