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Modern art was CIA 'weapon' (1995)
- mirimir 11y agoAlso see this review of Saunders' The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (2000). https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/23/reviews/000423.23joffet.html https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/23/reviews/000423.23joff...
- teh_klev 11y agoI own a copy, it's a fascinating read. The British author Ian McEwan mentions that Saunders' book influenced his novel "Sweet Tooth" [0], which itself is a fine read. [0]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0099578786 http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0099578786
- Ygg2 11y agoAnother possibility - CIA just sponsors random stuff to promote confusion in enemy ranks. Then claims it was for Cold War purposes. Adam Curtis spoke about Russian government vocally backing various organizations, some hostile and some friendly to it. That way people are never sure who to trust, because even opposition is funded by gov. One difference is that Russians broadcast who they sponsor, given their target is the public. Makes me wonder if CIA let slip it was using art as weapon to Russians, then watch them panic.
- VLM 11y agoI'd kick it back a step, maybe as a spy novel plot, its no secret that "forever" the left promotes that all cultural advancement only comes from the left, nothing culturally worth anything comes from the right. I'm not trying to promote it, I'm trying to observe it. This has been a constant for an extremely long time. Meanwhile the Russians were a little authoritarian and locked down their art... why? Well one "spy novel grade of plot" is the Americans will fall for the bait and then they can keep an eye on the americans given that the artists tended left wing anyway. Of course the rabbit hole never ends and a even more "spy novel plot" is the americans knew the russians knew so seeing as modern art is pretty much a waste of time WRT geopolitical struggles, we likely fed the artists a side dish of disinformation knowing that some of the disinfo will get back to the russians.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago>the left promotes that all cultural advancement only comes from the left, nothing culturally worth anything comes from the right. The right promotes that idea too; or rather, that all (gov't sponsored) cultural advancement only comes from the left.
- cousin_it 11y agoI guess the orthodox right-wing view is that "progress" shouldn't apply to culture at all, and that it actually ruins culture: a person thinking of progress will never build the Sagrada Familia, only the Barbican Estate. (Similar examples can be found for music, literature, the visual arts, etc.)
- gglitch 11y agoWe're saying Gaudi's work represents tradition?
- cousin_it 11y agoWell, it's a Catholic basilica in a mostly Gothic style that's being built for 100 years. It incorporates some ideas that were new for its time, but so did the Notre Dame (flying buttresses). I guess traditionalists are not against all new ideas, they're more against thinking that old = bad.
- gglitch 11y agoI'm sure we can agree that anyone who builds a politics on anything as reductive as [old|new] = [bad|good] is not helping much.
- cousin_it 11y agoJust look at any left-wing art manifesto, there's plenty of those. Here's a famous one from 1917 Russia: https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/mayakovsky/1917/slap-in-face-public-taste.htm https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/mayakovsky/1...
- coldtea 11y ago>Another possibility - CIA just sponsors random stuff to promote confusion in enemy ranks. Then claims it was for Cold War purposes. I don't think this is the case here. Can't speak for the US, where it might not have mattered much, but in post-war Europe the arts (fine arts, writing, etc) were very important in left wing politics and a serious social force to want to control. To the point that such art was a popular phenomenon, not something isolated -- people, including younger people, were hungry for those things (from the way 60's US kids were hungry for rock music et al. Artists played a prominent role in culture, were celebrated in the media, participated in demonstrations, influenced politics etc. Edit: think of people like Aragon, Sartre, Gunter Gruss, Duras, Montand, Beuys, Brecht, Godard, Antonioni, Theodorakis, Dario Fo, and countless others etc. Now, of these artists there were 2 major divisions: those loyal to the party and the communist cause, and those critical of USSR and more into intellectual euro-communism etc. CIA managed to fund and nourish the latter, more easily tempted by modern abstract expressionism, pop art, jazz, etc, which, while more progressive in stance, it was also more watered down and didn't pose any major political threat (the way USSR influence did). >Adam Curtis spoke about Russian government vocally backing various organizations, some hostile and some friendly to it. That way people are never sure who to trust, because even opposition is funded by gov. So, just like with the US and lots of opposition parties, "independent" organizations, NGOs, etc. Only the latter is doing it in other countries too (funding various groups in favor of its interests, and even some seemingly against). And unlike the US government, foreign governments can and do fall because of such schemes, or at least their domestic policies can be heavily influenced by such foreign intervention.
