Heroic realism

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Heroic realism is an artistic style which includes both the Socialist realism style of propaganda art associated with Communist regimes, and Nazi heroic realism, the very similar art style associated with Fascism.

Heroic realism designs were used to propagate the revolution in the Soviet Union during Lenin's time. At the time, Lenin doubted that the illiterate population would understand what abstract visual images were intended to communicate. He also thought that artists, such as constructivists and productivists, may have had a hidden agenda against the government. The artists countered such thinking, however, by saying that the advanced art represented the advanced political ideas.

Stalin understood the powerful message which could be sent through images to a primarily illiterate population. Once he was in power, posters quickly became the new medium for educating illiterate peasants on daily life — from bathing, to farming, the posters provided visual instruction on almost everything.

In 1934, a new doctrine called Socialist realism came about. This new movement rejected the "bourgeois influence on art" and replaced it with appreciation for figurative painting, photography and new typography layouts.

Around the time that Adolf Hitler came into power in Germany, the use of modern sans-serif typefaces was banned. Hitler and Joseph Goebbels (Nazi minister of propaganda) made it a point to replace modern art with classically heroic art. These political propaganda posters had a large role in the Nazi rise to power.

This heroic style is used not only for propaganda in dictatorships or socialist nations, it was also used during the Spanish Civil War, and Western democracies used the heroic realism style to promote their aims in the time of war.

It has been argued that these themes of heroic realism are most common in propaganda because realism is the most effective means to sell a war visually, because it portrays an idealized concept of war.

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[edit] Resources

Heller, Steven, and Seymour Chwast. Graphic Style from Victorian to Digital. New ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001. 53-57. (This resource provides many good examples of heroic realism and a detailed description of the history.)