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Review: Think Tank Aesthetics & Technocrats of the Imagination

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At the end of her book Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War, and the Neoliberal Present, Pamela M. Lee summarizes the ethos propelling the pernicious nexus of art and politics suggested by her title: “How to instrumentalize freedom—weaponize it?” Lee’s is one of two recent studies that aim to historicize the ways that the language of art has served to legitimize the logic of neoliberalism. The affinities are well known, and hinge on this duplicitous use of “freedom.” Artists are the ideal neoliberal worker: innovative, flexible, inclined to valorize and personalize risk. Corporations are quick to frame their profit motives using the terminology of experimentation and social praxis that once enlivened avant-garde manifestos. American politicians in both parties continually invoke freedom of expression and personal choice to justify dismantling social services such as public schools and health care, subjecting them to the operations of the market. These convergences

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