8 ms·

Not the first time when the Default Country thinks they invented everything. The title is almost comical. Modern art, as everyone should know, started in 1860s

Not the first time when the Default Country thinks they invented everything. The title is almost comical. Modern art, as everyone should know, started in 1860s in Europe inspired by technological advances, globalization of trade and cultural exchange. Japanese art made huge blast, photography pushed to seek new forms of expression, social progress demanded new messages and new images. We had impressionism, post-impressionism, then the whole explosion of artistic forms and ideas in 1910s-1930s. All of that was Modern Art. CIA was founded in 1947 and CIA-sponsored soft power projection was a relatively short period in the world history lasting just a few decades, a part of the bigger game played between the USA and the Soviets, which did exactly the same (and thanks to whom we have now e.g. Studio Ghibli).

AlecSchueler 23d ago
By "modern art" they mean things like abstract expressionism.
- ivan_gammel 23d ago
  Reduction of modern art to abstract expressionism is the same as reduction of cinema to MCU. Acceptable for a talk over couple beers, disqualifying factor for pretend-to-be intellectuals, mainly because it is cherry-picking based on the scale of a scandal rather than genuine interest in the history of art.
  - deleted 23d ago
    [deleted]
  - philipallstar 23d ago
    No, those are not the same. You might say it's like reducing superhero movies to "superhero movies made in the last 20 years", which actually most people do, and it's mostly understandable. Maybe those people wouldn't have what you'd call a "genuine interest in the superhero genre" but who cares? They weren't trying to demonstrate that, and what they were saying didn't require it.
    - ivan_gammel 23d ago
      Most of the significant works of modern art were created before CIA was founded. The title is factually incorrect and intellectually dishonest. But "who cares" question points to something different: indeed, who cares if the knowledge acquired by the reader will be shallow and misleading? I do care. You may not. It's a matter of attitude. People are free to choose their chewing gum, right?
      - philipallstar 22d ago
        Yes, perhaps you're right. I think people think of "banana nailed to wall" as the outcome of modern art, and that I think is more recent. But there are works older than the CIA that look younger than it, such as Kandinski, and perhaps that is indeed misleading.
- dgellow 23d ago
  Which is even more absurd
  - coldtea 23d ago
    Not really absurd. That scene nearly dominated the art scene in the post war / cold war period, and for layman casual uses (and even for several critic treatments), it was almost synonymous with modern fine art in general (not "modernist" art, modern, as in contemporary).
    - ivan_gammel 23d ago
      The only thing where "American" art scene dominated was the auction space. And significant part of it was imported from Europe (no tariffs applied) and continued to feed from there later. The rest of the world lived it's own life.
      - coldtea 23d ago
        It's not just about the "American art scene". Western European artists in the same "genre" also got funded in similar ways. >The rest of the world lived it's own life. Perhaps, but this is not about what happened in Mongolian or Indonesian art scenes, but mostly focused on the cold war theater of US and Western Europe.
        ivan_gammel 23d ago
        First of all, what "genre"? I assume, abstract expressionism? Second, why would anyone fund specifically abstract expressionism and for what purpose given the diversity of art movements of that time? Third, what do you even know about contemporary art of Europe to make such bold claims?
        coldtea 22d ago
        >I assume, abstract expressionism? Yes, abstract expressionism, but also other mostly US-led scenes like pop art to a degree. >Second, why would anyone fund specifically abstract expressionism and for what purpose given the diversity of art movements of that time? It had a US lead at the time, easier to explain US institutions promoting and do cross-continent exchanges and sponsorships, and conveniently apolitical compared to other art movements of the time. >Third, what do you even know about contemporary art of Europe to make such bold claims? Quite a lot, being from here, and familiar with both their history and the relevant literature. A hardly a bold claim at all, it has been studied and reported in books such as "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters" (The New Press), "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War" (University of Chicago Press), "Pollock and After: The Critical Debate" (Harper Collins) and others, and of course the topic of TFA. Your opposite claim would be the bold one.
- grey-area 23d ago
  That is not Modern art but an offshoot of it, like postmodern and pop art.
cyberjar 23d ago
"the Default Country" is a good one. I'll have to start using that.
- jjgreen 23d ago
  For fun, ask a citizen of the Default Country where cars were invented ...
  - Waterluvian 22d ago
    At some point they discovered it was easier to just convince everyone they were exceptional than to actually be exceptional.
- tryauuum 23d ago
  I think it a reference to "default city" from the russian internet, when people noticed that people from Moscow never specify the city when talking about topics which would normally require knowledge of which city are they residents of Eventually it evolved, sometimes people say "hey, I'm from DC" or "hey, I live in DC2" (that means the second largest city, Saint-Petersburg)
  - ivan_gammel 23d ago
    Yes. Default Country for the world on many English-speaking forums is the same as Default City for Russia.
- bmacho 22d ago
  Especially from someone whose "modern art" means mid-19th centuary European art under an article that starts with "In the mid-twentieth century".
