Joes Segal

At first glance, art and politics seem like they couldn't be more separate, with politics focused on the grubbiness of everyday reality and art busily creating a fantasy world of creative expression. Yet the two realms frequently come together, and the collision can be fiery. This book explores the place of art and artists under a number of different political regimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, traveling around the world to consider how art and politics have interacted and influenced each other in different conditions. Joes Segal takes us to the Third Reich, where Emil Nolde painted under pressure; shows us Diego Rivera creating Marxist murals in Mexico and the United States; ties Jackson Pollock's drip paintings to their Cold War context; and considers the countless images of Mao Zedong in China. In each case, he analyzes the inherent tension between free expression and ideology, the aims of the artist and the exigencies of politics.

Between Purity and Propaganda

Art and Politics

Giles Scott-Smith

Peter Romijn

With its unique focus on how culture contributed to the blurring of ideological boundaries between the East and the West, this important volume offers fascinating insights into the tensions, rivalries and occasional cooperation between the two blocs. Encompassing developments in both the arts and sciences, the authors analyze focal points, aesthetic preferences and cultural phenomena through topics as wide-ranging as the East- and West German interior design; the Soviet stance on genetics; US cultural diplomacy during and after the Cold War; and the role of popular music as a universal cultural ambassador. Well positioned at the cutting edge of Cold War studies, this important work illuminates some of the striking paradoxes involved in the production and reception of culture in East and West.

Joes Segal

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