[endsecrecy] The Cultural Cold War
KPan769741
>How the CIA. Played Dirty Tricks With Culture - Submitted by PARA
>
>The CIA., worried that the public might be too influenced by Orwell's
>pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the capitalist humans and Communist
>pigs, dispatched agents to buy the film rights to "Animal Farm" from his
>widow to make its message more overtly anti-Communist.
>
Communism, being by far the greater of the two 'evils' as you might have put
it, deserved to be put out of its misery.
>Rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" is just one example of the often absurd
>lengths to which the CIA. went, as recounted in a new book, "The Cultural
>Cold War: The CIA. and the World of Arts and Letters" (The New Press) by
>Frances Stonor Saunders, a British journalist. Published in Britain last
>summer, the book will appear in the U.S. in April.
>
>Traveling first class all the way, the CIA. and its counterparts in other
>Western European nations sponsored art exhibitions, intellectual
>conferences, concerts and magazines to press their larger anti-Soviet
>agenda.
Good. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian, backward and regressive thug
regime. Bringing it down was a step forward
>
>The CIA. also allegedly bankrolled some of the earliest exhibitions of
>Abstract Expressionist painting outside of the United States to counter the
>Socialist Realism being advanced by Moscow.
>
Abstract Expressionism is a *real* art movement, unlike the contrived and
artificial 'socialist realism'. Again, kudos to the CIA if this was true.
>
>It is well known that the CIA funded right-wing intellectuals after World
>War II;
'It is well-know that . . . " How many of Stalin's paragraphs began with this
phrase? It avoids having to provide proof of any sort. In any event, funding
intellectuals to defeat totalitarianism is hardly a bad thing.
fewer know that it also courted individuals from the center and the
>left in an effort to turn the intelligentsia away from communism and toward
>an acceptance of "the American way." Frances Stonor Saunders sifts through
>the history of the covert Congress for Cultural Freedom in The Cultural Cold
>War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. The book centers on the
>career of Michael Josselson, the principal intellectual figure in the
>operation, and his eventual betrayal by people who scapegoated him. Sanders
>demonstrates that, in the early days, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
>and the emergent CIA were less dominated by the far right than they later
>became, and that the idea of helping out progressive moderates--rather than
>being Machiavellian--actually appealed to the men at the top.
Duh.
>
>Many intellectuals were still drawn to Stalin's Russia. Saunders superbly
>traces the crisis of conscience that McCarthyism and its associated
>book-burning caused, and the subsequent rise of more moderate ideals. This
>exhaustive account, despite neglecting some important side issues, is an
>essential book. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk
>
>The Times [London]
>Saunders is right. This really is a crucial story, about the dangerous,
>compromising energies and manipulation of an entire and very recent age.
>
Gee. The very thought that democracy might, just *might* act to defend itself
against dictatorship really shocks the conscience.
>The Independent on Sunday
>Painstakingly researched...and jauntily written, alive to the ironies of a
>campaign for cultural freedom whose boundaries were circumscribed by its
>shady sponsors.
>
>>From Kirkus Reviews
>An impressively detailed, eye-opening study by film producer Saunders of the
>CIAs clandestine sponsorship of artists and intellectuals during the Cold
>War. Using interviews and archival data (taken mostly from sources outside
>the CIA, who routinely ignored her requests under the Freedom of Information
>Act),
I suppose security agencies should just hand out their playbook too, yes?
Saunders pieces together an elaborate network of CIA money-laundering
>schemes that funded cultural organizations opposed to communism. Starting
>with black accounts siphoned off from the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s,
>Saunders details how the CIA created or used nonprofit organizations such as
>the Ford Foundation to funnel millions of dollars to institutions like the
>Congress for Cultural Freedom and its affiliated programs. While few will be
>shocked that conservatives like Irving Kristol participated in CIA-backed
>projects, laymen will be surprised at how the Boston Symphony Orchestra and
>various abstract expressionist painters (via the Museum of Modern Art under
>Nelson Rockefeller, its president and an adviser to Eisenhower) benefitted
>from this largesse.
Again, be thankful they did.
BIG ONE
KPan769741 <kpan7...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20000329050543...@ng-cu1.aol.com...
> >
> >
> >The CIA. also allegedly bankrolled some of the earliest exhibitions
of
> >Abstract Expressionist painting outside of the United States to
counter the
> >Socialist Realism being advanced by Moscow.
> >
>
> Abstract Expressionism is a *real* art movement, unlike the
contrived and
> artificial 'socialist realism'. Again, kudos to the CIA if this was
true.
Funny thing is that the champion of this movement - Pollock -was only
chosen as such because he was Ameriskum. All the other (and much
greater) proponents were of foreign origin.
'a *real* art movement' Please type it again it's just too funny
Pollock came from the factory of 5000 'artists' employed by the
Federal Art Project
the philosophy of which was not to make great or even good art - just
to make sh*t loads of cr*p in a Roosevelt 'New Deal' for the
unemployed.
'The organisation of the project has proceeded on the principal that
it is not the solitary genius but a sound general movement which
maintains art as a vital, functioning part of any cultural scheme. Art
is not a matter of rare, occasional masterpieces.' -Holger Cahill
project director
Automated paint drips to reveal unconscious moods of an alcoholic =
'*real* art'
no composition or focus = random mess trimmed to fit = '*real* art'
No I don't think so
Perhaps you mean the works by the original Abstract Expressionist -
Kandinsky - now there was a real artist - at times both truly abstract
and expressionist , but I think you're calling on the Ny suckers who
stole the term (if not the talent)
Then there's those more talented but less well known painters of this
'*real* art movement' that just weren't the propaganda vehicle needed
(i.e. they either weren't yanks or had obviously foreign often German
names) by the great industrial nation with no soul. de Kooning(Dutch)
and Gottlieb (Adolph) were working in NY but weren't fit to wear the
crown, and incidentally weren't very abstract. And Rothko (Russian)
and Kline (Franz) were similarly nationally dismissed artists who
weren't very expressionist.
Just face it wasn't ever a movement - other than as that of a
propaganda machine to lie to the world that there could be a 'great'
north american artist
While Russian 'Socialist Realism' did not produce a single artist or
work of any lasting value - this was far from it's purpose as it was
for The Us. to fabricate one. Neglecting individuality is an artistic
crime of the same degree as granting it unbridled licence. and neither
can be called a '*real* art movement'. If you have any appreciation of
such things as expression you wouldn't be granting blessings on those
who wish to corrupt fair play. After all no one was going to like
socialist realism.