- JonnieCache 11y agoHere's the adam curtis clip youre talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM
- littletimmy 11y agoWell, then. Good to know America's intelligence agencies are doing the important stuff. Yes, promoting dribbling on paper.
- Ygg2 11y agoWell, at least it sounds good to taxpayers "Defeating Russians with modern art".
- fnordfnordfnord 11y agoYes, promoting dribbling on paper. Legislators and bureaucrats do it all of the time.
- larsiusprime 11y agoHey, it beats carpet bombing.
- NN88 11y agoThis is my favorite cold war story
- Iv 11y ago"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." In other words, the US acted like a good government and helped the arts flourish, because it had a competition. It sounds like a joke, but in Us if you want to fund anything, you have to describe it as a weapon. Write that open source software is a weapon against Chinese industry and you'll get CIA funding. Heh, after all Tor got funds from the Navy...
- walterbell 11y agoIn the movie Cradle will Rock, there are several fictional scenes about the real-world mural painted by Diego Rivera for the NYC Rockefeller Building. The mural was subsequently destroyed after a disagreement about Lenin, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_at_the_Crossroads https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_at_the_Crossroads. In a key scene, Nelson Rockefeller asks Rivera to remove Lenin from the mural: https://youtube.com/watch?t=68m51s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI https://youtube.com/watch?t=68m51s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI Rockefeller: This is not a revolution, Diego. This is United States. It's not Russia. Rivera: And I am Diego Rivera. Not Frederick Remington. Man: You understand that it is entirely inappropriate to feature a communist leader in the lobby of a Rockefeller Building? Rivera: No! I believe nothing in art is inappropriate. I paint what I see. Later, in a conversation about replacing "socially conscious" art by funding "abstract" art: https://youtube.com/watch?t=104m09s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI https://youtube.com/watch?t=104m09s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI Rockefeller: I wouldn't have had this problem with Picasso or Matisse. Cardinal: We can control the future of art because we pay for the future of art. Appoint people to your museum board who detest the Riveras of this world. Celebrate the Matisses. Create the next wave of art. You have the purse strings, it's quite obvious you have the power. Rockefeller: Cultural power. To pay for the Matisse. All: Celebrate colors. Celebrate form. Portraits. Countrysides. Men on horses. Sunsets. Nudes. https://youtube.com/watch?t=107m43s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI https://youtube.com/watch?t=107m43s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI Cardinal: Nelson will fund the new wave of art. A traveling exhibit throughout Europe, highlighting American artists. Mathers: Non-politcal. Rockefeller: Yes. Abstract. Colors and form, not politics. Cardinal: My papers will hail it as the next new thing. Canonize the artist. Make them rich. And soon enough, all artists will be doing the next new thing. Mathers: You think? Something about artists, they always get socially concerned. Cardinal: Sure, but they won't get paid for it. Rockefeller: They won't be seen, they will have no influence. Mathers: Rather than starve, they will adapt, it's survival. The New York City MoMA, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Modern_Art#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Modern_Art#History "The idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1929 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan ... When Abby Rockefeller's son Nelson was selected by the board of trustees to become its flamboyant president in 1939, at the age of thirty, he became the prime instigator and funder of its publicity, acquisitions and subsequent expansion into new headquarters on 53rd Street."
- fiatjaf 11y agoThe art that nobody wanted and that everybody, at the time, correctly judged as crap and garbage, was, then, forced upon people by the government.
- coldtea 11y agoIn Western Europe it was very much wanted and played a very important role in the cultural life. There were artists that were icons the way a singer like Dylan was in the states...
