In the 1950s, the Abstract Expressionist movement was 'it' - innovative, fresh, and free. These daring new artists were the latest thing, and their prices soared. What the public did not know, however, was that the inexplicable, almost instantaneous popularity was due to a series strategic purchases, at previously unseen prices, secretly orchestrated by a small and influential group.

In recent years it has become common knowledge that the CIA, awash in cash following the second world war and embroiled in a new cold war, chose to promote this work as a symbol of American ideals: individualism and freedom of expression.

That the fascist and Stalinist regimes would have considered this art degenerate was precisely why it was singled out. This new, seemingly carefree, methods of applying paint to canvas could not be any further removed from Russian and German ideas of realism; the form propaganda art had taken during the first fifty years of the twentieth century.

The Abstract Expressionist artists themselves, were probably just doing what artists do, oblivious (one must assume) to the subterfuge afoot. When a select group of art insiders and well-healed bankers began offering unimaginable sums of money for their work, it must have seemed as though fate had smiled.

Since I first read about these events in 2009, only one other person I've spoken to vaguely recalled hearing something about this. The story has not been widly disseminated, even (perhaps especially) within art circles, so this isn't particularly surprising. What is odd, however, is that there was no reaction or controversy when the CIA papers were made public, and there has been no real discussion since. The art world didn't appear to want to talk about it, and the rest of the world, apparently, was not interested. Even those who attended the Abstract Expressionism retrospective at the AGO in 2011 (those with whom I've spoken at least) were still unaware of this intrigue following their visit.

As a result, I've become quite evangelical. I believe some important conclusions must be drawn from this particular revelation, the effects of which are far reaching, but, be warned, if you wish to dig any deeper, it may forever change the way you look at abstract art.

"It doesn't mean anything," says Cristo, when asked about his work “The Gates," in Central Park,
repeating the point in an irritated manner, as if this were self-evident. "I did it because I wanted to." he adds, and I'm sure this is true. Cristo is considered one of the great contemporary artists, in part, because of his unwaveringly self-assured approach. In the last few decades however, what the viewer thinks or (more specifically) feels, has been accepted as being of equal, if not greater importance. What, then, has become of the artist as the initiator and communicator of ideas?

It may well be true that a given work of modern art has no meaning, in and of itself, and if artists are no longer expected to communicate actual ideas, then this is fine. As Neil Postmans suggests in his 1984 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, "form excludes the content." If an artist did wanted to say something more complex then, would this even be possible? Echoing McLuhan's famous axiom, Postman suggests that "one would not use smoke signals" for instance, "to do philosophy... [A] Cherokee philosopher would run short of wood or blankets long before he reached his second axiom." We choose the medium best suited to a purpose. This seems obvious to us now, yet the natural follow-up question to McLuhen's axiom – The medium is the message – rarely seems to be asked: What, then, is the message?

In an article in Eye Weekly magazine (November 18 – 24, 2010) "Conceptual Art Clarified " Sara Angel relates the description given by Nuit Blanche founders of their new visual culture "Thing." Moving on from the fifties, art left the "confines of a canvas or museum's walls; it became amorhous, unobvious and concept-driven. Increasingly, art is about performance and spectacle, which tend to be live or found on video." Five key points to keep in mind when appreciating a contemporary work of this ilk are listed, and in my next piece I will look at these more closely. Item 3, however, which is in the vein of Hennessey Youngman's YouTube 'performance piece' (See previous pieces), suggests the artist, "through his or her art, is asking you to answer unsolved questions." Among the most recent batch of avant garde artists Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin, and the like, "concept," is not so much an idea in itself, as it is an invitation to viewers to find meaning for themselves – In which case, there can be no wrong answers. All of this interactivity is very nice, inclusive and really quite a lot of fun – Nothing wrong with that, surely? As the YBAs (Young British Artists) have scaled back due to the worlds recent economic woes, the bleeding edge of high art has been without any direction, and the world awaits the next movement (To use that term loosely). Nevertheless, while the next big thing hasn't yet been chosen (various claims to have moved beyond the Postmodern notwithstanding) art is still being made, and it still has meaning in itself. No matter how innocuous contemporary may seem, it is, nevertheless, an ideological statement; it is also a political tool.

