在文化冷战时期，间谍机构是怎样利用毫不知情的艺术家，比如波洛克和德克宁的呢?
几个世纪以来，在艺术圈里，这要么是个流言要么就是个笑话，但是现在被确定为事实了。中央情报局利用美国的现代艺术作品作为冷战时期的一种武器，这些被利用的画家包括以下这些：杰克逊波洛克，罗伯特马瑟韦尔，威廉库宁和马克罗斯克。CIA就像文艺复兴时期的贵族一样提拔着这些画家，虽然手法比较隐蔽，但培养和捧红美国抽象派画作的项目已经持续20多年了。
这种关系相当不可思议。曾经就有这样一个时期，在二十世纪五六十年代，大部分的美国人都不喜欢甚至轻视现代艺术。杜鲁门总统总结那个普遍的观点，就是：”如果那就是艺术，那么我就是霍屯督了。”至于那些画家本身，他们大多都曾是共产党员，麦卡锡时代的美国对这种人格外排斥，可见这样的人绝不是美国政府乐于提供支持的对象。(译注：霍屯督，非洲一种族，也是是欧洲白种人对非洲黑人的蔑称)
为什么中央情报局要支持他们呢?因为在冷战期间美苏嘴炮的时候，这个新艺术可以被拿来当做美国人富有创造力、知识自由和文化力量的证据。至于俄罗斯艺术，由于它”被禁锢在共产主义之下“，自然是无法和美国相提并论的。
关于这一政策存在的传言和争论有很多年了，现在已经第一次被前CIA官员证实，不知情的艺术家，美国新的艺术家在意向所谓“长束缚”的政策下暗中受到提升——CIA安排了相似的方法来间接支持Encounter杂志，由Stephen Spender所编辑。
由于担心共产主义对许多西方知识分子和艺术家依然具有吸引力，于是中情局就设立了一个“宣传资产清单”分支机构，该分支机构在顶峰时期可以影响总共800多家报纸、杂志和公共信息组织。他们开玩笑说该机构就好比Wurlitzer牌点唱机：当中情局按下按钮时，就可以听到自己想听到的世界上任何角落的“音乐”。
下一个关键步骤是在1950年，当IOD(国际组织部门)在Tom Braden组织下建立，这个部门补贴乔治·奥威尔的《动物庄园》的动画版，它赞助了美国爵士乐艺术家，歌剧演出，波士顿交响乐团的国际旅游项目，其特工被安插在电影业、出版社中，还伪装成著名旅行杂志Fodor的旅行作家。还有，正如我们现在已经知道的，该机构还促进了美国的无政府主义先锋运动，也就是抽象表现主义。
起初，美国政府想以更开放的尝试来支持年轻的美国艺术。为反驳苏联认为美国是文化沙漠的说法，1947年国务院组织并筹办了一个名为“促进美国艺术”的巡回国际展览会。但这引起了国内的不满，并促使杜鲁门说出了关于霍屯督的那番话，而一位愤愤不平的国会议员则声明：“我们美国人真是太蠢，掏出税金来花在这种垃圾上头。”
美国政府现在进退两难。主流的庸俗品味，再加上麦卡锡对非主流异端歇斯底里的抨击，使政府深陷尴尬的境地。此事也使人不再敢相信美国是一个“文化博大精深的民主国家”。另外，文化霸权从20世纪30年代就开始从巴黎转向纽约，美国本想借此事巩固其逐渐到手的文化霸权，如今似乎也难上加难。为摆脱窘境，中央情报局被创立。
这种联系或许没有想象中那么奇特。这时新机构的工作人员主要是耶鲁大学和哈佛大学毕业生，他们当中有很多收集艺术品并且在业余时间写小说，比起由麦卡锡主义或者J·埃德加·胡佛的联邦调查局所统治的政治世界，这个机构是自由主义的避风港。如果说有哪一个官方机构专门吹捧纽约画派的列宁主义者、托洛茨基分子和酒鬼，那肯定就是CIA无误了。
直到现在，仍然没有什么第一手的证据证明这之间的联系存在，但是一个前任的情报机构内的官员唐纳德·詹姆士首次打破了沉默。是的，他说，中情局曾经将抽象表现主义艺术视为一个机会，是的没错，中情局确实将其付诸了实践。
“考虑到抽象表现主义艺术本身，我希望我能够说CIA的天才们发明它们只是为了看看将来在纽约和soho商业区会发生什么!” 唐纳德·詹姆士开玩笑的说。“但是我想，我们所做的真实意图是在于造成一种反差，它让人们感觉社会主义下的现实主义艺术相较抽象表现主义这种艺术形式看起来更加形式化，充满了强制性和各种限制，这种反差则是通过一系列展览来体现的。”
“在某种程度上我们的这种想法得到支持是因为，在那段时间里的莫斯科会对任何形式的反对自己僵化的模式的想法给予强烈的谴责。正因此，人们可以充分准确地得出这样的结论，凡是苏联人强烈且笨拙地反对着的事情，就值得我们通过某种方式去支持它。”
为了利用美国左翼先锋派达到不可告人的意图，中情局必须确保自己的赞助不会曝光。“这种事情要通过间接的方式来做，”詹姆士先生说，“这样的话，使杰克逊•波洛克这类人通过政治审查就不会有什么问题，让这些人参加一个组织来做某件事情也不会有问题。并且我们不应该太接近他们，因为他们中大部分人尤其对政府不太尊重，对中情局就更无尊重可言了。这些自以为更接近莫斯科而不是华盛顿的人，如果想利用他们的话，也许这样做较为适宜。”
这就是所谓的“长皮带”政策。1950年中情局发起运动的重头戏就是成为文化自由的大会，利用中情局的资金，由中情局的探员举行一场集合了知识分子、作家、历史学家、诗人和艺术家参与的艺术狂欢宴。这场运动发起之初是为了抵抗莫斯科和它西方“同僚”的文化攻击。然而在鼎盛时期，竟然在35个国家设立了办事处，并且出版了二十多本杂志，其中包括《相遇》。
文化自由大会成为中情局的理想化前线，通过推广抽象表现主义来促进某些隐秘的意图。它成为巡回展览的官方赞助人，其杂志还为当代美国绘画艺术的评论家们提供了有用平台;所有人，包括这些艺术家们，大家都被蒙在鼓里。
