THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2023 51 first election victory in 1932. After 14 long years in the political wilderness, the Republicans were eager to wield their power ferociously, something that President Harry S Truman, eyeing his own reelection in two years, was acutely aware of. The day after the election, the American Artists Professional League (AAPL), a conservative art group, sent a letter to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes complaining that the exhibition was “strongly marked with the radicalism of the new trends of European art,” which “is not indigenous to our soil.” The AAPL also encouraged its members to write to their representatives in Congress to protest the exhibition. In February 1947, Look magazine published a two-page spread about the exhibition, titled “Your Money Bought These Paintings.” The article was accompanied by large color reproductions of some of the most provocative paintings in the exhibition, including Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s “Circus Girl Resting,” the picture that would come to symbolize the exhibition. The painting depicts a young woman with short dark hair seated on a chair next to a bowl containing bananas and grapes. What made it unconventional was the woman’s skimpy attire, as well as her size; this circus girl did not conform to the prevailing standards of feminine beauty. The Chicago Tribune said Kuniyoshi’s painting “portrays a beefy female in a state of undress, seated on a chair, leering at whoever stops to look at the painting.” Kuniyoshi, the artist at the center of this storm, was born in Okayama, Japan, in 1889. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1906 and worked odd jobs in Spokane and Seattle before moving to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in a public school. A teacher encouraged him to go to art school, so he took classes at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design. By 1910 he had moved to New York. Kuniyoshi painted “Circus Girl Resting” in 1925. The picture had languished in obscurity until Davidson purchased it for $700. Then it became, briefly, the most famous painting in America. “No wonder foreigners think Americans are crazy,” said Representative Karl Stefan (R-Neb.) when he saw “Circus Girl Resting” in Look. Stefan’s opinion was not unimportant; he was the new chairman of a House subcommittee that funded the State Department. The Republican chair of the House Appropriations Committee, John Taber, called the paintings in the exhibition “a travesty” in a letter to George C. Marshall, who replaced James Byrnes as Secretary of State in January 1947. “They were evidently gotten up by people whose object was apparently to (1) make the United States appear ridiculous in the eyes of foreign countries, and to (2) establish ill-will towards the United States.” The loyalty of the artists was also called into question. It turned out that the names of 18 of the 47 artists in the exhibition appeared in the records of the House Un-American Activities Committee; three were reported to have been members of the Communist Party. Shortly after the Look article came out, President Truman unveiled a painting recently purchased for the White House: “The Peacemakers” by George Peter Alexander Healy. A picture very much of the academic, realistic variety, it depicts President Abraham Lincoln, Generals William Sherman and Ulysses Grant, and Admiral David D. Porter on the Union steamer River Queen. This was Truman’s kind of art. In his widely syndicated newspaper column, the Washington MerryGo-Round, Drew Pearson explained what happened next. “While in his office, newsmen were shown some of the art the chief executive despises most. He produced a spread of modern paintings from a magazine, which apparently he had been saving for just such an occasion,” wrote Pearson. “‘This is what I mean by ham-and-eggs art,’ [Truman] told the reporters, pointing to a painting of a fat semi-nude circus performer. ‘I’ve been to a million circuses, and I’ve never seen a performer who looked like her.’” Truman’s comments were blithely dismissive of the entire “Advancing American Art” exhibition. Clearly, this was not a fight the president was willing to pick with the new Republican Congress. A Success Abroad, but at Home … After another well-received preview in Paris, the European edition of the exhibition officially opened in Prague on March 6, 1947. It was to be the first stop on what was expected to be a fiveyear tour. The three-week show was a resounding success, with more than 8,000 people attending. The exhibition then moved on to two more cities in Czechoslovakia—Brno and Bratislava— where it also proved popular. “Advancing American Art” was equally well received in the Western Hemisphere. In Port-au-Prince, it was well attended, and one Cuban art critic said the show proved the United States Yasuo Kuniyoshi, “Circus Girl Resting,” ca. 1925, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University. This oil painting came to symbolize the “Advancing American Art” exhibition, organized by LeRoy Davidson. © 2023 ESTATE OF YASUO KUNIYOSHI / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NY
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