Thomas Hart Benton, Twentieth-Century Fox Picture Corporation, Divergence of the Joads, 1939, lithograph in black on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.14
Does art "piece of work" or have a purpose? How?
Is making art a form of piece of work? Brand your argument for why or why not.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated that fine art in America has never been the sole province of a select group or class of people. Do you agree or disagree?
Define what y'all retrieve Roosevelt meant by "the democratic spirit." How practise you think art can represent autonomous values?
The Bang-up Low spanned the years 1929 to nearly 1939, a period of economic crisis in the United States and around the world. High stock prices out of sync with production and consumer demand for goods caused a market bubble that flare-up on Oct 24, 1929, the famous "Black Thursday" stock marketplace crash. The severity of the market contraction afflicted Americans across the country. The most visible furnishings included widespread unemployment, homelessness, and a marked decrease in Americans' standard of living. In addition, a severe drought produced the Dust Basin—a series of damaging dust storms. This ecology disaster ruined many farmers during a period when the economy was largely agricultural.
In role at the time of the crash, President Herbert Hoover (term 1929–1933) was unable to stop the gratuitous fall of the American economic system. His successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was elected president in a landslide in 1933 with campaign promises to ready the economy. Roosevelt acted quickly to create jobs and stimulate the economy through the cosmos of what he called "a New Deal for the forgotten homo"—a program for people without resources to support themselves or their families. The New Deal was formalized every bit the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), an umbrella agency for the many programs created to assistance Americans during the Depression, including infrastructure projects, jobs programs, and social services.
Through the WPA, artists also participated in government employment programs in every state and county in the nation. In 1935, Roosevelt created the Federal Art Project (FAP) as the bureau that would administer artist employment projects, federal art commissions, and community art centers. Roosevelt saw the arts and admission to them as fundamental to American life and democracy. He believed the arts fostered resilience and pride in American culture and history. The fine art created under the WPA offers a unique snapshot of the state, its people, and art practices of the period. In that location were no authorities-mandated requirements nigh the subject of the fine art or its style. The expectation was that the art would chronicle to the times, reflect the place in which it was created, and be attainable to a wide public.
Artists working in the FAP and for other WPA agencies created prints, easel paintings, drawings, and photographs. Public murals were painted for display in post offices, schools, airports, housing developments, and other regime buildings. Community art centers hosted exhibitions of work fabricated by artists employed in government programs and offered easily-on workshops, led past artists, for everyone. Illustrators made detailed drawings that cataloged the physical culture and artifacts of American daily life—clothing, tools, household items. The WPA intentionally seeded arts programs and supported artists outside of urban centers. In so doing, it introduced the arts to a much more diverse swath of Americans, many of whom had previously never seen an original painting or work of art, had non met a professional creative person, nor experimented with art making.
Neat Depression Walker Evans,The Breadline, 1933, gelatin silver print, Gift of Katherine L. Meier and Edward J. Lenkin, 1991.173.i
This image is of a breadline in Cuba, showing us the effect of the Slap-up Depression on other nations. People line up against a fence, where a sign reads: "Cocina gratuita de Periodico, Departo de Raciones" (Temporary Free Kitchen, Ration Distribution).
Walker Evans went to Cuba in 1933, but non to document the effects of the Depression. He was on assignment to take photographs for a book entitled The Crime of Cuba. The volume was a critique of the regime of President Gerardo Machado y Morales, in office from 1925 to 1933. Equally the Low was felt in Cuba, Machado's regime became increasingly repressive, which fostered civil unrest. He was overthrown with assistance from the U.s. shortly subsequently The Crime of Republic of cuba was published. Machado was succeeded by Fulgencio Batista who was, in turn, overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1956.
Keen Depression Millard Sheets,Family Flats, 1935, lithograph in black on heavy Japanese newspaper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4385
"Family unit flats" were houses and buildings divided by a landlord into modest apartments, often overcrowded and in poor condition, and were too known as tenements. Such housing was ofttimes the simply choice for poor families. The place shown hither is Millard Sheets'south native Los Angeles, in a neighborhood that no longer exists chosen Bunker Hill. Y'all tin can get a sense of the pitched topography as the buildings at the top of the image rise quite high above the figures at the very bottom of the frame. Information technology is laundry day and groups of women chat, practise their launder using buckets (at right), and hang dress on the swinging lines that crisscross the picture. Try to count the number of clotheslines and so the number of other diagonal forms. Proper noun each type of diagonal you see (due east.g., roofline, railing, stair). How practise the diagonals create a sense of activity and motility? Imagine if the lines were all perpendicular or parallel. How would the scene be different? Attempt to draw a sketch of the scene replacing the diagonals with perpendicular or parallel lines. Run into the Pinterest board for a painting of this same scene that Sheets painted in 1934, upon which he based this print.
