I WOULD LIKE TO FILE A SUSPICIOUS TRANSACTIONS REPORT ON THE ENTIRE 20TH CENTURY

I Would Like to File a 

Suspicious Transactions Report 

on the entire 20th century

 

by Miles Mathis
@http://mileswmathis.com/index.html 

Several major articles appeared in the mainstream in 2013 on money laundering in the art world. A search on “art market money laundering” gives us a surprisingly long list, and on the first page of the search we find articles at the New York Times, Forbes, and—perhaps most surprisingly—USA Today. Although most of these articles are written as spin or damage control, some of them are relatively hard hitting. For example, the one at USA Today ends like this: 

Because there are few widows and orphans in the art market, there appears to be little need or public outcry to fix the system. Who is hurt? Nobody but artists who fail to willingly or adroitly play the game. And, perhaps, the culture itself, surrendering art to drug lords, oligarchs, money launderers and international vulgarians, and forcing the rest of us to admire what we might, given more rational values, disdain. 

That's from Michael Wolff, by the way. If you think I like reading that, you are right. Being one of the artists who has refused to play the Modern game, I find that paragraph a pleasant change from the normal newspaper fodder. But, as usual, I find even the strongest mainstream writing to be far too weak. You won't get the full story from reading the mainstream, which is why I am here. 

All the writers from 2013 implied that money laundering in the art world was a relatively new phenomenon, one they had been clued into by the ever-rising prices at auction for current (not Old Master) work. They also assured us that the problem was limited. Both these things are false. Modernism has been a money laundering scheme of one sort or another since the beginning. And I mean all of it. In other words, it is a manufactured market, manufactured to move large sums of money around without regulation and without suspicion.

In the article at the New York Times last May, we find this: 

The art market lacks these safeguards. Roll up a canvas and it is easy to stash or move between countries; prices can be raised or lowered by millions of dollars in a heartbeat; and the names of buyers and sellers tend to be guarded zealously, leaving law enforcement to guess who was involved, where the money came from and whether the price was suspicious. 

Governments around the world have taken steps to bring illegal activity to light. In February, for instance, the European Commission passed rules requiring galleries to report anyone who pays for a work with more than 7,500 euros in cash (about $9,825), and to file suspicious-transaction reports. 

As the art critic Robert Hughes said in his film The Mona Lisa Curse in 2009, “The art market is the largest unregulated market in the world.” That didn't just become true in the last decade: it has been true since the beginning. And please ask yourself this: what price paid for a Modern work since about 1925 hasn't been suspicious? I would like to file a suspicious transactions report on the entire 20th century. Where does one go to do that?

 

price: $60,000,000 

price: $163,000,000 

price: $160,000,000 

To see what I mean, let us go back to 1929 and the founding of the Museum of Modern Art by Abby Rockefeller. Any person awake should have been suspicious of that entire enterprise. First of all, the Rockefeller's were and are a banking family: their job from day one has been moving money around— laundering it,, inflating it, and mostly moving it out of the other fellas' pockets and into their own. Yes, the Rockefeller fortune originally came from Standard oil, but they were into banking early on and joined forces with Chase Bank in 1930—within months of the founding of MOMA. Please take note of that, since it is a huge clue here. Curiously, if you go to John D. Rockefeller's page at Wikipedia, you find no mention of Rockefeller's ties to Chase Bank. You will say he was 90 by then, but even Jr.'s page only has a couple of sentences on it. You have to go to David Rockefeller's page to get anything on Chase Bank, and it would be hard to divert you from that since David was President of the Bank by 1960. But they seem keen to skip over the early period in the 30's on everyone's page. They rush you past a few sentences on banking to give you a hundred paragraphs on philanthropy. 

As a historical matter, many people then and now didn't understand why these rich old families that had previously been strictly old school should suddenly become so interested in Modern art. Just a couple of decades earlier, these plutocratic families had mocked and slandered the new art, calling it decadent and embarrassing. What had changed their minds? Had their tastes in art changed completely? Had they been convinced by the new art critics? That is the line we are sold, but it isn't what happened. What happened is that one of these financial men—we don't know who saw it first—surmised that this new art could be bought low and sold high. Traditional art was already high (for the time), so it would be more difficult to inflate further. But with their connections to government and Intelligence*, they saw they could create a new market for the new art from whole cloth. The market for Modernism was new and low, and it was not being controlled by anyone else (no other mob), so it was seen as a perfect opportunity.

 

price: $118,000,000

 

price: $108,000,000 

Remember,  Edward Bernays had just opened his public relations shop in 1919, and by 1923 his technique of controlling markets was already being used by the top firms. I wouldn't be surprised if it were on a suggestion of Bernays that the Rockefeller's and other rich families began investing in Modern art. We know from what they have said, as well as from what they have collected, that they care nothing for the art object itself. From the beginning, it was only the financial possibility of the art object that interested them. 

So what was the financial possibility of these art objects? Was it simply by propaganda and price inflation that the Rockefeller's and others hoped to profit? That is the line we are sold by the art historians, but, again, it doesn't even begin to wash. Buying low and selling high cannot explain the progression of the art market in the 20th century, not with all the propaganda and market control in the world.

 

price: $142,000,000

 

price: $106,000,000 

That statement may not appear self-evident to most. In fact, if it were self-evident, I wouldn't be here writing and the 20th century scam would have never been possible. It wasn't even self-evident to me, and I didn't figure it out until recently—after studying the problem for more than 20 years! It is because it is not self-evident that it has persisted in front of our noses for so long. Like many other things, the truth beneath the art market has hidden in plain sight for decades. Let me give you an example, to show you what I mean. Almost everyone assumes that when a very rich person like, say, David Geffen, buys a Jackson Pollock for, say, 100 million, he believes the painting is worth 100 million. Until recently, I believed that is what he thought. I believed he was stupid for thinking it, but I didn't see any other way to explain it. And he appeared to be right and I wrong, since he was able to sell it later for even more, making a profit. But what if, like everything else we have been told, that sale was fake? What if David Geffen didn't pay 100 million? What if the announcement of the sale was just a paper transaction, posted to cover a completely different sort of transaction? 

I am not accusing David Geffen of anything here, I am just using him as an example. I don't know for sure whether his purchase was fake or real, and neither do you. All we have is a report in the press, and the press is taking his word for it (and Sotheby's, say). I am not a criminal investigator for the Justice Department, and have no way of researching David Geffen's purchases for legitimacy. But to anyone who tells me, “Miles, that is just more conspiracy theory—we have no evidence that things like that could be happening,” I answer, “read the articles at the New York Times, Forbes, and USA Today, my friend.” Things like that are happening, and very rich people are getting caught doing it. David Geffen's name is not (yet) involved, that is true, but we now know for sure that very large art purchases are not what we have been told. We now know that many of them are in whole or in part fake. They are paper transactions that only appear to be about art. They are really about drugs, gambling, or money laundering. 

Besides that, we now know that many or most things we read in the papers or see on TV aren't true. We have been lied to about everything else, so why should we believe what they tell us about these auction house records and gallery sales? They have faked the records of just about everything else, so why couldn't they fake these purchase records? Of course they could. And we know from mainstream news reports that part of the art market is fake. I am simply suggesting that most or all of it is. I don't have any specific evidence it is, since I don't have access to the records. Only a criminal investigator could dig out specific evidence, and we don't have any indication that is being done on a large scale, or will be done. But anyone who studies the 20th century for very long will find loads of prima facie evidence for it. Anyone with any sense will find pointers to it everywhere, and I have been showing you those pointers for more than a decade. I am showing you more here. 

If you don't wish to take my word for it,  you can listen to this federal judge:

“Money laundering in the art world should be considered a big problem,” says Judge Fausto Martin De Sanctis, a federal judge who is releasing a book on the subject this month. In Money Laundering through Art: a Criminal Justice Perspective, he argues that international justice systems, regulatory bodies and police forces are inadequately equipped to detect and investigate such criminal activity. “Proceeds from various crimes can be easily laundered through the purchase of works of art thanks to a big loophole—a lack of awareness and regulation,” he says. 

He should know, since he has presided over convictions in large money laundering scams (see, for example, the Ferreira case). 

