Considering the possibility of a truly proletarian art, the great English literary critic William Empson once wrote, “the reason an English audience can enjoy Russian propagandist films is that the propaganda is too remote to be annoying.” Perhaps this is why American artists and bohemians have so often taken to the political iconography of far-flung regimes, in ways both romantic and ironic. One nation’s tedious socialist realism is another’s radical exotica.
But do U.S. cultural exports have the same effect? One need only look at the success of our most banal branding overseas to answer in the affirmative. Yet no one would think to add Abstract Expressionist painting to a list that includes fast food and Walt Disney products. Nevertheless, the work of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning wound up as part of a secret CIA program during the height of the Cold War, aimed at promoting American ideals abroad.
The artists themselves were completely unaware that their work was being used as propaganda. On what agents called a “long leash,” they participated in several exhibitions secretly organized by the CIA, such as “The New American Painting” (see catalog cover at top), which visited major European cities in 1958–59 and included such modern primitive works as surrealist William Baziotes’ 1947 Dwarf (below) and 1951’s Tournament by Adolph Gottlieb above.
Of course what seems most bizarre about this turn of events is that avant-garde art in America has never been much appreciated by the average citizen, to put it mildly. American Main Streets harbor undercurrents of distrust or outright hatred for out-there, art-world experimentation, a trend that filters upward and periodically erupts in controversies over Congressional funding for the arts. A 1995 Independent article on the CIA’s role in promoting Abstract Expressionism describes these attitudes during the Cold War period:
In the 1950s and 1960s… the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art—President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.” As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
Why, then, did they receive such backing? One short answer:
This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy.
The one-way relationship between modernist painters and the CIA—only recently confirmed by former case officer Donald Jameson—supposedly enabled the agency to make the work of Soviet Socialist Realists appear, in Jameson’s words, “even more stylized and more rigid and confined than it was.” (See Evdokiya Usikova’s 1959 Lenin with Villagers below, for example). For a longer explanation, read the full article at The Independent. It’s the kind of story Don DeLillo would cook up.
William Empson goes on to say that “a Tory audience subjected to Tory propaganda of the same intensity” as Russian imports, “would be extremely bored.” If he is correct, it’s likely that the average true believer socialist in Europe was already bored silly by Soviet-approved art. What surprises in these revelations is that the avant-garde works that so radically altered the American art world and enraged the average congressman and taxpayer were co-opted and collected by suave U.S. intelligence officers like so many Shepard Fairey posters.
via Kottke
Related Content:
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Take a Virtual Tour of the 1913 Exhibition That Introduced Avant-Garde Art to America
MoMA Puts Pollock, Rothko & de Kooning on Your iPad
Rauschenberg Erases De Kooning
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him @jdmagness
So the CIA was more cultural savvy than most Americans of the ’50s.
Hey Bill, does propagating an ugly plant make the gardener ‘savvy’ to the domination of that plant in a garden…or is it another example of interference in the natural order of the garden? In Australia we have a pest called a cane toad that was introduced in 1935
by people who wanted to control the sugar cane beetle. It has no natural predator and has dramatically altered the ecology here. It is now recognised as a threat to the natural system. I think Abstract Impressionism was (is) like a cane toad. Far too common, ugly as all hell, and not welcome. Culturally savvy indeed!
Way to go, CIA!
Weren’t russians about to try the same with their vanguard just before realistic socialism hit? Some info on that would be great!
LOL! This article really made me laugh, not because I disbeleived it but because I find it entirely plausible. Abstract expressionism is faux-art and could only have been maintained with the CIA funding making it appear to be legitimate art. The commercial “art world” is a gigantic hoax of social engineering.
this is step 22.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
Shrewd move by the CIA.
It was a war of ideas. The freedom artists enjoy elsewhere to be original and daring did not pass unnoticed inside the Iron Curtain.
