Work for artists: A Depression Era project with relevance today

Today’s informative and extremely interesting post is from Jill Dwyer. Jill writes:

Our cultural institutions across the country are closed in response to the current pandemic; and artists, particularly performance artists but others as well, have been and will continue to be affected economically, with loss of income for the foreseeable future. It is interesting to see how opportunities for productive work were provided to visual artists in a project undertaken in the United States during the Great Depression, as one of President D Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives. 

Under the auspices of the US Government’s Public Works of Art Project [PWAP] in 1933-4, succeeded by the Federal Art Project [FAP] administered by the Works Progress Administration [WPA] during 1935-42, relief projects focusing on the visual arts were introduced. There were similar initiatives covering music, writing and theatre. Paid work was provided for approximately 10,000 visual artists across the United States, with artworks generally made for the decoration of government buildings, schools, libraries and hospitals. Preferred themes were those with a contemporary or social relevance, with the aim not only to provide economic relief but also to boost morale. At its heart was the premise that art was not a luxury preserved for a cultural elite but had a broader relevance and value.         

The arts projects included a mural division and I have had an interest in this area, specifically as it pertained to San Francisco. San Francisco was committed to the idea of mural art. Diego Rivera’s reputation was established in San Francisco in the 1920s, prior to his arrival on the New York art scene in the 1930s. Californian artists and artist-teachers travelled to Mexico City to visit and work with him; and fresco and mural painting were part of the curriculum at the California School of Fine Arts [now the San Francisco Art Institute]. Many of the artists subsequently employed on relief projects were faculty or students past and present of the School. In 1931, Rivera was recruited to paint a mural in the School’s exhibition hall. [above] Thematically, it represents at once the construction of a city and the making of the mural itself. Rivera is at its centre, seen from the rear as he sits on the scaffold. A contemporary report in Time Magazine somewhat disrespectfully described him as ‘famed, fat and 40’, going about his work with his ‘plump posterior squashed comfortably down on a plank’. Ironically, Rivera, a professed communist, was also commissioned to make murals depicting California’s commercial progress in the luncheon room of San Francisco’s new Stock Exchange Building.   

A number of the murals made in the 1930s remain on view for visitors to San Francisco. Some have been recently restored, so let’s take a virtual tour and look at a few of them. On the first floor of the Beach Chalet (now Golden Gate Visitors’ Center) in Golden Gate Park is a fresco series titled San Francisco Life by Lucien Labaudt, depicting scenes around Golden Gate Park, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Marina and nearby Baker Beach. [above] Many of the artist’s family and friends are included in the frescoes, as well as identities of the San Francisco art world. Labaudt’s scenes are refreshingly optimistic, promoting a sense of wellbeing in simple communal activities, an antidote to the harsh realities of Depression life. The Beach Chalet Brewery and Restaurant is an essential stop today, where visitors can take in the murals and other amazing architectural features of this 1920s Spanish Revival style building; and enjoy a coffee, beer or cocktail, good food and fine ocean views.

Tower on Telegraph Hill is also accessible to the public and provides guided tours. The project there employed 26 artists and 19 assistants to paint 27 murals over an area of 3691 sq ft. Victor Artnautoff was foreman, while also undertaking his own work, City life, which presents scenes of urban and industrial activity around San Francisco. The general theme for the Coit Tower murals was labour and its depiction in urban, industrial and agricultural settings. In a work by John Langley Howard, one of the most devastating effects of the Great Depression is graphically illustrated in the desperate faces of the jobless as they queue in vain hope of work. [above] The murals by Howard, Artnautoff and several others were political by nature, with some controversially referencing communism. Maxine Albro, one of several women muralists employed on the project, presents a less pessimistic view in her Agriculture in California, a vibrantly coloured fresco showing women at work in commercial flower fields and other scenes of agricultural production. From the top of Coit Tower, there are panoramic views across San Francisco City and the Bay.

The majority of the artworks were created in realist styles, but some artists experimented with variants of more radical approaches moving towards abstraction, as at the Aquatic Park Bathhouse, an Art Deco building designed to resemble the upper stories of a ship. It is appropriately located at the San Francisco Maritime Museum. The interior decoration was supervised by Hilaire Hiler, who created an imaginary ocean world titled The lost continent of Atlantis and Mu. One panel shows stylised marine life pictured against an architectural background of curving stairs and archways. [below] On the outside, African American artist, Sargent Johnson, carved a low-relief frieze in slate for the front of the building, as well as making a glazed-tile mural with a maritime theme called Sea forms, which stretches across the rear façade. The Bathhouse and San Francisco Maritime Museum are open to the public. The views from the rear elevation of the Bathhouse are spectacular, across the water to Aquatic Park, San Francisco Bay and Alcatraz Island. 

As last stop on our virtual tour of murals in San Francisco, let’s have a look at what the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is offering later in the year. In association with a major retrospective, Diego Rivera’s America, SFMOMA will also feature in a stand-alone space the great muralist’s largest work, Pan American unity. It is the giant of all the San Francisco frescoes created in 1940 in front of a live audience at the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40. It is enormous, 22 feet high and 74 feet wide, constructed in fresco on ten movable panels. [below] Its formal title is equally impressive, The marriage of the artistic expression of the north and the south on this continent. In it, Rivera explores the dual themes of the industrial and technological advancements of the United States and the artistic achievements of the Indigenous people of the Americas, with real art requiring a ‘marriage’ or blending of the cultures. It is teeming with images of machinery, artists, inventors, labourers, Mexican deities and symbols, and San Francisco landmarks. The mural usually lives at the City College of San Francisco and will be on loan to SFMOMA into 2021 – probably too soon for any of us to see the exhibition in real time. Post-exhibition, the mural will return to its home in the Diego Rivera Theatre at the City College, where it is available for viewing with guided tours provided. Visit City College of San Francisco – Pan American Unity Mural at: