1934: The Art of the New Deal

An exhibition of Depression-era paintings by federally-funded artists provides a hopeful view of life during economic travails

  • By Jerry Adler
  • Smithsonian magazine, June 2009, Subscribe
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Baseball at Night by Morris Kantor
Baseball at Night by Russian-born Morris Kantor depicts a dusty contest in West Nyack, New York, that might induce nostalgia in some viewers today. (SAAM, SI)

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In early 1934, the United States was near the depths of what we hope will not go down in history as the First Great Depression. Unemployment was close to 25 percent and even the weather conspired to inflict misery: February was the coldest month on record in the Northeast. As the Federal Emergency Relief Act, a prototype of the New Deal work-relief programs, began to put a few dollars into the pockets of hungry workers, the question arose whether to include artists among the beneficiaries. It wasn't an obvious thing to do; by definition artists had no "jobs" to lose. But Harry Hopkins, whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt put in charge of work relief, settled the matter, saying, "Hell, they've got to eat just like other people!"

Thus was born the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which in roughly the first four months of 1934 hired 3,749 artists and produced 15,663 paintings, murals, prints, crafts and sculptures for government buildings around the country. The bureacracy may not have been watching too closely what the artists painted, but it certainly was counting how much and what they were paid: a total of $1,184,000, an average of $75.59 per artwork, pretty good value even then. The premise of the PWAP was that artists should be held to the same standards of production and public value as workers wielding shovels in the national parks. Artists were recruited through newspaper advertisements placed around the country; the whole program was up and running in a couple of weeks. People lined up in the cold outside government offices to apply, says George Gurney, deputy chief curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where an exhibition of PWAP art is on display until January 3: "They had to prove they were professional artists, they had to pass a needs test, and then they were put into categories—Level One Artist, Level Two or Laborer—that determined their salaries."

It was not the PWAP but its better-known successor, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), that helped support the likes of young Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock before they became luminaries. The PWAP's approach of advertising for artists might not have identified the most stellar candidates. Instead, "the show is full of names we scarcely recognize today," says Elizabeth Broun, the museum's director. The great majority of them were younger than 40 when they enrolled, by which time most artists have either made their reputation or switched to another line of work. Some, it appears, would be almost completely unknown today if the Smithsonian, in the 1960s, hadn't received the surviving PWAP artworks from government agencies that had displayed them. "They did their best work for the nation," Broun says, and then they disappeared below the national horizon to the realm of regional or local artist.

"The art they produced was rather conservative, and it wouldn't be looked at by most critics today," says Francis O'Connor, a New York City-based scholar and author of the 1969 book Federal Suppport for the Visual Arts. "But at the time it was a revelation to many people in America that the country even had artists in it."

And not only artists, but things for them to paint. The only guidance the government offered about subject matter was that the "American scene" would be a suitable topic. The artists embraced that idea, turning out landscapes and cityscapes and industrial scenes by the yard: harbors and wharves, lumber mills and paper mills, gold mines, coal mines and open-pit iron mines, red against the gray Minnesota sky. Undoubtedly there would have been more farm scenes if the program had lasted into the summer. One of the few is Earle Richardson's Employment of Negroes in Agriculture, showing a stylized group of pickers in a field of what looks suspiciously like the cotton balls you buy in a drugstore. Richardson, an African-American who died the next year at just 23, lived in New York City, and his painting, it seems, could only have been made by someone who had never seen a cotton field.

This is art, of course, not documentary; a painter paints what he sees or imagines, and the curators, Gurney and Ann Prentice Wagner, chose what interested them from among the Smithsonian's collection of some 180 PWAP paintings. But the exhibition also underscores a salient fact: when a quarter of the nation is unemployed, three-quarters have a job, and life for many of them went on as it had in the past. They just didn't have as much money. In Harry Gottlieb's Filling the Ice House, painted in upstate New York, men wielding pikes skid blocks of ice along wooden chutes. A town gathers to watch a game in Morris Kantor's Baseball at Night. A dance band plays in an East Harlem street while a religious procession marches solemnly past and vendors hawk pizzas in Daniel Celentano's Festival. Drying clothes flap in the breeze and women stand and chat in the Los Angeles slums in Tenement Flats by Millard Sheets; one of the better-known artists in the show, Sheets later created the giant mural of Christ on a Notre Dame library that is visible from the football stadium and nicknamed "Touchdown Jesus."

