How the CIA Secretly Used Jackson Pollock to Fight the Cold War
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- Опубликовано: 26 сен 2024
- Jackson Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists made New York City the center of the art world after World War II. The CIA made them weapons of the Cold War.
This video explores the ideas that animated post-war American abstract painting and how these ideas were exploited by the CIA to combat Soviet propaganda.
References:
Art Forum: "ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM, WEAPON OF THE COLD WAR" by Eva Cockcroft
New Yorker: "Unpopular Front" by Louis Menand
New Art City by Jed Perl
what marvels me is that people think this stuff isn't happening now with other causes.
And the fact the CIA was founded in part by investment bankers only further demonstrates their weaponization of investment and art. And now the CIA has many ties to tech corporations like Google and Palantir.
@@armamentarmedarm1699 basic American response circa 2022
@@jjeshop it’s art tho
Its so much worse
Now they want all inclusive art and we pander to communist china
Jack the Dripper is top tier nicknaming. Pure class.
He drank mire than he spilled.
Love it!!
No, Lest Stoner is.
i think your documentaries are from a superb quality and are tv worthy. Great work!
Realist art was considered deeply suspicious after WW2. The subject matter often commented on social issues.This immediately opened the artist up to accusations of communism. Consider the mural work of Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. Artists were pushed towards abstraction by Mccarthyism. Abstraction became the image of Capitalism.
you are god damn right, my friend.
Abstraction philosophy became one of the many tools used to scramble the minds of artists and the next generation so that a feudal / fascist system could replace the capitalist one which is long dead at this point. The WEF are a great example of that fascist system and they've infiltrated everything including art.
A special club of interior decorators wall ornament technicians from the past..
Nice one
Explain
If you look closely at it, both the Soviet and the American artist were pawns on the board of the world's political game. But the art produced by both spoke for itself: the imprisoning austerity on the Soviet side and the shattering of the individual on the American side. Here in the century XXI, I believe that it is already possible to see the wear and tear of the two narratives... people are tired of the hardening of a police state and also of frivolous individualism in the midst of world misery.
+1
You can say the same with Chess and the computer won. Collectively and Individually
American pawns are always more lethal, for we know not that we are pawns
@@NoNameNo.5 A Soviet ambassador is stationed in the US and he meets with his American counterpart.
The American says "Level with me, Sergei, off the record - what are you _really_ doing here?"
Without missing a beat, the Soviet responds "I am here to study the American method of propaganda."
"What propaganda?" the American asks, incredulously.
"Exactly."
@@jessl1934 and with that witty, faux anecdotal morsel, we can all go home none-the-wiser.
No mention of class….gee shocker….
This is an excellent thesis. Well done!! Thanks for the lucid story and calm narration. Brilliant.
Great stuff! I saw Peter Fuller deliver his thesis on this subject at The Rivoli in Toronto a few months before he passed away. THE NAKED ARTIST by Peter Fuller...a wonderful analysist like you. Thanks!
Well done! New information that is very interesting and relevant to right now. Thank you for making this video!
I would rather admire and appreciate a statue dedicated to the workers who helped build a school, a hospital, or even a road, than I would paint dripped on a canvas, any day of the week.
Do you admire a sunset?
@@brmbkl Well said
Great topic! Isn't it interesting how the dwindling respect the world has for the U.S. corresponds with our increases in military spending? Jazz, rock & roll, Hollywood, and independent artists did far more for international influence than anything the military accomplished since WWII. Now compare dollars spent.
The subtlety of the CIA operation was to see American art as an expression of American freedom, even as American art (like Hollywood blacklisting), and really free thought itself was under attack in the 1950s. And yes, it didn't require military spending.
It’s artificial imposing through propaganda state-sponsored acts like described in this video. It’s going to kick back at some point don’t worry.
Wrong. Opinions are possibly RT NEWS PROPAGANDA, Imperialist British Sloothing, corrupt CCP INTELLIGENCE. Also Opinions are like assholes everyone has them. America picks small wars so there aren’t sny big ones.
Thr popularity of jazz internationally is also linked to the federal government since they did fund the travel of multiple jazz musicians.
