From Introduction: The Artist was denied any role in Plato's Republic because of his ability to impair reason by imitating reality through his works. Aristotle, however, welcomed the artist because of his ability to express ideas about society through artistic form. Ernst Fischer agrees with the latter view, "Art enables man to comprehend reality, and not only helps him to bear it but increases his determination to make it more human and more worthy of mankind. Art is itself a social reality, society needs the artist ... and it has a right to demand of him that he should be conscious of his social function" (Fischer: 1963:46). Fischer adds to Aristotle's view by stating that society has a right to demand a social function from the artist. This issue has been the subject of controversial debate throughout the history of art. In a society based on class, the classes try to recruit art to serve their particular purposes. Art is seen by some as a powerful weapon - a means by which people can be swayed towards certain ideals. At the time of the Counter Reformation Italian artists were given strict instructions by the Jesuits on how to persuade and educate the people with their paintings. Napoleon urged his men of letters, painters and architects to refer to the classical ideals of ancient Greece and Rome to shape the emergent French Republic. The French philosopher, Dennis Diderot, stressed the futility of art unless it expressed great prinCiples or lessons for the spectator. Ideals of justice, courage and patriotism were embodied in the Neo-Classical movement. The didactic paintings of Jacques Louis David portray the above ideals. History records several attempts by those in power to coerce artists into conforming to their idea of society, indicating that authoritative manipulation of the arts is not purely a twentieth century phenomenon. This thesis intends to examine aspects of Russian art since 1917. Because Soviet art was dominated by policies which enabled authorities to determine its content, its history raises ideological issues which are relevant to the study of art. The theories of Suprematism, Constructivism and Socialist Realism will be discussed and conclusions will be drawn as to whether these theories succeeded as art movements which were ostensibly designed for the improvement of mankind. Present attitudes toward the visual arts in Russia will also be examined. However, in order to examine the above it is necessary to place the development of art into historical perspective.

This dissertation analyses the convergence of primitivism and nationalism in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century French and Russian art. The discourse of primitivism has yielded a number of critical studies focusing on the artistic appropriation of aesthetics derived from "tribal" arts, Asian arts, medieval icons, outsider art, and peasant arts and crafts. Within that scholarship, modern European art that appropriates the aesthetics of folk arts and themes of the peasantry is frequently considered to be representative of national identity and myth. The artistic elucidation of the peasantry as emblematic of national identity combined with their incorporation into primitivism produces a tension that complicates the conventional, binary structure of the discourse. It is therefore necessary to examine artistic expressions of national myth and the peasantry's absorption into the primitivist discourse, as this indicates a critical point at which issues of nationalism and primitivism converge. In the cultural realm, that juncture is located in the artistic idealisation of peasant cultures, which is indicative of a mythical state of being from which national identity could be rearticulated. / The myth of the peasantry as developed in nineteenth century European thought centres around the premise that rural populations were an unchanging element of society whose traditional customs, religious beliefs, and modes of production contrasted sharply with the accelerated changes in urban culture. A critical examination of selected paintings by the French artist Paul Gauguin (1848--1903), the Russian Neoprimitivist Natalia Goncharova (1881--1962), and the French Fauve painter Othon Friesz (1879--1949) within their specific, social contexts reveals the ways in which the modern, artistic maintenance of the rural myth elucidates current political and social issues of nationalism. This underscores the peasantry's symbolism within the nation as representative of a national, collective consciousness and ancestry. The peasantry's incorporation into the primitivist discourse and the cultural articulation of the rural myth are revealed in the paintings The Vision After the Sermon (1888), Yellow Christ (1889), Fruit Harvest (1909), and Autumn Work (1908). The paintings and their respective social contexts situate the peasantry both as constructions within the primitivist discourse and symbols of national identity, thereby disrupting the structure of alterity upon which primitivism is predicated.

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