Too bad Louie Proyect is off hiding on an Indian
reservation. He could add to this....
I think in the case of abstract art that the condemnation
came before the anti-communist use. At the time of the
1917 Russian Revolution, abstract art already existed, with
some of its most important practitioners, e.g. Kandinsky and
Malevich, being Russian. Most of these folks were sympathetic
to the revolution and during the 1920s there was an outpouring
of abstract art and "constructivist art" (check out the funky
Tatlin architectural models at the Guggenheim that never got
built) in the USSR. The imposition of socialist realism (and I
agree with Charles that some of it is actually quite good) came
with the rise of Stalin and a more general crackdown on
"alternative" culture in many areas. I note that the 1930s saw
such art in many areas, I see an old WPA "socialist realist"
fresco in the local post office here in Harrisonburg.
Given the Stalinist suppression of such art, along with
"formalist" music and a lot of other stuff, which ran through the
1930s and reached a peak with Zhdanov in the "anti-cosmopolite"
campaign of the late 1940s, it is not surprising that many abstract
artists began to take a different view of things. Many were
Trotskyists, and the campaign that Charles is noting largely
involved former Trotskyists in the New York area. But, even so,
Picasso remained a member of the CP throughout all this nonsense.
I don't have a more general explanation of this sort of stuff,
but there is a huge literature out there purporting to provide all
kinds of explanations. In any case, the abstract painters were
originally pro-Soviet and only got turned off by Stalin's suppression.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 3:29 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:19327] Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
>
>>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/19/00 03:18PM >>
> >Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an
>anti-communist political aim ? <
>
>that doesn't mean that it was bad art.
>
>__________
>
>CB: I thought the Soviets knocked it out because it was being used for
anti-communist purposes, "good or bad". What is good art ?
>
>________
>
>Good things can be used by bad
>people. Besides, modern art seems better than most "socialist realism"
>outside some Cuban works.
>
>_______
>
>CB: I have seen a lot of modern art worse than a lot of socialist realism.
Of course, most of both I haven't seen.
>
>Whose correct about art ? Me or you ?
>
>
>
>
>
>