Despite supplying us with information like this, these mainstream sources nonetheless try to whitewash the subject. In the same article at The Art Newspaper, we are assured that 

A sense of perspective is in order, says the former federal agent Robert Wittman, who now runs a private consultancy. “Is art used to launder money? Sure it is. But the foundations of the art world are based on real collectors buying real art. Money laundering is part of the criminal underworld—it’s on the fringes.” Robert Storr, the dean of the Yale University School of Art, agrees. He says that, although there is opportunity, “not everybody becomes a crook. Suspecting the entire art world of massive fraud and larceny, as politicians are prone to do, is like suspecting every waiter at a five-star restaurant of stealing champagne and caviar or hogging tips.” 

You have to laugh. They must really think we are stupid, expecting us to take the word of a Yale art dean and a federal agent. Are these guys supposed to be disinterested parties? And that last sentence is especially rich. Given what the art world is, why wouldn't anyone suspect it of massive fraud and larceny? If it quacks like a duck and fouls the bathtub like a duck, it is probably a duck. And by the way, Robert, I have worked at a five-star restaurant: every waiter is stealing champagne and caviar and hogging tips. They are also pissing in the coffee of Yale deans and federal agents, whom they know good and well are involved in much more massive fraud and larceny than they will ever get a shot at. 

It's funny, because both Wittman's and Storr's comments are so easy to deconstruct. They think they are fooling us, I guess. They think we are still naïve enough to be diverted by such “earnest” denials, but the form of their denials is a dead giveaway. Wittman says, “the foundations of the art world are based on real collectors buying real art.” But wait, why would he need to say that? No one (before me, here) had implied that the collectors were fake and that the transactions were fake. He was being asked about money laundering, which is a much more limited accusation. It would be like your mother asking you, “Did you hit your sister?” and you answering, “No, and I didn't kill her either, or bury her under the oak tree.” Wittman's reply is pathological and incriminating in and of itself, and any good psychologist would be able to see right through it. 

The same applies to Dean Storr, who says, “suspecting the entire art world of massive fraud and larceny. . . .” But neither the writer nor anyone else was accusing the entire art world of massive fraud or larceny. The Dean was being asked about money laundering, which everyone on both sides in these articles assumes is limited. From what we have read, even the Justice Department thinks it is limited. Even the judge who wrote the book thinks it is limited. Not even Judge De Sanctis or Michael Wolff had suggested that the entire art world was involved. So Storr, like Wittman, is actually revealing more of his hand than we had asked to see. Their denials act as subconscious confirmations. 

This is just one more reason why I do believe the entire art world is a massive fraud, and that all the Modern collectors and purchases are fake. I no longer believe that the foundations of the art world are based on real collectors buying real art. I have known since the beginning that the art was not real art, since I have eyes. I have seen it in person and I know it isn't worth ten dollars, much less millions. And I had long believed the collectors were phonies. But only recently had I begun to expect they were fake. 

price: $82,000,000 

To see why I began to suspect that, you have to go back to my recent papers on CIA control of art. It has been known by some that the CIA was controlling art at least back to WWII. It was known because they have admitted it. The only reason I didn't know it is because I hadn't read the right mainstream sources. These sources were partially buried and hard to find, as you might expect. I finally dug them out or tripped over them. This control of art was spun as a cultural weapon of the Cold War, but I showed that interpretation was false. So why was the CIA controlling art? Since the CIA is just a tool of greater powers, it was these greater powers controlling art. In this case, it was the Rockefeller's and others controlling it. But again, why? Why would they be interested in controlling art? I saw immediately it must be for financial reasons, but I couldn't at first see the specific method. I still didn't understand how that much price inflation was possible, propaganda or no propaganda, CIA or no CIA. Unless the CIA was forcing rich people to buy art at gunpoint, I didn't see how these little pieces of nothing could be inflated into the tens of millions. 

And then it hit me: they weren't. None of it was real. The shows weren't real, the auctions weren't real, and the prices weren't real. 

Tom Wolfe told us in The Painted Word in the mid-70's that the art market was a closed circle of just a few hundred people. But his book was also a diversion: he didn't tell us the whole truth. Even those few hundred were just hires and actors. It is like the phony off-track betting parlor that Paul Newman's character sets up in the movie The Sting. The “big con” requires hiring dozens of con artists and actors to fool anyone who wanders into the place. This is what the Modern art market originally was, and the big con was not against any clueless buyers, it was against the Justice Department, FDIC, SEC and any other bank regulators. It immediately gave banks a way to move very large sums of money around without oversight. It was so successful that it expanded decade by decade, pulling in more actors and inflating the art more and more to cover ever larger cons. 

Eventually, due to its convenience, the government itself began using Modern art to hide transactions it wished to conceal. At that point, there was no longer any reason to regulate, or anyone left to be a regulator. A tool had been invented that everyone wanted to use. In this way, it is like the computerized voting machines. Although we now know elections have been stolen with them, no one appears to want to regulate them, even those who lost. Why? Because the tool is so useful. It is so perfectly anti-democratic no one in government wants to lose it. 

This explains why the artwork itself is beside the point. It is just a transaction symbol, like a betting chip. It simply represents the amount of the con. This also explains the look of the modern gallery. No one has understood why these places look like a gutted warehouse. 

Well, why waste money on finishing the place out and decorating it? The place is just a prop, like a Hollywood set. The gallery opening could be done under an awning or in a cardboard box—it doesn't matter. The only important thing is that some well-dressed people show up who seem to have money. This is apparently enough to fool the regulators.

 

these people are all either hires or dupes 

The next thing is just to go virtual, creating the gallery opening with CGI (computer generated images, like in Avatar). That would save them the money they spend hiring actors. It also explains the art criticism. They figured out early on that they didn't have to say anything to the point or even anything that made sense. They didn't have to hire people who knew how to write. All they needed to do was get the magazine out, with a certain number of glossy pages. The regulators weren't going to waste time reading that shit, so it could have been in an African tribal language or written by parrots pecking on typewriters. They just had to create a rough impression of an art market, one that would fool passing marks into thinking art was being made, being commented on, and being sold. 

And, as it turns out, the regulators were not very suspicious. Because government and regulator types don't tend to care a fig about art, it was the perfect place to hide. Even when these regulators saw cans of excrement and cows' heads going for tens of millions of dollars, they still weren't suspicious, apparently. I suppose they read the arts section of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal and just assumed all these rich people were mad. That is what the arts section has been written to make them think since the 1930's.

With that in mind, we can look at some of the other denials posted in these recent articles. At the Art Newspaper, we find this: 

“I’ve honestly never heard of using art for money laundering,” says the New York-based Old Master dealer Richard Feigen. Thomas Gibson, a London dealer, says: “Personally, we have never been approached to launder money.” Mary Sabbatino, the managing director of New York’s Galerie Lelong, says: “When I read [about the Nahmad case in] the New York Times, I thought I must really work in a different art world”. James Roundell, a UK-based Old Master dealer and the chairman of the Society of London Art Dealers, says: “From what I’ve read, the Nahmad situation seems to be more of a gambling problem than a money-laundering one.” 

Right. Feigen has never heard of using art for money laundering. He's a smart guy: couldn't he come up with something better than that? He might as well have said, “I've honestly never heard of money laundering. Or art.” All these denials are frankly pathetic, and read closely are just another tip-off that the accusations are true. Only guilty people respond like this. We should hook them up to a lie detector test. 

Which takes us back to Michael Wolff's comment above, in that first quote. He said that since no widows or orphans are in the art market, it is a low priority for regulation. Cute, but again false. Wolff is either misdirecting or he hasn't done his research. All this fraud is connected, and you can get a quick hint how it is interconnected by reading Matt Taibbi's recent exposés in Rolling Stone. I suspect that Taibbi has also been paid in the past to misdirect, but he is letting some of it hang out here. In short, money laundering by the banks, either via the art market, the porn market, the drug market, the arms market, or whatever, must be tied to price fixing scandals like L.I.B.O.R and the related muni-bond fixing, stock market manipulation, and commodities fixing. The more ways they have to hide large transactions, the better able they are to run these other schemes. Any money you can successfully launder can't be tied to fraud. If it is successfully laundered, that just means it looks clean to regulators. And, as we know, widows and orphans have been devastated by all these schemes. We now know the banks are stealing from pension funds, from municipal funds, from IRA's, and directly from individual accounts. This hasn't just been devastating to rich investors, it has been even more devastating to the retired, to small municipalities, and to poor people who can't afford to invest in anything. As the treasury is looted to cover all these bank thefts, the middle and lower classes take the brunt of the blow. They are the ones who get the bills for the various bail-outs, not the rich. 

