180
PARTISAN REVIEW
Holland, and had brought back the best of everything he found there to
the United States. He borrowed the idea of the Dutch architects, the
conception of the Bauhaus museum in Dessau, which was integrating
design, art, architecture, and cinema to the more conventional sections
of a traditional museum. He had the ability, talent, and access to finan–
cial support to pull it all together.
I'll now return to the person who trained me in American art, Leo
Castelli. When Leo arrived in New York in
194
I,
he said that the collec–
tion Alfred Barr had gathered at the Museum of Modern Art was an ency–
clopedia of European art that no European country could have created at
the time, integrating the German Expressionists, Russian futurists, and
French Surrealists. No European country could have been able
to
assem–
ble such a collection, simply because they were at war, ancl nobody knew
what was going on in other countries. Leo told me that for him the
Museum of Modern Art was already functioning as an integrated Europe
(and we are all aware of the extraordinary amount of emphasis put on
education in American museums). The theater designer Lee Simonson
argued that a museum should "generate culture rather than simply pre–
serve it." The idea of museums generating culture, questioning, challeng–
ing, and educating the public, is very strong and very American.
The federal government's involvement in the art world through the
WPA program represents another extremely important part of the story.
Roosevelt enacted the WPA program from
1933
to
1943
on the advice
of his friend, George Biddle. It was modeled on the Mexican revolution,
and commissioned artists to produce works of art for public spaces, such
as frescos and sculptures. This was the only time in American history
that the federal government became directly involved in the creation of
works of art. This period saw the development of Realist art, with
painters such as Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood; but above all,
the creation of cultural centers and art communities across the country.
It inspired Americans to believe that art is an essential part of their soci–
ety. And, as Dore Ashton puts it, it built a specific community which did
not exist before in the United States, connecting the artists to the public.
So there definitely are indigenous reasons for the establishment of
New York as a world center after World War
II.
But there are also exter–
nal reasons, which have to do with the European wars that forced so
many European artists to come to this country, for example, Josef
Albers and Hans Hofmann. From France they came in waves-Matisse,
Leger, Helion, Matta, Breton, Masson. As Edith mentioned in her intro–
duction, the French title of my book derives from a remark Matisse
made when he arrived here in
1933,
invitecl by Albert Barnes
to
paint a
