Huge public murals in America's Great Depression (1933-6)

 

Republican presidents Warren G Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover (1929-33) were easily el­ected in 1920, 1924 and 1928 resp­ect­­­­ively - the party of big business, high tar­iffs and wealthy fam­ilies. Until the Great Crash! The Depression of the 1930s was hid­eous for millions of unemployed workers across the world. Returned servicemen, who had fought so hard in the war of 1914-18, believed that home would be a place fit for heroes. By 1929, it was not!

Then Democratic President Frank­lin Roose­velt (1933–45) swept into power and expanded the size and role of the Federal Govern­ment. His New Deal was a brilliant set of reforms that could save ordinary families, including regul­at­ion of fin­an­cial inst­itutions, founding of welfare and pension pro­g­rammes, and infra­st­ructure development.

Federal work projects eg the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration-WPA created roads, parks, bridges and dams. Pre­s Hoov­er had created the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment in 1931 and Pre­s Roose­v­elt created a new and brilliant model for many other countries suffering in the Depression.

Advancement of learning through the printing press, 1936 (top image)

by Lucien Labaudt

George Washington High School library

It was the American Government’s Federal Art Projects that made the most difference to people in the arts, people whose car­eers had been curtailed by the Depres­sion. The WPA hired professionals to teach art, perform music, act on stage, and to write books, plays and music. Of the many divisions of the Federal Art Project that had social goals, the Mural Division had the grandest vis­ion.

As I wrote 9 years ago, the Mural Division showcased the talent of many artists in the 1930s with varying artistic styles. Note Harry Sternberg for example, an artist from New York who studied coalmine and steel-mill workers’ working conditions. His Chic­ago mural, like other New Deal post office murals, showed sc­ientists, metal workers, factories, railways and local agriculture. 

Beach Chalet San Francisco

by Lucien Labaudt

Photo credit

Examine Ben Shahn's mural panels, painted in 1937 to commemorate the New Deal resettlement community of Jersey Home­steads N.J, now called Roosevelt. As the mural showed, the story was on of escape from tenements and sweatshops in the city to simple, light-filled homes, a cooperative garment-factory, store and farm in the country. A reflection from history; hope for the future. 

And Harry Sternberg’s Chicago: Epoch of a Great City 1937, is in Lakeview Post Office, Chicago. The working conditions of coalmine and steel mill workers were featured in his first mural ever. Like other New Deal post office murals, this one showed scientists, metal workers, factories, railways and famous Chicago architecture.  

The message carried by New Deal art was clear: hard work, lifelong learning, literature and family outdoor activities will triumph ov­er economic depression. By painting murals celebrating this Am­er­ic­an ideal, the artists were working in a socially useful way, and the system was rewarding their hard work by paying them money for painting pict­ures in the middle of the USA’s worst ever economic catastrophe. The pro-work theme emphasised that work was the key to economic prosperity!

See The Beach Chalet in San Francisco (1925), designed by Willis Polk, which featured French artist Lucien Labaudt who had a beautiful series of murals commis­s­ioned by the WPA and painted by moved to the US before WW1. In one of his Beach Chalet scenes (1934), equestrians, tennis players and yachties filled the land­scape, and a crab fisherman offered one of his catch. In another the Park Superintendent was on bench, with the General Manager of Parks and Rec Dept. holding a redwood tree. Behind on horseback sat a sculptor and the head of California Federal Art Project . 

Fisherman's Wharf

by Lucien Labaudt

In a third, family, friends and students populated Labaudt’s rustic beach scene, with the Golden Gate Bridge still under construction in the background. It was finished in 1937. A Beach Chalet water­-front scene included a portrait of Labaudt's friend, labour organ­iser Harry Bridges, who was peace­fully wheeling a hand-truck, not leading the water-front strike. The Chalet had fallen into disrepair but was restored and re-opened in 1997, again offering food and drink. The original murals were also restored. 

The Labaudt mural, Advancement of Learning Through the Printing Press (1936), is in the library of the George Wash­ing­ton High School in San Francisco. This time his mural port­raits cov­ered famous people in the sciences, literature, religious teach­ing and statemen. Gutenberg's figure, one of the great found­ers of the printing press, was central to Labaudt’s entire concept of the advancement of learning. 

Naturally Roosevelt's New Deal divided the GOP; while many Rep­ub­lic­ans were will­ing to accept some parts of the programme, other more conservative Repub­lic­ans never agreed. The Old Right sharply attacked the Second New Deal because it “rep­resented class warfare and socialism”. Nonetheless Democrat President Roose­velt won in a landslide again in 1936, his programmes being hugely successful and gratefully welcomed. 

What can we learn, in any Great Depression in the future?