Hum2250 the art of recovery the new deal, the wpa & the fap

THE ART OF RECOVERY
The New Deal, The WPA, & The FAP

Twentieth Century Humanities
Professor Will Adams
Valencia College

The Great Depression
 The Great Depression was a period of worldwide economic
depression that lasted from 1929 until approximately
1939.
 The starting point of the Great Depression is usually listed
as October 29, 1929, commonly called Black Tuesday.
 This was the date when the stock market fell dramatically:
12.8%.
 This was after two previous stock market crashes on Black
Thursday (October 24), and Black Monday (October 28).
 The Dow Jones Industrial Average would eventually bottom
out by July, 1932 with a loss of approximately 89% of its
value.

The Great Depression
 Throughout 1930, consumer spending continued to decline
which meant businesses cut jobs thereby increasing
unemployment.
 Further, a severe drought across America meant that agricultural
jobs were reduced.
 Countries across the globe were affected and many protectionist
polices were created thereby increasing the problems on a global
scale.
 At the beginning of the Great Depression Herbert Hoover was
president.
 He tried to institute reforms to help stimulate the economy but
they had little to no effect - by 1933, unemployment in the
United States was at a staggering 25%.

President Roosevelt’s New Deal
 When Franklin Roosevelt
became president on March
4, 1933, he immediately
instituted the first New
Deal.
 This was a comprehensive
group of short-term recovery
programs.
 It not only included
economic aid & work
assistance programs, but
also the end of the gold
standard and of Prohibition.

 CCC - Civilian Conservation Corps: The Civilian Conservation Corps was created in
1933 by Franklin D. Roosevelt to combat unemployment. This work relief program
had the desired effect and provided jobs for many Americans during the Great
Depression. The CCC was responsible for building many public works and created
structures and trails in parks across the nation.
 CWA - Civil Works Administration: The Civil Works Administration was created in
1933 to create jobs for the unemployed. Its focus on high paying jobs in the
construction arena resulted in a much greater expense to the federal government than
originally anticipated. The CWA ended in 1934 in large part due to opposition to
its cost.
 HOLC - Home Owner's Loan Corporation: The Home Owner's Loan Corporation was
created in 1933 to assist in the refinancing of homes. The housing crisis created a
great many foreclosures, and Franklin Roosevelt hoped this new agency would stem
the tide. In fact, between 1933 and 1935 one million people received long term
loans through the agency that saved their homes from foreclosure.

 This was then followed by the
Second New Deal programs,
which included more long-term
assistance such as:
 The Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC)
 The Social Security System
 The Federal Housing
Administration (FHA)
 Fannie Mae
 The Tennessee Valley Authority
(TVA)
 The Securities & Exchange
Commission (SEC)
 The Works Progress
Administration

The Works Progress Administration
 The W.P.A. was the abbreviation for the Works Progress Administration, a
government-funded arts program which had a visual artists’ division.
 The visual artists who participated in the WPA ranged from figurative &
academic, all the way to abstract & surrealistic, in addition to almost every
other school of painting, sculpture and the graphic arts (including prints and
posters).
 The WPA was an idea that George Biddle presented to his close friend &
classmate, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
 Biddle was a talented painter who felt the plight of the unfortunate and poor
arts community during the Depression, and prevailed upon F.D.R. to create a
program for this group of creative people.
 The W.P.A. program (Federal Project No. 1, as it was called), included many
projects, among which were the Federal Art, Music, Theater & Writers’ Projects.

The Federal Art Project
 The Federal Arts Project (FAP) was
founded in 1935 as a sub-unit of
the WPA.
 The FAP existed in all 48 states.
 Its strongest outreach program was
in art education for children, with
more than 100 community art
centers across the nation that
managed art programs, and held art
exhibitions of works produced by
children and adults.
 Under this program thousands of
posters, prints, sculptures, paintings,
drawings, and murals were produced,
which were then, in turn, loaned to
schools, libraries, galleries, and other
institutions.

 These programs spawned a
new awareness of &
appreciation for American art
and provided jobs for needy
artists.
 World War II brought its
demise, as efforts were
concentrated on the war effort;
however, during its life an
estimated number of artworks
produced were: 2,566 murals,
17,744 sculptures,
108,099 easel paintings &
240,000 prints.

