Which Describes the Art and Culture of the Soviet Union After Wwii?

As the the states and the soviet matrimony forged a strained military machine brotherhood during World War Ii, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship (ncasf) flourished. From its launch on March 6, 1943, visual art was central to the quango's activities. With the back up of a devoted contingent of artist members, the ncasf mediated productive partnerships betwixt the Soviet government and major art institutions in the Us. Even so, a swift change of fortunes followed the dissolution of the Thousand Brotherhood and the onset of the Cold State of war. A narrative of US-Soviet bipolarity dominated postwar American political rhetoric, and artists affiliated with the council plant themselves marginalized. As anti-Communist paranoia reduced the outlets for socially engaged artwork in the U.s.a., artists on the left saw their wartime successes obscured past the rapid ascendancy of abstract expressionism. These challenges only served to increase the appeal of the USSR, where publicly funded social fine art projects offered an culling to the Western art market and the patronage of elite museums and galleries.

During a catamenia of improved diplomatic relations in the mid-1950s, the ncasf once once again provided the institutional framework for a burgeoning program of American-Soviet cultural commutation. Led past the charismatic and contrarian creative person Rockwell Kent (figs.ane, 2), these initiatives delivered a propaganda insurrection for the USSR. Kent's fascination with the Soviet Union is well documented, merely the activities of the organisation he chaired have remained in the shadows. However, correspondence and documentation in the personal papers of many ncasf artist members, now in the collection of the Archives of American Fine art, challenges self-congratulatory accounts of US cultural diplomacy, as well as what fine art historian Serge Guilbaut has described as the "domestic triumph of the avant-garde" in early Common cold War America.ⁱ Together with materials preserved in Russian state archives, these main sources assert the "other side" of painting and printmaking in the US during this period, presenting a view of American art more than in line with the diverse attitudes towards abstraction and realism in postwar Europe.²

fig. 1.

Rockwell Kent, The Trapper, 1921. Oil on canvas, 34 ⅛ × 44 ⅛ in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, purchase 31.258. Digital paradigm © Whitney Museum, NY.

fig. 2.

Rockwell Kent in his studio, ca. 1950s. Rockwell Kent Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Officially founded in 1943, the ncasf developed out of Soviet friendship societies established in the The states during the 1920s and 1930s. These groups inspired many American artists and intellectuals to undertake "interwar pilgrimages" to the USSR, while Usa-Soviet cultural substitution initially received governmental support on both sides.ⁱⁱⁱ Soon afterward its institution in Moscow in 1925, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Strange Countries (voks) collaborated with major American art museums as well every bit Communist front groups beyond the United states of america to plan creative initiatives, including displays of Soviet art in usa and American art exhibitions in the USSR (fig. iii).⁴

fig. iii.

Comprehend of catalogue for Exhibition of Work past American Artists of the John Reed Club, Museum of Western Art, Moscow, 1931. Illustration by William Gropper. Image courtesy Tate Library and Archive.

As artists struggled during the Great Low, the appeal of the Soviet Matrimony increased. At the launch of the American Artists' Congress (aac) in New York in February 1936, those who had recently visited the country—such equally photographer Margaret Bourke-White and printmaker Louis Lozowick—enthusiastically recommended its organization of state-funded artistic production as an attractive model for US cultural policy.⁵ Inspired by the centralization of art practice in the USSR, many at the aac saw the Works Progress Administration (wpa) and the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture every bit representing "new hope" for American art, and the Communist Political party United states (cpusa) officially endorsed these New Bargain programs in 1937.⁶ Motivational public artworks produced under the New Deal mirrored the heroic iconography of Socialist realism, and similarly encouraged commonage action to meliorate the national economy. Nevertheless, the USSR's signing of a nonaggression treaty with Nazi Germany in August 1939 brought an stop to the Pop Front and discredited the Soviets in the eyes of many Americans. The reestablishment of American-Soviet cultural exchange was therefore considered all the more necessary by the U.s.a. State Department when, only two years later, the countries found themselves in an unexpected alliance to defeat the Axis powers.^seven

Toward the end of 1943, the ncasf established an art committee under the chairmanship of sculptor Paul Manship. He initially received support from Kent, Jo Davidson, Leon Kroll, John Sloan, and Max Weber, who acted equally vice chairmen. Arts administrator and collector Hudson D. Walker was appointed treasurer, and painter Moses Soyer later joined every bit executive secretary.⁸ Walker's personal papers, held at the Athenaeum, provide deeper insight into the wartime activities of the ncasf art committee than do the council'southward remaining fundamental records, and these materials certificate a wide range of collaborations between the committee and leading US cultural institutions.⁹ The first ncasf-organized art exhibition was The Soviet Artist in the War, held from November four to thirty, 1943, at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art (fig. iv). This partnership betwixt the Metropolitan and the Soviet government signaled the willingness of individuals and organizations of diverse political persuasions to work with the council in back up of the K Alliance. The collection of posters and photographs, including reproductions of more than 40 original oil paintings and works on paper, afterward toured the country under the auspices of the American Federation of Arts.¹⁰ On the heels of this successful exhibition, the ncasf staged a display of contemporary Russian graphic art at Rockefeller Center and a presentation of watercolors and drawings past schoolchildren from Soviet Uzbekistan at the Museum of Modern Fine art (MoMA), both of which subsequently toured the US.¹¹ The council also collaborated with MoMA to prepare an exhibition of art by American children, which was shown at the New York venue in early 1946. Although intended to travel to museums and schools in the USSR, the deterioration of diplomatic relations during the showing at MoMA appears to have prevented its subsequent brandish.¹²

fig. iv.

General view of The Soviet Artist in the War, Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, November 6, 1943. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Epitome source: Art Resource, NY.

Shortly after Germany'south give up in May 1945, the ncasf assembled reproductions of figurative work by more than than 150 of its members "as a souvenir to the artists of the Soviet Marriage."^xiii Contributors included Lozowick, Thomas Hart Benton, George Biddle, Robert Gwathmey, Joe Jones, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Horace Pippin, and Norman Rockwell. Although a number of the works critiqued contemporary American life, more optimistic images, such as Anton Refregier's 1944 painting Heir to the Hereafter (fig. 5and front end embrace) expressed the artists' hopes post-obit the Bang-up Depression and World War II. While the weary expressions of the adult couple in Refregier's work spoke to the suffering and impecuniousness of the previous decade, the baby lovingly cradled in his or her mother'due south arms predicted a more plentiful future, a sentiment underscored by the painting's title. The image of the child every bit a symbol of innocence and compassion, unencumbered by political and racial prejudice, would be a recurring theme in Soviet and American realist art of the early Common cold War period. The ncasf collection briefly went on display at the Associated American Artists Galleries in New York in July 1945, followed early the side by side twelvemonth by a longer run at the Moscow House of Architects (under the title Fine Art of the USA (Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo v SSHA)).¹⁴ Although two months earlier the notorious House United nations-American Activities Commission had accused the ncasf of engaging in "un-American propaganda," the deputy chief of the U.s. mission in Moscow, George F. Kennan, had agreed to lend a group of sketches of New Bargain murals to the Soviet exhibition and the diplomat addressed attendees at the opening reception.¹⁵ Kennan's "invaluable assistance and cooperation" at this crucial moment in postwar diplomatic negotiations offers a tantalizing indication of how significant the quango'south activities were to the history of US-Soviet relations.¹⁶

fig. 5.