brodo 23d ago
Overall a great point, but I have a nit-pick: > Modern art, as everyone should know, started in 1860s in Europe As someone who is active in the German art scene, the understanding is not that clear-cut. Modern art, as I learned it, is "art in the modern period". So everything after the middle ages. Basically when people stopped only drawing religious art and portraits of nobles. What started in the 1860s is "modernism". The term used more often (at least in Germany) is "contemporary art". Which translates to "everything after WW 2". I've seen a lot of contemporary art museums, but few modern art museums.
- grey-area 23d ago
  No, Modern or Modernist art (with a capital m) is a specific period of art history. So yes it doesn’t tend to have museums but there are shows dedicated to Modern art. Contemporary art always refers to art from the specific period the speaker is living in, ie our present moment.
- thefz 23d ago
  > So everything after the middle ages. Basically when people stopped only drawing religious art and portraits of nobles. What started in the 1860s is "modernism". Ok, but you are reinforcing parent's point (which I agree with TBH).
  - brodo 23d ago
    Yes, I agree with the parent's point. I just wanted to point out that "modern art" is a little bit of a complicated term.
- ivan_gammel 23d ago
  The 1860s as a starting decade is a popular conventional definition in English, in other languages "modern art" may be defined differently. But you are absolutely right, it makes more sense to call post-WW2 art the contemporary art or just postmodernism, because something that happened long before the birth of the half of the population of the planet isn't really "contemporary".
- Antibabelic 23d ago
coldtea 23d ago
Sure. But those making the claim are not talking about that. They're talking about the post 50s abstract expressionism and pop art movements. Just because it says "modern art" doesn't mean it refers to any and all modern art, much less 19th century art or say cubism or dada.
- zombot 23d ago
  The art of arbitrarily redefining existing terms will never die out.
  - coldtea 23d ago
    It's the art of understanding terms have different meanings based on context and use, not one based on some definition handed down by the Gods that's applicable everywhere, that we should not let die out.
    - ivan_gammel 23d ago
      No, sorry, this is not the case. :) Not every popular idea has a free pass on this ground, especially not if it was created by a propaganda machine.
    - kakacik 23d ago
      Not its about using correct words with specific meanings instead of vague terms that at the end have incorrect claims, even you had to resort to that to get your point across. 'Humans are horrible', oh no I meant only that subset of 3 individuals, you should understand my context... thats weak excuse to be polite.
      - IAmBroom 22d ago
        Context in this case is derived by the arcane trick of RTFA.
  - OroPla 23d ago
    I agree that it is incredibly stupid to call something from 1870 "modern". The word modern has a a clear meaning of "just now" / "contemporary". Not two hundred years ago. It shouldn't be attached to anything that can age out of this meaning.
Tangurena2 22d ago
Both Hitler and Stalin only respected/allowed representational art. They both hated abstract art. Any promotion of non-representational art was in effect a rejection of Stalin (and Mao and Kim). Socialist Realism was the name for the representational art promoted by Stalin, Mao & Kim. It was always a propaganda piece. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/socialist-realism https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/socialist-realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_in_Nazi_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_in_Nazi_Germany https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/degenerate-art https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/degenerate-art If there was anything that Default Country did better than Commieland, the CIA would promote it. Art? Sure. Why not, some people like that stuff. Thanks for the new term.
boredumb 22d ago
Let's hear what non-default country invented pop-art in the 50s.
- ivan_gammel 22d ago
  The one with the young Queen, which also invented English language…
bluegatty 22d ago
And Xerox invented the GUI but who cares? 'Mid 20th century' is when the explosion of mass media happened, and these concepts were globalized. It's worth studying for sure, and frankly, it seems the CIA came to a reasonable conclusion. The backed art for literally the right reasons. Good on them.
rdtsc 22d ago
I think you might be reacting to the title only. The claim in the article is better phrased as “the Modern art was psy-op-ed by the US govt, especially through CIA”. They didn’t invent it, they may not even liked it personally. The very same artists making these paintings were not too far from being left leaning and sympathizing with regimes and ideas US government fought against. Nevertheless, it was still worth it, the sponsorship was seen as a counter to the Soviet art and culture. If anything a least as a “look you can even create these crazy paint splatters in a free society and nobody sends you to gulag” kind of angle.
- ivan_gammel 22d ago
  Jain. If you leave only the facts, it becomes a bit boring, because everyone did that and continues doing so via various institutions. But the article pitches with the title and first paragraph a different story. And I doubt that e.g. Picasso was aware of the battle for his mind.
rafram 22d ago
You clearly didn't even click through to the article, and neither did most of the people arguing with you.
prezk 20d ago
'modern' is such an omnibus of a term. I was recently looking at Jasper John's American Flag and it hit me that the stars are weird---because it is from 1955 so before Hawaii and Alaska, and so it has 48 stars in even rows. It was amusing to realize that this epitomy of modern art is quite ancient :)