Great Depression Seymour Fogel,Untitled (Pensive Black Homo), 1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.1807
This empathic and realistic portrait of a man encumbered by hard times is a compelling one. The give-and-take "attack" can be made out on the newspaper on the human being's lap. Note that the word is written backward. This is because the work is a print, the orientation of which is reversed when the paper is applied to the lithographic stone. What attack might the newspaper be announcing given the human's mental attitude and the date of the image? How did events of the day both negatively and positively affect life for ordinary Americans?
The artist, Seymour Fogel, worked as an apprentice to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in New York. Rivera's art was in high demand during the 1930s and he traveled the United States completing mural commissions. Fogel went on to paint approximately 20 of his own public murals for the Works Progress Administration'southward Federal Fine art Project and with the Department of the Treasury. See the resource section of this module to help you locate WPA-era murals and public works in your own community.
Great Depression Seymour Fogel,New York No. i, 1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.1805
While one man works, sawing wood at the centre of the image, others sit down on the ground around him, dozing or reading a newspaper perhaps. The time may be night, with illumination coming from streetlights beyond where the men are gathered. A affiche with an alluring female effigy is featured, peradventure advertising a burlesque show, and suggesting moral temptations to men not gainfully occupied. Although the setting is ambiguous, the man may be sawing wood to create a shanty or shelter of some sort, as the slanted panels just backside him advise. During the Depression, people fabricated homeless by the crisis oft congenital such improvised structures. Groupings of such dwellings were dubbed "Hoovervilles" in critique of President Herbert Hoover (in role from 1929 to 1933), who was unable to enact programs to finer help people plunged into poverty by the Low. What parts of the scene tell y'all that this group of people may take fallen on hard times? Please run into the Pinterest lath for additional related images.
Great Depression Walker Evans,Political Poster, Massachusetts Village, 1929, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Drove (Gift of Murray H. Bring), 2015.19.4232
Walker Evans had a bang-up eye for the telling item. He photographed this weathered window featuring a poster for presidential candidate Herbert Hoover. Hoover ran for and won the presidency in 1928, elected on the forcefulness of his successful work to alleviate hunger in Europe after World State of war I. If yous look closely, you can brand out the "-er" of "Hoover" on the poster, which is no longer proudly displayed, but rather folded like origami and stained at the lesser. Its state seems to presage President Hoover's sinking reputation once the Depression was underway, although Evans could not have known this in 1929. A small, faded flower arrangement on the sill reinforces the impression of a loss of promise and fourth dimension moving on.
Great Depression Clare Leighton,Breadline, New York, 1932, wood engraving in black on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Souvenir of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.3119
Compare this image of a Low-era breadline to Walker Evans's The Breadline, 1933. Look at specific parts of the scene: How are the people in the breadline portrayed? What is the setting? The season? Support your responses with specific bear witness from the pictures. Think about differences in medium (woods engraving versus photography), in composition (arrangement of shapes and forms), and fashion (realistic or stylized). Take note of specific features such as facial expressions, words included in the epitome, etc.
The artist Clare Leighton was born in England and later became an American citizen. She was a specialist in a distinct blazon of woodblock printing called wood engraving, which allows the artist to create very fine lines and details. Typically, woodblock printing is characterized by rougher, more expressive lines (see the Pinterest board for an example, Fred Becker's Rapid Transit, c. 1937). Wood engravers unremarkably cutting their designs into a very hard wood like boxwood. Typically, they emphasize the use of white, or "negative" line, to create an image, rather than black line (as in drawing). You can go a sense of what this approach is like by drawing on a black scratchboard with a white underlay.
