The Blindboy Podcast - Abstract Art and the CIA

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

Hot take Art podcast. I explore and explain the importance of Abstract Expressionist art and how the movement was covertly funded by the CIA Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh hello boys and girls, welcome to the blind boy podcast. I'm up very late recording this because I've been a busy boy. As you know I'm getting into live streaming. I've been doing some live streaming all week on twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast. Not proper live streaming, I've been testing the stream which means I've been going online at unannounced times and fucking up in real time i've uh some issues with my microphone submissions with issues with my camera and i'm going live with shit audio and shit visual and letting the people who are watching know i'm just here testing and it's actually it's been it's actually been fun because what i found with twitch it's a hugely supportive positive community

there's no negativity there people were helping me with my technical problems quite happy to just chill out and understand blind boy is new to this he's trying to iron out some issues and that's okay and we'll help him if we can so very positive i was on it three times this week and i'm getting closer and closer to announcing a streaming schedule and getting down to creativity getting down to making music live playing video games live just chatting, chatting with whoever's talking. I'm getting close to that, but I've got to iron out the technical issues. What I want is to sit down at my computer, camera pointing at me, microphone on, I want to press one button and I want to stream.

And then I can focus solely on the creative content and getting into a state of flow rather than worrying about audio issues why am i live streaming uh because it's a radical new opportunity because of advances in technology where you can now create art in the moment. With audience participation. Which is over a digital platform. It's unprecedented. And I just find it incredibly exciting as an opportunity. Because it's like here's a medium that's brand new. So if you participate in a medium that's brand new.

You're therefore at the forefront as an artist so i'm looking forward to that as well i've been planning on doing it for ages coronavirus came along i'm a performer can't do live gigs now for god knows when but i operate on the attitude of if something bad happens that's outside of my control I accept it and once I accept it I go where's the opportunity where's the opportunity to do something new to shake things up and

that's what this is I'm moving into live streaming because there's an opportunity to earn an income from it too and not worry about the fact that I can't do live gigs so that's what I've been at so I'm a tired boy this week's podcast

is a hot take art podcast which I'm really looking forward to doing I love doing art podcasts I love having the opportunity to speak about something I'm very passionate about and I know from feedback from ye, ye very much enjoy art podcasts too because

art isn't something that's spoken about, its importance isn't spoken about and I try my best to democratise it, especially the highfalutin difficult art so here we go and before I get into it actually a couple of weeks ago I had a podcast called quantum quarantino where I had Dr. Michael Brooks on to talk about quantum physics he did an excellent job of democratizing science and talking about some really complex quantum physics shit and I forgot to plug his podcast he has a podcast called science ish which you can listen to on all the different podcast platforms where he speaks about science every week and democratizes it so give that a listen so this week's podcast i don't want to call it a part two because it's not really it's more of a companion podcast I did a podcast about four weeks ago.

And the name of the podcast is Forgotten Pottage. And in this podcast, I did a 20th century history of avant-garde participatory art. What I spoke about was how Soviet art of the Russian Revolution and art belonging to the Italian fascism which would be fascism how artistic movements emerged whereby they had specific political aims and to take it to the Russian revolution type of participatory art the aim of the radical avant-garde art was to remove the concept of avant-garde art was to remove the concept of art is a painting art is a sculpture to remove this concept of art is an object that's an artist makes and it's on a gallery and then there's a line between the piece of art and then the observer of the art so Soviet art critiqued that model. Soviet art believed that a painting on a wall. That a brilliant talented painter made.

Which is completely separate and above the observers. Who kind of compete to bid for its brilliance. That this was merely a model of hierarchical capitalism. that this was merely a model of hierarchical capitalism and it served to reinforce the idea of some people are really rich at the top and some people are really poor at the bottom and that's how things have to be. Soviet art challenged that.

They wanted to strip that away by blurring the line between art and audience and encouraging the audience to participate in the art. And Soviet artistic endeavours believed that, and this was explicitly political and it was government run, that if you could get the public to engage in mass acts of theatre where there's, you know, fuck paintings, fuck sculptures there's no more object art instead everyone participates in this big piece of theatre and the art becomes the act of participation

the goal of this was it was a way to condition a society into collectivistic communist thinking. It was a way, it was a radical concept-based, narrative, story-based way to change how a population thinks about themselves and their role in society. They viewed the gallery system or paintings that were in churches as a form of propaganda

that reinforces hierarchies. Talented art on the wall, don't go near it, it's godlike, you're a piece of shit who can only observe it and if you're lucky you can buy it. They wanted to strip that down because they viewed it as propaganda that reinforced capitalist hierarchies.

Get everyone participating and then you condition the society towards we are all equal, we're all in this together and this is about the state. It's not about rich people versus poor people, it's about everyone for the state. And that was the noble and avant-garde intention of soviet participatory art if that sounded um a bit brief and complex and confusing it was uh i i did a podcast called forgotten pottage about four podcasts back where i went into that subject matter in great detail and tried to explain it in much simpler terms than that so that's a brief synopsis of something that took me an hour to explain in simpler terms so go back and listen so this week's podcast is going to be about american abstract expressionist art of the 1950s

which i believe to be the antithesis the direct opposite politically also of this Soviet participatory art which strived to challenge and remove hierarchical structures of power so firstly what is abstract expressionist art? because I'm aware that this is a podcast

it's audio I can't show you any visuals Abstract Expressionist Art. Because I'm aware that this is a podcast. It's audio. I can't show you any visuals. If you want to pause. And get a look at some Abstract Expressionist Painters. Franz Klein. Robert Motherwell. Georgia O'Keeffe.

