(np) "free enterprise painting"

Michael Bailey michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com
Sun Sep 30 00:53:30 CDT 2012


http://monthlyreview.org/1999/11/01/the-cia-and-the-cultural-cold-war-revisited


One of the most important and fascinating discussions in Saunders’
book is about the fact that CIA and its allies in the Museum of Modern
Art (MOMA) poured vast sums of money into promoting Abstract
Expressionist (AE) painting and painters as an antidote to art with a
social content. In promoting AE, the CIA fought off the right-wing in
Congress. What the CIA saw in AE was an “anti-Communist ideology, the
ideology of freedom, of free enterprise. Non-figurative and
politically silent it was the very antithesis of socialist realism”
(254). They viewed AE as the true expression of the national will. To
bypass right-wing criticism, the CIA turned to the private sector
(namely MOMA and its co-founder, Nelson Rockefeller, who referred to
AE as “free enterprise painting.”) Many directors at MOMA had
longstanding links to the CIA and were more than willing to lend a
hand in promoting AE as a weapon in the cultural Cold War. Heavily
funded exhibits of AE were organized all over Europe; art critics were
mobilized, and art magazines churned out articles full of lavish
praise. The combined economic resources of MOMA and the CIA-run
Fairfield Foundation ensured the collaboration of Europe’s most
prestigious galleries which, in turn, were able to influence
aesthetics across Europe.




-- 
- where the bee sucks, there suck I



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