- was8309 11y agonot saying that Dylan was just 'crap and garbage', but as a cultural icon, people like him replaced people like Nat King Cole, which simultaneously dumbed down and further 'whitened' our music.
- coldtea 11y agoI'll have to disagree here. I don't think Dylan "dumbed down" American music compared to Nat King Cole. I mean, there's not much high-brow about Cole's music, whereas Dylan has tons of academic studies on his "poetry" (whether one consider it actual poetry compared to people like e.g. Wallace Stevens and e.e. cummings or not). With Cole (and whites like Bing Crobsy, or band leaders like Glenn Miller etc) it's mostly entertainment, not really culturally significant. Sinatra goes a little further, but again, not that much. Compared to them Dylan is like a literary titan, and more adventurous musically too. I'm not sure about whitening it out either. Before Dylan there was Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly etc who have already whitened the scene. And of course whites do have a right to have their own music (like the folk/irish/country/rock etc thing Dylan combined) heard. Is Cole really "blacker" than Bing Crosby? Does Cole really represent black culture as a singer, or more what the while mass audiences wanted to here at the time? How many of his songs are written by white songwriting teams? Now, if Dylan had replaced Mingus, Billie Halliday, Robert Johnson, et co, then, yeah, that could have a basis to speak of "whitening" and "dumping down". But not for Cole et co.
- TACIXAT 11y agoThey also funded socialist literary magazines. http://www.theawl.com/2015/08/literary-magazines-for-socialists-funded-by-the-cia-ranked http://www.theawl.com/2015/08/literary-magazines-for-sociali...
- stratigos 11y agoThe average American is likely to be completely clueless as to the cultural influence of the CIA and other government agencies on their daily lives. And this is just commentary on the things the agency has publicly admitted to.
- cryoshon 11y agoYeah, they're effectively our Ministry of Culture in the Orwellian sense.
- nyolfen 11y agothis isn't CIA-specific -- the DoD takes an extremely active part in culture-shaping. anytime you see US military hardware or personnel in a film or TV show, it has to be run by the DoD PR for review and editing to promote an 'acceptable' view of the military -- even for things as trivial as American Idol[0]. Americans by and large absorb what is within the bounds of acceptable political thought from mass media. What you don't see are the hands behind the scenes sculpting our culture. [0] http://www.salon.com/2015/07/31/youre_watching_pentagon_propaganda_american_idol_ice_road_truckers_and_the_truth_about_your_favorite_shows/ http://www.salon.com/2015/07/31/youre_watching_pentagon_prop...
- Mimick 11y agoAs a neutral I see that Russia won the cold war by spending only on useful things...
- laotzu 11y ago>Jacques Ellul observes in Propaganda: When dialogue begins, propaganda ends. His theme, that propaganda is not this or that ideology but rather the action and coexistence of all media at once, explains why propaganda is environmental and invisible. The total life of any culture tends to be "propaganda", for this reason. It blankets perception and suppresses awareness, making the counter environments created by the artist indispensable to survival and freedom. -Marshall McLuhan
- dschiptsov 11y agoNot sure about modern art, but Travolta shooting heroin in Pulp Fiction killed thousands of Slavic youngsters..
- cousin_it 11y agoIronically, the same kind of art was super popular in revolutionary Russia, e.g. Malevich's "Black Square".
- agumonkey 11y agoWhat a weird bunch of decades. This neurotic competition against each's own paranoia feels a bit absurd and sour. And I just finished watching a few NASA movies again (The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, ...) .. similar reasons.
- njharman 11y agoYou're falling for the trap of perspective. The current decade is just as weird. We just don't know it yet.
- agumonkey 11y agoHeh, who said I thought it was an improvement. Now I'm wondering, is it a constant all through history ? And I believe the hidden emotions of nations have been diluted into other channels when wars (a large scale PTSD) and then scare crow competition were the primary ones, nowadays it might be running in subtler ways.
