Fall-Out Shelters for the Human Spirit: American Art and the Cold War

By Michael L. Krenn

During the Cold War, culture became another weapon in America's battle against communism. Part of that effort in cultural diplomacy included a program to arrange the exhibition of hundreds of American paintings overseas. Michael L. Krenn studies the successes, failures, contradictions, and controversies that arose when the U.S. government and the American art world sought to work together to make an international art program a reality between the 1940s and the 1970s.

The Department of State, then the United States Information Agency, and eventually the Smithsonian Institution directed this effort, relying heavily on the assistance of major American art organizations, museums, curators, and artists. What the government hoped to accomplish and what the art community had in mind, however, were often at odds. Intense domestic controversies resulted, particularly when the effort involved modern or abstract expressionist art. Ultimately, the exhibition of American art overseas was one of the most controversial Cold War initiatives undertaken by the United States. Krenn's investigation deepens our understanding of the cultural dimensions of America's postwar diplomacy and explores how unexpected elements of the Cold War led to a redefinition of what is, and is not, "American."

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Mar 8, 2006
• ISBN: 9780807876411

Michael L. Krenn

Michael L. Krenn is professor and chair of the Department of History at Appalachian State University. He is author or editor of ten previous books, including Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department, 1945-1969.

Book preview

FALL-OUT SHELTERS FOR THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Fall-Out Shelters for The Human Spirit

American Art and the Cold War

Michael L. Krenn

The University of North Carolina Press

Chapel Hill and London

© 2005 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved. Designed by Rebecca Giménez.

Set in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Krenn, Michael L., 1957–

Fall-out shelters for the human spirit : American art and the

Cold War / by Michael L. Krenn.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8078-2945-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Art and state—United States. 2. Art, American— 20th century. 3. United States—Cultural policy. 4. Cold War. 5. Propaganda in art. I. Title.

N8835.K74 2005 701’.03’097309045—dc22

2004027173

09 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Advancing American Art

2 Art as a Weapon

3 A Delightful Political Football

4 Success at Brussels

5 A Little Too Strange for the Average Russian

6 New Frontiers for the Government and the Arts

7 See Venice and Propagandize

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Major General Lemuel Mathewson at the 1951 Berlin Cultural Festival : 72

Works of Yasuo Kuniyoshi at the 1952 Venice Biennale : 81

Highlights of American Painting exhibit in Santiago, Chile, 1955 : 123

Arshile Gorky, Betrothal II (1947) : 150

Jackson Pollock, Cathedral (1947) : 171

Nikita Khrushchev at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959 : 172

Italian students protesting the opening of the 1968 Venice Biennale : 225

Henry Hopkins, Margaret Cogswell, and others plan the U.S. exhibition at the 1970 Venice Biennale : 228

William Weege demonstrating printmaking techniques at the 1970 Venice Biennale : 231

Communication Through Art exhibit in Lahore, Pakistan, February 1964 : 241

Seminar from the Communication Through Art exhibit in Lahore, Pakistan, February 1964 : 242

Preface

In the past, whenever I found myself in Washington, D.C., I inevitably ended up at the National Gallery of Art. Like the thousands of people who visit the museum every day, I wandered from gallery to gallery, stopping here to admire the fabulous skies of Turner, there to take in the beauty of Monet. I always finished up in the same place, however, the American section. From the early portraits, to the landscapes of Cole and Moran, to the often stark realism of Eakins and Homer, I made my way to the early-twentieth-century room and found a good viewing spot on one of the benches. I was sometimes there for more than an hour, drinking in my favorite artists. There was The City From Greenwich Village, by John Sloan, capturing the vibrancy of the city he loved. Edward Hopper’s Cape Cod Evening has that instantly recognized sense of loneliness, and perhaps unseen danger, so characteristic of many of his works. And then there were the works of George Bellows. The Lone Tenement and Blue Morning capture both the beauty and the sense of alienation to be found in America’s largest city. Finally, there was Both Members of This Club, which portrays the brutality, ugliness, and beauty of the sport of boxing better than any painting (or photograph) ever will. Reveling in the loveliness of these works, I often found it difficult to imagine how the artists, and many others of their time, inflamed the passions of art lovers, critics, and the general public, many of whom condemned the art as too modern, too unconventional, or as not American enough.

