They were thinking that abstract expressionism best represented the cultural values that made the West superior to the communist world - the pure freedom of tho

They were thinking that abstract expressionism best represented the cultural values that made the West superior to the communist world - the pure freedom of thought and imagination required to produce abstract expressionism, and a culture that could reward (or choose to not reward) its creators, without some government censor getting involved to decide what is and is not valuable and good. So it was an aesthetic love, but also a cultural love. I totally grok where they're coming from. If you don't love something, you're not going to hold it up as a model of what makes your culture superior. I love abstract expressionism and find megachurches creepy and weird, so I would hold up abstract expressionism as a fine example of what makes America great. Someone who loves megachurches and hates abstract expressionism would do the opposite. (By way of measure, my favorite painting ever is Jackson Pollack's "Mural", which I got to admire up close a lot when I was at the University of Iowa) So yes, those CIA directors who made that decision really, truly loved abstract expressionism. They also found it the perfect antidote to the soul-deadening rigidity of Socialist Realism. They felt socialist realism was the result of a dying culture.