To the Editors:
Your special issue, “The Arts in America 1945-1985” (Summer, 1985), is a valuable contribution to our understanding and appreciation of the past forty years. I particularly enjoyed the articles on art and music and agree with the points that were made.
The only statement that slightly raised my eyebrow was Hilton Kramer’s comment regarding the failure of the American art world to rebut the political attack on postwar Abstract Expressionism as contained, for example, in Serge Guilbaut’s How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. “Their silence,” Mr. Kramer wrote, “can only be accounted for, I think, by their fear of being seen to take an anti-Left position on what is as much a political as a cultural controversy.” While the silence is regrettable, I think an equally valid case can be made for a much simpler explanation: that the effort to place a cold-war ideological perspective on American postwar painting is so ridiculous and detached from reality that few if any painters or writers can be bothered to refute it. Putting it another way, if someone wrote a book today suggesting that the earth is flat, could any of our leading scientists be sufficiently exercised to reply?
Donald M. Blinken
New York City
Hilton Kramer replies:
We are pleased that Mr. Blinken has found so much to admire in our special issue on “The Arts in America 1945-1985.”
His “simpler explanation” regarding the “failure of the American art world
