In the play ART, someone buys an abstractpainting at an enormous price, while his friends ponder how they aregoing to tell him that it is inherently worthless. In the debateabout abstraction and whether it was entirely some sort of hoax, thenew traditionalists ridicule its "flatness" and its absence ofnarrative, while defenders of abstraction insist that representativeart is a form of nostalgia that modernism sought to eliminate. Thedefenders are definitely losing ground, but one wonders why theywere ever regarded as credible.
The point that most art critics miss is that artis also a form of commerce, and not antithetical to it. The god ofart is the art market. And so one might ask, "How did a JacksonPollock get to be worth so much money?" Part of it had to do with theCold War, which not only bloated the military budget, but distortedthe art market as well.
Faux genius and con man Clement Greenberg was atthe center of the scam. A former itinerant necktie salesman,Greenberg teamed up with struggling abstract artist and mountebank,Barnett Newman, to promote a vision of art that convenientlycoincided with the objectives of the US Cold War Establishment.Indeed, Greenberg argued that the avant-garde required the support ofAmerica's elite classes, a self-serving concept that would promotehis personal interests as a collector.
As the competing ideologies of capitalism andcommunism clashed after the Second World War, the question of "Whatis art?" became a significant issue in the struggle for dominance.Was art a vehicle of state propaganda to glorify a proletarianrevolution or depict an evil Hitler in his bunker at the end of theheroic struggle against fascism (never mind about the Hitler-Stalinpact), or was it the product of individual creativity unrestrained bygovernmental control and censorship?
But since America was then in the throes of one ofits tedious puritanical backlashes, the sensuality of great Westernart, as represented by say, Goya's "Naked Maja," was out of thequestion. Deriving their central thesis from Islamic art thatrepresentation of the sensual human form was interdicted by thesublime, the new Abstract Expressionists fit neatly into what theAmerican intelligence community desperately needed to rebut Sovietrepresentational propaganda; an art that was highly individualisticbut which did not offend the sensibilities of conservative religion.A Baptist preacher or Bishop Sheen could laugh at a Pollock, but hecould not condemn it as obscene. Yet because "modern art" was widelyderided, it needed a boost from an invisible sponsor, which wouldturn out to be the CIA.
In this milieu Clement Greenberg came forth insupport of the new art. Yes, the canvas was flat, and it should becovered flatly by paint in abstraction, so beauty would be destroyedin the name of the sublime. And Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) directorRichard Barr heralded this view when he quoted Greenberg'sco-conspirator, Newman, who infamously proclaimed, "The impulse ofmodern art was to destroy beauty." Barr went even further &endash;God was dead and had been replaced by AbstractExpressionism.
The more Greenberg wrote in promotion of theAbstract Expressionists, and particularly Pollock's "actionpainting," which involved dripping paint on the canvas, the more hecollected them at minimal prices before he had made them famous. Andas he increased his own power and influence, the more people wantedto buy these paintings, which served Greenberg's real personalobjective; to make himself rich.
Fortunately for him, like the military industrialcomplex, he had a helping hand in the federal government. As FrancesStoner Saunders explains in her brilliant book, 'Who Paid the Piper&endash; The CIA and the Cultural Cold War', the CIA covertlysupported the Abstract Expressionist movement by funding exhibits allover the world in promotion of the idea that the culture of freedomwas superior to the culture of slavery, and by covertly promoting thepurchasing of works by various private collections. Indeed, the CIAnamed its biggest front in Europe the Congress for Cultural Freedom.It worked. Soviet art became a laughing stock, and New York becamethe center of the art world, not Paris, where Picasso, a long-timemember of the Communist party and winner of the Stalin Peace Prize(who can forget his doves of peace?), still reigned supreme.
The CIA had stolen the show from Picasso, takingart a step further into a near mystical expression of unfetteredhuman liberty in the spirit of free enterprise. Nelson Rockefeller,whose family created the MoMA, actually referred to AbstractExpressionism as "freeenterprise painting." But like so manyRockefeller ventures, it was state supported, so that his owncollection of Abstract Expressionist works ended up being worthconsiderable fortune.
But why, then, did it come to an end? The Cold Warexploded into the Vietnam War and rebellion overtook the arts. Thesocial revolution of the Sixties brought with it Pop Art, Op Art, andvarious forms of social protest art, forcing Abstract Expressionismto the sidelines, even if prices were still good. Confronted withJames Rosenquist's "F-111," abstraction lost its force. Even morethan this, the answer lies in a paraphrasing of a remark by comedianMort Sahl about why the student movement ended. "The governmentwithdrew its funding."
June 20, 2002
Richard Cummings has taught at the Universityof Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the University of the West Indies,Barbados, and St. Catherine's College Cambridge. He holds the PhD inSocial and Political Sciences from Cambridge University and"completed with distinction" the 21st Session at Cornell University,of The School of Criticism and Theory. He is the author of thecomedy, "Soccer Moms From Hell" (recently produced in New York) andthe forthcoming novel, The Immortalists.
Copyright © 2002 byLewRockwell.com