During the writing of this book, however, I often went to the newer part of the National Gallery. To be perfectly honest, I had never really understood or cared much for the works of the modernists and abstract expressionists. As I studied, researched, and wrote on the role of art in U.S. cultural diplomacy during the Cold War, I was struck by the continuities in the debates over new forms of art. As with their predecessors in the field of American art, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and many others found themselves at the center of controversy. Their art, too, seemed too wild, too indulgent, too subversive, too un-American. Then one day, as I stood in front of Pollock’s Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), the beauty and power of his work began to make their first real impressions on me. And suddenly the politics, the isms of the Cold War, the debates over what was or what was not good art became, at least for a moment, of little interest to me.

Just as the finishing touches were being put on this manuscript, I visited the National Gallery one more time. To my dismay, Bellows, Sloan, Hopper, and many other early-twentieth-century American artists were no longer in their familiar homes. A query at the information desk elicited the answer that the Hopper was not currently on display and that the other works had been moved to the East Building with the other contemporary and modern works of art. I hurried over and there they were, looking as beautiful as ever and quite comfortable in their new surroundings. I was struck by the long, strange journey of these works of art: from radical visions, celebrated and condemned with equal vigor in the early 1900s; to traditional paintings, far removed from the world of modern art and housed in the marble halls of the West Building of the National Gallery of Art; and now, in the first years of the twenty-first century, housed with the works of Pollock and Rothko—the radicals of the 1940s and 1950s who felt the very same slings and arrows from the American public and critics.

Downstairs from Bellows and Sloan, one could catch a glimpse of the large new exhibit of Rothko’s murals and, a little farther on, Pollock’s Lavender Mist. It seemed entirely appropriate that they had been brought together under one roof. As I reluctantly left the National Gallery until my next trip to Washington, I remembered the words of one of my favorite authors, Henry James, when he said, It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance . . . and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process. Of course, the angry denunciation of new art forms continues in our contemporary society, as self-appointed art critics try to decide what is tasteless, what is pornographic, what, in fact, is art. Now decades removed from the similar ugly and squalid debates surrounding American art in the post–World War II period, it is perhaps just as well that we also remember the words of Hippocrates: Life is short. Art is long.

Acknowledgments

There are many people I wish to thank for their absolutely essential assistance during the course of researching and writing this book. First, of course, are the archivists and librarians who helped this neophyte find his way through the worlds of both cultural diplomacy and American art: Elizabeth Andrews, Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries; Michelle Harvey, Museum Archives of the Museum of Modern Art; Anne Ritchie, Gallery Archives, National Gallery of Art; Karen Schneider, Phillips Collection; and Kenneth Heger, National Archives. In particular, I would like to thank the staff of the Smithsonian Institution Archives, Kathleen Williams, Bill Cox, and Bruce Kirby, who provided monumental amounts of support and constant encouragement. It was a pleasant surprise for me to find that Bruce Kirby had moved to the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, where he again provided much needed assistance. The same must be said of Judy Throm and her staff at the Archives of American Art, including Annie Bayly, who helped me secure permissions for use of some of the restricted oral interviews. And finally, my very great thanks to Martin Manning, who at the time of the research for this book was the head of the United States Information Historical Collection. Martin is one of those truly unsung heroes for historians, one who has always gone the extra mile to assist any and all researchers.

I also owe thanks to two universities. The work on the book began during my last years at the University of Miami. I would like to thank the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at the university for providing much needed research and travel money that helped sustain this effort. A special thanks must go to Darby Bannard, who very kindly let me be a student in his graduate seminar on abstract expressionism at the University of Miami. In the middle of the project, I took up a new position as chair of the Department of History at Appalachian State University. Both the department and university have been generous in their support of my attendance at conferences, during which early drafts of many of the chapters of this book were presented. Most of all, I would like to thank my colleagues in the Department of History. While chairing a department of thirty people has certainly proved challenging, it has also been the most rewarding experience of my professional life. In particular, I would like to offer my very great appreciation to Tim Silver, who read the manuscript from top to bottom and made numerous suggestions for improvement.

