Abstract impressionism as the CIA’s propaganda tool in the Cold War
If you look at Pollock’s Full Fathom Five, you can hardly believe that such a painting can be used as an ideological weapon. When you step back, Pollock’s “drip” painting seems like an elaborate metamorphosis of forms and colors that neither makes nor refutes any political or spiritual statements. A closer look reveals a miscellany of trifle objects embedded in the surface, such as cigarette butts, matches, screws, coins, buttons, keys. If the artist ever wanted to prove anything with such a composition, it could have been a negation of prior artistic conventions. However, for Pollock, the painting was not an act of subversion but a process of self-discovery. “Every good artist paints what he is,” Pollock said. The frenetic pouring and splashing of household paint were his means to reflect and meditate. Full Fathom Five is a perfect example of Abstract Expressionism, an artistic movement that brought spontaneity and contagious energy to the art world, making it an unlikely weapon in the Cold War arsenal. However, it was precisely that apolitical quality of Abstract Expressionism that enabled the US Secret Service to turn the artistic movement into an ideological weapon.
The idea of Abstract Expressionism as a propaganda tool might seem absurd. Most of the Abstract Expressionists were either apolitical freethinkers or communist sympathizers. While Pollock was referred to as a “rotten rebel from Russia’’ in high school, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman were declared anarchists. David Anfam, a curator from Royal Academy, in his conversation with Alastair Sooke, a British journalist, and art critic, described Abstract Expressionists as a “nexus of non-conformist artists, who were completely alienated from American culture. They were the opposite of the Cold Warriors.”
Indeed, many cultural critics still refuse the idea of any political undertones behind abstract expressionism. For example, Irving Sandler, a renowned American art critic, believed the conspiratorial theories around the movement were a spoof. In a phone interview with Sooke, Sandler said that “there was absolutely no involvement of any government agency,” because “the federal government at the time considered Abstract Expressionism a Communist plot to undermine American society.”
In fact, Sandler was accurate in averring that the US Federal government didn’t harbor any affectionate feelings toward Abstract Expressionists. For example, in 1947, after attending the state-funded exhibition “Advancing American Art,” president Truman famously denounced the collection as “the vaporings of half-baked lazy people.” The newly-formed Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs (OIC) purchased the paintings in hopes of sending the collection overseas as a disproof of Soviet accusations in American philistinism. The exhibition was a fiasco. In his article in The New Yorker, an American art critic and essayist, Louis Menand quotes the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who sent an indignant letter to the Secretary of State, calling the paintings “a travesty upon art” and claiming they were collected by people whose sole purpose was to undermine the cultural image and prestige of the United States. Inquiries into the political backgrounds of the artists were made, and the show recalled.
The above example was not the only instance of the governmental reluctance to support modern artists. Illustrative of the government’s inability to handle cultural affairs was the USIA’s art show scandals in 1956, where the organization had to cancel such shows as “Sport in Art” and “100 American Artists,” on allegations that some exhibited artists were communists.
Some of the mentioned facts, however, were used in favor of promoting American values by the MOMA curators. Thus, Eva Cockroft, an American artist and writer, in her essay “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War,” argues that the artists’ prior communist affiliations have increased their value “as a propaganda weapon in demonstrating the virtues of ‘freedom of expression’ in an ‘open and free society’” (129). Moreover, the inability of the US Government to handle cultural matters made it “necessary and convenient for MOMA to assume this role of international representation for the United States” (128).
To understand how MOMA notched a victory in the cultural Cold War while using Abstract Expressionism as an ideological weapon requires a brief detour into the museum’s history.
MOMA was established in 1929 thanks to the efforts and financial support of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. During the war, MOMA was a war contractor, fulfilling “38 contracts for cultural materials totaling $1,590,234 for the Library of Congress, the Office of War Information, and Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.” (Cockroft 127) Nelson Rockefeller, in particular, dominated the museum curatorship throughout the war, later transferring his staff from the Inter-American Affairs to MOMA’s foreign activities. In 1941, a Central Press wire story called MOMA “the latest and strangest recruit in Uncle Sam’s defense line-up,” while quoting the Chairman of the Museum’s Board of Trustees John Hay Whitney on using the museum as a weapon of national defense “to educate, inspire, and strengthen the hearts and wills of free men in defense of their own freedom.” (Cockroft 126–7) Before becoming the chairman, Whitney served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s predecessor.
