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Although cultural exchanges were named within the Council of Europe
in the mid- 1950s as being second only in importance to the
military as a tool for ensuring a stable and integrated Western
Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, European-led
initiatives have generally been overlooked in the historiography of
art of the immediate post-war period. Popularly remembered as the
era of the United States' cultural 'triumph', American Abstract
Expressionism in particular is commonly identified as the cultural
'weapon' by which that nation conquered Western European culture.
Using the Venice Biennale as a case study, this book challenges the
idea that there was an American cultural conquest in the 1950s
through the fine arts, arguing instead that Western Europe retained
a strong sense of world cultural leadership in the immediate
post-war years. An institutional history that combines political
and diplomatic with art history, and is informed by extensive
archival research, it argues that Italian political and cultural
figures actively promoted the 'Idea of Europe' - the Council of
Europe's cultural initiative of 1955 designed to promote the idea
of a homogeneous post-war European culture - at the Biennale in the
form of gesture painting as an international style, as the emblem
of a culturally united Western Europe, and as the repository of
universal humanist values for the international community.
Scholarly but accessible, this book will be of interest not only to
researchers and to students of international cultural relations
during the Cold War, but to general, interested readers, too. -- .
In 1950, nearly 300 of Europe's leading artists, philosophers and
writers formed an international society intended to end the Cold
War. The European Society of Culture was composed of many of
Western Europe's best-known intellectuals, including Theodor
Adorno, Julien Benda, Albert Camus, Benedetto Croce, Andre Gide, J.
B. Haldane, Karl Jaspers, Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, Henri Matisse,
Francois Mauriac, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giuseppe
Ungaretti and Albert Schweitzer, among many others; over the next
twenty years it would also include many luminaries from the East,
such as Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, Ilya Ehrenburg and Georg
Lukacs. Pioneering the earliest political discussions between
intellectuals in Eastern and Western Europe that would serve as a
model for the activities of the better-known CCF in its efforts to
end communism, the ESC went on to create an informal but powerful,
1,600 member-strong cultural and political network across the world
in pursuit of dialogue between the Marxist East and the liberal
West, and in pursuit of peace and shared cultural values. Here, in
this first, comprehensive history of the SEC's early years, Nancy
Jachec demonstrates the influence its members had not only on
preventing the isolation of Europe's eastern states, but on
enabling the flow of people, publications and ideas from the West
into the East, thus playing a vital role in introducing the ideals
of human rights and cultural rights in the East in the run-up to
the signing of the Helsinki Accords of 1975. She also shows the
profound impact that the SEC had on the development of
post-colonial theory through the exchanges it organised between
European and African intellectuals, directly shaping the
expectations statesmen like Leopold Sedar Senghor, revolutionaries
like Frantz Fanon, and institutions such as Unesco would have of
culture in newly emerging countries.
In 1950, nearly 300 of Europe's leading artists, philosophers and
writers formed an international society intended to end the Cold
War. The European Society of Culture was composed of many of
Western Europe's best-known intellectuals, including Theodor
Adorno, Julien Benda, Albert Camus, Benedetto Croce, Andre Gide, J.
B. Haldane, Karl Jaspers, Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, Henri Matisse,
Francois Mauriac, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giuseppe
Ungaretti and Albert Schweitzer, among many others; over the next
twenty years it would also include many luminaries from the East,
such as Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, Ilya Ehrenburg and Georg
Lukacs. Pioneering the earliest political discussions between
intellectuals in Eastern and Western Europe that would serve as a
model for the activities of the better-known CCF in its efforts to
end communism, the ESC went on to create an informal but powerful,
1,600 member-strong cultural and political network across the world
in pursuit of dialogue between the Marxist East and the liberal
West, and in pursuit of peace and shared cultural values. Here, in
this first, comprehensive history of the SEC's early years, Nancy
Jachec demonstrates the influence its members had not only on
preventing the isolation of Europe's eastern states, but on
enabling the flow of people, publications and ideas from the West
into the East, thus playing a vital role in introducing the ideals
of human rights and cultural rights in the East in the run-up to
the signing of the Helsinki Accords of 1975. She also shows the
profound impact that the SEC had on the development of
post-colonial theory through the exchanges it organised between
European and African intellectuals, directly shaping the
expectations statesmen like Leopold Sedar Senghor, revolutionaries
like Frantz Fanon, and institutions such as Unesco would have of
culture in newly emerging countries.
Tracing the relationship between Abstract Expressionist artists and contemporary intellectuals, particularly the French existentialists, Nancy Jachec here offers a new interpretation of the success of America's first internationally recognized avant-garde art form. She argues that Abstract Expressionism was promoted by the United States government because of its radical character, which was considered to appeal to a Western European populace perceived by the State Department as inclined toward Socialism.
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