Look, Beck is a complete and utter shithead, and I'm sure he stole his little account from here, but he's not entirely wrong about the Rockefeller Piccirilli reliefs. The art historian David Castriota wrote about them back in 1986, and while Google Books is rather stingy with the excerpt from his article, there's no doubt about his point:
In the mid-1930s, the Italian tenants wanted some sculpture on the low buildings flanking Atlas that would express their current political ideology, and they were given a pair of reliefs by Attilio Piccirilli. One showed young men chasing a chariot and the other showed a man working...
[Google Books black hole]
...accompanied by the fascist motto “Lavoro e Arte, Arte e Lavoro.†Eager to attract tenants, the Center’s management allowed this propaganda on its entrances, even though a celebration of fascism had little to do with Rockefeller’s ideal of laissez-faire capitalism in a democracy.
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On Glenn Beck's Homemade Esthetics
Look, Beck is a complete and utter shithead, and I'm sure he stole his little account from here, but he's not entirely wrong about the Rockefeller Piccirilli reliefs. The art historian David Castriota wrote about them back in 1986, and while Google Books is rather stingy with the excerpt from his article, there's no doubt about his point: