By Annabella Shark. Simultaneously, the US did not hesitate to sink huge sums of unaccounted funds into the CIA’s campaign to culturally fight communism. This culminated in the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was rooted into place by 1950. The general idea was to parade art (writing, visual arts, music) that was as antithetical as possible to Stalinist dictums about what art should be. Art was to represent freedom, a nebulous concept without a context. The idea was that this pro-American freedom was a freedom of the individual, with the emphasis on every-man-for-himself. No political doctrine was going to tell these artists what to do. But basically, what the Congress for Cultural Freedom sponsored, was precisely that art which was banned in the Soviet Union. As an example, they put on an all-out-expense International Conference of Twentieth Century Music in 1954, which concentrated heavily on atonal music, for the express reason that atonal music was not allowed under Stalinism. Alfred Barr (director of MoMA) said, The modern artist’s nonconformity and love of freedom cannot be tolerated within a monolithic tyranny and modern art is useless for the dictator’s propaganda. In 1952 The Congress for Cultural Freedom sponsored the Masterpieces Festival of modern art. On display will be masterpieces that could not have been created nor whose exhibition would be allowed by such totalitarian regimes as Nazi Germany or present day Soviet Russia and her satellites. The primary art of this exhibition and a number of other widely publicized art extravaganzas during the fifties was Abstract Expressionism. Eva Cockcroft wrote about Abstract Expressionism in Artforum (No. 12) in 1974: To understand why a particular art movement becomes successful under a given set of historical circumstances requires an examination of the specifics of patronage and the ideological needs of the powerful. Why was Abstract Expressionist art singled out by the CIA/State Department as an essential weapon of the cultural Cold War? Why did Nelson Rockefeller purchase over 2500 pieces of Abstract Expressionist art and use these paintings to decorate the lobbies of Chase Manhattan banks? And then, why was New York’s Museum of Modern Art so terrifically enthusiastic over this specific art movement? In order to understand the trajectory behind these actions and policies, we have to examine the history and formation of the Abstract Expressionist Movement, what it was attempting to achieve in the world through its art, and how it was consequently interpreted. Perhaps this understanding will shed some clarity on the present day art establishment, and why it functions in its
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 03:31:39 +0000
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