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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/socialist-realism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_in_Nazi_Germany

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.

Modern art sucks, and displaced art that is beautiful. Huge net loss for humanity.

The only reason the CIA did it in secret is that congress _hated_ modern art and killed State Department projects supporting it. The soviets and every other government also promoted their own artists abroad extensively. Not everything the CIA did was a psy-op, sometimes it was a convenient way for the executive branch to do something that congress didn't want to pay for.

I wish those actions made the folks doing that "better" instead of implicating beautiful parts of my childhood in their vicious attempts to keep the entire world under their thumb...

The obvious problem is that when the same group is committing vicious crimes and horrors, it's very hard to look at about anything they do and be like... well, at least folks were getting laid during Midnight Climax.

"Oh, hey, that's cute: the vicious monsters who torture people to death in a global network of black sites are manipulating us again by exporting pleasant videos of puppets teaching children".

what do mean with the example of thailand and thai food, and why is that a psy-op? Every country tries to subsidize and dump excess production of stuff they produce

> what if we took nice things from our country and subsidized distributing them to the rest of the world

Or the appearance of nice things. Consider the suburb as promoted by American film which has left a very deep mark on the global imagination and that, regrettably, maintains a strong influence over housing markets and urban planning to this day.

Art became an investment and artistic properties ceased to matter.

"the abandonment of representation everywhere in the world"

Worth checking out Socialist Realism, both the thing that motivated the CIA to fund and promote non-representative art and help develop it into a fad, and also a large corpus of representative art that existed when you imagine it did not (there's many others besides, non-representative art has always been a small niche relative to all art produced which is primarily abstract or representative once you start to look outside galleries and museums).

[flagged]

Most of greatest works of modern art are European. The term “modern art” is in reference to an era that we are no longer in.

You have a strong opinion. I would highly implore you to learn more about art history and why art is the way it is today. You’ll learn why banana and duct tape is why it is.

What makes an art work museum worthy? It’s very rewarding to have that insight.

Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso were Europeans, and Europe is where art speculation and the "Art Market" was born, and where Art History became equated with Art Market History. Americans showed up with a 20 year lag and kept lagging, with e.g. Pollock imitating Picasso in the 1940s. By then, globally-viral-Picasso was selling paintings for hundreds of thousands of inflation adjusted dollars.

Maybe it's just semantics but:

I wouldn't use the nomer americana which is a grouping of styles itself becoming less comon.

Secondly I wouldn't ascribe intentionality to all if it. That's what made it so dangerous and imo destructive. It self-propagates. I saw people in the arts in turn instilling the idea that all these modern greats in some slightly different way pushed the boundaries with their slightly new thing and for that we should remember their name. To be avant garde was a quality in and of itself. The only quality. And it happened to diminish the need for certain skills. Understanding the origins, ideas, etc happened to become a form of social signaling. (this kind of art thoughtleader is typically not ascribed to a poor person detached from artistic cricles after all)

Barely a soul seemed to think there was something to the kind of expressive qualities we sought for thousands of years might have intrinsic value that was not derived from further abstracting things down or meaning that had to be taped on to be understood,, etc.

And so I saw so many people chasing their ego to either be different in ironically the same ways or mostly to just roll with the style du jour all without any kind of self reflection.

Also funilly enough I remember seeing an architect or 2 baffled that people liked certain classical styles because they were thought how these "incorrectly" took from previous even older styles. As if nobody could deconstruct their cubic creations in the same way.

Yours is a good take but the duct taping of the banana was done by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.

The "banana taped to a wall" tendency in art began in Europe, with Dadaism. But I think you're half right, in that it was a clear reaction to the destruction of Europe (by itself, in the first World War).

A banana taped to the wall is a deeper and more profound art commentary than yours.

This is nonsense.

Modern art is modern art because by the early 20th century, it was hard to do anything original in something resembling a traditional style.

It is the same reason for serial/12 tone music.

Arnold Schoenberg wasn't a psyop. If anything it is a comment on the lack of modern cultural sophistication and the way people relate to the world in terms of sensationalist narrative for click optimization.

Agree. I felt like I wasn't interested in art. I just didn't like it. Turns out, it's not a "me" problem, it's an "art" problem. Once I got involved in the furry community I discovered how beautiful art can be. My whole house is full of furry artworks, and I'm commissioning more. Those artists create things that are fun, novel, original. As opposed to "abstract New York no. 41715".

But the deeper problem is that an average consumer simply doesn't care about quality. Look at how most people listen to the music - random radio with same 10 pop songs over and over again with ads in-between, while being stuck in traffic. They're not experiencing music, they just want something to fill the void and that's it.

I am starting to be under the impression that movements are steered by leaders but formed only when the underlying conditions are present. No single element can make the movement.

I am reluctant to believe stories like "The CIA created modern art", as it is just a single part, although a very influential part, of the movement.

I say this as somebody who is very cautious about believing anything and am quick to call things (probably incorrectly) propaganda or disseminated by paid actors.

I assume by "orchestrated" you mean intended by the people involved in making them happen. Humans act in the world. Some people have power and influence that they bring to bear on their activities and desired outcomes. It's true.

That said, there's a tendency (that I think increases as we age) to want to explain everything in terms of order, control and power. Explaining away the world's complexities seems to be a pretty strong human trait.

Maybe the idea of a complex and uncertain world is just too uncomfortable for us to accept.

