WSWS Arts Editor David Walsh in Chicago on October 24

Public meeting: What the Russian Revolution meant for modern art and culture

19 October 2017

David Walsh, arts editor for the WSWS, will be speaking at a meeting on October 24 to discuss the impact and influence of the Russian Revolution on art and culture, and its meaning today. The meeting will be held at 7:00 pm at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Taft Hall Room 208.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was an earthshaking event, the first time the working class and oppressed took power. It opened a new era in human history. The revolution inevitably had the most profound implications for art and culture, not only in Russia but worldwide. It shattered old ideas and relationships, and opened enormous new possibilities. Soviet art and film of the early 1920s began to reflect these possibilities, before the rise of Stalinism violently cut them off.

Art today has reached an impasse, bound up with the general crisis of capitalist society. Dominated to a large extent by skepticism and postmodernist cynicism, along with gender and racial politics, very far removed from the conditions of life of wide layers of the population, art needs a new perspective. The lessons and experience of the Russian Revolution are critical in this regard.

Meeting Details:

Tuesday, October 24, 7:00 pm

University of Illinois at Chicago

Taft Hall, Room 208

826 S. Halstead Street, Chicago

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