Modern Abstract Art and the CIA
No longer a conspiracy theory, we now know for a fact (confirmed by CIA officials) that the CIA was behind the modern abstract art movement – an art disconnected from human identity and aspirations in which any child or monkey could produce. During the Cold War, the CIA secretly funded and controlled scores of US student, labor, religious, political and artistic organizations according to the book “The Mighty Wurlitzer” (2008) by Hugh Wilford.
They were modeled after Soviet propagandist Willi Munzenberg’s “Popular Front” organizations which had recruited earnest Westerners (Socialists and Liberals) in an array of “anti Fascist” causes. These seemingly spontaneous groups were secretly funded and run by Moscow (through the CPUSA) and subtly promoted Communism. Munzenberg called them his “innocents’ clubs.”
The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – ostensibly as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince – except that it acted secretly – the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the “long leash” – arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.
Mark Rothko, for example, was born in the Russian Empire in 1903 (modern day Latvia) and ended up in America in 1913. Being a Russian artist in America made him the perfect CIA tool, and apparently his art served that purpose unbeknownst to him.
Pollock stood over his canvas, stomping, whipping his brush, almost dancing across his paintings. It was wild, and raw, and—from an artistic perspective—quite powerful stuff. The reason it disgusted so many Americans then (and now) was that it was the exact antithesis of the older stuff. Norman Rockwell stuff. It didn’t just break the rules of painting, it was entirely ruleless—ditto the work of Pollock’s peers. Abstract Expressionism was meant to be the unmitigated will of a human being, blasted onto a canvas in the form of paint. And, thought the CIA, it was American as hell.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art – President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.” As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normal Americans would think were likely to receive US government backing.
Why did the CIA support them? They say that it was because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete. “Their painting, with its gestural expression of the artist’s consciousness and total rejection of representation, constituted a massive rebuke to…Soviet art..” (The Mighty Wurlitzer, p.106)
The ugly truth is that the CIA, while pretending to reject socialist realism, advanced the Illuminati agenda which is to make art discordant, irrelevant and ugly. “Modernism” mirrors a gradual perversion of reality and morality by the Illuminati bankers. What we regard as “progress” is really the advance of their satanist agenda. It is the change in “changing the world.” The CIA also financed the cultural magazines, (Encounter, Partisan Review) critics (Clement Greenberg) and art museums through a network of foundations and Illuminati millionaires like Nelson Rockefeller and John Hay Whitney.
Similarly, modern literary criticism is a linguistic voodoo divorced from the author’s social reality, biography or intention. Literature was treated like a self-contained artifact. Isolated words or sentences were analyzed like holy writ and presented as truth.
The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. The new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organizations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.
The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organizations Division (IOD) was set up under Tom Braden. It was this office which subsidized the animated version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which sponsored American jazz artists, opera recitals, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s international touring program. Its agents were placed in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers for the celebrated Fodor guides. And, we now know, it promoted America’s anarchic avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism.
Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organized and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled “Advancing American Art“. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: “I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash.” The tour had to be cancelled.
The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.
The connection is not quite as odd as it might appear. At this time the new agency, staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover’s FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.
Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, broke the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.
“Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I’d love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!” he joked. “But I think that what we did really was to recognize the difference. It was recognized that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylized and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.
“In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticized that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another.”
To pursue its underground interest in America’s lefty avant-garde, the CIA had to be sure its patronage could not be discovered. “Matters of this sort could only have been done at two or three removes,” Mr Jameson explained, “so that there wouldn’t be any question of having to clear Jackson Pollock, for example, or do anything that would involve these people in the organization. And it couldn’t have been any closer, because most of them were people who had very little respect for the government, in particular, and certainly none for the CIA. If you had to use people who considered themselves one way or another to be closer to Moscow than to Washington, well, so much the better perhaps.”
This was the “long leash”. The centerpiece of the CIA campaign became the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a vast jamboree of intellectuals, writers, historians, poets, and artists which was set up with CIA funds in 1950 and run by a CIA agent. It was the beach-head from which the Illuminati war on culture (art, feminism, homosexuality, sexual impropriety, etc.) could be cloaked and secretly deployed and promoted. At its height, it had offices in 35 countries and published more than two dozen magazines, including Encounter.
The Congress for Cultural Freedom also gave the CIA the ideal front to promote its covert interest in Abstract Expressionism. It would be the official sponsor of touring exhibitions; its magazines would provide useful platforms for critics favorable to the new American painting; and no one, the artists included, would be any the wiser.
This organization put together several exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism during the 1950s. One of the most significant, “The New American Painting“, visited every big European city in 1958-59. Other influential shows included “Modern Art in the United States” (1955) and “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century” (1952).
Because Abstract Expressionism was expensive to move around and exhibit, millionaires and museums were called into play. Pre-eminent among these was Nelson Rockefeller, whose mother had co-founded the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As president of what he called “Mummy’s museum”, Rockefeller was one of the biggest backers of Abstract Expressionism (which he called “free enterprise painting”). His museum was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to organize and curate most of its important art shows.
