BEXP 17A07 - American Art as soft Power

Since the Cold War era of public diplomacy, art has been a powerful tool of American soft power. After World War II,

New York dethroned Paris as the capital of modern art. In all artistic fields, a new generation of American artists

emerged as representatives of a "free" America. However, there is another side to American art. During the Cold War,

American intelligence services influenced European artistic and intellectual circles as they worked as weapons of

American propaganda. The intersection of US government branches and clandestine operations with international

private foundations, advertising agencies, press, universities and corporations revealed complex export operations,

carrying profound implications for art and shaping the character of American identity.

This seminar examines American art in particular through his export of its ideals to counter communism abroad.

Classes will consist of lectures on key issues in American art, cultural diplomacy and geopolitics, as well as sessions in

which students will analyze sets of documents (including photographs, videos, music and articles) as to gain a critical

overview of American art and its soft power.

Recommended readings:

• Greg Barnhisel, Cold War Modernists. Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy, Columbia University Press, 2015
• Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe. Shepard Stone between Philanthropy, Academy, and

Diplomacy, Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.

• Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe, New

York: Free Press, Collier Macmillan, 1989.

• Serge Guibaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, The University of Chicago Press, 1983
• Frances K. Pohl, Framing America: A Social History of American Art: c. 1865-Present (2), Thames & Hudson; 4th edition, 2017.
• Alan Nadel, Containment Culture. American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age, Duke Press University, 1995.
• Alfred A. Reisch, Hot Books in the Cold War: The C.I.A. Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain, ‎

Central European University Press, 2014

• Laura Belmonte, Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
• Jane Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies; Princeton Architectural Press, 1998
• Elizabeth Gill Lui, Building diplomacy : the architecture of American embassies, Cornell University Press ; Los Angeles, 2004.
• Ian Wellens, Music on the Frontline: Nicolas Nabokov's Struggle against Communism and Middlebrow Culture. Aldershot:

Ashgate, 2002

• Melvin P. Leffler and Odd Arnie Westad, eds., The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volumes I, II, and III, Cambridge University

Press, 2010