The title of this essay paraphrases the famous expression “Socialism with a human face,” which refers back to 1968, to the events in Czechoslovakia known as the Prague Spring, but also to the Soviet 1980s, the time of the late Soviet Union prior to perestroika, when the idea of changing the very nature of so-called “really existing socialism” from the inside according to human/democratic values was still popular among dissidents. Apparently, it was not a renewed and more refined socialism,…

I have no desire to disparage American art, which is a child, and therefore merits being loved and protected. —Andre Villebeuf in Gringorie, Paris Those who have been to the United States bring back nothing from visiting American museums but memories of Italian and French works found there. —Lucie Mazauric in Vendredi, Paris Critic Clement Greenberg tells the story of American avant-garde art in the years since World War II—a time when New York school painting and…