However, for a broad sector of the country’s intellectual elite, Abstract Expressionism represented the triumph of a free culture over totalitarianism because it was based on the absolute freedom of the artist. This is why the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deftly turned these artists into a propagandist weapon that American culture could wield against the Soviets, even subsidizing their work behind their backs. In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art, presided by Nelson Rockefeller, was another resource at the service of the cause, and promoted young American art by purchasing a large number of works and organizing exhibitions that traveled all over the world, such as Twelve Modern American Painters and Sculptors (1953) and The New American Painting (1958), which were shown in most large European cities between 1958 and 1959, as a means to spread the American way of life all around the world.
According to some historians, the CIA also secretly funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization promoted by the United States with offices in up to 35 countries. It organized cultural events such as conferences, exhibitions, concerts, and even published over twenty prestigious magazines, including Encounter in UK, Preuve in France, Tempo Presente in Italy, Cuadernos and Mundo Nuevo in Latin America, Quadrant in Australia and Jiyu in Japan.
Abstract Art was a means of promoting political expression above the artwork itself.
You didn’t need to hunt through the bohemian art houses and liberal arts colleges for a Van Gogh or Picasso with your attitude towards the Eastern Block. You could just throw a ton of money at an outspoken critic with a middling talent.
Ayn Rand topping the sales charts with her brainrot literature and David Broder churning out forty years of hack Op-Eds for the WaPo filled similar niches in their own fields.
Now we have NFT art and Superhero movie slop and manufactured Swifty/KPop idols to fill the role. But abstract art was the overhyped “It’s good because we told you so” content of its own generation
They had their hands in a whole lot of pies. The CIA was the OG Wingnut Welfare Program.
In the modern day, their wings have been clipped. You’re far more likely to get your beak wet off the back of a Miriam Adelson or Peter Thiel pet project. But back in the 60s/70s? Whether you were churning out some Hollywood pro-paramilitary Chuck Norris slop or running China White through a Texas air-force base or funding the trafficking of child prostitutes through a ponzi scheme in Omaha, Nebraska, the CIA was a great place to raise some seed money.
i think i remember a few "shushushush honey your friends are not a cia psyop"s growing up, but in different terms
some of my friends in school, well, i found out a friend of a friend’s dad was at the ATF writing the stupidest opinions known to man and another friend’s dad was working at the NSA. The dude we knew at the CIA, well it was the cooking school not the spy agency. I kind of feel justified in a lil bit of paranoia.
Honestly, I support the government funding unpopular art. It is a good message to say “yeah, we do have the freedom to create.” As a vaguely abstract mediocre artist, if the CIA wants to fly me to Czechoslovakia to put on an exhibit, I need the greenbacks.
I think so much of the discussion around modern art gets lost in how we often encounter the image. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing has a really good bit (in the first episode?) about how often we encounter the Mona Lisa completely decontexualized, how seeing a small picture in a book doesn’t match the experience of seeing an art work in the context of the museum. (Although tbh, if you do get to see the Mona Lisa you’ll be looking at it from across the room)
I like modern art. If I ever have money my lifelong dream has been to see The Bride Stripped Bare. I was delighted to get to see a replica of Fountain and Winerack. The full breadth of Rothko seems spiritual to me. A local free place even as a few Rauschenberg’s I could spend hours looking at. So much of the conversation around modern art seems to just assume that everyone who says they like it is faking.
The Mona Lisa was so underwhelming. Was at the louvre with my friend and she HAD to see the Mona Lisa. The museum was huge and we had so much trouble finding it for some reason. Walking directly up to ancient statues and murals the size of entire walls filled with so much color and detail. We finally found the Mona Lisa and it was like the size of a sheet of printer paper, and there was ropes 20 feet back, like a six flags ride with people just funneling through. What a disappointment.
The Mona Lisa was so underwhelming. Was at the louvre with my friend and she HAD to see the Mona Lisa. The museum was huge and we had so much trouble finding it for some reason. Walking directly up to ancient statues and murals the size of entire walls filled with so much color and detail. We finally found the Mona Lisa and it was like the size of a sheet of printer paper, and there was ropes 20 feet back, like a six flags ride with people just funneling through. What a disappointment.
