The Cowboy Artists of America have outlasted their Soviet rivals. I used to make jokes about this comparison and speculated on finding Soviet art in Scottsdale galleries. The Cowboys and Communists had too much in common for me to expect anything else. Both glazed over discomforts, be they of herding cattle, harvesting wheat, or fighting Indians. Sentimental and unchallenging, both glorified the systems which fostered them.
Soviet painting is part of history now the Cold War is over.
The propaganda value is down, but the dollar value seems to be rising. For all my old jokes, the first time I saw a sunburned worker on the wall of a Scottsdale gallery I was taken by surprise. It is hard to say who won the art war. The Cowboys still show annually at the Phoenix Art Museum while the Soviets occupy some wall space in galleries whose specialty remains capitalist realism. Watching Is Believing From behind their armor of cleanliness, the two young men at my door have come to persuade me that theirs is the one true religion.