Red Plot?

"It makes little difference where one studies the record, whether of surrealism, dadaism, abstractionism, cubism, expressionism or futurism. The evidence of evil design is everywhere...The question is...who has brought down this curse upon us; who has let into our homeland this horde of germ-carrying art vermin?"

Michigan's Representative George Dondero thought he knew the answer to his own question, supplied it from the floor of the House last week. Modern art, he thinks, is not a matter of evolution (as Philosopher Ortega y Gasset contends--TIME, Aug. 22), but of revolution; in short, a Red plot "to destroy the enemy, and we are the enemy. So-called modern...art in our own beloved country contains all the isms of depravity, decadence and destruction."

The fact that Moscow frowns on modern art too (Pravda calls it "decayed, formalistic, bourgeois") gave Dondero no pause. He concluded his blast with the suggestion that U.S. artists be screened just as lawyers (and Russian artists) are: "Why should our highest art organizations have any different standard of membership than our bar associations? [For the bar] a candidate must pass the strict requirements of a character committee..."

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