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Comment by Iv | Hacker News Reader

"Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete."

In other words, the US acted like a good government and helped the arts flourish, because it had a competition. It sounds like a joke, but in Us if you want to fund anything, you have to describe it as a weapon.

Write that open source software is a weapon against Chinese industry and you'll get CIA funding. Heh, after all Tor got funds from the Navy...

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> ... if you want to fund anything, you have to describe it as a weapon.

In 1955, the NY Times led with "United States has Secret Sonic Weapon-Jazz"

  http://thereisjazzbeforetrane.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-has-sonic-secret-weapon-jazz-nytimes.html

Why did they fund jazz like they funded abstract expressionism? Jazz was the ultimate display of democracy and integration, improvisation and the exchange of ideas.

NPR had a program about this not long ago. According to them, many of the most famous jazz musicians of the time, like Dizzy Gillespie, was sent abroad backed by CIA and the State Department.

Several of the most high profile musicians subsequently dropped out of that program after touring Europe for a while.

Supposedly the good reception they got in cosmopolitan centres like Paris put their treatment by the US public and their handlers in the government in a grim light.

just an fyi:

tor didn't simply "get funds" from the navy. It was invented at the Naval Research Lab. As explained to me at the time, they were trying to generalize the principles of mixmaster remailers to internet routing.

In the movie Cradle will Rock, there are several fictional scenes about the real-world mural painted by Diego Rivera for the NYC Rockefeller Building. The mural was subsequently destroyed after a disagreement about Lenin, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_at_the_Crossroads. In a key scene, Nelson Rockefeller asks Rivera to remove Lenin from the mural:

https://youtube.com/watch?t=68m51s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI

  Rockefeller: This is not a revolution, Diego. This is United States. It's
               not Russia.
  Rivera:      And I am Diego Rivera. Not Frederick Remington.
  Man:         You understand that it is entirely inappropriate to feature 
               a communist leader in the lobby of a Rockefeller Building?
  Rivera:      No! I believe nothing in art is inappropriate. I paint what I see.

Later, in a conversation about replacing "socially conscious" art by funding "abstract" art:

https://youtube.com/watch?t=104m09s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI

  Rockefeller: I wouldn't have had this problem with Picasso or Matisse. 
  Cardinal:    We can control the future of art because we pay for the future 
               of art.  Appoint people to your museum board who detest the   
               Riveras of this world.  Celebrate the Matisses. Create the next 
               wave of art.  You have the purse strings, it's quite obvious 
               you have the power.
  Rockefeller: Cultural power. To pay for the Matisse.
  All:         Celebrate colors.  Celebrate form. Portraits. Countrysides. 
               Men on horses. Sunsets. Nudes.

https://youtube.com/watch?t=107m43s&v=rqPE0YYgwjI

  Cardinal:    Nelson will fund the new wave of art.  A traveling exhibit 
               throughout Europe, highlighting American artists.  
  Mathers:     Non-politcal.
  Rockefeller: Yes. Abstract. Colors and form, not politics.
  Cardinal:    My papers will hail it as the next new thing. Canonize the 
               artist. Make them rich. And soon enough, all artists will be 
               doing the next new thing.
  Mathers:     You think? Something about artists, they always get socially 
               concerned.
  Cardinal:    Sure, but they won't get paid for it.
  Rockefeller: They won't be seen, they will have no influence.
  Mathers:     Rather than starve, they will adapt, it's survival.

The New York City MoMA, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Modern_Art#History

"The idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1929 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan ... When Abby Rockefeller's son Nelson was selected by the board of trustees to become its flamboyant president in 1939, at the age of thirty, he became the prime instigator and funder of its publicity, acquisitions and subsequent expansion into new headquarters on 53rd Street."

    > replacing "socially conscious" art by funding "abstract" art

This is what it was about.

It's appalling that the only kind of social consciousness on the market was advocacy for Communist revolution...

I'm sure there was more to it there. It's also a good way to move money around.

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