The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism

xvi, 165 pp. The author, a Hungarian dissident, argues that censorship is no longer a matter of simple state intervention. Rather, a new type of censorship has emerged in totalitarian socialist countries which attempts to eliminate the inherent antagonism between creators and censors. "The Velvet Prison is about the aesthetics of this new censorship. It examines the effort by the state to control the culture over which it presides, and probes the complicity of artists and writers consigned to collaborate with the guardians that govern them. Finally, it seeks to answer the question: Is freedom necessary for art to flourish'"