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A Note on New Deal Iconography: Futurology and the Historical Myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Karal Ann Marling
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Extract

In 1939 Erwin Panofsky opened his seminal essay on the interpretation of expressive content in the visual arts with a bold definition of a new and socially relevant discipline. “Iconography,” he declared, “is that branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works of art, as opposed to their form.” According to his model, subject matter can be read in three stages, ranked in an ascending hierarchy of richness and complexity. The first and simplest step isolates the “factual meaning” of patterns and shapes under the guidance of the history of style, or knowledge of the ways in which, at a given moment in time, objects were expressed by forms. Hence, certain arrangements of line and color in an American painting of 1934, let us say, may be identified as a representation of a male figure grimly carrying a flat rectangular object on a pole. When this object can subsequently be recognized as a sign bearing the legend “On Strike,” the “secondary or conventional” subject matter is exposed: the hypothetical canvas depicts a strike. Subject to a knowledge of the history of types, or the ways in which, at a given moment in time, concepts were expressed by objects, the motifs of worker and placard form a coherent image, which conveys the concept or story of a strike. These “factual” and “conventional” revelations are the prelude to an exposition of “intrinsic meaning”; the history of culture and ideas is brought to bear on the work of art in this third and final stage through an intuitional process, which suggests how “the essential tendencies of the human mind” in a given epoch have been expressed via objects and concepts, style and type.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 4 , October 1979 , pp. 421 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

NOTES

1. Panofsky, Erwin, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939; rpt. New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962), p. 3.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., diagrammatic table, pp. 14–15.

3. The pioneer work in the field is O'Connor, Francis V.'s Federal Art Patronage 1933 to 1943 (College Park: Univ. of Maryland, 1966)Google Scholar, the catalogue of an exhibition held at the University of Maryland. O'Connor provides an administrative chronology of all government art programs of the period, including the Section and the Federal Art Project (p. 40).

4. See Nochlin, Linda, Realism (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1971)Google Scholar, esp. “The Nature of Realism,” pp. 3 ff.

5. William McVey, quoted in Karal Ann Marling, introduction to Federal Art in Cleveland, 1933–1943 (Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Public Library, 1974), p. 38.Google Scholar

6. Baigell, Matthew, The American Scene, American Painting of the 1930's (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), Part 3, pp. 187–207Google Scholar, attempts a catalogue of types. These include such categories as families, people, and work, which may be broken down into variants on farmer and worker themes. His “City and Country” subdivision includes cityscapes and rural landscapes. For a similar typological classification, see Heller, Nancy and Williams, Julia, The Regionalists (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1976).Google Scholar

7. Rosenberg, Harold, The Anxious Object (New York: Collier Books, 1973), 2d ed., p. 39.Google Scholar

8. The phrase “art for the millions” comes from the title of a national report compiled by the WPA/FAP in 1936 but only recently rediscovered and published. See O'Connor, Francis V., ed., Art for the Millions (New York: New York Graphic Society, 1973)Google Scholar. “The language of the streets” is from Benton, Thomas Hart, An Artist in America (New York: Univ. of Kansas City Press and Twayne Publishers, 1951), p. 315.Google Scholar

9. This phrase comes from one title in a series of vitriolic, privately published pamphlets; see Bell, John C. Jr., New Deal Fairy Tales (Philadelphia, Pa.: published by the author, 1936).Google Scholar

10. For FSA photographs, see Stott, William, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973)Google Scholar, who cites the Soyers' work as similar in mood to documentary photography (p. 103).

11. The most extreme statement of this argument is Gelber, Steven M., “The Irony of San Francisco's ‘Commie Art’: An Artistic and Political Appraisal,” City of San Francisco, 10 (02 4, 1976)Google Scholar, especially the plates and plate captions on pp. 25 and passim, and p. 37. See also Gelber, Steven, “The New Deal and Public Art in California,” in New Deal Art: California (Santa Clara, Calif.: de Saisset Art Gallery, Univ. of Santa Clara, 1976), pp. 69–70Google Scholar. Francis O'Connor, in his introduction to this Santa Clara exhibition catalogue, responds to Gelber's assertions (p. 12).

