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'A Partnership of Equals': Kennedy, the European Union and the End ofAbstract Expressionism as an Atlanticist AestheticNancy Jachec

Online publication date: 25 August 2010

To cite this Article Jachec, Nancy(2002) ''A Partnership of Equals': Kennedy, the European Union and the End of AbstractExpressionism as an Atlanticist Aesthetic', Third Text, 16: 2, 105 118

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1. See, for example, MaxKozloff, AmericanPainting during the ColdWar and Eva Cockcroft,Abstract Expressionism,Weapon of the ColdWar, in Pollock andAfter, The CriticalDebate, ed. FrancisFrascina, Harper & Row,London, 1985 andFrances Stonor Saunders,Who Paid the Piper? The

CIA and the CulturalCold War, Granta,London, 1999, each ofwhich considers the directintervention of covertgovernment agencies inthe circulation ofAbstract Expressionism inEurope; as well as SergeGuilbauts How NewYork Stole the Idea ofModern Art, Universityof Chicago Press,Chicago, 1983, andNancy Jachecs The

Philosophy and Politics ofAbstract Expressionism,Cambridge UniversityPress, New York, 2000,which consider AbstractExpressionism as adisseminator of Americannew liberal ideology.

2. Donald Sassoon, OneHundred Years ofSocialism, The WestEuropean Left in theTwentieth Century, I BTauris, London, 1996, pp

20910.

A Partnership of Equals:Kennedy, the European Union

and the End of AbstractExpressionism as anAtlanticist Aesthetic

Nancy Jachec

Since the publication of Irving Sandlers The Triumph of AmericanPaintingin 1970, which treated the international success of AmericanAbstract Expressionism as the inevitable result of its formal superiority,

much of the scholarship on this movement has been preoccupied withthe political underpinnings of its success. While it is clear that AmericanAbstract Expressionism was assisted by the United States government inorder to attain international recognition in the visual arts, the questionsof why it was chosen for promotion in Western Europe between 1958and 1961, and, importantly, why its status was undermined in 1962,have not been fully investigated.1 This essay will show that AbstractExpressionism was deliberately selected by the State Department as thestyle best suited for achieving highly specific foreign policy objectives inthat region, its decline likewise marking a deliberate change between theEisenhower and Kennedy administrations from Europe-first to global

policy priorities. Beginning with Eisenhowers diverse, multi-agencyapproach to cultural exchanges in Western Europe through the StateDepartment, the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the CIA,it will be argued that a more focused cultural programme developedthrough their interplay by the mid-1950s. This programme wouldidentify and promote Abstract Expressionism as best suited forestablishing an Atlanticist, or Euro-American aesthetic to win overWestern Europes unaligned leftist intelligentsia, deemed by the StateDepartment and centrist factions of European government alike asadvocates of European neutralism.2 Believing the unaligned left wassecond only to the communists in posing a threat to European

unification and the Atlantic Alliance, we shall see that the State

Third Text, Vol. 16, Issue 2, 2002, 105-118

Third TextISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online 2002 Kala Press/Black Umbrellahttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/09528820210138263


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Department came to rely on Abstract Expressionism as a means ofpersuading this free-floating electorate to support the centre left bycultural means. It did this by working through unattributed clandestinely funded exhibitions, ostensibly supported by the privatesector. This was in order to sidestep the congressional debates overgovernment sponsorship of artists with past communist affiliations, and

to highlight capitalist democracys ability to sustain a world-classculture without help from the public sector.Kennedys administration, in contrast, favoured the development of

American relations with non-Western countries. Accordingly, a new,specifically American culture was encouraged with AbstractExpressionism redefined as the progenitor of other, distinctly Americanavant-gardes, and an emphasis placed on European cultural autonomy.In large part a pragmatic response to President de Gaulles repeatedrejections of an Atlanticist European Union in the early 1960s, it wasalso indicative of Kennedys desire to work alongside an essentiallyChristian Democratic European union to further liberal democratic

interests there and in non-Western countries.3

The adoption of thispartnership of equals approach to Euro-American relations wasresponsible for the reconceptualisation of American AbstractExpressionism as a wholly American practice.

Historians agree that Eisenhowers was an institutionalisedpresidency, based on the delegation of decision making to a pyramidalbureaucracy of White House staff, committees and departments.4 Thus,his administration often appeared sluggish in responding to foreignpolicy issues.5 Eisenhower also, however, reformed the protocoldetermining the autonomy of the CIA, and its freedom to undertakecovert operations was fully unleashed in 1954.6 His approach to fine

arts policy was marked by these contrasting approaches to governance.Decisions concerning attributed exhibitions were conducted acrossagencies and issued in middle-of-the-road agreements regardingstylistic preferences; the covert sector was actively constructing a muchmore focused propaganda campaign. Eisenhower was aware of theneed for a fully coordinated programme for the visual arts, andmeasures for one were already under way when he entered office. Hispredecessor, Harry Truman, had called for a review from the AdvisoryCommission on Educational Exchange on the role of fine arts inEuroAmerican relations, and the Commission made two importantobservations about the circumstances dictating the governments use of

the fine arts at the time. First, the government agencies concerned hadlittle confidence in their own understanding of fine art, and second,there was little chance of overturning the long-standing hostilityCongress had toward funding cultural programmes.7 The Commissionthus proposed the establishment of a Committee on Fine Arts, whichwas approved in July 1952.8 The resultant Advisory Committee onArts (ACA) was charged with taking stock of State Departmentprogrammes over the past two years. This included assessing theeffectiveness of the programmes, ascertaining how other friendlygovernments, as well as the Soviets, were using the fine arts aspropaganda, and determining the events in which the State Department

should officially participate, and which should be entrusted to theprivate sector.9

3. See Arthur M Schlesinger,Jr, One Thousand Days,John F Kennedy in theWhite House, AndreDeutsch, London, 1965,pp 319320, p 717; and

Theodore C Sorensen,Kennedy, Hodder &Stoughton, London, 1965,pp 55961 for first-handaccounts of Kennedysforeign policy platform.

4. David B Capitanchik, TheEisenhower Presidencyand American ForeignPolicy, Routledge &Kegan Paul, London,1969, pp 227, p 30.