If there is a political subtext to these paintings, the viewer has to supply it. One can mentally juxtapose Jacob Getlar Smith's careworn Snow Shovellers—unemployed men trudging off to make a few cents clearing park paths—with the yachtsmen on Long Island Sound in Gerald Sargent Foster's Racing, but it's unlikely that Foster, described as "an avid yachtsman" on the gallery label, intended any kind of ironic commentary with his painting of rich men at play. As always, New Yorkers of every class except the destitute and the very wealthy sat side by side in the subway, the subject of a painting by Lily Furedi; the tuxedoed man dozing in his seat turns out, on closer inspection, to be a musician on his way to or from a job, while a young white woman across the aisle sneaks a glance at the newspaper held by the black man sitting next to her. None of this would seem unfamiliar today, except for the complete absence of litter or graffiti in the subway car, but one wonders how legislators from below the Mason-Dixon line might have felt about supporting a racially progressive artwork with taxpayers' money. They would be heard from a few years later, O'Connor says, after the WPA supported artists believed to be socialists, and subversive messages were detected routinely in WPA paintings: "They'd look at two blades of grass and see a hammer and sickle."

It is a coincidence that the show opened in the current delicate economic climate. It was planned in the summer of 2008 before the economy fell apart. Viewing it now, though, one can't help but feel the cold breath of financial ruin at one's back. There was a coziness in those glimpses of Depression-era America, a small-town feel even to the big-city streetscapes that can perhaps never be recaptured. The nation was still a setting for optimism 75 years ago, the factories and mines and mills awaiting the workers whose magic touch would awaken industries from their slumber. What abandoned subdivision, its streets choked with weeds, would convey the "American scene" to artists today?

Jerry Adler is a Newsweek contributing editor.


In early 1934, the United States was near the depths of what we hope will not go down in history as the First Great Depression. Unemployment was close to 25 percent and even the weather conspired to inflict misery: February was the coldest month on record in the Northeast. As the Federal Emergency Relief Act, a prototype of the New Deal work-relief programs, began to put a few dollars into the pockets of hungry workers, the question arose whether to include artists among the beneficiaries. It wasn't an obvious thing to do; by definition artists had no "jobs" to lose. But Harry Hopkins, whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt put in charge of work relief, settled the matter, saying, "Hell, they've got to eat just like other people!"

Thus was born the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which in roughly the first four months of 1934 hired 3,749 artists and produced 15,663 paintings, murals, prints, crafts and sculptures for government buildings around the country. The bureacracy may not have been watching too closely what the artists painted, but it certainly was counting how much and what they were paid: a total of $1,184,000, an average of $75.59 per artwork, pretty good value even then. The premise of the PWAP was that artists should be held to the same standards of production and public value as workers wielding shovels in the national parks. Artists were recruited through newspaper advertisements placed around the country; the whole program was up and running in a couple of weeks. People lined up in the cold outside government offices to apply, says George Gurney, deputy chief curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where an exhibition of PWAP art is on display until January 3: "They had to prove they were professional artists, they had to pass a needs test, and then they were put into categories—Level One Artist, Level Two or Laborer—that determined their salaries."

It was not the PWAP but its better-known successor, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), that helped support the likes of young Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock before they became luminaries. The PWAP's approach of advertising for artists might not have identified the most stellar candidates. Instead, "the show is full of names we scarcely recognize today," says Elizabeth Broun, the museum's director. The great majority of them were younger than 40 when they enrolled, by which time most artists have either made their reputation or switched to another line of work. Some, it appears, would be almost completely unknown today if the Smithsonian, in the 1960s, hadn't received the surviving PWAP artworks from government agencies that had displayed them. "They did their best work for the nation," Broun says, and then they disappeared below the national horizon to the realm of regional or local artist.

"The art they produced was rather conservative, and it wouldn't be looked at by most critics today," says Francis O'Connor, a New York City-based scholar and author of the 1969 book Federal Suppport for the Visual Arts. "But at the time it was a revelation to many people in America that the country even had artists in it."

