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Once again it is time for a reckoning about the status of modernist art in Western Europe and North America. However we frame it, it's now perceived, in artist studios and academic programs alike, as just one formation among others, with no special claim on art practice or art history. No longer central, the field is relative not only to other modern arts in other geopolitical regions but also to all other art-historical fields. In short, it is neither the aesthetic epitome nor the historical gateway that most old-school modernists have believed it to be. This isn't news in other fields; that it might be for many modernists is one more sign that we have fallen behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains the conceptual vision of socialist realism as one of the key characteristics of art, transformed in the postmodern cultural era. Social realism is a cultural manifestation of the historical development of Soviet republics, including the Ukrainian SSR. The essence of socialist realism is seen as a manifestation of ideology in the Soviet conditions. Besides, the article considers the phenomenon in the context of postmodernism, relying on the findings of various scholars, and describes the interaction between postmodernism and socialist realism. Despite the general view that postmodernism (literally “coming after modernism”) emerged in the United States and Western Europe in the 1960s-1970s, there could be another way this movement evolved in fine art and architecture. The fact that the artists from the post-Soviet space managed to adapt to the global cultural field of postmodernism so swiftly proves that the totalitarian system failed to eliminate the plurality of opinions. A post-Soviet variant of postmodernism was largely defined by the influence of socialist realism. The recently proclaimed era of post-truth that allegedly started after the new millennium produced fascinating political and artistic experiments in the post-Soviet space. Hence, it would be logical to assume that some previously developed mechanisms were activated there. Post-truth as an instrument of politics in that sense resonates with the socialist realism used as an instrument of class struggle. Research methods include description, synthesis and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article argues that the reason for a paradoxical relationship between modern art and the museum lies in the fact that the project of the museum is a self-contradictory one. Ever since the rise of modernism, the validity of the project of the museum has been under challenge. Modernism saw itself as an adversary culture, pitted against the established museum culture. Movements such as Futurism and Constructivism launched scathing attacks on the museum in their manifestos, regarding its destruction as a prerequisite for the flourishing of the culture. Paradoxically, however, for all their vehement opposition to museum culture, by the 1950s modernism itself had become museified. The project of the museum, which evolved in Western Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, gave rise to the institution of the museum as a physical entity but is not to be equated with it. The realization of the project of the museum has taken many forms other than that of a building hosing works of art, as manifested in the production of art books and slide collections of the world's art. The project of the museum then, refers not to a physical entity as such, but to a set of guiding principles which have determined the nature of the collection and display of art.