Art and Politics in the Cold War Era Today we will consider Abstract Expressionism, and particularly the work of Jackson Pollock, against the backdrop of the Cold War. Drawing of scholarly essays by John Molyneux and Annabell Shark, we will discuss national and international responses to Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s and 50s. We will also discuss the relationship between Pollock's "action painting" and Kerouac's "spontaneous prose." What do these two aesthetic positions have in common? What do their commonalities signify about American culture in the Cold War era?

Eva Cockroft, “Abstract Expressionism: Weapon of the Cold War” Social Realism versus Abstract Expressionism Cultural Cold War abroad: The CIA and cultural politics The Rockefellers, MOMA, and the Cold War Alternatives: Congressman George Dondero on Communism and Modern Art

"Weapon of the Cold War"? (Eva Cockroft, Annabell Shark) Eva Cockcroft wrote about Abstract Expressionism in Artforum (No. 12) in 1974: "To understand why a particular art movement becomes successful under a given set of historical circumstances requires an examination of the specifics of patronage and the ideological needs of the powerful."

Our aim in the Cold War is not conquering of territory or subjugation by force. Our aim is more subtle, more pervasive, more complete. We are trying to get the world, by peaceful means, to believe the truth. That truth is that Americans want a world at peace, a world in which all people shall have opportunity for maximum individual development. The means we shall employ to spread this truth are often called "psychological." Don’t be afraid of that term just because it’s a five-dollar, five-syllable word. "Psychological warfare" is the struggle for the minds and wills of men. -President Dwight Eisenhower  

Jackson Pollock, Cold Warrior? Western upbringing Exposure to Native American sand painting Surrealism and psychoanalysis Growing celebrity after beginning of “drip painting” Influence of Thomas Hart Benton and Diego Rivera

Perhaps it was inevitable that Jackson Pollock, an artist who lived fast and died young, a man from the West who spoke of the kinship of his art with the rituals of the American Indian, whose expressionist painting style seemed involved not only with the violence of his own death, but also with the volatile American ethos itself, should have become a figure of the popular imagination. For millions who never saw the paintings of an artist whose works still cause intense critical debate, "Jack the Dripper," as TIME magazine mockingly labelled Pollock, was the original "rebel without a cause." Barbara Rose, Pollock: Painting (1980), 3-4.

Pollock's method and work [M]odern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age that we're living in ... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique. --Jackson Pollock Pollock an “action painter”; others, like Mark Rothko were “color field” painters The artists and their community (view clip from Kim Evans' 1987 documentary, Jackson Pollock)

Pollock's image became larger than life, and his myth began to dominate his art because of the interaction of many factors, including the public's fascination with the millions paid for art that did not, like Rembrandt's or even Monet's work, look like art to them at all. For Pollock' technique of pouring paint rather than using a brush was in and of itself so radical that Picasso's distortions looked tame by comparison. The focus on the drama and radicality of Pollock's technique was intensified by the exhibition and publication of the remarkable series of photographs that Hans Namuth made of Pollock beginning in the summer of 1950, and the showing of the film Namuth made with Paul Falkenberg in Autumn, 1950. --Barbara Rose, 3-4

Pollock seated by his car Hans Namuth Gelatin silver print, 1950 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

Hans Namuth, Jackson Pollock ’51 (film)

Through Namuth's unique documentary record of the artist in action, the public was to fabricate a new conception of the artist that fulfilled the need for a culture hero... In picturing a new image of the artist in the grip of impulse, driven by inner forces, Namuth, following his own unconscious intuition, provided the material necessary for the creation of a cultural myth of the artist as an inspired shaman, entirely "other" than the pedestrian businessman who dominated American social life. Barbara Rose, "Introduction: Jackson Pollock: The Artist as Cultural Hero", in Pollock: Painting (edited by Barbara Rose), Agrinde Publications Ltd.: New York (1980), pages 3-4.

Interpreting Jackson Pollock How might we read Abstract Expressionism, and the work of Jackson Pollock in particular, in relation to postwar cultural and political developments? According to Molyneux what was new and distinctive about the work of Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists? Molyneux discusses five schools of interpretation that emerged in response to Abstract Expressionism…

(LIFE's 1949 feature article on Pollock) "a random mess"? (LIFE's 1949 feature article on Pollock) "This is not art--it's a joke in bad taste." --Reynolds News headline, 1959 Eyes in the Heat, 1946. Oil and enamel on canvas, 54 x 43 inches (137.2 x 109.2 cm). The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 76.2553.149. Jackson Pollock © 2007 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

"a wild, romantic out-pouring of self expressionism"? Pollock, analysis, and the unconscious influence of Surrealism and Native American ritual “weapon of the Cold War”? Shimmering Substance, 1946 Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 24 1/4 in; Museum of Modern Art, New York

"the epitome of aesthetic value" and "the best painting of its day" "the epitome of aesthetic value" and "the best painting of its day"? (Clement Greenburg) drip paintings of 1947-1950 Pollock's greatest achievement According to Molyneux, these "create order out of chaos" and "without obvious patterning . . . achieve a total symphonic composition" thus they speak to "the struggle against alienation, fragmentation, and disintegration" (3)

Cathedral, 1947 Enamel and aluminum paint on canvas 71 1/2 x 35 1/16 in. Dallas Museum of Art

Full Fathom Five, 1947 Oil on canvas with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes, matches, etc., 50 7/8 x 30 1/8" Museum of Modern Art, New York

most Abstract Expressionists were male Pollock's "drip and flick performance as the acting out of . . . phallocentric male fantasy"? most Abstract Expressionists were male produced a "virile" and violent art Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950 7 ft 2 1/2 in x 9 ft 11 in, National Gallery of Art, Washington

                                                                            Autumn Rhythm, Number 1 1950 105 in. by 207 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

What makes these paintings 'great' What makes these paintings 'great'? The major paintings possess two qualities which relate to both form and content. First, they create order out of chaos. Without obvious patterning they achieve a total symphonic composition and this speaks of the struggle against alienation, fragmentation and disintegration. Second these compositions 'signify' at many levels--they convey by suggestion a multiplicity of 'meanings', meanings that are social, historical and political in character. --John Molyneux

Let us take Lavender Mist as an example Let us take Lavender Mist as an example . . . It is suggestive of an aerial photograph of a city, but it is a city that has somehow been blasted . . . It is also suggestive of astronomical photographs of nebulae and galaxies . . . while at the same time close up details of this and other paintings resemble microscopic photos of molecular structures.

Add to these visual associations that these works were painted in the aftermath of Hiroshima and at the onset of the Cold War, and note Pollock's own statement that 'modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age that we're living in ... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique.' Also recall again that this technique was to drip, flick and throw the paint onto the canvas from above. Put all this together and I think the connection between the work and the historical advent of the threat of nuclear annihilation is clear. --John Molyneux, “Expression of an Age”