Anton Refregier, preparatory sketch for Heir to the Future, 1944. Pastel and graphite on tracing paper, 30 ½ × 21 in. Anton Refregier Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The finished oil is in the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.

Nevertheless, regime support for the work of the ncasf was short-lived. In fact, just one solar day afterwards he attended the exhibition opening in Moscow, Kennan dispatched his famous "Long Telegram" to Washington, advising the Truman assistants that the differences between the USSR and the United states of america were fundamentally irresolvable.¹⁷ As the Cold State of war began, the ncasf closed all thirty-two of the local councils information technology had established in nineteen US states, and fifty-fifty old stalwart supporters, such as Walker and Manship, abandoned its ranks. In November 1947, the ncasf was added to the The states Office of the Attorney General'southward list of subversive organizations, and its operations quickly stalled.¹⁸

Although the remaining members of the ncasf art commission connected to meet in New York after the stop of World War Ii, new initiatives failed to materialize. From 1949, artists associated with the group were targeted by antimodernist campaigns led by U.s.a. Representative George A. Dondero. In a series of congressional diatribes that twelvemonth, Dondero denounced the ncasf as "Communist and subversive," and characterized socially engaged artists as "soldiers of the revolution—in smocks."^xix Moreover, museums that had supported the wartime activities of social realists now appeared to favor nonrepresentational work that they viewed as apolitical and individualistic.

Personal correspondence held in the Archives of American Art and other archival repositories provides insight into the debates amidst ncasf artists as they struggled to forge a larger social role for gimmicky U.s.a. fine art. Raphael Soyer recommended in March 1951 that he and other artists committed to figuration should "draw up a statement of … aesthetic principles" to reaffirm their values in the face of "numerous alien trends in fine art to-day, and the confusion arising out of them."²⁰ In the bound of 1953, Soyer published the inaugural upshot of Reality, a brusk-lived journal that provided a forum for the marginalized artists to air their grievances. The language of the publication mirrored the antiformalist rhetoric of Soviet art criticism and the antimodernist rants of Dondero, including vitriolic attacks on abstruse artists and their patrons and fervent assertions of the superior value of "humanism in fine art."²¹ This episode demonstrates how the growing hegemony of brainchild united proponents of realist and naturalist forms with affiliations beyond the political spectrum. Dismissed by MoMA director Alfred H. Barr Jr. equally "party-liners (hence the emphasis on reality and humanism)" and naive fellow travelers "unaware of the political and ideological motivations of many of the others," the initiative only served to farther alienate the grouping from both adversaries and potential allies.²²

Menstruum documentation also suggests that the ncasf artists' diminished condition during the early on Cold War prompted them to romanticize their prewar experiences, and in particular their contributions to New Bargain projects. For case, Refregier expressed a longing for the "complete freedom" he had enjoyed while working on a WPA-funded landscape for Brooklyn'due south Greenpoint Hospital in 1935, while overlooking his altercation with law who attempted to remove the "communistic" painting.²³ In the early 1950s, the USSR's country-funded program of social fine art remained a source of inspiration for many artists affiliated with the ncasf, even while committed supporters of US-Soviet friendship, such every bit Philip Evergood, admitted to being uncomfortable with the perceived stultification of Soviet cultural life.²⁴ The advance of the crusade against "un-American" behavior was an peculiarly worrying tendency for the large number of ncasf-affiliated artists who were first- and second-generation immigrants from Eastern Europe and countries since absorbed into the Soviet Union. Their growing sense of estrangement in the U.s.a. triggered a stronger affinity with artists behind the Iron Curtain. The reintroduction of official channels for United states-Soviet engagement in the mid-1950s therefore presented a timely opportunity for the ncasf to resurrect cultural dialogue with the USSR, providing a vital outlet for the frustrated ambitions of its artist members.

The death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953 brought about political and social reform in the Soviet Union. The mid- to late 1950s, a period known every bit the Khrushchev Thaw, was marked by renewed international engagement and domestic liberalization.²⁵ Following the first postwar meeting betwixt United states and Soviet leaders, at the Geneva Meridian on July eighteen, 1955, voks and the Soviet Ministry of Culture appear plans to revive cultural exchange between the two nations.²⁶ At this juncture, the ncasf was one of but 4 surviving Soviet friendship societies in the US.²⁷ It remained the largest and most powerful of these groups, with the highest proportion of creative person members, and Rockwell Kent's election to the chairmanship in June 1957 fueled interest in using visual art to strengthen US-Soviet relations. Kent's interest was a further example of the retaliatory response to anti-Communist campaigns that drew artists to the council.

Since joining the ncasf at its launch in 1943, Kent had pursued a political career alongside his creative pursuits. He joined the executive committee of the American Labor Party in 1946, and two years later unsuccessfully ran equally the political party's congressional candidate.²⁸ A 1949 report by the House Un-American Activities Committee accused Kent of affiliating with more than 80-five Communist front organizations.²⁹ Concerned that his political record was preventing the exhibition of his piece of work in the US, Kent recognized the display opportunities available in the USSR and, at the invitation of voks , the creative person made his first trip to Moscow in 1950.³⁰ 3 years later on, in July 1953, he was subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, presided over by Joseph McCarthy.³¹ Kent pleaded the Fifth Amendment, but later on insisted that he had never been a fellow member of the cpusa, and instead divers himself as a democratic socialist who "pin[ned] his faith on the Announcement of Independence and our Constitution." Despite publicly criticizing the lack of democracy in the Soviet Wedlock, however, Kent lauded the country's policies of land funding for visual artists.³²

