I thought this was an interesting quote. Hopefully it is still interesting without having read the entire essay.
‘Realism, whose only definition is that it intends to avoid the
question of reality implicated in that of art, always stands some-
where between academicism and kitsch. When power assumes the
name of a party, realism and its neoclassical complement triumph
over the experimental avant-garde by slandering and banning it…that
is, provided the ‘correct’ images, the ‘correct’ narratives, the ‘cor-
rect’ forms which the party requests, selects, and propagates can
find a public to desire them as the appropriate remedy for the
anxiety and depression that public experiences. The demand for
reality…that is, for unity, simplicity, communicability, etc….did not
have the same intensity nor the same continuity in German society
between the two world wars and in Russian society after the Re-
volution: this provides a basis for a distinction between Nazi and
Stalinist realism.’
– Jean-Frangois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (75)