Social realism

thumb|right|[[Grant Wood's magnum opus American Gothic, 1930, has become a widely known (and often parodied) icon of social realism.]]

Social realism is work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers, filmmakers and some musicians that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind these conditions. While the movement's characteristics vary from nation to nation, it almost always uses a form of descriptive or critical realism.

The term is sometimes more narrowly used for an American art movement that flourished in the interwar period as a reaction to the hardships and problems suffered by common people after the Great Crash. In order to make their art more accessible to a wider audience, artists turned to realist portrayals of anonymous workers as well as celebrities as heroic symbols of strength in the face of adversity. The goal of the artists in doing so was political as they wished to expose the deteriorating conditions of the poor and working classes and hold the existing governmental and social systems accountable.

Social realism should not be confused with socialist realism, the official Soviet art form that was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 and was later adopted by allied Communist parties worldwide. It is also different from realism as it not only presents conditions of the poor, but does so by conveying the tensions between two opposing forces, such as between farmers and their feudal lord.

Origins

thumb|[[Charles de Groux, The Blessing, 1860]]

Social realism, as an art movement that became prominent in the United States in the interwar period, as a reaction to the increasing hardship for ordinary people, was influenced by the social realist tradition in France which had existed for decades.

Social realism traces back to 19th-century European Realism, including the art of Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. Britain's Industrial Revolution aroused concern for the poor, and in the 1870s the work of artists such as Luke Fildes, Hubert von Herkomer, Frank Holl, and William Small were widely reproduced in The Graphic.

In Russia, Peredvizhniki or "Social Realism" was critical of the social environment that caused the conditions pictured, and denounced the Tsarist period. Ilya Repin said that his art work aimed "to criticize all the monstrosities of our vile society" of the Tsarist period. Similar concerns were addressed in 20th-century Britain by the Artists' International Association, Mass Observation and the Kitchen sink school.

Notable Ashcan works include George Luks' Breaker Boy and John Sloan's Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street. The Ashcan school influenced the art of the Depression era, including Thomas Hart Benton's mural City Activity with Subway. and is seen as an international phenomenon also traced back to European realism and the works of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet.

In the United States

thumb|[[Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936. A portrait of Florence Owens Thompson (1903–1983). An iconic photo of The Great Depression.]]

Social realism in the United States was inspired by the muralists active in Mexico after the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

Farm Security Administration project

Social realist photography reached a culmination in the work of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and others for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) project, from 1935 to 1943.

The FSA was a New Deal agency designed to combat rural poverty during this period. The agency hired photographers to provide visual evidence that there was a need, and that FSA programs were meeting that need. Ultimately this mission accounted for over 80,000 black and white images, and is now considered one of the most famous documentary photography projects ever.

WPA and Treasury art projects

The Public Works of Art Project was a program to employ artists during the Great Depression. It was the first such program, running from December 1933 to June 1934. It was headed by Edward Bruce, under the United States Treasury Department and funded by the Civil Works Administration.

Created in 1935, the Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unemployed people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. In much smaller but more famous projects the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.

In Mexico, the painter Frida Kahlo is associated with the social realism movement. The Mexican muralist movement that took place primarily in the 1920s and 1930s was an inspiration to many artists north of the border and an important component of the social realism movement. The Mexican muralist movement is characterized by its political undertones, the majority of which are of a Marxist nature, and the social and political situation of post-revolutionary Mexico. Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, and Rufino Tamayo are the best known proponents of the movement. Santiago Martínez Delgado, Jorge González Camarena, Roberto Montenegro, Federico Cantú Garza, and Jean Charlot, as well as several other artists participated in the movement.

thumb|[[Anton Refregier's Beating the Chinese mural in San Francisco's Rincon Center depicts the ethnic violence in the San Francisco riot of 1877.]]