 The FAP had two goals:
1. To provide artworks for
non-federal public
buildings, and
2. To provide jobs for
unemployed artists on relief
(unemployment) rolls.
 In order to accomplish these
goals, FAP artists were
organized into 3 different
FAP divisions.

Art Production Division
 The production of artworks held
multiple divisions:
 Easel division: This emphasized
nationalism and the rediscovery of
America in artwork subjects
 Mural division: The focus was on
works for public places with
regional differences occurring (e.g.
Chicago for realistic American
scenes, New York City for
abstract murals, and California for
Asian-influenced themes).
 Sculpture division: Here artists
were encouraged to work in less
expensive materials.
 Graphic arts division: It produced
posters for the government.

Art Education Division
 The art education division
included the establishment of
community art centers.
 Art centers as institutions
devoted to community education
rather than practical training
were rare before the FAP.
 By December 1936, there were
25 art centers in the south and
west.
 The heart of the community art
center was its educational
program provided through classes
for both adults and children.

Art Research Division
 The FAP facilitated art research
through the founding of the Index of
American Design.
 Its goal was to make an historical &
pictorial record of the daily life of
American people.
 They produced 20,000 index plates in
six years of operation.
 Specific kind of designs studied
included:
 Textiles & fiber designs
 Glasswork
 Ceramics
 Metalwork like copper or brass
 Regional varieties such as the
Shaker materials in New
England.

Becoming A FAP Artist
 Over 5,000 artists throughout the
nation were involved.
 An eligibility process was organized,
whereby the artists interested in
participating in the FAP would apply
to a panel of their peers.
 They first had to prove they were in
financial need, unless they were in a
supervisory job.
 Then, the artists would submit their
work with any publicity, resume or
exhibition records that they had.
 On the basis of the artists’ training
experience and ability, the artists then
received assignments.

Becoming A FAP Artist
 The pay scale ranged from $23.00
per week to approximately $35.00
per week.
 The artists waited on line each week
to receive their checks and this
waiting line very often became an
opportunity for the artists to
socialize with and meet one another.
 After being selected to be on the
Project, artists were reviewed
periodically and could be removed
from a project if their financial
status changed or if their work was
unsatisfactory.

Future Famous Artists in the FAP
 Many artists who became
luminaries of 20th century
art – known as The
Irascibles – got their start
in the FAP.
 Artists such as Milton
Avery, Stuart Davis, Mark
Rothko, Willem de Kooning
& Jackson Pollock were just
a few of the thousands of
artists on the WPA Project
who went on to achieve
worldwide recognition.

FAP Artist: Jackson Pollock
 Perhaps best known for his
later “drip” paintings,
Wyoming-born Pollock first
studied at the New York Art
Students’ League under
American Regionalist painter
Thomas Hart Benton.
 Pollock was employed by the
FAP from 1933 – 1943.
 He worked in the easel &
mural art divisions, creating
works that were influenced by
Benton, while also hinting at
his future abstract style.

Jackson Pollock’s Going West
1934 – 1935, Oil on fiberboard

Jackson Pollock’s Going West
1934 – 1935, Oil on fiberboard
 Pollock’s work before 1938  Mules draw two wagons
displays the influence of along a road in front of a
Benton & Mexican rickety-looking general
muralists David Siqueiros & store.
José Clemente Orozco.  A full moon dominates the
 The painting Going West is sky, the brightest portion of
typical of this period. which reads as a human
 Set in a nocturnal profile looking toward the
landscape where the lone muleteer.
dynamic compositional  The theme of the American
vortex is a synthesis of frontier is also a carry-over
Orozco’s atmospheres & from Pollock’s Regionalist
Benton’s terrains background.

FAP Artist: Willem de Kooning
 Dutch-born de Kooning came
to the US as a stowaway
between the World Wars.
 He was employed by the FAP
from 1935 – 1943.
 de Kooning successfully
worked in the murals division,
and created many works that
brought him great public
acclaim.
 Although his later work is
quite wild & gestural, his early
FAP work is comparably
meticulous & detailed.

Willem de Kooning’s Medicine Mural
1937 – 1939, Mural

Willem de Kooning’s Medicine Mural
1937 – 1939, Mural
 From late 1937 until early
1939, de Kooning worked on
a mural for the Hall of
Pharmacy for the New York
World’s Fair, which he called
Medicine.
 Thousands of motorists would
have been able to see the
curved wall of the building
decorated with de Kooning's
mural.
 Unfortunately, neither the
building or the mural survive
today.