The museum was also linked to the CIA by several other bridges. William Paley, the president of CBS broadcasting and a founding father of the CIA, sat on the members’ board of the museum’s International Program. John Hay Whitney, who had served in the agency’s wartime predecessor, the OSS, was its chairman. And Tom Braden, first chief of the CIA’s International Organizations Division, was executive secretary of the museum in 1949.
But look where this art ended up: in the marble halls of banks, in airports, in city halls, boardrooms and great galleries. For the Cold Warriors who promoted them, these paintings were a logo, a signature for their culture and system which they wanted to display everywhere that counted. They succeeded.
Covert Operation
In 1958 the touring exhibition “The New American Painting“, including works by Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell and others, was on show in Paris. The Tate Gallery was keen to have it next, but could not afford to bring it over. Late in the day, an American millionaire and art lover, Julius Fleischmann, stepped in with the cash and the show was brought to London.
The money that Fleischmann provided, however, was not his but the CIA’s. It came through a body called the Farfield Foundation, of which Fleischmann was president, but far from being a millionaire’s charitable arm, the foundation was a secret conduit for CIA funds.
So, unknown to the Tate, the public or the artists, the exhibition was transferred to London at American taxpayers’ expense to serve subtle Cold War propaganda purposes. A former CIA man, Tom Braden, described how such conduits as the Farfield Foundation were set up. “We would go to somebody in New York who was a well-known rich person and we would say, ‘We want to set up a foundation.’ We would tell him what we were trying to do and pledge him to secrecy, and he would say, ‘Of course I’ll do it,’ and then you would publish a letterhead and his name would be on it and there would be a foundation. It was really a pretty simple device.”
Julius Fleischmann was well placed for such a role. He sat on the board of the International Program of the Museum of Modern Art in New York – as did several powerful figures close to the CIA.
The CIA’s involvement in the promotion of Abstract Expressionism exemplifies the aesthetic terrorist’s strategy of tricking opposition into abandoning its self-avowed principles and adopting nihilism. Abstract Expressionism is one of several artistic trends that has been commensurate with America’s cultural decline. Since its introduction to the Western ethos, American art has almost completely eschewed any expressions of truth and beauty. Instead, most modern American art celebrates all that is ugly and unintelligible. This trend is symptomatic of a pervasive nihilism that has choked the life out of most American principles.
Meanwhile, the alleged mutability of values has become a chronically reiterated mantra in the marketplace of ideas. In keeping with the tradition of aesthetic terrorism, those trumpeting this relativistic proclamation have situated themselves outside of time, thereby establishing their own appetite-laden opinions as absolute. Like the existentialists, they have enshrined their own customized meaning as an objective metaphysical principle. Again, the irony of this enshrinement becomes painfully evident when one considers the fact that an objective metaphysical principle invariably gives way to a definite teleology. Such a consequence undermines the dysteleological foundations upon which the modern artistic radicals have built their outlook. However, the camouflage of art renders that outlook ostensibly tenable.
Given their potential for such dubious applications, one must question the extent to which the arts inform the Weltanschauungs of Americans. Zacharias observes:
To be sure, the arts have always had, and should have, a role in the imagination and entertainment of a society. What is so unique in our society, though, is the all-pervasive influence of the arts, even upon matters of transcending importance—in effect, desacralizing everything and programming our very beings. (Can Man Live Without God? 12)
If life imitates art, then one must wonder what is being programmed into very being of America. Of course, biographical criticism can elucidate the relationship authors and their artistic works. This relationship can provide clues concerning the normative claims waiting just below the surface of a particular piece of art. Perhaps a similar examination of those who promote certain forms of art can be equally profitable. Considering the criminal pedigrees of the Rockefeller dynasty and the CIA, the societal portrait that audiences are intended to imbibe is an ominous one. Little else could be gleaned from a biographical criticism of those who weaponize the arts.
Art & Money Laundering
Perhaps another reason for the CIA’s interest in the art industry was the potential role of high-end art and antiquities in money laundering schemes. The CIA’s involvement in trafficking drugs, weapons, and humans provided the need to launder money for those clandestine operations. The art world typically accommodates those that want to anonymously buy high-dollar paintings (the Bank Secrecy Act does not apply to art transactions), and on top of that, the industry (thanks to the globalist controllers) allows large cash deals. For those looking to launder money, it’s difficult to conjure up a more attractive set of circumstances than those.
“Art is a very attractive vehicle to launder money,” says Peter D. Hardy, a former US prosecutor who now advises corporations and industries on compliance with anti-money-laundering requirements. “It can be hidden or smuggled, transactions often are private, and prices can be subjective and manipulated—and extremely high.” Upward of 90 percent of auction catalog listings for valuable antiquities provide scant information about the seller. Tracing the ownership of anonymous shell companies, including those involved in high-value art transactions, is difficult.
