Volume 4, Number 10 · June 17, 1965
Art and Revolution
By Wylie Sypher
The Idea of Art as Propaganda in France, 1750-1799
by James A. Leith
University of Toronto, 184 pp., $4.95
The Invention of Liberty, 1700-1789
by Jean Starobinski, translated by Bernard C. Swift
Skira, 222, 63 color and 7 black-and-white plates pp., $20.00
In the evil Stalinist days when the arts fell under 'the social command' the Congress of Soviet Writers announced that 'a-political literature does not exist,' and the On Guardist Group of the Left Front summoned authors to be allies of the Revolution. The journal October proclaimed in 1936 that 'the interests of the Party and the People are the immutable supreme law governing the work and conduct of every truly Soviet writer.' But Trotsky had already pointed out the fallacy in this policy when he wrote that there is really no revolutionary art, since art is prophetic, and thus the genuine revolutionary art is always pre-revolutionary. Besides, he added, there are domains where the Party leads imperatively, and there are domains where it merely orients itself. Art is one of the 'unprotected flanks' of the Revolution. So Trotsky, however grudgingly, paid his best tribute to the artist, who, being avant-garde, is a recruit to the permanent revolution in modern history, although he eludes policies.
Review, 2590 words
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