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modernart

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Summary

A 1995 article by Frances Stonor Saunders reveals that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secretly used American modern art, specifically Abstract Expressionism, as a cultural weapon during the Cold War. For over 20 years, the agency fostered and promoted artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko. This was done to counter Soviet Union propaganda by showcasing the US as a hub of creativity and intellectual freedom, contrasting it with the rigid Socialist Realism of the Soviet Union. The policy was necessary because modern art was widely disliked in America at the time, with figures like President Truman openly mocking it, and many of the artists were ex-communists unacceptable in the McCarthyite era, making open US government support impossible.

The operation, confirmed by former CIA officials like Donald Jameson and Tom Braden, was run on a “long leash.” The CIA established the International Organisations Division (IOD) in 1950, which used front organizations to channel funds. The primary front was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which sponsored international touring exhibitions like “The New American Painting”. The CIA also leveraged connections with influential figures and institutions, including Nelson Rockefeller and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which helped organize and curate the shows. A specific example involves the Tate Gallery in London, which unknowingly received CIA money via the Farfield Foundation, run by Julius Fleischmann, to fund an exhibition. While the CIA’s patronage did not invent the movement, it was crucial in establishing Abstract Expressionism as the dominant post-war art form and a symbol of American culture.

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