618
DANIEL AARON
ately naturalistic" conventions adhered to by both the Left and com–
mercial theater. Unfortunately the brilliant experiments of Houseman
and Welles cut no ice with congressmen who grudgingly tolerated the
Federal Theatre Project as a temporary relief measure while never
ceasing to regard it as a haven for boondogglers and subversives. The
Mercury Theatre, despite its brilliant stage and radio successes, could
not survive (so the
Times
reported) "the cost of repertory and the
egotism of its directors."
The New Deal Art Projects, the subject of Francis V. O'Connor's
Anthology
0/
Memoirs,
provoked less official animosity than the Federal
Theatre did, but the recollecting contributors agree that artists, too,
had to cope with unsympathetic government representatives and a hos–
tile press. To be sure the WPA enabled the muralists, easel painters,
sculptors, and art teachers, in many cases, to preserve and develop their
skills as well as to eat, but to their paymasters, the advancement of art
was inadvertent. Work relief for the artist, in their eyes, had only an
economic purpose. In return for his government check, the "hobohemian
chiseler" ought to be grateful and not bite the hands of his donors. He
should work regular hours (inspectors saw to that) , strive for excellence
and originality, avoid controversy, and produce work in sufficient quan–
tities to justify his keep.
The ten contributors were attached at one time or another during
the 1930s to various federal arts projects and to programs supported by
the State of New York and New York City. They remember those
miserable and happy days with a certain nostalgia and collectively
reject the popularly held notion that government-sponsored art of the
1930s was perpetrated by bad and justly forgotten artists. Their essays
suggest that the opposite was true - fine artists produced fine work.
Acknowledging the red tape and pettiness of officialdom, they contend
that the Art Projects broke the hold of gentility on museums and art
schools while creating a new audience for American artists; fostered
important developments in the techniques of mural and easel painting
and in the graphic arts; provided opportunities for artists of differing
and often warring schools to experiment and to discover their own
mediums and styles and to express what they saw, felt, and knew.
All of this and more can be extracted from the autobiographical
essays which together comprise a detailed survey of the art program
between 1933 and 1943. It is a complicated story (the Treasury Depart–
ment alone directed three distinct operations) , but the anthology's
emphasis is quite properly on the WPA's Federal Art Project. Separate
chapters are given to mural painting, easel painting, sculpture, graphics,
the Index of American Design, artists' organizations, the abstract artists,
