ARGUMENTS IN MOSCOW

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28840, 10 March 1959, Page 9

ARGUMENTS IN MOSCOW

; Abstract Art Front Poland IBy DAVID VWYD in tM "Doily Telegraph”] {Reprinted by arrangement] However wordy the debates at the recent party Congress in Moscow, they will hardly have been so lively as those which can be heard any day now at the Exhibition of Art from Socialist countries in Moscow’s central gallery, toe *W Imperial Riding School. ; There is no need to ask the way to the Polish room: thei noise ft[ sufficient guide. For those who exhibits to be sent wm Warsaw included a number of abstract and far from naturalby artists young and old, and these are what all the fuss is about from the unsophisticated ghit/tlrades from the upholders Of °Socialist realism” are to be expected. What is new for Moscow is that every time someone starts tp denounce the unrealistic works to?*? k someone ready to defend them. There are seldom fewer than four or five groups arguing intensely, and generally in a highly - intelligent manner. It is the young people, brought up under communism, who are the defenders of the new ’ and experimental in painting and sculpture. In almost every discussion to which I listened they were demanding not that people praise or accept the new and unusual in part but simply that they be allowed to see it and judge it for themselves. The canvasses that provoke the most heated discussion are those from Dunikowski’s cycle Oswiecim (Auschwitz) on concentration camp themes, Dunikowski is 83 and a professor of art in' Krakow and Warsaw. He can hardly be dismissed as an “angry young man.” The excitement of the Polish room tends to obscure the interest of the rest of the exhibition. Most of it is, sadly enough, strictly conformist. The Czechs, ever anxious to avoid provoking their friends, have pulled their artistic punches. Little of the new, vigorous painting to be seen in Prague has reached Moscow. Some of the Romanians, Hungarians and Germans show considerable technical ability, hampered by the general absence of inspiration. Oddly enough it is from the East that clearer signs of artistic life are visible. Not, indeed, from China, whose exhibits are largely of the most photographic realism. But those from Northern Vietnam (a “people’s democracy”) show talent and unusual techniques rarely seen in Europe. And the remotest of all the Communist countries—-Mongolia—has no need to be ashamed of its artists. This exhibition will not ’ go down as a great event in the history of art. But it may yet be seen as an Important milestone

in the intellectual emancipation of the Soviet people. The more hide-bound of the authorities are already disturbed. They would like to stop the daily clash of ideas in the Polish room, but they have beeh forced to join in. It is a welcome sign.