5. William Preston, Jr,Edward S Herman, andHerbert I Schiller, Hopeand Folly, the UnitedStates and UNESCO,19451985, University ofMinnesota Press,Minneapolis, 1989, pp759.

6. Saki Dockrill,Eisenhowers New-LookNational Security Policy,195361, Macmillan,London, 1996, pp 1501.

7. Office Memorandum

from Russell L Riley toMr Francis J Colligan,February 15, 1954, p 1;Records Relating to theEvaluation of CulturalPrograms and to StaffVisits Overseas,19521960; GeneralRecords of theDepartment of State,National Archives andRecords Administration,College Park, MarylandNACP.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid, pp 56.

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The establishment of the ACA, however, did not automaticallypermit the development of a unified propaganda campaign, and thelaunching of the unattributed exhibitions through the private sectorwas in part brought on by the ACAs failure to develop one. Its taskwas complicated, moreover, by the National Security Councils (NSC)establishment of the USIA in 1953 expressly for the improvement of

the nations cultural image abroad.10

Organised around countrymissions, it took its operational directives directly from the Presidentvia the NSC, and received its foreign policy directives from the StateDepartment. 11 And while it focused on the promotion of Europeanintegration in France and Italy, which had the largest communist andunaligned leftist groups in Western Europe,12 the USIA was headed atthat time by Theodore Streibert.13 Remembered as a tough,organisationally minded administrator less interested in matters ofinformation policy than in getting more transmitters in the air, hisorganisation tended to represent the United States through massmedia.14 This was partly for financial reasons Congress was unwilling

to fund fine arts exhibitions, and this was characteristic of its attitudeinto the 1960s, prompting Kennedy to establish and fund his owngovernments arts committees through executive order.15 Yet there werealso more prosaic reasons for this emphasis on mass culture. The USIAmaintained at that time that the mass arts were the only ones that wereboth truly representative of the American people and comprehensibleto their audiences. It therefore turned a blind eye to art that was non-representational to the point of obscurity.16

Not all government representations of the visual arts abroad duringEisenhowers presidency, however, would be subject to congressionalscrutiny. The CIA at this time was being given increasing power and

autonomy, and as early as February 1954 the USIAState Departmentclashed with it over cultural policy for Europe. While it was clear to thegovernment as a whole that culture was the new battleground onwhich the struggle for Western Europe was taking place, the CIA washighly critical of the USIA, deeming it unable to respond to regionalneeds.17 Noting that there is a recognition that many US objectives aremutually applicable to two or more European countries and that theyhave common interests which it is to our advantage to forward,18 thepromotion of a sympathetic culture, in the view of the CIA, was nowcrucial. For the Truman and Eisenhower administrations had alwaysassumed that European unification would include a friendly

partnership with the United States with which it had sharedinterests.19 By this time, however, government agencies across theboard were increasingly worried by the spread of neutralist sentiments,particularly amongst the unaligned leftist intelligentsia in France andItaly, who were powerful shapers of public opinion.20 To make mattersworse, Soviet investment in cultural programmes to Western Europewas accelerating at this time.21

Only one month after the CIA attacked the USIA for itsineffectiveness, Eisenhower approved NSC 5412/1, which confirmedthe unassailable position of the CIA in conducting covert operations.22

Immediately, it launched an initiative for European unity, working

primarily through the European Movement.23

This organisation,headed by the foreign secretaries from Britain, France, Italy and West

10. Gary O Larson, TheReluctant Patron, TheUnited StatesGovernment and the Arts19451965, University ofPennsylvania Press,Philadelphia, 1983, p110.

11. US Congress, Hearingbefore the Committee onForeign Affairs House ofRepresentatives, Eighty-fourth Congress, firstsession, 15 February1955, Washington, DC,

US Government PrintingOffice, 1955, p 8.

12. For neutralism in Italy,see Spencer Di Scala,Renewing ItalianSocialism, Nenni to CraxiOxford University Press,Oxford, 1988, pp11014; in France, seeSue Ellen M. Charlton,The French Left andEuropean Integration,Denver, University ofDenver, 1972, p 16, p 20,

pp 334.13. Robert E Elder, The

Information Machine,The USIA and AmericanForeign Policy, SyracuseUniversity Press, NewYork, 1968, pp 12, p10.

14. Ibid., p 39.

15. August Heckscher, Noteson Meeting to DiscussWhite House Policy onAdvisory Committee on

the Arts, 12 May 1962;August Heckscher Papers,John F Kennedy Library,Boston, MA. JFKLibrary; Schlesinger,Memorandum toPresident Kennedy, 30January 1963. HeckscherPapers.

16. Andrew Berding, TheArts as OurAmbassador, Art Digest,28:4, 15 November 1953,pp 45.

17. Office Memorandum,op. cit., p 1.

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Germany, ardently supported European unification and the AtlanticPact, concentrating on France and Italy, where the numbers ofcommunists and hard leftists posed a serious threat to integration.24

The CIA would rely heavily on the private sector in promotingintegration, urging that its projects be carried out through theEuropean Movement or other non-governmental (European)

organizations centrally coordinated through an interagencycommittee.25

One such committee was the Operations Coordinating Board(OCB), established in March 1953 to oversee covert operations.26 Itwas, however, answerable to the NSC, and in order to get round this,the invisible Special Group of the OCB was established in March1955.27 Its core members were the secretaries of Defense and State, thedirector of the CIA, and Nelson Rockefeller, who was the presidentsrepresentative and chair of the board.28 In July a working group issueda circular underlining their shared commitment to supportingEuropean integration through indigenous European outlets insofar as

possible, and that there should be minimum attribution of suchpropaganda to the United States.29 Shortly after the Special Group wasfounded, the effort to launch Abstract Expressionism as an Atlanticistaesthetic commenced. For, already a special adviser to the president,and a member of the NSC, Rockefeller was also a financial andadministrative pillar of the museum his mother helped to found, theMuseum of Modern Art, New York.30 Thus, Rockefeller was wellplaced to employ the museums International Program (IP) toundertake fine art exchanges.

