dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)
künstler: George Biddle, Edward Bruce, Holger Cahill, Forbes Watson
titel: The New Deal art projects
jahr: 1933–43
adresse: USA
+: «[…] The most important cultural initiative of the CWA [Civil Works Service Programme] was the Public Works of Art Project, headed by Edward Bruce. This was a federally administered programme, set up in December 1933 with a grant to the Treasure Department to employ artists on the embellishment of public buildings. PWAP lasted four and a half months and cost $ 1'312'117. It employed 3'749 artists, who produced 15'663 art and craft objects, including 706 murals and mural sketches, 3'821 oils, 2'938 watercolours, 1'518 prints and 647 sculptures.
With the closedown of CWA, the Public Works of Art Project also officially ended (although it was allotted funds by FERA [Federal Emergency Relief Administration] to wind up its activities). Simultaneously, Bruce began to press for the establishment of a Division of Fine Arts within the Treasury, paid for from from Treasury and PWA funds. In this he was able to draw on the support of Henry and Elinor Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury and his wife, and both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, all of whom were sympathetic to a public art project. However, use of PWA funds proved impossible, and in September 1934 a more modest initiative, a Section of Painting and Sculpture (renamed the Section of Fine Arts in 1938) was established within the Treasury Procurement Division. Morgenthau's order setting up the Section did not prescribe that every new building would be decorated, but where Section and architects agreed, a sum amounting to about one per cent of the overall cost could be reserved for art works. Difficulties with architects and bureaucrats forced the Section to make its case building by building, and many went undecorated. None the less, over 1934—43, the Section commissioned 1'116 murals and 301 sculptures, which decorated 1'118 buildings in 1'083 cities. But in themselves these figures do not indicate the full scope of its activities, for the Section relied on a controversial competition system, which drew in far more artists than ever received commissions.
Unlike the PWAP and the WPA [Works Progress Administration] Federal Art Project, the Treasury Section was not a relief programme. It employed artists on what it regarded as criteria of competence to secure the best art available. Because the Sections's brief did not permit it to decorate existing federal buildings, in May 1935 Bruce applied to the newly established WPA for relief funds to hire unemployed artists to work on these, and in July 1935 the Treasury Relief Art Project [TRAP] was set up under the directorship of Olin Dows. However, WPA relief conditions were incompatible with Bruce's and Dows's notions of quality, and they effectively sought to evade the relief principle, hiring artists on a highly selective basis in numbers that fell far short of their quota. Relations between TRAP and the WPA Fine Art Project were strained, especially in New York City, where there was open rivalry between the two. TRAP was also sharply attacked by artists' organisations for its elitist policies. In all it produced only 89 mural and sculpture projects, together with more than 10'000 easel paintings and prints.
[…] [Harry] Hopkins always intended that the arts should be part of the WPA, and in the event four projects were established under the gereral title of 'Federal One', for art, music, theatre and writing. (To these a fifth, the Historical and Records Survey Project, was later added.) The Federal Art Project (FAP) was headed by Holger Cahill throughout its period of existence from 1935 to 1943. Unlike the Section, the FAP operated from the principle of relief rather than that of quality, and partly for this reason its ideological framework was rather different. […] At its largest in 1936 it employed about 5'000 artists across the nation, and about 10'000 were on its rolls at one time or another. Unlike the Treasury Section, which was tightly run from Washington, the FAP was decentralised and operated on a regional basis — although until 1939 regional FAP directors were responsible to the Washington office and not to the WPA state administrators. But having said this, it should be noted that WPA FAP activity was concentrated disproportionately in New York. Of an estimated total budget of $35 million spent on the FAP, about $16.6 million went to New York State, and an overwhelming share of that to the city. In 1937 almost 45 per cent of all artists employed on the FAP were working there. Overall the WPA produced 2'500 murals, 108'000 paintings, 18'000 sculptures and 200'000 prints from 11'000 designs, as well as 2 million posters and the 23'000 historic records of the Index of American Design.»
From: Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left. American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926—1956, Yale 2002, pp. 78—79