Wolff also glosses over the damage to real artists, throwing only one passing clause to those who “fail to willingly or adroitly play the game.” But it isn't a game to us, Michael, it is our lives. Many natural artists have committed suicide, and many others have had their lives ruined. Beyond that, the redefinition and co-option of art hasn't just forced viewers “to admire what we might, given more rational values, disdain.” It has also robbed those viewers of a living contemporary art that they would both admire and value. Five or six generations of art and artists have been prevented or destroyed on purpose, and replaced by a manufactured field of fraud and larceny. Wolff's tone doesn't even begin to address the enormity of that. 

In conclusion, I have to hope I have finally hit bottom here. I keep going further down the rabbit hole, but can't imagine another level below this. I thought I had hit bottom with the CIA revelations, but I was still one floor up. It can't get any worse than art as a completely manufactured market, can it? Can it? 

Well, actually, it can. The Muses like to send me easy information, and just by sitting here a while longer I was able to hit another sub-level, without trying very hard at all. I paused for lunch, came back to this paper, and almost immediately the elevator began descending once more. To show how little diligence the regulators have, I will show another obvious clue they have missed—a clue hiding in plain sight at Wikipedia. By far the most expensive painting ever sold is Cezanne's Card Players. 

That sold for something between 250 to 300 million in 2011, which is about double the previous record. Curiously, we don't even know the price. It doesn't really matter, because the price is not the clue. The reported buyer and seller is, along with the date. It sold to the royal family of Qatar, the Al Thanis. Why is that a clue? Well, just search on “Qatar, 2011,” and you get the answer. Qatar was involved in the Libyan war of 2011, supporting the Libyan rebels who toppled Gaddafi. Since that war was engineered by the US, this means that Qatar was our ally. They did a job for us. How did we pay them? That's right. But since the payment was made privately—via a private art sale—the US government doesn't have to admit it is paying these countries to wage war for them. You will say that the painting came from the Greek billionaire George Embiricos, not from the US, so this theory doesn't pan out. But that is just more laundering, since Embiricos is a shipping magnate and US ally himself. He wanted Libya overthrown just as much as we do, since he was competing with Libyan shipping. Libya is right across the Mediterranean from Greece. Embiricos was probably promised control of Libyan shipping. That was just a guess, based on nothing but a quick glance at Wikipedia entries, but upon doing a websearch, I find I was nearly right. It was the right to ship Libya's stolen oil that Embiricos was buying.  Libya was overthrown mainly for their oil, of course, but that oil has to be shipped out on tankers, tankers owned by Embiricos. So do you really think it is a coincidence that the world's most expensive painting went in 2011—the year of the Libyan war—from one major player in the war to another? No, this art sale was a decoy, meant to cover the transfer of money from Greece to the US to Qatar. By laundering the money through a private sale, the middleman there can be taken out. No one need know the US had anything to do with the movement of this 300 million.

You might say, “If I were the Al Thanis in Qatar, I would rather have the 300 million. Screw the Cezanne.” But you still don't understand. The Cezanne painting is immaterial. George Embiricos sent them the actual painting, but he could just as easily have sent them a betting chip or a slot machine token or a lottery ticket. It isn't the object that matters, it is the value printed on the piece of paper that accompanies the object. Think of it this way: when banks transfer money, they don't actually transfer gold or even dollar bills. They transfer debits and credits. Numbers in a machine. You can be sure that Qatar got both the painting and the numbers in the machine. Again, the painting is just a decoy. They want you to think that the value attaches to the painting, but it doesn't. The painting just accompanies the number transfer in the machine, you see. So the laundering here is a bit different than the laundering that is admitted in these smaller scams. In these smaller scams, money from a dirty transaction is rebooted into a clean transaction. The dirty money therefore disappears to any regulator. But in the mainline Modern art scam, there isn't a switch like that. Instead of a switch, you have a long-running decoy. You create a permanent fake commodity behind which you can hide any transaction. So the US can send 300 million to Qatar, hide that behind a Cezanne, and no one is the wiser. And they actually hide two payments in one transaction, since they don't have to admit that Greece paid them anything for the shipping rights to the Libyan oil, either. 

I encourage you to notice one other thing before we move on. At Wikipedia and the mainstream sources, it looks like Embiricos was the seller and Qatar the buyer. But as we have seen, the truth is actually the reverse. In this transaction, it is Embiricos that is buying the right to ship the oil. Qatar is selling their military services, for which they expect payment. It is Qatar that is getting paid and Embiricos that is paying. In the specific transaction, the money is moving from Embiricos to Qatar. So this system of laundering not only creates a decoy, it creates a reversal. Although money appears to be going from left to right, it is really going from right to left. Remember that, because you can apply it to other big art sales. While it may look like a rich guy is buying a painting, what is really happening is that the rich guy is being paid for some service. That is how he is getting rich. That is how these rich guys can seem to be blowing hundreds of millions on worthless paintings, while getting even richer. Modern art isn't an investment, it is a hidden direct payment. 

This explains why Modern art is under such low security in the museums, and why rich families so often give it away to these museums. Divorced from the transaction, the art object is worthless. Once you separate it from the numbers in the machine, it is back to being a zero-value composite of wood and oil. Say you go into MOMA and steal what you think is a million-dollar painting. Can you get a million for it? No, and it has nothing to do with its fame or its “heat.” The problem is, since you aren't a banker or billionaire, you have no way of investing that decoy with value. You have no promissory power, so for you, the artwork is worthless. You can't put any numbers into the machine, so the work has no accompanying value, you see. On its own, it has no value. It has value only for these rich people who can use it as a decoy for their illicit payments. Outside that realm of illicit payments, it is nothing but a framed bit of linen. To say it another way, it is not the painting that is being traded. Something else is being traded, and the painting is just the wrapper for that something else. If you steal the wrapper, you only have a wrapper. The wrapper on its own is worth nothing. 

Besides that, if you steal a famous Modern art work, you only have a thing that you can use as a decoy for a payment. But you don't want to pay someone, do you? No, you want to be paid. The reversed transaction won't do you any good, will it? In stealing the art, you thought you were stealing a left-to right transaction, but you have really stolen a chit for a right-to-left transaction. You have just stolen a potential debit, not a credit. 

For the wealthy, these museums are like museums of old coins. These are the coins they used to use, but have since retired. And by giving away these old coins to the museums, they have lost nothing of value. You will say, “Sure they have, if they didn't give them to the museums, they could sell them for millions at Sotheby's.” But you still aren't getting it. If a rich person hangs an expensive painting in his house, that painting isn't a symbol of money he has spent, it is a symbol of money he has been paid. Remember the reversal I just showed you? Yes, the rich person could then use that painting as a decoy in a new transaction, but if he did, he would be using it as a decoy for a payment. In giving away a decoy for a payment to a museum, he isn't giving away anything of value. After he gives away the decoy, he still has the numbers in his bank account. That is where the real money is, not with the decoy. Yes, if he needs to make another illicit transaction, he will need another decoy, but the rich have decoys running out their ears. They can manufacture decoys out of anything, and have. 

Which of course gives a whole different spin to charity and charitable trusts and so on. If you think about it, you will see that the wealthy are making huge amounts of money by giving away things that we think are expensive, but that are actually worthless. They are getting huge tax write-offs for what they are calling charity or public service, when in reality they are just donating old wrappers to the museum. 