Jackson Pollock abstract expressionist art is if you're someone who isn't mad into art or painting abstract expressionist painting is most likely the one that would make you very annoyed and frustrated

and pissed off abstract expressionist painting is the one whereby when you walk if you were to walk into a gallery and see it you would look at this giant painting that looks like splatters of paint on a canvas and you might say to yourself how the fuck and why is that art anyone can do that oh my god it's worth 60 million quid what type of shit is this that's often most people's reaction to abstract expressionist art and that's fair enough um do i feel that way about it no i don't some of my favorite paintings are abstract expressionist paintings to the point

that i'm often embarrassed my favourite painter if someone was to say to me who is your favourite painter some days I might say Robert Motherwell and Robert Motherwell's paintings are very large paintings that are simply usually brush strokes of black and white that aren't paintings of anything they're just shapes and sometimes they can actually look look like a painter had a go at a wall

and didn't finish it it's like if a painter went at a a white wall with black paint and went on their lunch break sometimes that's what a robert Motherwell painting can look like so that's why I'm nearly embarrassed saying to people that this is my favorite painter because to the untrained eye it it looks like a pile of shit so in order to understand like the first look I that I found out about Robert Motherwell's paintings because when I was about 12 13 I had an older brother who was into painting and I used to open up his books and I saw Robert Motherwell's paintings in it and it just spoke to me I don't know what it was I liked it I first saw Robert Motherwell in real life probably when I did my first gig in New York around 2010 and when I was in its presence in the gallery

I did cry I started crying now mainly because I've been looking at this thing in books all my life and here I am beside a Robert Motherwell so there was all that baggage along with it but it emotionally it brought some heavy emotions on me so did the paintings of mart rocko when i was present in their presence and to explain abstract expressionist painting the best way to do it is to look at its lineage right so you've heard of impressionist painting impressionist painting is from about 1860 onwards you're talking Monet right Monet is a fairly well-known painter his paintings are visually aesthetic you don't have to know about painting to appreciate a Monet it's in your face visually beautiful Monet used to paint water lilies and trees and nature and Monet was an impressionist. What is impressionism? Impressionism was basically, now I did a podcast on this as well, a full

podcast, can't remember the name but I did a full impressionist podcast. To make it as simple and as basic as possible, impressionism I believe is the start of the movement known as modernism which is when art started to move away from kind of religion and move towards science because impressionism embraced the new science of optics which is how biology understands how the eye works. So impressionism embraced that. it was also a product of the industrial revolution impressionism as a painting was a response to the brand new invention of the camera painting had existed for hundreds of years if you wanted to represent on a two-dimensional space a fucking horse or a field or a lovely sky or a person you had to get a painter to do it there was no cameras then all of a sudden this new invention industrial revolution comes along 1860

called a camera which can capture fucking reality in two-dimensional space this presents the act of the art of painting with a challenge why is painting relevant now? We have cameras. So impressionism came out of this for two reasons. Number one, when impressionism came about, people like Monet, actual paints, oil paints used to be a lot of hassle. Painters used to make them themselves and they were bulky and they'd rarely leave their studios with the industrial revolution around 1860 paints oil paint became available in tubes for the first time and it became portable so painters were able to paint outside in a field with an easel which hadn't really been done before so painting was left with this challenge of what can painting do that photographs can't so the impressionists tried to create an impression of reality if you take a photograph of a tree

that photograph will it will exactly capture what's there in front of you in a very cold exact representation of reality but that's that's a robot that's a machine's lived reality of observing a tree a camera is a machine it has no feelings it has no emotions a camera has no opinions about a tree it has no relationship with a tree it simply records the information of a tree in a mechanical facsimile of an eye when you as a human sit in front of a tree you're not just coldly looking at a tree like a camera does

you have opinions about the tree you can smell the tree you can wonder what the tree was like when it was younger you can wonder the health of the tree you can wonder if the tree is going to die you can say to yourself i might like to sit under that tree you experience and feel emotions in the moment

and the tree consolidates into your memory if this is a particularly beautiful tree the tree will stick in your memory and once you walk away from that tree and you close your eyes and you think about the tree, what you're left with in your mind is an impression of that tree. You have this little photograph of the tree, but it's not just visual information. It's the smell of the tree. It's your feelings about the tree. It's your emotions about the tree. It's inaccurate, but at the same time, it has greater depth and richness than a simple photograph of a tree. Well, impressionism tried to do this.

Impressionism was like, well, fuck the camera. The camera can take a photograph of the tree like a cold robot, but I'm going to paint my impression of this tree. I'm going to exaggerate. First off, I'm going to literally try and capture light as the human eye sees it. Okay? Cameras can't do that. A camera can't capture light the way the human eye can a painting can but a camera can't even today it can't i'm going to capture how the human eye receives the light of this tree and i'm also going to include some of the emotional resonance that this tree has to create an impression

of this tree so when you walk into a gallery and you see a photograph of a tree and then Monet's painting of a tree which one are you going to care more about Monet's fucking painting Monet's painting will have a very fascinating magic about it and the genius of Monet was that he was able to capture not just a fucking tree but the feeling of tree-ness the feeling he was able to capture what memories of beautiful trees felt like and that was impressionism and then after impressionism came expressionism where the expressionist said I like this business where Monet and the impressionists were getting impressions of trees I want to go one further. I just want to isolate the emotional feeling of the tree. A classic example for me there would be Piet Mondrian. Mondrian is one of the fathers of abstraction.

Mondrian has paintings of trees where they're really distorted trees and they're broken down he's removing information from the tree and breaking it down into a like a distant memory of what the tree would look like so look up Piet Mondrian's trees and you'll see with Mondrian's painting of a tree there's an economy of information only you you see branches it's it doesn't look like it looks like a tree but it's not a tree and it's almost like the skeleton of a tree or like a tree if a fucking six-year-old described it to you and if you look at mandrian's later paintings in particular one called broadway boogie woogie which was from about 1920 it's just yellow this is a very famous painting so you've definitely seen this it's just very perfect yellow red and white squares with black

borders and if you look at mondrian's painting expressionist not impressionist expressionist painting of a tree and then look at his later abstract work where it's just squares you can now see the lineage between impressionism to expressionism to abstraction but expressionism was about i'm not really even i'm not that interested in painting what this tree looks at looks like what i'm interested in is painting what this tree feels like i want to use paint as a language which expresses my feelings about this tree and that's what expressionism is and then abstraction is about removing that tree from reality altogether abstract expressionism which started around we'll say that the 1940s onwards and it's identified as an american painting movement abstract expressionism is the mixture of expressionism and abstraction whereby the goal of the painter is to literally paint

feelings and i know that sounds mad but abstract expressionism is an attempt to paint feelings. And it was modernist because it was very much hugely influenced by James Joyce. Hugely influenced by the Irish writer James Joyce, who was a modernist writer. Some say he's the father of modernist writing. So hugely influenced by James Joyce. Joyce was a modernist writer because he was looking at the new science of psychology and the work of Sigmund Freud. Fucking James Joyce was looking at Sigmund Freud's

work and Sigmund Freud's understanding of how words are formed in the unconscious mind and to make it really basic, that's how Joyce was trying to write. James Joyce when he, when James Joyce was writing stories like Ulysses