The relationship between the federal government and the Museumof Modern Art was certainly encouraged by the Rockefeller brothers,

who from early on fostered links between them. For example, DavidRockefeller was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,described by Frances Stonor Saunders as a private think-tank made upof Americas corporate and social elite, which acted as a kind ofshadow foreign policy-making unit.31 Initially preoccupied withpolitical, economic and financial policy, in 1952 it began toincorporate cultural matters into its remit, and on the advice of DavidRockefeller, Ren dHarnoncourt, director of the Museum of ModernArt, New York, joined the Council in December.32 Five months earlier,the IP had been set up with funds provided by the Rockefeller BrothersFund. Initially an in-house organisation, it would soon form the

nucleus of the International Council at MoMA (IC), which waslaunched the following year.33 While the records for the meetings of theIC are largely unavailable to researchers, we know that it was a hand-picked group of individuals, and substantially underwritten by theUSIA, according to Porter McCray.34 McCray, we shall see shortly, wasthe politically well-connected director of the IP at this time and themost strident supporter of Abstract Expressionism abroad. He wouldcurate Jackson Pollock 19121956 and The New American Painting,the exhibitions that launched Abstract Expressionisms internationalcareer as an Atlanticist art form.

Significantly, some of the early core members of the IC, which

included Andr Malraux, Herbert Read, Willem Sandberg and LionelloVenturi, would also have provided a good opportunity for ascertaining

18. Operations CoordinatingBoard OCB,Memorandum for theRecord, Meeting of theWorking Group for D-38and Related Matters,January 21, 1954, 1,

CIA Documents, Libraryof Congress, WashingtonDC, LoC.

19. Pascaline Winand,Eisenhower, Kennedy,and the United States ofEurope, St Martins Press,New York, 1993, p 78, p81.

20. See IRI IntelligenceBulletin, First NationalCongress of the ItalianPeace Movement,December 29, 1955;

Office of Research,Intelligence Summaries;IRI Intel ligence Summary,Communist PropagandaActivities in WesternEurope during 1955, 1March 1956, p 10; Officeof Research IntelligenceBulletins, Memorandumsand Summaries, 195456,Records of the USIA;NACP.

21. Jachec, op. cit., p 161, p187; Larson, op. cit., p

110.22. Dockrill, op. cit., pp

1501.

23. OCB, Memorandum tothe Executive Officer,OCB, March 31, 1954, p3; CIA Documents, LoC.See also IRI Intell igenceSummary, CommunistPropaganda Activi ties inWestern Europe during1955, March 1, 1956, p10; Office of ResearchIntelligence Bulletins,

Memorandums andSummaries, 19541956,Records of the USIA;NACP.

24. European Movement,Europe Unite!, London,1951, p 1.

25. OCB, Memorandum,March 31, 1954, op. cit.,p 10.

26. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones,The CIA and AmericanDemocracy, London,

Yale University Press,1989, p 92.

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what aspects of contemporary American art would appeal to its targetEuropean audience, as they were largely centre to centre-leftintellectuals, who were all at least receptive to, if not advocates of,gesture painting.35 Malraux had been an ardent anti-fascist in the1930s and member of the Resistance. Yet he committed himself toGaullism in 1945 and, a member of de Gaulles first cabinet in 1947,

he would become de Gaulles Minister of Culture when the latterreturned to power in 1958.36 Yet, unlike de Gaulle, he remainedreceptive to working with the Americans.37 Read was a pacifistanarchist.38 Sandberg, director of the Stedlijk Museum in Amsterdam,had already been identified by MoMA in 1952 as a far leftist, whichhad little bearing on his taste in art. Excepting his appreciation of thework of Jacob Lawrence, he generally promoted European abstract art,including that of the current generation.39 And Venturi, a well-knownchampion of gesture painting,40 was far left enough politically toencounter difficulty obtaining a visa to enter the United States in 1955in order to deliver a series of lectures at Columbia University.41

Yet there were other, overtly government-sponsored initiativesinvolving MoMA that enabled them to ascertain what avant-gardepractices would be best received by their target audience. One of thesewas the People-to-People Programs Fine Art Committee. Establishedin Washington DC on 18 February 1957, its members included bothPorter McCray of the Department of Circulating Exhibitions atMoMA, and William Burden, president of MoMA, and JuliusFleischmann, described by Stonor Saunders as the most significantfront man of the CIAs cultural campaigns in Europe.42 Thiscommittee would prove to be the international springboard forAbstract Expressionism. For MoMA had been busy interpreting

European responses to its previous exhibitions to determine whichartists had the desired political effects. Thus in May 1956 the ICcirculated its assessments ofTwelve American Painters and Sculptors(195253) and Modern Art in the United States (195455), both ofwhich had been pluralist, including works that ranged from the socialrealism of John Kane to the gestural abstraction of Jackson Pollock.The assessments showed that Pollock was by far the most provocative.The centre and the centre left saw his work as emblematic of theWestern condition at mid-century, taking American AbstractExpressionism to embody the same political values as Europes ownindigenous gesture painting. The hard left, on the other hand, rejected

it as a complete and irredeemable departure from rational thoughtand the betterment of the human condition promised in dialecticaltheory.43 As we shall see next, this early indicator of AbstractExpressionism as an Atlanticist aesthetic was soon reinforced byfindings from the People-to-People Program, out of which theAbstract Expressionist shows Jackson Pollock 19121956 and TheNew American Paintingdeveloped.

Although his career was primarily in museums, Porter McCray hadlong been a quasi-political figure. He met Nelson Rockefeller whiletraining in architecture and the fine arts at Yale, and what followedwas a long, intertwining career in art and politics.44 Moving between

the Section of the Cultural Relations Division of the Office of theCoordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Inter-American

27. Ibid.; Dockrill, op. cit., p155.

28. Jeffreys-Jones, op. cit., p92.

29. CIA, Progress Report onActivities of the OCBCultural PresentationCommittee, July 13,1955, LoC.

30. Stonor Saunders, WhoPaid the Piper?, p 144, p261; Helen M Franc,The Early Years of theInternational Programand Council, ed.Museum of Modern Art,

New York, The Museumof Modern Art at Mid-Century, At Home andAbroad, Museum ofModern Art, New York,1994, p 110.

31. Stonor Saunders, WhoPaid the Piper?, p 137.

32. Letter from George SFranklin, Jr, to RendHarnoncourt,December 4, 1952, andLetter from RendHarnoncourt to DavidRockefeller, December18, 1952, RendHarnoncourt Papers,Archives of American ArtAAA, roll 2924.

