Art, a CIA weapon?

Dear Uncle Sam,

I am writing this letter of consolation realising that you might need one as the conspiracy theory of ‘Modern Art being sponsored by CIA’ has finally proven right. Though looking at your obstinate behaviour over the proven political follies of imposed wars around the world, I am convinced that you hardly need support from a poor girl. I am saying that “I am poor because my country is poor” as Manto Sb has already told you, else I am blessed with enough self-respect to weigh my worth in terms of faith, piety, enlightenment and confidence in carrying forward a rich cultural legacy of the Global South. I do admit that there too are other motifs behind this letter. Maybe, I want to make sense of my times and surroundings. Or perhaps, I need to reassure myself of certain things as I believe that the conspiracist ideations are psychologically harmful for a young female thinker like me. Hence, to avoid the risk of lower analytical thinking and intelligence, paranoia, narcissism and insecure attachments I shall put my concerns on the table. This will give you a chance to explain and defend yourself which will be a source of great solace and compensation to me and many of my countrymen and of course, women. Please see that unlike my seniors, I am mature enough to understand your intentions and deceptive moves, so be careful.

It is confirmed the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting for over 20 years. This was part of a propaganda war with the Soviet Union, showcasing the creativity and cultural power of the US in contrast to the communist restrictions in Russia. CIA, with the support of the International Organization Division and the Congress of Cultural Freedom, was able to create an artificial supremacy in art followed by shifting the centre of modern art from Europe to the US. The Congress contracted Uncle Rockefeller’s Mummy’s Museum, aka The Museum of Modern Art in New York, to serve the cause. CIA’s first IOD chief was the executive secretary of the same museum. He blatantly admits to playing ‘pope for this century’s Michelangelos, uniting all the writers, musicians and artists to demonstrate that the West and the US were devoted to freedom of expression and intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what must be written, said and done and what must be painted as was the case in the Soviet Union. IOD proved to be the most important division that the agency had and it played an enormous role in the Cold War.

Though such confessions of ‘Art being a CIA weapon’ are music to many pro-Eastern cultural critics, they simply deplete art’s authenticity as an expression of the times it is created; recording, critiquing, conforming and providing resolutions to many societal facets. They also negate the authority of the artist as an illustrator of truth. Ultimately, on aesthetic paradigms such products would not fit in the definition of art as they must inherently lack the emotional fervour and value of any kind which is not true with the works of Abstract Expressionists. These ‘action and colour field paintings’ are deeply infused with spiritual and metaphysical messages. In artistic appeal, they provide their creators and the viewers with a physical space for emotional outbursts separating them from the prevailing mayhem and sweeping them into virtual inceptions of desired realities.

Frankly, my idealist mind still desperately wants all this CIA and modern art thing not to be true. But the evidences prove otherwise; in fact they hint towards other contemporary realities. I am more concerned with the neo-miniature movement. Aunt Virginia in her book, Art and Polemics in Pakistan, deliberately mentions it to be catering to a post-9/11 global art market. Many question Hanging Fire or Qureshi’s Metropolitan Museum project in this scenario. Well, my mind too often twirls around Sikandar’s burqa-clad demonstrations in New York City. But then art, politics and propaganda have always been in a notorious relationship. Well, this confession itself can be some CIA stunt. Only God and you would know.

More later.

Bano