Joyce is not writing words as they come out of a character's mouth he's writing words as they form in the

character's mind before they leave the character's mouth influenced by this new concept of the unconscious mind

that you see with Freud and Young and that's what makes the work of James Joyce modernist. But you can see there, there's a parallel with Joyce's writing and expressionism. So if Joyce is writing not words that come out of people's mouths, but how the words are formed in their minds before they come out of their mouths, the expressionists are not painting trees,

but they're painting the feeling of a tree and then the abstract cunts are the abstraction is like joyce they're the abstraction they're not even interested in fucking trees they're interested in what a tree they're almost interested in the pre-conscious notion of a tree i know this is getting really fucking complicated but this is what art is is concerned with right so the abstract expressionists were trying to paint emotion and they wouldn't say here's my painting of anger here's my painting of sadness they were trying to they borrowed as well from the surrealist movement, the surrealist being the likes

of Salvador Dali and that, abstract expressionism as well as heavily rooted in surrealism which you can trace back to Dada they were interested in surrealism was influenced hugely again by the work of S sigmund fried the unconscious mind writing painting unconsciously painting without thinking painting from a place of pure

passionate emotion so that's what abstract expressionism is to take it back to why would i be in the presence of a Robert Motherwell painting and feel like crying. The only thing I can compare it to is music. Abstract expressionism. The closest analogue to abstract expressionism is jazz music. Jazz music is quite similar. But if someone says to me. Blind by that Robert Motherwell painting up there on the wall,

which to me is just lumps of black and white, and you're telling me that's one of your favourite paintings and it's making you want to cry, why the fuck, like, you're lying to sound cool, that's usually what's said to me, and I've struggled with it for years, and how I, and I've struggled with it for years and how I I think the best way to explain it is we struggle when it's visual information when it's a painting of a blob on a canvas

it's easy to look at it and go that's fucking stupid but when you but with music it's not like music is pure abstraction. A painting that's supposed to elicit emotion, you can scrutinise that easily.

It's visual information. You can go, nah, fuck it, man, it's a blob. Music is symmetrical vibrations of air that make us feel certain emotions. Now that to me is utterly bizarre. Music is technically mathematics having fun. When you hear a piano piece or some piece of instrumental let's let's let's not have lyrics involved when you hear a piece of classical music or jazz music or whatever the fuck no lyrics in it it's just

music and you're like what the fuck is this and it's making you feel sad it's making you feel happy it's making you feel like you want to dance it's making you think of a time when you were in love and what's doing this are vibrations of air that happen to be symmetrical which means that the music the music is a painting in the air that you can't see instead your ears feel it and process it into the brain as emotion that's fucking mad that's far more complicated than a robert motherwell painting far more complicated but it's the same shit it's the same thing so with abstract expressionism what I'm sensitive to when I'm enjoying an abstract expressionist painting is

certain marks and certain ways the paint is used and that's all I can say certain ways that the paint is used elicit strong emotions in me it's not just black on white it's

the type of white it's the type of black it's how they interact together it's how the marks are made elicits emotion it's how they're layered and it's visual music that's all I can say I can't tell you music that's all I can say I can't tell you why a minor chord makes me feel sad and I can't tell you why a major chord makes me feel happy and I can't tell you why a major seventh chord feels kind of ironic and funny I can't tell you these things but I can feel them and if you heard them too you'd feel them and know what I'm talking about abstract painting is that there's certain marks on abstract paintings that can elicit emotions to those that are sensitive to them I believe I'm sensitive to it because I paint myself I haven't done it in fucking years, but when I was a teenager I used to oil paint, and I used to do a lot of painting, so because I myself understood the action and feeling of oil paint

and scraping it on a canvas, and understood mark making, it allowed me the sensitivity to empathise with paint on a canvas. the sensitivity to empathize with paint on a canvas so that's the easiest way for me to justify why i like abstract expressionism and to explain to you what is abstract expressionism it's it's quite a radical type of art type of painting which attempted to paint emotions that's the simplest way of putting it it was radical and avant-garde but it's it's not as radical and avant-garde as we'll say abstract expressionism is mostly an american movement of the 1950s they a lot of them weren't yanks they were a lot of them were Jewish people from like Lithuania, Poland, people who escaped after World War II and moved to America, okay, because they were persecuted, because they were Jewish or maybe if they were living in what became the Soviet Union, they didn't want to live

under communism, they preferred capitalism in america but abstract expressionism tends to be kind of old lefty left-leaning socialist but maybe not full-on soviet artists in the 1950s in america and it was radical but like not as radical as soviet participatory art with abstract expressionism you still have a gallery an artist that's revered like a god and a painting on a wall which you can buy so it operates happily within structures of capitalism and that's why it fucking thrived in america and that's the story i want to tell you this week on this podcast and that's the hot take I want. Before I do this I'm going to do the ocarina pause.

Where you may or may not hear an advert. A generic advert for a product. Or possibly even me begrudgingly reading out an ad for a product. But anyway here's the ocarina pause. I've got the blue ceramic ocarina this week. Oh that's beautiful so that was the ocarina pause I'd also like to remind you the support for this podcast comes from the patrons.