There's a lot of gov't money behind a lot of things in the mid 1900's from the Obvious Berlin Wall to the minor and weird "LSD" Dolphins. . . The funny part is that it worked to an extent since the USSR dissolved but the irony is how the people being used were unaware of who was funding them.
Shared.
In the process it was necessary to destroy the previous art movements and I do mean destroy. There were a couple of backup groups which the also CIA funded just in case abstract expressionism didn't catch on but they were very much kept in the background despite their funding and the artists in the groups saw themselves as rebels even though they were continuing a long tradition of knowledge and skill which attempted to bridge the gap between the spirit and the material world.
They did rebel, against the painterly traditions that preceded abstractExpressionism. Cycles, everything goes in cycles.
Nothing was destroyed. It's all still there to be tapped at will. Witness Neo-expressionism and Neo-realism ... just two examples.
@@ronagoodwell2709 Tapped at will. Do you work as a painter or are you just an historian? A huge amount of knowledge disappeared. Not just formulas but methods and experience as well as new cultural barriers. The cultural barriers are the strongest.
@@artytomparis It's not necessary to destroy one art in order to make way for another. That's not how it works. Artists can reject past traditions in favor of something fresh and new. Happens all the time, organically. But I suspect you're talking about something altogether different. What is it? Can you be more specific?
@@ronagoodwell2709 I'm talking about the CIA campaign to change art and control peoples minds by fragmenting their understanding of observational skills. Art has been used very effectively for propaganda purposes forever and it's simply controlled by the interest others have in collecting it. Those with the deepest pockets set trends and can starve out the artists who don't do as they desire.
America famously not banning books and entertainment to this day.
Exactly
Sarcasm?
This stuff still goes on to this day.
Stuff like Pollock's HAS to be forced into human heads by marketing and propaganda, no other way around, I don't despise his works, they have rhythm and movement, they decor nicely, just like some bird shit on the floor.
Well said. I always wondered how supposedly educated people were made to drink the koolaid on all this 'modern art' stuff. I should have known it was all a CIA psy-op 😂
Well stated.
Yes, and Rothko, Motherwell, Kline, et al, were even worse and even more self-deluded than Pollock was.
@@davidgeary490 I feel the work of all these guys at best could be described as experiments or exercises. BUT some people want to elevate it as something godly, that´s ridiculous, it´s all powerfull collectors wanting the price to increase shame on them.
very interesting and well put together vid - it's like the hippie movement in the 60s, that too was 'arranged' let's say - with certain 'programs'. It's kind of horrible really how the arts are infiltrated - I'm not sure how many people actually realise the extent of modern cultural manipulation. It's all a bit chilling tbh, if you look into it.
The influential music of the 60s all came from the CIA controlled Laurel Canyon.
It’s all “arranged”. Everything we were told to believe are lies.
Peux tu développer stp please
J ai entendu certaines choses la dessus
(Charles manson agent de la cia pour détruire le mouvement de l intérieur avec ce faux meutre satanique mis en scène par le fbi/cia ...
Jusqu où Polanski est impliqué lui aussi
Si tout ceci est vrai
Y a pas de faux sang
Sans mensonge de la cia
Yeah except all the music was anti war, as were the protests lol, I doubt the government wanted that at the time they were drafting people
@@tylerhibbs7086 what diff did it make? they drafted them anyway. mk ultra info is in the pub domain. If you control both sides of the narrative, it's a win win.
@@robinaart72 they weren’t controlling art and music during the hippie era is what I’m saying lol, people got drafted but against their will
The most amazing thing about this story is that the CIA didn't try to use a painting to kill Castro.
What amazes me is the length people went to to decieve me. Isanity.
Got me wishing the MOMA would mount an exhibition comparing soviet art and the abstract expressionists of this time period, wow! Get some talented writers on board to produce some essays on this.
To FEEL the energy is it's own experience and expression.
Soviet painters were also free to paint what they want, it just didn't get promoted by the state.
not true
😅😅😅 really? You could paint a picture of Stalin in his underwear??? 😂
This is a great video, you deserve more views!!
Psst. Look into Laurel Canyon and how nearly all of the free-thinking hippie musicians who lived there had close ties to the Federal government.
cLoSe TiEs DeRp
@@mightyprotong Yes, Frank Zappa was just somewhat related to Francis Zappa who developed mustard gas for the US Army at Aberdeen.
