Sots Art

Often referred to as “Soviet Pop Art”, Sots Art or soc art (Russian: Соц-арт, short for Socialist Art) originated in the Soviet Union during the period dubbed the "Era of Stagnation", under Leonid Brezhnev's leadership (1964-1982) as a reaction against the official aesthetic doctrine of the state— socialist realism, which was marked by reverential depictions of workers, peasants living happily in their communes. The goal of Sots Art was to fight against the bureaucratic manipulation and state propaganda by deconstructing myths and stereotypes from the previous art movement as well as how official art limited artists expression.

According to Arthur Danto, Sots Art's attack on official styles is similar in intent to American pop art and German capitalist realism. Both of those movements took the mass media and popular culture of the time and made it into art pieces that convey an anti-capitalist view. This idea is then mimicked in Sots art as artists took the art style popular during the “Era of Stagnation” and used it to protest this limitation on artists freedom of expression. This connection between pop art and sots art is intentional by its creators as they used the word soviet from soviet realism and the English word for art to create the movements title.

Sots art went against the popular art genre of socialist realism by changing the style to include elements from American pop art such as consumer products. In addition to this use of American pop art the Sots movement also used unconventional materials as a way of going against official art of the time by using found objects and deconstructed text. By opposing socialist realism through materials and capitalist images, and then placing this art in galleries beside socialist realism art, Sots art lowered official art to the same level as their own works. This comparison between sots art and socialist realism can be found in the 1998 University of Minnesota exhibition at the Fredrick R. Weisman Art Museum.