Great Low Elizabeth Olds,Bootleg Mining, Pennsylvania, 1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.3787
After a day's work, coal miners in Pennsylvania and elsewhere would frequently "glean" coal for personal use—with the tacit permission of mine managers. Withal, worker layoffs during the Depression due to decreased need for coal and the automation of coal mining led to a huge increase in bootleg—or illegal—mining practices. Laid-off workers returned to mines without permission to dig or collect coal on their own and then sold the bootlegged coal on the open up market. The economy of bootlegged coal became big business, with estimates of up to 100,000 people in Pennsylvania living off the practice. Oral history records one miner stating, "We 'steal' coal in society to keep from condign thieves and hold-up men, which, to keep alive, we probably would exist forced to become if we didn't have these holes" (Louis Adamic, "The Great Bootleg Coal Manufacture," originally published in The Nation, 1934).
Elizabeth Olds vividly illustrates the state of affairs: the hulking mechanism despised past the miners sits idle, while men work with a shovel, pickax, and crate to dig the coal manually.
Great Depression Walker Evans,Abased Ante-Bellum Plantation House, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1936, gelatin silver print, Robert B. Menschel Fund, 1989.69.eleven
Walker Evans worked for an agency of the Works Progress Assistants, the Farm Security Administration, from 1935 to 1937. He traveled beyond the rural South to photograph the effects of the Depression. This firm, with its classical columns and imposing grade, was once grand. Yet ultimately, it was subject to the same destructive economic and environmental forces that devastated plantations and farms pocket-sized and large throughout the U.s.a.. It also appears to symbolize the final demise of a fashion of life built on the labor of enslaved people.
Great Depression Jacob Kainen, Federal Fine art Project (New York City),Drought, 1935, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.2754
Many artists created images that addressed the environmental devastation that occurred during the Depression. The effects of the bad economy were magnified for agricultural workers and American Indians living on reservations, whose Native lands were overgrazed by livestock permitted there past federal rules, and vulnerable to erosion. In Jacob Kainen's work, what signs do you run across in the picture that offer clues to the state of the environment? You lot may notice the farmer's downcast appearance as well every bit the twisted, expressionless tree, sandy-looking soil, bony livestock, and sparse vegetation in the fields. Discarded wagon wheels may indicate there is null to harvest or transport.
Not bad Depression George Biddle,Sand!, 1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Souvenir of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.903
The imagery in Biddle'sSand!and Kainen'sDroughtis similar; detect the placement of the horizon line, gathering tempest or dust clouds, and the utilize of the railroad vehicle bicycle motif, which may symbolize the halt of progress and disability to motion on from difficulties. Biddle's work offers more than explicit imagery—suggesting the bones of domestic livestock that withered from starvation. Biddle studied the art of Mexican muralists who often used death imagery andSand!may reflect their influence. Biddle was also instrumental in advising Franklin Delano Roosevelt to outset a program paying unemployed artists a living wage to create images reflecting aspects of American life, which eventually became the Federal Art Program.
Great Depression Wright Morris,Nebraska Subcontract Firm, 1940, gelatin argent impress, Robert B. Menschel Fund, 1997.32.1
This house is not located on the seashore, but in the centre of Nebraska. Photographers working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) took images such as this one to both document and publicize the plight of farmers in the news media—newspapers and magazines at that time—and assistance the public understand the effects of the drought, the Low, and resettlement programs. They too sought to influence policy and budget decisions in Washington, DC. Many of their photographs are now in museums, only they were not considered art at the time of their making. Today, the 80,000 images taken by FSA photographers grade an important archive most the Low years and the extreme environmental weather condition that occurred due to poor agricultural practices, producing erosion, combined with a persistent lack of rainfall.
Smashing Depression Thomas Hart Benton, Twentieth-Century Fox Film Corporation,Departure of the Joads, 1939, lithograph in black on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.14
John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, was inspired by the real-life tribulations that the author observed in his native California. In the novel, the Joad family abandons their Oklahoma farm due to drought and seeks a new life in California. Here, the Joads pack their truck as they gear up to depart. The novel relates that the time is just before dawn, with the moon rising in the west and a table with a lantern on it. In Benton'due south lithograph, two ominous fingers of clouds attain across from right to left, possibly threatening a stinging grit storm.
Deviation of the Joads was role of a series of 6 prints that were created by Thomas Hart Benton every bit promotional fabric for the 1940 film based on the book. The images were diddled upward to billboard size to advertise the flick.
