Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Part Three of 'How Abstact Expressionist Painters Help Me Survive Old Age'

    How Abstract Expressionist Painters Help Me Survive Old Age - Part Three by Dave Jaffe.




     There was a hidden story to the rise of the abstract expressionist painters in the United States that only emerged in the 1980's. The reason for the sudden fame and exposure of these artists to the American public and then to people outside the U.S. was due to the Central Intelligence Agency. In the late 1940's when these painters were creating their work, the U.S. had become the world's greatest power. It was locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union for world supremacy.
       The communist ruled Soviet Union government led by Josef Stalin loathed abstract painting and probably shipped abstract artists to the Gulag. Stalin and his communist comrades preferred a s dull socialist realism. The U.S. government proclaimed itself 'The Leader of the Free World'. Abstract painting was allowed in the U.S. and its existence showed that the U.S.was truly free, unlike the Soviet Union.
     The Central Intelligence Agency used all the media of the day to popularize abstract expressionism. Photo journals, documentary films, newspapers, radio and the now emerging television stations gave space and time to these abstract artists. Yet it was the CIA that enlisted the media to do this job. "In this way," writes art critic John Berger, "a mostly desperate body of art was transformed into an ideological weapon for the defense of individualism and the right to express oneself."
      I knew all this back story when I started drawing and painting over 30 years ago. Yet I found that these abstract painters were really easy to copy and to make paintings and drawings influenced by their work. Also I did try to work out drawings using paintings by other artists who did abstract work. Yet I found out that the paintings by people like Philip Guston, Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn (who came along a little later than the abstract expressionists) were easier to use and made a greater impression on me than any other abstract painters.
      Of course the U.S. painters weren't the first abstract painters. Abstract painting has been around for many years. And the first modern abstract artists came along at around 1910 or a little later.