This is The Blue Space by Arkady Rylov, and this was the work that Alla Efimova centered her argument for a call for a revisionist idea of Socialist Realism around. It can be established that the discourse of art history, especially Western art history, on Socialist Realism is biased in the sense that it focuses on the negatives associated with Stalin’s totalitarian regime, with the “cliche” images of “Gulags or communal apartments” giving Western critics the idea that all art produced under the cultural mandate of Socialist Realism was an “ideologically laden aberration in the history of modern art.” However, this view is not necessarily justified, as Efimova and other art historians such as Boris Groys have argued, and that the connection between the highly (negatively) criticized style and the Russian avant-garde may be deeper than what the face value of Socialist Realism had to offer.
One of the mainstays of the avant-garde was that the prominent artists of that time truly believed in the power of art (and other cultural means) to change society and construct the ideal utopia. Thus, to say that Stalin and these avant-garde artists were far off in their aspirations for culture would not be true, as Stalin did recognize the importance of culture, just in a more propagandistic way. He saw it as an “instrument of political awakening” for the relatively uneducated and, for all intensive purposes, low-brow proletarian masses, and created the official style of Socialist Realism as such. Yet, even while being dictated on what to create within the confines of the official style, not all artists conformed to this notion, case in point being Rylov and The Blue Space.
While still working within the rules of the style, Rylov created this work without conveying the ideas of industrialization or proletarian internationalism, as can be seen in the painting. He merely used the realist aesthetic of Socialist Realism in creating this landscape. As such, this lack of ideology allowed Rylov to return to this idea of the avant-garde– the constructing of the Utopian future– by depicting this flock of birds flying freely across a picturesque landscape, evoking ideals of “freedom and liberty.” Yet, rather than do this on a level of heavy-handed symbolism as was characteristic of other works in Socialist Realism, he subtly played with the viewer on a “sensory level” and not a driven politicization; there are no images of Stalin, Lenin, industry, or anything that can be inherently associated with the Soviet Union. And, better yet, his work was not censored in any way because it still played with the aesthetics of the time, rather than portraying any critical themes or counter-ideologies. Rylov’s The Blue Space is but one example that debunks the myth of the unified artistic body of Socialist Realism, and even, on a deeper level, that not all in the Soviet art community fully bought in to the politicized nature of Socialist Realism.