Slap-up Low Dorothea Lange,Farm Security Administration camp for migrant agricultural workers at Shafter, California, June 1938, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Joshua P. Smith), 2015.19.4298
Families from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas abandoned their drought-stricken farms to seek jobs every bit migrant farmworkers in California. Workers were lucky to observe a place in a clean and organized agronomical migrant camp such every bit this one in California's Central Valley, 1 of the first constructed to meet the bones needs of recent arrivals. Other migrants were not so fortunate and formed ad hoc camps well-nigh irrigation ditches or roadways, where health and sanitation problems frequently arose. The number of arriving people vastly outnumbered the available jobs or places to alive.
Dorothea Lange worked as a portrait photographer in San Francisco for a decade before pursuing her interest in documenting social justice issues, get-go with the California State Emergency Relief Administration and then with the Federal Resettlement Agency, which became the Subcontract Security Administration. Many of her photographs came to vividly symbolize the economical and social bug of her time.
Great Depression Stephen Mopope,#17 (Red Dancer), c. 1940s, pochoir, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Souvenir of the Print Inquiry Foundation, 2008.115.450
Stephen Mopope (Kiowa Tribe) depicted ceremonial dance and other aspects of the Plains Indians' culture. Mopope's creative talent was recognized early on the Oklahoma reservation where he grew up. He trained in techniques of painting on hides used for garments and tipis (his traditional Kiowa proper noun was Qued Koi, which means "Painted Robe") and also was a skilful dancer and musician. Mopope and four other artists, who subsequently became known as the Kiowa Five, attended the University of Oklahoma School of Art during the late 1920s, among the outset Native Americans to exercise so. The Five participated in exhibitions in the United States and abroad and later on created a portfolio of prints produced in Paris, of which #17 (Red Dancer) and the next prototype,#xix (Three Dancers), are a part.
The works were fabricated with a print-making technique known aspochoir, or manus-colored stenciling. Stencils are created by cut out a design from a rigid material such every bit cardboard, placing it over some other surface, and applying color over the cut areas to produce an image. A stencil permits the product of multiple images, which vary with the materials or colors used each fourth dimension. Try making your own pochoir and echo the procedure with dissimilar colors or on dissimilar types of surfaces.
Bully Depression Stephen Mopope,#nineteen (Three Dancers), c. 1940s, pochoir, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.449
Kiowa Native American art oftentimes depicts the ceremonial dances, events, and symbolizes the behavior that reflected the civilisation. Stephen Mopope, a Kiowa creative person, dancer, and musician, grew up on a reservation in the Southwest U.S. where he was trained in the arts past his uncles who were also prominent Kiowa artists. Later, at the University of Oklahoma School of Art, he blended the traditional fine art skills he had learned with European training, including painting on media such as paper, canvas, and in a mural format.
The technique that Mopope used to create the ii works represented in this fix is known aspochoir, or hand-colored stenciling, a printmaking method. Although stenciling is centuries old and practiced in numerous cultures, the termpochoirwas outset popularized in France in the 1920s in graphic arts and illustration. Mopope and the Kiowa group adult what became known equally the apartment style, in bear witness here, which relates to the techniques used to paint on hides (used for formalism robes and tipis) to brand the imagery graphically legible.
Mopope'due south experience translated well to the public fine art murals he painted for Andarko, Oklahoma Postal service Office on Kiowa land under the Federal Art Program and for the Section of the Interior building in Washington, DC (where they may be seen today). Remember about how public art murals painted on a wall might be different from a portable painting on canvas – what factors might an artist take into business relationship?
See the related Pinterest lath for imagery of the Washington, DC, murals.
Great Depression Leon Bibel,Cerise Hot Franks, 1938, screenprint, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.888
Artists during the Low portrayed what they saw effectually them in unlike ways, not all of them realistic. Influences such every bit the urban landscape, music, and the work of other artists, similar that of the cubists, also shaped how they saw the world around them. Artists strived to depict not only sights, just sounds, feelings, and experiences of life equally it was lived.
The subject field of Leon Bibel's screenprint depicts what may have been an everyday sight on New York City streets: a pushcart vendor selling food, in this case franks and lemonade. How is this commonplace scene portrayed differently from a realistic rendering? Consider: the buildings tilting at unlike angles, the flat areas of colour, the wavelike swoop of the curb, the cart's umbrella split in two by a building, and how the colors of the vendor and the scene are the same, every bit if he himself is a feature of this landscape.
Bang-up Depression Stuart Davis,Sixth Avenue El, 1931, lithograph in black on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.52
Stuart Davis worked in New York City, whose skyline was growing and changing, calculation loftier-rises, bridges, and transit lines, into which people were funneled and came into proximity with ane another in new, impersonal ways. If you've ridden a charabanc, subway, or lift, you accept had such an experience.