@@dfgyuhdd I'm sure you are happy to be judged by whatever your relatives did or said, right? LOL....he was SOMEWHAT RELATED to somebody??? OMG!
just dont rush keep it calm
Oh yeah and the horde of art students that thought wearing shoes spattered with paint was a badge of individuality and left art school unable to paint. Genius.
Seriously! We did that to our shoes in middle school, lol
Good thing we still have "normies" like you. Someone has to do the boring, menial tasks.
@@anderslarsen4412 Like splatter their shoes with paint? Sure, someone has to do the menial stuff Lars.
I think it's cool. 😎 Excellent thought-provoking art and spreading the cause of democracy.
This is excellent content. Great work!!
Interesting content. You got yourself a new subscriber.
The Americans were very influenced and inspired by European artists fleeing Fascism in Europe, such as Hans Hoffman and Piet Mondrian. There are more
*communists fleeing rival socialists
great video, ta!
Bro, your contents are great !!!
And unbelievable you just have very little subcribers.
Damn, why the "Almighty Algorithms" such an unfair and cruel beings?
Thanks, I appreciate it. Yeah I don't know. I try not to take anything for granted. I teach part time so I can't upload videos at the rate the algorithm desires :)
Now our government doesn't care about art.
Not so much. Though I think painting had more cultural cachet in the 1950s.
They obviously didn't when they promoted this crap.
They have Disney for that.
Bit late to the party but just wanted to point out that of the three artists you mentioned at the start only one wasn’t European born.
That's true. Abstract Expressionism was only possible because of European immigrants and the craft and knowledge (and politics) they brought. But they became Americans and helped create something new.
Yes. The great meLting pot of America.
I wonder what the world would have been like if the Soviets had continued to promote abstract art? Maybe the abstract expressionists would never have arisen, because they would be seen as too 'communist', and we might have ended up with a western world where art effectively stagnated from the 50s until the end of the Cold War, and then exploded following the fall of the USSR. Or maybe it might have had an even bigger effect on how the Cold War played out. The CIA definitely seemed to think that it was making a real impact by promoting modern art.
We are already controlling what people can express in art and language.
They did it for "equality and freedom"
We do it for "safety and ally-ship"
'This is Blue Poles calling The Deep, copy. Over? Blue Poles calling any safe-house, get me a goddamn crate of Bourbon. Over?'
Greatest painters are comrades
leftist days are numbered
No just fools when it comes to politics
How easy it is to commandeer "art" that makes a point of having nothing to say.
Sounds a bit like an illiterate person saying "all these books...with all these meaningless symbols...so meaningless!"
@@anderslarsen4412 Squiggles equal sonnets. LOL
Very interesting to know that the CIA was into American art those days 😯
Hey I appreciate a ton that you made such a good content. It helps me a lot as a history student doing a research project about abstract art. ✌️
Appreciate the feedback : )
I for one would love to know how your project turned out. To me it doesn’t matter if it is the CIA, NKVD or the médiéval Popes. It is all using art to influence communication with people.
yeah, only problem is if you adopt this info you'll never get a gig in the art uh world
Wow that is super interesting, never heard of this till today. Funny how they were saying you can be an artist here without being a government puppet by using artists as government puppets lol
Fascinating! Gives me a renewed and unexpectedly nuanced appreciation of the artwork.
Really great stuff! Keep it coming!
Thanks. Appreciate it.
Lee Krasner worked for the CIA and did camo designs for warships
The CIA, while being an organization of killers, has done 2 good things: CIA World Fact Book (Atlas on all the countries of the world - available on the Web and can be purchased in bookstores) and its participation in the arts - Jackson Pollock is a great painter
clement Greenberg was the worst thing to happen to art since the plague. Until social media happened.
Great job on this.
I can understand killing Kennedy but this is unforgivable
Without Los Alamos, Abstract Expressionism wouldn't have happened.
Anyone know the intro music?
Very great and interesting video, thanks for uploading. Regards Conrad Bo, member of the Superblur Art Movement
Eisenhower was also a painter...
Of barns
Great video. Wondering the name of the song used at 01:05 to about 01:54?
