Aspects of Art in the Age of Totalitarianism

The new book by D.Sc. in Art History Oleksii Rogotchenko, Sixty Totalitarian Years: The Visual Arts of Ukraine, offers a comprehensive analysis of the system that, for more than sixty years, imposed a singular vision and mode of representing the world, shaping conditions that engaged artists within this ideological framework. The book is based on long-term research involving numerous texts published in monographs, art journals, and periodicals. Its source base includes documents from key institutions of the Union of Artists, private archives, photographic collections, museum holdings, and interviews. The author presents materials that trace the gradual expansion of this system into Ukraine, and, after World War II, into Halychyna, Bukovyna, and Transcarpathia. The main chapters systematically examine fundamental shifts across major forms of visual art—sculpture, painting, easel and applied graphics, and stage design. The emergence of pictorialism in the ceramics industry and artistic textiles is also addressed. However, the study reveals that many critical issues surrounding art created under totalitarian regimes—particularly in the Soviet Union—remain underexplored. In conclusion, Rogotchenko observes that although its dominant status declined in the 1990s, “the dominant method continues to exist in national visual arts.”