33. Helen Franc, op. cit., pp10910, pp 1202.

34. At a meeting of the ACA,McCray noted theunderwriting of theEuropean shows by theUSIA. Second Meeting ofthe ACA, 9.30 a.m., 13

May 1958, New YorkCity; General Records ofthe ACA 19511962,General Records of theDepartment of State,NACP.

35. The International Councilof The Museum ofModern Art, The FirstForty Years, New York,Museum of Modern Art,1993, p 127.

36. Geoffrey T Harris, AndrMalraux, A Reassessment,

London, Macmillan,1996, p 1, p 7, pp 1016.


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37. Telegram from DeanRusk to Department ofState, 12 February 1962;NSC Files, JFK Library.

38. For a good, conciseaccount of Readsanarchism, see DavidGoodway, The Politics ofHerbert Read, in HerbertRead Reassessed, ed.David Goodway,Liverpool UniversityPress, Liverpool, 1998,pp 1778.

39. Letter from DorothyMiller to Alfred Barr,Paris, July 20, 1952, p 3.Alfred Barr Papers, AAA,Roll 2171. StedelijkMuseum, Sandberg alsontwerper, Amsterdam,Stedelijk Museum,undated, p 42.

40. Maurizio Calvesi, TheAvant-Garde Biennales,in Venice and theBiennale, Itineraries ofTaste, ed. Palazzo Ducale,

Fabbri Editori, Venice,1995, pp 978.

41. Memorandum,Department of State,March 24, 1955; CentralDecimal File 195559,General Records of theDepartment of State,NACP.

42. Stonor Saunders, op. cit.,p 126. Note from PorterMcCray to Alfred Barr,February 25, 1957, andConfidential Memo fromPorter McCray toWilliam Burden, February25, 1957, p 4; BarrPapers, AAA, roll 2182.

43. For a detailed account ofthe ICs assessments, seeJachec, op. cit., pp1903.

44. McCray, BiographicalData, 1.3.1980, p 1;McCray Papers, AAA.

45. Ibid, pp 34.

46. McCray, BiographicalData, op. cit., p 2, p 3.

Program at the National Gallery in Washington DC between 1941 and1944, he became director of Circulating Exhibitions at MoMA NewYork in 1947 following 14 months of military service.45 His post atMoMA, which he held from June 1947 to October 1961, wasinterrupted several times by government appointments. He spentDecember 1950 to December 1951 in the Foreign Service as Deputy

Chief of Presentations and Publications in the European Headquartersof the Economic Cooperation Administration of the Marshall Plan. Amember of the Fine Arts Committee of the People-to-People Programfrom 1957 to 1960, he was also on the USIAs Advisory Committee forCultural Information from 1958 to 1963.46 According to WaldoRasmussen, who worked under McCray at the IP, McCray had almostdiplomatic status in Europe, and was a more passionate supporter ofAbstract Expressionism than anyone else in the museum, as well as theengine behind The New American Painting.47

McCray had been working with Arnold Rdlinger, Director of theKunsthalle in Basel, through the People-to-People Program when the

idea for an all-Abstract Expressionist show was first mooted.48

Rdlinger was attempting to organise a show of Pollock, Kline,Rothko, Still and Francis for the Kunsthalle and other Europeaninstitutions, but it fell through because two of the artists, probablyRothko and Still, refused to participate in a group exhibition.49

McCray then took charge of the exhibitions, making them available toa number of institutions on request, with apparently no provisosconcerning the way in which the European curators presented theshows. While standard catalogue texts by MoMAs staff accompaniedthe shows, the European curators appear to have been free to prefaceit as they saw fit. For example, Palma Bucarelli, the Director of the

Galleria Nazionale dellArte Moderna, Rome, actively sought thePollock show for her museum. Contacting Alfred Barr when she heardof plans for it, Barr put her in touch with McCray, and they met inRome later that summer.50 Yet, when organising the catalogue, McCrayonly suggested that she tuck into the bibliography any recent works byEuropeans on Pollock.51 Bucarelli clearly embraced the idea of Pollocksbeing a contemporary international art. A powerful advocate of ItalianInformale and French Informel, which she described as an existential,painful but authentic image of European conscience, she presentedPollock, too, as an existentialist painter who shared this contemporaryEuropean worldview.52

Sensitive to gesture paintings internationalist and existentialistunderpinnings, Jackson Pollock (JanuaryDecember 1958) and TheNew American Painting (May 1958September 1959) used theseaffinities to establish American Abstract Expressionism as anAtlanticist aesthetic. Emphasising the irrational and subjective aspectsof the movement, the American essay for the Jackson Pollockcatalogue, for example, was prefaced by the artists statement that:

The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in thiscountry during the thirties, seems absurd to me just as the idea ofcreating a purely American mathematics or physics would seem

absurd the basic problems of contemporary painting areindependent of any country.53


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Building on this observation, the essay by Sam Hunter, anotherMoMA employee, also located Pollocks work as the latest, albeitdistinctly American, innovation upon European modernist artpractices, notably Cubism and Surrealism, thereby creating a sharedEuro-American cultural heritage.54

Jackson Pollock travelled as a solo exhibition to Amsterdam, Basel,

Hamburg, London and Rome, and was twinned with The NewAmerican Painting in Berlin and Paris. The latter, which appearedseparately in Amsterdam, Basel, Brussels, London, Madrid and Milan,took a similar approach in presenting Pollocks colleagues to aEuropean audience. While in the brief preface McCray vaunted it as adisplay of a truly American avant-garde, the catalogue essay byMoMAs original director, and now curator of European painting,Alfred Barr, was also careful to contextualise American AbstractExpressionism regarding its European stylistic heritage andphilosophical origins, and its rejection of other types of Americanartistic production. Noting the importance for the Abstract

Expressionists of the School of Paris painters resident in New Yorkduring the war, particularly the surrealists, Barr noted that theirapproach to painting could be interpreted as existential. He wrote:Confronting a blank canvas they attempt to grasp authentic being byaction, decision, a leap of faith, to use Karl Jaspers Existentialistphrase. Noting that there were often Existentialist echoes in theirwords, he explained that this was restricted to their work. While theydefiantly reject the conventional values of the society which surroundsthem, the artists were not politically engags even though theirpaintings have been praised and condemned as symbolicdemonstrations of freedom in a world in which freedom connotes a

political attitude.55

Their retreat from political engagement toexistentialist cultural critique represented, to Barr, the politicalmaturation of a generation of romantic American leftists who hadbeen naively attracted by Communism at the end of the 1930s.56

