Framing the Early Modern Field of Vision

Abstract

just a term of discourse. Lee fulfils his declared intention of demonstrating 'the inaccuracy of our received notion of 1930s public art as issuing suddenly from an agency of the federal government and the efforts of reformist Democrats' (p. 128), to argue instead that the New Deal programmes intensified local battles over the perceived uses and abuses of public art. My only reservation to Lee's welcome contribution to the analysis of the complex relationship between the state and mural painting under the New Deal concerns his claims for Californian exceptionalism. The San Francisco Big Strike was just one of four important and violent strikes of that year there were others by workers at the Electric Auto-Lite Company in Toledo, Ohio; by truckers'in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and by textile workers along the East Coast. What they had in common was the fact that they all involved unorganized workers encouraged by Section 7a of Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act to move against their powerful anti-union employers.16 It would be interesting to see if radical mural painters also had a part to play in these confrontations, whether this be real or imaginary. And although the subsequent WPA years seem to be 'a period of relative homogeneity, in the murals' iconography and style and in their general ideological tone' (p. 161), there were nevertheless continuing battles over censorship as radical artists continued to challenge the restrictive administrative prescriptions for federal art. This is a story that has yet to be properly told. 16. In exchange for their exemption from the antitrust laws under the National Industrial