A People's Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice

by Nicolas Lampert

  The response to the call was overwhelming: 360 artists attended the congress, and 600 would sign up as members by the end of the year. The February 15, 1936, congress was extended from a one-day event to a three-day event—a public gathering at Town Hall at 123 West Forty-Third Street, followed by two days of closed sessions at the New School for Social Research, where attendees broke into individual sessions, read papers, debated tactics, and learned from one another’s ideas and experiences.

  Artists from twenty-eight states and three other countries—Mexico, Peru, and Germany—were present at the conference. These included a delegation of twelve Mexican artists, including the famous muralists José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Both had crucial experience in organizing artists, forming radical art collectives, and producing publications. The Mexican Artists’ Union, Syndicate, and the revolutionary paper El Machete all pre-dated the Congress and served as a key model for their U.S. counterparts to learn from.

  Peppino Mangravite, “Aesthetic Freedom and the Artists’ Congress,” American Magazine of Art, April 1936

  At the end of the congress, members voted unanimously to establish a permanent organization. New York City was to be the base, with smaller chapters encouraged to start in other cities. The preamble for the congress listed six reasons for its formation, many of which echoed the Artists’ Union goals:

  1.to unite artists of all esthetic tendencies to enable them to attain their common cultural objectives;

  2.to establish closer relationships between the artist and the people and extend the influence of art as a force of enlightenment;

  3.to advocate and uphold permanent Governmental support for the advancement of American art;

  4.to support other organized groups on issues of mutual interest in an effort to develop and maintain conditions favorable to art and human existence;

  5.to oppose all reactionary attempts to curtail democratic rights and freedom of expression [in the United States] and all tendencies that lead to Fascism;

  6.to oppose war and prevent the establishment of conditions that are conductive to the destruction of culture and detrimental to the progress of mankind.2

  While the Artists’ Union’s goal was to primarily advocate for a Federal Art Bill and to serve as a mediator between WPA-FAP employees and administrators, the American Artists’ Congress had a global agenda: to combat the rise of fascism and the threat of world war. The Congress took aim at the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, and right-wing, reactionary politics in the United States.

  The unstated goal of the congress was to support the Popular Front mandate—the 1935 shift in international Communist strategy that aimed to create a united front against fascism. This mandate, however, was not stated in the widely disseminated call to attend the congress, but an earlier draft of the call read:

  The first Workers State: the Soviet Union, has instituted cultural activities on a scale unknown in history. All creative workers there are free from the deadening threat of economic insecurity and all art trends are encouraged. The artist must realize his interests in the fight carried on by the Soviet Union against Fascism.3

  A number of presenters at the congress also stood in solidarity with the Soviet Union and its artists, most notably in the papers “An Artist’s Experience in the Soviet Union” by Margaret Bourke-White and “Status of the Artist in the U.S.S.R.” by Louis Lozowick.

  Sol Horn, “[Stuart] Davis at work on a canvas for the Federal Art Project,” ca. 1939 (digital ID# 2053, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

  However, an affiliation with CP USA or Communist campaigns was not a prerequisite to joining the congress. The congress, much like the Artists’ Union, reached out to a wide range of Left and progressive artists, some with ties to CP USA, many without.4 The expectation was that the artists invited to the congress were well known and respected in their field. This was not an organization for amateur or emerging artists. Stuart Davis noted in his address “Why an Artists’ Congress?” at the Town Hall event:

  The members of this Congress who have come together to discuss their problems in the light of the pressing social issues of the day are representative of the most progressive forces in American Art today. The applicants for membership were accepted on the basis of their representative power, which simply means that they had already achieved a degree of recognition and esteem as artists in the spheres in which they function.5

  Davis concluded with objectives for the congress:

  To realize them, we plan to form a permanent organization on a national scale. It will not be affiliated with any political group or clique of sectarian opinion. It will be an organization of artists which will be alert to take action on all issues vital to the continued free functioning of the artist . . . It will be a strengthening element to the whole field of progressive organization against War and Fascism. It will be another obstacle to the reactionary forces which would rob us of our liberties.6

  Davis then turned the stage over to addresses by Rockwell Kent, Joe Jones, Aaron Douglas, Margaret Bourke-White, Paul Manship, George Biddle, Heywood Broun, Francis J. Gorman, and Peter Blume.

  Aaron Douglas’s talk, in particular, stood out in terms of its criticality. In the talk entitled “The Negro in American Culture,” Douglas—a celebrated Harlem Renaissance painter and graphic artist—began by highlighting the achievements by other black artists, musicians, actresses, and actors, as well as the economic and social conditions that they faced. He followed with a critique of how museums had shut out black artists and ignored black subject matter in exhibitions. He then segued to a critique of how white radical artists employed black imagery in simplistic ways—cutting words to Douglas’s largely white audience. “It is when we come to revolutionary art that we find the Negro sincerely represented, but here the portrayal is too frequently automatic, perfunctory, and arbitrary,” he declared. “He becomes a proletarian prop, a symbol, vague and abstract.”7 Douglas portrayed white radical artists as out of touch with the black community and critiqued the congress itself—an organization that lacked racial and gender diversity and placed leadership roles largely in the hands of white men, mirroring the racial and gender inequalities in American society. However, Douglas also complimented his audience: “Revolutionary art should be praised, however, for pointing a way and striking a vital blow at discrimination and segregation, the chief breeding ground of Fascism.”8

