Thomas Hart Benton, Twentieth-Century Trick Film Corporation, Departure of the Joads, 1939, lithograph in black on wove newspaper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Souvenir of the Impress Research Foundation, 2008.115.14
Does art "work" or have a purpose? How?
Is making art a form of work? Make your argument for why or why not.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated that art in America has never been the sole province of a select grouping or grade of people. Do you lot agree or disagree?
Ascertain what yous remember Roosevelt meant by "the democratic spirit." How practise you think fine art can represent democratic values?
The Great Depression spanned the years 1929 to near 1939, a period of economic crisis in the United States and effectually the world. Loftier stock prices out of sync with production and consumer need for goods caused a market chimera that burst on Oct 24, 1929, the famous "Black Thursday" stock market crash. The severity of the market contraction affected Americans across the country. The nigh visible effects included widespread unemployment, homelessness, and a marked decrease in Americans' standard of living. In addition, a severe drought produced the Grit Bowl—a series of damaging dust storms. This environmental disaster ruined many farmers during a flow when the economy was largely agricultural.
In function at the time of the crash, President Herbert Hoover (term 1929–1933) was unable to finish the costless fall of the American economic system. His successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was elected president in a landslide in 1933 with campaign promises to fix the economy. Roosevelt acted quickly to create jobs and stimulate the economic system through the cosmos of what he chosen "a New Deal for the forgotten homo"—a plan for people without resources to back up themselves or their families. The New Deal was formalized as the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), an umbrella agency for the many programs created to help 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) equally the bureau that would administrate artist employment projects, federal art commissions, and community fine art centers. Roosevelt saw the arts and access to them equally 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 country, its people, and art practices of the catamenia. There were no authorities-mandated requirements about the field of study of the art or its manner. The expectation was that the fine art would chronicle to the times, reflect the place in which it was created, and exist accessible to a broad 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 fine art centers hosted exhibitions of work made by artists employed in government programs and offered easily-on workshops, led by artists, for everyone. Illustrators fabricated detailed drawings that cataloged the physical civilisation and artifacts of American daily life—clothing, tools, household items. The WPA intentionally seeded arts programs and supported artists exterior 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 not met a professional person artist, nor experimented with art making.
Great Depression Walker Evans,The Breadline, 1933, gelatin silver print, Souvenir of Katherine L. Meier and Edward J. Lenkin, 1991.173.one
This image is of a breadline in Cuba, showing u.s. the effect of the Great Low on other nations. People line upward 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 not to document the effects of the Low. He was on assignment to take photographs for a book entitled The Crime of Republic of cuba. The book was a critique of the regime of President Gerardo Machado y Morales, in function from 1925 to 1933. As the Low was felt in Cuba, Machado'southward authorities became increasingly repressive, which fostered ceremonious unrest. He was overthrown with help from the United States shortly after The Crime of Cuba was published. Machado was succeeded by Fulgencio Batista who was, in plough, overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1956.
Bang-up Depression Millard Sheets,Family Flats, 1935, lithograph in blackness on heavy Japanese paper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Souvenir of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4385
"Family flats" were houses and buildings divided by a landlord into small apartments, oft overcrowded and in poor condition, and were as well known as tenements. Such housing was often the only pick for poor families. The place shown here is Millard Sheets'due south native Los Angeles, in a neighborhood that no longer exists called Bunker Hill. Y'all can get a sense of the pitched topography as the buildings at the top of the image ascent quite high above the figures at the very bottom of the frame. Information technology is laundry twenty-four hours and groups of women chat, do their wash using buckets (at right), and hang clothes on the swinging lines that crisscross the picture. Try to count the number of clotheslines so the number of other diagonal forms. Name each type of diagonal you see (due east.g., roofline, railing, stair). How exercise the diagonals create a sense of activity and movement? Imagine if the lines were all perpendicular or parallel. How would the scene exist unlike? Try to draw a sketch of the scene replacing the diagonals with perpendicular or parallel lines. See the Pinterest lath for a painting of this same scene that Sheets painted in 1934, upon which he based this print.
