The Rise and Fall of the American Artists' Congress

Abstract

In the fall of 1929, just after the stock market crash but before its effects were widely felt, a group of radical artists and writers in New York established the John Reed Club, named after the already legendary journalist, poet, and revolutionary activist. The founders, some of them members of the Communist Party, some loosely associated with the party's cultural magazine New Masses, were committed but restless young men in search of a focus for their political energies. Soon after the club began, the artist members created an art school, organized exhibitions, and sponsored a lecture series and discussion groups with emphasis on the practice and theory of art and art history from a Marxist point of view. As the Depression deepened, with dire consequences to artists dependent on an art market in a state of collapse, the John Reed Club's approach attracted growing attention.