[justshutupandtakeit]

You can't blame the collapse of art on the commies. Their officially acceptable art was very traditional. Stale, lifeless but traditional. The great artists who lived under Soviet rule: Malevich, Kandinsky, and the Suprematists either wound up in the gulag, officially disappoved or fled. Proletarian Realism may be crappy but much better than Rothko, Pollack, or the other charletans we are cursed with.
The Nazis also hated modern art.

All modern art is not ridiculous even when abstract or non-objective.

[Sam Cree]

I do believe the Nazis had quite an appreciation for Art Deco, which was pretty definitely modern(e).

[u-89]

You can't blame the collapse of art on the commies

Yes I can. There is a very big difference with what the Soviets tolerated at home for domestic consumption and what their agents and useful idiots promoted in the west. The politicization of the art world was part of the culture war and is very well documented.

Abstract painting is not in and of itself political and the artists I know, though they are liberals do not attempt to politicize their art but professors do interpret everything politically and it is amazing what they can read into a simple canvas. However abstract work is not the real problem, it is the representational work and installation pieces that convey the messages. All one has to do is go to any downtown gallery or the Whitney to see the pro- homosexual, feminist, environmentalist, anti-christian, anti-republican, etc. message loud and clear. Very frequently bad drawing and bad painting are used to illustrate the harshness of modern life as we suffer under traditional oppression. Furthermore artistic standards of the academy have been compromised in the name of egalitarianism like standards in other disciplines have so not all bad drawing is intentional, it just is natural to successful but untalented "artists".