There were always rumors that the cloak and dagger world of the CIA and the wild weird world of modern art were intimately intertwined.  Despite the fact that many modern artists were extreme leftists (including many former communists), their artwork thumbed its nose at Soviet Communism as much as it did stuffy corporate America.

Now former CIA agents are talking openly about how the US Intelligence agency secretly funded Abstract Expressionism in art as an element of psychological warfare against Soviet Social Realism.

From funding “art foundations” to shaping the words of art critics, propaganda officers promoted AbEx as the pinnacle of anti-communism:  An art based wholly on individual expression.  The problem, however, is that the law of unintended consequences still applies, even to clandestine operations.  The worldviews of many of the modern artists have been criticized by individuals and organizations such as the Art Renewal Center for, themselves, being anti-American.

Either way, the view into the inner workings of the culture and propaganda war being told in The New Yorker, The Independent, and others is providing fresh fodder for academic discussions of aesthetics.

Hollywood isn’t answering the question I know everyone is now asking:  Will the next James Bond film feature 007 as . . . . . an art critic?