AlecSchueler 23d ago

By "modern art" they mean things like abstract expressionism.

ivan_gammel 23d ago
Reduction of modern art to abstract expressionism is the same as reduction of cinema to MCU. Acceptable for a talk over couple beers, disqualifying factor for pretend-to-be intellectuals, mainly because it is cherry-picking based on the scale of a scandal rather than genuine interest in the history of art.
- deleted 23d ago
  [deleted]
- philipallstar 23d ago
  No, those are not the same. You might say it's like reducing superhero movies to "superhero movies made in the last 20 years", which actually most people do, and it's mostly understandable. Maybe those people wouldn't have what you'd call a "genuine interest in the superhero genre" but who cares? They weren't trying to demonstrate that, and what they were saying didn't require it.
  - ivan_gammel 23d ago
    Most of the significant works of modern art were created before CIA was founded. The title is factually incorrect and intellectually dishonest. But "who cares" question points to something different: indeed, who cares if the knowledge acquired by the reader will be shallow and misleading? I do care. You may not. It's a matter of attitude. People are free to choose their chewing gum, right?
    - philipallstar 22d ago
      Yes, perhaps you're right. I think people think of "banana nailed to wall" as the outcome of modern art, and that I think is more recent. But there are works older than the CIA that look younger than it, such as Kandinski, and perhaps that is indeed misleading.
dgellow 23d ago
Which is even more absurd
- coldtea 23d ago
  Not really absurd. That scene nearly dominated the art scene in the post war / cold war period, and for layman casual uses (and even for several critic treatments), it was almost synonymous with modern fine art in general (not "modernist" art, modern, as in contemporary).
  - ivan_gammel 23d ago
    The only thing where "American" art scene dominated was the auction space. And significant part of it was imported from Europe (no tariffs applied) and continued to feed from there later. The rest of the world lived it's own life.
    - coldtea 23d ago
      It's not just about the "American art scene". Western European artists in the same "genre" also got funded in similar ways. >The rest of the world lived it's own life. Perhaps, but this is not about what happened in Mongolian or Indonesian art scenes, but mostly focused on the cold war theater of US and Western Europe.
      - ivan_gammel 23d ago
        First of all, what "genre"? I assume, abstract expressionism? Second, why would anyone fund specifically abstract expressionism and for what purpose given the diversity of art movements of that time? Third, what do you even know about contemporary art of Europe to make such bold claims?
        coldtea 22d ago
        >I assume, abstract expressionism? Yes, abstract expressionism, but also other mostly US-led scenes like pop art to a degree. >Second, why would anyone fund specifically abstract expressionism and for what purpose given the diversity of art movements of that time? It had a US lead at the time, easier to explain US institutions promoting and do cross-continent exchanges and sponsorships, and conveniently apolitical compared to other art movements of the time. >Third, what do you even know about contemporary art of Europe to make such bold claims? Quite a lot, being from here, and familiar with both their history and the relevant literature. A hardly a bold claim at all, it has been studied and reported in books such as "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters" (The New Press), "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War" (University of Chicago Press), "Pollock and After: The Critical Debate" (Harper Collins) and others, and of course the topic of TFA. Your opposite claim would be the bold one.
grey-area 23d ago
That is not Modern art but an offshoot of it, like postmodern and pop art.

cyberjar 23d ago

"the Default Country" is a good one. I'll have to start using that.

jjgreen 23d ago
For fun, ask a citizen of the Default Country where cars were invented ...
- Waterluvian 22d ago
  At some point they discovered it was easier to just convince everyone they were exceptional than to actually be exceptional.
tryauuum 23d ago
I think it a reference to "default city" from the russian internet, when people noticed that people from Moscow never specify the city when talking about topics which would normally require knowledge of which city are they residents of Eventually it evolved, sometimes people say "hey, I'm from DC" or "hey, I live in DC2" (that means the second largest city, Saint-Petersburg)
- ivan_gammel 23d ago
  Yes. Default Country for the world on many English-speaking forums is the same as Default City for Russia.
bmacho 22d ago
Especially from someone whose "modern art" means mid-19th centuary European art under an article that starts with "In the mid-twentieth century".

