Stranger Than Demented Conspiracy Theories

Ken MacLeod, the wondrous science fiction writer, unearths something beyond the imagination of a lesser science fiction writer. In fact it's so demented that, given the source, I had some doubts as it its plausibility. But there it is:

The Early Days of a Better Nation: Do you find modern art baffling and depressing? Have you ever wondered if it's all a ridiculous hoax? Don't worry. It's meant to be baffling and depressing, and it is a ridiculous hoax. According to American leftist James Petras's review of Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders,

[the]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.

So the whole hegemony of boring decadent rubbish art that has been inflicted on us for fifty years, from Jackson bloody Pollock to Damien fucking Hirst, has all along been a CIA plot.

Never could quite see the point of Robert Motherwell myself. This is certainly the most close-to-rational account I ever heard.

MacLeod's coda is biting:

Socialist Realist art now commands higher prices than that of the dissidents and the Western-imitative official art of perestroika. The market has taken an ironic revenge on its votaries.

This entry was posted in Kultcha, National Security. Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to Stranger Than Demented Conspiracy Theories

  1. dilbert dogbert says:

    Now the scales have fallen from my eyes. I always thought of this stuff was crap.
    My prime requirement in an artist was that first he had to show me he was a good draftsman, then good at composition and color. After that he could do anything he dammed well pleased. The english painter, Turner, fits the bill.

  2. and all this time I thought I was aesthetically deficient because I didn’t understand AE.

    I just hope that it 30 years we don’t find out that Britney Spears was a CIA plot…

  3. Paul Gowder says:

    that’s lovely. That cheered me up immensely from e.g. the death squads. It really did. thank you.

  4. Jeanne says:

    Thank you. I am sick of the crap I am forced to accept as great art. It’s boring, passionless, and mindless. Why are we funding this ho hum, waste of a trip, yeah whatever, it ain’t great so don’t try to con me into thinking it is, “art”? I want to see the real stuff. There are artists out there that deserve to be seen and I want to see their art. Please. Please. Please. Break down the walls. Show me the real art.

  5. Jeanne says:

    To continue- My daughter, an artist, read this site and told me I was insulting people like Pollack and the like. I like their stuff. What I don’t like is the art that is viewed at great right now, today. It is mindless. The same thing is happening with music. The really good music is not on the radio because the money people are not allowing it to hit the airwaves. All we get is safe nice music and safe nice art. It’s like going to a really good restaurant and having the staff tell me oatmeal is the best thing on the menu. I refuse to accept boring.

Comments are closed.