This article is a CIA whitewash itself. The artists weren’t on any long leash, and the CIA itself blew their cover back in the 1960’s. See agent Tom Braden’s article in the Saturday Evening Post, or the articles in Ramparts. Even the 1995 article by Saunders that Josh Jones links to admits that. Saunders book shows you that all these artists were part of the propaganda program that is still going on.
Summary: Using Avante Garde art on commies = LULZ
Summary: Using Avante Garde art on commies = LULZ
You don’t have to be an artist to recognize crap when you see it.
DISMANTLE THE C.I.A.
Oh, why bother? You are the one who thinks “the Government” blew up the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Your take is that most of whole world is a whitewash or cover-up of one kind or another.
Here are some of your quotes:
911 Truth
“I think pretty much everyone knows that 911 was an inside job. We know that cellphone calls from the planes were faked. We know that video of the planes going into the towers was faked. We know that the 19 hijackers were either made up or were under the protection of the US government. We know that there is no evidence they were on the planes, and that there is much evidence that many of them were not on the planes.”
Proof From NASA That Pi is 4
“NASA is hiding something here.…They can’t admit that π is wrong, because that would make everyone look very stupid.…about any number of other things concerning other cover-ups at NASA.”
Censored By Yahoo
“If the Gestapo is trying to silence me, I must be doing something right. A new wave of censorship is just beginning and the major webhosts are of course among the first targets. Given that the USGov wants to quash 911 questions (as the DoD has just admitted), Yahoo and Google and MSN would naturally be the places to start. The only way to avoid the secret police is to have no opinion.”
Was Physics Taken Over By The Intelligence Communities?
“If the CIA can control the media for decades, it can also control science. So why would the CIA want to control science? I don’t think that is hard to answer. The government doesn’t want private citizens or unsupervised university people discovering anything, because that would be dangerous.”
The Boston Marathon
“The good thing about these recent events is that they are so poorly faked that a lot of people are catching on. If they can keep us talking about three fake people who were fake-killed in Boston or the 27 people who were fake-killed in Sandy Hook, they can keep our eyes off the real tragedies.”
“Fake-killed”? “Pi is 4”? “video of the planes going into the towers was faked”?
And you wonder why only kooks take you seriously?
My previous post was a reply to Miles Mathis.
Where is the proof that the exhibition The New American Painting was funded or promoted by the CIA? Please name your source.
Far from being unknown, there was an extensive article regarding this in Artforum in 1974, written by Eva Cockcroft, entitled “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War.” Based on FOIA requests, the article should have caused a reassessment of the historical narrative, but by then the art market and the inertial weight of cultural investment worked to obviate that possibility.
Please check “How New York stole the idea of modern art” by Serge Guilbaut.
I always thought the Intelligence community and industrialists like Hearst and Rockefeller were unnerved by the power of art as a tool of political change. The powerful art coming out of Mexico, Rivera, Orozco etc was deemed dangerous. Therefore they decided to promote a form of art that by its very nature lacks any meaning or any power of influence over the viewer. The mural that Rockefeller commissioned Rivera to paint in the new Rockefeller Center contained a portrait of Lenin. Rivera absolutely refused to remove the portrait and Rockefeller refused to permit it. At that point the great American oligarchs decided to bring art to its knees.
Difficult to understand why CIA would bother to spend much money on this? Wouldn’t have made much or any impact.
Always thought abstract art was a con, but it beats that grim socialist realism ‘art.’
Wow, a website with an old school comment section under the articles. I love it. Culture is the expression of how people live. Change that culture, artificially, and you can change the relationship between the ruling class and the population. If only people could see how different the world is from 10–20 years ago. At a glance, you probably think it’s not much different. But the church is falling, moral relativism abounds. And as a result, people are unhappier than ever. People are more prone to criminal behavior, and the prosecutors are weak on crime. And God forbid you defend yourself or others- you’ll be the next great villain on the nightly news!
This didn’t happen organically. The CIA wants this, among many others.. It’s called social engineering, and it’s radically evolving… and fast!