The European curators, for their part, certainly helped to promotethis interpretation of Abstract Expressionism.57 As we have seen,Bucarelli was more than willing to present American gesture painting asan Atlanticist aesthetic, and her views were typical of those of most ofher European colleagues. Rdlinger, in his essay for the German-language catalogue, described Abstract Expressionism as finding itssocial and artistic open-mindedness in the work of Jaspers, Kierkegaard

and Heidegger, yet Whitmanesque at the same time in its naturalness andspontaneity.58 Likewise, Franco Russoli, who wrote the catalogue essayfor the Italian showing ofThe New American Painting, argued that itwas because gesture painting was grounded in existentialismsunderstanding of individual perception and its role in the formation ofmorality and hence social values that both cultures were on nothing lessthan a road traveled together.59 Russoli is almost certain to have been afunctionary of Italys pro-American, and pro-integrationist, ChristianDemocratic Party. Director of the Brera in Milan, and soon to be amember of the IC, he became involved with the Venice Biennale in 1957,when its directorate was being purged of communists and socialists, and

the Christian Democratic ministers of parliament in charge of theexhibition were replacing them with their own people.60

47. Sharon Zane, TheMoMA Oral HistoryProject, Interview withWaldo Rasmussen,November 1994, NewYork City, pp 423.Archive of the Museumof Modern Art, NewYork.

48. Porter McCray, Reportof the Director of the IPat the Second AnnualMeeting of the IC at theMoMA, 24 November, p58, McCray Papers,AAA, box 8, p 4.

49. Porter McCray,

Confidential Memo toWilliam Burden onOrganisation Meeting ofthe Fine Arts Committee,People-to-PeopleProgram, p 4. BarrPapers, AAA, roll 2182.

50. Letter from PalmaBucarelli to Alfred Barr,May 20, 1957, andLetter from PorterMcCray to PalmaBucarelli, June 25, 1957,AAA, Barr Papers, roll2198.

51. Porter McCray, Letter toPalma Bucarelli, 11February 1958. ArchivioStorico della GalleriaNazionale dArteModerna, RomaASGNAM.

52. Palma Bucarelli, JeanFautrier, in Catalogodella XXX Biennale diVenezia, ed. EnteAutonomo, Stamperia diVenezia, Venice, 1960, pp

14951; Palma Bucarelli,Presentazione, JacksonPollock 19121956,Rome, Galleria NazionaledArte Moderna Roma,1958, unpaginated.ASGNAM.

53. Note by the Artist,Jackson Pollock19121956, Muse delart moderne, Paris,1958, p 5.

54. Sam Hunter,Introduction, Jackson

Pollock 19121956, pp910.


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Of all the curators of these exhibitions, Jean Cassou, head of theMuseum of Modern Art, Paris, however, was muted regarding theAtlanticist elements in American Abstract Expressionism. This isarguably because he never relinquished his commitment to the left.61

Unwilling to host either exhibition he had originally booked JacksonPollock for June of 1958, but postponed it to January 1959 he

similarly cancelled The New American Painting, preferring to show themuseums own collections in the newly refurbished galleries.62 Afterpolitical and diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on him, JeremyLewison has noted, Cassou agreed to take both shows simultaneously but he and his staff were not supportive of them.63 Accordingly,Cassous text for The New American Paintingwas terse and avoidedany discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of the Americanschool. While noting that the new American painting had its analoguein European tachisme, he identified it most closely with Walt Whitman,the autochthonous American.64 Naturism, primordial and pre-, if notanti-rational was, in Cassous view, at the heart of American identity.65

Interestingly, although Cassou had broken off his close relations withthe Communist Party in 1949, his comments were not dissimilar tothose critiques appearing in the French communist press accusingPollock of having turned off the light of reason in himself and in hiswork.66

Cassou notwithstanding, the interest in constructing gesturepainting as an Atlanticist aesthetic appears to have been largely sharedby the European centrists and their American counterparts. In Franceand Italy in particular, the promotion of this aesthetic was calculatedto win over those socialists on the right as opposed to the left flank oftheir party, and what would emerge from this split amongst the

socialists would be the centre left.67

In order to bring recalcitrant leftistson board, gesture paintings advocates exploited its paralleldevelopment in Europe and the United States.

This parallelism had been noted by French critics throughout theprevious 10 years, who understood the second School of Paris toinclude gesture painters Atlan, Bazaine, Corneille, Deyrolle, Estve,Hartung, Lapoujade, Manessier, Pignon, Poliakov, Schneider, Soulagesand Viera da Silva, amongst others.68 Embedded in Frenchexistentialism, which was still a living part of French politics, thisphilosophy, and the artists and intellectuals who embraced it, werenow clearly divorcing from the Communist Party following the Soviet

invasion of Hungary in 1956.69

A deeper consideration of therelationship of French Tachiste and, no less importantly, ItalianInformale with existentialism is beyond the scope of this essay. Yet,that the CIA saw gesture painting as suitable for an international, andabove all, humanist painting emblematic of a political centre isindicated by its hosting, through Fleischmann and McCray, of a dinner-cocktail party in Paris for predominantly Paris-based gesture painters,curators and critics, and UNESCO officials.70 Held on 17 January 1959 the night after Jackson Pollock and The New American Paintingopened in Paris what is clear from the guest list was that theAmericans were attempting to bring the second School of Paris into

contact with UNESCO, which itself was only just embarking on a 10-year project to identify the cultural bases for a universally valid

55. Alfred Barr, Jr,Introduction, The NewAmerican Painting,Museum of Modern Art,New York, 1959, pp1516.

56. Ibid, p 17.

57. Jachec, op. cit., pp 2014.See also Jeremy Lewison,Jackson Pollock and theAmericanization ofEurope, Jackson Pollock,New Approaches, ed.Museum of Modern Art,New York, Abrams, NewYork, 1999, pp 20131.