This podcast, as a result of world events and the coronavirus, is my sole source of income. So there's a Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast, where if you're listening to this podcast and you're enjoying it, you can give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month to pay me for my work essentially there's a lot of work goes into this podcast um now i really need it at the moment obviously because this is my sole source of income so please do if you're in a position to do it

please do contribute to the patreon page it makes a massive difference to my fucking life it pays my way. Also as well, and I announced this this week, a new thing I'm doing once a month. Now I'm changing the terms a little bit, right? So last week I said what I'm going to do from now on as a reward. I'm particularly thankful to the people who've become patrons in the past two months because like I said they're saving my fucking bacon so I was like

I'm gonna pick a new patron each month and give them a drawing I'm gonna do hand drawings like I do in my books I'm gonna do a fucking drawing a one of a kind hand drawing and I'm gonna send it to one person at random

who is a patron of the podcast I'm gonna contact them get their address and I'll send it in the person at random who is a patron of the podcast I'm going to contact them, get their address and I'll send it in the post and you will have a one of a kind drawing that I make for you I was going to do it to just new patrons and then I thought, no fuck it that's not very fair to people who have been patrons for ages

so I'm just going to pick a random patron right, regardless of when you joined I'm just going to pick a random patron one a month and you're gonna get sent a piece of art that i created in the post with a little note and i'll sign it as well as a thank you because i really have to give massive fucking thanks to the patrons at this time of the podcast em you're making I can sleep at night

just thank you so much alright so moving on oh yeah like and subscribe and share and tell your friends about the podcast

all that shit as well and I'm on twitch now as well twitch.com no twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast I'll be fully up and running

in about two weeks right now I'm still testing but even the test streams are good crack to be honest people seem to be enjoying them so there you go

subscribe and follow there or whatever the fuck you do so back to American Abstract Expressionist Painting of the 1950s and why I'm trying to make the case an argument that it's the antithesis of Soviet painting which Soviet painting had its its radical roots not just Soviet painting

Soviet art Soviet art had its radical roots in the participatory art movement with its you know it came from futurism and dada and at the time of the russian revolution had radical roots but by 1950 soviet art wasn't soviet by by which i mean look the the communist art of the soviet union russia right now no not russia the Soviet Union, which is an area that doesn't exist anymore, which encapsulated Poland and Lithuania and all these countries after World War II. So by 1950, Soviet art in Soviet countries, it wasn't these grand theatrical participatory plays that it would have been around 1920 it was much more state sponsored

art that served as propaganda painting there was strict rules around what was acceptable painting in the Soviet Union around 1950 and the strict rules were the painting had to be

realistic, it had to portray russian workers doing their fucking jobs going to work and doing everything to benefit the state and to be good communists russian painting by 1950 was propaganda by state-sponsored artists who really had very little creativity. It was a very restricted art form. If you want to see, you know, the paintings that are in North Korea right now, paintings of Kim Jong-un, you know, used as an oppressive kind of regime

to create a cult of personality around a leader and to keep people in control. So this is what Soviet art was by 1950, even though it did have incredibly radical avant-garde roots. In America, at the same time, what you had was American abstract expressionism, which is very different to Soviet art. There's no realism.

It doesn't appear to have any purpose. It's all over the place. It's chaotic. What's also worth noting about American abstract expressionism, Soviet art, you know, it wasn't about selling it, it wasn't about making money. Ten of the most expensive paintings of all time, something like six of them,

are American abstract expressionist paintings uh number number 17a which is a painting by jackson pollock 200 million that's sold for there's a mark rockco painting for 186 million a willem de kooning painting for 200 million it's very much over represented in paintings. The most expensive paintings were paintings from the 1950s in America. More expensive than Picasso's. More expensive than fucking Monet's. And you got to ask yourself why is this?

How did that happen? Are they really worth that much? How did this come about? So we have to contextualize all of this within the cold war if you don't know what the cold war was it wasn't a war it was an era of unrest after world war ii so very basic world war ii the russians and the americans closed in on Very basic. World War II. The Russians. And the Americans. Closed in on Berlin at the same time.

To kill fucking Hitler. And they were allies. And then shit got fucked up. And the world became divided. Into East and West. Communism versus Capitalism. The Soviet Union. And the East. Represented the huge force of communism and

socialism and the united states represented capitalism and democracy and money individualism versus collectivism right and this was the cold war it was a period of about And this was the Cold War. It was a period of about, Jesus, about 70 years, was it 60 years? We'll say it started in 1945 and ended in 1990. So over 50 years of an ideological battle where proxy wars were fought. But the Soviet Union and the United States at all times could have gone to war, could have had nuclear war and because nuclear war would have ended the

world, it could never happen. So the war was fought through things like the Korean War, the Vietnam War, loads of these smaller conflicts but also a huge ideological war. And this is where American abstract expressionism has its roots why it's important and why i believe it to be the antithesis of soviet art

so there was a culture war going on where in the Soviet Union there would have been quite a lot of propaganda against capitalist America. The propaganda, the gist of it would have been, you're all here in Russia and you're all here part of the, you know, you're for the benefit of the state. And everyone has a house and everyone has food and you don't want for nothing. And you're not greedy pigs like the americans you're all working together as brothers and sisters for the state this is communism so that was the propaganda that was in russia and it was anti-american and it's america's evil america's bourgeois they just care about money there's a load of rich people and a lot of poor people at least you all have equality here and they used to say about when

the average soviet person would be like but i want coca-cola i want a big american car i want the things that they have the russians would say well the americans all they have is mcdonald's and cars but they've no fucking culture they've no no art they've no culture, they're soulless they're soulless evil devils who only have possessions they don't have the wonderful great meaning of the Soviet motherland that ye have, they don't have

emotionally rich lives so this would have been this propaganda America is a sterile capitalist place that only cares about money and they wouldn't know fucking art from their elbow. They know fuck all about art and they don't have any. They've no culture over there. Just money.

So America wanted to counteract this as part of an ideological war and America really needed... ideological war and America really needed America needed to show that because America at the end of the day is an incredibly capitalistic country where money was the only thing that matters money reigns supreme there's very strict and blatant hierarchical structures around race and money and privilege and America doesn't like to admit it but that's capitalism and when russia used to say they might have cars but they don't have culture that was quite damaging so the yanks wanted to fight back against this image and show hold on a second soviets yes we do have fucking culture and it's better than years and what they chose to promote was abstract expressionism also jazz music but that's a separate podcast And what they chose to promote was abstract expressionism.

