Theme and Variations

Jackson Pollock and Louis Armstrong became famous during the Cold War as symbols of freedom.  Louis Armstrong was instead one of the founding jazz musicians, skilled at improvisation and experimental in style.  Both artists were promoted by the United States government abroad as representative of the free expression and racial equality that Soviets, with their totalitarian art world, would not permit.

Louis Armstrong's music showed freedom of expression in its new jazz style, but it meant more to countries abroad.  It was meant to show the equal status of African Americans in social life, and Armstrong's campaign in Africa and Europe was successful.  When the National Guard was called in to prevent desegregation at Little Rock High School, however, he stopped his tour until Eisenhower called in troops to allow the African American students to enter.  He took a firm stance on desegregation and did not want the United States to export a false image without his consent.  Louis Armstrong was instead one of the founding jazz musicians, skilled at improvisation and experimental in style.  His 1967 "What a Wonderful World" promotes optimism toward the future, speaking of hope for future generations in his raspy, unconventional singing voice.

Jackson Pollock experimented in splatter paint and abstraction, circling his canvas while listening to jazz to create the radial lines above.  Lavender Mist shows Pollock's lack of positive and negative space.  The painting does not show a figure but a direct expression of the artist's emotion.  The painting is a blur of action that denies any sense of political meaning even as its government exports it as such.  It is a space of both violence and grace, a pure view into the artist's soul.  As these new trends of abstraction and anti-convention arose in media, the United States took advantage to tout them as trademarks of the free world.