Sian Hunter of the University of North Carolina Press has been one of those editors that authors dream about. She was encouraging, helpful, quick to respond, and receptive to new ideas and suggestions, and she provided a sympathetic ear when my doubts about completing the project were at their highest. The two outside readers provided perhaps the best evaluations I have yet had as an author, not because they were overly effusive with praise, but because they offered clear, substantive, and significant suggestions for improvement. Any problems or errors that remain, therefore, must remain the sole responsibility of the author.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank Margaret Cogswell. The interview I did with her in the early stages of researching this book changed its direction and focus, and very much for the better. Through that interview, I finally grasped the immense amount of passion, emotion, and pure love of art that sustained so many of the people who worked to make a U.S. international art program a reality. Yet she went beyond this by reading the manuscript not once, but twice, with some of the sharpest editorial eyes it has been my pleasure to know. She looked over documents and photos and gave me feedback and information. Most important, perhaps, she gave me constant encouragement, especially when the project seemed to be slowing down to a crawl. Now if I could only get her to write her autobiography!

Introduction

In 1962, Lloyd Goodrich, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and chairman of the National Committee on Government and Art, reflected on the ominous times in which he lived. The Soviets were making every effort to diminish our will to resist by a rain of threats of mass destruction. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev declared that he holds a ‘sword of Damocles’ over our heads. In response, the U.S. government was considering the appropriation of substantial funds to help in the construction of fall-out shelters. In Goodrich’s opinion, The individual has a feeling of helplessness, with or without these shelters, to protect himself from destruction or to foresee the conditions under which he and his family will have to struggle to survive. In these chaotic and frightening times, he continued, the arts provide fall-out shelters for the human spirit vastly more essential, more urgently needed and at infinitely less cost than those for the human body. As such, he called upon Congress and the American people to consider government aid to the arts in an entirely new light, as an integral part of the defense of our civilization.¹

During the post–World War II period, the American government—and American art world—followed Goodrich’s prescription and considered the relationship between government and art in an entirely new light. Recognizing both the power of art in terms of delivering political messages and the need to win the hearts and minds of the world’s people, U.S. officials began to more carefully and thoroughly consider the idea of cultural diplomacy as part of the nation’s Cold War arsenal. Starting from extraordinarily humble beginnings, the United States embarked on this new form of diplomacy by sending American art and culture around the globe. Jazz became a staple on the Voice of America radio broadcasts; later, rock and roll would also be featured. Jazz artists such as Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong were among the musicians highlighted in American propaganda, and the United States Information Agency (USIA) promoted and funded tours by them and other artists. Productions of American plays were also mounted overseas, such as the popular Porgy and Bess (which simultaneously served to showcase American culture and to counteract criticisms of America’s treatment of its African American population). High culture was also well represented, as American symphonies and opera companies circled the globe. Naima Prevots, in her 1998 study, explains that American dance companies—both classical and modern—were also the recipients of government support so that they might tour overseas. Hollywood got in on the act as well, and American films were soon prominently shown in numerous foreign markets.²

Much less is known about the efforts to send American painting for display to foreign audiences. Aside from studies of the disastrous Department of State–sponsored Advancing American Art show in 1946, a collection that came in for harsh criticism from U.S. congressmen and others for its un-American and potentially communistic modern art, little has been written about this important and extremely controversial component of America’s Cold War cultural diplomacy. This is surprising since during the two and a half decades following the end of World War II, the Department of State, the USIA, and even the Smithsonian Institution saw to it that hundreds of exhibitions of American paintings found their way to Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and eventually into the heart of the communist bloc. Requests for showings of American art, particularly modern art, flowed in from around the world. American paintings were on display at world’s fairs and at the large and prestigious international art shows in São Paulo and Venice, as well as in small urban areas in Guatemala, Iran, Senegal, and Cambodia. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, the program was in disarray, floundering without direction or focus, functioning on an ever-shrinking budget. Even during its periods of greatest success, the art program was a constant lightning rod for controversy; U.S. government support waxed and waned in response to criticisms from art groups, congressmen, and, in the end, the very foreign audience to which the program was directed.