Also jazz music, but that's a separate podcast. No, no, don't. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. What's not real?

Who said that? The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe Herway, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring

rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. famously unnerving piece. Symphony Exploder. April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca. But the American government chose abstract expressionism because these were young, they weren't American-born artists. Like I said, these were like, a lot of them ex-socialists, ex-communists,

Jewish people who left in exile from Soviet places in Europe to find a new life in America. But they would have had the lineage of Dada and Surrealism and they were now making art in America in the 1950s, centred around New York specifically and making this really exciting style of painting known as American Abstract Expressionist Art. Abstract Expressionist Art, it was branded as American

but the American government were like look at this, this is class and new and we need to promote this new type of abstract expressionism because it's ours, it's American same way they did it with jazz music and it's not Russian but also remember that America is a deeply conservative sometimes backwards right-wing country so why would the american establishment want to see the incredibly difficult complicated paintings by all these european jewish people and ex-communists why would they possibly want to embrace these people who were very left-leaning in their ideals

who would have been seen as lazy dropout artists and not actually encapsulating american ideals why would the u.s government want to support and promote the art of these people well at the start they fucking didn't so in 1946 this huge government u, US government funded exhibition was created and it was called Advancing American Art. And I can't remember. Robert Motherwell was one of the painters who was included in this and Georgia O'Keeffe. But legends in abstract expressionism were chosen to be part of this state-funded American abstract art exhibition and the purpose of the exhibition was that it was going to be toured all around Europe and Latin America as a US government-funded attempt at exporting American art and not just exporting like music or fucking TV it was like

no no no no because the center of art at this time you have to remember would have been Paris art fine art was a European thing and America had an image problem America was seen as this young foolish country with more money than sense like America's the country like about 20 years before that or possibly more

like a rich yank bought the original London Bridge and brought it over brick by brick to America and a law had to be brought in that was like the Yanks are going to buy up European castles and try and implant them in America if we don't stop them so laws were brought in America was seen as a new young country where there's more money than sense and they don't have culture, intellect, identity or history. This was the view of America, not just by the Soviets but by all of Europe. There was a snobbishness.

So even in Paris, no one gave a roar and fuck about American art. It's like what the fuck would those Yanks have to say? They're all stupid pricks. what the fuck would those Yanks have to say? They're all stupid pricks. So the purpose of Advancing American Art Exhibition 1946 was to tour this all around the world as an image and propaganda exercise to say to Europe and to say to the Soviets,

we've got art, lads. We've got culture and we've got art. And it's the best. It's the most forward-thinking shit art. And it's the best. It's the most forward thinking shit going. And it was getting on grand. And then what happens is that a congressman. A US congressman called George Dondero. Went fucking apeshit.

Because George Dondero was like. Okay the US government's after putting aside a couple of million dollars. To take these ridiculous looking paintings. and move them all around the world. And what Dondero did is he decided for the crack to look up the history of abstract art and the lineage of the abstract artists in America and where they come from. And he started reading about Dada, about surrealism. He started to read about futurism. And he, while tracing the lineage of these artists,

where does it take you? It takes you to radical political thinkers. It takes you to, you know, if you want to trace American abstract expressionism back to futurism which you absolutely can you get fascism if you want to trace it back to the russian fucking revolution or russian suprematism which is also a lineage of fucking american abstract expressionist painting you get communism and socialism so they weren't pretty paintings anymore now this congressman george dundero was like hold on a minute these painters from new york and you're presenting this

as american art they're a bunch of commies and jews who you can trace the roots of what they're doing back to fucking fascism and socialism and all this shit why the fuck and then he had this huge big campaign your tax dollars are paying for this exhibition to go all around the world and then what happened is in america in the 50s now bear in mind this is the cold war so it's a huge ideological war against the Soviets and against communism. There was a fella called Senator McCarthy. Irish name, unfortunately. The biggest cunts in America always have fucking Irish names.

There was a fella called Senator McCarthy who was a rabid anti-communist. The phrase McCarthyism comes from him, right? And within the culture that McCarthy operated in in this huge anti-communist culture there was a thing called the house on a house of un-american activities right which was like this i don't know what you call it like a tribunal or something it was a government-run american tribunal where they would investigate private american citizens or businesses who they suspected of being communists and it was pure witch hunt fucking spanish inquisition shit really humiliating and embarrassing so if somebody in America was suspected in the 1950s of having any ties or beliefs that are socialist, that are communist, are fascist.

Fascism, fair enough. But anyone who was socialist, you kind of ratted them out. And then this person had to appear before the House of Un-American Activities. And they were grilled and quizzed on their beliefs and whether or not they were fucking sensitive to the Soviet Union because they were deemed to be a threat to the United States or possibly a spy

so it was taken very seriously so what happened was because this George Dondro had done his art history and looked at the radical roots of abstract expressionism it got in front of the house of un-American activities and a lot of the fucking artists were

called up and their paintings, their abstract paintings were being analysed by this committee and one person was asked like this is like brush strokes on a fucking canvas like like I said the important this really highlighted the poverty of cultural

knowledge in america at the time the whole significance and importance of an abstract painting is that it's non-representational the markings on the canvas of this painting don't represent something that's in real life the symbols don't mean anything it's it's trying to paint a fucking emotion so you can't look at an abstract expression as painting and say i think i see a duck i think the artist has painted a duck that's not what it's about if you see a duck that's you seeing it but the artist didn't want the duck in there they're trying to paint an emotion so artists had to american artists had to take their their abstract paintings and present them to this house of un-american committee uh or un-american activities and they were being asked questions like they they'd hone in on small areas of the artist's painting, little flicks of paint, and they'd ask the artist,

is this flick of paint the sickle and hammer of the communist Soviet flag? Or one of the most ridiculous ones is I believe they got, I'm nearly sure it was either Arshile Gorky or fucking Jackson Pollock,

but some painter, I'm going to say it was Jackson Pollock, garkie or fucking jackson pollock but some painter i'm gonna say it was jackson pollock right i could be wrong jackson pollock was an abstract expressionist painter who was famous for literally splattering paint on the canvas not even using a brush he would action painting he called it very similar to extreme stream of consciousness painting no no thought or thinking splashing the paint on the canvas to capture the his own emotions in the moment so the house of un-american activities had looked at a jackson pollock painting and one of them said this looks like you know if you look at this painting from a certain angle, it actually looks like a map. Because it does, if you look at a Pollock painting and then look at, we'll say, a map of mountains or countryside, you can draw a visual analogue between the two.

