WPT Archives: 1980s

Art On Relief

>> Narrator: The following program is brought to you in part by a grant from The Friends Of Channel 21 Incorporated. [bright music] It’s hard time Believe old boy, it’s hard time When you’re down and out

>> How did I get involved? I had to get involved in it. I was out of work. It’s hard time Believe old boy, it’s hard time When you’re down and out

>> You just painted your guts out more or less and you got a little money for it and enough so that you could buy your meals and a few pigments and then go on and do some more painting. It’s hard time Believe old boy, it’s hard time When you’re down and out

>> When the women first came to the project, they were women who were out of jobs who needed jobs. And they were just sent in mass and put in a department and nobody asked them whether they wanted to print blocks or do weavings or make dolls, they just put them in a group and said, here, do it. It’s hard time Believe old boy, it’s hard time When you’re down and out

>> The thing was that the project for me, and I’m sure for thousands of other people who were involved, sustained you at a very critical period. It’s hard time Believe old boy, it’s hard time When you’re down and out

>> Narrator: These people were part of one of the most radical and massive experiments in all of art history, yet an experiment ignored as soon as it was over. Their memories and their art fill in the shadows of a time forgotten by many, unknown by others. A time when art was on relief. [bright jazzy music] It was The Great Depression, the 1930s, hard times for just about everybody, especially artists.

>> Well, the Depression of course was a pretty unhappy period for everybody, for everybody, regardless of the particular field of endeavor. And I think for the artists, it was especially bad, for one thing, interest in American art hadn’t developed to any extent in the 1933, ’34, ’35 period, so that when the Depression came and hit all levels of workers, the artist was almost the first to suffer so he had a very miserable time until the New Deal came in with its attendant works progress programs.

>> Narrator: While in the depths of the 1930s Depression, the United States government hired thousands of unemployed painters and sculptors and craftsmen to create works of art for schools and post offices and hospitals and places where people in their daily activities could see them and enjoy. It was public art in public places. But over the years, this artistic legacy has faded into the background, ignored and forgotten by many.

>> And some don’t even notice. That’s the worst part of it. Some example on that, one lady this morning when they were setting up, she says, what are they taking pictures of? And I told her the mural. And she says, how long has that been up? And I said ever since, and she’s the lady that’s been in this area for many, many years. And she says, I never did really take a look at it.

>> Narrator: Here in a small museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, a re-discovery is in progress. It’s the opening of Wisconsin’s New Deal art exhibition. People are seeing, perhaps for the first time, a sample of their artistic inheritance from the Depression. Many pieces have been loaned by other institutions. And some have been rescued from dark basements and dusty addicts, because for many years, only a few people cared enough about Depression art to understand its true worth. But why?

>> One, because it was buried so deep and it was buried because the artist, even though he was accepted in the mainstream of practical America, when he went on a salary and was paid the same amount of money as a ditch digger and the rest, that put him as a working man. But the idea of the artist working for the government being paid was looked down upon. And it was erroneously supposed that the people who were on the painting couldn’t sell their painting, they weren’t good enough to. Well this was a shallow point of view because nobody, good, bad, or indifferent could sell their work. John Sloan did a tremendous series of etchings that he offered to the richest people in the country for $30 a set. He sold two of them even to the people with wealth, these things are worth fortunes today. That’s how, and he wasn’t even on a WPA, but that’s the condition of art.

>> In my case, I was a young artist just beginning in my professional art life. And that coinciding with the interest the government was showing in the survival of the artist as an artist worked out very well for me because I was able to experiment with my painting. I was able to do the kind of things that I wanted to do. In my case, it was looking around Chicago, at the less glamorous sections, the streets, the alleys, the shops, the people, the bread lines, that kind of thing. And that kind of painting at best would not have received a patronage interest. And the government of course didn’t care too much about the subject matter involved so that the artists were able to work out their own ideas without the concern that they had to produce likable paintings, things that could be absorbed by the general public.

>> I think the significance of the New Deal art projects is that they sustained the young American artists over a 10 year period. They fed him, and as William Gropper always reminded him, they put food in our bellies. And that was the most important part because it sustained them but it allowed them an opportunity with a comparative freedom of mind to experiment to keep working at their craft. And you see a certain amount of timidity in the paintings here at the exhibition. However, these are still a great break. You don’t see any sweet sentimental things. You see some nice glossy, but you see some rather hard boil. You see realism, showing people that work, the farmer, the back of a cow, and sweat shops, no one had ever seen this in American art. No I don’t want your Rolls-Royce, mister I don’t want your pleasure yacht All I want’s just food for my baby Is to me my old job back We work to build this country, mister While you enjoyed a life of ease You’ve stolen all that we’ve built, mister Now our children starve and freeze So I don’t want no millions, mister I don’t want your diamond ring. All I want is the right to live, mister Give me back my job again

>> There was a lot of events in that time period, graduating from college, right in the middle of the Depression already, trying to find a job, getting part-time, being involved in political movements. I think pretty much it was a situation where we felt there were good people and bad people, good parts of society and bad parts of society, as exemplified by the lynch scene there, you know, where those bad people were Ku Klux Klanners. We hated Ku Klux Klanners you might say. And when it got to the Spanish civil war, well, those were the fascists. I think it was sort of a simple involvement in the side that we were with was good side and the other side was the bad side. And this, I think, determined our activities pretty much in our artwork because it was done on a relatively innocent basis. And I think we became aware of the evils, even of the good side in a sense by some of the things that took place like Soviets marching in on Finland. And that ran rampant throughout the whole liberal community. I mean, they just left that political affiliation by the hundreds.

