A great British literary critic who considered the possibility of true proletarian art. William Empson I once wrote that “The reason British audiences enjoy Russian propaganda films is because the propaganda is annoyingly remote.” Perhaps this is why American artists and bohemians often take up the political iconography of distant regimes in romantic and ironic ways. Boring socialist realism in one country is radical exotica in another.
But will U.S. cultural exports have the same effect? One need only look at our most mundane branding successes abroad to answer in the affirmative. Still, I don’t think anyone would want to add it. abstract expressionist painting Go to a list that includes fast food and Walt Disney products.
Nevertheless, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning The project was born as part of a secret CIA program aimed at promoting American ideals abroad during the Cold War.
The artists themselves had no idea that their work was being used as propaganda. In what intelligence agents called “the long chain,” they participated in several exhibitions secretly organized by the CIA. These included “New American Paintings” (see top of catalog cover), which visited major European cities in 1958 and 1959, and included modern primitive works such as a 1947 work by surrealist William Bagiotes. dwarf (bottom) and 1951 tournament Above is written by Adolf Gottlieb.
Of course, the strangest thing about this turn of events, to say the least, is that American avant-garde art is poorly regarded by the general public. On America’s Main Street, there is an undercurrent of distrust and outright disgust toward the art world’s unorthodox experiments, a trend that filters upward and periodically erupts in controversies over Congressional funding for the arts. a 1995 independent article A paper on the CIA’s role in promoting Abstract Expressionism explains this attitude during the Cold War:
In the 1950s and 1960s…the majority of Americans hated and even despised modern art. President Truman summed up the general 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 MacArthur-era America, and usually not the kind of people who would receive support from the American government.
So why did they receive such support? One short answer:
This philosophicism, coupled with Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical condemnation of everything avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply disconcerting. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy.
The one-way relationship between modernist painters and the CIA, recently confirmed by former case officer Donald Jameson, is thought to have allowed the CIA to make the Soviet socialist realist’s work appear, in Jameson’s words, “more stylized, more austere and limited than before.” (See Evdokiya Ushkova 1959) Lenin and the villagers For example below). For a more detailed explanation, read the full article at the following URL: independent person. It’s the kind of story Don DeLillo would create.
William Empson went on to say that a Conservative audience exposed to the same intensity of Tory propaganda as that imported from Russia would “be extremely bored”. If he is right, the average true-believer socialist in Europe would have already become bored with Soviet-sanctioned art. What is surprising about these revelations is that the avant-garde works that fundamentally changed the American art world and infuriated average congressmen and taxpayers were being exploited and collected by well-mannered American intelligence agents, just like so many others. shepherd fairy poster.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on the site in 2013.
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How the CIA secretly used Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists to fight the Cold War
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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
