Often referred to as “Soviet Pop Art”, Sots Art or soc art (, short for Socialist Art) originated in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

in the early 1970s as a reaction against the official aesthetic doctrine of the state— socialist realism, which was marked by reverential depictions of workers, peasants living happily in their communes.

Vitaly Komar Komar and Melamid is a tandem team of Russian-born American conceptualist artists Vitaly Komar (born 1943) and Alexander Melamid (born 1945). In an artists' statement they said that "even if only one of us creates some of the projects and works, w ...

and Alexander Melamid are credited with the invention of the term "Sots Art"; in an analogy with the Western pop art movement, which incorporated the kitchy elements of the Western

mass culture Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art pop_art.html" ;"title="f. pop art">f. pop artor mass art, somet ...

, sots art capitalized on the imagery of the

Socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

mass culture. According to

Arthur Danto Arthur Coleman Danto (January 1, 1924 – October 25, 2013) was an American art critic, philosopher, and professor at Columbia University. He was best known for having been a long-time art critic for ''The Nation'' and for his work in philosop ...

, Sots Art's attack on official styles is similar in intent to American pop art and German

capitalist realism The term "capitalist realism" has been used, particularly in Germany, to describe commodity-based art, from Pop Art in the 1950s and 1960s to the commodity art of the 1980s and 1990s. When used in this way, it is a play on the term " socialist ...

.Arthur Coleman Danto, ''After the End of Art: contemporary art and the pale of history'', Princeton University Press, 1997, p126.

Artists

Grisha Bruskin Grisha Bruskin (full name ''Григо́рий Дави́дович Бру́скин'', ''Grigórij Davídovich Brúskin'', born October 21, 1945) is a Russian artist known as a painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He was born in Moscow. Between ...

* Eric Bulatov *

* Alexander Kosolapov *

Igor Novikov (painter) Igor Alekseevich Novikov, also Igor Alexejewitsch Nowikow, (Russian language, Russian): Новиков, Игорь Алексеевич (born 2 January 1961 in, Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic) is a Switzerland, Swiss-Russians, Russian paint ...

* Alexander Melamid *

Dmitri Prigov Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov (, 5 November 1940 in Moscow – 16 July 2007 in MoscowLeonid Sokov

Artists

References

Further reading