At 07/08/98 17:41:34, [log in to unmask] wrote:
# Tony wrote:
# > The actions of the State Department were in fact no different from
those of
# > their opposing cultural commissars pushing Voznesensky and
Yevtushenko, but
# > the Russians screwed it up by stifling their own avantgarde rather
than
# > using it as a countermove against the Americans. Not that there was
much of
# > an avantgarde in Russia at the time, to be honest.
#
# A favourite William S. Burroughs simile: "...as fake as a
# Communist mural."
#
# No different? Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, Kline, Newman et al were
# toured around Europe as GIANT examples of The Kinds of Things You Can
# Do In The States (Without Being Killed; In Fact, Here`s A Grant).
# "Stifling"..? Why wasn`t there much of an avant-garde in Russia "at
# the time, to be honest". Does "stifling" do it justice? Mightn`t
# the State Dept. have a point?
#
# robin
Governments seem to spend an awful amount of time and money meddling with
art-related things (i.e. censorship rules, propaganda etc). I tend to the
view that governments think that art has some cultural effect, and that
this will effect what they do (policy and culture have to collide at some
stage).
Roger
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