Many artists who subscribed to social realism were painters with socialist (but not necessarily Marxist) political views. The movement therefore has some commonalities with the Socialist Realism used in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, but the two are not identicalSocial Realism is not an official art, and allows space for subjectivity. In certain contexts, socialist realism has been described as a specific branch of social realism. Several WPA artists found work with the United States Office of War Information during WWII, making posters and other visual materials for the war effort. After the war, although lacking attention in the art market, many social realist artists continued their careers into the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and into the 2000s; throughout which, artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Ben Shahn, Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Raphael Soyer, Robert Gwathmey, Antonio Frasconi, Philip Evergood, Sidney Goodman, and Aaron Berkman continued to work with social realist modalities and themes.

Whether in and out of fashion, social realism and socially conscious art-making continues today within the contemporary art world, including artists Sue Coe, Mike Alewitz, Kara Walker, Celeste Dupuy Spencer, Allan Sekula, Fred Lonidier, and others. In Britain, artists such as the American James Abbott McNeill Whistler, as well as English artists Hubert von Herkomer and Luke Fildes had great success with realist paintings dealing with social issues and depictions of the "real" world. Artists in Western Europe also embraced social realism in the early 20th century, including Italian painter and illustrator Bruno Caruso, German artists Käthe Kollwitz, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckmann; Swedish artist Torsten Billman; Dutch artists Charley Toorop and Pyke Koch; French artists Maurice de Vlaminck, Roger de La Fresnaye, Jean Fautrier, and Francis Gruber and Belgian artists Eugène Laermans and Constant Permeke.

The political polarization of the period resulted in social realism's distinction from socialist realism becoming less obvious in public opinion, and by the mid-20th century abstract art had replaced it as the dominant movement in both Western Europe and the United States.

Russia and the Soviet Union

thumb|[[Ilya Repin, Barge Haulers on the Volga 1870–1873]]

The French Realist movement had equivalents in all other Western countries, developing somewhat later. In particular, the Peredvizhniki or Wanderers group in Russia who formed in the 1860s and organized exhibitions from 1871 included many realists such as Ilya Repin and had a great influence on Russian art.

From that important trend came the development of socialist realism, which was to dominate Soviet culture and artistic expression for over 60 years. Socialist realism, representing socialist ideologies, was an art movement that represented social and political contemporary life in the 1930s, from a left-wing standpoint. It depicted subjects of social concern; the proletariat strugglehardships of everyday life that the working class had to put up with, and heroically emphasized the values of the loyal communist workers.

The ideology behind social realism, communicated by depicting the heroism of the working class, was to promote and spark revolutionary actions and to spread the image of optimism and the importance of productiveness. Keeping people optimistic meant creating a sense of patriotism, which would prove very important in the struggle to produce a successful socialist nation. The Unions Newspaper, the Literaturnaya Gazeta, described social realism as "the representation of the proletarian revolution". During Joseph Stalin's reign, it was considered most important to use socialist realism as a form of propaganda in posters, as it kept people optimistic and encouraged greater productive effort, a necessity in his aim of developing Russia into an industrialized nation.

thumb|Lenin in Smolny, [[Isaak Brodsky, 1930]]

Vladimir Lenin believed that art should belong to the people and should stand on the side of the proletariat. "Art should be based on their feelings, thoughts, and demands, and should grow along with them", said Lenin. He also believed that literature must be part of the proletariat's common cause.

A wide-ranging debate on art took place; the main disagreement was between those who believed in "Proletarian Art" which should have no connections with past art coming out of bourgeois society, and those (most vociferously Leon Trotsky) who believed that art in a society dominated by working-class values had to absorb all the lessons of bourgeois art before it could move forward at all.

The taking of power by Joseph Stalin's faction had its corollary in the establishment of an official art: on 23 April 1932, headed by Stalin, an organization formed by the central committee of the Communist Party developed the Union of Soviet Writers. This organization endorsed the newly designated ideology of social realism.

