Posted on 01/19/2016 5:37:47 PM PST by woofie
Author of a masterful study on the CIA and the cultural Cold War, British historian Frances Stonor Saunders provided a detailed account for The Independent of the CIA’s covert role in sponsoring Abstract Expressionist painting in the United States. The CIA exploited this artistic movement as a showcase of freedom and free enterprise, and to counteract the influence that communist ideology still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West.
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when 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 did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.
(Excerpt) Read more at voltairenet.org ...
Ah, yeah, right, if you say say so, that’s interesting..... (As I look for another person to talk to at the party)
Crap like Jackson Pollock
could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US.
????????????????????????????????????
In other news, it has been confirmed Sean Penn was working for the CIA while interviewing El Chapo...
Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled “Advancing American Art”, with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: “I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash.” The tour had to be cancelled.
The US government now faced a dilemma. 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. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.
The CIA used long-terms stratagems, which sought to destroy Soviet Communist society and economy - and it worked
The KGB used long-term stratagems, which sought to destroy American society and economy - and its working....
I think Penn was working for the Russians
Is FR working for the CIA? This is gonna make us suspicious of everything.
I often wonder why more artists don’t celebrate the absolute freedom found in the USA...Its a hard thing to come by
So now Joe McCarthy was the only one who thought Jackson Pollack and Piss Christ and Andy Warhol’s tin cans were crap?
That’s a LEAP, woofie.
One of the stated Communist goals was to make art as meaningless as possible.
Classical symbolism, heraldry, even the images of Liberty have been lost to blobs that could have been (and on occasion were) slathered on canvas by an animal.
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.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
“The KGB used long-term stratagems, which sought to destroy American society and economy - and its working....”
It certainly has been working! I pray we can turn that around very soon.
Its saying that Truman and most Americans were against modern art in the 50s
I think we still have the split in the culture ...Those who hate modern art and those who celebrate it
whats interesting is to see the government’s involvement and concern
And at the same time (60s and 70s) encouraging drugs (LSD mainly) and the psychedelic music scene (Laurel Canyon).
There was definitely a cultural revolution going on being pushed by the CIA. Read David McGowan’s “Weird Scenes in the Canyon” for more info on how the rock stars of this period were sons and daughters of intelligence offices. Jim Morrison’s dad was an Admiral who was Captain of a boat at the Gulf of Tonkin.
http://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/1909394122
He died in 2015 when he came down with an advanced cancer. Look at his stuff on youtube, he dissected the Boston Bombings as well.
The left has destroyed art, just as it has made a farce out of Science.
Looks really interesting
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