>No one talks about two huge scams involved with such "art".
There is another factor involved here as well...
From "EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, January 10, 1963" on "Current Communist Goals,"
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."
May I also just say that some here have been critical of "illustrators". As somebody who can barely draw a stick figure I have upmost respect for their talents as much as I do for the "fine artists" of the more traditional genres. The Cleveland Museum of Art was once offered the entire body of Norman Rockwell's work and turned it down because he was "just" an illustrator. What a stupid mistake. Most unfortunately for all of us, Rockwell's view of of American culture from just a few generations ago has become "fantasy art" for too many.
The Jean-Michel Basquiat monstrosity from post #5 sold fot $110 million dollars in May 2017, proving that, unless there was an underlying scam involved, the buyer was just as mentally ill as the painter of the work in question.
Because I recognize the difference between fine art and illustration does not mean that I condemn illustration. Fine art and illustration have distinctly different aspects. Otherwise, there would not be a separate word or illustrations. See my post 73 just above.
I do agree that Norman Rockwell's work occupied a special niche in American popular culture, and perhaps Cleveland should have collected it for its own sake (it certainly has been collected elsewhere, including on the walls of the East Wing of the White House); but its culturally significant depictions still don't make such frankly commercial work "fine art."
In the Cold War the CIA was funding and promoting the work of the avant garde modernists and abstrationists.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artcurious-cia-art-excerpt-1909623
How MoMA and the CIA Conspired to Use Unwitting Artists to Promote American Propaganda During the Cold War
Art’s role in American intelligence history features in the new book ‘ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History’—read an excerpt here.
Jennifer Dasal, September 24, 2020
The secrecy with which the CIA pursued Abstract Expressionism was not only integral to successfully fooling the Soviet Union but also to keeping any associated artists in the dark. In [former CIA operative Donald] Jameson’s words, “[M]ost of [the Abstract Expressionists] were people who had very little respect for the government in particular and certainly none for the CIA.” Multiple artists self-identified as anarchists, particularly Barnett Newman, who was so taken by anarchism that he would later write the foreword to the 1968 reprint of Russian author Peter Kropotkin’s 1899 Memoirs of a Revolutionist, describing the anarcho-communist’s influence upon his life and work. In other words: tell Clyfford Still or Helen Frankenthaler that you wanted to use their paintings to forward a government agenda, and the answer would most likely have been a firm no.
The CIA’s answer to these problems was something known as the long-leash policy. This solution kept CIA operatives at a remove of two or three degrees from the artists and art exhibitions—sometimes even more—so that they could not be linked to any furtive governmental bankrolling. In order to fulfill this need, they elicited the participation of arts foundations, artists groups, and, most crucially, art museums, requesting their assistance in organizing special exhibitions, events, and collections. Such activity was funneled through a new arts agency created by the CIA named the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which was developed in 1950 and not revealed as a CIA project until 1966. It would always appear, then, that a museum or arts corporation was presenting and promoting Abstract Expressionism, never the government, no way! And no one was the wiser, not even the artists themselves. Especially not the artists themselves.
The crap we know was promoted for reasons other than art or asthetics.