Socialist and Post–Socialist Mongolia by Simon Wickhamsmith Phillip P. Marzluf

Author:Simon Wickhamsmith, Phillip P. Marzluf [Simon Wickhamsmith, Phillip P. Marzluf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367350574
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 55198042
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

8 “Capitalist Art” and the invention of tradition in twentieth-century Mongolia

Uranchimeg Tsultemin

In June 1968, the Exhibition of Young Artists (Zaluu uran buteelchdin üzesgelen) opened at the only art gallery in Ulaanbaatar at that time, built and run by the Union of Mongolian Artists (UMA). The exhibition consisted of works by young artists, including Ekh (Mother 1968) by Sosai (see Figure 8.1), P. Baldandorj’s Khövsgöl Nuur (Khövsgöl Lake 1968) (see Figure 8.2), and Arvan Yamaa (Ten Goats 1968) (see Figure 8.3) and Arvan Khoni (Ten Sheep 1968) by G. Dunbüree, which were unusual in not following exclusively the tenets of the then dominant style of “socialist realism.”

The exhibition opened with the approval of the Chairman of the UMA, N.-O. Tsultem1 (1923–2001) and stirred interest precisely because it featured works that functioned outside of socialist propaganda. The exhibition was heavily criticized by the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) for years to come and triggered a negative view of the UMA by the Party. Over the next two decades until the early 1990s, such criticism had a far-reaching impact, creating an atmosphere of discouragement and fear and placing Tsultem and the artists in a difficult situation. Under pressure from the MPRP, and himself condemned by a Party “warning” (namyn sanuulga), Tsultem and the UMA took several measures to define and oversee the Party’s more regulated principles of socialist art. These various strategies for publicly reinforcing the mainstream practice of socialist realism necessitated that he and his colleagues question the nature of “Mongolian” art and how to define a specific “Mongolian traditional style” in the era of Sovietization.

This chapter will look into the realities of “socialist realism” in 1967–1969 and will outline the process of Tsultem’s invention of what he termed Mongol Zurag, or “Mongol painting,” in the struggle to construct a new socialist culture and a new identity for Mongolia and its citizens. In the course of my research, it became apparent how exclusive dependence on archival documents alone is likely to lead to a misinterpretation of this period of turmoil, since the documents do not embrace the full and complicated reality of what was visible and what was hidden, the relationship between the local knowledge and the information recorded in official MPRP documents. Subsequently, based on interdisciplinary and comparative research, I will argue that the artists’ response to “socialist realism” included an extended process of searching for, and defining, Mongolian identity, through which a new cultural form – Mongol Zurag – was created and kept alive, and practiced to this day.

Figure 8.1 G. Sosai, Ekh (Mother, 1968).

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