Great Depression Seymour Fogel,Untitled (Pensive Blackness Man), 1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.1807
This empathic and realistic portrait of a man burdened by hard times is a compelling i. The discussion "set on" tin can be fabricated out on the newspaper on the homo's lap. Note that the word is written backward. This is because the work is a impress, 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 appointment of the image? How did events of the day both negatively and positively affect life for ordinary Americans?
The artist, Seymour Fogel, worked every bit an apprentice to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in New York. Rivera'due south art was in loftier demand during the 1930s and he traveled the United States completing landscape commissions. Fogel went on to paint approximately xx of his own public murals for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Fine art Projection and with the Section of the Treasury. Run across the resources section of this module to aid y'all locate WPA-era murals and public works in your own community.
Groovy Depression Seymour Fogel,New York No. 1, 1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.1805
While ane man works, sawing wood at the center of the image, others sit on the ground around him, dozing or reading a newspaper maybe. The time may exist night, with illumination coming from streetlights across where the men are gathered. A poster with an alluring female effigy is featured, perhaps advertizement a burlesque show, and suggesting moral temptations to men not gainfully occupied. Although the setting is ambiguous, the man may exist sawing wood to create a shanty or shelter of some sort, equally the slanted panels only behind him suggest. During the Depression, people fabricated homeless by the crunch often built such improvised structures. Groupings of such dwellings were dubbed "Hoovervilles" in critique of President Herbert Hoover (in part from 1929 to 1933), who was unable to enact programs to effectively assist people plunged into poverty by the Low. What parts of the scene tell you lot that this group of people may accept fallen on hard times? Please run across the Pinterest board for additional related images.
Nifty Depression Walker Evans,Political Poster, Massachusetts Village, 1929, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (Souvenir of Murray H. Bring), 2015.xix.4232
Walker Evans had a keen eye for the telling detail. 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 strength of his successful work to convalesce hunger in Europe afterwards Earth War I. If y'all await closely, you lot tin make out the "-er" of "Hoover" on the poster, which is no longer proudly displayed, but rather folded similar origami and stained at the bottom. 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 bloom arrangement on the sill reinforces the impression of a loss of hope and time moving on.
Dandy Depression Clare Leighton,Breadline, New York, 1932, wood engraving in black on wove newspaper, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Souvenir of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.3119
Compare this image of a Depression-era breadline to Walker Evans's The Breadline, 1933. Wait at specific parts of the scene: How are the people in the breadline portrayed? What is the setting? The flavour? Support your responses with specific evidence from the pictures. Think about differences in medium (forest engraving versus photography), in composition (arrangement of shapes and forms), and style (realistic or stylized). Take notation of specific features such every bit facial expressions, words included in the image, etc.
The creative person Clare Leighton was born in England and later became an American citizen. She was a specialist in a distinct blazon of woodblock printing called woods engraving, which allows the artist to create very fine lines and details. Typically, woodblock printing is characterized by rougher, more expressive lines (meet the Pinterest lath for an example, Fred Becker's Rapid Transit, c. 1937). Wood engravers usually cut their designs into a very hard woods like boxwood. Typically, they emphasize the use of white, or "negative" line, to create an prototype, rather than black line (as in drawing). Y'all tin become a sense of what this arroyo is like by drawing on a blackness scratchboard with a white underlay.
Groovy Depression Elizabeth Olds,Homemade Mining, Pennsylvania, 1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.3787
Later a day's work, coal miners in Pennsylvania and elsewhere would ofttimes "glean" coal for personal utilise—with the tacit permission of mine managers. Even so, worker layoffs during the Low 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 and then sold the bootlegged coal on the open market. The economy of bootlegged coal became large 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 lodge to keep from condign thieves and agree-up men, which, to keep alive, we probably would exist forced to go if nosotros didn't have these holes" (Louis Adamic, "The Great Bootleg Coal Industry," originally published in The Nation, 1934).
