Jackson Pollock and the connection with the secret service
Few people are aware that Jackson Pollock, the leading exponent of American Action Painting, had ties to the Secret Service. During the Cold War, the CIA leaders decided to implement a secret plan, called the Long Leash, in support of Abstract Expressionism and American Contemporary Art. The primary intent was to counter Soviet influence on American intellectuals. In 1958 an itinerant exhibition called The New American Painting was organized, with paintings by Pollock, Motherwell, De Kooning and others, entirely financed by the CIA. But the artists, it seems, were not aware of this fact.