  The closed sessions at the New School for Social Research continued the debate. These sessions focused on three themes: “The Artist in Society,” “Problems of the American Artist,” and “Economic Problems of the American Artist.” It concluded with “Reports and Resolutions of Delegates and Permanent Organization.” In these sessions, delegates listened and responded to presentations, including discussions on the federal art projects: “Government in Art” by Arnold Friedman, “Municipal Art Center” by Harry Gottlieb, “Artists’ Union Report” by Boris Gorelick, “The Rental Policy” by Katherine Schmidt; reports on the rise of fascism: “Art in Fascist Italy” by Margaret Duroc, “Fascism, War, and the Artist” by Hugo Gellert; and reports from the Mexican delegation: “The Mexican Experience in Art” by David Alfaro Siqueiros, and “General Report of the Mexican Delegation to the American Artists’ Congress” by José Clemente Orozco.9

  Orozco’s report was particularly important, for he summarized some of the previous conversations that had taken place at the Congress in Mexico. Orozco stressed that it was essential for artists to organize into trade unions and to link up with other working-class organizations. Moreover, he argued that trade unions, not the government, should be the primary backers to fund working-class art. In this scenario, artists and artists’ organizations would provide cultural services to trade unions—theatre productions, books, lectures, mural decorations—and in turn, the trade unions would financially support the artists. Orozco envisioned a scenario where trade unions had a cultural component and part of the
union dues would include the purchasing of “cultural stamps” that would fund artists to create work.10

  Combined, all of these presentations set an agenda for artists to organize around and to form new alliances. The congress concluded with the formation of an executive committee of fifty-seven members, with Stuart Davis serving as the national executive secretary.

  Max Weber was selected as the chairperson. Other branches were formed in Cleveland, St. Louis, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Members were asked to pay $2 in annual dues. In the months that followed the Congress, reports were mailed out to keep the members informed of upcoming events. One internal report to members, written by Davis, signified their role:

  The Artists’ Congress has a cultural function, which is to promote the welfare of the artist and to increase the public understanding of the place of art in modern society. It is because of this purpose that it is necessary to fight relentlessly all the reactionary forces, wherever and in whatever form they appear, forces which would assign to the artist the role of sterile follower of tradition, or make him the propaganda instrument of a reactionary social force like Fascism.11

  In a message aimed at the apolitical artist, it concluded:

  To the artist who still insists that he is only interested in art and does not want to be annoyed by other matters, it is necessary to point out that we too are interested primarily in art, but we realize that the creation of important art is a social phenomenon and does not begin and end in the studio of the artist.12

  Paper Politics

  Momentum from the February 1936 congress carried over to staging group exhibitions. From 1935 to 1941, the congress organized twenty-two exhibitions, highlighted by a number of print shows that were staged in multiple cities.13

  In 1936, the congress organized America Today, where artists were invited to submit upward of three black-and-white ten-by-fourteen-inch prints relevant to the title of the show. Those selected were then asked to pull thirty copies of their image so that America Today could open simultaneously in thirty cities during the month of December. Alex R. Stavenitz wrote in the show’s catalog: “The American Artists’ Congress is attempting to help the artist reach a public comparable in size to that of the book and motion picture, and to bring the artist and public closer together by making the print relevant to the life of the people, and financially accessible to the person of small means.”14

  Harry Sternberg, “Industrial Landscape,” lithograph, 1934, (Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs, The New York Public Library)

  This same model was applied to In Defense of World Democracy: Dedicated to the Peoples of Spain and China, which was exhibited from December 15 to December 30, 1937, in simultaneous cities: New York City, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Cedar Rapids (Iowa), New Orleans, St. Louis, and Portland (Oregon).

  Another show attempted to realize Stavenitz’s goal of art reaching an audience comparable to that of motion pictures. The 1936 exhibition Against War and Fascism: An International Exhibition of Cartoons, Drawings, and Prints was exhibited at the New School for Social Research and also filmed. Organizers reproduced the one hundred works in the show onto 35 mm film, making it available for rent or purchase.

  This facet of the show was incredibly innovative, but the print medium itself was also well suited for the large-scale dissemination of graphics. Congress member Harry Sternberg wrote, “No other medium has the adaptability of the print, which can be produced rapidly and inexpensively in large quantities, and can be widely distributed at low cost.”15

  He called upon artists to reject traditional ideas about printmaking:

  Unidentified photographer, “Elizabeth Olds at work, New York City,” 1937 (digital ID# 2309, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, courtesy of the Archives of American Art Wikimedia Partnership)

  The chief drag upon the development of the immense possibilities ready to hand in the print field today is the cult of rare prints. The fancy jargon of print connoisseurship is no more than a pretentious front for speculation with an artificial limited audience. Artists are induced to destroy their plates after pulling a ridiculously small number of proofs in order to appeal to the vanity of “connoisseurs,” interested only in having things that no one else has.16

  Sternberg’s solution: move away from small editions and choose techniques that would allow for the largest output of prints to be produced and disseminated. In turn, this would keep the cost of prints down so that working-class people could afford them.

