The Peoples Art History of the United States Chapters 2029

Here is a short extract from Affiliate fifteen from my new book A People's Art History of the United States. This chapter examines the role of the Artists' Union during the 1930s.

"Art has turned militant. It forms unions, carries banners, sits down uninvited, and gets under-foot. Social justice is its battle cry!" —Mabel Dwight, WPA-FAP printmaker

Prior to the start of the WPA-FAP, the Artists' Wedlock in New York Urban center was already a well- developed organization, and by the finish of 1934 it had up of seven hundred members. Meetings were held every Midweek nighttime, and attendance often fluctuated betwixt 2 and three hundred people; crisis meetings would describe upward of six hundred.

Locals were also formed across the country, in Philadelphia, Boston, Springfield (Massachusetts), Baltimore, Woodstock (New York), Cedar Rapids, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

By 1936, the WPA-FAP employed more than than five one thousand artists and well over a thou- sand of these artists were Artists' Union members, spread out across eighteen states. Many of the Artists' Union members, though non all, were also affiliated with CP United states of america and Communist campaigns. Others were fellow travelers, sympathetic to communism and socialism and the motility confronting war and fascism. The Artists' Union, nonetheless, distanced itself from direct Communist ties, stating that it would non align itself to any political party. Instead, its primary role was economic—helping unemployed artists obtain piece of work in federal and land art programs, and advocating for the arts to achieve all Americans. In brusque, the Artists' Union became the mediators between artists and PWAP (and then WPA-FAP) administrators, settling grievances betwixt workers and administrators and threatening to take directly action if needed.

On November 30, 1936, more than 1,200 artists, writers, actors, and actresses gathered in protest in New York City over WPA funding cuts and layoffs. Two days later, on December 1, more than 4 hundred Artists' Union members gathered outside the WPA administration offices on Fifth Artery and Thirty-ninth Street while 219 demonstrators stormed the offices and occupied them. The administration'southward response was to telephone call in police, who proceeded to assault them. Twelve Artists' Union members were badly injured and taken abroad in ambulances, including Philip Evergood and Paul Block (who had led the demonstration), and all of the demonstrators were arrested.

In jail, some gave fake final names to the government, claiming to be Picasso, Cézanne, da Vinci, Degas, and van Gogh. A couple days later, the 219 individuals arrested were arraigned in court on December 3, found guilty of disorderly conduct, and given a suspended sentence.

More protests would follow. On Dec 9, some 2,500 WPA workers orchestrated a half-twenty-four hour period piece of work stoppage of all fine art projects to protest pending dismissals. Three days later, artists joined in with five,000 other WPA workers in a watch at the fundamental WPA part. The January 1937 cover of Art Front—the Artists' Union'due south official publication—documents their capacity to demonstrate. Visualized is a street packed with protesters; prominent among them are Artists' Union signs and scarlet banners with the "AU" letters. Also held up high are cut- out images of pigs with superlative hats—a likely reference to bankers.

These demonstrations produced results. The street protests, the police brutality at the WPA offices, and the resulting press caused Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to make an emergency trip to Washington that resulted in funds not being cut. Gerald One thousand. Monroe writes, "While boilerplate employment on the WPA as a whole de- creased 11.9 per centum from January to June 1937, employment on the four Arts Projects increased 1.1 percentage."

However, this temporary reprieve was short-lived. In April 1937, President Roosevelt and Congress pushed through a 25 percent cut of all WPA funding that did not spare artists. In late June, WPA-FAP employees began receiving their pinkish slips, setting off another moving ridge of sit-ins by the Artists' Union and others—writers, musicians, actors, and actresses—who occupied the WPA offices in Washington, DC. In New York, half-dozen-hundred-plus demonstrators occupied the Federal Arts Project Office and held Harold Stein, a New York City Fine art Project administrator, captive for fifteen hours. At that place, he was ordered to telephone call his superior in Washington, DC, and relay the strikers' demands that all cuts should exist rescinded.

Somewhen, Stein signed an understanding that the layoffs would be delayed, but in reality Stein had no power in stopping the cuts from eventually going through. These actions lone represented a new militancy amidst artists as they began to realize their collective force. Stuart Davis, the offset editor for Fine art Front end, wrote:

Artists at concluding discovered that, like other workers, they could merely protect their basic interests through powerful organizations. The great mass of artists left out of the project constitute it possible to win demands from the administration just by joint and militant demonstrations. Their efforts led naturally to the edifice of the Artists' Matrimony.

Others were less apt to pay compliments to these tactics, or to the Artists' Union. Olin Dows, an artist and the director of Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP), believed the actions were counterproductive: "It was grotesque and
an anomaly to have artists unionized confronting a government which for the first time in its his- tory was doing something about them professionally." And Audrey McMahon, head of the New York City Art Project, argued that the Artists' Union, along with other radical fine art groups, tarnished the image of the unabridged WPA-FAP, for it led the public and bourgeois members of the government to meet all artists as radicals. But, the Artists' Union represented the workers' perspective, not management'south. They held little religion in the sincerity of government bureaucrats and believed that it was the artists' ability to organize that had led to artists being included in the WPA programs in the outset place.

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