/ARTS WEEKLY/ROMANIA: Paintings Bring Back Communist Visions

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Marian Chiriac

BUCHAREST, Apr 4 2005 (IPS) - Daniel Vasilescu was only nine years old when the communist regime was overthrown in Romania in December 1989, following a bloody popular revolt that ousted former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife.

Today, at 25, he visits the giant House of the People – which was itself built to pander to Ceausescu’s personality cult – where art from the communist years went on display for the first time in an exhibition designed to illuminate one of the most sombre periods in Romania’s history.

Some 160 paintings depict Ceausescu, his wife and their children. Sycophantic and kitsch, they show the former dictator as a demigod, interacting with other Romanian historic figures.

For instance, one painting shows Ceausescu sipping a drink with local medieval ruler and hero Stephen the Great. Others show him on idyllic walks with his wife, or are simply glorifying portraits, such as those where Nicolae Ceausescu is depicted as a handsome, youthful revolutionary, and his wife Elena as a good fairy with the Olympic flame in one hand and a peace dove near her.

"I have no nostalgia for the communist regime, but I do like to remember my early childhood. It’s amusing to think back to all that, especially if you are sure it will never return," says Daniel.

His memories of that time are just a few but vivid. "I remember mainly the image of a stadium full with banners, with legions of running, dancing figures, shifting and swirling to form colourful shapes, patterns, slogans. Then those thousands of people turn to the audience and applaud. And the audience is just one person, perhaps two – Nicolae Ceausescu, sometimes with his wife."

In the 1980s, while Romania’s economy foundered and its people starved, Ceausescu cloaked his disastrous mismanagement with an astonishing personality cult that involved the entire media, as well as squads of choreographers and painters who concocted an endless run of lavish entertainment.

"People, mainly youngsters, should know more about that dark period of Romania’s past," says Maria Tudoran, a 45-year-old engineer who visited the museum. "Many still talk about Ceausescu as a patriot, and have a lot of sympathy for him as they don’t feel they got a lot out of capitalism. They’ve short memories for things like the secret police and the starvation of the 1980s. It’s as if they preferred it when there was nothing to buy in the shops rather than now, when there are lots of things they can’t afford."

Nicolae Ceausescu is also popular among teenagers. According to a recent poll, almost half of young people think Ceausescu did a better job than his successors. Sociologists explain the attitude as political immaturity where teenagers just repeat what they hear from their parents.

Florin Tudor, the curator of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, where the show opened in the former House of the People building, says one of the aims of the exhibition is to recall the past in order to better understand it.

"This is not a witch hunt. The works on show are representative of Ceausescu’s personality cult, which included also pop songs, bardic paeans and especially the spectacular stadium routines," he said.

But the present-day exhibition, the first one of this kind in Romania is also an exploration of the dark side of Romanian painting from the last few decades. "The project is just an attempt to reopen the debate on the subject of the Romanian art in the communist context, and can be considered a preamble to an ample critical and theoretical analysis in the years to come," Tudor added.

Some of the artists whose works are displayed not only enjoyed the patronage of the communist regime but are also today in good positions. These include former culture minister Viorel Marginean and president of the Union of Plastic Arts Zamfir Dumitrescu.

Dumitrescu told local media that he is not ashamed of painting the Ceausescu family and being rewarded with riches and comfort. "It is true that I was paid very generously but I only did my job, as an artist who tried to depict the reality of that time," he said.

But the paternalistic tradition that once nourished the arts and the Communists who lavishly financed artists – within strict creative boundaries – have been relegated to history. Now a new generation of artists is trying to adjust to the uncompromising demands of the free market.

Most of them do not support such an exhibition. Many say this is not art, only a useful way of explaining the past. "For sure, the exhibition freshens the memories of people who lived during communist time or offers a history lesson for young generation," says Rarita Szakats, art manager at the AltArt Foundation.

"But the art scene in Romania witnesses now the conflict between the artists of the generation that painted Ceausescu and the young artists. And the exhibition deepens the gap between the two generations – the old one, still in charge of the management of arts resources, and the new one claiming to open the spaces to contemporary arts."