Elizabeth Olds vividly illustrates the situation: the hulking mechanism despised past the miners sits idle, while men work with a shovel, pickax, and crate to dig the coal manually.
Groovy Depression Walker Evans,Abandoned Dues-Bellum Plantation Firm, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1936, gelatin silver print, Robert B. Menschel Fund, 1989.69.11
Walker Evans worked for an agency of the Works Progress Assistants, the Farm Security Administration, from 1935 to 1937. He traveled beyond the rural Due south to photo the effects of the Depression. This house, with its classical columns and imposing form, was once grand. Yet ultimately, it was subject to the same destructive economical and ecology forces that devastated plantations and farms modest and large throughout the U.s.. It also appears to symbolize the concluding demise of a way of life built on the labor of enslaved people.
Dandy Depression Jacob Kainen, Federal 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 furnishings of the bad economic system were magnified for agricultural workers and American Indians living on reservations, whose Native lands were overgrazed by livestock permitted at that place past federal rules, and vulnerable to erosion. In Jacob Kainen's work, what signs do you see in the film that offer clues to the land of the environment? You may discover the farmer'due south downcast appearance as well as the twisted, dead tree, sandy-looking soil, bony livestock, and sparse vegetation in the fields. Discarded carriage wheels may indicate there is nothing to harvest or transport.
Great Depression George Biddle,Sand!, 1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.903
The imagery in Biddle'sSand!and Kainen'sDroughtis similar; find the placement of the horizon line, gathering storm or dust clouds, and the use of the carriage wheel motif, which may symbolize the halt of progress and inability to move on from difficulties. Biddle'due south work offers more explicit imagery—suggesting the bones of domestic livestock that withered from starvation. Biddle studied the art of Mexican muralists who frequently used decease imagery andSand!may reflect their influence. Biddle was too instrumental in advising Franklin Delano Roosevelt to start a program paying unemployed artists a living wage to create images reflecting aspects of American life, which eventually became the Federal Art Programme.
Great Depression Wright Morris,Nebraska Farm House, 1940, gelatin silver print, Robert B. Menschel Fund, 1997.32.1
This house is not located on the seashore, but in the middle of Nebraska. Photographers working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) took images such equally this one to both document and publicize the plight of farmers in the news media—newspapers and magazines at that time—and help the public understand the effects of the drought, the Depression, and resettlement programs. They also sought to influence policy and budget decisions in Washington, DC. Many of their photographs are at present in museums, but they were not considered fine art at the time of their making. Today, the 80,000 images taken past FSA photographers form an important annal about the Depression years and the extreme environmental conditions that occurred due to poor agricultural practices, producing erosion, combined with a persistent lack of rainfall.
Great Depression Thomas Hart Benton, Twentieth-Century Play a joke on Moving-picture show Corporation,Departure of the Joads, 1939, lithograph in black on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.14
John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, was inspired past 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 every bit they prepare to depart. The novel relates that the time is just before dawn, with the moon ascension in the w and a table with a lantern on it. In Benton's lithograph, two ominous fingers of clouds reach across from correct to left, possibly threatening a stinging dust storm.
Departure of the Joads was role of a serial of six prints that were created past Thomas Hart Benton as promotional material for the 1940 motion picture based on the volume. The images were diddled up to billboard size to annunciate the movie.
Great Depression Dorothea Lange,Farm Security Administration campsite for migrant agricultural workers at Shafter, California, June 1938, gelatin argent print, Corcoran Collection (Souvenir 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 detect a place in a clean and organized agronomical migrant campsite such as this one in California's Central Valley, one of the commencement constructed to meet the basic needs of recent arrivals. Other migrants were not so fortunate and formed advertising hoc camps nearly irrigation ditches or roadways, where health and sanitation bug frequently arose. The number of arriving people vastly outnumbered the available jobs or places to live.