58. Arnold Rdlinger,Vorwort, Die NeueAmerikanische Malerei,Basel, 1958, unpaginated.

59. Franco Russoli,Prefazione, La NuovaPittura Americana, Milan,1958, p 9.

60. Giovanni Ponti to DottoreGuido Oliva, Head ofCabinet, Ministry ofPublic Instruction,26.1.60, Rapporto, Gliinviti e le polemiche per lapartecipazione Italianaalla XXX Biennale diVenezia, 285; ArchivioCentrale dello Stato,Roma. This is a reportcommissioned by theMinistry of PublicInstruction from Ponti todefend his presence at theBiennales since 1945 ashaving no politicalmotives.

61. David Caute,Communism and theFrench Intellectuals,Andre Deutsch, London,1964, p 112, pp 1501,pp 1845.

62. Jeremy Lewison, JacksonPollock and theAmericanization ofEurope, in JacksonPollock, NewApproaches, ed. Museumof Modern Art, NewYork, Abrams, New York,1999, p 220.

63. Ibid.

64. Jean Cassou, Foreword,in Jackson Pollock et laNouvelle PeintureAmricaine, ditions des

Muses Nationaux, Paris,1959, unpaginated.


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humanism. Although UNESCO was willing to accept culturalpluralism as inevitable, it was hoped that some shared values could beidentified that could promote, through culture, human solidarity andgreater democratisation across the globe.71

The American commitment to Abstract Expressionism as an Atlanticist

and potentially world aesthetic would end, however, as abruptly as itbegan once Kennedy took office in January 1961. For Kennedyspresidency was marked by his confidence in the European union andhis concern with the non-Western world, particularly Asia, Africa andthe Middle East. As Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr, Harvard historian, guruof the postwar new liberalism, and special adviser to Kennedy,reflected, Kennedy was unworried by European neutralism: the thirdworld had now become the critical battleground between democracyand communism. ... The battle for Europe had been essentiallywon by the end of the forties.72

While there were regular disagreements with de Gaulle over the

nature of European union, Kennedys administration was nonethelessconfident of the French presidents inability to derail it. As RobertKomer of the CIA noted to McGeorge Bundy, Kennedys chief foreignpolicy adviser and president of the NSC:73

In a nutshell we must face up to the reality of Europes newfeistiness and use it rather than fight it. ... After all, it is true that weran Europe in the 1950s. The Gaullist reaction is a natural one,though heightened by the Generals particular style. Lets adjust toit enough to rob it of its sting, confident that in the last analysis deGaulle cant create the independent Europe he may seek.74

At this time, reports were also flooding into the White House fromEuropean embassies and from the ACA that reinforced the need for theUnited States to develop an independent cultural identity. The criticalresponse to Jackson Pollock and The New American Painting inparticular had turned the ACA into a forum for complaints fromEuropean ambassadors. The American Embassy in Rome reported inMay 1958 that since MoMA had become most active in organisingexhibitions in Italy, the stress had been on the non-objective school, andrequested that there be additional representation of other schools, inorder to present a more full and balanced picture of work being done inthe United States today.75 The USIA Rome also noted that, while it

appreciated the ICs contribution to establishing an understanding of thehigh level of American artistic production and American appreciation ofthe fine arts, the USIA should give serious thought to the problem ofbringing to foreign countries, at least to Italy, examples of the best thathas been produced in the representational field, such as Joan Mitchelland Jasper Johns.76 A heavily sanitised, recently declassified CIAdocument suggests that disquiet was felt beyond Italy, with a number ofEuropean ambassadors requesting that they be uninvolved with thedirty business of covert artistic propaganda programmes.77

This feedback confirmed the ACAs own doubts about leaving thetravelling exhibitions more or less exclusively in the hands of MoMA. In

May, 1959, the ACA conceded that if everything should be channeledby the MoMA it would look like everybody from twenty to thirty-five

65. Ibid.

66. Caute, op. cit., p 185;Jachec, op. cit., p 202.

67. In Italy, this socialistfaction was the PSIU, andin France the SFIO. See

Byron Criddle, Socialistsand EuropeanIntegration, A Study ofthe French Socialist Party,Routledge & Kegan Paul,London, 1969, pp 8390;Spencer Di Scala, op. cit.,pp 1046, pp 11016.

68. Alfred Pacquement,Confrontations19501953, inParisNew York19081968, CentreGeorgesPompidou/Gallimard,Paris, 1991, p 647; Laurede Buzon-Vallet, LEcolede Paris, lments duneenqete, in ParisParis19371957, CentreGeorgesPompidou/Gallimard,Paris, 1992, p 379.

69. Jean Cassou, Une viepour la libert, RobertLaffont, Paris, p 233, p237, p 241.

70. Invitation List to Dinner-

Cocktail Party given byMr. Julius Fleischmann,Saturday, 17.1.59, at LaCloserie des Lilas, 171Boulevard Montparnasse,Paris, McCray Papers,AAA.

71. UNESCO, Lapprciationmutuelle des valeursculturelles de lorient etde loccident, April,1958, Comprendre , no.19, 1957/58, p 273, p 5.

72. Schlesinger, op. cit., p

444.

73. Winand, op. cit., p 155.

74. Robert Komer, Note toMcGeorge Bundy, 11February 1963; NSCFiles, JFK Library.

75. Memorandum from theAmerican Embassy, Rometo the State Department,Washington, May 9,1958; General Recordsof the ACA 19511962,General Records of the

Department of State,NACP.


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JFK and Leo Castelli with Jasper Johnss Flag, White House, 14 June 1963. Photograph courtesy of the John F KennedyLibrary, Boston, MA


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is doing non-objective art.78 Neither the State Department nor theUSIA had ever been fully comfortable with the governments relianceon the IC travelling shows, and their dissatisfaction featured regularlyin their internal and inter-agency reports between 1958 and 1962. Forexample, in September 1959, the CU issued an internal report outliningits European policy for 196061, based on the forecast that the

tendency toward neutralism might well accelerate, and that the SovietUnion would continue its efforts to expand. It flagged France and Italyas still being of particular concern, given de Gaulles efforts toestablish France on an equal footing with the USA and Britain, andItalys political instability even more precarious because of itsformidable communist party.79 While CU advocated continued culturalprogrammes to the region, it also noted that the planning of theseprogrammes needed to be centralised by the State DepartmentsCountry Teams.80 Twelve months later, the ACA again warned the StateDepartment that reliance on non-governmental cultural programmesneeded to be reconsidered. Noting that the USIA, under George Allens

direction, had proved its integrity as a legitimate aspect of foreignaffairs, it was now time for a public display of governmentsponsorship of American culture abroad in order to give propagandaa less sinister connotation.81 This could be achieved through overtgovernment sponsorship of shows promoting a consistent message.

