Modern art was CIA 'weapon'

Abstract Expressionism was the first art movement I really fell in love with, mostly because it wasn't a household name and sounded cool. For those of you who don't know anything about it, here are some links to a few well known artist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kline

It's important to keep in mind that these paintings are not about technical quality. The argument, "my kid could have done that," is not relevant since your kid didn't do it -- you may as well argue you teenager could have written TS Eliot poems since she knows the vocabulary. These paintings are about energy, form and scale, often lack of form or contrasting forms. They also tend to photograph poorly, so try to appreciate them in person.

As secrets go, this didn't seem to make it very far. Czeslaw Milosz's notice of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in _Milosz's ABCs_, says "you could smell big money a mile away, and the French, who were stewing in their anti-Americanism, boycotted it totally."

There is something amusing about the US government, through whatever agency, funding Abstract Expressionism hardly two decades after building all those post offices with WPA murals that I suppose one might call Socialist Realist.