Serigraphs: A Lasting Legacy
 A year before the FAP was  The New York poster division
organized, New York City had was headed by Richard Floethe.
created the Mayor's Poster Project  Floethe was a German-born
within the Civil Works internationally known industrial
Administration.
designer who was educated in the
 Posters were already being fundamentals of the aesthetic
produced by this group for some of movement known as the
Mayor LaGuardia's favorite Bauhaus.
projects.
 The freedom given to project
 In 1935, this department was
artists under Floethe’s
absorbed by the federal government
enlightened leadership enabled
and became the country's first
FAP poster division.
them to experiment with bold
colors & many different styles.

 In an essay written in the
1930’s and later published
in Art for the Millions:
Essays from the 1930s by
Artists and Administrators
of the WPA Federal Art
Project, Floethe wrote,
"...the government unwittingly
launched a movement to
improve the commercial poster
and raise it to a true art form."

 By 1938, there were FAP
poster divisions in at least
eighteen states.
 New York City, Chicago,
and Philadelphia had
thriving poster divisions,
with New York City's being
the largest division.
 The poster divisions
designed posters mainly for
the Federal Art, Music,
Writer's, and Theatre
Projects.

 At first, posters were created
by hand, individually
painted and lettered.
 Later on, the divisions'
artists usually used the
silkscreen process, which
was adapted and refined for
the mass production in
1936 by designer Anthony
Velonis.
 Consequently, the printing
of a poster was a
collaborative effort.

 Artists were responsible for the
poster's design, color selection,
and sometimes the cutting of the
stencils used to print the poster.
 The workshop's technical staff
screened the posters.
 The exchange of ideas between
the designers and the printers
resulted in a technically and
artistically well-balanced poster.
 With this silkscreening process,
as many as six hundred posters
were printed in a day.

The Basic Silkscreen Process
Remember:
An
individual
screen must
be created
for each
different
block of
color, and
the screens
must be
independent
ly inked and
precisely
aligned!

 Velonis coined the word serigraph
(from seri, Latin for “silk” and
graphein, Greek for “to write or
draw”) to convey the fine-art
rather than commercial aspect of
the process.
 Velonis also wrote a book entitled
Silk Screen Technique that was
used as a "how-to" manual for
other poster divisions.
 He traveled extensively to advise
FAP artists on the technique of
silkscreening.

 Due in part to congressional
opposition, the New York City
FAP and its poster division
were once again placed under
Mayor LaGuardia's
sponsorship in 1939.
 By 1942, all the remaining
WPA art projects were
transferred to the Defense
Department to become the
Graphics Section of the War
Service Division.

 In the history of the WPA
art projects, over two
million posters were
printed from thirty-five
thousand designs.
 Today, only about two
thousand of the posters
produced by all the poster
divisions are known to
exist.

 In a 1938 issue of Signs of the
Times, a journal of advertising
and design, it was said:
"The poster division . . . is doing a
valuable service to the profession in
general and the consumer in
particular, in trying to combine good
craftsmanship and design with
original ideas . . . it is to be hoped
that these beneficial WPA
productions may act as a
stimulating influence to poster
artists in all parts of the country."

 Not only did the poster
divisions succeed, but
government support of the
arts through the Federal Art
Project gave new impetus to
American artistic
expression.
 The different approaches to
poster design of the many
artists associated with the
WPA combined to create a
truly original, American
poster style.

The End Of An Artistic Era
 The FAP ended with the closing
of the fiscal year on June
30,1943, when the government
turned its attention towards the
war effort.
 In the late 1940's, thousands
much of the artworks that were in
the WPA project’s storage rooms
were lost or sold off by the pound.
 Despite the unfortunate way the
WPA and the government dealt
with the artists’ work, many
positive results took place

The End Of An Artistic Era
 The artists were able to sustain
themselves through difficult
times.
 Many artists gained experience,
their careers were helped, and
life-time friendships began during
the WPA.
 The general public became
exposed to the works of art
through the exhibitions, the
schools of art & the public
institutions that displayed the
murals, sculpture & other works.

Hum2250 the art of recovery the new deal, the wpa & the fap

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