Dorothea Lange worked as a portrait photographer in San Francisco for a decade earlier pursuing her interest in documenting social justice problems, first with the California Country Emergency Relief Administration and and so with the Federal Resettlement Agency, which became the Farm Security Administration. Many of her photographs came to vividly symbolize the economic and social issues of her time.
Great Depression Stephen Mopope,#17 (Red Dancer), c. 1940s, pochoir, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of the Print Research Foundation, 2008.115.450
Stephen Mopope (Kiowa Tribe) depicted formalism dance and other aspects of the Plains Indians' civilisation. Mopope'southward creative talent was recognized early on the Oklahoma reservation where he grew upwards. He trained in techniques of painting on hides used for garments and tipis (his traditional Kiowa name was Qued Koi, which means "Painted Robe") and besides was a good dancer and musician. Mopope and 4 other artists, who later became known every bit the Kiowa Five, attended the Academy of Oklahoma School of Fine art during the late 1920s, among the first Native Americans to do so. The V participated in exhibitions in the United States and abroad and later on created a portfolio of prints produced in Paris, of which #17 (Ruby Dancer) and the adjacent image,#19 (Three Dancers), are a function.
The works were made with a print-making technique known aspochoir, or hand-colored stenciling. Stencils are created by cutting out a design from a rigid material such as paper-thin, placing it over another surface, and applying color over the cutting areas to produce an image. A stencil permits the production of multiple images, which vary with the materials or colors used each time. Attempt making your ain pochoir and echo the process with dissimilar colors or on different types of surfaces.
Dandy Low Stephen Mopope,#19 (Three Dancers), c. 1940s, pochoir, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of the Print Enquiry Foundation, 2008.115.449
Kiowa Native American art often depicts the ceremonial dances, events, and symbolizes the beliefs that reflected the civilization. Stephen Mopope, a Kiowa artist, dancer, and musician, grew up on a reservation in the Southwest U.South. where he was trained in the arts by his uncles who were also prominent Kiowa artists. Later, at the University of Oklahoma School of Art, he blended the traditional 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 two works represented in this set is known aspochoir, or hand-colored stenciling, a printmaking method. Although stenciling is centuries old and practiced in numerous cultures, the termpochoirwas first popularized in France in the 1920s in graphic arts and analogy. Mopope and the Kiowa group developed what became known as the flat style, in evidence here, which relates to the techniques used to paint on hides (used for ceremonial robes and tipis) to make the imagery graphically legible.
Mopope'southward experience translated well to the public fine art murals he painted for Andarko, Oklahoma Mail service Office on Kiowa country under the Federal Art Plan and for the Department of the Interior building in Washington, DC (where they may be seen today). Recall about how public art murals painted on a wall might be different from a portable painting on sail – what factors might an creative person have into account?
See the related Pinterest lath for imagery of the Washington, DC, murals.
Smashing Low Leon Bibel,Red Hot Franks, 1938, screenprint, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.888
Artists during the Depression portrayed what they saw around them in different means, not all of them realistic. Influences such as the urban landscape, music, and the piece of work of other artists, like that of the cubists, too shaped how they saw the world effectually them. Artists strived to depict not just sights, but sounds, feelings, and experiences of life every bit it was lived.
The bailiwick of Leon Bibel'south screenprint depicts what may have been an everyday sight on New York City streets: a pushcart vendor selling food, in this instance franks and lemonade. How is this commonplace scene portrayed differently from a realistic rendering? Consider: the buildings tilting at unlike angles, the apartment areas of color, the wavelike swoop of the curb, the cart's umbrella split up in ii by a edifice, and how the colors of the vendor and the scene are the same, as if he himself is a feature of this mural.