>> Narrator: For many artists like Santos Zingale and Aaron Bohrod, this period of political unrest was also a time of concentrated professional growth and productivity.

>> Oh yes. I think in those days, 1933, ’34, and so on, I produced many, many works and I know in 1933, I probably produced more paintings than I did at any other period before. Of course there weren’t too many years before that. But certainly since that, now I know I spend weeks and weeks on one individual work, but in those 1933 days, I used to paint three or four watercolors in the before noon section and then afternoon I’d paint a full scale oil.

>> Narrator: The relief program, or rather series of programs that allowed Aaron Bohrod and thousands of other artists to create an experiment were part of the New Deal under president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. WPA, PWAP, CWA, FAP. In the 1930s, the confusion of letters stood for one thing, a government commitment to save an entire generation of artists. The Wisconsin project, based in Milwaukee, was typical of many throughout the country. It was part of the Federal Arts Project under the Works Progress Administration, WPA. From 1936 to 1943, as many as 100 artists were employed in the creative painting and sculpture unit alone. Their output was astonishing, 643 easel paintings, 657 prints, 167 sculptures, and 76 print designs. In addition, the Milwaukee Handicraft Project was established. It was unique and received national attention because of its extraordinary success. After eight years of development, over 9,000 men and women were employed to produce everything from printed fabrics and costumes to furniture and dolls. Clarice Logan, a painter in her own right, supervised one of the printing units. Her husband Fred was president of the Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors Association, a fledgling art lobby of the time.

>> Well the project was held, that part that we did, now there were projects all over the city, but we were in a big barren factory building and block printing was one place in factory building and weaving was in another place and bottle making was in another place and so on, everybody had to listen to everybody else’s noise, but surprisingly it didn’t bother too much. And then when the women first came to the project, they were women who were out of jobs who needed jobs and they were just sent in mass and put in a department and nobody asked them whether they wanted to print blocks or do weavings or make dolls, they just put them in a group and said, here, do it, do what this lady tells you. So we had to teach them just as we’d teach a class.

>> If you were a school principal or a hospital director or any public service group, you could go down to the project and see what they had and see what the prices were and order materials. Now you had to agree that these would never be used privately. They would be used in the public institution, public purposes.

>> Well we certainly considered ourselves artists. After all, it takes artistry to do a design like this. Most people couldn’t turn out a design of that sort. They wouldn’t know where to begin. So certainly we were artists and the people who made the dolls were artists and so on.

>> And nearly everybody who was on various aspects of the project carried on some of the work that they did in some way. Now, if none of these projects had existed, two things would clearly have happened. That group of the 30s wouldn’t have had nearly the experience they had. And if they had wanted to stay in the arts, they would’ve had to leave here. Or if they had stayed here and hadn’t been active in the arts, then almost certainly they would’ve gone off into other things and not done what they did in the arts. So clearly the projects were great help to a very large group of people, which group has continued to develop their interests all their lives quite professionally in the arts.

>> Narrator: The Milwaukee Handicraft Project became a national model of success. Combining artists, craftsman, and manual laborers to produce useful and artistic works for the public. [bright jazz music] In the fine arts, many states throughout the country took up the challenge to support artists and provide art for public places. In Wisconsin, under the initial leadership of Charlotte Partridge, the program was small but significant.

>> The Wisconsin project as far as the fine arts were concerned was that it was a small program. And thanks to Charlotte Partridge, she kept it at the maximum. It did sustain the artists, again, that same word, but there was a smaller core of them and managed to spread it out to the countryside. And if you look at these paintings at are exhibit here at Wausau, you will find they were distributed and allocated out in the countryside into Oshkosh, into Berlin, into Wausau, far from Milwaukee, which was the metropolitan scene, the art scene in Wisconsin. So it provided art to be distributed around the state.

>> Narrator: Bringing art to the countryside was a major breakthrough for the rural communities of Wisconsin. For many, it was the first time an original work of art had been seen. [bright jazz music] One New Deal project, sponsored principally by the treasury department, advanced greatly the cause of art in public places. Post offices and other government buildings throughout the country would enjoy the benefits of the mural competitions. There’ll be blue birds over The white cliffs of Dover Tomorrow, just you wait and see There’ll be love and laughter And peace ever after Tomorrow, when the world is free The shepherd will tend his sheep The valley will bloom again And Johnny will go to sleep In his own little room again There’ll be blue birds over The white cliffs of Dover Tomorrow, just you wait and see The federal murals of Wisconsin brightened the walls of dozens of public buildings. It was a new experience for the painters as well as the post offices.