The saddest part is that all this is completely unnecessary. Let's go back to the Cezanne example to see what I mean. Has the US really fooled anyone with regard to its involvement in the Libyan war? Has it fooled its enemies? Has it fooled the public? Has it fooled the regulators? No. Everyone knows Qatar sold us their airforce and ground troops. It was reported in the mainstream (see the link above). Everyone knows that Greek shipping is involved in moving out the stolen oil. If the US just skipped the whole art decoy plan, taking money from Greece and giving it to Qatar, nothing would change. In other words, the US was going to do what it did in Libya regardless, so why not just do it right out in the open? Why all this cloak and dagger bullshit, lying to the public when it isn't even necessary? The public was split on the war, and waging it right out in the open would not have changed that split one iota. In short, you had those who thought it was OK to invade another country and those that didn't. Many people no doubt think it is OK for countries to invade one another, if they can get away with it. They think life is like that—it is a competition—and countries have always done this. Others think otherwise. They think that countries should be sovereign and left alone. So that is the split. Do you think any of those in the second category were fooled by telling them we were invading Libya for humanitarian reasons? Do you think because we hid behind NATO and fake art deals, anyone in that second category went, “Wow, I guess invading countries is OK in that case. Murdering the leaders of countries is OK in that case. Breaking all international law is OK as long as you do it behind the cloak of NATO and behind fake art deals”? No. Not one person was fooled by that. And if the public wasn't fooled, Congress was even less fooled. Congress didn't fail to stop the war because they were fooled, they failed to stop the war because they didn't have the power to stop it. Congress has been eviscerated by the Intelligence community and now doesn't have the power to stop an illegal parade. There is no regulation of the military or even the military budget, and no oversight. So there are no regulators to fool. The military and Executive and Intelligence do whatever they want. Congress and the people have been against them since at least 1971, but it hasn't mattered. International sentiment has been against US aggression since the 1950's, but it hasn't mattered. 

So the destruction of art hasn't been necessary. These fake sales aren't necessary. The whole con isn't necessary. I say to them, “Go ahead and be an Empire if you want. Invade the whole fucking world if that is what you have to do. But leave art out of it. Did Alexander have to destroy all art and every artist in order to invade Persia? Did Julius Caesar have to destroy art before he conquered Omnia Gallia? Did Napoleon have to kick David and Ingres and Gros and Gerard and Prud'hon out in the snow, refilling the Louvre with slashed canvases and soup cans, before he overwhelmed Prussia? No,and a thousand times no. Not even Hitler was crazed enough to think he could or should destroy art history in order to make it easier to conquer Poland or France. Only the shallow psychopaths that run this country have been shameless enough to stoop so low. 

The only question remaining is why these mainstream sources are partially spilling the beans, and why they are doing it now. If the rich people control the CIA and the CIA controls the press, how do these stories get out? For many decades, they didn't. But in the past five years, stories that are very unflattering to the big dogs seem to be getting through, not only regarding this money laundering in art, but on many other major issues. How and why is that happening? I would link these revelations in art to the revelations we have seen about the NSA recently, from Snowdon, as well as the earlier and broader revelations from Assange. I read all these events as signs of a split. The Rockefeller's and their allies appear to be losing control of at least one part of the greater Intelligence apparatus. This is a predictable outcome of an Intelligence that has gotten too large. I have shown in recent papers that all told, the Intelligence agencies now comprise something in excess of six million people. That number of agents is simply too great to maintain overall cohesion. 

The powers-that-be like the fact that the US is large and spread-out. It makes it harder for us to organize, march, and resist. But they are confronting a similar problem within their own constructions. The CIA and other government organizations have gotten so large and spread-out, they are impossible to control. The CIA is like an amoeba that has grown too large: it must split. We are seeing signs of this split. One part of the internal apparatus has apparently decided it doesn't like the direction the country is going—for whatever reasons it may have—and we are seeing signs of revolution from within. As I have put it before, the Praetorian Guard looks to be restless. It doesn't approve of what its Caesars are doing. This revolutionary faction seems to have partial control of the press, and the ability to plant stories. The old guard families like the Rockefeller's seem to be finding this to be very inconvenient for their plans. They are running scared. This is why we are seeing large ammunition purchases by D.H.S, I.R.S, F.E.M.A, and A.T.F, as reported at places like Infowars. Those currently in control of the government are not as scared of a popular revolution as they are of an internal coup. 

To put it in rough terms, it looks like the D.H.S/N.S.A/banks are scared of some faction of C.I.A/military that is resisting them. And a large part of this war is financial, as you would expect. So it is not that the C.I.A has suddenly taken an interest in art history. After all this, I am not naive enough to believe that. What we are seeing is one part of the CIA attacking the financial interests of the banks, including this money laundering via the Modern art market. 

For many decades, the C.I.A was content to take orders, undermining any attempt by the Justice Department or other agencies to investigate various criminal activity by the rich families they served. After all, the C.I.A has been more powerful than Justice almost from the beginning, and since at least 1960 has been capable of doing that. But after 2001, some in the C.I.A/military seem to have come to the conclusion it had all gone too far. The power and reach of this faction seems to have increased year by year since then, and they are now having a real effect. 

Or that is my current analysis. Despite the fact that many probably think I am cynic or a pessimist, just the opposite is true. As you can see from my track record, I have always been far too optimistic, trying to read every sign in a good light. I try to insert a ray of hope into even the darkest places, which a psychologist could read as either a sign of health or as a sign of desperation. Since I know myself better than any psychologist could, I will tell you it is probably a bit of both. However that may be, it is always good to know the truth. The truth is very ugly here, but it is still the truth. Discovering the truth is always exhilarating, even when it is stinking and putrid. Identifying the problem always gives one a whiff of hope, since only a problem that is out in the open can be solved. We can at least hope that this splinter group is able to rein in the worst excesses of the Caesars, and that if they succeed in overthrowing Nero and the current Claudian dynasty, they don't replace it with a clone. That is, we should pray they skip the Galbas and Othos, elevating immediately a Trajan. I would love to think that they would just leave us alone, dismantling large parts of the government as useless, but at this point in history I don't see that in the cards. The current bad guys won't be kept down by a Congress or a voting bloc. It will take other powerful individuals to do that, and our only hope is that these powerful individuals are more benevolent to the citizenry than the last lot. Not all governments or leaders in the past have preyed upon their people so shamelessly, and it is altogether possible that the splinter group is tired of seeing this country run by malevolent fascists. It doesn't have to be. 

*The Rockefeller's had mostly gotten past their government problems by 1930, having either bought out the regulatory agencies, or having simply become more powerful than the agencies.
http://mileswmathis.com/launder.pdf

THE CULTURAL COLD WAR

The Cultural Cold War

 

by Miles Mathis

@http://mileswmathis.com/index.html 

When artists are made the slaves and the tools of the state, when artists become chief propagandists of a cause, progress is arrested and creation and genius are destroyed. 

President Eisenhower, 1954 

Eisenhower said the above in his “Freedom of the Arts” address at MoMA for its 25th anniversary gala. Yes, MoMA and the Rockefeller's could even afford to hire the President to read their scripts. Although he was intending to condemn Russian realism and promote Abstract Expressionism, we can now see that his words were upside down, as usual. Most of the 20th century was upside down to the truth and this is just one more example. For his words are a perfect description of Modernism and its purposeful subordination of art and artists to politics, Theory, and financial speculation. This subordination was not engineered from Moscow. It was engineered from New York City and DC. And it turned out to be even worse than Eisenhower warned. If progress had only been arrested, how happy we would now be. Due to the engineered collapse of art in the 20th century by speculators, propagandists, paid academics, and New-World-Order architects, we have regressed no one knows how many centuries.

 

before: Tate Britain 19th century gallery

 

after: Pace Gallery, 2010 

We can see from these before and after photos what Eisenhower's “freedom of the arts” really meant. It meant the freedom of art to devolve from something large and beautiful into something small and meaningless. It was an early example of Newspeak, telling you one thing while selling you the inverse. 

This has now been proven. It is no longer a theory or an opinion. Documents have been declassified, agents have gone on record, and fully researched books have been written. We now know exactly which artists were slaves (all the famous ones) and which artists were propagandists (all the famous ones). We can only guess at the genius destroyed, since most of it was never allowed to see the light of day. Thousands of talented artists have been suppressed, ignored, slandered, and ultimately lost to history. Some quit, some killed themselves, and others just faded out.

I have referenced the work of Frances Stonor Saunders in three previous papers, including her 1995 article in the London Independent and her 1999 book Who Paid the Piper/The Cultural Cold War. While using parts of her research, I nonetheless mentioned several times that I found her work to be a probable diversion. In other words, I think it is likely the book was either suggested by Intelligence, overwritten by them, or written in full by them with only her byline. I come to this conclusion from several facts, which I will now share with you. The first curious fact is that this book which is sold as an exposé of the CIA managed to be reviewed by top mainstream sources, including the London Times and the London Review of Books. Her initial article also managed to get published by the London Independent. Since Intelligence owns the London press just as it own the US press, we must assume Intelligence is trying to spin information that has already been leaked. 