Stuart Davis's lithograph is inspired by the "el" or elevated train line (many in New York City were dismantled to make style for current day subway lines). Describe what you run across in the prototype: What do you recognize and what seems unfamiliar? How might this image relate to the experience of riding the elevated train, or walking near it as information technology zoomed past overhead?
On the Pinterest board, you lot can see a photo by Berenice Abbott,Jefferson Market Courtroom, 1935, that shows a view of the El that may have inspired Stuart.
Bully Low Grant Forest,New Route, 1939, oil on canvas on paperboard mounted on hardboard, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Strasburger, 1982.vii.two
Grant Forest, who was built-in and lived near of his life in Iowa, worked as an artist with the Works Progress Administration's Public Works of Art Projection (PWAP, a predecessor of the Federal Art Project). He created murals, notably for Iowa Land University'due south library, that pictured the virtues of rural life. Woods also served as the manager of PWAP in Iowa, analogous public art projects beyond the state. Please see the Pinterest board for images of the Iowa State landscape that Wood completed.
Wood's pictures of rolling and verdant farmlands, which accept an idealized, dreamlike quality, depart from the images of drought and farm devastation that many WPA-era artists created. By 1939, the Dust Bowl and drought had subsided (information technology lasted from virtually 1931 to 1937) and the economy was benefiting from WPA investment in restoring agricultural land and jobs in public works, as well as the start of World War II product. How might this image symbolize new hope in America?
Great Depression Berenice Abbott,Automat, 977 Eighth Avenue, Manhattan, 1936, gelatin silver print, Gift of the Collectors Committee, 1996.half dozen.1
Automats were an early on kind of cocky-service restaurant that offered cheap food to eat in a deli or to take away. Patrons inserted coins next to a window containing their pick of nutrient, and the door unlocked, permitting them to remove information technology. Automats were the get-go fast-food restaurants and they opened in urban environments where a lot of people needed to find food quickly and cheaply. The popularity of automats peaked during the Great Depression.
In 1935, Berenice Abbott proposed and directed a project for the WPA'south Federal Art Project called "Changing New York." Her appetite was to photo-document New York Metropolis, which was speedily modernizing with skyscrapers; new, often WPA-funded infrastructure such equally subway lines, bridges, and tunnels; and novel types of shops and conveniences, such every bit this automat. Abbott also documented aspects of old New York that were being razed to make mode for the new. Her piece of work was published in a book of the same proper name, which was distributed to New York City high schools, libraries, and public institutions.
Swell Depression Bernarda Bryson,Arkansas Sharecroppers, 1935–1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4357
This impress by Bernarda Bryson and the following photo by Gordon Parks are each inspired by Grant Woods's famous painting,American Gothic,1930.American Gothicportrays an austere and prim farmer couple outside their clapboard house (which features a pointed "Gothic" window). You tin see an image of Wood's painting on the related Pinterest board (and a unlike work by Wood elsewhere in this slideshow).
The couple in Bryson'south lithograph stand in a similar frontal pose, but their appearance, and that of their home, is shabby and rickety in contrast to Wood's painting. Signage behind them on some outbuildings refers to "malaria, chills, and fever" along with repeated use of "666." Bryson was the companion of another artist who participated in WPA programs, Ben Shahn. They worked together to document aspects of a disappearing rural America.
Corking Depression Gordon Parks,Washington, D.C. Government Charwoman (American Gothic), July 1942, gelatin silver print, printed later, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.104
Gordon Parks, a photographer, musician, and filmmaker, created this iconic image that also makes reference to Grant Wood'due south painting,American Gothic, 1930. While he lived in Washington, DC, working for WPA programs, Parks created a serial of photographs about the life of Ella Watson. Watson was an ordinary adult female who worked in housekeeping for the federal regime (in the offices that housed the Farm Security Assistants) in Washington, DC, to support her family. Parks photographed Watson'southward life, both at piece of work and at domicile, extensively. Here, she solitary assumes the frontal pose of Wood's painting, missing a partner, with a mop or broom in place of a pitchfork.
The work of Bernarda Bryson (previous slide) and Parks poses questions nearly the promise of and disappointments in pursuit of the American dream, and to whom information technology is available.