Kent's activities in the USSR and his contributions to the work of the ncasf can be pieced together through research in his extensive personal archive, now digitized by the Archives, combined with a review of letters and documents held in the State Annal of the Russian Federation (garf) and the annal of the Pushkin Country Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, which would later become the primary repository of his life works. At the stop of 1957, Kent became the starting time postwar American artist to be granted a solo exhibition in the Soviet Marriage. The opening reception at the Pushkin Museum on December 12 was attended by prominent figures from the Moscow art community and representatives of the Us Embassy, an indication of the current detenté in US-Soviet relations.³³ The show comprised 128 graphic works and 55 oil paintings, most of which were landscapes depicting remote territory in the US, Canada, Greenland, Southward America, and Ireland, as well every bit Kent's farm in upstate New York.³⁴ The willingness of the Whitney Museum of American Fine art to lend Kent's 1921 painting The Trapper (run intofig. one) further signaled improved diplomatic relations, while the permission granted Kent to include such a piece of work evidenced liberalizing policies within the USSR. Although the bailiwick matter and style of Kent'south canvas were bourgeois by US standards, the work stood in sharp dissimilarity to Socialist realism. Its subjects—a human being and his canis familiaris hunting for food alone, in the snowy wilderness—contravened the accent on collective experience, or the private working for communal benefit. His confront turned from the viewer, the man's expressionless appearance revealed none of the determination or rapture typical of Soviet figurative painting of the period. The muted palette, moreover, avoided the chromatic symbolism of Socialist realism, while the simplified, bathetic limerick flew in the face up of the antiformalist doctrine that characterized Zhdanovism, the repressive policy that had dominated Soviet culture in the final years of Stalin'south government. The mountainous terrain of The Trapper—reminiscent of stylized landscapes by American modernists Marsden Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe—diameter no sign of industrialization, a primal business concern in Soviet art at the dawn of the Space Age.

Moscow audiences had ample opportunity to compare Kent's piece of work to that of contemporary Soviet artists, as his show at the Pushkin Museum coincided with the All-Union Art Exhibition Dedicated to the 40th Ceremony of the October Revolution, one of the largest art exhibitions in the history of the USSR. This vast display of at least 5,500 artworks past some ii,100 artists from across the nation was shown at multiple venues in the Soviet capital.³⁵ The exhibition confirmed the rejection of Zhdanovism following Stalin'southward death and the relaxation of the tenets of Socialist realism. Impressionist and expressionist tendencies were displayed aslope work that sought to project a mod, technologically advanced epitome of the USSR. Yet the subject thing of new works such as Blacksmiths (Kuznetsy) by Aleksandr Deyneka (fig. vi)—which depicts a group of men laboring in an industrial setting, their facial expressions resolute, still serene—proved the enduring influence of a Socialist realist ethos. Withal, the brandish of Kent'south piece of work suggested that post-Stalinist art censors were prepared to tolerate stylistic deviations from Socialist realism by non-Soviet artists in the interest of supporting the Khrushchev administration's strange policy objectives. Kent'south clarification of his art as "a means of communication … conditioned past the deeper values of American life," and his hope that its display in the USSR would improve US-Soviet understanding and mutual appreciation, were in keeping with the rhetoric of "peaceful coexistence" that dominated gimmicky Soviet discourse.³⁶

fig. 6.

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Deyneka, Blacksmiths (Kuznetsy), 1957. Oil on sail, 94 ½ × 109 in. M. One thousand. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, Kaunas, Lithuania. © Estate of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Deyneka/RAO, Moscow/VAGA, New York. Prototype source: Sputnik/Alamy Stock Photograph.

Kent's prove traveled from the Pushkin Museum to the Country Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (at present Saint Petersburg), before continuing on to exhibition halls in Kiev, Riga, and Odessa. In Moscow, 140,000 visitors saw the display, and across all five venues more than than 500,000 people reportedly attended.³⁷ Every bit might be expected for a Soviet state-sponsored consequence, the exhibition received widespread critical support. The major newspapers Pravda, Sovetskaia Kul'tura, and Novoe Vremia all published favorable reviews, as did the English-language journal USSR, distributed in the Us. The Pushkin Museum claimed that visitors were "carried away by the monumentality and epic strength of Kent's works, the boldness and effulgence of his coloring, the cheerfulness and optimism of the general mood of his art."³⁸

The warm reception Kent received in the USSR assorted dramatically with his contemporaneous experiences in the US. Indeed, the artist was unable to attend the opening of his exhibition in Moscow because the Land Department had revoked his passport. US regime had been monitoring Kent's activities since 1949, and his trip to Russia the following year aroused further suspicion that he was a subversive threat. In 1950, when the artist refused to answer questions related to his politics or to evangelize an affidavit stating that he had never been a Communist, the State Section rejected his application for a passport renewal. Kent was again denied a passport in 1951 and 1954.³⁹ In an attempt to publicize his plight, in October 1955 the artist arranged an exhibition of paintings, lithographs, and engravings at Manhattan's Art of Today Gallery titled The Correct to Travel (fig. 7). In keeping with Kent'due south cocky-presentation as a pioneer and adventurer, the display featured depictions of the Arctic and Antarctica, which the New York Times commended equally "compelling illustrations … [that] pursue their proud, lonely mode, unswayed past the choppy currents of modern fine art."^twoscore In full, Kent raised $2,000 from exhibition admission fees and from the sale of his 1955 autobiography toward a lawsuit asserting his ramble prerogative to travel freely. The instance went all the way to the US Supreme Court, and in June 1958, the court concluded that the right to travel was "a part of the 'liberty' of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due procedure of police," granting the creative person a new passport.⁴¹

fig. 7.

Cover of exhibition leaflet for The Right to Travel, Fine art of Today Gallery, New York, 1955. Rockwell Kent Papers, Athenaeum of American Fine art, Smithsonian Institution.

Kent embarked on his long-awaited bout of the USSR that Baronial. The artist initially traveled to meet his exhibition in Kiev, where, in a televised speech, he expressed his admiration for "the all-embracing virility of the Soviet way of life." He as well called on artists to "serve the crying need of all mankind," an apparent reference to the Khrushchev-era policy of peaceful coexistence.⁴² Over the course of the next six weeks, he delivered lectures to artists and arts professionals in a number of Soviet cities, relishing the opportunity to position himself as an audacious political radical. Kent'south vilification in his home country and the flattery bestowed upon him by Soviet regime engendered in the artist an unabashed enthusiasm for the USSR that blinded him to persistent repression at that place, even as he openly criticized restrictions on personal freedoms in the The states.

