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imomus
Well, we're on a roll with this "politics hidden in apparently non-political art and design" stuff. Yesterday we looked at how General Motors, in 1958, attempted to weld Modernism to the American Way. Today, let's look at a similar attempt to mix apparently-neutral cultural forms with politics that was going on at the same time. On November 29th Arte television aired When the CIA Infiltrated Culture, a documentary based on three years of research into a secret, highly ambitious "Marshall Plan of culture": the CIA's efforts to promote "the freedom of individual choice" in postwar Europe by... subsidizing the arts. Using front organizations like the Farfield Foundation and the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA channelled millions of dollars into the European cultural scene during the 1950s and 60s in an attempt to alter the intellectual DNA of the continent. If you wanted the CIA on your side, paradoxes abounded:
"no ideology" had to become your ideology. You had to banish politics from your work for entirely political reasons. You were free to be anything except critical of "freedom", and you could pick any individual stance except a pro-collective individual stance. What's more, your anti-government, pro-market position had to be bankrolled by the government and protected from the market.Since the aesthetic favoured by pro-Soviets in Europe tended to include stuff like political commitment, realism, melody, and representation -- the communists deplored "decadent formalism" above all -- the CIA (somewhat incredibly, to our eyes) threw its weight behind atonal music and Abstract Expressionism. Concerts and exhibitions of the most inaccessible, anti-populist, non-commercial avant garde artists flourished. "The ideology of the CIA was that the West had to be the most modern of the modern," says Gunter Grass, interviewed for the documentary. "The result was a sort of Kandinsky kitsch."
One direct result of the CIA's efforts was a series of literary journals which attacked European intellectuals who aligned themselves with communism. There was, it seems, one in each major European country. There was Preuves in France, Encounter in the UK, Tempo Presente in Italy and Der Monat in Germany. Presided over by impressive intellectuals like Heinrich Boll, Arthur Koestler, Solzenitsyn, Raymond Aron, Isiah Berlin, Ignazione Silone and Steven Spender, these journals regularly attacked even more impressive intellectuals who also happened to be leftists -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Charlie Chaplin, Arthur Miller, Pablo Neruda and even Thomas Mann. In the campaign against Neruda's writing, the CIA stressed that the magazine shouldn't attack him on political grounds, but "on the quality of his writing". The mud didn't stick; Neruda won the Nobel Prize in 1971.Meanwhile, in France Preuves competed head-to-head with Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes. Raymond Aron, the editor of Preuves, had clashed with Sartre at the Ecole Normale Superieure, so it was very much a personal as well as an ideological battle for him. But Aron had American taxpayer's money giving his magazine immunity to market imperatives (ironically enough) and allowing him to pay his writers better. CIA money was also secretly buoying up -- and altering -- such venerable cultural institutions as the ICA in London and the Musee Nationale D'Art Moderne in Paris.
"We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, artists, composers, to demonstrate that the West and the USA would give opportunities for intellectual achievement without anyone dictating to them what they had to say and think, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union," says Tom Braden, the patrician CIA officer who was chief of the International Organizations Division of the Directorate of Plans, the office that ran the Congress for Cultural Freedom and Encounter magazine. The CIA did, however, dictate what the recipients of its money could say and think. A negative article on America by Dwight Macdonald for Encounter was vetoed by the bosses in Paris. "The Congress for Cultural Freedom believed in all freedoms except the freedom to criticize the United States," remarked one cynic.The CIA renounced its role as a patron of the arts only when the Vietnam war polarized politics, breaking up the middle ground and shattering the illusion that something as indirect as art could foment gentle, benign political swings. As Michael Rogin wrote in The Nation:
"With the exposure of CIA secret influence and with the divisions over the war in Vietnam, the utility of the non-Communist left in the cultural cold war had come to an end. When some of the same faces resurfaced a decade later, first in the Committee on the Present Danger (the group of intellectuals and politicians instrumental in heating up the cold war) and then in the Reagan regime, they would speak as neoconservatives."