Neat Low Margaret Bourke-White,Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936, gelatin silver print, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2014.113.1
Margaret Bourke-White'southward photo of the Fort Peck Dam under construction was famous—it graced the encompass of the beginning issue of Life magazine in 1936. (Come across the related Pinterest board for a moving-picture show of the mag cover.) The hulking cast physical piers, supports for an elevated roadway over the dam's spillway, about await similar abstruse sculptures. Bourke-White maximized their visual drama by including figures at the lesser to evidence the scale of the piers and the dynamic diagonal line in which they are arrayed, as if marching forward. The photo captures the fascination with the dramatic new structures of modern life.
Groovy Depression James East. Allen,Curvation of Steel, 1937, lithograph in black, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Souvenir of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.644
The Bayonne Bridge is pictured here under structure every bit a pre-WPA project. (It was completed in 1931.) The bridge connects Bayonne, New Bailiwick of jersey, with Staten Island, New York Urban center; below, ships pass back and along, to and from the Port of Newark. Following its construction, numerous bridges and other elements of infrastructure were funded and built through WPA programs and continue to serve as public amenities today. WPA artists documented and made art inspired past the urban landscape to create positive images of progress in American society and the economy. Bayonne Bridge continues to be in service today and in 2017 it was lifted by 64 feet in order to adapt larger ships passing underneath. Please see the related Pinterest board for an paradigm of how the span looks today.
Nifty Depression Gifford Aggravate, Gathering Brush, Fundamental Park, 1934, drypoint in black on laid paper, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Mary E. Maxwell Fund), 2015.xix.376
From 1934 to 1938, the Works Progress Administration assigned workers to make improvements to New York'southward Central Park, which included clearing dead trees; building new paths and walls; seeding and reviving the landscaping; and placing amenities like benches, trash cans, lighting, and drinking fountains throughout the park, many of which are withal in utilize today. Artists also working for the WPA documented and created images of the projects and improvements being made to public spaces.
Slap-up Depression Henry Tomaszewski,Carousel Giraffe, c. 1939, watercolor and graphite on paperboard, Index of American Design, 1943.8.17121
This drawing is one of thousands that artists employed by the Federal Art Project made for the Alphabetize of American Design (IAD). The IAD compiled detailed drawings of the well-crafted, everyday objects that represented American material culture from colonial times to about 1890. Objects illustrated included examples of folk art, decorative arts (furniture, rugs, ceramics, quilts, etc.), clothing, signs, and household objects—such as conditions vanes, piggy banks, tools, puppets, and this merry-go-circular giraffe. Each artist drew from the actual object, whose dimensions were oft recorded alongside data about the cartoon itself.
The IAD sought to constitute a tape and history of American pattern that reflected the state'south unique history, origins, and diverse people and places. Information technology showcased the ingenuity, pragmatism, and pride craftspeople took in their work, and sought to foster people's pride in those accomplishments.
Great Depression Orville A. Carroll,Bonnet, 1935/1942, watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paperboard, Alphabetize of American Pattern, 1943.8.16810
Drawings made for the Index of American Design project during the Depression offer a valuable tape of non simply arts and crafts, only the handmade ordinary objects used in everyday life–a washboard, jug, carriage, toy, saddle, or hammer—from colonial times until well-nigh 1890. By the 1930s, the pace of modernization, with its increasing reliance on mass-produced commodities, prompted IAD program administrators to seek to document an earlier manner of life in which American craftspeople produced by hand all the things needed for living, ane by ane. The IAD likewise generated needed jobs for artists, administrators, and researchers. Finely crafted objects, such as this delicate Shaker-way woven and material hat and utilitarian, functional items like an ox-cart expressed the range of American design.
This cartoon represents an case among the nearly 22,000 that were produced by a team of 400 artists working in 36 states. The planned book—to be distributed to public schools and libraries effectually the country—was never published as its funding was appropriated for the Globe War Two endeavor. Still, exhibitions of the completed drawings were shown in section stores, community arts centers, and museums around the land. The National Gallery of Art is the largest repository of these drawings, many of which can be viewed online.