With more research, that is precisely what I found. Saunders admits that much of the information in her book was leaked or published in various places decades earlier, and though it has been suppressed since then and is now barely remembered, it means her research is not new. In this context, her article and book appear to be the somewhat late effort to spin old information, for reasons unknown to me. It seems to me they would have been better off keeping quiet about it, but I don't know what undercurrent they might have been trying to quell in the late 1990's. Probably they know their own jobs better than I do. 

Another thing that leads in this direction is her bio, which is almost non-existent. Both parents were in the British peerage, which is in itself a red flag in this case. The first thing on her bio is this CIA exposé, which she produced at age 29. So there is an 8-year gap in her bio, from age 21 to age 29. She then became an editor at the New Statesman, another red flag. Her own book ought to tell us that, since it admits most of these journals had been taken over by Intelligence soon after W.W II (or even before). But the warning is even easier to hear when we find that Saunders was at the New Statesman under the leadership of Ian Hargreaves, a big supporter of Tony Blair. Blair, like Bush and Obama, was just a puppet of Intelligence. 

But it is the content of the book that is the real indication it was written to whitewash and spin information. Although she and her editors manage to compile a lot of old evidence that someone like me can use to his own purposes, most people reading the book will not be able to take the information they receive and sew it into their own shirts. Most readers will take the information as Saunders gives it to them, and Saunders is careful in most cases to make Intelligence look not-so-bad-after-all. 

I have already shown in my previous papers how ridiculous the main thesis is: that Modern Art was sold as part of the Cold War, to combat Communism and the backward ideas about art professed by the Russians. I agree that the Soviets were wrong about just about everything, including politics and art, but that doesn't make the US position right. Saunders helps sell the peculiar idea that a government either has to outlaw “decadent art”—as the Soviets did—or promote it wildly, as the US did. She helps those she quotes at Intelligence gloss over the possibility that we might have done neither. We might have promoted the American art of the time in proportion to its merits. . . which was not much. Or, since we were supposed to be an example to the world of free-market capitalism, we might have let the free markets promote the art of the time, letting the buyers and the public decide its merits. Instead, we chose to propagandize it to the greatest extent possible, outdoing any propaganda Hitler or Stalin ever dreamed of. We then tried to sell this propaganda as pure simply because it was ours. “Their propaganda is manipulation; our propaganda is just 'fair promotion' of 'free enterprise.'” 

I have shown the main thesis of the book is false, since the art they chose to promote wasn't chosen based on merit, much less on its ability to fight Communism or make the US look creative. The works were chosen because the Rockefeller's had already invested in them, and the Rockefeller's controlled both the museums and the CIA. That information is buried in the book, but since it isn't highlighted or stressed, readers will tend to miss it. 

In this paper I wish to continue pulling apart the book by concentrating on chapter 16, “Yanqui Doodles.” It is in this chapter that Saunders finally gets to the paintings of Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, Motherwell, and others. Before we get to the analysis of the text, let me just say that I agree that the Abstract Expressionists aren't very decadent. I have always found them more boring and pointless than decadent. They tie into the adjective “decadent” not in the way Duchamp did before them or Warhol would after them. That is, they don't obviously try to tear down culture by any direct attack. They still give you colors and shapes, some of which might be called interesting in a small way. However, they are decadent in the sense that they were used by critics and others to continue the destruction of art, by the loss of old conventions. They aren't morally decadent, they are aesthetically decadent. They represent the decay and loss of old standards, old conventions, and all the means the artist historically used to create beauty, meaning, depth, and subtlety. Remember, Abstract Expressionism wasn't and isn't sold as just another artistic possibility. It was sold by critics like Clement Greenberg as the historical replacement for old aristocratic art—meaning high realism. Even the artist Ad Reinhardt—Greenberg's arch enemy—said that Abstract painting was “the last painting that anyone could paint.” The new art was promoted as superior in every way, immediately mothballing all art that had come before. It was the art of a new century, the art of America!, the art of the future, blah blah blah. So in promoting Abstract Expressionism and Modernism in general, the salesmen in Intelligence were at the same time forbidding the old realism. 

Saunders' book and Tom Braden's lengthy quotes in it only tell you about the promotion side; they forget to tell you about the suppression side. They forget to tell you that while they were promoting Modernism, they were implicitly forbidding anyone from painting the old way. The old painting was dismissed as outdated, regressive, undemocratic, and generally small minded. No, they didn't outlaw realism, but any artist of the time who wished to be noticed got the message very clearly: do not paint in the old way anymore. If you do, we won't like you. 

I will be told that was a blessing: we didn't want any more of that Nazi realism or Communist realism. We didn't want that arid, stiff, poster-art, selling the party-line. But again, that kind of argument creates the illusion of only two possibilities. You are led to believe that you must either promote poster-art realism that glorifies the State, or you must promote Modernism. I beg you to remember that all of the high realism before 1900 falls into neither category. In arguing against Modernism, I am not promoting Soviet realism or Nazi illustration. The mainline argument in the book, like the argument of the 20th century, is a finessed argument. It presents the choice as being between one of two categories, and real art isn't in either category. 

Barnett Newman 

Jackson Pollock

But let us return to Abstract Expressionism. Abstract Expressionism was chosen as the lead for the book for the same reason it was chosen as the lead for the CIA. Since the decadence of AE is far less obvious than the decadence of most other Modern Art, the CIA and Saunders can dodge the decadence question. Most people think of decadence in terms of moral decadence. If they even know what aesthetic decadence is, it doesn't mean anything to them. So most readers will look at a Pollock and say, “well, I don't like it, but I don't see how it is decadent. If the CIA wants to promote that to combat Communism, OK.” Most readers won't understand why the Soviets were saying AE was decadent, why they were banning art, or why the US was promoting it. As long as the CIA can spin this as some patriotic crusade, most people will give them a pass. 

But what Saunders and the CIA are leaving out is the other art of the 20th century, which Intelligence also promoted. Saunders keeps your eyes on Pollock and Rothko, and off Duchamp, Manzoni, Fontana, Nitsch, Quinn, Hirst, and the Chapman Brothers. Since thousands of promoted 20th century artists—including many in 1950's and 60's—have explicitly and vocally been trying to be both morally and aesthetically decadent, it must look odd to argue that Modern art is not decadent—as Saunders does in chapter 16. It is a mystery to me how 20th century art can be promoted as gloriously decadent for 90 years, but when a Congressman or Harry Truman says he doesn't like it because it is decadent, he is a “philistine.” 

Duchamp

 

Manzoni 

Hirst 

[I can't even show you Nitsch, since you may have just eaten. If you search on him, be warned][I have to agree with Miles on Nitsch,the disgust level is very high D.C] 

When the Soviets say this art is decadent, they are out-of-touch and backwards and regressive and antidemocratic. 

No, they have just read the artists' own press releases, where they brag about how decadent they are. Painters and writers have been bragging about their decadence since the time of Baudelaire, so when we see historians like Saunders clicking their tongues at those who have found it decadent, we can only laugh. 

This is not to say that I think Duchamp or any of the rest should have been banned. They should have just been ignored. Since it is too late for that, they must be exposed for what they were: closeted fascists destroying art on purpose, at the behest of even more closeted masters in Intelligence. 

I must say this goes for the Abstract Expressionists as well as the Dadaists before them and the post moderns after them. Although they may not have been as decadent as some, they were still fascists. Pollock, Motherwell, Calder and Baziotes were all members of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom [A.C.C.F], which was an Orwellian name for yet another CIA organization. The figurative artist Ben Shahn called it the A.C.C.Fuck. Although its stated purpose was to promote art as free expression, it actual purpose was to promote the art the Rockefeller's had invested in, and since these member/artists had been invested in, they were happy to join that promotion. However, this promotion also entailed the anti-promotion of everything else, so that abstract painting became the new religion. As Saunders puts it, 

The Museum of Modern Art, described by one critic as the “over geared cartel of Modernism,” held tenaciously to its executive role in manufacturing a history for Abstract Expressionism. Ordered and systematic, this history reduced what had once been provocative and strange to an academic formula, a received mannerism, an art officiel. 