Pollock remains one of the greatest painters in American history, all the same.
Oh well
You can sell a submarine in the middle of the desert, as long as you take the right pictures and tell the right story!
I prefer Soviet Realism because not only is it more beautiful but it also stood for a higher purpose than one persons individual expression.
That "higher purpose" being a cynical scheme of public indoctrination.
Looks like we've got ourselves another case of Stokely's Snake Hater courtesy of Rampart.X here
@@jessl1934 is that esoteric code for something relevant?
@@Rampart.X Iykyk 🤷
I get the distinct feeling that you don't actually know actually what socialism is.
@@jessl1934bro just said random words 😭
Shucks, too bad this channel is Jo longer active. I’d love to see you cover the Soviet’s love and excitement over jazz music. Its origins were in the United States, and it was novel to their ears, white unite anything they’d heard before. As you can imagine, the abstract and often improvised nature of jazz similarly reflect the artistic concepts the CIA had wanted people to associate with the abstract expressionist movement.
Apparently the young adult’s became absolutely obsessed with the music. A completely new sound from a country you’re supposed to hate. In the earlier days of the forbidden tunes entry into the Soviet Union, both buying and selling of the music for home listening would be on par with the rebellious, illegal act of obtaining substances for recreational consumption with friends. These kids (young adults) would sit around and listen to music knowing the very act of doing so was quite badass!
Makes sense.
Abstract Expressionism, a totally American movement including many immigrants
The bare facts of this story are correct as far as I can tell, but this video is just dripping with ideological propaganda to the point that it's almost unwatchable.
Whine harder. See if it helps.
@@mightyprotong lol you felt the need to post this on a random year-old comment but I'm the one whining? Ok, bud
Smart move from the CIA.
What does it all mean? It means the CIA had surprisingly good taste.
Would make for a good movie starring George Clooney and Timothee Chalamet.
Very informative
Thanks!
Like African American saids: ihave being bamboozled, hookwing , playout by the little school girl - mean the CIA all this time!
So modern art is a phyop. And it’s turned into the monstrosity it is today
If I put those 3 letters in a post you'll never see it, and you know why.
I’m sorry , but I still prefer works by the great masters of renaissance of Italy , Netherlands and Spain
Maybe I'm just not that deep, but this sounds more like an excuse than an explanation.
This is an interesting topic. CIA. The mediaeval Popes. It is all the same. But as a fan of Rothko, the work shown at 13.25 of the video is very interesting. I would love to know more about it.
I think this is from the Seagram murals
I never rated him.
CIA is all over RUclips.
Apart from Mark Rothko, the others are pretty average methinks!
This is certainly an interesting perspective. You were thorough & you avoided the negatively that has become so popular.
They entered him in a Russian drinking contest. USA!
So, if they were creative enough to do this. Think about some of the things today. Banksy may very well be a plant lol
Whats really frustrating about this video is the attempt here to draw a moral comparison between what the soviets and the americans did. Thats a really useless exercise, especially when this person actively admonishes the soviets and then tacitly justify the cias, both without much justification. At least they included their one source so we can look at it ourselves.
This is not completely unfair. I wanted to remain more neutral but I also wanted to express the moral quandaries of the propaganda war as expressed and experienced by those involved. Many left-wing intellectuals/communists abandoned their politics to help the U.S. combat the Soviet Union (especially after the Hitler-Stalin Pact). Some of them even knew about the CIA money and were ok with it. The State Dept. tried to fund modern art openly but was blocked by anti-communist zealots. It was not my intention to justify the CIA but merely to describe their justification - which was shared by anti-communists on the right and left.
@@TheConspiracyofArt then that attitude needs to be expressed by quotes from people who were involved, and not your own narration. The moral justification of the figures youre talking about needs to come from them.
Greenberg was vehemently anti-Communist? What a load of nonsense, his writing on medium specificity is influenced by Trotsky’s own writing on art. Greenberg was a Marxist for much of his career. As were many art critics, including his successor, Arthur Danto. Greenberg and Leon Trosky's writing on art-specifically two essays published in Partisan Review in 1938 (just prior to Greenberg's own "Art and Politics in Our Epoch" and "Towards a Free Revolutionary Art") delineate how abstraction can be a genuinely leftist project when avant-garde art pursuing indeterminate forms is deracinated from its bourgeois patronage. Greenberg’s Marxism may have withered over time but calling him staunchly anti-Communist reveals deep ignorance. What exactly have you read by Greenberg indicating his anti-Communism and where in said texts does Greenberg make such claims?