12. Holger Cahill's “American Resources in the Arts,” chosen by O'Connor as the foreword to Art for the Millions, is a prime example of the populist rhetoric of project administrators, pp. 33–44. See also the text of the 1933 letter from George Biddle to Franklin D. Roosevelt, generally thought to be the inspiration for New Deal programs in the visual arts, in Biddle, George, An American Artist's Story (Boston: Little, Brown, 1939), p. 268.Google Scholar

13. Holger Cahill, introduction to New Horizons in American Art (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936), p. 32.Google Scholar

14. Watson, Forbes, “A Perspective of American Murals,” in Bruce, Edward and Watson, Forbes, Art in Federal Buildings (Washington, D.C.: Art in Federal Buildings, 1936), I, p. 4.Google Scholar

15. Contreras, Belisario, “The New Deal Treasury Department Art Programs and the American Artist: 1933 to 1943,” diss. American University, 1967, pp. 339–40Google Scholar, provides the relevant statistics.

16. This observation is substantiated by examination of Record Group 121 in the National Archives, related photographic files, and lists of Section mural titles through 1941 published by American Art Annual, 35 (1941)Google Scholar. See also the observations of Park, Marlene and Markowitz, Gerald E., New Deal for Art (Hamilton, N.Y.: Gallery Association of New York State, 1977), p. 39.Google Scholar

17. Contreras, , “New Deal Treasury Department Art Programs,” pp. 218–19.Google Scholar

18. Marling, Karal Ann, “Federal Patronage and the Woodstock Colony,” diss. Bryn Mawr College, 1971, p. 474.Google Scholar

19. Section of Fine Arts, “Exhibition of Preliminary Sketches for Murals,” cited in Park and Markowitz, New Deal for Art, p. 37.Google Scholar

20. These works are by Earley, Mary (Down-Rent War, ca. 1845, 1940Google Scholar), Blanch, Lucile (Osceola Holding Informal Court, 1938Google Scholar), and Jones, Wendell (First Pulpit in Granville, 1938).Google Scholar

21. O'Connor, , Art for the Millions, p. 21.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 20.

23. Ibid., pp. 20–21.

24. Susman, Warren, ed., Culture and Commitment, 1929–1945 (New York: George Braziller, 1973), p. 1.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., pp. 6–7. Like O'Connor, Susman (pp. 20–21) refers to WPA programs for collecting historical and folk material as functions of the quest for a usable past.

26. The phrase was used in a derogatory way by artist Stuart Davis, among others. See O'Connor, , Art for the Millions, p. 23.Google Scholar

27. Wendell Jones, untitled article in the Woodstock, N.Y., Overlook, 11 4, 1938, p. 1.Google Scholar

28. “Efforts of Mrs. Hite Secure Inclusion of Rees Figure in Post Office Mural,” Granville, Times, 08 18, 1938, p. 3Google Scholar. See also Marling, , “Federal Patronage,” pp. 463–68.Google Scholar

29. J. E. Zollers, Director of Procurement, Treasury Department, quoting Forbes Watson in a letter to the Honorable William A. Ashbrook, cited in the Granville Times, 08 18, 1938, p. 3.Google Scholar

30. Gelber, Steven, City of San Francisco, 10 (02 4, 1976), p. 37.Google Scholar

31. Jones, Wendell, “Article of Faith,” Magazine of Art, 33 (10 1940), 554.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., pp. 556–68.

33. Ibid., pp. 557–59.

34. Wingert, Paul S., Primitive Art, Its Traditions and Styles (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian, 1962), p. 30.Google Scholar

35. Marling, , “Federal Patronage,” pp. 499–508.Google Scholar

36. For example:

37. Susman, , ed., Culture and Commitment, plate 27b, p. 369.Google Scholar

38. Adams, James Truslow, “1789–1939: A Nation Rises,”Google Scholar New York Times, March 5, 1939, World's Fair supplement, p. 7.

39. See This Fabulous Century (New York: Time-Life Books, 1969), IV, plate on p. 275.Google Scholar

40. The Official Guide Book of the New York World's Fair (New York: Exposition Publications, 1939), p. 41.Google Scholar

41. Stott, , Documentary Expression and Thirties America, p xi.Google Scholar

42. For this 1937 mural cycle by Hayes, see Park, and Markowitz, , New Deal for Art, p. 161.Google Scholar

43. Sontag, Susan, “Notes on Camp,” in Against Interpretation (New York: Dell, 1969), pp. 277–93Google Scholar, analyzes artistic modes in which form subsumes content. The Try Ion and Perisphere were probably so entertaining in 1939—as they are today—because of this unbalance.

44. Quoted by Kasson, John F., in Civilizing the Machine, Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776–1900 (New York: Penguin Books 1977), p. 109.Google Scholar