这个组织在20世纪50年代前后举办了好几场以抽象表现主义为主题的展览。其中最有影响力的是名为“当代美国绘画”展览，在1958年到1959年间在欧洲好几个大城市的举行过。其它的一些重要展览包括1955年的“美国现代艺术”和“20世纪美国巨作”。
为抽象派的展览来回巡演花费巨大，所以中情局求助于一些有钱人和私人博物馆馆主。其中最著名的是纳尔逊•洛克菲勒，他的母亲与别人合资建立了位于纽约的现代艺术博物馆。而洛克菲勒正是这家博物馆的董事长，所以他称这座博物馆叫“妈妈的博物馆”，他也是抽象表现主义的热心支持者(他将之称为“自由企业绘画”)。他的博物馆与文化自由国会签约，组织并协办了大部分重要的艺术秀。
现代艺术博物馆和中情局还存在一些其它的联系。包括威廉•佩利，这位哥伦比亚广播公司网络的董事长，同时也是中情局的元勋，就是博物馆国际项目的管理班子中成员之一。乔克•海•惠特尼，以前是战略情报局的老前辈，也担任博物馆的托管人。还有汤姆•布雷顿，中情局国际组织部门的第一任首席，在1949年曾担任过博物馆的执行秘书。
现在布雷顿先生已经80岁了，居住在弗吉尼亚州的伍德布里吉，他的房子被抽象表现主义的作品挤得满满当当，几只阿尔萨斯巨型犬在那儿守着。他向我们解释了这场运动的目的。
“我们希望能把那些作家、音乐家和艺术家团结在一起，来证明西方和美国为言论自由和知识成就所做的努力，而不是像苏联那样，关于你说的话，做的事甚至画的画都有很许多刻板的规定。我想这是中情局最重要的部门，并且在冷战中发挥了巨大的作用。”
他承认这个部门的确对外保密，因为大众对先锋派怀有敌意：“我们想做的事很难通过国会这一关，比如到国外举办艺术展览，把交响乐团派到国外演出或者在国外出版杂志。这就是为什么要秘密进行的原因之一。为了鼓励开放我们不得不秘密行事。”
如果这意味着我们将对本世纪的米开朗琪罗们扮演教皇的角色的话，反而更好解释了：“艺术需要教皇或其他有钱人的支持才行”，布雷顿先生说。“也许许多世纪过去以后，人们会说，“瞧，这就是西斯廷教堂，世界上最美的艺术创造!”自从第一位艺术家得到第一位百万富翁或者第一位主教的支持以来，一直是文明面临的一个问题。如果没有百万富翁们或者主教们的支持，我们今天就不会有艺术了。”
如果没有赞助的话，抽象表现主义还会成为战后时期占主导地位的艺术运动吗?答案是肯定的。同样地，当我们在欣赏抽象表现主义的绘画时，觉得被中情局欺骗这种想法也是错误的。
但是瞧瞧这项艺术运动的结局：银行的大理石大厅，机场，市政府大楼，会议室以及不错的画廊里，都有抽象派表现主义的艺术品。对于推崇冷战的人来说，这些画作算是他们展现文化和系统的一个标志。
秘密行动
1958年，“新美国绘画”巡回展在巴黎开幕，展品包括有Pollock(杰克逊波洛克或波拉克，1912-1956，纽约动作画派领导人和抽象派代表画家)、de Kooning(威廉德库宁，1904-1997，美国抽象派艺术家)和Motherwell(罗伯特马瑟韦尔，1915-1991以抽象绘画和有关现代艺术的论著而著名)等的作品。泰特艺术馆(位于伦敦)渴望作为下一站展会承办地，但负担不起。晚些时候，朱利叶斯.弗莱希曼，一个美国的百万富翁和艺术爱好者，出钱介入了此事并把展览带到了伦敦。
弗莱希曼提供的资金并不是他自己的，而是CIA的。通过一个弗莱希曼任总裁的叫做法菲尔德基金的组织提供资金。但这基金会根本不是一个百万富翁的慈善机构，而是一个提供CIA资金的秘密渠道。
于是，在美国纳税人的负担下，展会被转移到了伦敦，毫不知情的泰德艺术馆、公众和艺术家就微妙的服务于冷战宣传目的了。前中情局人员汤姆.布瑞登描述了是如何建立类似法菲尔德基金会这样的资金渠道的。“我们会找到纽约某个知名的富人，并会告之“我们想建立一个基金会”，我们会告诉他我们想要做什么并要求他保守秘密，他如果说“可以，我愿意干”，然后我们就会发出一个带有他名字的公函，这样一个基金会就成立了。这真是一个相当简单的手段。”
朱利叶斯.弗莱希曼很适合这个角色。像几个与CIA关系密切的大人物一样，在纽约，他是现代艺术馆的国际规划委员会成员。
原文：Modern art was CIA 'weapon'
Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War
By Frances Stonor Saunders
Sunday, 22 October 1995
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- com- munists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
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.
The existence of this policy, rumoured and disputed for many years, has now been confirmed for the first time by former CIA officials. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the "long leash" - arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.
The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.
The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up under Tom Braden. It was this office which subsidised the animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, which sponsored American jazz artists, opera recitals, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's international touring programme. Its agents were placed in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers for the celebrated Fodor guides. And, we now know, it promoted America's anarchic avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism.
Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled "Advancing American Art", with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: "I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash." The tour had to be cancelled.
The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy's hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.
The connection is not quite as odd as it might appear. At this time the new agency, staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.
Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, has broken the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.
"Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I'd love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!" he joked. "But I think that what we did really was to recognise the difference. It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.
"In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another."
To pursue its underground interest in America's lefty avant-garde, the CIA had to be sure its patronage could not be discovered. "Matters of this sort could only have been done at two or three removes," Mr Jameson explained, "so that there wouldn't be any question of having to clear Jackson Pollock, for example, or do anything that would involve these people in the organisation. And it couldn't have been any closer, because most of them were people who had very little respect for the government, in particular, and certainly none for the CIA. If you had to use people who considered themselves one way or another to be closer to Moscow than to Washington, well, so much the better perhaps."
