The CIA tried to use modern "art" as a weapon

[Balog]

http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-cia-were-bunch-of-idiots.html

Ironically, it seems like the KGB actually had a similar idea, actively promoting non-representational art in the US as a cultural weapon. This ranks up there with NASA's focus on Muslim outreach as most farcical wastes of fed.gov money.

[brimic]

On a different level, in the 1930s members of CPUSA (the Communist Party of the USA) got instructions from Moscow to promote non-representational art so that the US’s public spaces would become arid and ugly.

I don't remember if I read it in the communist manifesto, or elsewhere, but making art ugly and repulsive to discourage individualism is part of the program.

[KD5NRH]

I don't remember if I read it in the communist manifesto, or elsewhere, but making art ugly and repulsive to discourage individualism is part of the program.

Funny, seems to me that when crap sells, (and/or gets Federal money) a lot of other untalented individuals start expressing their individualism with more crap.

[Tallpine]

I don't remember if I read it in the communist manifesto, or elsewhere, but making art ugly and repulsive to discourage individualism is part of the program.

they were doing that fifty years ago in the publick skoolz 

[brimic]

http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
Looks like the communists met almost all of their goals.

[lee n. field]

I wonder what my wife's old art school buddies would say to that.  Especially the feminist artist group she hung around with for a while.

[Perd Hapley]

As a society, we spend a lot of time laughing at the old fuddy-duddies for thinking that Elvis was going to turn their children into promiscuous tramps, or that no-fault divorce would bring on the break-up of the family, or that having some gay people on TV would lead to immorality and general moral decay. Or that fake art (eg, Jackson Pollack) would devalue appreciation for genuine art.


It's a good thing none of those actually happened.

[Tallpine]

Fake art has certainly devalued my appreciation for fake art.

[brimic]

As a society, we spend a lot of time laughing at the old fuddy-duddies for thinking that Elvis was going to turn their children into promiscuous tramps,

Elvis was just the Justin Beiber of another generation.