alt.hn

8/25/2026 at 1:35:00 AM

Was Modern Art a CIA Psy-Op? (2020)

 https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/

by neom

8/25/2026 at 2:39:14 AM

And here I was thinking any psyop was necessarily bad.

by Barbing

8/25/2026 at 3:14:34 AM

The leadership of nations requires you to put pressure on the thoughts and minds of your people, left to their own devices those minds will simply be shaped by someone else.

The morality in it comes from your motivation and methods. Secretly giving piles of money to the weirdos you successfully identify as being the leaders of artistic movements to amplify those movements can't be all that bad.

The question of the day is if you were the CIA trying to do the same thing today, who and what would you fund?

by colechristensen

8/25/2026 at 3:42:51 AM

I would fund things which make people less susceptible to manipulation and more equipped to think for themselves.

Because I believe in democracy not as a political tool but as a fundamental right. I don’t wish to use democracy to gain more power.

But maybe that’s why I’ll never be in that position, to make that choice.

by left-struck

8/25/2026 at 2:41:35 AM

Are you saying modern art is positive?

by gigatree

8/25/2026 at 2:43:45 AM

Do you not appreciate art?

by math-man

8/25/2026 at 2:57:42 AM

I like bananas.

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5199568/a-duct-taped-ba...

by NordStreamYacht

8/25/2026 at 3:30:32 AM

That's postmodern art, not modern art.

by evanjrowley

8/25/2026 at 3:11:35 AM

Okay, this is a bit too far xD. But I wouldn’t put this in the same bucket as Pollock. I genuinely find his work interesting.

by innis226

8/25/2026 at 2:57:45 AM

I love art. Contemporary art is a bunch of ugly wankery by pretentious people who are bored of actual beauty and can only amuse themselves by creating ugly stuff, then claiming "you just don't get it". The world would be a significantly better place without contemporary art in it.

by bigstrat2003

8/25/2026 at 3:01:40 AM

This could have been written at any point after the 1850s or so.

by karmakurtisaani

8/25/2026 at 3:22:30 AM

Indeed. Once galleries became significant buyers of art, scandalous art became an attractive thing to produce: it commanded outsized attention.

The dynamics are similar in Twitter today, too.

by nine_k

8/25/2026 at 3:49:06 AM

If there is any change I could make to the human personality at large it would be the reflexive opinion that anything you don't understand, or even dislike, is automatically morally wrong.

by wredcoll

8/25/2026 at 2:59:11 AM

[dead]

by cindyllm

8/25/2026 at 3:03:06 AM

[flagged]

by greenavocado

8/25/2026 at 3:01:41 AM

More likely it was a money laundering operation disguised as a psyop.

by NordStreamYacht

8/25/2026 at 3:16:04 AM

Betteridge’s law prevails. A fun read, but not as fun as the title suggests.

tl;dr Modern art existed before the CIA and even CIA predecessors did not originate it, but they did push it abroad to show that America is great because we put up with modern art made by socialists depite most americans disliking both the art and the artists

by claytonjy

8/25/2026 at 3:50:35 AM

The interesting thing to me is, despite it being hard to imagine today, back then this was actually a strange thing, and did actually serve as a demonstration of American freedom of expression.

Hard to imagine today because this kind of weird art comes from just about everywhere with a few exceptions now.

Interesting to read about how it actually was the work of a few elite institutions that made this happen. Agreed the CIA angle is a bit weak, to me it's more a story about the Rockefellers and their compatriots who funded this stuff.

by zhivota

8/25/2026 at 3:18:58 AM

Sounds like modern art was the kpop of its era.

by lattice_epochs

8/25/2026 at 3:23:06 AM

Oddly enough kpop is the result of American music taking over the world.

by analog31

8/25/2026 at 3:11:44 AM

I don’t know if this is a reaction to AI or something, but recently I’ve only been interested in classical/realism art. I just can’t do abstract cubes anymore. The default wallpaper of windows 11 is a perfect example - I hate it. Give me a wallpaper of some painting from the Renaissance.

by WD-42

8/25/2026 at 3:40:08 AM

Kinda paradox because AI seems better at replicating complex classic paintings and realism than rather simple modern parametric imagery.

by rramon

8/25/2026 at 3:24:11 AM

I feel like a picture of rolling hills with spring wheat and a blue sky wouldn’t go amiss

by tacitusarc

8/25/2026 at 3:28:00 AM

They should bring it back

by WD-42

8/25/2026 at 2:42:20 AM

“educate, inspire, and strengthen the hearts and wills of free men.”

Funny how times have changed and more or less everyone on every side is fighting for the strength and survival of their own groupthink and little more.

by colechristensen

8/25/2026 at 3:01:33 AM

Eventually, people realize they will never agree and therefore don't have to fight.

They realize the majority of their beliefs already existed before they were born and will continue on after they're dead. They have nothing to add to the conversation while they are too busy fighting. They turn their focus to developing their ideas peacefully and let their subcultures flourish once again.

This isn't the first cycle and won't be the last. The last major cycle was in the 20th century due to broadcast media. I think people sometimes forget how relatively young the internet is.

by sublinear

8/25/2026 at 3:21:29 AM

"Live and let live" is in fundamental tension with "protect the weak." ALL aggressive ideologies act as heroes protecting others from oppression. There is a barely expressible thing that allows people to live in peace with those they disagree with. It is a personality trait, an aesthetic, a mood associated with the best of the Enlightenment but never described by it. Perhaps people need relative silence, a few good books, physical labor, hand-made goods, and slow travel to attain it. I often wonder at how boldly people think they can reduce the enormous, holistic experience of being of a particular time and place and call the effect simply "reason".

by simpaticoder

8/25/2026 at 3:38:35 AM

lol i think the CIA is nowhere near competent enough to even consider that idea.

by senectus1

8/25/2026 at 2:57:56 AM

Sounds like it was more about spreading American culture as part of the Cold War. This feels a lot more benign compared to Modernist architecture which seems to have fascist tendencies what with Le Corbusier and Philip Johnson being literal Nazi sympathizers.

by Eufrat

8/25/2026 at 3:09:48 AM

Far more things/movements are orchestrated than are organic. This is to me one of the most surprising things I have learned as I got older.

by mikert89