This was the "long leash". The centrepiece of the CIA campaign became the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a vast jamboree of intellectuals, writers, historians, poets, and artists which was set up with CIA funds in 1950 and run by a CIA agent. It was the beach-head from which culture could be defended against the attacks of Moscow and its "fellow travellers" in the West. At its height, it had offices in 35 countries and published more than two dozen magazines, including Encounter.
The Congress for Cultural Freedom also gave the CIA the ideal front to promote its covert interest in Abstract Expressionism. It would be the official sponsor of touring exhibitions; its magazines would provide useful platforms for critics favourable to the new American painting; and no one, the artists included, would be any the wiser.
This organisation put together several exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism during the 1950s. One of the most significant, "The New American Painting", visited every big European city in 1958-59. Other influential shows included "Modern Art in the United States" (1955) and "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century" (1952).
Because Abstract Expressionism was expensive to move around and exhibit, millionaires and museums were called into play. Pre-eminent among these was Nelson Rockefeller, whose mother had co-founded the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As president of what he called "Mummy's museum", Rockefeller was one of the biggest backers of Abstract Expressionism (which he called "free enterprise painting"). His museum was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to organise and curate most of its important art shows.
The museum was also linked to the CIA by several other bridges. William Paley, the president of CBS broadcasting and a founding father of the CIA, sat on the members' board of the museum's International Programme. John Hay Whitney, who had served in the agency's wartime predecessor, the OSS, was its chairman. And Tom Braden, first chief of the CIA's International Organisations Division, was executive secretary of the museum in 1949.
Now in his eighties, Mr Braden lives in Woodbridge, Virginia, in a house packed with Abstract Expressionist works and guarded by enormous Alsatians. He explained the purpose of the IOD.
"We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War."
He confirmed that his division had acted secretly because of the public hostility to the avant-garde: "It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do - send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That's one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."
If this meant playing pope to this century's Michelangelos, well, all the better: "It takes a pope or somebody with a lot of money to recognise art and to support it," Mr Braden said. "And after many centuries people say, 'Oh look! the Sistine Chapel, the most beautiful creation on Earth!' It's a problem that civilisation has faced ever since the first artist and the first millionaire or pope who supported him. And yet if it hadn't been for the multi-millionaires or the popes, we wouldn't have had the art."
Would Abstract Expressionism have been the dominant art movement of the post-war years without this patronage? The answer is probably yes. Equally, it would be wrong to suggest that when you look at an Abstract Expressionist painting you are being duped by the CIA.
But look where this art ended up: in the marble halls of banks, in airports, in city halls, boardrooms and great galleries. For the Cold Warriors who promoted them, these paintings were a logo, a signature for their culture and system which they wanted to display everywhere that counted. They succeeded.
* The full story of the CIA and modern art is told in 'Hidden Hands' on Channel 4 next Sunday at 8pm. The first programme in the series is screened tonight. Frances Stonor Saunders is writing a book on the cultural Cold War.
Covert Operation
In 1958 the touring exhibition "The New American Painting", including works by Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell and others, was on show in Paris. The Tate Gallery was keen to have it next, but could not afford to bring it over. Late in the day, an American millionaire and art lover, Julius Fleischmann, stepped in with the cash and the show was brought to London.
The money that Fleischmann provided, however, was not his but the CIA's. It came through a body called the Farfield Foundation, of which Fleischmann was president, but far from being a millionaire's charitable arm, the foundation was a secret conduit for CIA funds.
So, unknown to the Tate, the public or the artists, the exhibition was transferred to London at American taxpayers' expense to serve subtle Cold War propaganda purposes. A former CIA man, Tom Braden, described how such conduits as the Farfield Foundation were set up. "We would go to somebody in New York who was a well-known rich person and we would say, 'We want to set up a foundation.' We would tell him what we were trying to do and pledge him to secrecy, and he would say, 'Of course I'll do it,' and then you would publish a letterhead and his name would be on it and there would be a foundation. It was really a pretty simple device."
Julius Fleischmann was well placed for such a role. He sat on the board of the International Programme of the Museum of Modern Art in New York - as did several powerful figures close to the CIA.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
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