In a very direct fashion, Goodrich’s metaphor serves as an explanation as to what went wrong with the U.S. government’s attempt to construct a workable and effective international art program during the Cold War. His call for fall-out shelters for the human spirit illustrated the dilemma that both government officials and supporters of the program in the private sector faced. For many art lovers across America—artists, museum directors and curators, gallery owners, private collectors, organizations and agencies dedicated to the arts—it was the human spirit that mattered most. Art, for them, was not a means to an end, but an end in and of itself. It was an international language of peace, understanding, and spirituality in a world that seemed in short supply of all of these qualities. Works of art would speak across borders, across political ideologies, and across racial, ethnic, and national differences and serve as a bridge to further understanding between the earth’s peoples. Officials in the Department of State and the USIA, however, generally focused on the need for fallout shelters. For those interested in winning the propaganda war with the communists, art was an attractive tool. It could be used to reflect American diversity, dedication to culture, and artistic freedom. American art—particularly the more modern and abstract expressionist styles—would say to the world that in the United States the artist was free to paint what he or she wished, without censorship or fear of retaliation. Thus, it would stand in stark contrast to the strict socialist realism dictated by the government of the Soviet Union. And American attention to the arts would serve as an antidote to the criticisms—from friends and foes alike—that the nation and its people were uncultured, unsophisticated, materialistic, and militaristic.

At least initially, U.S. officials and interested members of the American art community felt that they might work together in the effort to bring the nation’s art to a world audience. In fact, it was so obviously necessary that they cooperate that the idea seemed a natural. The government could provide the funds for what was a relatively costly operation, and its overseas personnel would facilitate local arrangements. The American art world would provide much-needed expertise in the area of aesthetics, and their contacts with peers in foreign nations could prove valuable. Almost from the beginning, however, the conflict between these two groups became apparent. For, in truth, they saw the international program in very different ways. Both sides believed that American art had an important role to play in the Cold War world. The one side sought to use art as a salve for a scarred and uncertain world; the other saw in art a valuable weapon in the ongoing propaganda battle with the Soviet Union. Thus, when government officials tried to provide policy guidelines or requested that this or that piece of art or artist be excluded from a particular exhibition, members of the art community cried censorship. Similarly, when the nation’s art lovers demanded complete freedom of artistic expression, the Department of State and USIA calmly observed that if the government was footing the bill, it naturally expected results— in this case, propaganda victories. Unfortunately for both sides, they were never able to discover a happy medium between art as art and art as propaganda.

A number of interesting studies have appeared in recent years regarding American art and politics in the wake of World War II. To a large extent, however, these works have either focused on the internal dynamics of the struggle (debates between the more conservative and representational artists and the more radical abstract expressionists), or have tried to understand that debate as largely a reflection of Cold War frictions within the American art world and society at large.³ Other scholars, more interested in the political/diplomatic context, have turned their attention to the covert side of America’s cultural diplomacy. A number of important recent studies examine the links between state and private institutions and individuals in creating networks for carrying out the business of promoting American culture (and politics) overseas. As Giles Scott-Smith has demonstrated in his examination of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)–funded Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which numbered many prominent American intellectuals and artists among its members, the agency was certainly well aware of the potential power of culture and ideas in the war against communism and did not hesitate to put resources into initiatives such as the CCF. Turning their attention particularly to America’s overseas art program during the Cold War, some writers, such as Frances Stonor Saunders, have suggested that the relationship between an influential handful of individuals in the American art world and the U.S. government was primarily an underground effort, funded and supported by the CIA. Arguing that the Advancing American Art fiasco left the Department of State gun-shy about supporting an overseas art program, these historians suggest that the CIA, working mostly through the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), arranged for private showings of the controversial modern and abstract American art abroad (mostly in Western Europe). Few of these studies of American art overseas extend beyond the 1950s or early 1960s.⁴

While these earlier works have raised some interesting and controversial questions concerning America’s Cold War cultural diplomacy, the focus on the covert side of this effort—particularly when applied to the overseas art program—is problematic. A much more dramatic illustration of the complex interrelationship between art and government during the Cold War was the overt international art programs run through the State Department, the USIA, and the Smithsonian Institution, which have been to a large extent ignored. The American Federation of Arts (AFA) actually played a larger, and more important, role in the international art program than MOMA, and its efforts were openly funded and supported by the Department of State and, later, USIA. By 1951, before MOMA even got seriously involved in overseas exhibits, the AFA and the State Department were already working together to organize a show that included modern and abstract art for exhibit in Berlin. By 1953, an AFA show—supported now by the USIA—went to India; and a 1954 exhibit of modern watercolors was sent to France. Dozens of other exhibitions soon followed.⁵

