Unemployed

The artist and teacher Claude Flight promoted linocuts – a relief printing method that utilized the quotidian material of linoleum—as a technique　that reflected the goals of the modern era. Not only would they employ a modern aesthetic, linocuts, he argued, could be sold at a price on a par with other consumer items aimed at a mass audience. Flight also believed artists should respond to the contemporary world in their subject matter. Unemployed and its companion Employed reflect his support for socialism as well as provide commentary on the global economic depression. In 1932, the nadir of what was known as the "Great Slump," almost three million people were jobless in Britain; unemployment numbers would stay above a million until the first year of the Second World War. Unemployed contains a group of men and women workers with children and animals in tow carrying a large banner with a red rectangle. Unified, they stride forward and face off against the all-male group in Employed, whose ceremonial uniforms and rigidity give the impression that the figures are toy soldiers from another era.