And not only artists, but things for them to paint. The only guidance the government offered about subject matter was that the "American scene" would be a suitable topic. The artists embraced that idea, turning out landscapes and cityscapes and industrial scenes by the yard: harbors and wharves, lumber mills and paper mills, gold mines, coal mines and open-pit iron mines, red against the gray Minnesota sky. Undoubtedly there would have been more farm scenes if the program had lasted into the summer. One of the few is Earle Richardson's Employment of Negroes in Agriculture, showing a stylized group of pickers in a field of what looks suspiciously like the cotton balls you buy in a drugstore. Richardson, an African-American who died the next year at just 23, lived in New York City, and his painting, it seems, could only have been made by someone who had never seen a cotton field.

This is art, of course, not documentary; a painter paints what he sees or imagines, and the curators, Gurney and Ann Prentice Wagner, chose what interested them from among the Smithsonian's collection of some 180 PWAP paintings. But the exhibition also underscores a salient fact: when a quarter of the nation is unemployed, three-quarters have a job, and life for many of them went on as it had in the past. They just didn't have as much money. In Harry Gottlieb's Filling the Ice House, painted in upstate New York, men wielding pikes skid blocks of ice along wooden chutes. A town gathers to watch a game in Morris Kantor's Baseball at Night. A dance band plays in an East Harlem street while a religious procession marches solemnly past and vendors hawk pizzas in Daniel Celentano's Festival. Drying clothes flap in the breeze and women stand and chat in the Los Angeles slums in Tenement Flats by Millard Sheets; one of the better-known artists in the show, Sheets later created the giant mural of Christ on a Notre Dame library that is visible from the football stadium and nicknamed "Touchdown Jesus."

If there is a political subtext to these paintings, the viewer has to supply it. One can mentally juxtapose Jacob Getlar Smith's careworn Snow Shovellers—unemployed men trudging off to make a few cents clearing park paths—with the yachtsmen on Long Island Sound in Gerald Sargent Foster's Racing, but it's unlikely that Foster, described as "an avid yachtsman" on the gallery label, intended any kind of ironic commentary with his painting of rich men at play. As always, New Yorkers of every class except the destitute and the very wealthy sat side by side in the subway, the subject of a painting by Lily Furedi; the tuxedoed man dozing in his seat turns out, on closer inspection, to be a musician on his way to or from a job, while a young white woman across the aisle sneaks a glance at the newspaper held by the black man sitting next to her. None of this would seem unfamiliar today, except for the complete absence of litter or graffiti in the subway car, but one wonders how legislators from below the Mason-Dixon line might have felt about supporting a racially progressive artwork with taxpayers' money. They would be heard from a few years later, O'Connor says, after the WPA supported artists believed to be socialists, and subversive messages were detected routinely in WPA paintings: "They'd look at two blades of grass and see a hammer and sickle."

It is a coincidence that the show opened in the current delicate economic climate. It was planned in the summer of 2008 before the economy fell apart. Viewing it now, though, one can't help but feel the cold breath of financial ruin at one's back. There was a coziness in those glimpses of Depression-era America, a small-town feel even to the big-city streetscapes that can perhaps never be recaptured. The nation was still a setting for optimism 75 years ago, the factories and mines and mills awaiting the workers whose magic touch would awaken industries from their slumber. What abandoned subdivision, its streets choked with weeds, would convey the "American scene" to artists today?

Jerry Adler is a Newsweek contributing editor.

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Additional Sources

1934: A New Deal for Artists by Ann Prentice Wagner, Smithsonian American Art Museum/D. Giles Limited, 2009

Federal Support for the Visual Arts: The New Deal and Now by Francis V. O'Connor, New York Graphic Society (Greenwich, CT), 1969


 

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Comments (10)

On behalf of my mother, Alleyne Richardson Booker, I would like to thank you for including the picture of the painting "Employment of Negroes in Agriculture" by her brother Earle W. Richardson in the June issue titled "1934 Picturing Hard Times". My mother is now 93 years old and has limited mobility. Seeing the painting in the article brought tears to her eyes.

However, she had an opportunity to view the original painting at the Smithsonian and at Spelman College. But now, due to her health she will be unable to travel to Washington to see the original painting again.

Many years ago, she told me of the summers she and Uncle Earle spent in Asheville N.C at their paternal grandmother's home. Richarson was born and raised in New York City,but his interpretation of the family in the cotton field,no doubt,came from his view seen from the window of segregated trains as he travelled to and from North Carolina. Nonetheless, my uncle was encouraged to paint by noted New York sculptor Charles Keck. My maternal grandmother was the housekeeper for Mr. and Mrs. Keck.