What followed was the reinterpretation of Abstract Expressionism inuniquely American terms pragmatic, and giving rise to a plurality ofrecent innovations, and the rationale behind its redefinition was intonatedin the Slater Report of Spring, 1961. This was the first of a spate of expertreports produced by the State Department on the shortcomings of theUnited States cultural relations programmes, that chided the USA for

having come late to the realisation that educational and culturalactivities are a major instrument of foreign policy, to be joined withpolitical and economic activities in sustaining and directing the positionof the United States in world affairs.82 While it did not mention whatspecific cultural products should be circulated, it did warn, however, that:

any hint of educational or cultural imperialism will strike asdeeply at the sensibilities of another country as a hint of political oreconomic imperialism. We cannot transplant our education and ourculture; we can only display them honestly, make it possible forothers to judge them fairly, and help others put them to use. 83

The report also advocated dismantling the approach taken by theUSIA, which operated on either an individual country or regional basis,in favour of promoting a consistent representation of American cultureon a global scale. Similarly, the Sprague Report, circulated in autumnthat year, reasserted the need for multilateral as opposed to bilateralexchanges, and to work with Western European aspirations forcultivating democratic principles at home and across the globe.84

The achievement of this independent cultural identity, however,meant the curbing of the unattributed exhibitions. Within six monthsof taking office Schlesinger and Kennedy were already drafting plansfor bringing the CIA under the jurisdiction of the Department of

State.85

One of their first targets was the OCB, disbanded in February1961.86 Schlesinger saw these changes as morally necessary, as the

76. Alfred V Boerner,Despatch from USISRome to USIAWashington DC, July 18,1958; General Recordsof the State Department,

NACP.77. Subject, Covert

Operations, May 9,1961, p 2, p 4;Presidential Office Files,JFK Library.

78. Fifth Meeting of theACA Executive Session,19 May 1959, p 12, p22; General Records ofthe ACA 19511962,General Records of theState Department, NACP.

79. Secret Report, Inclusionof Data on CU in GeneralAssumptions and Policyguides, FY 1961, 1September 1959, 1, pp67; Bureau of CulturalAffairs, 195660, GeneralRecords of Departmentof State, NACP.

80. Ibid, pp 423.

81. ACA, Official Minutesof the Ninth Meeting ofthe Advisory Committeeon the Arts, September

1213, 1960, p 1;General Records of theACA 19511962,General Records of theDepartment of State,NACP.

82. Preston et al., op. cit.,104; J E Slater, BasicPhilosophy, Objectivesand Proposed Role of CUConcerning U.S. Policiesand Programs in theEducational and CulturalFields during the 1960s,

first draft, 26 March1961, p 1; SchlesingerWhite House Files, JFKLibrary.

83. Ibid., 2.

84. Carleton Sprague Smith,A Survey of Multi-National CooperationMade in Europe fromJune 24 to September 2,1961 for The Bureau ofEducational and CulturalAffairs, The USDepartment of State, pp

23; Heckscher Papers,JFK Library.


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85. Arthur M Schlesinger, Jr,Memorandum for thePresident, CIAReorganization, 30 June1961; Schlesinger WhiteHouse Files, JFK Library.

86. Jeffreys-Jones, op. cit., p121.

87. Schlesinger,Memorandum for thePresident, 30 June 1961.

88. Wolf von Eckhardt,Interview with AugustHeckscher, 10 December1965; Oral HistoryProgram, JFK Library.

89. Schlesinger,Memorandum for thePresident, Around theWorld in 42 Days, March5, 1962, p 3; PresidentialOffice Files, JFK Library.

90. National SecurityCouncil,Memorandumto the IL Staff, List ofSubjects of Interest toStaff, 7 February 1962;White House Files, JFKLibrary.

91. Jeffreys-Jones, op. cit., p121; Elder, op. cit., p 39.

92. Lois Bingham,Memorandum reCorrespondence betweenMr. Murrow and Mr.DHarnoncourt, January16, 1962; Records of theOffice of the Director,USIA, 195364, Recordsof the USIA, NACPSmithsonian InstitutionArchives, Washington,DC, SIA.

93. Edward Murrow, Letterto Alfred Barr, 1February 1962; Barr

Papers, AAA, roll 2199.94. Edward Murrow, Letter

to Alfred Barr, 9February 1962; BarrPapers, AAA, roll 2199.

95. James A Donovan, AStatement on theSelection of American Artto Be Sent Abroad Underthe GovernmentsInternational CulturalRelations Programs,c.1963, p 1, p 3; RU321,SIA.

96. Ibid, p 3.

current activities of the CIA contravened the very notion of a free andopen society.87 Schlesinger was arguably the closest of Kennedysadvisers; they were in contact almost daily throughout the presidency,88

and it was he who impressed upon the president the need to present theUnited States as above all a pluralist society. In March 1962 he notedto the president: What we must do is both to emphasise the fact that

our objective is a pluralist world and to rethink our internationalrelationships in these terms.89 Concerning the extent to which hisviews would be expressed in the stylistically diverse governmentexhibitions that travelled to Europe in 1962, it is likely that Schlesingerplayed a key role in forming the ideological rubric under which theywere organised. Recently declassified documents outlining the specialinterests of Kennedys White House staff identify Schlesinger as theonly member with an interest in cultural exchanges. He is described asconcerned with, amongst other things, US image abroad especiallyUSIA, CIA and cultural relations, and Europe (Internal Affairs) especially.90

Pluralism certainly defined the USIA exhibitions VanguardAmerican Paintingand ART: USA: NOW, which followed soon afterthe curtailing of covert operations. Under the direction of EdwardMurrow, whose approach was flexible and pragmatic, the USIA wouldrestrict itself to the avant-garde, yet would self-consciously expand thatdefinition to include a far more diverse offering than AbstractExpressionism.91 In January 1962 Murrow diplomatically relieved theIC of its sole responsibility for representing the United States inEurope. While stating that IC exhibitions were of excellent caliber,they were selected with the specialized slant typical of MoMA, whichwas now drawing requests from cultural leaders abroad for a broader

representation of American art.92

He therefore urged greatercoordination between the USIA and the IC. A more conciliatory letterwas sent by Murrow to Barr three weeks later, explaining that the USIAwas now under pressure to shift its efforts from Europe to Africa, Asiaand Latin America,93 and he later noted that the programme with theIC was not sacrificed lightly.94