  Other radical printmakers offered up similar advice. Elizabeth Olds, who joined the congress and was employed in the WPA-FAP Graphic Division, argued that the government could take an active role in disseminating prints. She advocated that the Government Printing Office “distribute original prints to public institutions and directly to the people along with its agricultural manuals and departmental reports.”17 The mass mailing of prints to citizens did not occur, but many prints did find their way into schools, libraries, hospitals, and housing projects, thanks to the WPA-FAP.

  Prints would also be featured at the A.C.A. Galleries, an epicenter for radical art in New York City at 52 West Eighth Street that was started by Herman Baron in 1932.18 In October 1936, the congress organized To Aid Democracy in Spain, which raised over $700 for Loyalist Spain. Three years later, the congress would help bring Picasso’s Guernica to New York City, where it debuted at the Valentine Gallery in May 1939, one month after the Spanish Republic had fallen. This event helped raise money for the refugees of the Spanish Civil War.19

  Resignations

  The Artists’ Congress staged their second mass gathering on December 17, 1937, at Carnegie Hall and featured presentations by Mayor LaGuardia, Max Weber, Philip Evergood, George Biddle, and others. Pablo Picasso was scheduled to phone in an address, but he had to cancel at the last minute due to an illness.

  However, momentum after this event would wane. Internal debates on whether to support international Communist policy, and the party line that came out of Moscow, began to tear the organization apart.

  Between August 1936 and March 1938, Stalin purged the Communist Party of dissenting voices in a series of group trials in Moscow. He then banned modern art in 1938 in favor of Socialist Realism—a stance that should have made artists in the United States, regardless of affiliation to the CP USA, tremble. On August 23, 1939, Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany, crushing the very reason behind a movement against fascism.

  Flyer for the American Artists Congress 2nd annual national convention public session, December 1937 (digital ID# 12949, Gerald Monroe research material, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

  Many Artists’ Congress members still defended the Soviet Union despite the numerous contradictions and the affront against many of the ideals that members stood by. Eventually, the CP USA issued a ban on public discussion on the infamous show trials in Moscow, and the May 1938 issue of New Masses published a document entitled “The Moscow Trials: A Statement by American Progressives” in which more than one hundred artists (including congress members Stuart Davis, Philip Evergood, Hugo Gellert, Harry Gottlieb, William Gropper, Paul Strand, Max Weber, Elizabeth Olds, and Louis Lozowick) justified some of the purges. Helen Langa writes that the article “sought to persuade readers not to condemn them [show trials]. It praised the accomplishments of the Soviet government, offered reasons for believing that the accused were guilty, and linked these explanations with the need to attack fascism both internationally and in America.”20 A year later, in August, many of the same artists, Davis excluded, signed a letter printed in the Daily Worker insisting that Russia was not spiraling downward into a totalitarian state.21

  However, defending the Soviet Union’s reputation became much more difficult after Stalin signed the nonaggression treaty with Hitler and invaded Finland. These actions shocked many CP USA members and sympathizers, yet some continued to stand behind the party line and were not openly critical. Th
is silence or tacit support resulted in a field day for their critics, who ridiculed them as Stalinist apologists. Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg (art historians who would eventually become synonymous with promoting abstract expressionism and artists moving away from political themes) signed a letter, along with Meyer Schapiro and others, in the summer 1939 issue of the Partisan Review that blasted these artists’ support of Soviet policy. At first, Congress leadership tried to avoid public discussion of the issue. Stuart Davis explained that the group would focus solely on cultural issues.

  Avoiding the issue proved impossible after the Hoover Committee for Finnish Relief (directed by former president Hoover) asked the congress for a donation. Within the congress, Schapiro directly challenged the leadership to address whether the organization stood behind Stalin’s attack of Finland. This led to further stalling and finally a measure was put forth by the printmaker Lynd Ward that the congress should remain neutral on the Finnish issue (although he personally voiced support for the German Soviet Pact and the invasion of Finland). Additionally, Ward argued that the United States should remain neutral in the crisis of war looming in Europe.22 Ward’s measure passed 125 to 12 and led to numerous resignations within the congress, with members accusing the organization of following a Stalinist line. Davis resigned in a letter to the Congress board on April 5, 1940, followed by around thirty other members over the following two weeks. In response, those who left formed the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. The Artists’ Congress carried on for a few more years but lost much of its membership and its clout, finally folding in 1942.

  The congress, despite its divisions, represented an intense period of artists organizing, and showcased the important role of artists contributing their talents to solidarity movements, both nationally and internationally. As a result, the public began to view artists and their role in society differently, and artists began to see themselves differently as well. The notion of artists as bohemian outcasts, a common label during the pre–World War I cultural movements, was fading. In its place a new identity—one much more tied to the working class—was forged, an identity that would be severely tested during the Second Red Scare, World War II, and its aftermath.