Unfortunately,while still a young man, Richardson's life ended tragically. Consequently, few of his paintings exist and his talents are less known. His most noted award was from the Harmon Foundation.

While showing me a few sketches in her possessiom, my mother once said to me- "If your uncle had lived, he would have been very famous." We appreciate the fact that "Employment of Negroes in Agriculture" was selected for an article in the June issue. In our eyes this brother and uncle will always be famous.

Bobbye Booker Coleman
Houston,TX

Posted by Bobbye Booker Coleman on July 24,2009 | 03:33 AM

I have a question... will the exhibit be at the museum on July 25th when I will be there? If not which exhibit would you recommend... unfortunately I will have only a couple of hours to spend there (shucks)... thanks for your input... ml :-)

Posted by Mary Louise Baum on July 14,2009 | 12:31 PM

As a member of the Royal Oak Murals Committee, a school board member and a member of the Royal Oak Historical Society, I feel compelled to respond to one of the comments on this website. While it’s unfortunate that someone would want to post misstatements and mischaracterizations, I think most people aren’t interested in reading personal grievances in this national forum. Therefore, I would only say that in regard to the Royal Oak murals, we celebrate all of the volunteer efforts that have gone into making the project such a great success. This has been a tremendous project that has brought many community members together as we work to ensure that our local New Deal art (PWAP/WPA) will be appreciated throughout the years to come. In a side note to Ms. Blackmer, you might be interested to know that Angela Maglia’s father, Andrew, actually included your grandfather’s name on a scroll in one of the Royal Oak murals! And, for anyone wanting more information about the New Deal murals in Royal Oak, Michigan, you can e-mail me at andersond@royaloakschools.com.

Posted by Deb Anderson on July 13,2009 | 02:26 PM

Ms. Blacckmer, Ms. King and Ms.Maguire,
It's so wonderful, isn't it to see that our relatives' hard work and beautiful creations are being acknowledged....if not individually, at least as part of an important body of American artwork. Yes, it is very disappointing that our relatives individual names are not mentioned. They each had a hand in achieving the WPA goals; and we want them remembered for their talented contributions to the American Art scene. And, of course as artists, they had a very personal stake in making sure that each painting, print, sculptute, craft they created gave voice to their own personal "vision". But it's gratifying, on some level, that we descendants are alive & speaking outto let others know that there were many many participants of lesser noteriety than, say, Rothko and Pollock who joined hands in this effort.

Perhaps, when the exhibit begins it's national tour, art museaum curators and historical groups in the host cities can arrange for interested visitors to see, firsthand, some of the local projects which still exist in their own communities.

Mr. Iacona....some very interesting and thought-provoking comments!

To Ms. Vandermark, I can only say that, although most readers can certainly understand your frustration at missing or damaged personal high school memorabilia, I believe that the comments here are directed toward an article about a Federally funded program with over 3,000 participants from across our Nation. Perhaps this is not the correct forum to voice your discontent with your local school district.

Angela Maglia
Michigan

Posted by Angela Maglia on July 3,2009 | 10:20 AM

I agree, the WPA murals from Dondero HS are a great part of our Art History. Many WPA art projects were beautiful and worthy of preservation. Community support made the RO mural restoration a success. However, the 'restoration project' at times left me befuddled. How could the murals be "lost" for 25 yrs. when they were "stored" under the auditorium stage only feet away from where they origonally hung? School personnel obviously made a decision to store them. The same staff that was using Dondero's auditorium during the 1979 renovation, was also there 25 yrs. later. The murals were never "lost" as far as they were concerned. But,'no one ever asked about them.' Then one day someone opened a door. From that point on, the RO Historical Society and the RO School Board seemed to become attached at the hip in working for the restoration of the murals. I have no qualms with the H S in this matter. Projects of this magnitude and fundraising are their business. What I don't understand is, a School Board that is under tremendous financial strain, consolidating buildings, tearing down old schools, has declining enrollment, making it their business to be overly involved in this project. Suddenly, school board members are also members of the historical society. The Board and Historical Society formed a joint 'restoration committee". Board meetings usually contain a tidbit on the progress of the 'restoration project' which toolk several years. The thing is, it's not like the RO School Board are guardians of historical treasures. When they closed Dondero 3 years ago, the Bd. sold our trophys and awards. They gave valuable items to the RO historical society, who in turn stored them in a boiler room where many were damaged /destroyed by fire and steam. Finally, they dismantled the Dondero "Wall of Fame" which honored specific graduates. WhichI haven't been able to locate. Anyone know where these "lost" honors have been for the last 3 years. Maybe if I wait another 20 yrs...

