Andrei Chegodaev, “The Art of the United States of America: From The War of Independence to Today,” translated from Russian by Dina Akhmadeeva, originally published as Iskusstvo Soedinennykh Shtatov Ameriki. Ot voiny za nezavisimost’ do nashikh dnei (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1960), 100–116 (excerpt)

Andrei Dmitrievich Chegodaev was recognized as the USSR's leading specialist in Western art. This chapter offers a corrective to the history of US art as presented at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959. Abstract art, particularly in the hands of the artists of the Northwest School and the groups related to it, stopped dealing with any kind of ideas, feelings, impressions of life or other "old-fashioned things"—it became purely a commercial venture and a profitable business. American critics and art historians—even highly educated ones like Alfred Barr, Lloyd Goodrich, and John I. H. Bauer—seriously consider works of abstract art to be an important, great and even a progressive artistic phenomenon. Despite proud words about the value of an artist’s "self expression," and the profoundly original and impressively individual nature of "plastic vision," etc., the works of several representatives of abstract art are highly monotonous.