119: Art & Artifice Part I: The Long Leash

Episode 119: Part 1 of 2. Throughout the 1950s, the CIA, through a number of secret fronts, provided funding and publicity for abstract modern art in the United States. Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko became arrows in the Cold War quiver, as the Agency turned them, and scores of other modern artists into unwitting agents of American propaganda. How and why did the CIA accomplish this, and what does it mean for the relationship between modernism and politics?

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Sources and Further Reading

How MoMA and the CIA Conspired to Use Unwitting Artists to Promote American Propaganda During the Cold War: Link

Art For Art’s Sake: Link

Modern art was CIA 'weapon': Link

How the CIA Secretly Used Jackson Pollock to Fight the Cold War: Link

The New American Painting, 1959: Link

The new American painting, as shown in eight European countries, 1958-1959: Link

An Era-Defining 1930s Mural of American Excess and Industry Is Revived: Link

Dickstein, Morris. Dancing in the dark: A cultural history of the Great Depression. WW Norton & Company, 2009.

Alfred Barr, ‘Introduction’, in The New American Painting, 1959: Link

The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited: Link