brodo 23d ago

Overall a great point, but I have a nit-pick: > Modern art, as everyone should know, started in 1860s in Europe As someone who is active in the German art scene, the understanding is not that clear-cut. Modern art, as I learned it, is "art in the modern period". So everything after the middle ages. Basically when people stopped only drawing religious art and portraits of nobles. What started in the 1860s is "modernism". The term used more often (at least in Germany) is "contemporary art". Which translates to "everything after WW 2". I've seen a lot of contemporary art museums, but few modern art museums.

grey-area 23d ago
No, Modern or Modernist art (with a capital m) is a specific period of art history. So yes it doesn’t tend to have museums but there are shows dedicated to Modern art. Contemporary art always refers to art from the specific period the speaker is living in, ie our present moment.
thefz 23d ago
> So everything after the middle ages. Basically when people stopped only drawing religious art and portraits of nobles. What started in the 1860s is "modernism". Ok, but you are reinforcing parent's point (which I agree with TBH).
- brodo 23d ago
  Yes, I agree with the parent's point. I just wanted to point out that "modern art" is a little bit of a complicated term.
ivan_gammel 23d ago
The 1860s as a starting decade is a popular conventional definition in English, in other languages "modern art" may be defined differently. But you are absolutely right, it makes more sense to call post-WW2 art the contemporary art or just postmodernism, because something that happened long before the birth of the half of the population of the planet isn't really "contemporary".
Antibabelic 23d ago

coldtea 23d ago

Sure. But those making the claim are not talking about that. They're talking about the post 50s abstract expressionism and pop art movements. Just because it says "modern art" doesn't mean it refers to any and all modern art, much less 19th century art or say cubism or dada.

zombot 23d ago
The art of arbitrarily redefining existing terms will never die out.
- coldtea 23d ago
  It's the art of understanding terms have different meanings based on context and use, not one based on some definition handed down by the Gods that's applicable everywhere, that we should not let die out.
  - ivan_gammel 23d ago
    No, sorry, this is not the case. :) Not every popular idea has a free pass on this ground, especially not if it was created by a propaganda machine.
  - kakacik 23d ago
    Not its about using correct words with specific meanings instead of vague terms that at the end have incorrect claims, even you had to resort to that to get your point across. 'Humans are horrible', oh no I meant only that subset of 3 individuals, you should understand my context... thats weak excuse to be polite.
    - IAmBroom 22d ago
      Context in this case is derived by the arcane trick of RTFA.
- OroPla 23d ago
  I agree that it is incredibly stupid to call something from 1870 "modern". The word modern has a a clear meaning of "just now" / "contemporary". Not two hundred years ago. It shouldn't be attached to anything that can age out of this meaning.

Tangurena2 22d ago

Both Hitler and Stalin only respected/allowed representational art. They both hated abstract art. Any promotion of non-representational art was in effect a rejection of Stalin (and Mao and Kim). Socialist Realism was the name for the representational art promoted by Stalin, Mao & Kim. It was always a propaganda piece. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/socialist-realism https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/socialist-realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_in_Nazi_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_in_Nazi_Germany https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/degenerate-art https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/degenerate-art If there was anything that Default Country did better than Commieland, the CIA would promote it. Art? Sure. Why not, some people like that stuff. Thanks for the new term.

boredumb 22d ago

Let's hear what non-default country invented pop-art in the 50s.

ivan_gammel 22d ago
The one with the young Queen, which also invented English language…

bluegatty 22d ago

And Xerox invented the GUI but who cares? 'Mid 20th century' is when the explosion of mass media happened, and these concepts were globalized. It's worth studying for sure, and frankly, it seems the CIA came to a reasonable conclusion. The backed art for literally the right reasons. Good on them.

rdtsc 22d ago

I think you might be reacting to the title only. The claim in the article is better phrased as “the Modern art was psy-op-ed by the US govt, especially through CIA”. They didn’t invent it, they may not even liked it personally. The very same artists making these paintings were not too far from being left leaning and sympathizing with regimes and ideas US government fought against. Nevertheless, it was still worth it, the sponsorship was seen as a counter to the Soviet art and culture. If anything a least as a “look you can even create these crazy paint splatters in a free society and nobody sends you to gulag” kind of angle.

ivan_gammel 22d ago
Jain. If you leave only the facts, it becomes a bit boring, because everyone did that and continues doing so via various institutions. But the article pitches with the title and first paragraph a different story. And I doubt that e.g. Picasso was aware of the battle for his mind.

rafram 22d ago

You clearly didn't even click through to the article, and neither did most of the people arguing with you.

prezk 20d ago

'modern' is such an omnibus of a term. I was recently looking at Jasper John's American Flag and it hit me that the stars are weird---because it is from 1955 so before Hawaii and Alaska, and so it has 48 stars in even rows. It was amusing to realize that this epitomy of modern art is quite ancient :)