In the piece last May I spoke about the democratization of art, which, like art's new interactive quality, would seem to be a noble objective. But here too, for a reason I could not quite put my finger on, the idea seemed vaguely disturbing. A short time later however, when I re-read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, this all started to make sense. In much the same way as the Brave New World of Aldous Huxley describes the direction life in North America (Canada and the UK) has taken, Rand's vision portrays a political / ideological struggle between a creative class, and those who seek to dismiss, control or harness the creative energy of others.

Howard Roark, the individualist architect, battles against a scheming intelligentsia, which seeks to usurp power by disseminating an extreme leftist morality of collectivism and unbridled altruism. In Rand's story, a group called 'The New League of Proletarian Art' represents the direction art might take in an art-by-committee world. Rand's fear, understandably given her Russian background (and the era in which she wrote) was socialism. However, if one moves far enough to the left the political/ideological circle closes – socialism and fascism blur. As in the world Huxley's envisioned, it makes little difference, in the end, whether it is fascists or socialists pulling the levers, humanity is controlled by ideas.

Art communicates powerfully, which is why so often in the past, as part of cultural revolutions the world over, intellectuals, writers and artists were the first ones to be taken out and shot. Even though I never looked at my own work as being political – most artists wouldn't – I've always been haunted by the film The Killing Fields, which so clearly illustrated the process of purging of intellectuals – and even those who looked liked intellectuals, because they wore glasses. It is hard to imagine anyone bothering with artists today. Cristo's claim, on one level at least, may be correct.

This struggle between opposing forces has been played out through the medium of images for time in memorial. Today we see ourselves as too sophisticated to be ensnared by the "obvious" propaganda images of communist Russia or imperialist, then fascist, Germany. Perhaps we are. But the techniques for communicating ideas are generally a step or two ahead of the general population.

It is difficult to think of two areas of study less interesting than semiotics and hermeneutics, but these are central to the worlds of propaganda and advertising. Art too relies on a cryptic language of symbols and emotional cues, but the latter encourages an understanding of this language. With an insistence that “it doesn't mean anything” or that the viewer may read into a given work whatever he or she wishes, the audience is disarmed as to the hidden meaning of the work, which all mediums convey. This isn't to say that an individual should not interpret a work independently, but to suggest that this work totally neutral, or simply “a question presented for the viewer to answer,” is pure deception.

When we think of propaganda art, we typically think of poster art of the two great wars, but the Allied powers produced just as many of these pieces as the Axis. "Rosie the Riveter" and "Uncle Sam Needs You," existed to rally the forces of good against the forces of evil, even if the images themselves were a somewhat manipulative. The visual language of the Allied forces and the axis was essentially the same, until the fifties that is, when a completely non-representative iconography was chosen by the power elite of the West to represent American ideals.

Abstract Expressionism, as the movement that marks the end of painting as a medium for serious consideration, is just one chapter in an ongoing battle of ideas. The modern phase of this struggle began, as I wrote on my website in 2008, when Oxford Don Walter Pater promoted the idea of Art for art's sake in the late 1800s (coinciding with the Impressionist movement in France). This phrase implied that pure art was not to convey anything beyond the emotions and feelings which would arise spontaneously in response to the a works essential characteristics: color, form, line etc.

This seems, on the surface, an inocent turn of events. Quite liberating actually, as it's nice not to be lectured, told this and that, or have to worry about being tricked in some way. But this was a watershed moment in the 30,000 or more years of human kind creating art, the import of which was not lost on the social satirists of the early twentieth century – as its implications became apparent:

These words are from a song in the play The Cradle Will Rock, performed in 1936 in the United States (across 17 States). A social protest piece, the story tells of the struggles of factory workers against the many forms of control imposed by the power elite, industrialists, bankers, politicians, etc.

As Chris Hedges presents in his recent book, Death of the Liberal Class, socialism is not the concern
today, but a distorted conservatism in which the arts have been co-opted. The arts have been harnessed by the world of advertising to move products and service. What remains of the visual arts, since Abstract Expressionism, has evolved into decorator art, on one hand, and graphic arts on the other. The first uses ever-changing designs and new color schemes to move new merchandise, when last season's is pronounced to be out of fashion. The other picks up on these trends to package currently fashionable ideas, commercial and political. High art supposedly sits above all of this, but a world of contemporary high art was constructed, almost single-handedly, by Charles Saatchi of the London advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi.

