On the one hand, there was the strong statesupported desire to show that the country could compete with its big Western neighbor, offering its citizens new ways of obtaining personal autonomy and showing new ways of reinventing the authentic German identity, hence the encouragement not to shy away from artistic experiments. However, she insists on the elements that set the GDR apart from all other Soviet-dominated counties (not to speak of Russia itself). To explain this astonishing liberty, Blaylock mentions of course the inevitable tension between the artists ’ natural pursuit of freedom and the reactionary demands of the state. Instead, it was a culture that was directly produced by the GDR institutions themselves and their officially salaried and protected artists who found in the system the very openings that allowed them to create nonmainstream work and challenge the political agenda of the state. James showed for the elder generations, more sympathetic to the GDR ideology, mainly due to their personal experiences under Nazism- it was anything except an underground culture, actively censored or persecuted by the police and the authorities. Even if the GDR avant-garde became increasingly critical of the political system-it should be repeated that on this point, the analysis of this book is totally different from what Sarah E. Blaylock meticulously discloses the fact that avantgarde or alternative culture in the GDR is misunderstood if one reduces it to a kind of samizdat culture. Art and culture played a vital role in this social engineering, as demonstrated by the many privileges given to artists, all well-paid members of the official artist associations, and the considerable financial and logistic means devoted to the construction and maintenance of a tight network of specialized venues and institutions, both for the artists and for their audiences (and we shouldn’t forget: all that in a society characterized by a crude lack of many elementary consumer and technological goods). Leonardo Reviews 115 evolve into socially responsible individuals, capable of building their own lives while at the same time eager to build with their fellow citizens a new socialist society.
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