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 10:03 am (UTC)Michael and Kiyomi here in the Bay Area, CA.
We've recently been enjoying the website and
yours and Hisae's hijinks from afar. We'll be moving
back to Japan next year ourselves. Perhaps we'll run
into you guys sometime when you're there.
Regarding the CIA/culture tampering connection,
coincidentally, I've been reading James Campbell's
Exiled in Paris about the expat literary scene there
in the 50s and 60s and there's mention of a possible CIA
connection to George Plimpton's and Peter Matthiessen's
own journal The Paris Review in the 50s. What next?
Mother Jones' secret editor-at-large revealed to be
Donald Rumsfeld?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 10:30 am (UTC)See you in Tokyo!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-11 09:35 am (UTC)In the postwar years, William Glock at BBC Radio Three embraced the new Stockhausen/Boulez avant garde. Of course he couldn't stop performances of established composers like Britten, but young composers soon got the message that, if they wanted to get their music heard or performed by BBC orchestras, this was the new received style, and they'd better follow it. Robin Holloway told me that, as a young composer, he wrote pieces he didn't particularly like, but he knew that the Glockists controlling Radio Three would like them. He'd get performed, and at least he'd learn something from hearing his music being played by a serious orchestra. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the conceptual artists of the 90s Turner Prize world eventually reveal that they didn't really like the work they were doing, but they knew that this was what Nicholas Serota liked.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 10:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 10:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 10:24 am (UTC)The CIA's oddly disturbing projects aside, concepts like these are why someone should've really given Oscar Wilde the tongue-lashing of the century right after he published the wonderfully confused The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 11:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-11 01:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-11 01:59 pm (UTC)again while doing a good job in discussing the particular country's internal problems, creating an unambiguous image of 'the west' was pretty nasty and basically on a par with the local propaganda machine. (no, actually much much worse since the public was basically mentally, critically equiped to deal with the local propgnda)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 11:07 am (UTC)The neo-cons have become the paleo-gones, and THE COLD WAR IS BACK!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 12:06 pm (UTC)Whilst it is completely believable there is a Dr. Stranglelovesque beautifully absurd comedy to it.
"If we can't nuke 'em we'll just hit 'em with a twelve tone row backed by a barrage of aleatory elements"
You need to write a song on this, Nick.
Regards
Thomas Scott.
A Philip Glass
Date: 2006-12-10 12:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 01:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 12:58 pm (UTC)The CIA; what a bunch of fellows. I have a friend who teaches at the LSE, who was at Berkley in the late 60's. On his way home late one night with a Chilean friend who was politically active, they were stopped and ordered to get out of their car by a group of men, and his companion was shot dead in front of him.
I suppose I'll be thought a liar or something for telling this here, and perhaps it is pointless to share something like it without the possibility of verification. But, what can I say? I don't want to be seen as a fruitloop... but I'm not a liar, and I know my friend to be a grounded and trustworthy man.