What is perhaps most overlooked in analyses that suggest a covert working relationship between the American art world and agencies such as the CIA is that what held true for the American government did not necessarily hold true for the art community. As Eloise Spaeth, a noted collector and vice president of the board of trustees for the AFA, explained to an audience (which included USIA officials) in 1951, You and I have different reasons for wanting our visual arts known abroad. We are not primarily interested in using art as an instrument of propaganda. We love this particular art form (or we wouldn’t be gathered here today). Loving, we want to share it.⁶ Understanding these differing viewpoints, and how they came together to first create and then eventually derail the international art program, is a key element of this study. My research suggests a complex picture, one in which the American art world was not merely a willing (or unwilling) dupe in a CIA plot; nor was the U.S. government, with Machiavellian ruthlessness, simply calling the tune to which the art world danced. Both sides had their goals; both sides saw the need for compromise; and both sides, operating within the confines of the Cold War, were unable to bridge the gap between their differing aims.

The central purpose of this book is to explain how and why the program to send American art abroad, a program vigorously supported by so many members of the American art world and a handful of officials in the U.S. government, had virtually collapsed by the early 1970s. Why, even when the U.S. art world and government agreed on the importance of sending the nation’s art overseas, when American art was finally reaching a maturity that established it as a leading force in world culture, when official reports and the responses from foreign audiences suggested that the art was making a dramatic impact, wasn’t the program able to sustain itself at the same level after the 1960s? In short, despite their shared interest in exhibiting America’s art to foreign audiences, why were the U.S. government and art world unable to maintain an apparently successful effort in cultural diplomacy?

Answering those questions leads to a broader understanding of the cultural dimensions of the Cold War. The controversies that the international art program engendered in the United States involved much more than simply matters of taste (though, to be sure, this rather vague term was always used). Art, and the artists who produced the works, found themselves enmeshed in sometimes confusing, sometimes ugly, sometimes contradictory political and ideological battles. The Cold War mind-set in the United States certainly created a distinct us versus them mentality; it also helped, at times, to create a climate of fear and anxiety. Why would art find itself pulled into these matters? For most of the artists, their work was primarily an expression of self or deep emotions; an exploration of the new and the unknown. For many viewers, however, the art spoke directly to what it meant to be American. For these individuals and groups, there was a distinctly American art, expressive of what were defined as innate American values. Modern art, and abstract expressionism in particular, challenged that perspective by moving away from works that were representational or that contained easily understood and recognizable forms and shapes. This, detractors declared, was positively not American art—if it was art at all. Had the argument stopped there, it would have remained of little interest to most Americans, for whom debates about the aesthetics of painting were of scant concern. Wrapped up in the suspicions and animosities created by the Cold War, however, the attackers soon moved on to label modern art and artists as positively subversive and quite possibly procommunist. And thus was created one of the rich ironies of the international art program. The very reason why so much modern and abstract art was sent overseas was because it was believed that it provided a potent weapon in the propaganda war with the communists. In this light, the art was actually the most American art, symbolizing democracy, freedom of expression, and creativity. The Soviets, for their part, agreed, and quickly denounced American modern art as the decadent, perverse, and subversive manifestation of bourgeois capitalism. It was a rather remarkable feat: Cold War politics somehow defined modern art as both the insidious representation of communist infiltration and a tribute to the democratic spirit. Remarkable, but also interesting in terms of how the Cold War led to a discussion and redefinition of what was—and was not—American.