By 1934, all other independent art groups were abolished, making it nearly impossible for someone not involved in the Union of Soviet Writers to get work published. Any literary piece or painting that did not endorse the ideology of social realism was censored or banned. This new art movement, introduced under Joseph Stalin, was one of the most practical and durable artistic approaches of the 20th century. With the communist revolution came also a cultural revolution. It also gave Stalin and his Communist Party greater control over Soviet culture and restricted people from expressing alternative geopolitical ideologies that differed to those represented in socialist realism. The decline of social realism came with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In film

Social realism in cinema found its roots in Italian neorealism, especially the films of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti and to some extent Federico Fellini.

In British cinema

Early British cinema used the common social interaction found in the literary works of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. One of the first British films to emphasize realism's value as a social protest was James Williamson's A Reservist Before the War, and After the War in 1902. The film memorialized Boer War serviceman coming back home to unemployment. Repressive censorship during 1945–54 prevented British films from displaying more radical social positions. and Box, who favoured realism over what he termed as "flamboyance fantasy", brought these and other social issues, such as child adoption, juvenile delinquency, and displaced persons to the fore with films such as When the Bough Breaks (1947), Good-Time Girl (1948), Portrait from Life (1948), The Lost People (1949), and Boys in Brown (1949). Films of new rapidly expanding forms of leisure by working class families in postwar Britain were also represented by Box in Holiday Camp (1947), Easy Money (1948), and A Boy, a Girl and a Bike (1949). Box remained determined on making social realism films, even after Gainsborough closed in 1951, when he said in 1952 "No film has yet been made of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Suffragette Movement, the National Health Service as it is today, or the scandals of the patent medicines, oil control in the World, or armaments manufactured for profit." However, he would not go on to make these types of stories into films, instead focusing on issues related to abortion, teenage prostitution, bigamy, child neglect, shoplifting, and drug trafficking in films such as Street Corner (1953), Too Young to Love (1959), and Subway in the Sky (1959).

A British New Wave movement emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. British auteurs like Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and John Schlesinger brought wide shots and plain speaking to stories of ordinary Britons negotiating postwar social structures. Relaxation of censorship enabled film makers to portray issues such as prostitution, abortion, homosexuality, and alienation. Characters included factory workers, office underlings, dissatisfied wives, pregnant girlfriends, runaways, the marginalized, the poor, and the depressed. The New Wave protagonist was usually a working-class male without bearings in a society in which traditional industries and the cultures that went with them were in decline.

List of British New Wave films

Room at the Top (1958)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
A Kind of Loving (1962)

In Indian cinema

Social realism was also adopted by Hindi films of the 1940s and 1950s, including Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar (1946), which won the Palme d'Or at the first Cannes Film Festival, and Bimal Roy's Two Acres of Land (1953), which won the International Prize at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. The success of these films gave rise to the Indian New Wave, with early Bengali art films such as Ritwik Ghatak's Nagarik (1952) and Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy (1955–59). Realism in Indian cinema dates back to the 1920s and 1930s, with early examples including V. Shantaram's films Indian Shylock (1925) and The Unaccpected (1937).

Body and Soul (1947)
Thieves' Highway (1949)
The Young Lovers (1949)
Outrage (1950)
Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951)
The Bigamist (1953)
The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Little Fugitive (1953)
Salt of the Earth (1954)
The Phenix City Story (1955)
On the Bowery (1957)
Shadows (1959)
The Exiles (1961)
The Cool World (1963)
Nothing But a Man (1964)
Wanda (1970)
Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971)
Killer of Sheep (1978)
Northern Lights (1978)
Bush Mama (1979)
Thief (1981)
El Norte (1983)
My Brother's Wedding (1983)
Bless Their Little Hearts (1984)
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Down By Law (1986)
Border Radio (1987)
American Me (1992)
Clerks (1994)
Friday (1995)
The Delta (1996)
George Washington (2000)
8 Mile (2002)
Man Push Cart (2005)
Half Nelson (2006)
Chop Shop (2007)
Frownland (2007)
The Visitor (2007)
Frozen River (2008)
Sugar (2008)
Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Meek's Cutoff (2010)
Winter's Bone (2010)
Nebraska (2013)
Tangerine (2015)
American Honey (2016)
Moonlight (2016)
The Rider (2017)
Patti Cake$ (2017)
The Florida Project (2017)
Eighth Grade (2018)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2018)
Leave No Trace (2018)
Roma (2018)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
Red Rocket (2021)
Anora (2024)

