The CIA: Patrons of Eco Art?
Eco artists are engaged in emergency rescue missions to save the beleagured planet. Most of these artist are self-propelled by urgencies that are both pragmatic and psychological. Their drive to heal and restore the planet, however, is frequently diverted by the need to seek funding and opportunities.
The world would be so much more safe and secure if some enlightened patron provided the resources that would enable eco artists to fulfill their innovative enviornmental schemes.
I propose the CIA!
Is this idea crazy?
Not at all. It follows a documented precedent.
CIA officials just revealed that for more than 20 years the agency directed its vast resources to secretely promote Abstract Expressionism around the world!
This chapter in the CIA clandestine policies is truly bizarre. It happened in the 1950s and 1960s when most Americans, including President Truman, delighted in ridiculing this art form. CIA supported Abstract Expressionist artists despite the fact that many were communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era.
Why did Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko receive US government backing?
The new reports reveal that these artist renegades were used as ‘weapons’ during the Cold War. Vanguard art bolstered the anti-communist propaganda campaign waged against the Soviet Union because it provided irrefutable evidence of the creativity and intellectual freedom that was unique to democratic societies. The contrast to communism was uncontestable. Russian artists of the era weres still mired in the rules imposed by social realism.
Within this era’s international context, Joseph McCarthy’s denunciations of the avant-garde was more than an embarrassment. The CIA perceived it as damaging to U.S. security. That is when the CIA was summoned.
In the late 1940s, a policy was established known as the “Long Leash” to influence content in over 800 newspapers, magazines, and other public information organizations. This revelation was made by a former CIA case officer, Donald Jameson, who explains, “It was recognized that Abstract Expressionism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylized and more rigid and confined than it was.”
The centrepiece of the CIA campaign was the Congress for Cultural Freedom that funded a group of intellectuals, writers, historians, poets, and artists for the purpose of defending U.S. culture against the attacks of Moscow and Moscow sympathizers. At its height, it had offices in 35 countries and published more than two dozen magazines that touted the merits of the new American painting. It also promoted its covert support for Abstract Expressionism by sponsoring touring exhibitions such as”The New American Painting” that visited every big European city in 1958-59. Other influential shows included “Modern Art in the United States” (1955) and “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century” (1952). The Museum of Modern Art was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to add status to this cause by featuring Abstract Expressionist painters. by curating shomost of its important art shows.
Tom Braden, a former CIA officer and executive secretary of MOMA in 1949 explains, “We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War.” (“Modern Art was CIA ‘Weapon”, the Independent.UK. Frances Stonor Saudenrs. May 1, 2013).
He confirmed that his division had acted secretly because of the public hostility to the avant-garde: “It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do – send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That’s one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret.”
The United States abounds with eco artists whose vision, courage, independence, and originality could bolster the tarnished image of this nation. How ironic it would be if they attained the patronage needed to fulfill their ambitious strategies from the CIA! Yet there could hardly be more effective emissaries of good will and good action on behalf of our ailing planet.