Scholar of the depression-era Victoria Grieve discusses her latest book on the WPA’s Federal Art Project, art to the people, and why Depression-era studies are quite uplifting.

BOOK: The Federal Art Project and the Creation of Middlebrow Culture by Victoria Grieve (University of Illinois Press, 2009).

Interview By JASMINE MAHMOUD
Published: Issue 1, Summer 2009

FDR was not a huge supporter of arts policy. Instead it was his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, who lobbied for federal support of the arts. What experiences in her life led her to support arts policy, and what language did she use to influence federal arts policy?

Eleanor Roosevelt (and Harold Ickes, who had been a social worker) was the impetus behind the Roosevelt administration’s support for the arts. In the early years of the Depression, Roosevelt and three close friends built a furniture factory called Val-Kill Industries with the intention of keeping farmers on farms rather than moving to cities, but also to create opportunities for creative work experiences. During the 1930s, Mrs. Roosevelt became deeply involved in the Arthurdale Homestead, a community created by the Resettlement Administration, which provided housing for unemployed coal miners in exchange for agricultural work and work in a furniture factory. Roosevelt believed, and repeated several times in her daily “My Day” column, speeches, and radio addresses, that the arts provided not only economic and social benefits, but less practical benefits as well. She argued that if the arts flourished, ordinary people would learn more sophisticated art appreciation, use handicraft skills as a creative outlet, and foster a more creative worldview.

In her defense of the WPA arts projects, Roosevelt emphasized the power of the arts to create more fulfilling lives, more complete persons, more engaged citizens. She shared a nationalistic belief with many FAP supporters that the arts would contribute to the development of Americans “as a people.” Finally, she came to the defense of the Federal Theatre Project when it was targeted by the Dies Commission, and defended art as free speech.

Did Eleanor Roosevelt tie her support of the arts to greater citizenship and human rights?

I don’t recall a specific occasion, but it wouldn’t have been uncharacteristic of her or contradictory to her understanding of the role of the arts in human life. She basically saw the arts as a means to enrich individual lives and civilization. During her appointment to the United Nations, she chaired the committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 27 of that document states: “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”

Artists in the Federal Arts Project included Jacob Lawrence, Eleanor Coen, Georgette Seabrook along with Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock; the work of these artists reached rural communities and inner-city neighborhoods. How were these artists chosen?

The FAP was famous, or notorious, depending on your point of view, for having no selection process for artists other than documented financial need. In addition, one of the guiding ideas of the FAP was that artists should be encouraged to remain in their communities, rather than run off to New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. However, the sheer number of artists in urban centers meant that they would sometimes be sent to a rural area that lacked enough artists to staff the local program. For instance, Carl Morris, Guy Anderson, and Clyfford Still worked at the Community Art Center in Spokane, Washington.

Whose idea was it to have such an integrated set of artists in the 1930s, a decade before the after-effects of WWII lead, in small part, to vast societal integration efforts? The New Deal did not challenge Southern segregation, and all New Deal programs were administered at the state level. Those in the South reflected the laws of the South. It is well known that African-Americans on relief received less money than did whites, and that they were “the last hired, and the first fired.” But most New Deal relief programs created African-American sections—the Civilian Conservation Corps, as well as the cultural projects. In my book, I write about the Harlem and the South Side (Chicago) Community Art Centers. Both were incredibly vibrant and active organizations that launched (or maintained) numerous careers, including those of Dox Thrash, Charles Alston, Augusta Savage, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Jacob Lawrence, to name just a few. The South Side Art Center is still functioning—what better legacy could there be?

Your book adds a new insight to cultural history by addressing the tension between highbrow critics/abstract artists and middlebrow artists/activists, and their fundamentally different views of culture. Why hasn’t this tension been previously discussed?

The middlebrow has been discussed extensively in literature, but not in the visual arts. I’m not sure why this omission has persisted, but perhaps because organized attempts to address the divide between art and the “common man” have been so intermittent. Perhaps with President Obama’s arts initiatives, these fundamentally different views of culture can be addressed with less acrimony than in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s.