THE CIA AND ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Abstract Art was a means of promoting political expression above the artwork itself.
You didn’t need to hunt through the bohemian art houses and liberal arts colleges for a Van Gogh or Picasso with your attitude towards the Eastern Block. You could just throw a ton of money at an outspoken critic with a middling talent.
Ayn Rand topping the sales charts with her brainrot literature and David Broder churning out forty years of hack Op-Eds for the WaPo filled similar niches in their own fields.
Now we have NFT art and Superhero movie slop and manufactured Swifty/KPop idols to fill the role. But abstract art was the overhyped “It’s good because we told you so” content of its own generation
People keep telling me “not everything you dislike is a CIA psyop” but every other day I learn something else that sucks is a CIA psyop.
They had their hands in a whole lot of pies. The CIA was the OG Wingnut Welfare Program.
In the modern day, their wings have been clipped. You’re far more likely to get your beak wet off the back of a Miriam Adelson or Peter Thiel pet project. But back in the 60s/70s? Whether you were churning out some Hollywood pro-paramilitary Chuck Norris slop or running China White through a Texas air-force base or funding the trafficking of child prostitutes through a ponzi scheme in Omaha, Nebraska, the CIA was a great place to raise some seed money.
Sigh. Even psy-ops have been privatized.
i think i remember a few "shushushush honey your friends are not a cia psyop"s growing up, but in different terms
some of my friends in school, well, i found out a friend of a friend’s dad was at the ATF writing the stupidest opinions known to man and another friend’s dad was working at the NSA. The dude we knew at the CIA, well it was the cooking school not the spy agency. I kind of feel justified in a lil bit of paranoia.
Say what you will, but it’s not going to stop me from liking a whole lot of abstract art.
Honestly, I support the government funding unpopular art. It is a good message to say “yeah, we do have the freedom to create.” As a vaguely abstract mediocre artist, if the CIA wants to fly me to Czechoslovakia to put on an exhibit, I need the greenbacks.
I think so much of the discussion around modern art gets lost in how we often encounter the image. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing has a really good bit (in the first episode?) about how often we encounter the Mona Lisa completely decontexualized, how seeing a small picture in a book doesn’t match the experience of seeing an art work in the context of the museum. (Although tbh, if you do get to see the Mona Lisa you’ll be looking at it from across the room)
I like modern art. If I ever have money my lifelong dream has been to see The Bride Stripped Bare. I was delighted to get to see a replica of Fountain and Winerack. The full breadth of Rothko seems spiritual to me. A local free place even as a few Rauschenberg’s I could spend hours looking at. So much of the conversation around modern art seems to just assume that everyone who says they like it is faking.
I like this article better on the CIA/modern art science connection than the earlier commentor’s. Keep in mind on the other side of the world, Soviet Realism was pretty much mandatory and was also state sponsored.
The Mona Lisa was so underwhelming. Was at the louvre with my friend and she HAD to see the Mona Lisa. The museum was huge and we had so much trouble finding it for some reason. Walking directly up to ancient statues and murals the size of entire walls filled with so much color and detail. We finally found the Mona Lisa and it was like the size of a sheet of printer paper, and there was ropes 20 feet back, like a six flags ride with people just funneling through. What a disappointment.
The Mona Lisa was so underwhelming. Was at the louvre with my friend and she HAD to see the Mona Lisa. The museum was huge and we had so much trouble finding it for some reason. Walking directly up to ancient statues and murals the size of entire walls filled with so much color and detail. We finally found the Mona Lisa and it was like the size of a sheet of printer paper, and there was ropes 20 feet back, like a six flags ride with people just funneling through. What a disappointment.
Or bad art!
I like good art too ofc, but I’m mostly just interested in what people have to say.
I’m just as bad about junk food and soda, but at least the abstract art won’t give me diabetes.