So the fucking House of Un-American Activities decided that Jackson Pollock's paintings were actually maps because what they were very paranoid about at the time okay so this is 1946 only a couple of years after World War II both Russia and America have nuclear bombs they hadn't developed intercontinental ballistic missiles yet so they didn't they didn't have the policy of what's known as mutually assured destruction, whereby we have a bunch of nuclear missiles and so do ye, and we launch them all at once. If you attack us, we can attack ye and everyone dies. This didn't exist in the late 40s.

They were both worried about who would make the first strike, who would fly their planes over and obliterate America and Russia wins. This was in the early stages make the first strike. Who would fly their planes over. And obliterate America. And Russia wins. This was in the early stages of the Cold War. This was a real fear. Someone could win a nuclear war. And. What they were terrified of was.

Russian spy planes. They were terrified of. Weather balloons. That were spying. Basically high altitude planes that would take photographs of America and point out where strategic military bases were and the Yanks were

terrified of Russian spies gaining this information so this house of un-American activities looked at the paintings of Jackson Pollock and decided that Pollock's paintings were actually visual encrypted codes that had maps of strategic American bases and that Pollock's paintings were a way for him to let the Russians know where they could bomb in America because there's maps hidden in the paintings.

And that's the level of madness you're dealing with there. And these are just fucking, it's just art. So what happened is this exhibition in 1946 immediately got pulled. The average American person said, what the fuck, why are you funding these commies who are painting maps to show the Russians how to bomb us why are you funding them and then calling it American art and showing it to the world not with my tax dollars buddy so they shut it down immediately and one of the great ironies

the US government was left now with fucking a hundred paintings on their hands and they sold like Robert Motherwell paintings and Georgia O'Keeffe paintings for like $20 just sold them off getting the fucking rid of them so American Abstract Expressionist painting by 1950 is off to a very rocky start

like this Congressman George Dondero fella he believed that this idea of taking these young American artists, and showing them around the world, that because their paintings, were in his eyes, so hideous,

and distorted, and strange, that he believed that, quote, it was to tell the foreigners, that the American people, are despondent, broken down, or of hideous shape.

He believed that this would be the ideological message that it would send the world about America to showcase these artists to Europe. But this is where it gets really fucking interesting. So America's odd the way it operates. America's odd the way it operates. Congress and the American public had rejected these paintings, rejected these artists, and at the height of anti-communism

had said these are communist lefty layabout fuckwits who are trying to get us all killed. I don't give a fuck about this art and don't use my tax dollars. That's the attitude of Congress and the American people. But America's weird. America has got very shadowy

and secret organizations like the CIA who don't operate in the interest of Congress or in the interest of even the President. The CIA are Machiavellian and they do what they believe is in the interest of even the president. The CIA are Machiavellian and they do what they believe is in the interest of the dollar, ultimately, regardless of morality. And what Congress had failed,

you know, by Congress saying these lazy fucks with their ugly paintings are communistic, what they had failed to notice and what would they were kind of what was kind of silly is what abstract expressionism had and what made it appealing is that it was the exact opposite of soviet art at the time, okay, the exact, the polar fucking opposite, and taking it back to my podcast, a couple, a couple of podcasts ago, pottage something, whatever the fuck it was, forgotten pottage, where I spoke about the radical Soviet roots of how, in the Soviet Union, right, the Russian Revolution, 1917 onwards, there had been a deliberate attempt by the state to use

participatory art okay blur the line between artist art and audience get everyone participating as a way to condition society into collectivist communistic thinking right this was the roots of russian soviet art by 1950 it had stopped being that now art was state sanctioned and it was propaganda art the soviet congress in 1934 right which was stalin had four rules for what what art had to be. Okay? So under Stalin, art had to be, number one, proletarian. Proletarian means the working class, the worker. Art relevant to the workers and understandable to them. Simple, visual.

A painting of a man in a field and the sun is shining on him and he's digging up potatoes and his family are happy. Number two, it had to be typical art had to represent scenes of everyday life of the people it had to be realistic the art had to be representational if you painted a pig it better fucking look like a pig number four it had to be partisan the art had to be supportive of the aims of the state and the party so this was straight up soviet fucking gone are the roots of soviet art which

come from this wonderful avant-garde deconstruction of what fucking art is it's like fuck paintings art becomes the act of participation which is incredibly radical and deconstructs capitalism by 1934 under Stalin art was just whatever the fuck Joseph Stalin it's like draw pretty paintings of people working hard and make me look class that was Soviet Stalinist art which if you're an artist in Soviet Russia living under that you'd be like fuck that man I'm an artist

I want to explore my innermost feelings I want to express myself I'm looking for expressionism not representationism not representation of an idealised version of what the state should be. So you had a lot of people fleeing, getting the fuck, if they could, trying to get out of Soviet Russia so they could go and express themselves.

So what's the exact opposite of those four rules that Stalin had created for what art must be? Fucking abstract expressionism. American abstract expressionism. American abstract expressionism. American abstract, like, rule number one, art relevant to the workers and understandable to them. There's nothing understandable about abstract. It's fucking a blob of paint on a canvas. Number two, it has to be typical scenes of everyday life of the people. Abstract expressionism is not that. It's marks of paint on a canvas that represent incredibly abstract themes. That's interested in psychoanalysis, that's interested in Freud,

that's trying to paint emotions. Three, it had to be realistic in the representational sense. It's not representational, it's abstract. Abstract is the literal, in artistic language, the literal opposite to representational art is abstract. It had to be partisan. It had to be supportive of the aims of the state and the party. Now, that's the interesting one.

