May 1973

Beginning of article

Three decades ago in Art forum, Max Kozloff asked just what, beyond formal achievement, made Abstract Expressionism (and Pop art and Color Field painting on its heels) so triumphant after all. Managing editor looks back on the essay that opened the floodgates on political readings of postwar art.

"THE MOST CONCERTED ACCOMPLISHMENTS of American art occurred during precisely the same period as the burgeoning claims of American world hegemony." Coincidence? Max Kozloff thought not. And with "American Painting During the Cold War," he set out to prove it--placing the era's dominant strains of political and material culture alongside its art and discovering in their juxtaposition a Rind of symbiosis wherein the paintings professed, however unconsciously, a "profound glorifying of American civilization" and in turn reaped certain advantages.

Kozloff's tract, published in these pages …