In 1963, the USIA issued its own guidelines concerning how artshould be chosen for circulation abroad, stipulating that the artists andworks should represent or reflect elements of life in the US of whichwe are most proud, and that over-commitment to specific tastes whether traditional or avant-garde is often open to misunderstanding

and criticism.95

These guidelines, however, did not exclude privatesector involvement, but simply brought it under the jurisdiction of theUSIA, recommending that selections be left in the hands of recognizedexperts in the particular art form concerned, who had clear-cutinstructions as to the purposes to be served by a given project and itsdesired scope and content.96

This new approach to representing the American avant-garde wasevident in Vanguard American Painting. Opening in Vienna in June1961, and travelling to Salzburg, Belgrade, Madrid, Skopje, Zagreb,Maribor, Ljubljana, Rijeka, Madrid, London and Darmstadt, themission of this show was clearly to undo the identification of Abstract

Expressionism as an Atlantic style, redefining it as a pragmatic anduniquely American art form. Abstract Expressionism was well


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represented, yet the catalogue introduction explained that because itwas the most important experimental style in the history of Americanpainting, it deserved to figure prominently.97 This introduction, by HH Arnason, Director of the Guggenheim in New York, didacknowledge the European influences on Abstract Expressionism in itsearly years through Surrealism. Yet it was dismissive of the lasting

importance of this early encounter: no artistic movement, and least ofall abstract expressionism, can be understood simply as anaccumulation of influences. In 1942, [it] could not even be called amovement.98 Moreover, it was only one, albeit very important,example of an American penchant for innovation, preceded by StuartDavis and Milton Avery, and followed by hard-edge abstractionistssuch as Ellsworth Kelly, and figurative artists such as RichardDiebenkorn, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Of the creativepossibilities it could subsequently spawn, Arnason concluded: OfAmerican painting in 1961 it can only be said that it is varied, it isexperimental, it is healthy, it is prolific.99

ART, USA, NOW built on Vanguard American Paintingsinterpretation of Abstract Expressionism as a distinctly Americanpractice, yet renounced that movements status as the only Americanvanguard. Comprising solely works from the Johnson Wax Companycorporate collection, it toured 15 Western European countries in 1963and 1964, before travelling to Asia and South America in 1965, thentouring across the United States in 1966. Its overriding purpose was toestablish American art as both avant-garde and pluralist. Although theUSIA provided only practical support and assistance, this showattacked the privileging of Abstract Expressionism in the IP shows. Thecatalogue introduction by Lee Nordness, a New York gallery owner

who presided over the purchasing of the collection, explained theexhibition as a corrective to the skewed depiction of current Americanart practices that was demanded by the Europeans themselves.100

Accusing American museums of taste making, he argued that theirprivileging of this movement had misinformed the public by endorsingand promoting beyond ethical limits.101

Moving on from the question of institutional bias, the maincatalogue essay by Allen S. Weller dealt with the question ofinternationalism in American art, taking a more exaggerated positionon the relationship between European and American art than that ofVanguard American Painting. While he noted the contributions to the

art of the twentieth century made by the European painters present inthe United States during the war, he asserted that it was only after theyreached this country that they found complete fulfillment.102

Both these exhibitions renounced Abstract Expressionism as anAtlanticist aesthetic, the first by divorcing it from its European roots,and by playing up its experimental, pragmatic and thus essentiallyAmerican qualities, the second by denying the importance of Europefor Abstract Expressionism at all, and challenging that movementscentrality to current American practices. This change of tactic clearlyhad ramifications for the IC, which, according to Helen Franc, decidedin January 1960 to distance itself from the USIA exhibitions, which

were tinged with an atmosphere of propaganda, and to devote itselfto specifically modern exhibitions.103 Nor was it welcomed by a

97. H H Arnason,Introduction, inVanguard AmericanPainting, London, 1962,unpaginated.

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid.

100.Edward Murrow, Letterto H F Johnson, 27

April 1962; Records ofthe Office of theDirector, USIA, 195364,Records of the USIA,NACP; Lee Nordness,Introduction, in ART,USA, NOW, ed. LeeNordness, Lucerne, C JBucher, 1962, p 5.

101.Ibid., p 7.

102.Allen S Weller, Art,USA, Now, in ART,USA, NOW, ed.Nordness, 11.

103.Franc, op. cit., p 141.


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104.McCray, Memorandumto dHarnoncourt, 2January 1963; McCrayPapers, AAA.

105.Letter from Mrs. BlissParkinson, President ofthe InternationalCouncil, to All CouncilMembers, March 1,1962, Barr Papers,AAA, roll 2199.

106.McCray, BiographicalData, op. cit., p 2, p 3.

number of European curators who had helped to establish AbstractExpressionism as an Atlanticist aesthetic. McCray, reporting todHarnoncourt on the progress of ART: USA: NOW and itsunfortunate pluralism, noted that it had been turned down by theTate, Cassou and Bucarelli.104

Clearly, the Atlanticist aesthetic was over, and the Europeans were

not interested in cooperating with the new American approach. Thisseems to have mattered little however, as American sights were by thenfirmly set on the Third World. The IC continued to work with theKennedy administration towards achieving these new goals, sharing itspersonnel and international connections with the government.Kennedy was doubtlessly very familiar with the IC, as it repeatedly hadsought his membership and that of his wife since the late 1950s, withJackie Kennedy becoming an honorary member in February 1962. Shewas also involved in some of its programmes in India on behalf of theIC and The Asia Society.105 In October 1961 McCray was sent by theMuseum of Modern Art, The Asia Society and the State Department to

tour Australasia, 19 countries in Asia, and 19 in Africa, in order todetermine the need and local response to projects proposed by theUnited States Government or private institutions.106 This piecemeal,pragmatic approach, in which exhibits were planned to meet currentpolitical exigencies for specific locations, was a clear departure fromthe broad, regional plan engineered by the OCB. It also embodied thevalues of the New Frontier, which were pragmatic and experimental byKennedys own definition, and global in their progressivist vision.

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