Editor's Message
A Self-Evident Truth
“For milk to become yogurt, it needs culture.”
—Willem de Kooning
In Germany, under Hitler’s regime, artistic expression was banished as a form of Bolshevism. In Russia, under Stalin, it was denounced as “bourgeois cosmopolitanism”. In mid-50s America, Abstract Expressionists met with aggressive censorship by members of the House Un-American Activities Committee. More recently, in October of 1999, Rudy Giuliani threatened to cut off city funding for the Brooklyn Museum because he deemed a painting in one of its shows to be “offensive.” And last month, Governor George Pataki issued highly publicized threats against the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center for their display of “anti-American art.”
History has not been kind to those who attack the creative spirit. Nor should it be. Freedom of expression is our birthright as Americans. And so we dedicate this issue to all our comrades in this genuinely patriotic “war for freedom.” All of us here at the Rail wish you a great summer!
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
De Kooning: Five Decades
By Tom McGlynnJUNE 2019 | ArtSeen
It’s been 22 years since Willem de Kooning’s death at 93. His long and prodigiously productive career was lately most fully examined in a retrospective held between 2011–12 at MoMA.
Nele Wynants’s When Fact Is Fiction: Documentary Art in the Post-Truth Era
By Tiernan MorganOCT 2020 | Art Books
The anthology’s thirteen contributors, among them artists, photographers, broadcasters, and filmmakers, analyze projects that exemplify the discursive and rhetorical value of blurring the distinction between fiction and reality. But, despite its title, the contemporary context of online culture, populism, and “fake news” are almost entirely absent from its pages.
Paul Mendez’s Rainbow Milk
By Tony LeuzziMARCH 2021 | Books
Distinguished by its gritty realism, Rainbow Milk is among the more convincing debuts I have read in years.
“Instead of call-out culture, we’re calling them in”
By Diep TranOCT 2020 | Theater
The Broadway Advocacy Coalition began in 2016 but, in light of continuous police brutality and calls for racial equity, has gained steam even as theaters are closed. Here, Diep Tran profiles the vital organization, speaking with two of its leaders about birthing a movement and shepherding it into transformative times.
