Artă și ideologie: cultul personalității lui Nicolae Ceaușescu reflectat în arta oficială a regimului comunist din România (1980–1989)
Art and Ideology: Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Personality Cult Reflected in the Official Art of the Communist Regime in Romania (1980–1989)

Summary/Abstract: Nicolae Ceaușescu’s personality cult invaded Romanian public life in the early years of the seventh decade of the 20th century and continued to intensify and diversify its personifications until December 1989. This period was marked by the gradual consolidation of his power within the party and state leadership. Moreover, during the 1980s, the Stalinist model of economic development was forcefully reintroduced. The party elite supported Ceausescu’s cult of personality. Their motives were diverse. They included the need to project an image of a party leadership united around the leader after the events of August 1968, but also a personal motivation, such as the promising prospect of further advancement in the official hierarchy, kinship ties, or even old friendships. There are many types of instruments involved in the public transmission of the homage message: homage volumes printed in the country and abroad, musical recordings, cinema, radio and television, mass events, other events having a homage character (exhibitions, homage symposiums and different types of artistic performances) organized in Romania or abroad. The analysis of these homage events underlines the gradual confiscation of these tools for the general purpose of promoting the cult of Nicolae Ceaușescu in the Romanian public space. The institutional perspective on analysing the phenomenon of public adoration of the leader identifies the most important party, state, mass or affiliated institutions of the Communist Party of Romania, involved in supporting and publicly transmitting the homage message dedicated to Ceaușescu, according to a plan approved by the most important party forums (in particular, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Romania). Also, thematic exhibitions, as part of the official art of the communist regime, were an important instrument for manifesting Nicolae Ceaușescu’s personality cult. Therefore, from the perspective of analysing the phenomenon of personality cult dedicated to the Romanian leader, we identified two main types of exhibitions: homage exhibitions proper organized on the occasion of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s birthday or on the occasion of the anniversary of an important number of years since an event associated with his biography. Homage exhibitions of fine art, which included works of painting, graphics or sculpture dealing with the great achievements of the “Ceaușescu era”, as well as Nicolae Ceaușescu’s “exemplary life and revolutionary activity”, were organized in Bucharest, but also in various urban and rural localities throughout communist Romania.

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