I encourage you to have that quote in mind as you re-read my under title quote from Eisenhower. Rather than being the antithesis of propaganda or slave art, the art of the 1950's (and after) was actually its perfect representation. It was part of a “manufactured history” promoted by a cartel. It was “official art.” Not only was it promoted by the state, but it was promoted covertly by a secret state agency. If nothing illegal or unseemly was going on here, why keep it all in the dark? 

New York Times art critic John Canaday said, “an unknown artist trying to exhibit in New York couldn't find a gallery unless he was painting in a mode derived from one or another member of the New York School [Abstract Expressionism].” And Peggy Guggenheim—a Rockefeller competitor— apparently had an even better grasp of the situation, saying “the entire art movement had become an enormous business venture.” [p. 274]. 

Since these leading artists of the New York School like Pollock and Motherwell were members of C.I.A organizations, they could not have been on any “long leash.” These were dogs leading their masters, yapping and leaping. Almost a decade before the A.C.C.F, Rothko and Gottlieb had founded the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors in 1940, which was already fiercely anticommunist before the US declared war on Japan. “Rothko and Gottlieb led these efforts to destroy Communist presence in the art world.” [p. 277] This by itself proves two things. One, in earlier chapters, C.I.A agents like Tom Braden told us that the U.S had secretly promoted leftist artists during the Cold War to fight Communism. This was supposed to be ironic or something, but it turns out to be false. The few artists that had ever been red or pink hadn't been pink since the 1920's. The ones sold to us as leftist after W.W.II weren't leftists then, and weren't leftists before the war. It wasn't McCarthy who turned them, or new-found patriotism. It was the desire to get noticed by the Rockefeller's and MoMA. Rothko and Gottlieb were acting as little McCarthy's in 1940, purging the art world of opposition. So much for freedom of expression. Two, we were also sold the idea that this art propaganda only started after the war, as part of the Cold War. But we see that isn't true, either. If Rothko and Gottlieb were founding an anti-Communist artist organization in 1940, then this whole program couldn't have been started after the war or by the C.I.A. There was clearly covert promotion of Modern art before the war, by pre-C.I.A intelligence as well as by MoMA. 

So the argument of Saunders and the C.I.A doesn't add up. Neither does their attack on Truman and the post-war Congress. Although I normally don't have much use for Harry Truman, when he says Modern art looks pathetic compared to Rembrandt or Holbein, I can only agree. Saunders quotes him as saying, 

The Dutch masters make our own modern day daubers and ham and egg men look just what they are. 

That is simply a true statement. Saunders doesn't try to refute it by any cogent argument or direct comparison, putting a Pollock next to a Rembrandt, for instance. She only jumps immediately into this: 

Those European vanguardists who had fled the Fascist jackboot were now startled to find themselves in an America where modernism was once again being kicked about. This was, of course, consistent with the cultural fundamentalism of figures like McCarthy, and part of the confusing process by which America, whilst advocating freedom of expression abroad, seemed to begrudge such freedoms at home. 

I almost doubt that Saunders wrote those particular sentences. Frankly, I would bet they were inserted into her draft at some point by Intelligence. Most of Saunders' book is on or least near the mark, and even where it is off she in only subtly turning you from the truth. But here, all subtlety is gone. The fact that Truman preferred Rembrandt to Pollock has absolutely nothing to do with Joseph McCarthy and his Communist witch hunts. Truman didn't dislike Pollock or any of the others because they were Communists. He says it very clearly in his own words: he dislikes them because they don't impress him in any way as artists. 

Beyond that, promotion of the Abstract Expressionists or other Moderns had absolutely nothing to do with freedom of expression. I am all for freedom of expression, and I think all people who are creating art for their own purposes should be allowed to do it. But that doesn't mean I think they should be promoted by the CIA just because they have done it, or made rich and famous because they have done it. 

Remember, freedom of expression applies to the audience as well. The audience should be free to express their dislike for Modernism if they honestly do dislike it, without being attacked as philistines. Saunders—or whoever wrote those sentences—is implying that those like Truman who disliked Modernism were “kicking it about” or denying the artists freedom to create. But neither Truman nor anyone else ever suggested Modernism should be banned. Almost without exception, those in Congress or in the press who were against Modernism in the early years were simply making the argument that it shouldn't be promoted with tax dollars. They thought the US should either be promoting really fine art or no art at all. There is no “jackboot” involved in either idea. In reality, the jackboot involved is in forcing people to like Modernism when they don't: taking their tax dollars under the threat of jail, then spending that money to promote art they strongly dislike, as part of expensive propaganda initiatives their representatives haven't voted on. That is what is anti-democratic. 

The jackboot is also involved in funding decades of domestic propaganda for Modernism in magazines, trade journals, professional journals, academic journals, books, TV, and film. The jackboot is involved in telling several generations of art students they cannot create any realism and be taken seriously. The jackboot is involved in calling the art market pluralistic and free, and then consciously excluding any form of realism from that market for many decades. The jackboot is involved in a century of bold lies, by which artists and the public are told Modernism is being promoted to advance freedom, encourage expression, celebrate diversity, and air important political issues, when in fact we find the opposite has always been true. After the unmasking, we see that Modernism was promoted mainly to protect the investments of the Rockefellers, but that when there was an agenda beyond that purely financial one, it was an agenda of destabilization, stupefaction, liquefaction, misdirection, and obliteration. It was the century-long program of taking everything solid in art, atomizing it, and selling us back the fragments at a vicious mark-up. 

Large parts of chapter 16 in Saunders' book look to have been inserted later by external hands. Great swaths of it don't even parse like her common sentence structure. On p. 253, we get this:

This was not a propitious time for modernists. Most vulnerable to the attacks of the Dondero caucus [in the Congress] was a group of artists that emerged in the late 1940s as the Abstract Expressionists. . . . They were linked by a similar past: most of them had worked for the Federal Arts Project under Roosevelt's New Deal, producing subsidized art for the government and getting involved in left-wing politics. 

The problem with that argument is that Congress was almost as marginalized in the late 1940's as now. No one was listening to Rep. Dondero or anyone else in Congress. Then as now, Congress was just a backboard against which Intelligence hit its tennis balls. Saunders admits that on the next few pages, where we are reminded that by 1946, a whole gaggle of critics (already being underwritten by the Rockefeller's in various ways) were praising these artists to the skies. It is these critics who were being read by academics and gullible progressives. Those interested in art weren't reading the Congressional record, they were reading Partisan Review and Commentary and the Nation—and assuming, naively, that these magazines were independent. Saunders also admits that Pollock got his center spread in Life Magazine in 1949 thanks to the CIA pressuring Henry Luce. So to say this was “not a propitious time for Modernists” is just hooey. 

And we see from the quote above that other things in this chapter don't add up. Although all bullets for the book tell us it blows the whistle on CIA influence after the war, it is clear these people were being promoted and subsidized before the war and before the CIA was ever founded. Look again, these artists were “subsidized” under the New Deal. The New Deal was before the war, in the 1930's. As another example, we know Clement Greenberg was promoting Modernism fiercely before the war, and again, Saunders admits it, quoting from his “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” article of 1939 in the Partisan Review. That is before the war and before the CIA, so none of this started in 1947. Despite the fact that Partisan Review and Greenberg were saying the same things—at least regarding art—in 1948 that they were saying in the 1930's, why are we supposed to believe they were bought in the 1940's and independent in the 1930's? It is pretty obvious they were bought all along. After 1947, the Rockefeller's paid Greenberg and Partisan Review via the CIA; before that they paid them directly. 

Although we now know Greenberg was just a puppet, he was pathetic, talent less puppet. And if I hear one more time about how Greenberg was a “brawling, boozing, one-man slug fest,” I think I am going to cough up a lung. Greenberg was a short, bald, paunchy little creep even when he was young, and he looks like the kind of guy who only punched women and those in lower weight classes.*

 

My favorite story is how Greenberg started shoving the tiny Max Ernst, only to get clocked by the long-armed Nicholas Calas. In 1961, the 52 year old Greenberg got caught with a left jab from the 57 year old de Kooning and wasn't able to respond. From my research, none of these fights ever got past one punch, so as usual it looks like a lot of posturing by armchair critics and fighters. Despite the fact that Greenberg is a minor character in her book, Saunders implies he,of all the people who pulled the Rockefeller oars (except possibly the Trillings)—was the most unctuous, the most reviled, and the most insincere. Which gives me an opening I missed the first time I counter-critiqued “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” Coming to Greenberg from the assumption that Modernism was trying to sell itself as leftist and progressive, I hadn't been able to understand his assertion that the avant garde “belonged to the ruling class,” or that “it had always remained attached to this ruling class by an umbilical cord of gold.” But now that I understand that Greenberg was actually a conservative and a fascist, I see what he means. He is constructing a subtle apologia for his groveling at the feet of the Rockefeller's. Art had always belonged to the ruling class, according to Greenberg, so why should he or his artists have any qualms about accepting their gold? 