Posted by Donna Vandermark on June 24,2009 | 03:23 PM

Thank you very much for this article about a little heeded but most important pre-World War II period in American Art. Unfortunately the works published barely scratch the surface.

I am looking forward to seeing the show.

If you will permit me. I would like to take issue with a couple of points made by Mr. Adler.

First that "...at the time [the depression era] it was a revelation to many people in America that the country even had artists in it."

Cute but inaccurate.

A host of renowned American Artists beginning in the 17th century have throughout our history given visual form in accessible terms to the American soul.

They were well known people of the depression era interested in the visual arts (and there were far more then than there are now).

As for depression era art being "rather conservative", well the most conservative art ever produced in America is being produced now.

Today's mainstream visual arts community is governed by an aestehtic standard dictated by Clement GReenberg's preposterous remark in his 1939 article titled "Avant-Garde and Kitsch", that "...'Art for art's sake' and 'pure poetry' appear, and subject-matter or content becomes something to be avoided like the plague."

It is no more possible to avoid subject matter or content in a work of art than it is to avoid personality or character in an individual. All art is ultimately about the people and the culture that produced it.

If the imagery is anaccessible few if any are interesterd in decoding the content.

What would Mr. Adler say that today's extraordinarily homogenous and therefore conservative mainstream visual art which admits no art that deviates from the prescribed standard says about our society?

Bruce Iacono
Brewster, NY

Posted by Bruce Iacono on June 18,2009 | 07:53 AM

My father, Marvin Beerbohm, was a WPA muralist who painted an automotive assembly line for the Detroit Public Library's Technology Library. After many years of neglect, stored in the Library's basement, the mural returned to the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and was discovered by me in 1981,by chance, as my father was dying of cancer. The museum restored the mural and it has been on exhibit ever since, even traveling while the museum was renovated. As a regional artist, not really recognized nationally, he died thinking he was an artistic failure, and had no idea that the mural would have a "second life," enjoyed by present generations around the country.

Posted by Cynthia Beerbohm Maguire on June 10,2009 | 07:05 PM

Regarding the Art of the New Deal article, I missed a reference to Holger Cahill, the man who was appointed by Harry Hopkins to direct the Federal Art Project. He held that job until the project ended in 1943.

Holger Cahill has a very interesting personal history. I urge readers to read a bio of him on the internet and also to read the interview he gave in the last year of his life.(1960) That interview tells much about the politics and direction of the Art Project. That interview also makes reference to early exhibits of FAP works at the Smithsonian.

Posted by joan King on June 5,2009 | 09:36 PM

I enjoyed your article on the New Deal Artists by Jerry Adler. I half-expected to find my grandfather's name - Clyde H. Burroughs - in there somewhere; he sort of directed the project. When researching some stuff on his life, I came across several articles he wrote about the project in the archives of The Detroit Institue of Arts.

He had a good time working on such endeavors in his long career as a curator and acting director, but in an article from the Detroit Free Press on the occasion of his retirement, he remarked that it had "turned his hair white".

Thanks for the article.

Posted by Roxanne Blackmer on May 28,2009 | 06:08 PM

My father, Andrew R. Maglia was one of the artists recruited in 1934 by the PWAP/WPA. He created two 11'X 23' paintings.A third panel was done by Leon and Bronislaw Makielski.The three murals were painted in Royal Oak, Michigan, at the(then)Dondero High School. They remained there until 1979 when they were removed during a building renovation. "Lost" for nearly 25 years, they were relocated in 2004. A group of dedicated citizens launched a massive effort to raise community awareness and $60,000 in funds in order to restore and re-hang the huge murals. A PBS documentary by Ruben Rodriguez(airing on PBS 5/27/09)details the incredible journey to save a magnificent piece of American Art history. The murals are a wonderful tribute to American Art History, of course, but also to the power of Art to uplift and fuel the human spirit

Posted by Angela Maglia on May 20,2009 | 09:03 AM



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