IDEAL BEING IN SOVIET NAIVE ART
Article investigates idea of an ideal being, a fantastic, perfect world created in Soviet naïve, amateur, and selftaught art. The construction of an ideal person and state was part of cultural policy and ideological narratives of Soviet art. It oriented amateur artists to similar themes and imagery. The paper demonstrates, that in the late 1920s-1930s selftaught artists had embodied an ideal socialist existence (V.F. Tochilkin, P.Kudryavev, etc.). In the 1960s1980s imageries of the ideal Soviet state expressed through many thematic lines: idyllic pictures of Soviet village (Ivan Krokhalev, Ivan Sarychev, Afanasy Chepkasov, Nina Varfolomeeva), organization and clarity of Soviet life practices (Sergey Stepanov), prosperity and abundance (Fedor Kamenskikh), achievements of Soviet science and technology and the conquest of space by Soviet man (Nikolai Tyurin). The selftaught artist of the Soviet period, were following the profound patterns of naive vision, created the image of the world “one step away from Paradise.” At the same time, the naive and amateur art of the Soviet era was a kind of visual anthology of the Soviet utopia, constructed based on the archaic picture of the world, characteristic of the profound folk consciousness, and official narratives.