According to a 2020 Senate investigation:
A large number of art sales happen through intermediaries referred to as ‘art advisors’ who can represent both purchasers and sellers. In a typical transaction, a purchaser may not ask who owns the piece of art they are purchasing; the seller may not ask for whom it is being purchased or the origin of the money. And in general an art advisor would be reluctant to reveal the identity of their client for fear of being cut out of the deal and losing the business.” As a result, “auction houses treat an art agent or dealer as the principle purchaser of art, even if they [have] reason to believe they were working with an undisclosed client.” This creates a “significant AML vulnerability” because “[t]his practice enables the auction house to perform due diligence on the art agent or dealer instead of identifying and evaluating the undisclosed client[.]”
According to Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, who is chairperson of the subcommittee that issued the Report, “[i]t is shocking that U.S. banking regulations don’t currently apply to multimillion-dollar art transactions, and we cannot let that continue . . . . The art industry currently operates under a veil of secrecy allowing art advisers to represent both sellers and buyers masking the identities of both parties, and as we found, the source of the funds. This creates an environment ripe for laundering money and evading sanctions.”
With the CIA’s creation of abstract worthless art in the 1950’s that sold for hundreds of thousands ad even millions with their own price manipulationg, they had great control over the industry whether they chose abstract art or traditional art. They have kept the industry unregulated for decades. Will it continue?
There are plenty of instances on record where art has played a role in the act of money laundering. Consider that when the Mexican government passed a law in the early 2010s to require more information about buyers, and how much cash could be spent on a single piece of art, the market cratered, as sales dipped 70 percent in less than a year. Many believed that was because Mexican cartel rings had previously been the biggest buyers in the market.
So how does one launder money in the art world? The Globe and Mail reports that some of the cases are very straightforward. Let’s suppose someone has $10 million dollars on hand. They could buy a Picasso at an auction in, say, Geneva, and have the painting immediately moved to storage at a “freeport,” or a high security storage space near the airport. The painting could be then anonymously sold without ever moving an inch, and the new buyer would have it retrieved from the same freeport. Suddenly, the original buyer, turned seller, has money from what is considered a legitimate business deal. The Economist estimated in 2013 that the Geneva freeport might hold $100 billion worth of U.S. art, sitting tucked away in a space that also functions as a tax haven.
Other cases are more complicated. Take, for example, a story about Jean Michel Basquiat’s Hannibal painting, estimated to be worth $8 million. The work was smuggled into the U.S. by convicted Brazilian money launderer and former banker Edemar Cid Ferreira. The painting had come to the U.S. “from Brazil, via the Netherlands, with false shipping invoices stating that the contents of the shipment were worth $100.” Presumably, Ferreira was on his way to the U.S. to sell the painting.
Then there is the case of international terrorism, where bands like ISIS have been noted for their laundering of cultural antiquities. Whereas much of the area that ISIS controlled has been taken over by government-backed forces, it is reported that the group still controls millions of dollars—and possibly hundreds of millions—thanks in large part to a robust antiquities trade.
In 2017, the Wall Street Journal published a longform feature reporting how, exactly, ISIS turns these artifacts into revenue. The process begins with ISIS-affiliated jihadists overseeing local digging groups in Iraq in Syria. If and when an object of value is found, the digger sells it to ISIS officials at a discounted price. The goods are sold to independent middlemen who smuggle them out of the country, into border countries like Lebanon and Turkey. Eventually the goods find their way to warehouses in Europe where they await a Western buyer.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the underground art market, which includes thefts, fakes, illegal imports, and organized looting, may bring in as much as $6 billion annually. The portion attributed to money laundering and other financial crimes is in the $3 billion range.
Not surprisingly, the art industry (again, controlled by the CIA) has and continues actively fighting any regulation attempts by government. Some sectors assert that examples of actual money laundering via the art trade are rare or exaggerated by law enforcement agencies eager to generate sensational headlines. Others, like the International Confederation of Art and Antique Dealers Associations, say the reporting requirements are too burdensome for smaller players in the art market.
A proposed federal regulation — dubbed the “Hunter Biden Rule” — was submitted in October 2021 by the Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center to the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The effort was the NLPC’s response to an imminent sale of paintings, priced between $75,000 and $500,000, at a Manhattan art gallery by President Biden’s son, Hunter, who had a history of pay-for-play schemes involving his father as a high-ranking deocrat legislature and president at the time of the art sales.
Sources:
- https://educate-yourself.org/cn/makowculturecontrol06oct13.shtml
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
- https://www.conspiracyarchive.com/2014/11/19/weaponizing-the-arts/
See also:
- The History of Arts in the Church (VIDEO)
- Early Christian Art (VIDEO)
- A Visit to the CIA’s “Secret” Abstract Art Collection
- Superficial Christian Art (VIDEO)
- The First Christian Art and its Early Developments – Lord Richard Harries (VIDEO)
- Ernst Zundel on Modern Art
- Dark Secrets of the Art World from an Insider
Chronological History of Events Related to Art
The ‘Plumb-pudding in danger’, or, ‘State Epicures taking un Petit Souper’ Cartoon