The Secret Service links can be traced through numerous other people and organizations. For example, William Parley, the founding father of the CIA and the president of CBS broadcasting, sat on the members’ board of the museum’s International Programme. Tom Braden was executive secretary of the museum in 1949 before joining the CIA. Braden was instrumental in setting up the anti-communist International Organizations Division (IOD), which operated covertly by placing its secret agents in the art and entertainment industries. The division also sponsored the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s international touring program, which, as Braden claimed, “won more acclaim for the US in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have bought with a hundred speeches” (Cockroft 128).
While the CIA had to operate covertly, MOMA, backed up by the approvals from Secret Agency and the financial assistance of the Rockefellers, could pursue its international operations in the open.
The Rockefellers’ remarkable collection of paintings was greatly influenced by Alfred Barr, who became the first director of MoMA and the most influential person in shaping the museum’s policies throughout the cultural war. His great enthusiasm for Abstract Expressionism convinced the Rockefellers of the movement’s cultural significance and its usability in ideological propaganda. Barr was a fantastic PR person: he often corresponded with the press, advising the journalistic milieu on cultural matters. Menand, in his article in The New Yorker, provides two examples illustrative of Barr’s influence on media. For insurance, in March 1949, Barr wrote a letter to Henry Luce, the publisher of Life, Time, and Fortune, recommending they change their stance on abstract expressionism because “attacking abstract art was something that totalitarian regimes did.” The results were almost immediate; just a couple of months after, Life published a favorable account on Pollock’s work, making the artist famous overnight. Another example of Barr’s penmanship was an article in the New York Times Magazine titled “Is Modern Art Communistic?” where he condemned soviet realism as dogmatic, rigid, and didactic. Abstract art, in turn, was fed to the masses as “avant-garde, the product of an advanced civilization,” a “pure painting.”
Besides Barr, there was Porter A. McCray, another cultural influencer, who had a great impact on the curatorship of the museum and the development of its international programs. It was during McCray’s tenure that the most significant exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism were put together and exhibited both locally and abroad in shows like “The New American Painting” (1958–59), “Modern Art in the United States” (1955), and “Masterpieces of Twentieth Century” (1952).
The Tate Gallery in London was particularly keen on having “The New American Painting” but could not afford it at the time. According to Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist and author of Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, the art show was saved thanks to an American art lover and millionaire, Julius Fleischmann, who donated the money so that the show was brought to London. However, as it later turned out, the money was not Fleischmann’s but belonged to the Farfield Foundation, the secret conduit for CIA funds.
Much of the CIA’s involvement in shaping the Cold War’s cultural narrative was revealed through a number of exposés in the 1960s. Thus, in 1967, Braden, in defense of his cultural activities, published an article in Saturday Evening Post, titled “I’m Glad the CIA is Immoral,” where he explained the necessity for the covert sponsorship of the Secret Agency’s cultural activities. As Braden tactfully put it, because of the significance of the cultural element in the Cold War and the difficulties of arranging sponsorships through the US Government, it was necessary to assume a low-key profile to subside a range of activities in the art industry. The exposés of 1967 also revealed that besides modern American painting, the CIA also funded a multitude of other programs and projects, including The National Student Association (NSA), Encounter magazine, and other liberal publications and associations.
Still, when you look at Pollock’s Full Fathom Five, words like “war” and “politics” hardly come to mind. On the contrary, you think of the artist, an individual with the audacity to reject a “common sense” painting and create an entirely new phenomenon that would transform the culture of a whole generation. Being familiar with Pollock’s history of substance abuse, you’ll also probably think of the personal struggles the artist conveyed along with those vicious brushing of strokes and splashing of color. However, as in any war, anyone hardly thought of Pollock more than a commodity. All the individuals who contributed to the US triumph in the cultural Cold War were America’s first victims. Pollock’s deadly DIU accident, Rothko’s and Gorky’s suicides, Evergood’s financial troubles, and Newman’s untimely death, are all examples of individual tragedies behind the veil of glory. However, it’s not the political interpretations that we think of when we look at those paintings. For many Abstract Expressionists, the painting was an act of conviction, a form of expression, the art of the subconscious. Hardly anyone of them was aware of or cared for their political significance. Just as no one in the higher power cared for an individual abstract expressionist.
Works Cited
Cockroft Eva. “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War.” Pollock and After:
The Critical Debate, edited by Francis Franscina, New York: Harper & Row, 1985, pp.125–131
Menand, Louis. “Unpopular Front.” The New Yorker, 20 June 2017,
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/17/unpopular-front.
Saunders, Frances Stonor. “Modern Art Was CIA ‘Weapon.’” The Independent, 14 June 2013,
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html.
Sooke, Alastair. “Was Modern Art a Weapon of the CIA?” BBC, 4 Oct. 2016,
www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia.