Great Depression Stuart Davis,6th Avenue El, 1931, lithograph in black on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Florian Carr Fund and Gift of the Print Enquiry Foundation, 2008.115.52
Stuart Davis worked in New York City, whose skyline was growing and irresolute, adding high-rises, bridges, and transit lines, into which people were funneled and came into proximity with one another in new, impersonal ways. If y'all've ridden a bus, subway, or lift, you have had such an experience.
Stuart Davis'southward lithograph is inspired by the "el" or elevated train line (many in New York Metropolis were dismantled to brand way for current day subway lines). Describe what you come across in the image: What do you recognize and what seems unfamiliar? How might this image relate to the experience of riding the elevated train, or walking near information technology as it zoomed past overhead?
On the Pinterest board, y'all can come across a photograph by Berenice Abbott,Jefferson Market Court, 1935, that shows a view of the El that may have inspired Stuart.
Great Depression Grant Wood,New Road, 1939, oil on canvas on paperboard mounted on hardboard, Souvenir of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Strasburger, 1982.seven.2
Grant Wood, who was built-in and lived almost of his life in Iowa, worked as an creative person with the Works Progress Assistants's Public Works of Art Project (PWAP, a predecessor of the Federal Art Project). He created murals, notably for Iowa Country University'southward library, that pictured the virtues of rural life. Wood as well served as the director of PWAP in Iowa, coordinating public art projects across the state. Please run across the Pinterest board for images of the Iowa State mural that Forest completed.
Woods's pictures of rolling and verdant farmlands, which have an idealized, dreamlike quality, depart from the images of drought and subcontract destruction that many WPA-era artists created. By 1939, the Dust Bowl and drought had subsided (it lasted from about 1931 to 1937) and the economic system was benefiting from WPA investment in restoring agricultural land and jobs in public works, as well as the start of Globe War II product. How might this prototype symbolize new hope in America?
Great Low Berenice Abbott,Automat, 977 Eighth Avenue, Manhattan, 1936, gelatin argent print, Souvenir of the Collectors Committee, 1996.6.1
Automats were an early on kind of self-service restaurant that offered cheap food to swallow in a cafeteria or to take away. Patrons inserted coins next to a window containing their choice of nutrient, and the door unlocked, permitting them to remove information technology. Automats were the commencement fast-food restaurants and they opened in urban environments where a lot of people needed to notice food quickly and cheaply. The popularity of automats peaked during the Great Low.
In 1935, Berenice Abbott proposed and directed a project for the WPA'southward Federal Fine art Project called "Changing New York." Her ambition was to photograph-certificate New York Urban center, which was rapidly modernizing with skyscrapers; new, frequently WPA-funded infrastructure such every bit subway lines, bridges, and tunnels; and novel types of shops and conveniences, such equally this automat. Abbott likewise documented aspects of old New York that were being razed to make style for the new. Her work was published in a book of the same name, which was distributed to New York City loftier schools, libraries, and public institutions.
Neat Low Bernarda Bryson,Arkansas Sharecroppers, 1935–1936, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4357
This print by Bernarda Bryson and the following photograph by Gordon Parks are each inspired by Grant Woods's famous painting,American Gothic,1930.American Gothicportrays an austere and prim farmer couple exterior their clapboard firm (which features a pointed "Gothic" window). You can see an image of Wood's painting on the related Pinterest lath (and a different work past Wood elsewhere in this slideshow).
The couple in Bryson'south lithograph stand in a similar frontal pose, only their advent, 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 apply of "666." Bryson was the companion of some other artist who participated in WPA programs, Ben Shahn. They worked together to document aspects of a disappearing rural America.
Swell Depression Gordon Parks,Washington, D.C. Regime Charwoman (American Gothic), July 1942, gelatin silverish print, printed subsequently, 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 Woods's painting,American Gothic, 1930. While he lived in Washington, DC, working for WPA programs, Parks created a series of photographs about the life of Ella Watson. Watson was an ordinary woman who worked in housekeeping for the federal authorities (in the offices that housed the Farm Security Administration) in Washington, DC, to back up her family. Parks photographed Watson's life, both at work and at home, extensively. Here, she lone 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 about the promise of and disappointments in pursuit of the American dream, and to whom it is available.
