re: #27 JRCMYP

“We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War.”

What an interesting article. If you look at American art of the period and post war/50s/60s Soviet and Cuban art, you’ll see the American art was actually much less political and freeform, which is probably why it was considered junk. Then, as the cold war amped up, the communist art actually emulated a lot of pre- and WWII art. Kind of funny then the communist art styles became so sourced in the 80s and 90s by American artists.