Corking Depression Lucienne Bloch,Land of Plenty, 1936, woodcut in black on wove newspaper, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Souvenir of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.944
This family unit of 4, who appear tired and bent over, with ragged article of clothing and bare feet, pass before a field of abundant corn and soaring electrical lines overhead. The moving picture on one hand represents hope and recovery from the Low—electricity was made available to many more Americans every bit function of WPA infrastructure projects, and the Subcontract Security Administration of the period provided assistance to farmers. Nevertheless, a fence separates the family from these resource, which are inaccessible to them. The image may comment on the lack of equity in the distribution of such life-sustaining resource to families of color. Lucienne Bloch studied with and was an assistant to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, working with him on major commissions in Detroit and New York Urban center. She also completed a mural for a women's detention facility in New York City, entitled Life Cycle of a Woman, 1935.
Neat Low Ben Shahn,Prenatal Dispensary, 1941, screenprint, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Souvenir of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4345
This epitome of two women in a dr.'south waiting room at a hospital or clinic was an unusual, and even taboo, choice of bailiwick. While today nosotros are accustomed to open discussions nigh pregnancy and associated health care, in the 1940s (and until the 1960s), such subjects were non publicly discussed. A poster behind the women asks, "Do I deserve prenatal care," suggesting that some might answer "no." The two women, who wear maid uniforms typical of the period, announced distracted and disconnected from one another. The ambience of the green, tiled room is grim and unwelcoming.
Ben Shahn is known as a social realist, or artist who depicts the conditions and struggles of working-class people. He also worked with Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, whose work similarly focused on the lives of ordinary people and women'south experiences. Shahn painted murals for the Federal Art Projection and also served as a photographer for the Farm Security Assistants, documenting the plight of agricultural workers. He was married to artist Bernarda Bryson, whose piece of work is besides featured in this resource.
Great Depression Marion Greenwood, Associated American Artists,Mexican Harvest, 1941, lithograph in black on wove newspaper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Souvenir of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.2239
Marion Greenwood, built-in in Brooklyn to a family of artists, began her art studies early on. Past age 15 she was enrolled at the Art Students League of New York. She established a successful portrait-painting practice while still immature, an endeavour that financed her subsequent travels around the The states, Europe, and Mexico. Greenwood commencement went to Mexico in 1932 and was commissioned to create murals for the Mexican government, sometimes traveling with her sis Grace, also an creative person. She returned to the United states around 1936 and was commissioned to create murals for the Department of the Treasury's Section of Fine Arts and the Federal Art Project.
This paradigm reflects Greenwood'southward association and familiarity with Mexican themes. Mexican Harvest depicts indigenous women gathering wheat below a mountainous landscape. In the background, men also dressed in traditional garb load wheat onto the backs of horses or donkeys. Men and women piece of work side by side as equals, laboring to bring in the life-sustaining harvest.
Dandy Low José Clemente Orozco, George C. Miller,Flag (Bandera), 1928, lithograph, Rosenwald Drove, 1944.ii.45
Mexican artists such as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros played an of import function in influencing the course of art in the United States during the Great Depression. During the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), these artists and others were commissioned by the authorities to create images intended to stoke national pride in Mexican heritage and identity. The artists depicted the revolution'south humble heroes: working-course people; campesinos, or farmers; and the lives of ethnic people, long treated as an underclass by the dominant culture. Here, campesinos in traditional apparel, armed with rifles slung over their shoulders, carry the new Mexican flag. A draped significant woman stands nearby, possibly symbolizing the nativity of a new era for ordinary Mexicans.
Dandy Depression Diego Rivera,Viva Zapata, 1932, lithograph in blackness on Rives BFK newspaper, Souvenir of Mrs. Robert A. Hauslohner, 1990.106.51
This image memorializes Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919), a folk hero of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). Diego Rivera rendered this image of Zapata iii times. The first was for a public mural he painted in Cuernavaca, deputed past the Mexican government in 1929. Its purpose was to instruct illiterate Mexicans near the history of the Mexican Revolution. In 1931, Rivera painted a copy for a portable fresco he made for a solo exhibition of his art held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Finally, Rivera created this lithograph version.
Zapata stands over the slain torso of a hacienda owner, or oppressor. Campesinos, farmworkers, line up backside him with only their farming implements every bit weapons. The revolutionary Zapata was a charro, or cowboy, and is ordinarily pictured in flamboyant wearing apparel. Hither, however, he is dressed equally a peasant in solidarity with the farmers, for whom he seeks landownership reform. The Cuernavaca murals were Rivera'south beginning landscape commissions from the Mexican government; they sought to illustrate the cultural history and new values of United mexican states through art. The Mexican program provided a model for the United States in the 1930s, demonstrating how government-commissioned art could foster a sense of national pride.
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