That's the interesting one. Because abstract art you you know when you're looking at essentially marks of paint on a canvas and it's not a painting of anything other than emotions it's pure abstraction and you look at that and you say well this this this certainly isn't political how can this painting these blobs on a canvas be political but in a sense american abstract art unintentionally that was partisan so if in soviet russia your paintings represented the worker in the field working hard and feeding their family and smiling joseph stalin up in the clouds, which is explicitly representationally partisan. Abstract Expressionism very much represented the American dream.

Okay? And the fucking CIA recognised this. The American Congress didn't, but the fucking CIA did. So let's look... I'm going to take the example of Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollock was an American abstract expressionist painter of the 1950s and I mentioned him earlier literally what Jackson Pollock used to do is he would have a big massive canvas he would have 20 bottles of paint and he would literally throw the paint at the canvas. The archetype of the mad artist is Jackson Pollock, throwing paint at a canvas with no care or thought in the world,

no rules. Jackson Pollock's paintings represented the ideological ideals of the American dream. It represented freedom, democracy. So in Russia, if you're an artist in Russia, and their cultural output is like, you gotta obey these fucking rules, you gotta draw a pig as a pig is, and the pig better be saying something sound about Stalin. And then you have Jackson

Pollock going I'm doing whatever the fuck I want buddy because I'm American and I'm free so abstract American abstract expression expressionist painting came to represent the ideology of American freedom democracy manifest destiny frontierism the canvas was the great american frontier to be explored whatever way you choose create your own path splash the canvas down the world is yours you're free to do whatever the fuck you want because this is america that's what these splattered fucking marks of paint on canvases came to represent ideologically and the cia spotted this now this is not conspiracy no it is conspiracy and in the 1950s this was straight up secret covert anti-fucking communist cold war cia conspiracy but now in 2020 when you have access to documents it's fact abstract expressionism was rejected by the american congress as seen as being

commie bullshit the cia said no it's not lads but we're not going to say shit and donald jameson who's a former cia agent i've got a quote from him here he literally said he goes we recognize that this abstract expressionism was the kind of art that did not have anything to do with socialist realism moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticized that much and that heavy-handedly was worth support in one way of another so if you would have attempted an abstract painting in soviet russia you'd have been fucked off to the gulag because that's threatening to an authoritarian system why is this who the fuck is this cunt with his 10 tins of paint flipping it all over the canvas

why isn't he working in the factory so it was suppressed in russia so the yanks were like well we better promote it then and the cia fucking did it but as I mentioned because Congress had denounced this type of art the CIA had to do it covertly so as I've mentioned in previous podcasts like nowadays the CIA have a company called In-Q-Tel which they fund and the money comes from the CIA and they fund many different mainly data gathering stuff now but in the 1950s the CIA were using shell companies and deep state money is deep state money the right word black budget money from the government and they were funding the museum of modern art in New York now the thing is the museum of modern art in New York the people curators, they don't know where the fucking money is coming from.

The CIA are able to fund things, six companies removed, so that no one knows where the money is fucking coming from. So the mad thing is, is that these abstract expressionist painters, they would have been very anti-CIA. They would have been anti-war. They would have been socialist anti-CIA they would have been anti-war they would have been socialist if not communist they would have been anti-state they didn't know that they're being funded by the fucking CIA but they were the CIA put a lot of money into the Museum of Modern Art in New York specifically to fund and promote American abstract expressionist art, to promote this mad, crazy type of painting where the artist has utter emotional freedom.

It's greedy. It turns what is a sensitive type of art about exploring emotions into hedonistic excess Pollock's paintings now are orgies of paint it's him doing a bukkake on a canvas it's the orgy of American excess

on a fucking canvas that's what it is now and the philosophy is removed it becomes something new it becomes something ugly with this new information. So the CIA funding took the shape of. I think one of the Rockefellers or something.

Was on the board of the Museum of Modern Art. They managed to get the funding in there. And. The purpose of the money was for that. The Museum of Modern Art. Would heavily invest in buying up. All these. American abstract expressionist paintings and supporting these painters. And to fund and to encourage the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, to lend these paintings to European museums.

in 1946 when the US government publicly and up front were like look at these new class American expressionist painters we want to show them to the world to show Europe that America isn't just dumb young country with no culture that we have our own art that was shut down by Congress because they believed to be communist they're doing the same thing again, six years later, except now it looks radical. It's the Museum of Modern Art that are loaning them out. It looks like it's driving itself. It's no longer state-sponsored, publicly state-sponsored American art. It's doing its own thing.

And to be perfectly honest, the fact that, the House of Un-American Activities, had denounced abstract expressionist art, that's like this really hip, cool stamp of approval, that now makes, this art appear dangerous,

and that's one of the things, one of the things that and i can there's another podcast on how mi5 did this with uh afro afro caribbean magazines in the uk how mi5 funded them that's a separate podcast but intelligence agencies within capitalist democracies like Britain and America you're kind of stepping back wondering why the fuck would the CIA you think of the CIA as assassinating fucking people going trying to kill

Fidel Castro and it's like yeah they do that but they also have a shit ton of money for propaganda and why the fuck did the CIA want to fund these artists painting canvases obviously there's the first one i mentioned whereby it directly challenges the soviets and shows europe that america has culture but what it also does is when you live when you live in a democracy right when you live in america with and and the ideology of america is democracy which is you have got unlimited freedom

that's the ideology you have got freedom right you don't really have freedom in america you don't you've got freedom if you have enough money but if you don't have the money you don't have freedom talk to anyone with no health care so this freedom business in america you don't have freedom if you're a person of color and you're discriminated against and you're like you ringing the police might mean getting shot dead if you're black so i'm sorry but no you don't have freedom in america you have there is a lip service and the ideology of freedom and democracy is a cornerstone of what America is but it's not real and the CIA put huge amounts of money

into promoting the illusion of freedom to the average person so they will sometimes consciously and deliberately fund things which are symbolically and harmlessly sub subversive and but what i mean by that is this is 1952 in 1946 abstract expressionism was denounced as communist by the house on of un-american activities it was blacklisted it was said this is the work of commies their paintings are trying to tell the Russians where to bomb right so congress says this ban it but yes four years later the museum

of modern art has got all these commie paintings that you can walk in and see. And they're being sold. What does that say? It's like holy moly. Look at this dangerous commie art. This is so subversive and dangerous. But we live in America. We don't ban things in this country. We live in a free country. Where even if you're a dirty commie painter.

