Lidiia Reingardt, “Abstraction and Reality,” translated from Russian by David Mossop, originally published as “Аbstraktsiia i deistvitel’nost’,” in Mikh. Lifshits and L. Reingardt, Krizis bezobraziia. Ot kubizma k pop-art (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1968), 106–116 (excerpt)

The chapter “Abstraction and Reality” in the book Crisis of Ugliness, co-authored with another leading Marxist art thinker, Mikhail Lifshits, is an outstanding example of Soviet critical discourse, written in a vivid literary style. It argues that the American bourgeoisie fully embraced the “prodigal son” of modernism, and that capitalism financed abstract art. As the press indicates, the dependence of the artist on speculators and art traders is a modern form of slavery, reminiscent of the times of domestic industry in the weaving profession. On the pages of Magazine of Arts Professor Walter Abell of Michigan College makes the following interesting admission: Theoretically we are obliged to think that in American democracy public interests and public prosperity must be supreme. In 1936 the association of American Abstract Artists was created. “Although the movements in American art were extremely varied,” wrote Holger Cahill, “the group of abstractionists is the strongest of them”.