| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Modern Art Was CIA Weapon |
| 2010-12-14 |
| Posted by:Grunter |
| #19 The new campus, built after the student riots of the later 1960s, was deliberated designed to discourage student gatherings and break up riots into groups small enough to be handled by the police The reason the streets of Paris were reworked into a grid pattern was for crowd control. Cannon could be placed at the intersections. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2010-12-14 23:14 |
| #18 There's the story of Picasso in occupied Paris. A German officer looking at Picasso's painting "Guernica" asks him: "Did you do this?" Picasso replied: "No, you did." |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2010-12-14 18:04 |
| #17 I wonder, will the CIA fund my watercolor painting classes? I like to use blue and green paints and I oppose Jihadists and rude fellows everywhere. |
| Posted by: whatadeal 2010-12-14 16:25 |
| #16 You're so ugly you can be a modern art master piece! Gunny Hartman, Full Metal Jacket |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-12-14 15:05 |
| #15 The preferred soviet art style was sometimes called 'heroic realism'. In this artistic style, the people are all healthy, hard working, patriotic, etc. |
| Posted by: Lord Garth 2010-12-14 14:59 |
| #14 Ah, that would explain Suprematism: it must have been the KGB's secret counterweapon! Mom's right: The Nazis put a lot of work into destroying modern art as a movement in Europe. Rather unsurprisingly, Stalin hated it as well. To learn more about the Nazi's war on modern art you can read Lyn H. Nicholas' excellent and painstakingly researched Rape of Europa, or see the documentary with the same name. The Nazi's and Soviets were big time art thieves as well, stealing whatever the didn't destroy. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2010-12-14 14:43 |
| #13 How about contemporary architecture? I studied at the University of Buffalo, part of the State U. of NY system. The old campus was done in the classic, ivy-covered walls style. The new campus, built after the student riots of the later 1960s, was deliberated designed to discourage student gatherings and break up riots into groups small enough to be handled by the police (or whomever). So while the CIA may not have been involved in architecture as a weapon, architecture was certainly used for a while for deliberate behaviour modification and control. No doubt that is also why the grad student dorms were at the old campus at the edge of the city, while the undergrads were domiciled in the suburban isolation of the new campus. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-12-14 14:36 |
| #12 Brief historical note: The Nazis gathered up all the art that was offensive to party sensibilities and made the mistake of presenting an exhibition of it to show the people what horrors the mighty Nazis were protecting them from. The Nazis had to close the exhibit because people lined up around the block for days to see it. On a related topic: "After the Shock is Gone: Pity the poor artist trying to get a rise out of an audience today" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703377504575650882413327998.html?KEYWORDS=Eric+felten |
| Posted by: mom 2010-12-14 14:03 |
| #11 Frank Zappa was very popular in Soviet Lithuania. Vilnius is the only place they erected a monument for him (after the Soviets left). Hmmmm |
| Posted by: European Conservative 2010-12-14 13:00 |
| #10 Frank wins the thread. |
| Posted by: Mike 2010-12-14 12:26 |
| #9 Considering the platform these artists were placed upon for my generation's students it likely irrated the hell out of the writer that the artwork was used for such means. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2010-12-14 12:20 |
| #8 Good snark, Frank. But you raise an interesting point. If modern art drove the Bolsheviks nuts, just think what the Jefferson Airplane would do to them. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2010-12-14 12:10 |
| #7 To promote openness and free-enterprise, the CIA established a secret, government program that undermined the preferences of free citizens by subsidizing unwanted art. Of course to freely express your opinion that abstract modernist art sucked, was "Philistinism". This article was clearly written by an elitist fabian socialist of the London intelligentsia set. |
| Posted by: mjhlaw 2010-12-14 11:49 |
| #6 Heh. Good one, Frank. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2010-12-14 10:38 |
| #5 Yoko Ono singing was one of the first Active Crowd Dispersal (ACD) weapons |
| Posted by: Frank G 2010-12-14 10:35 |
| #4 Well, it is history... doesn't come with an expiration date unless you're way, way too deep into revisionist historiographical politics. I've heard about the CIA's European subsidy to culture and intellectual institutions; I don't think I noticed this bit about American art subsidies. Somehow, it fits with my internal stereotype of the liberal-fascist tendencies of the very WASPy, idiot-pretentious CIA that they'd be so very, very bad at patronizing the art world. It's not as if their brothers and uncles in corporate America were doing any better, leaving us with a public cultural landscape littered with massive, deranged aluminum monstrosities looming over empty, arid concrete plazas. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2010-12-14 10:29 |
| #3 Do not assume for a moment that this is nonsensical as it sounds. The OSS and later, the CIA, did an awful lot of serious psychological analysis of fascist and communist fanatics, and reached some very useful conclusions. For example, HUAC investigators were taught to tell surreal and funny jokes to suspected communists, because it had been discovered that their world view was so restrictive, that any irrationality would be ignored. They couldn't honestly laugh. If they laughed, it was forced. In this case, the way fanatics *defined* art, was not as something that "broadened horizons", but as something that accurately reflected their fanatical worldview. This was why National Socialist art was so similar to Socialist Realism art. Idealized realism was good. Surrealism was evil and decadent, and thus forbidden to their artists. It also irritated the heck out of the fanatics. A bonus. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-12-14 10:25 |
| #2 By Frances Stonor Saunders Sunday, 22 October 1995 Way to stay up with current affairs! |
| Posted by: gromky 2010-12-14 10:13 |
| #1 How about contemporary architecture? |
| Posted by: gorb 2010-12-14 09:53 |