The alleged separation of art and politics proclaimed throughout the ‘free world’ with the resurgence of abstraction after World War II was part of a general tendency… By giving their painting an individualist emphasis and eliminating recognizable subject matter, the Abstract Expressionists succeeded in creating an important new art movement. They also contributed, whether they knew it or not, to a purely political phenomenon – the supposed divorce between art and politics which so perfectly served America’s needs in the cold war.