PARTISAN REVIEW
-among other languages-by the USSR Society for Cultural Relations
with Foreign Countries. The author of the article is the magazine's
editor, Vladimir Kemenov, whose pen, if not mind, functions in a sub–
cellar of consciousness a Neanderthal man would have shrunk from
entering. Mr. Kemenov attacks contemporary "bourgeois" art indis–
criminately, sparing neither abstract art nor neo-realism and taking in
everything in between (though he is careful never to use the word
"academic"). Aside from the unbelievable level of intellectual probity
on which it is written, Mr. Kemenov's article is remarkable for its in–
sinuations to the effect that our country is now the chief promoter of
"decadent" art (Dali and Sir Kenneth Clark are called Americans, and
it is pointed out that Lipchitz has spent a "long time" in this country).
Mr. Kemenov accuses modern art of trying to convince the working
man "that he is no more than a conglomeration of mechanical parts ...
or else a biological creature possessing purely animal instincts and de–
sires." Lipchitz is said to
be
a "representative of that tendency in modern
bourgeois art which utterly perverts the image of man, distorting his
body, violating measure and proportion, emphasizing his animal nature."
Picasso's art is called "an aesthetic apologetics for capitalism" des–
pite his own "professed sympathy for the struggle of democracy against
fascism." The Impressionists and Gezanne also get theirs in passing, be–
ing accused of one-sided "rationalism."
Mr. Kemenov goes on to say that modern art is pathological, insane,
mystical, irrational, escapist, etc. But it is to be noted that throughout the
article he, or at least his translator, avoids the term, "degenerate art,"
perhaps because the Nazis used to apply it so regularly to modern art.
This does not, however, prevent him from adding that the latter is a
"fantastic mixture of unwholesome fantasy and fraud," "worthless non–
sense," "a mixture of pathology and chicanery" tracing its origins to
"daubs painted by the donkey's tail." But even our "realistic" art is only
"quasi-realistic. ... Its purpose is to put a veneer on bourgeois reality."
Mr. Kemenov says that the decadence and deterioration of modern
bourgeois art (it used to be better in the nineteenth century, he admits,
when it was realistic and closer to the people) are such that it is unable
to produce good war propaganda; only imported Soviet music, movies,
and posters could "spiritually" mobilize people in this country and Britain
against Hitler during the war. "As opposed to decadent bourgeois art,
divorced from the people, hostile to the interests of the democratic masses,
permeated with biological individualism and mysticism, Soviet artists
present an art created for the people, inspired by the thoughts, feelings,
and achievements of the people, and which in its turn enriches the people
578