A great book on this is 'Active Measures'. Most things have an organic start, which are then amplified / co-opted by various actors.

The concept of Nuclear Winter first came up in the USA, then the Russians caught wind of it and claimed they had independently reached the same conclusions. This helped them turn public opinion against the deployment of more missile bases in Europe... conveniently after they had already deployed theirs.

I think the first time that was brought to my attention was one of our host's essays: The Submarine.

https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Thanks so much for sharing this! I went looking for what I’d call modern “masterwork” statues a year or so ago and had come to this exact same conclusion. Glad that other people are noticing!

Maybe that is why realism is chased so much in video games in the west, while eastern countries rarely are interested.

Man, this might be a case where the average HN reader is less informed than the general public.

I thought this was well known. Like, the Men In Black movies literally have a scene lampshading this.

"Coffee break is over, stop thinking and get back to work."

Wealthy patronage has always steered art, and the CIA has a lot of money.

The CIA hires "actual" artists, all the time and in great numbers. They have a creative writing division.

More incredible to believe the most powerful clandestine agency in the world wouldn't want to hold sway over artistic movements to their own end.

And the CIA actually had rather good taste

Wait til you find out what the GIA[1] did with other forms of cultural expression and education - like motion pictures, music, television, and academia

[1]: Global Intelligence Agency - because we know that they have deep reach into every nation at this point and are only accountable to themselves.

True Soft Power - Hollywood, and associated media industry, which happens to be the platform through which "Russian ballet, Japanese manga, k-pop", etc. reach people.

With the Internet and some competing heavy-weights, it may no longer be an US soft superpower it was before, but it still retains its important quality: it's ubiquitous, ever-present, and so enormous it's hard to notice - much like fish don't think much about the water they swim in.

and dont forget the pandas

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

I remember from one of my art history courses that it was more a rejection of Hitler & Stalin. Those 2 loved representational art so much that "the art world" took decades before representational art was acceptable.

Soon to overtaken by nkpop if I'm reading the room accurately.

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

Fun fact - the default Windows 10 wallpaper was actually shot on a real camera in physical space[0], making it one of the exceptions. It's disappointing that they went back to 3D renders in 11, but it was probably done so they could make their light and dark mode versions match exactly.

[0] https://gmunk.com/Windows-10-Desktop

i wonder about this too.

modern art (the cubes etc) always had a cerebral, iconoclastic, anti-bourgeois element. and i think those are just markers and categories that have no meaning anymore in 2026. everybody's smart now, watching ted talks, with their college degrees. iconoclasm is just corporate branding now at best, and we've all witnessed its literal expression since 9/11 and blm, which is quite vile and steeped in mass hysteria. and the bourgeois, where are they, these decorous, self-confident and self-actualized burghers? i haven't seen them in a long time, what is there to rage against.

the substrate is gone for modern art. i'm not saying some of the aesthetics can't prevail, e.g. the minimalism, an interest in geometry, ...

> I just can’t do abstract cubes anymore

I never could, its boring low effort blah to me when standing next to Rembrandt (they never will but you get the idea). It just doesn't induce any strong emotions, and why the heck should I force that process just to feel conforming to expected general emotions in the crowd.

Do you see the same value, and extend same respect towards say Chris Sawyer' Transport Tycoon made mostly in assembly, or some claude's 5 minute output to prompt, even if it roughly works? 'But I had this idea, man!

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

"raison du joure these days"

I had to laugh out loud too when I read this.

Did you actually read the article? It lays out a pretty compelling case that the CIA established funding sources and magazines to popularize American modern art and make it a worldwide phenomenon / a cultural export to have Americans be taken seriously as taste makers.

Holy shit that track rips. Thanks!

> if you did something different you couldn't get state funding

RTFA. This is literally what the CIA did, to soft-blacklist marxists and prevent them from becoming successful artists

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?

Yeah, if that’s true we should get those people their own agency and let them manage museums

Are you saying modern art is positive?

Exactly, it is a weird title. Modern art is as much of a "psy-op" as:

  - grocery stores
  - NASA
  - rock music
  - psychedelics and hippies
  - a strong middle class
  - affordable vehicles and the highway system
  - Hollywood movies
  - Books

That said, the article is still interesting and I wouldn't ignore it just because the dumb title.

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.

But I mean is this something that is supposed to be shocking or revelaing? All countries want to promote their culture so they win the soft war and influence. You think people just magically started liking kpop in the us? Look up what the south korean gov planned and how it worked out overall.

It is interesting they were taunting the Soviets by saying "look our artists are so free even we dont know wtf they are making but we support them!" rather than "look how amazing modern art is" lol

Actually yes

https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/15...

> Who's behind the transgender psy-op?

Right wing nutjobs who think the most important thing in the world is what exists between your legs. A few years ago there were news stories about a family that decided to raise their child "gender free" and that they would not announce the gender of the child to the world. The outrage that story produced was astonishing. People who would never in their entire life meet that kid were having fits because knowing what genitals that kid had was more important than anything else in their life.

Also the author of Harry Potter stories is rabidly transphobic. She's spending millions of dollars on propaganda and hate groups. It is so bad that none of the actors who played in the HP movies want anything to do with her. She's so angry at that that she's financing remakes of the movies with politically reliable/subservient staff & actors.

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.

I don't think it was genuine then as well, just a slogan for "fighting the communists".

You lie today, you lied then.

Same with "let my people go" for the Soviet jews, it was more about draining the "human capital" from USSR.