Great Depression Margaret Bourke-White,Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936, gelatin silvery print, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2014.113.i
Margaret Bourke-White's photo of the Fort Peck Dam nether construction was famous—it graced the cover of the first issue of Life magazine in 1936. (Come across the related Pinterest board for a picture show of the magazine encompass.) The hulking cast concrete piers, supports for an elevated roadway over the dam's spillway, almost await like abstract sculptures. Bourke-White maximized their visual drama by including figures at the bottom to show the calibration 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 modernistic life.
Great Depression James Due east. Allen,Arch of Steel, 1937, lithograph in black, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.644
The Bayonne Bridge is pictured here under structure as a pre-WPA project. (Information technology was completed in 1931.) The bridge connects Bayonne, New Jersey, with Staten Isle, New York City; below, ships pass back and forth, to and from the Port of Newark. Following its structure, 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 by the urban landscape to create positive images of progress in American gild and the economy. Bayonne Bridge continues to be in service today and in 2017 it was lifted by 64 anxiety in order to accommodate larger ships passing underneath. Please run into the related Pinterest board for an image of how the bridge looks today.
Bully Depression Gifford Beal, Gathering Brush, Central Park, 1934, drypoint in blackness on laid paper, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Mary E. Maxwell Fund), 2015.xix.376
From 1934 to 1938, the Works Progress Assistants assigned workers to make improvements to New York's Primal Park, which included clearing dead trees; edifice new paths and walls; seeding and reviving the landscaping; and placing civilities like benches, trash cans, lighting, and drinking fountains throughout the park, many of which are still in utilise today. Artists also working for the WPA documented and created images of the projects and improvements being fabricated to public spaces.
Great Depression Henry Tomaszewski,Carousel Giraffe, c. 1939, watercolor and graphite on paperboard, Index of American Blueprint, 1943.8.17121
This drawing is ane of thousands that artists employed by the Federal Fine art Project fabricated for the Index of American Blueprint (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.), wear, signs, and household objects—such as weather vanes, piggy banks, tools, puppets, and this merry-get-round giraffe. Each artist drew from the actual object, whose dimensions were often recorded aslope information almost the drawing itself.
The IAD sought to establish a record and history of American design that reflected the country'south unique history, origins, and diverse people and places. It showcased the ingenuity, pragmatism, and pride craftspeople took in their piece of work, and sought to foster people's pride in those accomplishments.
Not bad Depression Orville A. Carroll,Bonnet, 1935/1942, watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paperboard, Index of American Blueprint, 1943.8.16810
Drawings made for the Index of American Design project during the Depression offering a valuable record of not but arts and crafts, but the handmade ordinary objects used in everyday life–a washboard, jug, carriage, toy, saddle, or hammer—from colonial times until about 1890. By the 1930s, the pace of modernization, with its increasing reliance on mass-produced commodities, prompted IAD plan administrators to seek to document an earlier fashion of life in which American craftspeople produced past hand all the things needed for living, one by one. The IAD also generated needed jobs for artists, administrators, and researchers. Finely crafted objects, such as this frail Shaker-style woven and cloth lid and commonsensical, functional items similar an ox-cart expressed the range of American design.
This drawing represents an example amongst the virtually 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 state—was never published as its funding was appropriated for the World War Ii endeavor. Yet, exhibitions of the completed drawings were shown in department stores, customs arts centers, and museums around the country. The National Gallery of Fine art is the largest repository of these drawings, many of which can exist viewed online.
