From 1929 to 1945, American art and architecture underwent important developments that reflected both long-term trends and the momentous events of the era. Modernism (a broadly defined movement based upon the intentional rejection of traditional, classical methods of artistic expression) continued to profoundly influence American art, but the social and political context of the Great Depression and the New Deal had a significant impact as well. Aided by a large influx of European artists, New York City especially revealed the growing accomplishments of American art and architecture and increasingly displaced Paris as the world capital of art.
Architectural achievement in the period included the continued prominence and productions of Frank Lloyd Wright and the emergence of urban skyscrapers, most notably in New York. A modernist architect with natural instincts, the Wisconsin-born Wright continued to build upon the legacy he had established in earlier decades. His most notable achievement of the era was the rustic Falling Water (constructed between 1936 and 1939), a blended, modernistic and Japanese-styled home built in the secluded woods of Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, architecture in the New York City area in the interwar years came to epitomize the very notion of the modern big city. Especially in Manhattan, the 1920s and early 1930s witnessed the rise of the skyscraper as a powerful symbol of urban civilization. Relying upon an adapted French art deco style, the New York City skyline was expanded to include the Chrysler Building (designed by William Van Allen and completed in 1930) as well as the world-famous symbol of modern New York City itself, the towering Empire State Building (completed in 1931 under the direction of the architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon). The architect Raymond Hood, who had been at the forefront of early Manhattan skyscraper development in the 1920s (for example, the Daily News Building and the American Radiator Building), continued to be a powerful architectural force through the 1930s. While the McGraw-Hill Building was one of his notable achievements, he is best known for the Rockefeller Center, begun in 1929 and completed in 1939. Under the patronage of the powerful Rockefeller family, Hood designed the multipurpose area to include such notable venues as the RCA building and the popular Radio City Music Hall (conceptualized by Samuel Lionel “Roxy” Rothafel and designed by Wallace Harrison).
The opening of the New York World’s Fair in 1939 further cemented the developing image of New York City as the world’s cosmopolitan, architectural center. The modernistic obelisk Trylon and the soaring, triangular Peri-sphere (also designed by Wallace Harrison) complemented
Art and architecture 29
The home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago, Illinois (Library of Congress)
The prophetic Futurama exhibition, designed by Norman Bel Geddes under the sponsorship of the General Motors Corporation. Such international exposure gave New York City a creatively vibrant, cutting-edge feel, and helped to transform the image of Manhattan from one of a crowded destination for industrial immigrants to that of a center for cultural and artistic progressivism. With the construction of the Museum of Modern Art (1929) and the Whitney Museum (1931), New York City was poised to become the new world center for sculpture and painting as well. During World War II, war production and construction needs took priority over such architectural projects in New York and elsewhere.
The leading figure in American sculpture during the period was the innovative Alexander Calder (1898-1976). The inventor of the “mobile” form of sculpture, Calder had studied and worked in Paris prior to coming back to America. Calder constructed abstract figures out of wire, wood, tin, and other materials, often placing ball-like shapes at the ends. Sometimes, his constructions were enormous (especially later creations, which could approach the size of an airplane), and at other times they were interconnected arcs or leaflike structures that moved with room air currents. Calder’s mechanical engineering background doubtless enabled him to effectively manipulate materials and shapes in unique ways that greatly expanded the creative horizons of modern sculpting.
The Great Depression brought about major changes in the relationship between GOVERNMENT and the arts. Such New Deal programs as the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and the Federal Art Project (FAP), undertook various art ventures in order to provide work RELIEE jobs for unemployed artists. The resulting publicly funded paintings, sculptures, and murals often reflected populist and patriotic themes. These works sometimes displayed a noticeably chauvinistic emphasis upon displaying the strength of indigenous American character, as well as teaching the necessary public virtues to weather the economic crisis. Generally, the work produced by the federal programs was not highly regarded by art critics, although such subsequently renowned artists as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning were at one time supported by the Federal Art Project.
The increasing role of government in the arts during the depression also offered opportunities to African American artists, particularly the New Jersey-born Jacob Lawrence. As a young man, Lawrence had traveled to New York City, where he was stimulated by the Harlem Renaissance. Lawrence focused on the contemporary Great Migration of African Americans from the southern poverty and racism to almost equally grim northern urban areas. During the 1930s and 1940s, Lawrence painted a series of 60 works that came to be known as the Migration Series (originally known as The Migration of the Negro). In these paintings, which were influenced by cubism and the French painter Henri Matisse, Lawrence depicted the harsh realities of life for African Americans during the Great Depression. Even while depicting such themes as rural African-American poverty, urban slums, and prison life, however, Lawrence did not display a radical or overtly political ideology in his works, in contrast to more openly leftist artists of the period.
Photography continued to develop as an art form in the era, particularly in the Western School of Ansel Adams and others. Also of continuing importance was Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), a pioneer in the emergence of photography as a distinct art form who brought European avant-garde artistic styles to America in the late 1800s. Opening in New York City the most influential artistic photography studio in America, Stieglitz was highly active not only in photography but also in promoting modernist painting and sculpture and in lecturing widely, until his death in 1946.
But photography reached a larger audience through the photojournalism of Life magazine and the news media. As with other aspects of art, photography also reflected the social and political currents of the era—not only in the photojournalism of the depression and war years, but also in the documentary photographs of the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration (FSA). Such accomplished FSA photographers as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans provided graphic (and often carefully and purposefully composed) depictions of rural poverty designed to develop support for reform programs. During World War II, the FSA’s photographic section was transferred to the Office of War Information, which sought to inspire patriotism as well as to document social change and progress.
Nighthawks, painting by Edward Hopper, 1942 (The Art Institute of Chicago)
Asian Americans 31
During the Great Depression and World War II, three camps emerged that defined particular artistic styles and preoccupations: abstract artists, social realists, and regional-ists. While the sculptor Alexander Calder clearly was one of the most notable representatives of the abstract wing, other important abstract artists of the period (overwhelmingly centered in New York City) included Fritz Glarner, Bur-goyne Diller, Carl Holty, Ilya Bolotowsky, and Charmion von Wiegand. The abstract artists were influenced by Europeans (such as Piet Mondrian and others), and they often produced works of geometric and abstractly utopian construction. In general, however, this group received little attention at the time, perhaps because the economic and social difficulties of the Great Depression tended to point toward a focus upon more realistic themes.
The social realists of the time can themselves be broadly divided into two groups: those artists who were more overtly political from a liberal or leftist perspective and those who can best be characterized as apolitical. Strongly political and leftist themes were injected into the U. S. art scene by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, whose mural, Man at the Crossroads, created a furor for its heroic depiction of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. Though commissioned by the Rockefeller family for inclusion in the new Rockefeller Center, the mural so offended the Rockefellers that they removed Rivera, and the mural, from the project. Other politically radical social realist artists included Ben Shahn, Jack Levine, and Philip Evergood, who generally displayed overtly Marxist themes and social commentary in their works.
From a more apolitical perspective, artists such as Stuart Davis and Edward Hopper especially focused on urban scenes and the realities of life in the big city. Davis tended more toward abstraction in his later works, as he was increasingly influenced by the cubist movement. Two of his most noteworthy works were both murals: Men without Women (1932) and Swing Landscape (1938), itself a piece created under the auspices of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. Davis often drew inspiration from his excursions into various New York City neighborhoods, including Chinatown and JAZZ clubs catering primarily to blacks.
Edward Hopper likewise portrayed landscape and cityscape works that often had the feel of a vignette, and a certain dreamlike character often pervaded his paintings. Hopper depicted the realities and complexities of both rural and especially urban life in 20th-century America, with a special attention given to lighting, shadow, and mood, which often provided his works with a mysterious or even lonely quality. Works such as Early Sunday Morning (1930), Room in New York (1932), and perhaps Hopper’s most notable work, Nighthawks (1942), are primary examples of this particular style and emphasis.
From a completely different venue came the work of the regionalists, including such artists as Grant Wood, John Steuart Curry, and Thomas Hart Benton. These artists developed themes relating to small-town, rural, and farm life in the America of the period. Quintessentially American in their portrayal of heartland values, religion, and morality, these artists gained, perhaps surprisingly, a critical following in the sophisticated New York City art world of the day. Notable works of these artists include Wood’s Stone City, Iowa (1930) and especially his well-known American Gothic (1930), Curry’s Baptism in Kansas (1928), and Benton’s Social History of Missouri (1935). In a somewhat different vein, the popular artist Norman Rockwell also gave attention to such themes in his mass-produced works. Rockwell’s name became practically synonymous with the image of small-town Americana as exhibited in his productions, which provided reassurance in the trying days of depression and war, and his works were deeply beloved by the public at large.
Finally, the mid-1940s witnessed the emergence of the movement that would later become known as abstract expressionism, a phenomenon that would last into the 1950s and beyond. This movement would shift the artistic focus to the examination of Jungian-style concepts and themes, such as the primordial, the primitive, and archetypal explorations. Such notable figures as the “drip” artist Jackson Pollock (Mural and Pasiphae, both 1943), Willem de Kooning (Seated Figure, 1940), and Mark Rothko (Baptismal Scene, 1945), would all lay the foundations for this next influential period in American art in the postwar era.
See also cities and urban life.
Further reading: Ian Chilvers, Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Wayne Craven, American Art: History and Culture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994); Helen Gardner et al., Art through the Ages, 11th ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 2000); Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America (New York: Knopf, 1997); H. W. Janson, History of Art, 6th ed. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001).
—Haelim Allen
World History
