Modernism & the Communist Party (was Re: Jazz/CPUSA)

[Max Sawicky]

Once upon a time I was interested in this.
I think Y is likening the celebrity artists
who were supportive of the CP and/or the
pop front with the party's own cadres.  The
CP did not pick and choose supporters based
on the congeniality of their ideas, nor should
it have done so.

If one compared the writing of these two groups
one would discern a marked difference, IMO.  Whether
one side or the other was more right or valuable is
a different matter.

mbs

The CP critics, oftentimes, suffered from the very failings that you 
mention.  In contrast, _artists_ in the CP -- e.g., Tillie Olsen, 
Bertolt Brecht, Tina Modotti, Pablo Picasso, Sergei Eisenstein, etc. 
-- & more broadly artists within or close to the Popular Front 
culture -- e.g., Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Orson Welles, Luis 
Bunuel, etc. -- not only were not hostile to modernism; in many cases 
-- _especially Brecht, Picasso, Welles, & Eisenstein_ -- they were 
the best embodiments of modernism, whose styles _& theories_ have 
continued to influence artists of later generations (including 
artists who are un- or even anti-Marxists).

Even the quintessence of literary modernist _excess_ Goerges Bataille 
was briefly part of the Popular Front!

Yoshie