- mladenkovacevic 11y agoI guess even Michelangelo had the Medicis, but I wonder if something like this will influence the auction prices for various modern art. Does a painting like this http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/h2/h2_57.92.jpg http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/h2/h2_57.92.jpg lose or gain new value in the context of being an unwitting participant in a sophisticated exercise of distraction? Does the artist's original intention behind his or her art take a second place to the newly revealed absurdist quality?
- mladenkovacevic 11y agoThis statement from the article strikes me as a bit of a stretch: Would Abstract Expressionism have been the dominant art movement of the post-war years without this patronage? The answer is probably yes. Equally, it would be wrong to suggest that when you look at an Abstract Expressionist painting you are being duped by the CIA. Perhaps not duped. But, how many other types of art were stifled by having a secret fund devoted to creating, promoting and praising one type of art. Which raises the question of why the CIA chose abstract expressionism as the vehicle of choice for its propaganda. Perhaps because it is hard to be subversive with a work of art that every observer will interpret differently. Or perhaps because unlike other art that has some common ground for discourse between two observers, abstract art is like watching clouds pass by. "I see a baby!" one watcher will say. "I see a puppy!" another watcher will say. And that's where the conversation ends. It's the ultimate expression of individualism, but also the ultimate killer of dialogue.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoIt's hard to make a point about political violence with a maroon rectangle.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoYes and no. The maroon rectangle doesn't directly say anything. But Russian Expressionism wasn't free to paint that maroon rectangle, so the maroon rectangle could be a powerful statement of freedom. In Park City, Utah, there is (or at least was) a gallery that sold Russian Expressionist paintings. It had a painting in it that was controversial in Russian art in the 1960s. It showed workers in a cloth factory, and it was controversial because one of the workers had a wistful or dreamy expression on her face. That expression nearly cost the painter his license as an artist. That's how heavy-handed the USSR was toward art - you needed a license to be an artist, and the government cared about the expressions on peoples' faces in your paintings. Another thing I saw in that gallery: There was a difference in the landscapes done after 1990. They still are impressionist landscapes, but they have little dots of bright color where there were flowers. Pre-1990, the landscapes looked the same, but the overall impression was more drab. The freedom that came in 1991 showed up even in the landscapes, because the artists felt different.
- andyl 11y agoArt as CIA weapon - sure. Cultural marxism as leftist weapon - still paying dividends.
- hackuser 11y agoWhat are government intelligence agencies backing or opposing today?
- flycaliguy 11y agoBased on some of the culture control ideas in this article, online piracy doesn't seem far fetched. Pirates Bay could totally be a CIA backed site in the end. Also bitcoin maybe? Wikileaks? Reddit? Hacker News? The Simpsons? Clear Channel? Adbusters? 4chan/8chan? Those are my guesses, I bet I got at least one right.
- compbio 11y agoOk, that's solved. Now let's speculate on the current cultural weapons, that the Russians can't keep up with, but that the Americans use to keep cultural dominance: - The entire entertainment industry. - The LGBT-movement / Pussy Riot. - Social networks, the internet, email providers and search engines. - Quantum computing and advanced NLP. Clearly they wanted to keep "the (perpetual) fight against terrorism" on this list, but Russia did not listen.
- krapp 11y agoThere are parts of American culture that aren't CIA propaganda. Probably.
- mladenkovacevic 11y agoI guess we'll find out in about 50-60 years if we're still here.
- A_COMPUTER 11y agoVideo games specifically. They are next-gen propaganda tools because you can subtly or not so subtly railroad a player into your frame by making them roleplay it for reward. It can adapt to less or more pliant players, it can collect analytics which help create faster iterations of improvement. As an intentional cultural weapon (in the manner OP describes) I don't think it's actually ascendant yet, but it will be.
- JonnieCache 11y ago>Pussy Riot. I always thought that was a putin/surkov double-bluff.