Following the trajectory of the international art program also allows us to understand more fully the means and goals of America’s cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. The program was designed to say something about America to what the nation’s professional propagandists defined as target audiences. The controversies associated with the program illustrate how difficult it was for U.S. officials to project the proper image of America overseas. After all, one of the main goals of sending American art to foreign nations was to demonstrate the diversity of the nation’s culture and artistic freedom. Diversity and freedom, particularly when associated with art, were difficult concepts to channel precisely into the desired message. That difficulty reflects one of the inherent dilemmas related to America’s cultural diplomacy in the post–World War II period. American officials sought to portray America to others without, it often seemed, completely agreeing on what the term meant. And meaning was important, especially when those officials sought to define the proper audience for American art and to measure its impact. When historians have discussed the battle for hearts and minds that took place during the Cold War, it is often assumed that the battle was for a single and well-defined heart or some sort of universal mind. As the history of the international art program demonstrates, U.S. officials carefully monitored their propaganda program. Art deemed as essential and meaningful for a Western European audience would be classified as inappropriate or useless for an Asian or African audience. They classified target audiences in terms of geographic location, age, socioeconomic status, perceived degree of friendliness toward America, and even, on occasion, artistic tastes. And they always made clear their goals for the art. It might be to deliver a simple message about America’s dedication to cultural affairs. For Eastern Europe, the exhibitions might be designed to send a more powerful message about personal and political freedom. An exhibit in Africa, on the other hand, might be set up to stress issues of racial equality and civil rights for the African American population.

Yet, to focus entirely on the government’s goals, the government’s intentions, and the government’s involvement in the international program is to ignore the fact that for many private individuals and organizations in the United States art was viewed as the best and brightest hope for bringing understanding to a world in chaos, peace to a world on the verge of war, and a sense of kinship to peoples divided by walls and political ideologies. They viewed their mission of sending U.S. art abroad, to a large degree, as above the political and military jousting between East and West. Their battle was a larger one and, to them at least, much more crucial. Leaders, ideologies, even nations might rise and fall, come and go, but the human spirit must endure and progress. Their pleas likely strike the scholar of Cold War diplomacy, whether realist or revisionist, as hopelessly naïve, as impossibly idealistic. However, they represent a strain of thinking during the Cold War that is often ignored in the race to find the ways in which that conflict shaped, or mangled, or destroyed aspects of American culture. The Cold War was indeed a powerful force, but it was not omnipotent—there were survivors, people and ideas who tried to find (and occasionally found) shelter from the political and ideological storms. Today, in a world where chaos has actually evolved into a theory, in which a new war has been declared, and where new walls seem to be daily replacing those torn down over a decade ago, the need for those fallout shelters for the human spirit seems more pressing than ever.

1: Advancing American Art

In March 1941, the United States was less than a year away from being engulfed by World War II. On the seventeenth of that month, President Franklin D. Roosevelt briefly turned his attention away from foreign policy and the economic depression that still lingered in his nation to speak at the opening of the National Gallery of Art. The first director of the gallery, David Finley, remembered that it was a cold, blustery day, and a strong wind that evening added to everyone’s discomfort. Yet, nearly 10,000 people came to hear the president open the first truly national art museum in the history of the United States. Roosevelt declared that there was a time when the people of this country would not have thought that the inheritance of art belonged to them or that they had responsibilities to guard it. The National Gallery was the physical embodiment of the change in attitude. But that was not the only thing that had changed. There had also been a time, the president continued, when Americans thought of paintings as only works of art. That did not hold true in 1941. Today they are the symbols of the human spirit and of the world the freedom of the human spirit made—a world against which armies now are raised and countries overrun and men imprisoned and their work destroyed. By establishing a great new museum in a time of such turmoil and danger, the people of the United States signaled that the freedom of the human spirit and human mind which has produced the world’s great art and all its science—shall not be utterly destroyed.¹

During and immediately after World War II, a sizable portion of the American art community and the Department of State came to share President Roosevelt’s belief that art had not only come to play a larger role in the lives of the people of the United States but was also taking on a larger and more significant role in the world. While in most regards the two groups dramatically disagreed on the precise shape and meaning of that role, for many critics, artists, curators, and museum directors, it was enough that the federal government was showing an interest in cultural matters. For its part, the Department of State was happy to use the expertise and connections afforded by members of the American art scene in understanding the world of art. Immediately following the war, the department, ably assisted and much encouraged by vocal segments of the art profession, embarked on a bold new initiative designed to bring American art—particularly modern art—to the world. That initiative ended disastrously. Instead of dampening the enthusiasm of the nation’s art connoisseurs, however, the episode provided them with valuable lessons that they would apply during the late 1940s and 1950s to help shape and sustain America’s international art program.

