Lithuanian culture

In the international cultural arena, Lithuania is first and foremost famous for its theatre directors, whose use of symbolism has prompted many critics to talk of a school of Lithuanian directors. Symbolism, conceptualism, and a leaning towards minimalist tools have left their mark on the work of artists representing Lithuania in contemporary cultural forums of other fields.

However in Lithuania, the cultural panorama has many more contrasts, while the view of what cultural expressions should represent the country is far from unified. Recently the image of Lithuanian culture that has been developed for more than a decade has garnered very strong criticism. The reason for these arguments is the inner contradictoriness that is characteristic of Lithuanian culture today, along with a conflicting nature arising from the complex twists and turns of official Lithuanian culture in the 20th century.

The young national Lithuanian state, established in 1918, constructed its identity on the basis of peasant culture. Peasant culture, as the treasure trove of ethnicity, was championed by the national revival movement in the 19th century. Peasant culture was associated with national culture. This is why Lithuanian culture exploited and interpreted elements of peasant culture in one way or another throughout almost the entire first half of the 20th century. Adding to this favourable atmosphere was the interest of modernism in exotic and primitive cultures during the first half of the 20th century. Many Lithuanian artists adapted and mixed the impulses of modernism with their own take on “peasant” or “national” culture, in this way not closing themselves off entirely from official culture.

Nationalism or national pride was not tolerated in the official culture of the USSR, which occupied Lithuania in 1940. However the requirement of official Soviet ideology for culture to be “of Soviet content and peasant in form” left a certain niche for the exploitation of ethnic peasant culture. The fostering of a culture was a phenomenon particular to Soviet culture, and based on what was declared as a culture of and for the people.

During the Soviet period in Lithuania, it was precisely peasant culture and its interpretation that became a refuge for national and modern culture. The radical hostility of Soviet culture towards modernism forced cultural artists to mask their search for form with interpretations of “folk” culture. Also it was precisely in this “folk” culture that the defenders and supporters of nationalism saw the possibility to resist the razing of official Soviet culture. In this way the prestige of peasant culture during the Soviet period rose even more. The hostility of Soviet ideology towards Christianity and its goal of curtailing the statehood of the nations of the Soviet Union encouraged a search for pagan elements in folk culture, and the correlation of ethnicity and national pride with the pre-historic culture of Lithuania. The works of semiotician Algirdas Greimas and archaeologist Marija Gimbutienė, who both lived in exile, were devoted to the reconstruction and interpretation of Lithuania’s pagan culture, which awaited tremendous popularity in Lithuania and greatly strengthened the standpoint towards folk culture as a reservoir of national culture protecting the earliest forms of a sense of nation which were totally independent of time. Though limited and fragmentary, the processes of modern Western culture were also reflected in the Lithuanian culture of the time. Art historians have named this phenomenon “silent modernism”. Directors, painters, musicians, architects and poets walked a thin line of ideological control and were able to introduce their more moderate formal searches to the public, gradually stretching the limits of what was officially acceptable.

The heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was poorly incorporated into Lithuanian culture. The research and interpretation of it only started after 1990, thus Lithuania’s historical culture still occupies a small part of the landscape of contemporary Lithuanian culture.

After the restoration of Lithuanian independence, the state declared cultural and creative freedom. However soon afterwards a rather acute question arose concerning the creation of a new official culture. Lithuanian artists took very different paths in breaking free of the limits that had been imposed by the Soviet dictatorship. Some of them quickly joined international cultural networks. For others new cultural trends and the global cultural market seemed to be unacceptable, and even hostile. They wanted the state to judge both artists and artistic works. There is a battle for a piece of official culture that is based on regulations for the financial support for ethnic culture strengthened by Lithuanian law and requirements to support only those forms of culture that are Lithuanian in nature.

At the same time a culture of popular entertainment has invaded Lithuania’s culture. Focused on profit, this culture strongly pushes aside any kind of aesthetic assessment, with mass culture being made equal to a kind of culture for the people and appealing to the masses.

Thus the three most distinguishable cultural trends that are intensely competing and fighting in Lithuanian culture are mass commercial culture, a contemplative search for ethnicity that seeks a status of being official culture, and individual creative searching, where you can find thoughts on ethnic culture or at least thoughts concerning its myths.

Text by Dr. Irena Vaišvilaitė