Upon returning habitation Kent undertook a promotional tour of the W Declension, presenting his arcadian vision of Soviet life to audiences in cities from Los Angeles to Seattle. During these lectures, Kent referred to Americans as "the most brain-washed people in the world," and accused the The states media of falsifying information that gave a negative impression of the Soviet Spousal relationship in order to perpetuate the Cold War.⁴³ So invested was he in the notion of the USSR as a refuge for marginalized American artists that Kent readily accustomed his Soviet hosts' romanticized view of their country's artistic life; he condemned "the cult of abstract art, so assiduously promoted in the United States," while arguing that "no pressure or compulsion is exerted against Soviet artists."⁴⁴ Kent's transformation into a devoted propagandist for the Khrushchev administration farther demonstrated to Soviet authorities the benefits of cultivating close relations with America's disenfranchised realist artists.

While Kent'southward artwork toured the Soviet Union, negotiations were underway to present a more "official" view of American art in Moscow. In the mid-1950s, the USSR resumed participation in international cultural events, including the Venice Biennale (from 1956) and Expo '58 in Brussels, the beginning postwar world's fair. Many in the U.s. government viewed this renewed international date with suspicion, with the National Security Council describing information technology as a "tactic for dividing the complimentary world and isolating the US from its allies."⁴⁵ In his State of the Union address on January 9, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the USSR was waging a "total cold war," in which "every man activity … the whole world of ideas" had been "pressed into service every bit a weapon of expansion," and asserted that the US must use similar means in society to win "full peace."⁴⁶ In an attempt to strengthen American influence within Soviet order, the U.s.a. government entered into a "Cultural, Technical, and Educational" commutation understanding with the USSR in Jan 1958. The most high-profile result of this agreement was the presentation of two large national exhibitions in the summer of 1959: the American National Exhibition (in Moscow) and the Soviet Exhibition of Science, Engineering science, and Culture (in New York Urban center).

The American National Exhibition, long remembered as the site of the infamous Kitchen Debate between Soviet Premier Khrushchev and and so United states of america Vice President Richard Nixon, opened in the outskirts of Moscow on July 25, 1959. The show'south art display was jointly managed by the US Country Department's Informational Committee on the Arts and the U.s. Information Agency'due south (usia) Advisory Commission on Cultural Information.⁴⁷ More and then than the records of either government bureau, both housed in the National Archives, the records of auxiliary institutions such as the American Federation of Arts and the Downtown Gallery in New York, both now held in the Athenaeum, reveal the intentions of the organizers in staging the exhibition. In total, 40-ix paintings and xx-3 sculptures produced within the preceding thirty years were selected past a jury equanimous of Franklin C. Watkins, a postimpressionist painter, Theodore Roszak, an abstract sculptor, Henry R. Hope, a professor of fine arts at Indiana University, and Lloyd Goodrich, director of the Whitney Museum. While fine art-historical accounts of America's Cold War propaganda exhibitions tend to focus on the inclusion of abstraction in these shows, the jury for the American National Exhibition fabricated a concerted try to emphasize the plurality of US art, presenting stylistic diversity every bit a benefit of democratic government. The eclectic display included American Scene paintings by Benton, John Steuart Curry, Edward Hopper, and Grant Wood; expressionism and early experiments with brainchild by Kuniyoshi, Weber, and Stuart Davis; and mature abstraction by Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko (fig. 8).⁴⁸ In response to controversy about the selection stirred upwards by several bourgeois anti-Communist fine art groups in the US, the exhibition was augmented by a selection of historical works that presented a view of American art more in keeping with the "fine heritage and traditions" touted by Congressman Dondero.⁴⁹ Characterized by dignified portraits, picturesque landscapes, and cheerful depictions of noble American citizens, such as George Caleb Bingham'due south The Jolly Flatboatmen (fig. 9), this supplementary group exemplified what the exhibition jury considered to exist the worst aspects of official Soviet fine art and had aimed to challenge in their own selection.⁵⁰ Ironically, it was a Soviet artwork of this kind that overjoyed President Eisenhower during his visit to the Soviet Exhibition of Scientific discipline, Technology, and Culture in New York in July 1959. Iakov Romas's 1947 painting of friends relaxing on a raft in a rural setting (fig. 10) appealed to Eisenhower's sensibilities equally an amateur painter of landscapes, and demonstrated the attraction of Socialist realism fifty-fifty to those warning to Soviet propaganda.

fig. viii.

Crowds viewing Parson Weems' Legend by Grant Wood (1939) and Cathedral past Jackson Pollock (1947), at the American National Exhibition, Moscow, 1959. Photographer: F. Goess. Downtown Gallery Records, Archives of American Fine art, Smithsonian Establishment.

fig. 9.

George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846. Oil on canvas, 38 ⅛ × 48 ½ in. National Gallery of Fine art, Washington (Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2015.eighteen.one).

fig. 10.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower viewing On a Raft (Na plotu) by Iakov Romas (1947), at the Soviet Exhibition of Science, Applied science and Culture, New York, July one, 1959. Photo: Hank Walker. LIFE Movie Drove. Image source: Getty Images.

In a scathing review of the American National Exhibition published in Sovetskaia Kul'tura, art historian and critic Vladimir Kemenov prepared readers to feel "deep disappointment" at the exclusion of contemporary works by American social realists such as Kent.⁵¹ 2 works past ncasf members were included in the exhibition—Evergood's Street Corner (fig. xi) and Raphael Soyer's A Railroad Station Waiting Room (fig. 12)—but Kemenov observed that these works dated from the New Deal period and did not represent the artists' current output. However, despite reports that visitors oftentimes greeted the brandish with mocking laughter and questioned the absence of Kent's work in particular, the art in the American National Exhibition proved to be a big draw for local audiences.⁵² Goodrich attributed this response to viewers' "strong fascination" with works such as Pollock's Cathedral (1947), fifty-fifty while the Soviets tended to express "blindness, cliffhanger, and a sure degree of hostility" toward these unfamiliar art objects.⁵³

fig. xi.

Philip Evergood, Street Corner, 1936. Oil on canvas mounted to board, 37 × 57 in. (framed). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, J. Harwood and Louise B. Cochrane Fund for American Art. © Manor of Philip Evergood, courtesy ACA Galleries, New York. Photo: Travis Fullerton. Prototype © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

fig. 12.

Raphael Soyer, A Railroad Station Waiting Room, ca. 1940. Oil on canvas, 34 ¼ × 45 ¼ in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund, 2015.nineteen.69). © Manor of Raphael Soyer, courtesy Forum Gallery, New York, NY.

