THE AESTHETICS OF LABOR AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL BODY IN ROMANIAN SOCIALIST REALIST PAINTING (1948– 1965)

This article examines the aesthetics of labor in Romanian Socialist Realist painting between 1948 and 1965, focusing on the ways in which the image of the worker’s body participates in the construction of ideological discourse and the configuration of collective visual sensibility. The study investigates three fundamental dimensions of visual representation: the heroization of labor, the standardization of corporeality, and the symbolism of productivity. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates Socialist Realism studies, theories of the politics of the body, and analyses of the imaginary of socialist modernity, the article argues that official painting does not mimetically reflect social reality, but rather elaborates a normative model of the socialist subject, defined by discipline, efficiency, and integration into the collective. Methodologically, the research combines iconographic analysis with a contextual-visual reading applied to a corpus of representative works from both the industrial and agrarian domains. The analysis demonstrates that the representation of labor functions as a symbolic mechanism of political legitimation and the internalization of ideological norms, contributing to the configuration of a visual anthropology of the “New Man.” At the same time, the study identifies the specific features of the adaptation of the Socialist Realist canon within the Romanian context, emphasizing the integration of traditional elements and the predominance of rural imagery as expressions of the interaction between ideological universalism and local cultural specificity. By situating the Romanian case within the broader international debate on the relationship between ideology, corporeality, and visual representation, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the visual mechanisms through which socialist subjectivity is produced, within Socialist Realism as a complex aesthetic and political system.