Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s

Rudnick, Allison, with contributions by Kirsten Pai Buick, Max Fraser, and Rachel Mustalish (2023)

This title is in print.

Publication Details

Description

American art in the 1930s—intertwined with the political, social, and economic tumult of an era not so unlike our own—engaged with the public amid global upheaval. This publication examines the search for artistic identity in the United States from the stock market crash of 1929 that began the Great Depression to the closure of the Works Progress Administration in 1943 with a focus on the unprecedented dissemination of art and ideas brought about by new technology and government programs. During this time of civil, economic, and social unrest, artists transmitted political ideas and propaganda through a wide range of media, including paintings and sculptures, but also journals, prints, textiles, postcards, and other objects that would have been widely collected, experienced, or encountered. Insightful essays discuss but go beyond the era’s best-known creators, such as Thomas Hart Benton, Walker Evans, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe, to highlight artists who have received little scholarly attention, including women and artists of color as well as designers and illustrators. Emphasizing the contributions of the Black Popular Front and Leftist movements while acknowledging competing visions of the country through the lenses of race, gender, and class, Art for the Millions is a timely look at art in the United States made by and for its people.

Table of contents

Director’s Foreword
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Lenders to the Exhibition
Note to the Reader

Shifting Politics and the Visual Culture of the 1930s
Allison Rudnick

“We Artists Must Act”: Left-wing Artists and the Great Depression
Max Fraser

Representational Activism and the Committee for the Negro in the Arts
Kirsten Pai Buick

Materials, Identity, and Independence
Rachel Mustalish

PLATES
Leftist Politics and Labor
Cultural Nationalisms
The Promise of Progress

Notes
List of Plates
Selected Bibliography
Index
Photography Credits

About the authors

Allison Rudnick is associate curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Related Titles

Titles by thematic category (207)

American Art, 20th Century

Titles by author (9)

Kirsten Pai Buick

Max Fraser

Rachel Mustalish

Allison Rudnick

Related Content

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (11)

Essays (9)

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and His Circle

Charles Sheeler (1883–1965)

Design, 1925–50

Early Documentary Photography

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986)

Kodak and the Rise of Amateur Photography

Photography and Everyday Life in America, 1945–60

Precisionism

Walker Evans (1903–1975)

Timelines (2)

Central Europe (Austria, Germany, and Switzerland) 1900 A.D.–present

The United States and Canada, 1900 A.D.–present

Exhibition

Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s

September 7–December 10, 2023

The 1930s was a decade of political and social upheaval in the United States, and the art and visual culture of the time reflected the unsettled environment. Americans searched for their cultural identity during the Great Depression, a period marked by divisive politics, threats to democracy, and intensified social activism, including a powerful labor movement. Featuring more than 100 works from The Met collection and several lenders, this exhibition explores how artists expressed political messages and ideologies through a range of media, from paintings, sculptures, prints, and photographs to film, dance, decorative arts, fashion, and ephemera.

Highlights include paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and Stuart Davis; prints by Elizabeth Olds, Dox Thrash, and Riva Helfond; photographs by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange; footage of Martha Graham’s dance Frontier; and more, providing an unprecedented overview of the era’s sociopolitical landscape.