In an attempt to undermine the pop appeal of the American National Exhibition, renowned Soviet fine art historian Andrei Chegodaev curated an opposing view of American fine art composed of works from the collections of the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage. Kent described the exhibition to William Gropper as a "gesture of protest" against the omission of blacklisted artists from the American National Exhibition.⁵⁴ This rival display opened at the Pushkin Museum on October 29, 1959, and was subsequently viewed past around 70,000 visitors. The pick of virtually 180 paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings included works dating from the late eighteenth century to the present. Of detail interest to the Moscow audition was a well-known portrait past Gilbert Stuart of the early nineteenth-century Russian socialite Evgeniya Dashkova, on view in the capital city for the first time (fig. 13). However, the majority of the works in the exhibition were by twentieth-century American realists. Kent enjoyed the largest representation, including oil paintings and illustrations that the Soviet regime had purchased from his 1957 solo show. Other featured artists affiliated with the ncasf included Evergood, Gropper, Refregier, Raphael and Moses Soyer, and Charles White.⁵⁵

fig. 13.

Gilbert Stuart, Portrait of Evgeniya Iosifovna Dashkova, ca. 1815. Oil on console, 28 × 23 in. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian federation. Photo © The State Hermitage Museum/Photo by Pavel Demidov.

The brandish at the Pushkin Museum also included examples of work by artists associated with the American Russian Institute in San Francisco, such as Diego Rivera's former administration Victor Arnautoff and Emmy Lou Packard. In a primal position was Packard's cheerful lithograph Peace Is a Homo Right, depicting a multiethnic group of children feeding sunflower seeds to a dove. The print had previously appeared in a small 1958 exhibition at the Moscow Artists' Marriage defended to affiliates of the Graphic Arts Workshop in San Francisco (fig. fourteen), which had been formed in 1952 from the remnants of the California Labor School. Packard's paean to peaceful coexistence, revisiting the iconography of youthful innocence seen in Refregier's Heir to the Futurity, was subsequently reproduced and circulated widely across the Soviet Union. The larger exhibition of work past American artists that opened at the Pushkin Museum in 1959 also included prewar prints by John Reed Club artists such as Louis Lozowick (fig. fifteen), Fred Ellis, and Hugo Gellert, and lithographs donated to the USSR during Globe War 2 past members of the Woodstock Artists Clan, including Doris Lee and Andrée Ruellan.⁵⁶ The Pushkin Museum praised the participating artists as "fighters for ideological, national and socially-directed art … at the forefront of progressive American art ['bortsy za ideinoe, narodnoe, sotsial'no–napravlennoe iskusstvo … v avangarde progressivnogo iskusstva Ameriki']," reinforcing the Soviet claim that realism was the nigh advanced fine art form.⁵⁷

fig. 14.

Vitaly Goriaev delivering an address at the opening of an exhibition of work by California graphic artists, Moscow Artists' Union, May 6, 1958. Emmy Lou Packard Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Establishment.

fig. 15.

Louis Lozowick, Nascency of a Skyscraper, 1930. Lithograph on paper, 12¼ × 8⅝ in. Smithsonian American Fine art Museum, Washington, DC, Gift of Adele Lozowick, 1979.76.18. © 1930 Lee Lozowick.

Kent besides initiated his own protestation against the American National Exhibition. In the lead-upwards to the regime-sponsored display, the artist had contacted the organizers to highlight the success of his solo evidence in Moscow and to advocate for social realism equally the most constructive aesthetic tool for aiding American-Soviet integration.⁵⁸ He was therefore enraged when both his ideas and his artworks were spurned, and became determined to respond to the "shabbily presented" official presentation past highlighting its many "omissions."⁵⁹ During a visit to Moscow in the summer of 1959, Kent proposed that the ncasf organize an exhibition of American fine art in the city later that year, to coincide with Eisenhower'south planned visit.⁶⁰ He appealed to artist members of the ncasf to donate reproductions and prints of their own work to go on view at the Firm of Friendship in Moscow, the headquarters of voks and, from early on 1958, its successor bureau, the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (ssod). In an October 1959 alphabetic character to Refregier, Kent expressed his hope that such an exhibition might "win some recognition" for the council as "an organization of American people devoted to the aforementioned cause as that which, ostensibly, had brought the President to Moscow."⁶¹ Yet, the artist was also eager that the show remain "entirely free" from US governmental influence.⁶² Upon receipt of Kent's letter, Refregier assumed responsibleness for the project, with assist from artists Frank Kleinholz and Philip Reisman. The American Artists' Souvenir Exhibition followed a like format to the council's Fine Fine art of the USA (1946), and included a number of the same artists. However, the depletion of the ncasf's membership since the start of the Common cold War had decreased resources available to the organizers, and the presentation that opened on July 6, 1960, featured a mere fraction of the 150 contributors to the before show (a total of 56 works past 25 artists).⁶³

Evergood and Raphael Soyer both contributed fine art that more than closely represented their current practice than the works selected for display in the American National Exhibition. Whereas Evergood's 1936 painting in the United states government-sanctioned show (seefig. 11), an archetypal work of New Deal realism, directly addressed the themes of grade sectionalisation and racial discrimination, Cool Doll in Pool (fig. 16), the 1960 lithograph the creative person lent to the ncasf exhibition, lacked obvious political content. Evergood's difference from social realism in the 1950s may have been a response to the rise of anti-Communist sentiment and Cold State of war paranoia, or perhaps reflected a want to celebrate postwar abundance, a tendency also evident in Soviet art of the Thaw period. Meanwhile, in lieu of his circa 1940 painting of a diverse group of passengers awaiting their trains (run acrossfig. 12), the ncasf exhibition featured Soyer's 1956 lithograph The Adolescent (fig. 17). Both of the creative person's works focus on a young adult female, with her head tilted downwards and mentum resting in the palm of her hand. However, the female figure at the centre of A Railroad Station Waiting Room is part of a scene with wider political significance that references the itinerant lifestyle forced on unemployed working-class Americans during the Neat Depression, while the protagonist in The Adolescent is lonely and appears absorbed in her own thoughts. Devoid of clear descriptive content, the latter paradigm maybe reflects Soyer's concerns nearly the isolation of the private in postwar America, or may propose hope for the future, as previously shown in works depicting youthful subjects past Refregier and Packard.⁶⁴ Soyer's delicately rendered, expressive lithograph also accentuated the technical skills that the creative person and his peers feared were declining in the Usa due to the prevailing enthusiasm for brainchild.⁶⁵

fig. sixteen.

Philip Evergood, Cool Doll in Pool, 1960. Lithograph on paper, xx × 15 in. Richard F. Castor Art Gallery, St. Lawrence University, County, NY, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Plotka, SLU 73.44. © Estate of Philip Evergood, courtesy ACA Galleries, New York. Epitome courtesy Richard F. Castor Art Gallery.

fig. 17.