Furthermore, the State Department’s promulgation of AbEx in the Venice Biennale was a byproduct of their attempt to counter burgeoning European movements, from CoBrA and Helhesten to the works of Miro et al., attempting to stake that American art was equally philosophically inclined. The “AbEx was a CIA cultural export to meet Soviet Realism” line is a gross oversimplification. I recommend “Rereading Abstract Expressionism, Clement Greenberg and the Cold War” by Daniel Neofetou for a much more rigorous, and historically accurate, rendering of this history.
He flipped after the war. I am not sure if the stumbling block is the term “anti-communism” or lacking knowledge of Greenberg’s efforts after the war which included open support of anti-communist organizations. I think calling Greenberg an anti-communist is appropriate and historical. I would add that Greenberg’s views on Communism changed during the 1940’s and the Partisan Review itself ironically became anti-communist; and there was a whole movement of left-wing anti-communists including George Orwell (a contributor to the Partisan Review) disaffected with Communism and/or Stalin.
Also, I appreciate the recommendation. I would say that being anti-communist back then could simply mean being anti-Stalinist/anti-Soviet. One could still maintain socialist/Marxist ideas and be against the Soviet Union and the Communist party, which Greenberg was - he was a member of the CIA funded Committee for Cultural Freedom, has referred to himself as anti-Stalinist, and even claimed to have known about the CIA money behind it. Leftist intellectuals became aligned with conservatives in surprising ways.
Admittedly in 1984 Greenberg said he held a “revulsion…against leftist cant” to downplay his youthful commitment to revolutionary socialism. But as Caroline A. Jones speculates, we should be wary of this late in life tendency;. Consider how Greenberg suppressed the republication in his otherwise almost comprehensive Collected Essays and Criticism of his ‘10 Propositions on the War’ (EA: 445, n111), which was a 1941 piece co-authored with Dwight Macdonald and published in the July-August issue of Partisan Review, in which the authors argue against immediate US intervention in the Second World War and, instead, contend that ‘[to] win the war against fascism, we must work for the replacement of the present governments in England and the United States by working class governments committed to democratic socialism’ (1941: 277). Whether Greenberg suppressed the republication of this essay is questionable, as the equally uncompromisingly radical ‘An American View’ is republished in the Collected Essays and Criticism, and it is thus likely that ‘10 Propositions’ was not reproduced simply because, as John O’Brian notes in the introduction to the first volume, articles that were jointly written were not included (CEC1: xviii). Nevertheless, Greenberg was certainly dismissive of ‘10 Propositions’ late in life: in 1994, Greenberg blithely attributes this article to the influence of his Stalinist brother Sol, claiming that, like Sartre, in the 1930s he ‘reasoned that the Stalinists were showing him the true path’ (2003: 237). This is very questionable. Notwithstanding his hope, which he held until at least 1944, that Stalinism might still have been fomenting the conditions for its own demise, as ‘an increase in production and productivity, coupled with the slackening of foreign danger’, may have released ‘the socialist tendencies which Trotsky said lay locked in soviet economy’ (CEC1: 187), it is easily demonstrable from Greenberg’s letters that his hatred of Stalinism, and specifically Sol’s dedication to Stalinism (2000: 127), was fierce and visceral at the time - he describes how Stalin’s ‘darkness infects the mind more thoroughly than syphilis infects the blood’ (2000: 177). (Although it should be noted that he can be found in a 1942 review of The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers claiming that his criticism of her work is not founded in her being a Stalinist,