- xlm1717 11y agoWhat's funny is that many on the right were convinced that abstract art was a communist ruse intended to upend American culture and thus weaken the US. The article does make you ask questions, though: >If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA. Was it just a matter of proving to the Soviets that America could be even more cultured due to freedom of expression? Or was it the Trotskyites looking to show that Stalin's brand of communism was inferior to Trotsky's? It does make you wonder...
- fiatjaf 11y agoWell, communist or not, it achieved these objectives.
- clock_tower 11y agoThe deed is done, the Communists are beaten... so can we go back to art that looks like things (and requires skill to create) now?
- vlehto 11y agoNo. Some jokes keep getting better if repeated. Canning shit and presenting that as art piece is hilarious. Someone paying $37 for that canned shit in 1961 is even more hilarious. But somebody paying £182,500 for that his is again even more hilarious. And just consider the "inspiration" people get from that? I shit you not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_Shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_Shit
- clock_tower 11y agoArt as a joke at the expense of art-buyers? I never thought of that angle, but it does make sense.
- vlehto 11y agoOn many levels too. Imagine you have just gotten some utter crap into a gallery. You are silently laughing at your own joke. And telling everybody that "each person finds different aspect of it.. so I don't want to ruin that with my analysis". Or some other snobbish shit. Then some dude comes to you "I like it. Would 500k$ be enough?". What do you respond? "Aww man, it's just a joke. That's too much." vs. "Sold!"? And the joke lives on.
- tootie 11y agoJust to be pedantic, "Modern Art" is not synonymous with Abstract Expressionism. Modern Art began with Goya in the early 19th century. It refers to any of the schools of art that departed from the long traditions of commissioned portraiture and religious art.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI've wondered: does that mean that anything that comes after is under the umbrella of "Modern Art"? It seems like it should.
- yarrel 11y agoPretty much. I'd date artistic Modernism from Manet, but that's personal taste. It's also open to debate when Modernism gave way to Post-Modernism - Neo-Dada in the 50s, Minimalism or Conceptualism in the 60s? We're currently on "Contemporary Art", which is going to be a hard label to shake...
- SteveBash 11y agoI read about this a long time ago in the form of a conspiracy theory, I always see people(even well educated ones) dismiss those and label it as false right away, but seeing that many conspiracy theories have proven to be true I think is time to recognize that this kind of thinking is a fallacy of the form X, X is a conspiracy theory => X is false. So I think conspiracy theories should be taken as what they are: hypotheses.
- MichaelMoser123 11y agoi am not sure about the target audience of this sponsorship. Was it supposed to persuade people in the west or in the east? Modern art and Jazz were not very outspoken on political issues, it was very easy to sponsor them as the artists were not likely to bite the hand that feeds them (unlike Rock musicians who were much more unruly). Maybe it was propaganda aimed at an western audience? You still have to claim to be open minded and liberal and tell it to your own people; (see how we tolerate modern art? The commies are less liberal, never mind that we are not very liberal to minorities, blacks or those who we label to be communist sympathizers) i think in the east Rock music (later) was doing more damage to the communist regimes (in real terms) than Jazz. Modern art and jazz had a more limited appeal, while Rock music (later) had a much wider audience. (modern art was brait is funny that the person that helped the CIA here (post Stalin) was Khrushchev - in December 1962 he lashed out on modern art at a modern art exhibition in Moscow, following that they started a official campaign against modern art.)
- MichaelMoser123 11y agoHere is some more information on this event that ended the cultural thaw in the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Nonconformist_Art#1962_.E2.80.93_mid-1970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Nonconformist_Art#1962_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Neizvestny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Neizvestny Khrushchev lashed out on the artist Ernst Neizvestny, interstingly he seems to have regretted that move once ousted, as Neizvestny was later approached by Khrushchev's family to design the tomb/monument for the former general secretary. go figure. Maybe this modern art thing was designed to take some influence on the direction of cultural discourse during the thaw (relative liberalization) of the soviet union after the death of Stalin.
- kaonashi 11y agoIt was also apolitical. That's one way to not have to deal with any new Diego Riveras popping up.