CIA funded "Animal Farm" Movie and Pollock art exhibit??

[gatorboy]

I had no idea about alot of this stuff!

http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=1611&page=1

<snip>
While Saunders’ book received many favorable reviews and most mentioned the CIA having a hand in the creation of Animal Farm, the information seemed trivial compared to more sensational revelations including the CIA financing the publication of several fine art books, and their using Nelson Rockefeller and the Museum of Modern Art in New York to present art exhibits of Jackson Pollock’s paintings and other abstract expressionists to counter the social realism being advanced by Moscow!

<snip>

The CIA’s Role in Producing Halas and Batchelor’s Animal Farm
By the late 1940s the CIA was spending our tax dollars creating culture as a secret weapon to combat Communism and to promote our way of life around the world. Their choice of George Orwell’s Animal Farm as an animated film to produce almost makes sense. Almost, because the book’s ending shows both the pigs and humans joined together as corrupt and evil powers. They probably bought the rights assuming that the ending could be changed to better serve their purposes.

To use Animal Farm for their purpose, the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination (they directed covert government operations) had two members of their Psychological Warfare Workshop staff obtain the screen rights to the novel. Howard Hunt, who became infamous as a member of the Watergate break-in team, is identified as head of the operation. His contact in Hollywood was Carleton Aesop, brother of writer Joseph Alsop, who was working undercover at Paramount. Working with Alsop was Finis Farr, a writer living in Los Angeles. It was Alsop and Farr who went to England to negotiate the rights to the property from Sonia Orwell. Mrs. Orwell probably knew Farr as she moved in literary and artistic circles as an assistant to the editor of Horizon magazine. This is well documented in The Girl From the Fiction Department by Hilary Spurling (Hamish Hamilton, 2002). Mrs. Orwell signed after Alsop and Farr agreed to arrange for her to meet her hero, Clark Gable. “As a measure of thanks” a CIA official named Joe Bryan made the arrangements for the meeting according to The Paper Trail, edited by Jon Elliston.
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[efhmc]

1. No thinking person is faling for this. Sorry CIA. But ther are lots of non

thinking folks.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. What do you mean - 'is' falling for this?

This happened 50 years ago.

[HamdenRice]

3. the role of the CIA in MOMA

is well known. The idea is that "modern art" trumpeted an extreme version of individualism, which was diametrically opposed not only to the Soviet's socialist realism, but even to the American "socially conscious" realism that dominated American arts and literature during the 1930s.

[HamdenRice]

4. dupe -delete

[ShaneGR]

5. So, uh, did they change the movie?

I read the book, it's very good.

[jdots]

6. Never forget that one of C.I.A.s jobs is to keep thier job

By the mid 50s they were working in the liberal media.This stuff about the art world is hinky,but the art is hinky. Just read Acid Dreams,toss in some greed and glitter and alot of this far out paranoid conspiracy lit makes a whole lot of sence.Check into dumb america's hatred of the U.N. for instance.If you are in the arts you wonder why alot of things happen.