The mess of berkeley
Date: 2006-12-10 04:34 pm (UTC)http://www.cheapsurrealism.com/movies/Berkeley002.mov (http://www.cheapsurrealism.com/movies/Berkeley002.mov)
Re: The mess of berkeley
Date: 2006-12-11 02:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 01:59 pm (UTC)I've always felt that abstract art was terribly neutral and subjective. But I can see how the abstraction can open the mind to surreal vistas unimagined, the same with atonal music. Figurative art was compared to soviet realism, while abstract expressionism acted as our own capitalist abstraction, a blank slate which looks good on a big wall in an office building. Figurative painting is still on the outs, it seems, because it looks old-fashioned (the market loves the new), but also because it often deals with psychological/physical issues which cause unease. Harder to sell. There are some exceptions though, like Joihn Currin's new show (http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0650,saltz,75243,13.html) or Matthew Barney (http://community.livejournal.com/contemporaryart/129692.html) ...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 02:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 02:36 pm (UTC)What I find odd about these paintings is the way they resist collection. I guess I'm naive, but I thought people bought painting to hang it somewhere in their home and meditate on the artist's message. Hard to imagine these paintings hanging in the homes of the rich. But maybe in Hollywood. But of course they buy art as an investment and stock it away somewhere, or lend it out to museums. Tax write off ...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 02:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 07:23 pm (UTC)I suppose if the central focus of an individual's life is the acquisition of money and if said individual finds them self fiscally well equipped enough to buy an expensive work of art then one can hardly expect them to see the art as anything other than just another commodity, another boast for the dinner party.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 04:27 pm (UTC)Maybe the later minimalists like Brice Marden or Sol LeWitt could fairly be called "neutral", but Philip Guston? Willem DeKooning? I think not.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 04:30 pm (UTC)http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/156584596X
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 05:49 pm (UTC)Pollack and Warhol are the only times artists have entered the U.S. public consciousness.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 07:07 pm (UTC)Thomas Scott.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 08:37 pm (UTC)Pollacks?
Polish?
Polloc?
Never mind the Polloc's, here is the C.I.A.
Those who anonymously designed the Dollar sign and the green Dollar bills probably made the only art that entered the U.S. public consciousness.
Andy would agree.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 09:29 pm (UTC)Arte began in 1992, under Sozialismus rule.
How one can trust Hans-Rüdiger Minow or Arte? Cause it's on TV? Because it is written? When one look into that topic page for more info, it lead to a page on smart second world war allied prisoners who escaped Colditz!
Yah, let's blame the C.I.A. responsible for promoting all these modernist nihilist european art and litterature but let's not forget as well all these contemporary artistocrats who lend oath of allegiance to the politicians and civils servant, whose artistic activity becomes a load, as there were some under l'Ancien Régime.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 09:57 pm (UTC)weapons of massed attention
Date: 2006-12-10 11:03 pm (UTC)~William Thirteen
Re: weapons of massed attention
Date: 2006-12-10 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 11:46 pm (UTC)The US has done some downright dastardly things, but nothing comparable to Stalin's holocaust against the Slavic peoples, etc. etc. etc. It's always somebody totally disconnected from horror who romanticizes it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-11 12:57 am (UTC)Really, all that's left is to figure out some way that America can be held responsible for events that occurred before America existed as a nation. Sounds like a concept album in the making!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-11 07:39 am (UTC)Now now, let's not be hyperbolic. Nobody here is starting out with that premise.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-11 11:17 am (UTC)Das Netz
Date: 2006-12-11 01:01 am (UTC)http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=14&articleid=35
http://niddrie-edge.livejournal.com/tag/das+netz
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-11 10:04 am (UTC)http://jacketmagazine.com/12/pybus-quad.html
The magazine itself still exists (and is still a playground for right-wing intellectuals):
http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/issue_view.php
- Hugo
More on CIA arts support
Date: 2006-12-12 07:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 08:53 pm (UTC)Slow IN THE PAST? Yow...
Date: 2007-01-23 08:12 pm (UTC)Anyway, what's this about people being slow *IN THE PAST* about unread literary efforts being surprisingly well funded. Good grief: no one reads or buys any novels, chaps or journals produced by the hundreds of well-funded MFA departments in the USA today. It's all *STILLLLLL* a scam! Funded by whom for what? It might as well be the CIA! What's the point of lit today: atmosphere, style, detail... Ah yes.
The parallel of today's lit to the BBC music/orchestra situation is hilarious. (People producing bad work that a boss figure will like.) Maybe this is how the "fancy" arts have always worked? Posing foisted from on high. When has it been different? ---Except in the underground.
