Stilizacija: plastinė vaizdo savikontrolė

ENThe article deals with stylization, a massive phenomenon, typical and symptomatic of Lithuanian culture and art (including painting, printmaking, and sculpture) from 1960s till 80s. The aim of the article is to analyse, how plastic possibilities, peculiarities and structural traits of visual art condition ways objects, subjects, and motifs are represented and read. Stylization here is discussed from three different perspectives: as an opposition to the naturalism of plastic language and literary-like narrative in the post-war soviet art: as an evidence and a symbol of modernity of the creative practice of this period; as a manifestation of a national identity. Laconic composition and reduced forms are characteristic of artworks stylised after the examples of folk art. This in turn results in a reduced plot, typical figures, and a narrowed circle of meanings. In order to counterbalance the shortage of meanings, one had to enhance the expression and emotional suggestiveness, giving way to the “poetic” expression that relied on references. Not every image surrenders to the stylization of such kind, i.e. to a unanimous stylistic order of form. It is particularly unfavoured by the portrait genre.Among subjects to be avoided in Lithuanian art through the 1960s-80s was urban lifestyle, psychological and social traumas, boredom, perversion, or daily life. Specific details of the image, a documentary narrative would have broken the decorative consistency of the usual stylised composition. The analysis of the stylisation phenomenon supports the hypothesis that the plastic form or medium of an artwork, in other words the visual language and its communication system that has become naturalised in a certain historical epoch, affects the entire visual thinking of the time, and contributes in establishing certain clichės and canons of representation. Media and forms at the disposition of artists indirectly encourage them to employ certain ideas, leaving the rest aside. Therefore the control of images in the 1960S-80S was due not only to ideological censorship, but also to the established “stylised” plastic language that was not appropriate for certain ideas, subjects, and mental images. [From the publication]