Raphael Soyer, The Adolescent, 1956. Lithograph on paper, xv ¾ × ten ¾ in. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Gift of Brenda Kolker, 1991.275, imamuseum.org. © Estate of Raphael Soyer, courtesy Forum Gallery, New York, NY.

The ncasf exhibition welcomed fifteen,000 visitors in Moscow. The annotate books tape widespread appreciation for the opportunity to see examples of contemporary US realism, and certificate repeated requests for larger and more frequent displays of a range of American art.⁶⁶ The prove later on traveled to Tbilisi and other major cities in the USSR before the artwork was divided and placed within the collections of ssod and the Pushkin Museum.⁶⁷ The brandish was widely publicized in the Soviet media, in big part as a ways of critiquing the American National Exhibition'due south claim to present a costless and democratic art. In voks's monthly English language-language magazine Culture and Life, the ncasf bear witness was said to prove that "despite the authorisation of abstruse and modernistic art fostered by fashionable criticism and museum patrons, America's genuine artists are fighting, through the medium of their work, for realism and humanism in art."⁶⁸ In Sovetskaia Kul'tura, Chegodaev criticized American museums for rejecting "genuine artistic treasures ['podlinnye khudozhestvennye tsennosti']" and heralded the exhibition as prove that the United states of america government was propagating a faux impression of the popularity of abstruse and surrealist art among the American people.⁶⁹ Soviet art critics drew parallels between Socialist realism and American social realism, presenting the latter as part of a "swell realist tradition" that was being crushed in the US.⁷⁰

The effusive praise heaped on the ncasf's creative person members inspired Kent to make a grand gesture in the name of Soviet-American cultural relations. On Nov sixteen, 1960, at a press briefing at the Soviet Ministry of Culture in Moscow, the artist appear his intention to souvenir his life works to the USSR. Although given as an expression of his gratitude to the Soviet people for their wartime sacrifices and their commitment to peaceful coexistence, Kent also used the occasion of the donation to critique the deportment of his home country. The artist had originally offered his works to the Farnsworth Fine art Museum in Rockland, Maine, and the donation had been accustomed with the promise that a special wing would exist built to house the collection. Still, following the news that Kent had refused to provide cocky-incriminating testify before Senator McCarthy, the Farnsworth withdrew from the agreement. At the Moscow press conference, Kent expressed hope that his decision to give his drove to the Soviet Union would force his compatriots to realize that their admission to American art was being barred past official and government control.⁷¹ Meanwhile, the Moscow News reported that Kent'southward decision was prompted by "political intolerance" and a "hostile atmosphere" toward peace in the U.s.a..⁷²

An exhibition of Kent'due south gift opened at the USSR Academy of Arts on November nineteen, 1960 (fig. xviii) and afterwards traveled to Petrograd and the industrial city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the Urals. In the April 1961 event of the cpusa 's cultural magazine Mainstream, Kent boasted that the collection comprised "80 paintings, over 800 drawings and other works in the graphic arts, too as books and manuscripts," which were thereafter distributed amid museums across the Soviet Union, in Moscow, Saint petersburg, Riga, Yerevan, Odessa, and Kiev.⁷³ Soviet artists showered Kent with gifts in recognition of his donation, and in June 1962, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, he was appointed an honorary fellow member of the USSR Academy of Arts. Khrushchev described Kent'south piece of work every bit "a brilliant example of an artist's public service to the ideals of peace and humanism," that "affirm[ed] the inexhaustible strength of realistic art."⁷⁴

fig. 18.

Opening of Rockwell Kent exhibition, USSR University of Arts, Moscow, November 19, 1960. Rockwell Kent Papers, Athenaeum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The artist members of the ncasf initially embraced the thought of exhibiting their work in the Soviet Union equally a mode of improving their continuing and prospects in the US. However, the emphatic acclaim they received in the USSR just served to further marginalize them in their dwelling house state, and increase their confidence that US institutional back up for abstract art was an assault by capitalist forces on their "genuine" version of American art, likewise as a rejection of the majority artful preferences of the American people. Therefore ncasf artists gradually embraced their marginalization as a protest against assuasive themselves to be "whipped into conformity" by the threat of blacklisting, and viewed unofficial exhibitions in the USSR as a way for "the brave and gratuitous American … [to] speak up confronting such barbaric practice."⁷⁵ While the official US-Soviet cultural exchange treaty was maintained until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, voks and ssod besides continued to support the work of artists associated with the Soviet friendship groups. In fourth dimension, as the Cold War entered a new era and the peace movement was revived within mainstream US politics, regional branches of the ncasf would once again span the nation, from Seattle and San Diego, to Boston and Washington, DC.

While the obscurity of the ncasf and its artist members during the early Cold War was symptomatic of the vitriolic political atmosphere of the era, the present unwillingness of historians to review the council's unofficial cultural initiatives suggests the ongoing legacy of the academic self-censorship that evolved in McCarthyite America.⁷⁶ Past bringing together rare archival materials held on both sides of the former Iron Curtain, this investigation reveals a challenging attribute of Us-Soviet history and twentieth-century American art that calls into question many of the popular narratives of the cultural Cold War.

Notes

Julia Tatiana Bailey is an art historian and curator who specializes in visual politics and cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. She holds a PhD from Academy College London and in 2013–14 was the Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is currently leading a research projection at Tate Modern focusing on Us postwar art, with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

The author wishes to thank the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, and UCL Graduate School for their generosity in funding this research.

1. Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Mod Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Common cold War, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Printing, 1983), 193.

ii. Greta Berman and Jeffrey Wechsler, Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940–1960 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Fine art Gallery, 1981), vi. Come across, for example, James Hyman, The Boxing for Realism: Figurative Art in Britain during the Cold War, 1945–1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); and Sarah Wilson, Picasso/Marx and Socialist Realism in France (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013).

three. Michael David-Trick, Showcasing the Swell Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941 (Oxford: Oxford Academy Press, 2012), one.

4. Andrew Weinstein, "From International Socialism to Jewish Nationalism: The John Reed Club Souvenir to Birobidzhan," in Complex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art, ed. Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd (New Brunswick: Rutgers Academy Printing, 2001), 142–45, 159n18.

5. Bourke-White, "An Artist's Experience in the Soviet Matrimony," in Artists confronting War and Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists' Congress, ed. Matthew Baigell and Julia Williams (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 86; and Lozowick, "Status of the Artist in the USSR," in ibid., 164.