Leaving aside the moral or political aspects of that idea, we see a huge contradiction here. If the avant garde belongs to the ruling class, then the famous division of the avant garde from old “aristocratic” art evaporates, doesn't it? This division—which Greenberg helped to manufacture—has been one of the defining divisions of the century, being used to jettison any and all realism from the new definitions. I was personally excluded from the upper echelons of contemporary art based on that manufactured division. I was told my art was “aristocratic” and therefore outmoded, based only on its use of old forms and conventions—like figuration, representation, and attention to technique. But if both the old art and the new art “belong to the upper class,” then this slur against realism collapses. The old art is then not frowned upon because it is “aristocratic.” It is frowned upon because the new aristocrats like Rockefeller choose to frown on it. An art that “belongs” to the elite is then at the mercy of the elite. If they decide to redefine art to suit their portfolios, artists and critics can only go along. This is what Greenberg is really saying, in his nearly illegible way. 

But back to Saunders' book. The more I reread chapter 16, the more it looks like a palimpsest, written over and written over again. It undercuts itself and then the undercut is re-undercut. We see this most clearly in the way Pollock is dealt with. Although the main line of the book would lead most people to dismiss Pollock as a CIA creation, someone underneath the top layer of this book is trying to save him with all the rest. We hear the tired superlatives once again: that Pollock was the great American painter [so says Budd Hopkins], the Hemingway of painting, the real American, the cowboy, the hard-talking heavy drinker with “the grittiness of Marlon Brando and the brooding rebelliousness of James Dean.” But then that sales pitch is destroyed in one sentence, where we are reminded that all of this is bunk: Pollock couldn't ride a horse and left Wyoming as a child. And this reminds us he was also terrorized by self-doubt (hence the drinking), couldn't hold his booze, and—like Greenberg—was short, bald and unattractive. Pollock had nothing in common—even on the surface—with Marlon Brando or James Dean, much less John Wayne. He was neither a rebel nor a tough guy, spending his afternoons—like Woody Allen—in therapy. He saw his drip period as a lark and a marketing ploy, and felt guilty for the undeserved fame. He preferred his earlier work, and wished he were allowed to pursue figuration. This is the reason he went off the wagon after the Hans Namuth photo shoot in 1950 and quit doing the drip paintings. The photo shoot made him feel like a big phony. 

Which brings us to a curious outcome of my research on Pollock. Turns out Pollock spent some time pursuing Theosophy, attending retreats in California with Krishnamurti. That of course brings us back to the paper that started all this, where I show that Theosophy was founded as a joint project of US/Russian Intelligence. So even before Modernism was infiltrated by the CIA, it had long been infiltrated by Intelligence through Theosophy and its offshoots. Other artists who were influenced by Theosophy include Rothko, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Brancusi, Gauguin, Itten, Marc, Pasternak, Blok, Katherine Mansfield, T.S. Eliot, Klee, Gropius, Delauney, Scriabin, and Schoenberg. ** 

Since Theosophy was founded in 1875, it would seem difficult to connect it to the Rockefeller's. The Rockefeller fortune was just being made at that time, and most assume the first Rockefeller was too busy creating his monopoly to bother with spiritualism. But those who assume this would be wrong. Rockefeller not only followed Vivekananda in the 1890's, he is one of the ones who brought him here. Vivekananda, like Krishnamurti, was one of the early importations of the Theosophists. What most people don't know is that Vivekananda was a freemason. It is not widely publicized, but it is admitted even at Wikipedia. He was educated at the General Assembly's Institution, now known as the Scottish Church College. This is curious, since this college taught a “liberal Western” education. Vivekananda's favorite professor was from Trinity College. Also of interest is the fact that when Vivekananda came to the US for the first time in 1893, he went straight to Harvard and the waiting arms of William James. See my previous papers  for the importance of that fact. To get you started, remember that James was a Theosophist and a mentor of Gertrude Stein.

But back to Saunders' book. Here's another strange contradiction in chapter 16. On page 256, we learn of an exhibition in 1947 called “Advancing American Art.” We are told that speeches in Congress killed it after it got to Europe. This is supposed to be evidence of the power of the reactionaries in the House, including Rep. Dondero. But Saunders, in the previous paragraph, had just admitted that the show—which included works by O'Keefe, Gottlieb and Gorky—had already been to Paris and Prague, where it was “a major success.” It was such a success, we are told, that the Russians had to immediately organize a competing exhibition. So we see the contradiction already. We are told that Congressmen killed the show, but if they had killed it, it would never have left New York. It opened first at MoMA before moving to Europe, and a proper “killing” would have prevented it from ever being shown at all, here or abroad. 

What we learn if we delve deeper is that Congress voted funds for the show in the amount of $50,000. With that money, 79 paintings were bought, and the funds also had to include travel expenses to Europe and Latin America. Which means the average price paid for an oil painting was about $500. Since most were bought through galleries, each artist got about $250. We are told the itinerary after Prague included Budapest and an “undetermined venue in Poland.” That sounds fishy to me, since what major art exhibition goes to Europe without a firm itinerary? The “great success” in Prague also turns out to be pushed, since it is admitted that the opening attracted 1,000 visitors. That sounds pretty paltry to me, considering the show was supposed to have received advanced promotion from critics and accolades from Czech President Benes. If the President was in favor of the exhibition, why wasn't it shown at one of the National Gallery venues in Prague? Why was it relegated to an art cooperative? 

The story completely unwinds when Saunders admits that after the show was “canceled,” the paintings were sold off at a 95% discount as surplus government property. What? That means each painting fetched about $25 on the open market! Two questions are begged by that: 1) if the exhibitions were such a success, why was no one interested in buying this “exciting new work”? We know most of the lots went to small museums in Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama. If the works were so good, why didn't any of the major museums bid on them? Apparently it wasn't only Truman who didn't care for this work. The directors of 99% of the museums in the country also passed, even at a bid of $25. 2) If the government and the CIA believed so strongly in Modernism, why did they sell off these works for almost nothing? The CIA agents themselves should have been bidding these works up into the thousands, right? No. The CIA believed in Modernism to the tune of less than $25, and the rest is bluff. 

But of course this means the whole story was manufactured. It wasn't the “philistinism” of Truman or Dondero or Busbey that killed this show. That story was created after the fact as spin. The show went to Europe and Latin America as planned and bombed on its own lack of merits. If the show really had so much critical and academic support back in the US, the paintings would have sold to critics and academics. Anyone can afford $25 for a painting, even a lowly art critic. 

The reason these early shows failed while later shows didn't is that the CIA hadn't yet assumed total control of the press in 1946. Some magazines and newspapers were still printing honest opinion at that time, which obviously got in the way of the propaganda machine. But within a couple of years, that changed completely. Whereas Hearst's New York Journal-American and LOOK magazine had panned the show in 1946, the CIA soon brought them on board. And once the media was speaking with one voice, it didn't matter what Truman or any Congressman thought. The newspapers could be instructed not to report it, or to report it with a strong spin. If the newspapers got a hundred letters from readers panning the show and one extolling it, they would print the one and throw the other hundred in the trash. That is how things work to this day. 

We see another bold contradiction on page 258, which starts off, “Supporting left-wing artists was familiar territory for the Rockefellers.” Saunders then repeats the story we all know about Diego Rivera being hired to paint a mural for Rockefeller Center. Rivera paints Lenin into the mural, Nelson Rockefeller asks him to remove it, Rivera refuses, and Rockefeller pays him off and destroys the mural with jackhammers. Saunders gives us the CIA spin here, which is that despite that, the Rockefellers continued to support left-wing artists. Of course she doesn't pursue the obvious conclusion here, which is that the Rockefellers promote left-wing artists only as long as “left-wing” means “Modern.” If leftwing has any real political meaning—as in supporting either Socialism or Republicanism—the Rockefellers run like the wind. They only support lefties that aren't really lefties. All the Rockefeller artists who are sold as lefties turn out on closer inspection to be righties sold as lefties. They are fascists posing as Marxists. In my previous papers we saw the same thing with Ezra Pound and many others. Sometimes, as with Pound, the fascists posing as Marxists then pose as fascists, just to be sure you are well and permanently confused. 

