The beginning

This is a strange story - dealt with rather telegraphically and often leaving the reader to adjust to gaps and switches of focus, with names and events skated over in order to indicate the scale of the scenario. And much is still uncovered.

We are told by Cosmologists that the nearer we approach to the zero moment of creation of the universe (the Big Bang) the more we can know about today and predict the future. Via the basic elements a specific dynamic followed: exponential expansion, creating as it went its own space.

This concept is one which fits all kinds of events. Here, my interpretation concerns Modern Western Culture’s Big Bang - over the 19-20th centuries in the visual arts... under the all embracing title of the

Modern Movement. Mostly dealing with fine art, while bringing in other areas which had different experiences which seem relevant. For the story proposes the existence of a kind of counter-bang : launched in post-war culture as a kind of social-engineering experiment for political and military ends. It’s originality was in the concept rather than the execution - to harness culture as an accessory, ignoring its intrinsic worth which was of no strategic consequence. It was put in place to keep the lively elements of the Europeans postwar fairly harmless, with the political intent of resisting socialism. Something many had suffered persecution defending ; amongst the exiles and those who survived the war and stayed on...

This counter-bang operated within the terrain of the Modern Movement, deliberately ; it was incapable of creating its own - it inevitably pushed the authentic into the margins - for big figures respect was shown but they could not form their independent spheres of influence, they had to be embedded. This counter-bang is still expanding and robbing the original space of oxygen - although what it is producing is rather hysterical the host is getting weak.

“Who Paid the Piper?... the CIA and the Cultural Cold War” by Frances Stonor Saunders deals largely with the literary world and the methods used, particularly the poet, Stephen Spender and the magazine Encounter. Where he was editor and apparently quite unaware that he was being paid by the CIA with assistance and support from M16. As they said, if you weren’t shrewd enough to figure it out, simply keep the person being used happy with denials - some didn’t want to know.

For art no such in-depth analysis exists yet while evidence suggests that its exploitation was swifter and more dramatic. It seems that each area of culture had its specific handlers with somewhat different briefs. In the US the movie world and its writers suffered a seismic shock in 1947 with the McCarthy government hearings and general witch-hunt which went much wider than culture. They had to be shown the stick and to this day they have never been allowed to forget that it could happen again - but they were targeted by Hoover end the FBI. Ostensibly, the art plan for export was in the hands of the CIA and they were not meant to be active internally - but the setting up of the plan was dependent on long preparation in New York. For this reason alone covert carrots were preferred to overt actions.

There artists of all stripes and their nascent agents had to be American to get the full treatment of nurture and sponsorship since that is what policy demanded. Policy from Washington. Out of this was born the Abstract Expressionist group... the two names which have been retained as most representing that moment are Pollock and Rothko, although the latter was trying for a stylistic variant. While Pollock reflects some early Alexander Rodchenko (one of the original and prolific members of the Russian Constructivist movement) experiments, Rothko’s attempt at mysticism, à la Malevich, is a very thin affair.

Realistic judgement of quality was the first casualty of the cultural invasion of Europe. Today the work of Malevich is presented as a sort of historical accessory to Rothko. Ludicrous to anyone with a decent eye - I thought so in the 50’s and have never changed. Pollock chose a technique where nature did half the work so it has survived better. The cast selected in New York probably had no real idea they were to be made into mega-stars in the fairly small world of “advanced” art. They must have just been glad to find an answer to the insecurity of bohemianism in the rather small-time NYC milieu. Ditto for their agents and portentous theorists à la Continental sophisticates. Some of the latter were by then living in New York. Art CIA-style had its special field territory defined and mixing was not encouraged, That is pretty much the case today, both in the US and the UK and even the long-since colonized Continent. From time to time efforts are made to cross-fertilize but they are not encouraged because it messes up the territories of the controllers. Powerful State patronage sees to that - often concealed, as at the beginning. It’s attractive to a bureaucratic system. To divert attention artists are chosen increasingly who look bizarre.

What we are seeing now is a variant of the early formula to control modernism for purposes which have little to do with original thought or inspiration... while the presence of such qualities is needed to justify the raison d’être of the entire activity and public investment. Recent public protest at the authoritarian imposition of clunking coneptualists at huge expense and over-weening conceit is not surprising.