I always thought Suprematism was what the Soviets were pushing, now I read the wiki article and it seems it was not, and Socialist realism was, and I guess it was the hyper-realism you talk about?
Unless you lived in that era it’s really hard to imagine how the reds lived in the imagination of every American. if you’re old enough to remember the war culture during the start of Iraq/Afghanistan. it was like that on steroids. 50 years of Cold War means a couple generations were completely consumed by it. The cold war nostalgia tour didn’t end until the “terrorists are every where” tour began.
I’m not old enough to remember the first one and I’m not American so I was never really caught up in the second one, so it is genuinely hard for me to understand why the CIA cared so deeply about Soviet artistic preferences that they conducted psyops to oppose them. I’m not doubting that it happened, it just seems bizarre to me
Abstract expressionism (ie modern art) was actually pushed by the CIA as well (source), though the motivation in this case is murkier
Not really? Soviets were pushing hyper-realism so the US government funded the opposite
I always thought Suprematism was what the Soviets were pushing, now I read the wiki article and it seems it was not, and Socialist realism was, and I guess it was the hyper-realism you talk about?
I didn’t know that. Either way it seems a bit odd that the CIA would care so deeply about matters of artistic taste
They didn’t. It was about opposing the Soviets everywhere more than anything
A foolish strategy. It means you allow your opponent to limit you. People who like hyper realism would have no option but Soviet art.
It’s also a stupid strategy because modern art is pretty dumb (I know I might get hate for this but lets be real guys)
Yes but the extent to which they’d go to oppose the Soviets even on trivial matters seems silly
Unless you lived in that era it’s really hard to imagine how the reds lived in the imagination of every American. if you’re old enough to remember the war culture during the start of Iraq/Afghanistan. it was like that on steroids. 50 years of Cold War means a couple generations were completely consumed by it. The cold war nostalgia tour didn’t end until the “terrorists are every where” tour began.
I’m not old enough to remember the first one and I’m not American so I was never really caught up in the second one, so it is genuinely hard for me to understand why the CIA cared so deeply about Soviet artistic preferences that they conducted psyops to oppose them. I’m not doubting that it happened, it just seems bizarre to me
It’s very bizarre. Like a mass psychosis. To be fair any idea you can summon sounds better than a nuclear war, so they did a lot of bizarre ideas.
Sounds like something a communist would say, take 'em away boys