On page 261, the tug of war between Saunders and her invisible re-writers continues, as she re-leaks the information that most of MoMA's trustees/directors/executives are from Intelligence, the invisible writers come on the page and spin that, and then she comes back and despins it. For the reader, the entire chapter is like riding a yo-yo. We are told that in addition to Nelson Rockefeller, the Intelligence/trustees included John Whitney, William Burden, Rene d'Harnoncourt, William Paley, Joseph Verner Reed, Porter McCray, Gardner Cowles, Junkie Fleischmann, Cass Canfield, Oveta Hobby, and Tom Braden. And although she lists the actual links to Intelligence, the invisible writer then pops in and says, 

Of course it could be argued that this congruity revealed nothing more than the nature of American power at the time. Just because these people knew each other, and just because they were socially (and even formally) enjoined to the CIA, doesn't mean that they were co-conspirators in the promotion of the new American art. 

What? Yes, that is exactly what it means, Buddy. You have to be kidding me with sentences like that. Saunders is too good a writer to be caught writing that. “Congruity”? “Socially enjoined to the CIA”? What the fuck does that mean? Is the CIA now a cotillion? Saying that just because these people were in the CIA and running MoMA doesn't mean the CIA was running MoMA is like saying that just because these clothes are on my body doesn't mean I am wearing them. It is the dastardly attempt to dodge the definition of words. Only an organization as untouchable as the CIA would even think to put such an argument in print. 

The invisible writer is so confident, he next sends you to Eva Cockcroft's 1974 article in Artforum— which is of course one of Saunders' primary sources for this 1999 book—but does nothing to spin it except to preface it as a “rumor.” But since the CIA's Tom Braden has since confirmed large parts of that article, and since documents are referenced showing these people's official links to Intelligence and the government, none of this is a rumor, and hasn't been for decades. In fact, that is why Saunders' book was allowed to go to press, and why it was allowed to be reviewed by major media outlets in Great Britain: the CIA needed to spin it, because it was now common knowledge. You don't need to spin rumor, since you can dismiss it as rumor. You only need to spin things that are documented and making the rounds. 

The confidence of the invisible writer is again apparent when he allows Saunders back on the page immediately to undercut him. As proof that MoMA's support for Abstract Expressionism was not linked to the CIA or the Cold War, Michael Kimmelman is quoted from 1994 telling us that MoMA didn't get involved in collecting or showing Abstract Expressionism until the late 1950's. But Saunders comes back in the next sentence to show that is an outright lie. She proves that not only was Kimmelman paid to say that by MoMA, but that it is easily refuted by the record. Saunders quotes from the Museum's own catalogs to show that it had been collecting all the big names since 1941. She finds a particularly damning entry in 1944, in which the Museum sold off “certain of its 19th century works” to buy more Pollocks, Motherwells, and Mattas. 

In probably the last attack of name artists upon an American museum, we see in 1952 a group of fifty including realists Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield and Jack Levine publishing a “Reality Manifesto” against MoMA, accusing it of propping up unpopular art for “dogmatic” reasons. Reading the manifesto, it is clear these artists had no idea of the real reason this art was being promoted. Since my realist friends and I still had no idea until recently, this is not surprising. The Rockefellers and CIA were not unmasked until the mid 1970's, and then only partially. Since that unmasking was in Artforum, no realist would have been expected to see it. They were unmasked again in 1995 by Saunders, but that was in London, and you could count the number of outspoken realists there on one hand. I would have expected to hear something from the Stuckists on this, but haven't. The article at the Independent seems to have only hit the web recently, and that is where I discovered it. I don't know of any realist since Thomas Hart Benton who is as outspoken as I am, so I suppose it is up to me to lead the first serious charge since 1952. 

 Motherwell 

Matta 

As part of that charge, we can borrow some firepower from Ad Reinhardt, a painter of little talent from the time in question, who we would have liked to have sicced on Clement Greenberg. Reinhardt would have pounded him into a meaty pulp. Reinhardt was a sort of anti-Agnes Martin, being famous for his all black canvases. He was also the anti-Agnes in that while she was semi-catatonic, he was a volcano. He claimed to be painting the “last paintings that anyone can paint,” so he was as full of air as the next Abstract Expressionist; but he is useful at least as a provider of interesting quotes against his fellow airmen. Reinhardt called Rothko a “Vogue magazine cold-water-flat-fauve,” and Pollock a “Harper's Bazaar bum.” Barnett Newman was “the avant-garde huckster-handicraftsman and educational shopkeeper.” He called art criticism “pigeon droolings” and ridiculed Clement Greenberg as a phony. He said the museum should not be a “counting house or amusement center,” which means he would not be comfortable in the Whitney, Guggenheim, MoMA, Pompidou, Tate or Saatchi Gallery. You almost have to like the guy, no matter what you think of his art. Although not much of a painter, he was at least not a boot licker of the elite, and he was the only Modern artist to participate in the March on Washington for black rights in 1963. We may suppose the others were polishing their medals. 

Of course, this is the reason you haven't heard of Reinhardt before now, despite the fact he was producing pretty much the same thing as everyone else. The others kept quiet and just pissed in the fireplace or something. He was foolish enough to think he was actually a real person, and therefore the owner of his own life. 

To wrap this up, let us return to the book. Russell Lynes gives us a good quote to end with: 

The Museum now had, and was delighted to have, the whole world (or at least the whole world outside the Iron Curtain) in which to proselytize—though this time the exportable religion was home-grown rather than what been in the past its primary message, the importable faith from Europe. 

That is from his history of MoMA, and he is talking about the year 1950. It was upon reading this unparsable sentence that I finally figured out what the European exhibitions were all about. It wasn't about fighting Communism or showcasing democracy. It was about expanding the market. In order to drive the prices of their investments up, the Rockefeller's needed to manipulate not just the US market, but the European market as well. Since the population of Europe was at that time about 3 times that of the US, the Rockefeller's could quadruple their market for new art by expanding operations into Europe. Until the end of the war, Europe was too unstable for anyone to think of pursuing art markets there, but as soon as hostilities ended, the Rockefeller's saw their opening. Hiding this move under the flag was the perfect cover. Samuel Johnson's “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” fits this ploy like a hand in a glove. 

Since the recent NSA scandals have proven that we are being watched at all times, I will turn straight into the camera for this final paragraph, talking to the agents directly. It occurs to me you may be as surprised as all my other readers to discover the true story behind Modern art. Perhaps you have never cared enough about art to look closely; or perhaps you cared but—like me—just couldn't see through the many layers of veils. I beg you to ask yourself if this is really what you signed on for. Maybe you feel just as used as the rest of us. Since I have shown that patriotism was just a cloak here, your patriotism doesn't matter. Art history wasn't killed on the altar of patriotism or US political interests, it was killed only to enrich people that were already billionaires. You may say, “You are right, I don't care about art. Its loss means nothing to me.” So substitute what you do care for instead of art. For the truth is, everything is being destroyed to enrich those who are already billionaires, and the destruction is always justified under the cloak of patriotism. Our health is being destroyed, the oceans are being destroyed, the fertility of the land is being destroyed, our water quality is being destroyed, our privacy is being destroyed, our very self-determination is being destroyed, and in each case those doing the destroying are hiding behind the flag. So I ask again, is this what you signed on for? It isn't what I signed on for when I squeezed through the birth canal. 

*Like theater critic Lionel Abel, who was about 5'5”. It takes a real macho man to attack a theater critic. After that, Greenberg went out and stole cookies from a girl scout. 

** This link tying the Moderns to Theosophy is to a reprint of another article by Frances Stonor Saunders, although I wasn't aware of it until later. The website does not attribute the article, but it is from a BBC4 program book called Hidden Hands. According to the linked website, the article was on the web for a while but was later wiped. Curious, since we saw that Saunders' 1995 Independent article was also wiped from the web for about 15 years. 

http://mileswmathis.com/stoner.pdf