How better to counter Stalin's Socialist Realism (above: Boris
Vladmiriski, "Roses for Stalin" 1949) than by deploying art by
Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark
Rothko? The idea was initially tested in the open in 1947 by the
State Department, which launched a program called "Advancing
American Art." The centerpiece was a group of 79 avante-garde
paintings purchased with $49,000 of government funds. Over the
next two decades, several exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism
were organized, including one called "The New American
Painting," which traveled at government expense throughout
Europe in the late 1950s. Other shows included "Modern Art in
the United States" and "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century."
Cracks in the program formed fairly quickly. Critics began
attacking the artwork as “un-American” and “subversive.” The
paintings were ridiculed in the national media and in Congress.
President Truman, summing up the average American's opinion of
the work, said, "If that's art, t