A side note: I have recently been ordering supplies for my new etchings. The photosensitive zinc and magnesium plates are produced by one company in North America, Magnesium Elektron. This firm is principally a supplier to the aerospace and military sector, yet on their website, beside the drop menu link for “Graphic Arts” is shown the image of an Apache helicopter, missiles projecting from each side of the fuselage, flying menacingly toward the viewer. Next up in the rotation of images on the index page is a Stealth Bomber. To connect the graphics arts industry and the military industrial complex so directly, based on this one anecdotal observation, may be overstating things a bit, neverthess, I found it disconcerting (and telling) to see these apparently incongruous items listed side by side.

When I picked up a copy of Hedges’ latest book a few months ago, I opened it to a page which spoke directly to the subject that had been on my mind – “We don't find books, books find us", the old saying goes, and as time passes I feel increasingly inclined to agree with this.
Chapter IV, The Politics as spectacle:

Only a small percentage of the population would ever visit an art gallery, or have any interest in such things. This is the audience for so-called highbrow art. For the rest, those for whom kitsch, or lowbrow art, will suffice, a whole other strategy would be required. Thus, immediately following Abstract Expressionism, Fluxus appeared and seemed to address this. In the past, art was always treated with a certain religious reverence, whatever its content, and Rand's scheming arch villain in The Fountainhead, in pseudo-religious terms, reveals the method by which he aims to subdue the masses:

Hal Foster’s recent book Design and Crime cleverly sums up this argument. Although the book itself is not quite so damning, he states, "In today's world, everyone is and artist." This is a direct result of course of the democratization of art, which began with the Fluxist "Happening." No art is more entertaining, or more suited to the medium of YouTube, than performance art, currently the most fashionable means of expression, even within the world of high art. With this intellectual experiment, the lines were blurred. There was no longer even needed to be such categories of 'Highbrow' and 'Lowbrow.' Everyone was an artist and all art was equally valid.

Aldous Huxley too makes this point in A Brave New World. Performance art is perhaps the most obvious example of this prediction coming to pass. Performance itself does not preclude a message, but a medium, democratized to the extend that it has been, creates a deluge of material, drowning out all but those with the most entertaining performance. Static work, like paintings and installations, are quickly displaced by this medium. Art has been regarded as a form of entertainment since the time of Fluxus, and this process has accelerated in the era, as relevant information can be drowned out in a sea of entertaining video clips.

Long before YouTube, Andy Warhol presented the idea of art as entertainment when he talked about celebrity as the art movement of our times, and thus: “[N]o matter who the artist was and no matter what school he belonged to, the entertainment society made his fame his achievement and not his achievement his fame.”

Neil Gabler tells us that the so-called “action painters,” use their canvases as a kind of movie screen for the creation of art and made themselves into romantic action heroes, bounding, thrashing, and raging their way across the canvas/screen and leaving art in their wake." Pollock spoke of literally being "in the painting as if he were an actor in a film."

Most artists are accepting of art in any shape or form. After all, it is for the artists alone to decide what he or she will paint, and whether or not he or she wishes to say something through the medium of art. It is the idea that some forms of art are acceptable and relevant, and that others are no longer of any consequence, that challenges. It is difficult to actually dislike Abstract Expressionism because of what it is. As the Russian saying goes, “Size has a quality all its own,” and standing in front of one of these giant canvas can be a powerful experience. Who could really object to such work based on its own inherent characteristics? It would be like saying, “I don't like circles,” or “I don't like blue swatches.” The work itself is not the thing other painters find objectionable. Artist Alan Magee says of Abstract Expressionism, and subsequent works in that mode:

The solution to this conundrum, it seems, was to make art even more entertaining. After all, art is no longer about the passage of useful images or ideas. The proponents of Art for art's sake set us on a slippery slope, which has led, inexorably, to a world where artists are made by advertizing firms and art has become about entertainment. Maybe that isn't all bad, as Huxley points out, cultural decline can be great fun...for a while at least.

Next time: On the bright side

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