You still have the freedom to express your views buddy because this is America you have freedom of speech so when you fund something that appears subversive paintings aren't going to do shit

like if you want subversive the Black Panthers that's fucking subversive that's actual black people in America activists saying do you know what it says in the constitution

that I can have a gun to defend myself so I think I will that gets fucking shut down the CIA aren't supporting that but they will support a bunch of white people painting with the illusion

of this middle class subversion when it's not really. The idea of it is subversive, but they're just fucking paintings on a wall. So the CIA will fund things that appear to be subversive to create the illusion of freedom. Congress says this is commie art, yet it's on a wall in New York. Whoa, freedom. freedom wow what an amazing country if this was russia the artists would be sent to gulag and they might be executed and the art would not be shown to anyone that's the opposite of freedom so it was a double-edged blade it marketed america as as a center of culture and thought and art and it

presented the american people with the illusion of subversive art being permitted and beautifully what it does is as i mentioned i read out the four conditions that stalin had said that what what state art must be and number I said abstract expressionism is the complete opposite of all of it except for number four number four the art must be partisan

it must support the aims of the state and the party abstract expressionism does that abstract expressionism represents

the unbridled freedom and excess of this is America you can do whatever the fuck you want. And what it also did is, because the CIA and the money was backing the Museum of Modern Art and backing these painters, people like fucking Motherwell and Pollock, who was a communist, they became multi, multi, multi millionaires. It was all, like, if you look at the series Mad Men, you'll see that, like,

sometimes in the office shots around the 60s, you'll actually, you'll see the odd Robert Motherwell painting because who was buying these paintings in America? Corporations. It was around the same time in America that art had been brought in, paintings, as a corporate write-off or as a way to avoid tax.

That if you, as a corporation, were buying a certain amount of art and paintings, you weren't paying tax. It was all tied in and sewed in. So these abstract expressionist paintings, which have these noble beginnings as trying to paint emotions, became the most obnoxious tool of capitalism where they moved out of galleries and became a giant blur of paint

that are on the walls of corporate headquarters because the corporation paid 600 million for them and don't pay tax on it and it's a way to hide money that can't be taken away like why the fuck, how can you decide that a painting is worth 200 million quid is the

painting really worth that it is if it's being used as a way to launder money and not pay tax and shit like that then it is yeah I mean the art world and auction and auctioning and valuing a paintings

that has nothing to do with art that's a completely separate system but you can see the roots of it all with this shit and the CIA funding the fucking

abstract expressionists and it does it's it's fully promotes the ideals of of American democracy freedom excess money Fully promotes. The ideals. Of American.

Democracy. Freedom. Excess. Money. Do whatever you want here buddy. That ideology. That's what it promotes. And now.

Abstract expressionism. Now it's the shit art. That's on the walls of hotels. That's not even made by an artist. It's made by a machine. With house paint. That's what abstract expressionism is now why is that because whoever was designing the hotels was obviously trying to copy corporate fucking lobbies from the 70s and 80s when they might actually have a robert motherwell up on the wall that's worth 60 million quid does any of this change how i feel about abstract expressionist art?

Not necessarily. I view it as separate. In my podcast Forgotten Potage. Where I spoke about the radical avant-garde roots of Soviet art. Where they encouraged participatory theatre. Where they were breaking down the boundaries of art. I fully respect that. I think that's fucking amazing.

The creativity there the passion I admire it and respect it as art do I respect Joseph Stalin and his very strict rules about what state art should be absolutely not no I don't but I recognize that the roots are absolutely genius I think Jordan Peterson collects old Soviet art I I think he does some type of ironic weird thing. He collects old Soviet art. But similarly, I did a podcast on Italian futurism. Futurism is an incredibly vibrant, forward-thinking, avant-garde style of art which unfortunately led to fascism.

And I can separate futurism from fascism. I don't support fascism i don't like where futurism went but the early stages of futurism and how that went on to influence dada how it influenced surrealism of course i can appreciate that because i'm an artist i can still look at a robert motherwell painting robert motherwell didn't know he was being funded by the fucking CIA Jackson Pollock didn't, Georgia O'Keeffe didn't the money was being kept far away, they were being used as puppets do I look at a Robert Motherwell

painting and view it as this represents the democracy, ideology of democracy and freedom and excessive America I don't, I look at a robert motherwell painting the way motherwell probably intended it and he was someone who had a he was a painter but also a doctor of philosophy who was a huge fan of james joyce and i appreciate it as a piece of art and it moves me to tears and i appreciate the mark making on the canvas and

his attempt at expressing his emotions on canvas I don't give a fuck if it ended up in the corporate headquarters of a bank in 1960 you know so that's all I can say that was a big one wasn't it that's the

the contrast of American abstract expressionist art with Soviet art at the time. How it was co-opted by the CIA. And hopefully that wasn't too complex and that I sufficiently democratised it because there's a lot of big concepts in there, especially we're not as a society educated about art and why art is important. And I know all this shit because

i studied fucking art for years and i care about it and i when i study this shit i want to democratize it i want to let people know this isn't complicated we're just not given access to the information and it's not valued i mean another huge thing to mention is the toxicity that came out of this we only view art within terms of its monetary value you know the fact that Jackson Pollock can throw paint on a canvas and have it for 600 million quid I'm much more excited by the early Russian revolution shit where they were like get rid of the art, get rid of the artist and then you can't sell it. Because you can't sell a performance, you can't sell participation. Which is truly radical because it breaks down capitalism. Abstract expressionism, while it's beautiful, it's very much in the service of capitalism. It's still, here's a painting from a talented artist. You stay behind that line and you can buy it if you have enough money.

Yeah, hopefully it was concise. Go back to some of my other art podcasts. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm.

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