Is Jackson Pollock a CIA Conspiracy?

luka

Well-known member
my mate told me of this convincing argument the other day at work. he said a lot of people think that Jackson Pollock was prooted by the CIA as americas great artist becasue he was apolitical and inoffensive and vapid. it was a deliberate attempt to suppress politcally engaged art. i think this is probbaly true. he then named some political artists who were pollocks contemporarys and said. have youi heard of them. i said no. he said, see, it worked.
 

LRJP!

(Between Blank & Boring)
I saw a documentary about this a few years ago. As I recall the CIA were involved with bankrolling various art institutions – I think the MOMA in NYC was mentioned – as a cute cultural prong of the Cold War, Abstract Expressionism being used as a demonstration of Western freedom in exhibitions in Moscow and whatnot. I never got the impression that it was explicitly aimed at undermining politically engaged art, though I guess if that a side-effect it could only have suited them. Who were the artists your friend mentioned?
 

juliand

Well-known member
This line of thought has its origins in Artforum, where, under the editorship of John Coplans, the magazine swung heavily towards identity politics, and Abstract Expressionism was out of favor. Pollock was not singled out, though; all of Abstract Expressionism was accused of being an ideological weapon in the cold war. See Max Kozloff, "American Painting During the Cold War," and Eva Cockcroft, "Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War," both published in Artforum in the early 1970s and reprinted in Francis Frascina, ed., Pollock and After, The Critical Debate (1985).

Whatever you want to say about Pollock and Greenberg (and Newman, etc.) they were hardly apolitical--or inoffensive. Greenberg was a socialist Jew who at one point edited Partisan Review; Newman was an established anarchist and wrote prolifically about it; Pollock began painting as a social realist and admired Rivera. Their work was reviled and misunderstood by many in its moment. How, or whether, the paintings were subsequently appropriated by American power afterward is debatable (the Frascina book is the best resource for this), but the conspiracy theory angle--Pollock as a covert operative--is unlikely.

For a substantive, historical account of how Abstract Expressionism was used ideologically in a world context, the best thing I've read is on Barnett Newman and the 1967 World Fair in Bruce Barber, ed., Voices of Fire: Art, Rage, Power, and the State (1997), especially the essays by John O'Brian and Serge Guilbaut. The best account I've read of the particular style of politics at play in AbEx painting is the one offered by TJ Clark in the last chapters of Farewell To An Idea. There's a great argument on Pissarro's anarchism as well.

Sorry for throwing a bibliography at you! Those are the places you'd want to go if you wanted to put it together for yourself.
 

pfflam

Member
Nonetheless . . . despite the left-leaningness of the artists and critics, they were actually used by the State Department to project a distinctly 'American' image abroad . . . for instance the letter by Greenberg to a friend praising the State Department for a free trip to Japan in order to accompany and support a State Department funded show of Ab Ex art there . . .

Ab Ex was big, bold, and all about 'freedom' . . . this was perfect for promoting the ideals of a 'Free world' . .. so yes its true but it wasn't instrumental in the initial stages of AbEx's rise to popularity, and is completely blown out of proportion by critics/professors with an agenda to define AbEx as both retrograde and politically conservative or complicitous through their disengaged formal stances (desite their strong political ideas) . . . the dichotomy of AbEx vs PoMo as seen as being also Disengaged/engaged is one of the most over reified and theorized non-entities that ever polluted an academic environment . . . . its the by-product of academic publish-or-perish standards and the trendiness of mediocre Graduate Teaching assistants and desperate pre-tenured professors who feel they need to create a position, problematize it to death and then use it to catagorize the work of far more interesting and subtler and more complex artists . . . .

Sure there are real formal and methodological differences between 'PoMo' artists and teh High Modernists of the AbExers . . . and real differences between Greenberg and R Barthes . .. .but not even the AbExers themselves believed the caricature of Greenbergian formalism that came about . . . in fact, not even Greenberg believed it . . . his addenda and appendii attached to his essays try to show how his ideas should be taken heuristically and not overly dogmatically . . . kudos to intelligent critics like Thierry de Duve who are able to appreciate Greenberg and, at the same time, able to undestand the implications of Duchamp . . . . we could use more of that flexibility of mind . . .
 

luka

Well-known member
prooted is a good word. my typing improves a lot when im not smoking weed for breakfast.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Clement Greenberg made him, and Greenberg was a Partisan Review Trot, so obviously true.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Isn't the theory simply that the CIA funded various magazines and institutions to promote Ab Ex and new American art worldwide in general? Not that Pollock himself was a spook or even aware of what was going on. I'm sure I heard Isaiah Berlin was involved somehow.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Found an article/review of a book on the subject, here:

The linchpin of this effort, from 1950 until its link to the CIA was exposed in 1967, was the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Through the Congress and parallel organizations, the CIA secretly underwrote international conferences, art expositions, music festivals, and more than 20 magazines, including the highly respected Encounter, which was edited originally by Stephen Spender and Irving Kristol. The CIA campaign was so extensive that, at its height, it would not be wrong to say that the agency acted as a secret ministry of culture. Nearly every prominent Western intellectual in the early years of the Cold War was, wittingly or unwittingly, involved with some CIA-backed program. Among those most notably implicated were historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., French social theorist Raymond Aron, novelist and essayist Arthur Koestler, and philosopher Bertrand Russell. According to a U.S. government oversight committee, by the mid-'60s almost half the grants given out by various philanthropies--including some by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations--involved some CIA money.

The campaign was designed to bolster Western Europe against the ideological encroachment of Soviet Communism. Specifically, and in an apparent irony, the CIA wanted to highlight the way the American system protected the right of the individual "to hold and express opinions ... different from those of his rulers." CIA planners had realized that the key battle of the Cold War--and indeed the battle whose loss ultimately spelled the end of Soviet power in 1991--was not merely for physical control of Europe but for the hearts and minds of Europeans.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_5_32/ai_62215216/
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
no.

See Max Kozloff, "American Painting During the Cold War," and Eva Cockcroft, "Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War," both published in Artforum in the early 1970s and reprinted in Francis Frascina, ed., Pollock and After, The Critical Debate (1985).

interesting, Frascina was at Keele vis arts when i was an undergrad there, pre the great culling of depts at Keele.
the lab-tech was the best person there, you could rely on him for a drink
 
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luka

Well-known member
basically anyone successfgul in academia and the arts in america at that time had some degree of cia assistance wittingly or unwittingly.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
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luka

Well-known member
cathy who i live with, i find it embarresing saying y girlfriedn this, my girlfriend that....
as
you
know
you weirdo perv
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
I reckon using someone's name who nobody knows on here is nobbier. It's almost like you are trying to prove that she is a real person using some kind of complex backstory (such as a name).
 
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