Great Low Lucienne Bloch,Country of Enough, 1936, woodcut in blackness on wove newspaper, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.944
This family unit of iv, who announced tired and aptitude over, with ragged article of clothing and bare feet, pass before a field of abundant corn and soaring electrical lines overhead. The picture on one hand represents hope and recovery from the Depression—electricity was fabricated available to many more Americans as part of WPA infrastructure projects, and the Subcontract Security Administration of the flow provided aid to farmers. However, a contend separates the family unit from these resources, which are inaccessible to them. The paradigm may comment on the lack of equity in the distribution of such life-sustaining resources 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 City. She besides completed a mural for a women'southward detention facility in New York Urban center, entitled Life Wheel of a Woman, 1935.
Keen Depression Ben Shahn,Prenatal Clinic, 1941, screenprint, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.4345
This image of 2 women in a doctor's waiting room at a hospital or clinic was an unusual, and even taboo, choice of subject. While today we are accustomed to open discussions nigh pregnancy and associated health intendance, 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 reply "no." The two women, who wear maid uniforms typical of the period, announced distracted and asunder from one another. The ambience of the dark-green, tiled room is grim and unwelcoming.
Ben Shahn is known as a social realist, or creative person 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's experiences. Shahn painted murals for the Federal Art Project and besides served every bit a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, documenting the plight of agricultural workers. He was married to creative person Bernarda Bryson, whose piece of work is besides featured in this resources.
Corking Depression Marion Greenwood, Associated American Artists,Mexican Harvest, 1941, lithograph in black on wove paper, Reba and Dave Williams Drove, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.2239
Marion Greenwood, born in Brooklyn to a family unit of artists, began her art studies early. By age xv she was enrolled at the Art Students League of New York. She established a successful portrait-painting exercise while yet young, an endeavor that financed her subsequent travels around the Us, Europe, and Mexico. Greenwood beginning went to United mexican states in 1932 and was commissioned to create murals for the Mexican regime, sometimes traveling with her sister Grace, besides an artist. She returned to the The states around 1936 and was commissioned to create murals for the Department of the Treasury'due south Section of Fine Arts and the Federal Art Project.
This image reflects Greenwood'southward clan 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 work next as equals, laboring to bring in the life-sustaining harvest.
Corking Depression José Clemente Orozco, George C. Miller,Flag (Bandera), 1928, lithograph, Rosenwald Collection, 1944.2.45
Mexican artists such every bit José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros played an important role in influencing the course of art in the United States during the Neat Depression. During the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), these artists and others were commissioned by the government to create images intended to stoke national pride in Mexican heritage and identity. The artists depicted the revolution'due south humble heroes: working-class people; campesinos, or farmers; and the lives of ethnic people, long treated as an underclass by the ascendant culture. Here, campesinos in traditional wearing apparel, armed with rifles slung over their shoulders, bear the new Mexican flag. A draped pregnant woman stands nearby, maybe symbolizing the nascency of a new era for ordinary Mexicans.
Great Depression Diego Rivera,Viva Zapata, 1932, lithograph in black on Rives BFK paper, 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 three times. The kickoff was for a public mural he painted in Cuernavaca, deputed by the Mexican government in 1929. Its purpose was to instruct illiterate Mexicans about the history of the Mexican Revolution. In 1931, Rivera painted a copy for a portable fresco he made for a solo exhibition of his fine art held at the Museum of Mod Art in New York. Finally, Rivera created this lithograph version.
Zapata stands over the slain body of a hacienda possessor, or oppressor. Campesinos, farmworkers, line upwards behind him with simply their farming implements as weapons. The revolutionary Zapata was a charro, or cowboy, and is unremarkably pictured in flamboyant clothes. Hither, even so, he is dressed equally a peasant in solidarity with the farmers, for whom he seeks landownership reform. The Cuernavaca murals were Rivera's first mural commissions from the Mexican regime; they sought to illustrate the cultural history and new values of United mexican states through art. The Mexican program provided a model for the Us in the 1930s, demonstrating how authorities-commissioned art could foster a sense of national pride.
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