IN RUSSIA, ART LOOKS AT YOU! There's some sort of thread (albeit a short, frayed one) at The Kerner, based on an apercu by the madman Derbyshire, claiming that Communist states were "uncreative."

Artists have of course existed at all times and in all places. Herbert von Karajan conducted for the Nazis, and Maurice Chevalier entertained the Vichy governors. At The Kennel, though, they are obsessed with painting the most horrific picture imaginable of the late Red regime, like medieval Catholics ornamenting Hell with new torments -- not only was it a failed economic system, they wrote lousy poetry!

It's as if they genuinely worried that Communism might make a comeback -- odd, when one observes how fulsomely these same guys extoll the health of capitalism.

One might as well ask how anyone could be creative in America. Our unnatural obsession with money, our worship of greedy scumbags, and the negative aesthetic value of the disgusting, demeaning, violent crap with which we gorge our eyes and ears would indicate to any disinterested observer a thoroughly anaesthetic society -- one that not only wouldn't recognize art if it saw it, but would actually be downright hostile to it, sensing on some animal level the threat art would pose to our perfect ugliness and invincible ignorance of anything more exalted than the main chance and the art of the deal.

Still we make art, sometimes. And if we can do it, so could the Reds.