THE COUNTRY OF THE SOUL

In the April 1943 issue of Fortune, amidst the despair and destruction of World War II, Dr. William Macneile Dixon of the University of Glasgow took time to ponder the issue of civilization and the arts. With the nations of the world apparently bent on mutual destruction, he implored his readers to remember that art and literature were not merely to be regarded as pursuits pleasant in themselves, . . . but beyond doubt the most valuable of allies in the long battle for a nobler and a better future, as making for the common good of human society. What, he asked, had humanity’s faith in science and technology gained for the human race? We have put our trust in political, economic, and scientific remedies— yet, judging from the present state of the world, without any very dazzling or resounding success. In an age of crowding doubts, the arts could point to a world above our heads, a transcendental world, in which, if anywhere, we may hope to find the fulfillment of our heart’s desire. Only the arts, he concluded, could show the way to a province of human life . . . to whose interests and problems the most extensive knowledge or control of nature’s machinery affords no entrance, a country upon which the bright sun of science sheds not a ray of light. It is the country of the soul.²

As war descended upon the world in the late 1930s and 1940s, many artists, critics, and art lovers in the United States and elsewhere came to share Dr. Dixon’s concerns. They saw art not as a separate or distant aspect of life but as a powerful, vital force for peace, humanity, civilization, and democracy. Even before the conflict reached America’s shores, Duncan Phillips, director of the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D.C., declared that art is the antithesis of war. Art is the greatest natural language between the different tribes and races. It is the symbol of the creative and social forces which unite men. . . . Art offers the only universal currency of thought-exchange and fellowship of the likeminded. In a world being torn asunder by war, art must go on. . . . We must keep that beacon burning. With the economic, political, and social regimentation required by societies at war, art must be the last stand, as it will be the eternal stronghold of the individual.³

The ideas that art was in some way the keeper of civilization’s flame and a force for international understanding and peace were powerful ones during and immediately after World War II. As Peyton Boswell, editor of Arts Digest, suggested just a week after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, humanity was now in a struggle for the survival of culture. Art, which always left the most enduring imprint on society, was living proof that there is a continuing line to man’s constructive progress; living proof that man has suffered other cataclysms—and has always survived. Alfred M. Frankfurter, editor of Art News, in 1943 decried the notion prevailing among some politicians and citizens that art was just about as essential today as fan-dancers. He noted the wartime work of artists with posters and cartoons and camouflage and therapy but then declared that "there is still room and, above all, the absolute need for art as art. Without that there would be fatally interrupted the very Western tradition of civilization that the whole fight is about."⁴

As important as art was during the war, its supporters also made clear that it was equally significant for achieving a lasting peace. To a large degree, art’s principal role was seen as that of an international language that could help bring a shattered world together. The English novelist Aldous Huxley argued that artists could do the most for enduring peace . . . by genuinely believing in transcendental values and by giving effective expression to their beliefs in plastic or literary form. In an article entitled, Art, A Factor for International Peace, the director of art for Milwaukee public schools wondered whether the same amount of energy, skill, money, materials, and planning which periodically is expended for destructive purposes could be used for creative effort. He was confident it could, for certainly the creative and brilliant minds which can work together collectively to split the atom and to devise the atomic bomb could under favorable circumstances and with adequate financial support create a world of untold beauty. Such views, which bordered on the utopian, found common expression among those in the American art community. E. M. Benson of the Philadelphia Museum of Art declared that art can destroy the hate in our hearts, and help to create a world we can all be proud to live in—a place for the spirit to grow strong. The artists themselves were primarily responsible for this healing value of art, for they were for the most part, good citizens who make an earnest effort to leave this world a little better than when they entered it.⁵

The director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, James Soby, went to the crux of the matter when he stated in 1944 that art is international. The museum, he suggested, was aware of the desperate need for recognizing the arts as vehicles of that international communication and understanding on which the future of everyone depends. Writing just a few months after the end of the war, Peyton Boswell surveyed the new world, one in which air power and the atomic bomb have given new meaning to the shortest distance between two points. The change was clear: our thinking is international in scope, and our artists, fulfilling their traditional function, are beginning to express this world-wide scope of interlocking interests. That so many artists and art lovers in the United States couched their discussions in international terms was hardly surprising. The period of the 1930s through World War II witnessed an important migration of European artists to the United States and, in turn, what one might call the internationalization of American art. Marion Deshmukh, in her study of this transatlantic movement,