You write that the early 20^th-century arts activists from the Arts and Crafts Movement championed fine arts as a means to “eliminate the daily harsh realities experienced by the urban poor and as a means of social uplift.” How did their theories influence the creation and execution of the Federal Arts Project?

Arts activists, both political progressives and Arts and Crafts activists, believed in the “highbrow” idea that art could elevate daily life, provide spiritual fulfillment, and assuage the poor working and living conditions of the working classes. The progressive activists that I mention in my book are settlement house workers like Jane Addams, education activists like John Dewey, and museum professionals like John Cotton Dana. Each of these individuals was very influential in terms of spreading such ideas through publications, speaking engagements, and educating later political activists, educators, and museum professionals.

What was the relationship between these art activists and the federal government?

The direct link between early 20^th-century arts activists and the Federal Art Project is the relationship between Holger Cahill, the eventual director of the FAP, and his mentor John Cotton Dana, the director of the Newark Museum. It was at the Newark Museum that Cahill learned many of the ideas he put into practice in the FAP in the 1930s and early 1940s.

What can current arts activism groups learn from their efforts?

Quite a lot has changed since the 1930s in the world of federal arts policy. I think that one of the best lessons of the FAP, though, is that in terms of the arts, you must meet people where they are. You will have more success in engaging them if art is not mystifying or hard to grasp. Dana created exhibits from teacups and five-cent vases, not “difficult” modern art. What engages young people today? Animation, computer graphics, music. There have been recent examples of museums attempting to bring in new audiences using such strategies. The “Put the ‘OM’ in MoMA for example—yoga on Saturday mornings in the gallery!

FAP was conceived not only to enrich the public with artwork, but also to preserve the creative skills of artists. What were the policy arguments that supported the latter?

The WPA cultural projects made the argument that artists, musicians, actors, and writers were the same as any other white-collar worker. This “artist-as-worker” idea supported the contention that if these workers allowed their skills to go unused for a decade, they would be lost. Therefore, rather than employing painters or trumpet players to dig ditches or plant trees, they should be hired to use their particular skills for the good of the nation.

What are your thoughts on why many European nations developed a department of arts and cultural affairs, while the United States never did, and still lacks a Department of the Arts?

There has been a lot of discussion about why the U.S. has never implemented a centralized arts bureau, as have many European nations. My research on the 1930s adds to this—the perception of the “starving artist” contributed to a lack of funding. One congressman achieved rounds of laughter and applause when he listed artists who had completed their masterpieces while starving in garrets. In other words, not everyone was willing to conceive of the “artist-as-worker.”

What were the limits of the FAP?

In terms of economic revitalization, the Federal Art Project was indeed limited, as was the entire New Deal. FDR himself was always uncomfortable with deficit spending, and he was not inclined to support a permanent Bureau of the Arts, in the tradition of some European countries. Congressional conservatives and other critics had been targeting the WPA for years, and when the economy began to revive, the program was an easy target. By 1943, many WPA projects couldn’t hire enough people because defense industry jobs paid so much better.

Were there desired results that weren’t realized?

I think that for the years in which the FAP and other cultural projects existed, they achieved desired results. People who had never seen or experienced art, music, or theatre were able to do so. Careers were launched, and saved. Ideas were rooted that later flowered under the NEA and NEH, if not to the extent that some FAP advocates would have liked. I don’t think that the divide between art and the people has been eradicated by any means, but I do think that it has shrunk considerably compared to what it had been. Ideas about what “counts” as art have changed radically, and as a result, more people are culturally engaged today than in the 1920s.

Who was your favorite visual artist of the 1930s?

Hmmm… my favorite artist? That’s tough. Among printmakers, I like Elizabeth Olds. Among painters, it’s Clyfford Still. I’ve also been researching the work of Irving Norman and Vanessa Helder.

The focus of much of this book and of your scholarship is the 1930s. What about that decade do you find most compelling?

Political, economic, and social alternatives seemed so viable. For a moment, the gears were stuck, and many other possibilities emerged. The Depression exposed glaring inequalities that working class and middle class people felt compelled to challenge, and they came up with creative ways to do so. I am fascinated by the ways in which art and politics collide and influence one another, by the ways in which people use culture to express political ideas, and in the 1930s the connections between the two are very strong. TAP