Chloe Zhao
Ramin Bahrani
Sean Baker
Charles Burnett
Barry Jenkins
John Cassavetes
Shirley Clarke
Ida Lupino
Jim Jarmusch
Barbara Loden
Kent Mackenzie
Kelly Reichardt

Sources:

List of artists

The following incomplete list of artists have been associated with social realism:

{| class="wikitable"

|-

! Artist !! Nationality !! Field(s) !! Years active

| Abbot, Berenice || American || photography || 1923–1991

| Anand, Chetan || Indian || film || 1944–1997

| Barnet, Will || American || painting, illustration, printmaking || 1930–2012

| Bearden, Romare || American || painting || 1936–1988

| Beckmann, Max || German || painting, printmaking, sculpture || unknown–1950

| Bellows, George || American || painting, illustration || 1906–1925

| Benton, Thomas Hart || American || painting || 1907–1975

| Billman, Torsten || Swedish || printmaking, illustration, painting || 1930–1988

| Bishop, Isabel || American || painting, graphic design || 1918–1988

| Blanch, Arnold || American || painting, etching, illustration, printmaking || 1923–1968

| Bloch, Julius || American || painting || 1888–1966

| Bogen, Alexander || Polish/ Israeli || painting, etching, illustration, printmaking || 1916–2010

| Bourke-White, Margaret || American || photography || 1920s–1971

| Brocka, Lino ||Filipino||film||1970–1991

| Cadmus, Paul || American || painting, illustration || 1934–1999

| Camarena, Jorge González || Mexican || painting, sculpture || 1929–1980

| Caruso, Bruno || Italian || painting, illustration, printmaking|| 1943–2012

| Castejón, Joan || Spanish || painting, sculpture, illustration || 1945–present

| Charlot, Jean || French || painting, illustration || 1921–1979

| Chua Mia Tee || Singaporean || painting || 1956–1976

| Counihan, Noel ||Australian ||painting, printmaking ||1930s–1986

| Curry, John Steuart || American || painting || 1921–1946

| Dehn, Adolf || American || lithography, painting, printmaking || 1920s–1968

| Delgado, Santiago Martínez || Colombian || painting, sculpture, illustration || 1925–1954

| de la Fresnaye, Roger || French || painting || 1912–1925

| de Vlaminck, Maurice || French || painting || 1893–1958

| Dix, Otto || German || painting, printmaking || 1910–1969

| Douglas, Aaron || American || painting || 1925–1979

| Evans, Walker || American || photography || 1928–1975

| Evergood, Philip || American || painting, sculpture, printmaking || 1926–1973

| Fautrier, Jean || French || painting, sculpture || 1922–1964

| Garza, Federico Cantú || Mexican || painting, engraving, sculpture || 1929–1989

| Ghatak, Ritwik || Indian || film, theatre || 1948–1976

| Gropper, William || American || lithography, painting, illustration || 1915–1977

