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The field of twentieth-century American art history has been undergoing révision for the past quarter century. General survey historiés written in the 1960s at the height of formalist abstrac­ tion slighted the predominantly realist art of the Dépréssion era: authors tended to denigrate it by quoting dismissive re­ marks such as Arshile Gorky’s “poor art for poor people,” or, if they treated the socially concerned art somewhat sympathetically, they either ignored or glossed over the political context.1 In recent years, a spate of publications by “new left” academies in the United States hâve coincided in general with the shifts in art history toward contextual rather than stylistic studies. Tn Britain, a génération of Marxist art historians led by T.J. Clark also took a strong interest in American art and criticism. This group has been associated with the Oxford Art Journal, and Andrew Hemingway’s Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926—19561s indicative of the rigorous scholarship that characterizes that journal. Although, collectively, recent surveys and monographs provide a substantial coverage of left-wing American art from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, Hemingway not only thoroughly summarizes the current research, but adds significant, previously unpublished material to provide a dense, richly textured account.2 The product of over a decade of research and writing, the treatment of the subject is exhaustive, and the book will remain an authoritative source on American left-wing art for the foreseeable future. In his careful summaries of political, institutional, and intellectual contexts, Hemingway provides a valuable reference source. The book is also beautifully produced and includes a significant number of previously unpublished or lesser-known images, increasing its value as a resource. The subject Hemingway tackles is an especially daunting one. The thirty years from 1926-56 were marked by continuai upheaval, and artists whose carecrs fall into that span were likely to change their political allegianccs with some frequency as the Dépréssion gave way to World War II and, finally, the Cold War. Add to this the fact that the Left was often more divided against itself than it was united in opposition to capitalism and fascism, and you hâve a story that is written on constantly shifting sands. Hemingway teases out the buried threads that hâve made the relationships between left-wing art, Marxist theory, and radical politics so difficult to trace, but in laying out ail of the évidence for the reader, his thoroughness sometimes defeats clarity. Just as Communist Party members expended much valuable energy in arguing over the correct “Party line,” Hemingway is so intent on correcting other scholars’ mistakes, omissions, and misinterpretations that he neglects to clarify the larger picture for the reader. One might argue that this book is more about contemporary scholarly disputes than it is about the period under discussion. Bccause the book is so densely written and its main threads so difficult to follow, I will not attempt to summarize its argu­ ment; rather, this review will be confined to a few general observations and réservations. The text is divided into three parts: “Revolutionary Art: The CPUSA and the Arts in the Third Period”; “The Popular Front and the Transition to ‘People’s Art’”; and “From the Grand Alliance to Oblivion.” Part one is devoted to the early 1930s, and is particularly valuable for its account of the development of the magazine The New Masses and the exhibitions of the John Reed Clubs. Hemingway dives right into the discussion, with little background on the formation of American Communism or on the changing policies in the Stalinist USSR. As a resuit, even the chaptcr heading, “The CPUSA ... in the Third Period,” is confusing, as the reader is not reminded that 1929 saw the abolition of individual farming and the oblitération of the kulaks as a class in the USSR. The term refers to Russian history, not American history. The définition of key terms is frequently insufficient throughout this text. Hemingway often uses Marxism and Com­ munism in the same sentence, and although the enormous différence between the two is unquestionably obvious to the writer, the distinction begins to collapse in the reader’s mind. For instance, Hemingway confesses early on that “the implica­ tions of Marxism for both artistic practice and aesthetics are far from straightforward and the CPUSA could offer little substantive guidance regarding either” (p. 8). Further, Hemingway does not provide the basic historical information about the formation of the U.S. Communist Party nor, more crucially, does he examine its ramifications for Communist-influenced art in the U.S. Although he states that the Cultural Révolution in the USSR had “considérable repercussions in the American Communist Movement” (p. 29), Hemingway only provides the briefest of descriptions, involving “a rcturn to the spirit of the civil war years ... and a use of military-style slogans reminiscent of that time.” The ramifications of this, beyond sloganeering, are unclear. Eschewing this broader context, Hemingway instead provides a minutely detailed account of the often shifting positions of left-leaning and Communist artists. Unfortunately, since, as Hemingway admits, it is often difficult to identify who was a Communist, he struggles to identify the “revolutionary” aspects of American art during this “Third” period and those to follow. Compounding the problem arc the continuing changes in the American political landscape, which Hemingway charts in

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Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926–1956. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2002, 357 pp., 10 black-and-white, 10 colour illus., $50 U.S.