I didn't realize that it was getting so much play lately, but only nine hours after peartreed posted this OP (of which I was unaware at the time), I also cited that article in the
Hollywood Scripting thread. I assumed the content was common knowledge around here, but perhaps peartreed and I have the same voices in our heads, or are both post-hypnotically suggested spam zombies.
In any case, I'd like to shamelessly reproduce my post here where perhaps it will stir some discussion. Also, I put a lot of time into restoring (hobby-level, not professionally) the movie mentioned below, so I like to plug the torrent link.
The following two images are stills from a 1968 Soviet spy movie,
The Secret Agent's Blunder (Ошибка Резидента). The setting in both is a West German spy den / safehouse. The filmmakers really seem to have made an effort to associate these imperialist spooks with abstract modernist painting. Maybe it was just part of a domestic campaign against the bogeyman of bourgeois individualist art, but I wonder if it could have been a KGB "
active measure" hinting at CIA cultivation of Abstract Expressionism. (The styles below aren't AE, to be sure.)
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/PFeLHlw.jpg)
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/nWweZJQ.jpg)