For Bread Alone

The extent of federal art patronage in the U.S. from 1933 to 1943 would have made even the Medicis blush. Known mainly for its major program, the Works Progress Administration, Government benevolence kept artists, among others, alive during the Depression not only by the dole, but by work. In fact, it changed an era that otherwise could have been barren of artistic achievement into a germinal decade.

In eight years, WPA alone produced 18,800 sculptures, 108,000 easel paintings, 11,300 original prints, and 2,500 murals for public buildings. At its peak, it employed some 5,000 artists. As a current exhibition of 83 works at the University of Maryland's art gallery shows, the U.S. got quite a bit for its money.

Sweatshops & Justice. Federal support of art got its start when George Biddle, now 81, an artist and Harvard law graduate, urged President Roosevelt to sponsor mural painting with a Government program similar to that in Mexico. F.D.R. was interested, but, he cautioned Biddle, he did not want "a lot of young enthusiasts painting Lenin's head on the Justice Building." Nonetheless, many of the program's finest murals contained notes of social protest. Even Biddle titled his own fresco for the Justice Building The Sweatshop and Tenement of Yesterday Can Be the Life Planned with Justice of Tomorrow.

Much that looked like social protest turned into a protest against the canons of art. Jackson Pollock, once a disciple of Thomas Hart Benton, turned out drab American factory scenes and landscapes in his search for a new style, later went on to produce his famous drip paintings. Adolph Gottlieb, another abstract expressionist who won first prize at the 1963 Sao Paulo Bienal, had to be content in 1939 to win a commission for a mural in the Yerington, Nev., post office.

Out of the Shadow. There were boondoggles and bad work. A WPA supervisor named George K. Gombarts was put in charge of remodeling a condemned building into a free art school. After a couple of months, his office was finished, including stained-glass windows and a tapestry of a knight in shining armor. The knight was George K. Gombarts.

Federal patronage hardly produced a renaissance in painting. But as murals turned up in post offices in Anadarko, Okla., Corning, Iowa, or Hartselle, Ala., a nation woke up to art. During the period, such artists as Rockwell Kent, Reginald Marsh and Grant Wood became popular favorites. In their shadow, other figures such as Ad Reinhardt, Arshile Gorky and Willem deKooning were learning and living under the same program. For the first time in U.S. history, the artist was not only officially recognized, but also Government approved.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.