The CIA and the Art World: The Cultural Front of the Cold War

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Dear readers, the editors of TS "Alone" are starting a new cycle of literary selections. In it, we will get acquainted with excerpts from various books that reveal the effect of political technologies, be it in history, religion, art, and so on. Today we will talk about the war in the field of art.

Our first book: The CIA and the Art World: The Cultural Front of the Cold War by Francis Stonor Saunders. And an excerpt from it is about how abstract expressionism in painting, while not carrying a high artistic value, nevertheless became one of the weapons of political struggle and moral conformism.

So, in the book by Francis Saunders, we find that for the American cultural intelligentsia, abstract expressionism "carried a specific anti-communist message, an ideology of freedom, free enterprise." - And further: “The lack of imagery and political indifference made it the complete opposite of socialist realism. This was the kind of art the Soviets hated. Moreover, abstract expressionism, its proponents argued, was a purely American intervention in the modernist canon. As recently as 1946, critics applauded the new art as “an independent, self-confident, true expression of national will, spirit and character. It seems that in aesthetic terms, art in the United States is no longer the result of European trends and not just an amalgamation of foreign "isms", gathered into assimilated with a greater or lesser share of reason."

However, with all this, the exhibitions of the "new art" did not enjoy success, and "the Soviet Union and most of Europe argued that America was a cultural desert, and the behavior of the American congressmen seemed to confirm this. Seeking to show the world that the country had an art commensurate with the greatness and freedom of America, senior strategists were unable to publicly support him due to internal opposition. So what did they do? They turned to the CIA. And a struggle began between those who recognized the merits of Abstract Expressionism and those who tried to denigrate it.

In the US Congress there were many opponents of the new aesthetics and abstract expressionism in particular. As Braden later recalled: “Congressman Dondero gave us a lot of problems. He hated contemporary art. He thought it was a parody, that it was sinful and ugly. He unleashed a real battle with such painting, which made it extremely difficult to negotiate with the US Congress about some of our intentions - to send exhibitions abroad, perform abroad with his symphonic music, publish magazines, and so on. This is one of the reasons why we had to do everything in secret. Because all this would have been curtailed if it had been put to a democratic vote. In order to encourage openness, we had to operate in secrecy. Here again comes the grand paradox of America's cultural Cold War strategy: in order to promote democracy-born art, the democratic process itself had to be bypassed.

Once again, the CIA turned to the private sector to achieve its goals. In America, most museums and art collections were (as they are now) privately owned and financed from private sources. The most prominent among modern and avant-garde museums was the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. Its president for most of the 1940-1950s.there was Nelson Rockefeller, whose mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was one of the founders of the museum (it opened in 1929, and Nelson called it "Mother's Museum"). Nelson was a passionate admirer of Abstract Expressionism, which he called "the art of free enterprise." Over time, his private collection grew to 2,500 pieces. Thousands more works adorned the lobbies and corridors of buildings owned by the Rockefeller Chase Manhattan Bank.

“As far as Abstract Expressionism goes, I'm tempted to say the CIA came up with it just to see what happens in New York and the Soho area the next day! - joked CIA officer Donald Jameson, before moving on to a serious explanation of the involvement of the CIA. - We realized that this art, which has nothing to do with socialist realism, can make socialist realism look even more stylized, more rigid and limited than it really is. Moscow in those days was extremely persistent in criticizing any kind of inconsistency with its extremely rigid patterns. Therefore, the conclusion suggested itself that everything so vehemently criticized by the USSR should be supported to one degree or another. Of course, in cases of this kind, support could only be provided through CIA organizations or operations, so that there were no questions about the need to launder Jackson Pollock's reputation, for example, or do something to attract these people to cooperate with the CIA - they had to be at the very end of the chain. I can't say that there was at least some kind of serious connection between us and Robert Motherwell, for example. This relationship could not and should not have been closer, because many of the artists had little respect for the government, in particular, and, of course, none of them - the CIA."

Jackson Pollock Paintings

Let's give a concrete example. “Originally titled Poetic Sources of Contemporary Painting, the exhibition that eventually opened in January 1960 at the Louvre Museum of Decorative Arts was given the more provocative title Antagonisms. The exhibition was dominated by the work of Mark Rothko, who at the time lived in France, Sam Francis, Yves Klein; this was the first display of his work in Paris, Franz Kline, Louise Nevelson), Jackson Pollock, Mark Toby and Joan Mitchell. Many of the paintings were brought to Paris from Vienna, where Congress exhibited them as part of a broader campaign organized by the CIA to disrupt the 1959 Communist Youth Festival. The exhibition cost the CIA $ 15,365, but for a wider version in Paris, they had to seek additional funding. An additional $ 10,000 was laundered through the Hoblitzell Foundation, and $ 10,000 from the French Association for the Arts was added to this amount. Although the press "generously paid attention" to the Antagonisms exhibition, Congress was forced to recognize the reviews as "generally very vicious." While some European critics were captivated by the "magnificent resonance" and "breathtaking, dizzying world" of Abstract Expressionism, many were confused and outraged.

Not only European artists felt like dwarfs next to the gigantism of Abstract Expressionism. Adam Gopnik later came to the conclusion that "dimensionless abstract watercolor [became] the only art movement represented in American museums, forcing two generations of realists to go underground and, like samizdat, distribute still lifes." John Canadey recalled that “the peak of the popularity of abstract expressionism came in 1959, when an unknown artist who wanted to appear in New York could not agree with an art gallery, unless he wrote in a style borrowed from one or another member of New -york school ". Critics who “believed that abstract expressionism was abusing its own success and that the monopoly on art had gone too far” could find themselves, in the words of Kanadei, “in an unpleasant situation” (he claimed that he himself was allegedly threatened with death for not recognizing the New York school) … Petty Guggenheim, who returned to the United States in 1959 after a 12-year absence, was "amazed: all of the visual arts have become a huge business project."

The bottom line is disappointing: “It's like in a fairy tale about the naked king,” said Jason Epstein. - You walk down the street like this and say: “This is a great art,” and people from the crowd agree with you. Who will stand in front of Clem Greenberg, and also in front of the Rockefellers, who bought these paintings to decorate their banks, and say: "This stuff is terrible!"? Perhaps Dwight MacDonald was right when he said, "Few Americans dare to argue with a hundred million dollars."