Read on Twitter
the conversation rn between herndon/dryhurst/saunders getting incredibly granular with the involvement of the CIA in culture post-WWII so important and overdue --
First off, i have no care for defending ab-ex but it's always been interested to see I only see this crit wielded against pollack when so many fields -- literary, music, etc -- were all funded here, really showing the colors of that more widely held crit as "my kid could do that"
seeing the specifics is important because it reveals the involvement of CIA was fairly cartoonish, trying to draw ideological conclusions around "freedom" from often ambiguous works that could be framed differently as well.
Black jazz bands, like dizzy gillespie's, that were funded to tour across the atlantic were quickly identified as an ideological apparatus by these non-american audiences to project that race relations in the states were all fine and good, the CIA realizing this, pivoted to...
trying to get dave brubeck to tour as an all-white jazz band in order to throw the scent.
John Cage just as easily could have been instrumentalized as a medium for an ideologically "free" practice, yet he was interpreted differently and was not necessarily funded by CIA money
Saunders clarifies that beyond this, her inspection of the financial statements of art and music journals reveals that they were literally ALL in the red, except for the checks coming in from the CIA
that, more than a flat indictment of the "in-vogue"-ness of 50s ab-ex, does way more for me to talk about the historiography of mid-century work. saunders also lingers on the phrase "curating the curators" as the more accurate way of talking about it.
Worth mentioning that Arendt, who was also promoted by the CIA, attempts to scrub the marxism off of W. Benjamin in a foreword to one of the editions of "illuminations," so revisionism becomes a part of this conversation too.
More than anything, I come out of it thinking that the reductionism of works to "freedom" vs "collectivity" is a flat, very CIA, way of gleaning value from works and many of these distinctions -- actually somewhat arbitrary based on the semiotic leanings of gov workers -- is bad
i should clarify the only abex i like is frankenthaler and maybe alma thomas lol