and that contrarily he is ‘thankful that she is at least that, that she is for socialism’ (CEC1: 117)). More simply, though, Greenberg’s claim that Sol’s Stalinism informed ‘10 Propositions’ is nonsensical because opposing US intervention in the Second World War in July 1941 was, of course, anti-Stalinist, since the very trigger for US intervention was Germany invading the USSR in June 1941. In fact, Greenberg himself justified his stance as Luxembergian (EA: 44), which is certainly notable, because Rosa Luxemburg provides a model of revolutionary art very similar to Trotsky’s, writing that ‘[w]ith the true artist, the social formula that he recommends is a matter of secondary importance; the source of his art, its animating spirit, is decisive’ . Tracing the development of Greenberg’s politics in the 1930s through Greenberg’s letters to Lazarus also reveals a more than trivial commitment to the radical left
in general. To an extent, one can see the justification for Greenberg’s dismissive retrospective characterization. At times it seems as if Marxism was just another curio among his cultural activities: he at one point writes that he’s ‘been reading Communist pamphlets and Henry James’; makes a point of his aloofness even when affirming that he voted for the socialists in 1932; and, rather than Trotsky,
the Marxist figure who receives the most attention in these letters is Brecht, who Greenberg discovers in 1931 and swiftly proclaims as ‘everything!’ (2000: 140; 76; 55). However, he repeatedly articulates his investment in contemporary struggles in markedly affective terms, as if his ‘faith in the revolution’ is wholly imbricated with his ‘faith in [himself]’, as he puts it in one letter (2000: 251). In 1933, for instance, he describes being moved to tears and going ‘home all jagged up’ after attending a Communist mass-meeting about a cotton pickers’ strike in the San Joaquin valley, and three years later, he uses similarly affective phraseology to describe his emotive responses to reading a book about the Socialist uprising in Austria, and news of a strike in France - ‘all cut up’ and ‘all stirred up’, respectively (2000: 108; 150; 164). Furthermore, while his commitment did not extend to volunteering for the Spanish civil war, it preoccupies him constantly; he bemoans that it is ‘all [he] can think
of in the morning’, and ‘[i]f the Loyalists were winning [he’d] really be happy in a
personal way’ (2000: 167; 174).
All of this is to say that Greenberg held various views, including after the war, that aligned with Trotsky, Luxemburg, etc. To say he “flipped” is just to take him at his word, but more important is his writing on art, including his postwar writing, which through and through remained in line with Trotsky’s position on revolutionary art as necessarily being free from the “heteronomous constraint” of (Stalinist) Soviet Realism. Recall Trotsky’s account of revolutionary art as art which refutes heteronomous constraint and yet progresses by determinately negating elements of preceding art. This account is central not only to the way in which Greenberg’s criticism, when hypostatized, contributed to Abstract Expressionism’s co-optation, but also to how Greenberg’s criticism bears witness to the way in which Abstract Expressionist artworks indict the ends for which they were enlisted.
All of this is to say the story of Greenbergian art theory, revolutionary art, and AbEx is much more complex than the simple line you rehearse, and is espoused by those like David Anfam; even Anfam acknowledges the ‘CIA’s advancing Abstract Expressionism abroad during the 1950s’ but affirms the artists ‘were neither chauvinists nor nationalists’ (2016: 31). Ben
Street acknowledges that the CIA ‘[f]amously funded exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism abroad in an attempt to promote the notion of cultural freedom in the United States in contrast to the perceived restrictions of the Soviet Union’, but stresses that the Abstract Expressionists ‘did not want to be associated with, and
the paintings were not made to articulate’, the ‘political messages’ which the US government thus tried to transmit with them (2016: 23). Craven and others’ revisionist histories of the matter have been deftly challenged in recent literature, and I maintain your account of Greenberg et al. for thr aforementioned reasons.
