Degenerate!: Art and the State

…we travel to postwar America, where the elites also held that art should fulfill an ideological (if not overtly political) function, but were politically compelled to denigrate both Nazi and now Soviet control over culture. The CIA worked alongside corporations to install “corporate” non-partisan, inoffensive art that celebrated the individual (i.e. capitalist and not communist) and denigrated anything containing possible, even hinted at, socialist leanings. Abstraction, particularly Abstract Expressionism became their rallying cry.

Degenerate!: Art and the State

…we travel to postwar America, where the elites also held that art should fulfill an ideological (if not overtly political) function, but were politically compelled to denigrate both Nazi and now Soviet control over culture. The CIA worked alongside corporations to install “corporate” non-partisan, inoffensive art that celebrated the individual (i.e. capitalist and not communist) and denigrated anything containing possible, even hinted at, socialist leanings. Abstraction, particularly Abstract Expressionism became their rallying cry.

Degenerate!: Art and the State

…we travel to postwar America, where the elites also held that art should fulfill an ideological (if not overtly political) function, but were politically compelled to denigrate both Nazi and now Soviet control over culture. The CIA worked alongside corporations to install “corporate” non-partisan, inoffensive art that celebrated the individual (i.e. capitalist and not communist) and denigrated anything containing possible, even hinted at, socialist leanings. Abstraction, particularly Abstract Expressionism became their rallying cry.

Degenerate!: Art and the State

…we travel to postwar America, where the elites also held that art should fulfill an ideological (if not overtly political) function, but were politically compelled to denigrate both Nazi and now Soviet control over culture. The CIA worked alongside corporations to install “corporate” non-partisan, inoffensive art that celebrated the individual (i.e. capitalist and not communist) and denigrated anything containing possible, even hinted at, socialist leanings. Abstraction, particularly Abstract Expressionism became their rallying cry.

Degenerate!: Art and the State

…we travel to postwar America, where the elites also held that art should fulfill an ideological (if not overtly political) function, but were politically compelled to denigrate both Nazi and now Soviet control over culture. The CIA worked alongside corporations to install “corporate” non-partisan, inoffensive art that celebrated the individual (i.e. capitalist and not communist) and denigrated anything containing possible, even hinted at, socialist leanings. Abstraction, particularly Abstract Expressionism became their rallying cry.

Degenerate!: Art and the State

…we travel to postwar America, where the elites also held that art should fulfill an ideological (if not overtly political) function, but were politically compelled to denigrate both Nazi and now Soviet control over culture. The CIA worked alongside corporations to install “corporate” non-partisan, inoffensive art that celebrated the individual (i.e. capitalist and not communist) and denigrated anything containing possible, even hinted at, socialist leanings. Abstraction, particularly Abstract Expressionism became their rallying cry.

Degenerate!: Art and the State

…we travel to postwar America, where the elites also held that art should fulfill an ideological (if not overtly political) function, but were politically compelled to denigrate both Nazi and now Soviet control over culture. The CIA worked alongside corporations to install “corporate” non-partisan, inoffensive art that celebrated the individual (i.e. capitalist and not communist) and denigrated anything containing possible, even hinted at, socialist leanings. Abstraction, particularly Abstract Expressionism became their rallying cry.

Degenerate!: Art and the State

…we travel to postwar America, where the elites also held that art should fulfill an ideological (if not overtly political) function, but were politically compelled to denigrate both Nazi and now Soviet control over culture. The CIA worked alongside corporations to install “corporate” non-partisan, inoffensive art that celebrated the individual (i.e. capitalist and not communist) and denigrated anything containing possible, even hinted at, socialist leanings. Abstraction, particularly Abstract Expressionism became their rallying cry.

Abe and Julia: Honor and Survival During Hoover’s Reign

Kotelchuck reveals his parents as “persons of great moral courage” who “refused to change their views in the face of governmental persecution.” He also reveals Hoover’s FBI as using dirty tricks, forgeries, illegal wiretaps, and intimidation while “hounding . . . domestic opponents of U.S. policies during the Cold War period, often illegally…