The Most Hated Artists in the World?
Nothing divides museum-goers like Abstract Expressionists. How did they become a global phenomenon, and what did the CIA have to do with it?
The very best assets to an intelligence agency can be found in unexpected places.
None can forget the world-famous entertainer Josephine Baker, who doubled as a spy for the Allies during the Second World War. Simultaneously, French fashion designer Coco Chanel worked as a Nazi informant, using her connections with political leaders on both sides of the war to collect secrets—in exchange for the release of her nephew from a German prisoner-of-war camp. As tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union reached a boiling point following the war, the Central Intelligence Agency turned to an unlikely place for its latest propaganda campaign.
By 1950, the Museum of Modern Art in New York had taken an interest in a group of painters known as the Abstract Expressionists, or the New York School. After years of political turmoil and unspeakable violence, and now facing the possibility of nuclear annihilation, it isn’t surprising that the subject matter that had once dominated art no longer resonated with them. Barnett Newman commented that the artists of his generation “felt the moral crisis of a world in shambles”:
…a world devastated by a great depression and a fierce world war, and it was impossible at the time to paint the kind of paintings that we were doing—flowers, reclining nudes, and people playing the cello. … This was our moral crisis in relation to what to paint.1
The Social Realist art of the Great Depression seemed insufficient to express the existential panic of the age. Jackson Pollock, inspired by the earlier Ukrainian-American painter Janet Sobel, began experimenting with drip painting. Others, like Mark Rothko, embraced “color fields” to express human thought on the canvas. In a 1943 letter to the New York Times, Rothko, Newman, and Adolph Gottlieb wrote:
We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.2
They denied the notion that these paintings had no subject; rather, they derived inspiration from the Abstract Surrealism of Joan Miró, from the writings of Carl Jung, from “psychic automation” as a method of accessing new forms. Their works were meant to express the chaos of an urban landscape, the unconscious mind, and the wide range of emotional experience.
Furthermore, they rejected the nationalistic undertone of works by American artists during the World Wars. In their studios and bars in Greenwich Village, artists like Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Clifford Still, and more found a loose cohort of like-minded peers. Many possessed leftist or even anarchic views. They certainly weren’t cut out to spy on the Soviets.
The CIA wasn’t interested in working directly with these painters. In what universe would they accept? But the agents at the CIA knew the power of art to move culture, and despite the political leanings of the artists themselves, Abstract Expressionism seemed to be the perfect cultural ambassador for American freedom. Compared to the extraordinary censorship and control of style under which Soviet artists labored, the Abstract Expressionists had the freedom to create wild, radical art. (There is undeniable irony here, as the McCarthy Trials were raging in the background.)
This was art that possessed a distinctive American flair, and the CIA was keen to use it to their advantage. Luckily for them, there was someone at the Museum of Modern Art who would make a strong collaborator.
Nelson Rockefeller lived a double-life. On one hand, he was the grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the Gilded Age-oil baron behind Standard Oil and the world’s first billionaire by 1916. Nelson Rockefeller’s mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was a co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art (along with Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan). By 1950, her son Nelson was the president of MoMA’s board.
A New York socialite may not appear to be an obvious CIA collaborator. But Nelson Rockefeller had previous experience serving as the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, which aimed to counter German propaganda in Latin America during World War II. (He would later serve as Vice President under Gerald Ford.)
Rockefeller was therefore the ideal man for the mission: he was rich, connected, and covered by the glossy sheen of high society. As MoMA’s president, he could help the CIA execute their plans, and the artists would be none the wiser. Their mission was to take an up-and-coming New York art movement and make it a global phenomenon.
Former CIA operative Tom Braden later reflected that pulling off such schemes were far easier in the past:
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 actually 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.3
Through shell organizations such as the Farfield Foundation and the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA could funnel money and resources into traveling exhibitions that sent Abstract Expressionism overseas. Preeminent among these was “The New American Painting,” an exhibition which ran from 1958 to 1959 in cities across Western Europe.
The timing for American art proved fortuitous. The damage of the World Wars slowed the recovery of Paris (hitherto the world’s leading art city), and New York was ready to take its place in the limelight. By the 1960s, the Abstract Expressionists were famous around the world.
It’s hard to think of a more divisive group of painters.
Several weeks ago, I shared an image of Mark Rothko’s Orange and Yellow (1956) on Substack Notes. The summer solstice had passed, and nothing reminds me of sweltering rays like Rothko’s color field. Immediately, this painting sparked debate in the comments.
Some spoke fondly of it and noted that Rothko’s work possesses a distinctive character and depth when viewed in person. Some commenters shared their frustration with Rothko’s minimalist style, likening it to a scam. Several noted the power of the debate itself—how one artist could provoke such intense reactions. One person left a poem.
I can understand why Abstract Expressionism elicits these varied responses. As I write this, I am reminded of a recent trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. My dad, the jolliest of Greek men, paused before a Rothko and remarked, with zero ill will, “I can do that!” (He is a contractor and a commercial painter, so in fairness, he does know a thing or two about rendering texture through paint. Nevertheless, I’m sure many readers have heard similar statements.) Another common whisper about Abstract Expressionism is that it’s all about money laundering, as works by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock are among the most expensive paintings ever sold. (I will note that the ultra-wealthy can wash their money through art of any period.)
While I tend to gravitate toward figurative art, I appreciate Abstract Expressionism for how it so perfectly captures a moment in time. After the devastation of war, perhaps all that makes sense is to splatter paint on a canvas, or to mine the colors of the subconscious. To me, Orange and Yellow is the heat of the solstice, optimism and possibility. To you, it may be something else entirely.
Recently in The Crossroads Gazette:
H. H. Arnason and Elizabeth C. Mansfield, History of Modern Art, Sixth Edition (Pearson, 2010), 403.
Arnason and Mansfield, History of Modern Art, 419.
Jennifer Dasal, ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History (Penguin Books, 2020), 34.
I understand the distrust of AE and believe that a skeptical approach to the assertions of any kind of art is healthy, whereas simplistic deference to experts breaks down the social trust necessary to elevate the very best above the others. That said, I think Pollack’s vision of “action painting” was special for its complexity, for its imitation of a natural process, and for its human scale, which was limited to the possibilities of a man’s arm moving over the canvas. For those reasons, I find it emotionally moving and thought-provoking, although I get why others might have a hard time with it.
I think it's unfair to conclude poor "quality" in a painting while disregarding the artist and the state of things around the painting. It's a complex matter. Come to think of it Warhol wasn't an artist at all 🥲
Protect Rothko at all costs.