As Neofetou reminds us, and I would really appreciate your response particularly if you do choose to read the book (and I hope you do), “Pollock is known to have been staunchly anti-capitalist and actively involved with left-wing politics as a youth. To adduce this, Craven quotes a letter from the young Pollock to his father, in which the artist ‘repeatedly criticized the capitalist system and “the rest of the hokum” that goes with it’ (ACC: 48), and in B. H. Friedman’s biography of the artist, Pollock is quoted claiming to have attended ‘a number of Communist meetings’ (1972: 12). Despite all this, Pollock is one artist singled out by Eva Cockcroft as having ‘left behind his earlier interest in political activism’, and for Cockcroft this is tantamount to his submission to the status quo (1985: 129). Yet, as Anfam writes, Pollock ‘so far is known, kept his youthful left-wing views’ (1990: 55; see also Naifeh and Smith 1989: 406). Similarly, as Anfam observes, those Abstract Expressionists who began as committed radicals, such as David Smith and Ad Reinhardt, ‘did not abandon their socialist principles afterwards’ (1990: 55). While Reinhardt’s support of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) into the 1950s is well documented, (see, most recently, Corris 2008: 52-9), he was not the only Abstract Expressionist whose dissidence led to investigation by the FBI. As Craven details, Reinhardt’s file ‘runs to around 123 pages’, but ‘Motherwell’s comprises 45, Rothko’s 21, Gottlieb’s 5, and Krasner’s a mere 2 pages, albeit very provocative ones’ (ACC: 81). The inclusion of Gottlieb and Rothko in this list is particularly notable, because their involvement in the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors (FMPS) is often adduced as evidence of their active complicity with ‘the social and political function to which [their work] was put’, due to the Federation’s role as ‘an active agent for anti-Communism in the art world’ (Stonor Saunders 1999: 275; see also Cox 1982: 29; Jachec 2000: 34, 149). Now, this judgement is questionable, because, while Annette Cox demonstrates that the FMPS ‘sought to expose Party influence in such organisations as Artists for Victory and Artists’ Equity’ (1982: 29), its opposition to the CPUSA was expressly rooted in anti-Stalinism rather than pro-Americanism. It was founded in reaction to the American Artists’ Congress passing a resolution ‘that to many . . . appeared to sanction the Russian invasion of Finland’ (Ashton 1996: 67), and, similarly to Trotsky and Breton’s earlier manifesto: its first statement of aims ‘described the Soviet and Nazi regimes as two examples of “totalitarianism of thought and action” which valued the artist “only as a craftsman who may be exploited”’ (Cox 1982: 28-9).” (Neofetou 2022: 171-2, n.6).
This is all interesting and I don’t dispute any of it. 20th century avant-garde art in general was an enterprise of the left, even if artists often relied on rich people. That Pollock had been a communist is precisely what made him and other modern artists more difficult to support and required covert action. The question of how Pollock’s political beliefs informed his career/practice though seems more difficult to answer, particularly during his drip period.
I did check out Neofetou’s book. I found the rejection of the argument that AbEx’s lack of content/subject matter allowed for co-optation by U.S. imperialism vis-a-vis Social Realism’s critical content pretty convincing. I also found Trotsky’s views on art pretty interesting, especially as precursor to Greenberg’s early essays.
I would say that Greenberg’s abandonment of revolutionary socialism and support of U.S. soft power however should color how his depoliticized art criticism is viewed in the context of Cold War propaganda. I agree with Neofetou that Greenberg is a bit unreliable in later interviews in the way that he downplayed his Marxism-but trying to get inside the head of Greenberg (or Pollock) also feels like hearsay and doesn’t speak to the practical effects of his writing and political activities. I find the impact and public perception of Greenberg, as possibly the most influential art critic of the period, to be salient when trying to frame the events of the time.
While it seems Greenberg never abandoned his leftist politics, he said that fighting Stalin “overrode all other considerations” in the ’92 interview with Robert Burstow (the interview referenced in the the beginning of Neofetou’s book). Greenberg defended his association with the American Committee for Cultural Freedom in the same interview by noting that the CIA money wasn’t conditional and denied outright that Partisan Review received CIA money. This seems like a cop-out. While I have to admit to being heavily exposed to the revisionist historians’ version of events, I don’t think Greenberg gets to pretend that his association with The Nation, Partisan Review, the Committee for Cultural Freedom much less his declaration of AbEx’s supremacy didn’t aid U.S. propaganda-and contrary to Greenberg’s claim, the State Dept. and the CIA were in fact capable of subtlety. The CIA in particular realized that for the U.S. government to buy art outright and in the open was a headache-much better to fund organizations that were already politically aligned (or create their own).
I’m definitely glad you suggested Neofetou’s book. In general I find it pretty compelling and I’m happy to read what seems (so far) like a kind of defense and/or explanation of AbEx’s persistent allure and a defense of the artists themselves despite their co-optation.
x-cell-lent!