| Grosz, George || German || painting, illustration || 1909–1959

| Gruber, Francis || French || painting || 1930–1948

| Guayasamín, Oswaldo || Ecuadorian || painting, sculpture || 1942–1999

| Guston, Philip || American || painting, printmaking || 1927–1980

| Gwathmey, Robert || American || painting || unknown–1988

| Henri, Robert || American || painting || 1883–1929

| Hine, Lewis || American || photography || 1904–1940

| Hirsch, Joseph || American || painting, illustration, printmaking || 1933–1981

| Hopper, Edward || American || painting, printmaking || 1895–1967

|Ishigaki, Eitaro

|Japanese

|painting

|1915-1958

| Kahlo, Frida || Mexican || painting || 1925–1954

| Koch, Pyke || Dutch || painting || 1927–1991

| Kollwitz, Käthe || German || painting, sculpture, printmaking || 1890–1945

| Kuhn, Walt || American || painting, illustration || 1892–1939

| Lamangan, Joel || Filipino || film, television, theater || 1991–present

| Lange, Dorothea || American || photography || 1918–1965

| Lawrence, Jacob || American || painting || 1931–2000

| Lee, Doris || American || painting, printmaking || 1935–1983

| Lee, Russell || American || photography || 1936–1986

| Levine, Jack || American || painting, printmaking || 1932–2010

| Lozowick, Louis || American || painting, printmaking || 1926–1973

| Luks, George || American || painting, illustration || 1893–1933

| Marsh, Reginald || American || painting || 1922–1954

| Meltsner, Paul || American || painting || 1913–1966

| Montenegro, Roberto || Mexican || painting, illustration || 1906–1968

| Myers, Jerome || American || painting, drawing, etching, illustration || 1867–1940

| Ochs, Phil || American || songwriting || 1961–1975

| Orozco, José Clemente || Mexican || painting || 1922–1949

| O'Hara Mario ||Filipino||film|| 1976–2012

| Parks, Gordon || American || photography, film || 1937–2006

| Pippin, Horace || American || painting || 1930–1946

| Portinari, Candido || Brazilian || painting || 1928–1962

| Prestopino, Gregorio || American || painting || 1930s–1984

| Ray, Satyajit || Indian || film || 1947–1992

| Reisz, Karel || British || film || 1955–1990

| Richardson, Tony || British || film || 1955–1991

| Rivera, Diego || Mexican || painting || 1922–1957

| Rothstein, Arthur || American || photography || 1934–1985

| Roy, Bimal || Indian || film || 1935–1966

| Schlesinger, John || British || film || 1956–1991

| Shahn, Ben || American || painting, illustration, graphic art, photography || 1932–1969

| Siporin, Mitchell || American || painting || unknown–1976

| Siqueiros, David Alfaro || Mexican || painting || 1932–1974

| Siskind, Aaron || American || photography || 1930s–1991

| Sloan, John French || American || painting || 1890–1951

| Soyer, Isaac || American || painting || 1930s–1981

| Soyer, Moses || American || painting || 1926–1974

| Soyer, Raphael || American || painting, illustration, printmaking || 1930–1987

| Stackpole, Ralph || American || sculpture, painting || 1910–1973

| Steichen, Edward || American || photography, painting || 1894–1973

| Sternberg, Harry || American || painting, printmaking || 1926–2001

| Tamayo, Rufino || Mexican || painting, illustration || 1917–1991

| Toorop, Charley || Dutch || painting, lithography || 1916–1955

| Ulmann, Doris || American || photography || 1918–1934

| Walker, John Augustus || American || painting || 1926–1967

| Williamson, James || British || film || 1901–1933

| Wilson, John Woodrow || American || lithography, sculpture || 1945–2001

| Wolcott, Marion Post || American || photography || 1930s–1944

|Wong, Martin || American || painting || 1946–1999

| Wood, Grant || American || painting || 1913–1942

| İlhan, Attilâ || Turkish || poetry || 1942–2005

Social realism

Origins

In the United States

Farm Security Administration project

WPA and Treasury art projects

Russia and the Soviet Union

In film

In British cinema

List of British New Wave films

In Indian cinema

List of artists

See also

References

Origins

In the United States

Farm Security Administration project

WPA and Treasury art projects

Russia and the Soviet Union

In film

In British cinema

List of British New Wave films

In Indian cinema

List of neorealist/social realist films in American cinema

Filmmakers associated with American neorealism/social realism

List of artists

See also

References