6. Louis Ferstadt, Jacob Kainen, and Ralph M. Pearson, "Regime in Art," in Artists against State of war and Facism, 157; and Andrew Hemingway, "Meyer Schapiro: Marxism, Science, and Art," in Marxism and the History of Fine art: From William Morris to the New Left, ed. Hemingway (London: Pluto Printing, 2006), 137.

seven. J. D. Parks, Culture, Conflict and Coexistence: American-Soviet Cultural Relations, 1917–1958 (Jefferson: McFarland, 1983), 79–89.

viii. East. Ellis to Nan Golden, "Report of Cultural Committees," November 22, 1943, Box five, folder 9, National Quango of American-Soviet Friendship Records, TAM 134, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York Academy (hereafter ncasf Records).

9. The ncasf Records at the Tamiment Library have perpetuated a deceptively narrow view of the group'southward operations.

ten. Metropolitan Museum of Art, "The Soviet Artist in the State of war," press release, Nov iv, 1943, Office of the Secretarial assistant Records, EX 484, Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives; and Thomas C. Parker to Margaret Lamont, March 1, 1945, Hudson D. Walker Papers, Athenaeum of American Art, Smithsonian Establishment (hereafter Walker Papers).

11. Committee of the Arts, "Soviet Graphic Art," 1943–46, Box 5, folder 7, ncasf Records; Exhibit Department, "Soviet Children'southward Art," n.d., Box 5, binder eleven, ncasf Records; and Museum of Modernistic Fine art, "Exhibition of Soviet Children's Paintings at Museum of Modern Fine art Picture Home Front end Activities," printing release, 1944, accessed Oct 22, 2016, http://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3153.

12. "Art Committee Meeting," June seven, 1945; and Paul Manship and Moses Soyer to Hudson Walker, Jan 28, 1946, Walker Papers.

13. National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, press release, July 21, 1945, Box 5, folder seven, ncasf Records.

xiv. Run into "Vystavka amerikanskogo iskusstva five Moskve," [1946?], f. 5283, op. 14, d. 296, fifty. 5, Country Archive of the Russian Federation (future garf).

fifteen. Corliss Lamont to John South. Wood, Dec 9, 1945, Walker Papers; and Parks, Civilization, Conflict and Coexistence, 194n23.

16. Vladimir Kemenov to Paul Manship, telegram, Feb 1946, Box 5, folder 6, ncasf Records.

17. Kennan, "The Kennan 'Long Telegram': Moscow, February 22, 1946," in Origins of the Cold War: The Novikov, Kennan, and Roberts "Long Telegrams" of 1946, ed. Kenneth M. Jensen, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: U.s. Constitute of Peace Press, 1993), 17–31.

eighteen. Parks, Culture, Conflict and Coexistence, 131–32; and National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, memorandum, Dec xv, 1947, Walker Papers.

19. Dondero, "Communist Art in Authorities Hospitals," Cong. Rec., 81st Cong., 1st sess., March 11, 1949, vol. 95: 2364–65; and Dondero, "Communists Maneuver to Control Art in the United states," Cong. Rec., 81st Cong., 1st sess., March 25, 1949, vol. 95: 3297–98.

20. Raphael Soyer to Ben Shahn, March ten, 1951, Ben Shahn Papers, Archives of American Art.

21. Honoré Sharrer, "Humanism in Art," Reality 1, no. 1 (Spring 1953): 4. The publication's editorial commission was composed of a various group of artists including Isabel Bishop, Edward Hopper, and Henry Varnum Poor.

22. Barr to Gertrude Benson, May 18, 1953, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Papers, microfilm reel 3157:750, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York.

23. Transcript of oral history interview with Refregier conducted by Joseph Trovato, November 5, 1964, Athenaeum of American Art; and Refregier to Mr. Knight, July ten, 1935, Anton Refregier Papers, Archives of American Fine art (hereafter Refregier Papers).

24. Donald Kuspit, "Philip Evergood's Social Realism" (chief's thesis, Pennsylvania State Academy, 1964), 79, quoted in Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956 (New Oasis: Yale University Printing, 2002), 233.

25. The Soviet Ground forces's brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in November 1956 demonstrated the limits of this new liberty.

26. Rósa Magnúsdóttir, "Mission Impossible? Selling Soviet Socialism to Americans, 1955–1958," in Searching For a Cultural Diplomacy, ed. Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Marking C. Donfried (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 50; Parks, Culture, Conflict and Coexistence, 159; Yale Richmond, Cultural Commutation and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park: Penn Land Academy Printing, 2003), 12; and Susan East. Reid, "Toward a New (Socialist) Realism: The Re-engagement with Western Modernism in the Khrushchev Thaw," in Russian Art and the W: A Century of Dialogue in Painting, Architecture, and the Decorative Arts, ed. Rosalind P. Blakesley and Reid (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Printing, 2007), 226–27.

27. The three other remaining societies were the Chicago Council of American Soviet Friendship, the American Russian Found (San Francisco), and the American Russian Institute of Southern California (Los Angeles).

28. Kent, Information technology's Me O Lord: The Autobiography of Rockwell Kent (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1955), 572.

29. Committee on Un-American Activities, Review of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for Earth Peace Bundled by the National Quango of the Arts, Sciences and Professions and Held in New York City on March 25, 26, and 27, 1949 (Washington, DC: Firm of Representatives, 1949), 17.

thirty. Kent, It's Me O Lord, 570–72, 582.

31. "Testimony of Rockwell Kent," in Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Commission on Government Operations, Country Department Information Service—Information Centers, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., July one, 1953, vol. 2: 1196–98.

32. Transcript of oral history interview with Kent conducted by John Wingate, September 12, 1957, Archives of American Art.

33. Aleksandr Pavlov, "Translation: Rockwell Kent and His Exhibition in Moscow. Summary of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts," due north.d., f. 9576, op. 8, d. 18, l. 194, garf.

34. List of artworks, n.d., f. 9576, op. 8, d. 18, ll. 215–22, garf.

35. The exhibition ran from Nov five, 1957 to March 16, 1958. See Vsesoiuznaia khudozhestvennaia vystavka, posviashchennaia xl-letiiu Velikoi Oktiabr'skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: Zhivopis', Skul'ptura, Grafika, Raboty Khudozhnikov teatra i kino (Moscow: USSR Ministry of Culture, 1957), n.p.

36. Robbie Lieberman, "'Does That Make Peace a Bad Word?': American Responses to the Communist Peace Offensive, 1949–1950," Peace and Change 17, no. 2 (Apr 1992): 198–228; and Kent, "Statement for Utilize of 'VOKS', Moscow, U.Southward.S.R.," June fifteen, 1957, Refregier Papers.

37. Pavlov, "Translation: Rockwell Kent," l. 194, garf; and Rockwell Kent, "My Gift to the Soviet People," Mainstream 14, no. 4 (April 1961): 38.

