The New Deal and People's Art: Market Planners and Radical Artists

Abstract

The New Deal and People's Art Market Planners andRadical Artists byDavid A. Horowitz RESPONDING AFTER THE 1932 election to 25 percent unemployment, falling demand forgoods, demoralizing deflation, and massive evaporation of investment, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal committed the federal gov ernment tounprecedented intervention ina peacetime economywith an agenda of relief,recovery,and reform.Banks, public utilities, stock exchanges,mines, agriculture, and working conditions all now came under regulation from Washington. Agencies like theTennes seeValley Authority (TVA), theCivil ian Conservation Corps (CCC), and theWorks Progress Administration (WPA) expanded or rebuilt elements of the nation's infrastructure such as Oregon's Pacific Coast Highway and Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge. New Deal policies backed industrial labor unions, enacted minimum wage laws, established the social security system, and provided work and cash relief to An earlier version of this essay was presented before the Labor Arts Forum on theArt of the Roosevelt Era at the Portland Art Museum, October 9,2004. 318 OHQ vol. 109, no. 2 needy families.Millions of otherswere assisted through low-interest loans and refinanced farmand home mortgages. Almost all of these activities, from social welfare subsidies to public works, were designed to revitalize or protect theeconomy by stimulating mass purchasing power. By the late-i930s, a coalition of retail,banking, and labor interests,led by Federal Reserve Board ChairMarriner Eccles, had worked with administration economists to enact fiscal and monetary policies embrac ingdeficit spending,huge public invest ment, progressive taxpolicies, and relief programs. By distributing government benefits, credit, and infrastructure grants, they hoped to stimulate pri vate investment, get people back to work, and reinvigorate themarket. As reformers,New Dealers believed that theeconomy could be salvaged through intelligent planning and constructive social action. One resultwas the social securitysystemofunemployment insur ance, old-age pensions, assistance to singlemothers, and help for thephysi callydisabled. The final example of their work was theGI Bill of 1944,the massive public investment in education, aid, training,and home financing for World War IIveterans thatfacilitatedtheriseof thepost-World War IImiddle class. The New Deal sought to accomplish these goals through a discourse empha sizing thegovernment's role inunifying thepeople around common citizenship and service to the nation. Although mainly directed toward European eth nics, particularlyRoman Catholics and Jews,in contrast toAfrican American, Hispanic, orAsian minorities, Roosevelt rhetoric identifiedcitizenshipwith "the people," whose strength and common purpose were to liftthe nation out of theDepression. Public artwas to be compatible with this newly emerging national culture.New Deal officials saw artas a public commodity.They believed thatthegovernment could take the lead in popularizing the production and consumption of art among ordinary Americans so thatthearts would no lon gerbe theprivileged preserve of therich. Articulating a philosophy of aesthetic populism, federaladministrators hoped tobring representationalartto the masses through works thataddressed theUvesof ordinarypeople and theexperiencesof an authenticallyAmerican culture. Artistic realism contrasted with the revolution inabstract canvases thathad begun inthe1910s with Cubists likePablo Picasso ? who painted images from multiple perspectives, a phenomenon viewed as anunwelcome symbolof social and cultural fragmentationbyRoosevelt arts officials. New Dealers preferred genres like themural ? which could deliver images topeople inpublic arenas likehousing projects, schools, hospitals, correctional institutions,or post offices. Roosevelt era projects often relied on printreproductions to make artaccessible to millions ofAmericans. The federalgov ernmenteven createdan IndexofAmeri canDesign?a collection of twenty-two thousand graphic recreations (usually watercolors or drawings) of handicraft artifactsdating as farback as the eigh teenth century. These exhibits were displayed in popular gathering places such as department stores.More than half of thefivehundred participants in Reflections on theNew Deal inOregon 319 ^^^^^^^H^r^^S??ku^H^^IC .Tiki ^ ??^^^HH^^^^^^H Martina Gangle's The Homesteaders, orceo/fwomural panels of 'TheColumbia River Pioneer Migration, was installed in 1940at Portland's Rose City Grade School under theauspices of the federallyfunded Oregon Art Project. thefederalgovernment'sPaintingProject were involved indocumentary photog raphyor applied arts likestagedesign or archivaldocumentation. Artwas further brought to thepeople through sixhun dred local art centers across thenation, including facilitiesinSalem, La Grande, and theOregon Coast. Inaugurated under the WPA in 1935, the Federal Arts Project (FAP) shared theconsumerist and populist aesthetic goals of theRoosevelt administration. There were some practical reasons for this approach. First, the administra tion believed that economic recovery depended upon restoration...