This dissertation examines the “Brecht-effect” in postwar American art: the reception of the work of German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht in the U.S. visual arts from the mid-1960s until the late 1970s.

Depoliticized during the McCarthy era and rediscovered during the '60s, Brechtian aesthetics were submitted to a wide range of appropriations and applications in postwar American art. Notions such as Epic Theater and “estrangement,” initially integral parts of an artistic imagination that sought political and cultural revolution, found new actuality in the visual arts and art criticism of the 1960s and '70s, from the politically committed works of Dan Graham and Martha Rosler to the more formalist writings of Michael Fried and Roland Barthes. The history of the reception of Brecht's work, the choices between and combinations of Brechtian performative didacticism and perceptive pleasure, formal dissociation and political materialism, reflects a trajectory of evolving sensibilities and goals in American artistic production and criticism.

Rather than providing a comprehensive survey of the reception of Brecht's work in the American art world, this dissertation discusses the influence of Brechtian aesthetics on the work of Martha Rosler, Hans Haacke, and Yvonne Rainer. In Rosler's case, a consideration of Brecht's work produces a rearticulation of documentary practice and visual resistance in collage, photomontage, and photography. Haacke's sculpture develops into an investigation of the politics of science and a commitment to ‘truth-telling’ in art. Rainer's use of film transcends conventional definitions of private and public experience to provide a critical dialogue on political violence. Through an assessment of their work, this project addresses the quality of the changing relation between art and politics, providing a case study in the history of what could be considered the perennial problem of political engagement in art. The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to establish a basis for the much-needed articulation of a model of political art now.