The New Masses: Art and Activism

  • Anna Igorevna Chernisheva The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Keywords: New Masses, left-wing art, print media, radical culture, intercultural communication

Abstract

The New Masses is one of the most important leftist American illustrated magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. It stands out from a number of other similar magazines due to the significant number of images published on its pages.

The brightest period of the magazine coincided with one of the most paradoxical periods in the relations between the USSR and the USA, which was characterized both by the “americanization” of Soviet culture and the influence of the USSR on the Communist Party USA.

The leftist artists, who created the illustrations for the New Masses, did not receive salary for their work, but were eager to publish their artworks on its pages. This magazine has become an appropriate platform for artists, which made it possible to express their opinions and distribute works aimed at destruction the sentiments of capitalist American society. Editorial board and authors of the New Masses were also the members of the John Reed Club (1929-1935), which collaborated with the USSR and took part in organizing the exhibitions of American artists in the USSR. At the years when diplomatic relations between USSR and USA wasn’t established yet there were close relations between John Reed Club artists and Soviet art institutions.

The New Masses magazine is the very important part of the American proletarian culture of the 1920s — 1930s and an extraordinary product. The graphic art published in it is rare and outstanding material that attracted the interest of researchers and curators recently. Despite the vast research of modern and contemporary American art in Russia, little is known about leftist American graphic art. Different references from the literature offer few details about the main properties of this art. This study continues to remedy lacunae in the art history of 20th century.

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Author Biography

Anna Igorevna Chernisheva, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Junior Researcher at The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)

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Published
2019-12-29
How to Cite
ChernishevaA. I. (2019). The New Masses: Art and Activism . Communications. Media. Design, 4(4), 89-102. Retrieved from https://cmd-journal.hse.ru/article/view/10266
Section
Scientific Articles