>> We artists on the project did not have a mural tradition for one thing. And these were our first paintings in mural contacts you might say, or in mural dimensions, and more often than not, a lot of the murals look like easel paintings yet. And fresco painting as such was limited in our knowledge. We didn’t have the nerve, I imagine, to tear down a wall and start a new wall to paint a fresco. So we painted it on canvas and they weren’t that big. We could just as well, we did go up, I went up to Sturgeon Bay to look over the wall before I start painting on it or designing for it. In fact, I had to make some arrangement for the door frame that came into the thing designed around that.

>> Narrator: James Watrous was another Wisconsin painter who was given his first opportunity to paint murals under the New Deal project. He chose themes from Wisconsin history and folklore, like the legends of Paul Bunyan, painted in the University of Wisconsin Student Union. [upbeat music] I ain’t got no home, I’m just roamin’ around Just a wanderin’ worker, I go from town to town And the police make it hard wherever I may go And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore In a post office in the far Northern Wisconsin town of Park Falls, Watrous painted the great spring battle between loggers from competing companies who fought to get their logs into the Flambeau River and down to the mill before the waterway would become choked with timber. [upbeat music] The murals of the Wisconsin New Deal projects reflected life and legend in the region. In fact, a sense of regionalism in art was developing in areas throughout the country. Wisconsin was a rural state of farms and forests and small towns. While New York painters captured the harsh realism of the ghettos and the sweat shops. Many Wisconsin New Deal artists found strong images in the countryside. As the fog was lifting and I was strolling What fields weaving, dust clouds rolling And the storm clouds building The boys come chanting This land was made for you and me This land is your land, and this land is my land From California, to the New York island, The Redwood forest and the Gulf Stream waters This land is made for you and me The grand artistic experiment of the New Deal resulted in thousands of works of art for public enjoyment. It provided support for thousands of artists, allowing them to continue their work. One would think that such a program would find immediate acceptance from an enriched and grateful public. But that was not the case, not in the 1930s, nor for decades after.

>> It was downgraded. It was downgraded. It was believed because there was no sudden genius come out of it that there was no merit to it.

>> There was so much in the way of bulk. And I must admit that so much that was produced was of a kind of mediocre quality that you could almost not blame the administrators for not cherishing every work of art that came across their threshold there. I know when the WPA program was abandoned, some of the paintings were even released to the general public and they were sold to them for sums like 50 cents a pound. Some rolled up mural paintings, for instance, which weighed 10 pounds could have been purchased and were purchased for a mere $5 or so for tremendous paintings that would cover entire walls.

>> Narrator: Although not all the New Deal art may be considered masterpieces, they still have value. Their worth is reflected in the people who pass by and do notice and appreciate the art that was created for them and us. It gives us a glimpse of our past and our heritage when an entire generation of artists gave us a legacy that may now find its true value, a sense of pride in our history, our community.

>> I think it’s beautiful. It really indicates what Door County’s all about and the heritage that was here, the fishermen. And I think a lot of people overlook it when they come into the post office and should be made aware that it’s up there.

>> Interviewer: What do you think of the picture up on the wall?

>> It’s funny.

>> Interviewer: Why is it funny?

>> Because it got fisherman.

>> Interviewer: Do you like it?

>> Of course I do.

>> Interviewer: How come?

>> ‘Cause it’s pretty.

>> It’s really interesting once you look at it.

>> I know this one.

>> When you enter the lobby, you kind of look up, I mean, it’s one of them things that you’re associated with all the time and you stand side by side beside, but I think if it were missing, you’d notice that right way too. And it’s an era where it’ll never happen again, I don’t imagine at least in this era, but it’s something to be proud of maybe.

>> Its importance, I think one, is restoring the line of history. We’ve been going through a period in our whole culture of going off in many directions from a straight line of history and America is in the same line as anybody else. It’s a fairly straight line of development. And so they’ve gone off here and there. With a loss of a sense of history, and I think this is one of the things that’s proving that we’re still in this whole mainstream and development of Western culture at a period now when a lot of the values have been found to be sort of thin, the discovery that we had some painters who painted realism, painted some drama, experimented, people are hanging onto it. And it also, back to the history theme, reminds them of where America has been because the American scene invited American history and you’ll find it on these walls. [bright jazz music] We want to reach out again and get reassurances from our past. So we get these reassurances that we do have a past and we do want a future. And this is serving as a pivot point for it. [upbeat music] We’re in the money, we’re in the money We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along We’re in the money, the sky’s sunny Old Man Depression, you are through, you done us wrong We never see a headline about a breadline today And when we see the landlord We can look that guy right in the eye We’re in the money, come on my honey Let’s spend it, lend it Send it rolling around

>> Narrator: The proceeding program was brought to you in part by a grant from The Friends of Channel 21 Incorporated.