The ULA first broke the CIA/PR/PM story. Check us out at http://literaryrevolution.com. We're the only literary activist group out there, banding together to get our voices some impact. We promote nonacademized writers from the nonNYC hinterlands who have actual fans and followings and who think relevance is still relevant. We expose the hidden workings of the MFA machine. We dare establishment flacks to debate both ideas and real-world projects.
What fun!
Re: Slow IN THE PAST? Yow...
Date: 2007-01-23 09:33 pm (UTC)Paul Dacre, editor of the UK's right-leaning Daily Mail newspaper, made a speech (http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/230107/paul_dacre_bbc_subsidariat_media_journalism_daily_mail_associated_newspapers) the other day attacking the "subsidariat" (the quality newspapers which are subsidised by the big-selling tabloids) and calling the BBC "cultural Marxists" for being more liberal in their perspective than the majority of the British public.
I think the danger with your attack on "the MFA machine" is that it might play into a right wing populist account of things, a view a bit like Dacre's. A certain amount of unpopular culture should, I think, be funded. Just not for propaganda, obviously.
Re: Slow IN THE PAST? Yow...
Date: 2007-01-24 03:28 pm (UTC)A certain amount of unpop should be funded, sure. But so should some indy lit. That's what's being denied today, not the unpop stuff.
It's interesting seeing the notion above that the CIA impact on art ended with Vietnam. Maybe the overt support is over (but why should we think that?). But it seems like their mission of turning art away from everyday life (social issues, relevancy...even politics) has succeeded and is still in place. Especially in literature. It maybe doesn't even need overt funding. The style is the rule. No, it needs funding: people wouldn't write that crap if they didn't want the money.
The indy music and film scenes seem to be thriving. Not so indy lit...yet.
The solution is easy: go to the true indy writers who've been getting the job done all along, if in obscure populist penury of the sort that funding was intended to relieve. Funny stuff.
It's amazing how both the Soviet and CIA systems resulted in credentialism. Both included with upperclass elites, too. And it's amazing the impact of their lameness. Their actual operations are always botched, but enough money does the trick.
We in the ULA have been exposing the inevitable disasters of elitist/credentialism. We gave a strong hint that it related to the CIA (by breaking that story first), but the dynamic duo of elitist/credentialism gives plenty of rope.
The CIA revelation is great because it's a shocker. We can use it to break the issue thru to the public awareness. It's rare that art gets such a hook, as you've mentioned. OK, maybe using it for clarity will be a bit tricky: showing how "freedom" works to prevent freedom... Our public has some catching up to do on what's being done in its name. Basically, it's just dropped lit entirely as something not of interest except to some sub-group of Fresh Air fans. What a win for the CIA...or credentialists...or nichifiers. OK, we know who the enemy is: it's us. To fix this we have to get lit back in the game.
The Net is a factor here. The lit establishment hasn't responded to that NYT story. And won't unless FORCED. Blogs are vital. But here's something else: Wiki is vital, too! We in the ULA are relishing this opportunity to add history/facts to subjects that we're normally censored from. Paris Review finally gets some light shed on its history whether it likes it or not. Proven (linked!) corruption can now be included in the bio's of all these players. We've greatly enjoyed watching them finally respond: with lawyers, of course---who add terms like "alleged" to our Wiki contributions. Now, who are we to worry about outlawry---the corruption we protest is the kind that prevents art and cultural evaluation. The airbrushers on both sides must hate Wiki! (Unless they can get the Net marginalized...segregated...nichified... Ah, it's already happened! Maybe what's really needed is a revival of high-impact literature as hip-pocket pulp. For those who aren't wired, if you see.)
One of our ULA oft-repeated stories is how the ex-editor of Publisher's Weekly said there were no undiscovered genius writers toiling away in the hinterlands. He'd rejected O'Toole's "Confederacy" and said he'd do it again, said the system works. (O'Toole killed himself after dozens of rejections of the book that went on to become a classic.) It's a tale that reminds us of what we're up against.
Still.