38. Pavlov, "Translation: Rockwell Kent," ll. 194–95, garf.

39. Kent, It's Me O Lord, 582, 589; and "Almost Art and Artists," New York Times, October 19, 1955, thirty.

xl. "Near Art and Artists."

41. Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.South. 116 (1958).

42. "Accost past Rockwell Kent. Kiev Television set," August 28, 1958, f. 9576, op. 8, d. xix, l. 131, garf.

43. "Kent Comments (Pro and Con) on Visit to USSR," People's World, Nov 29, 1958, newspaper clipping, f. 9576, op. 8, d. 41, l. 43, garf.

44. "Rockwell Kent—Argument at a Printing Conference in New York," October 16, 1958, f. 9576, op. 8, d. 19, fifty. 118, garf.

45. National Security Quango, NSC 5440: Basic National Security Policy, Dec thirteen, 1954 (229th NSC Mtg.), in Documents of the National Security Council, 1947–1977 (Washington, DC: Academy Publications of America, 1980), reel 4:364–65.

46. Eisenhower, "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union," January ix, 1958, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, US National Archives and Records Administration, accessed January 30, 2016, http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/1958_state_of_the_union.pdf.

47. Lloyd Goodrich, introduction to Painting and Sculpture from the American National Exhibition in Moscow (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1959), 2.

48. Ibid.; and "Moscow to Encounter Mod United states of america Fine art," New York Times, May 31, 1959, 60.

49. Office of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, "27 Older Paintings Chosen for Exhibition in Moscow," printing release, July 22, 1959, American Federation of Arts Records, Athenaeum of American Art; and Richard B. K. McLanathan, "The Art Showroom at the American Exhibition in Moscow 1959," unpublished report, November 20, 1959, Downtown Gallery Records, Archives of American Fine art. Dondero claimed that many postwar painters were attempting "to undermine and destroy the fine heritage and traditions which have been built up over the generations of our existence as a keen Commonwealth." See Dondero, "Communism in the Heart of American Art—What to Practice about Information technology," Cong. Rec., 81st Cong., 1st sess., May 17, 1949, vol. 95: 6488–89.

50. Lois A. Bingham to Tom Roderick, "Meeting of the Jury for the Selection of the Fine art Exhibit for Moscow," memorandum, June 30, 1959, Box 62, folder 3, record unit 321, Records of the Office of Program Support, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

51. English translation of Kemenov, "U.s.a. Gimmicky Art on Exhibition in Sokolniki Park," Soviet Culture, August eleven, 1959, Downtown Gallery Records.

52. See "Comment Books and Lists of Visitors Related to United states Exhibits in the USSR, Rumanic, and Bulgaria," n.d., Box 11, folder "American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959: Comment Volume Translations," Office of Exhibits, Records Relating to the American National Exhibition, Moscow, 1957–59, record grouping 306, Records of the Us Data Bureau, National Archives, College Park, MD; and Richard B. K. McLanathan, "American Fine art in Moscow," Atlantic Monthly 205, no. 5 (May 1960): 77.

53. Goodrich, introduction to American National Exhibition, 6–7.

54. Kent to Gropper, September 26, 1959, microfilm reel 5188:148, Rockwell Kent Papers, Archives of American Art (hereafter Kent Papers).

55. Pushkin Land Museum of Fine Arts, Vystavka proizvedenii amerikanskikh khudozhnikov (Moscow: Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 8–ix, 15–21.

56. Ibid., 15–24.

57. Untitled written report, due north.d., f. 5, op. 3, d. 249, 50. ten, Manuscripts Department, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

58. Kent to Lydia Kislova, March 18, 1958, f. 9576, op. 8, d. 18, fifty. 190, garf.

59. Kent to Anton Refregier, September 26, 1959, Refregier Papers.

60. Kent to unknown recipient, Feb 29, 1960, Refregier Papers.

61. Kent to Refregier, Oct 29, 1959, Refregier Papers.

62. Kent to Lydia Kislova, May thirty, 1959, f. 9576, op. 8, d. 41, l. 110, garf.

63. "The American Artists Gift Exhibition," north.d., Refregier Papers; and Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, "Exhibition of Contemporary American Art in Moscow," printing release, July 8, 1960, Box v, folder 9, ncasf Records.

64. Raphael Soyer, Cocky-Revealment: A Memoir (New York: Maecenas Printing, 1969), lxxx.

65. Hemingway, Artists on the Left, 280.

66. Transcription from comment books for American Artists' Gift Exhibition, 1960, f. 9576, op. 17, d. 142, ll. 33–39, garf.

67. Richard Morford to Anton Refregier, Dec 16, 1960, Refregier Papers; 5. I. Kononov, E. I. Larionov, and G. A. Kolobov, "Akt," January 31, 1962, f. 9576, op. 17, d. 142, ll. twenty–ane, garf; and Five. I. Kononov, Eastward. I. Larionov, and G. A. Kolobov, "Akt," February two, 1962, f. 9576, op. 17, d. 142, ll. 18–9, garf.

68. G. Kolobova, "A Gift from Friends," Culture and Life, 1960, magazine clipping, Refregier Papers.

69. Chegodaev, "Dar amerikanskikh khudozhnikov," Sovetskaia Kul'tura, July 26, 1960, paper clipping, f. 9576, op. 17, d. 142, l. 5, garf.

seventy. Union of Artists of the USSR, All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Vystavka proizvedenii Rokuella Kenta: zhivopis' i grafika (Moscow: n.p., 1957), 6.

71. Kent, "Rockwell Kent's Gift to Soviet People," Trud, November 16, 1960, abridged translation, November 17, 1960, Box 1, binder 8, ncasf Records.

72. "Rockwell Kent Presents His Work to the Soviet People," Moscow News, November xix, 1960, newspaper clipping, Box 1, folder ix, ncasf Records.

73. Kent, "My Gift to the Soviet People," Mainstream fourteen, no. 4 (Apr 1961): 37; "Rockwell Kent Exhibit in Sverdlovsk," n.d., Box 1, binder viii, ncasf Records; and M. F. Asaevich, I. A. Kuznetsova, and A. D. Chegodaev, "Akt," December 10, 1960, f. 2329, op. 4, d. 1201, ll. 3–12, Russian State Archive of Literature and Art.

74. Khrushchev, "To Mr. Rockwell Kent," June 21, 1962, Box 2, binder 25, ncasf Records.

75. William Gropper to Franklin Watkins, June four, 1959, Kent Papers, reel 5188:145.

76. Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 396.

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Source: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/692635

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