Which is true, but in my view very depressing. I grew up in a household where abstract expressionism was reviled as a return to cave art, by people who were still amazed that paint dripped off the end of the brush. It was, quite apart from the CIA funding, the new orthodoxy in the art schools, and a largely obscurantist movement with little worth. Not that socialist realism was the alternative that the CIA feared, or that Pop Art was much of a step up, remaining largely an ironic commentary on the vulgar taste of the lower orders by patronising 'bad boys', who enjoyed slumming with Mickey Mouse and Marvel Comics at the weekends.