Andy Warhol?
Your standard view isn’t helpful, pollack only left image for awhile. ABEX flourished for a short period if Pollack survived the car crash he would have been tried for the murder of the woman who begged him to stop and let her out.
Abstract "art", the talent of a toddler gaining worldwide acclaim. It's not much different than the Emperor's New Clothes. People are just doing and liking whatever they perceive the connected folks tell them to. It's like they are just trying to see how much they can get away with, how stupid the masses really are.
thi s video is so funny socialist realism is the hardest art genre title
Gee it's getting pretty expensive to live in our free western society
Kehadiran JP dalam dunia seni rupa sangat berpengaruh hingga saat ini. Ia menunjukan bahwa kebebasan itu ada pada pikiran dan imajinasi kita.
Not for me,i'll stick with Van Gogh
Pollock did not use "cheap house paint" - he actually used rather expensive good quality house paint because it dripped properly in a way the cheap stuff did not
The distinction I'm making is not between cheap and expensive house paint but how Pollock used house paint over traditional fine art paint, and that he was using the paint directly, unmixed from the can. It's probably not clear enough in the video that this was a rebellious act in the sanctified world of high art so I'm glad you're making this point. Pollock absolutely cared about the way the paint behaved and took his process seriously.
Who cares. That "art" was crap
Even the more expensive house paint is cheap compared to a tube of quality oil or acrylic paint.
I paint houses and am also an oil painter. All house paint drips the same.
Actually he generally used a lot of metallic - automotive paint
So, your basically pro CIA funding of abstract art.
No I wouldn’t say that. Pollock and other artists weren’t against open government sponsorship. It was the conservative politicians who made it impossible for the US to fund modern art -thus the CIA had to figure out a way around it, which included not telling the artists. I am generally against governments exploiting their citizens but I am not interested in moralizing. People can do that themselves.
The ads are insufferable
Wish I could turn them off.
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
There was no conspiracy that entangled the artists themselves, who for the most part didn't make more money than a dentist until the 1960's. The government tried to make use of something that they couldn't easily eradicate. It would have had to institute a charge that the avant-garde artist or poet was a 'social parasite.' In other words become a carbon copy of the USSR. So it tried to make use of it. Nothing special there. Even Napoleon III instituted a 'Salon de Refuses,' after avant garde artists of the 1870's complained they had been excluded. There's no exposé worth going on about. A big yawn.
I mean that’s basically the attitude america has towards artists now
Cultural Victory!
Beeple... 🤣🤣🤣😭
He was used by the CIA, a contrast of social realism vs pure imagination. Wonder how that might play now ..
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I’m not sure. Painting today isn’t part of pop culture like it was in the 20th century, but movies still are. So that’d be a good place to start looking.
Pollock wasn't an artist.... he was just another drunk with a paintbrush.
This “art”, uncomfortable, chaotic, and unintelligible, is esentially the creation, production, and promotion of the usual influencers. Plain and simple. There’s nothing “deep, spiritual, or meaningful” about any if it. It’s the “expression” of kindergarten fingerpainting, that’s all. Pumped up by phony rhetoric into a BS of heightened bamboozlement for money making. It’s a scam.
I saw a documentary about Pollock which addressed the elephant in the room directly which was, "Why is Jackson Pollock popular?" The answer, he had a friend that was a famous critic and he basically sold the idea that his work was good, and relevant. So he was the product of having someone who was a famous critic that liked him. Also, Rothko basically plagiarizes Marshall McLuhan. So, nuthin original there.
Great!
Scribbling jack the dripper as the personification of American individualism. Sick.
Individuals are not their "unchained id."
was it really that secret? i mean people i've met knew about it at the time--i don't claim be so special to be privy to that kinda thing.
Interestingly, the Ttump-government (and he himself) had ideas about art much more aligned to the Stalinist ideas mentioned in the video. That's where the US has come to!
Yeah. A lot of presidents have had ideas about art but trying to put these ideas into law is silly. Plus Trump is super old-fashion, even for someone of his generation.
When trump wants to grab you, he ain't reaching for your hearts and minds.
F your Trump derangement syndrom.
I knew it had to be something. I mean. Throwing paint around a room? Come on now