AN4AA Talks 2025 | Alison Carroll | 'Changing the World'? Soviet Socialist Realism and Art in the Asia-Pacific

This talk will be co-presented by the Australasian Network for Asian Art and Asialink Arts & Culture at the University of Melbourne and online

In 1934, the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky explained the role of art was to change the world. This art was named Socialist Realism. A new book by Alison Carroll, Soviet Socialist Realism and Art in the Asia-Pacific (Routledge, 2025), evaluates if this Soviet art movement did just that in the Asia-Pacific. The book argues the art is both visually powerful and part of the history of the Asia-Pacific but, despite this, has been frequently overlooked and underestimated. It asks why this has been so – and gives reasons. The book is about art, but within the context of political and cultural history, focused mainly on China, Vietnam, the two Koreas, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and also Australia. This talk will summarise this history over the last 100 years, explain why the usual initial response to Socialist Realism is dismissive, and put forward its many artistic and organisational achievements in our region, from Gorky’s time in the USSR to today.

Dr Alison Carroll has worked with art in Asia for many years as a curator, writer, academic and administrator. Her film series, A Journey Through Asian Art, was shown on ABC TV and her book The Revolutionary Century, Art in Asia 1900-2000 was published by Macmillan in 2010. She was founding Director of Asialink Arts, from 1990-2010, and is now Senior Research Fellow at the VCA. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia and received the Emeritus Medal of the Australia Council for this work. In her many years working in the region, she kept seeing art, both ‘socialist’ and ‘realist’, that reflects what she had seen in the USSR in the 1970s both as a young traveller and as a curator on assignment for the Australian Gallery Directors’ Council. It intrigued her then and continues to do so.

Image: Shen Jiawei (b. 1948), Standing Guard for our Great Motherland (detail), 1974, oil on canvas, 189 x 158 cm. Coll: Long Museum, Shanghai. Courtesy of the artist.

The Australasian Network for Asian Art (an4aa) is a group of researchers including academics and curators from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand working in the field of Asian art and visual culture. The Network and its affiliated mailing list serve as a platform to share research, promote events and exhibitions, foster a scholarly community, cultivate interest, and act as a vehicle for advocacy.