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PARTISAN REVIEW
the French avant-garde. They believed in representational art that
the man in the street could appreciate and rejected the modern idea
of an initiated "happy few." Benton's insistence that art was a politi–
cal statement impressed Pollock, which made it more difficult for
him to make the transition to a more private and subjective art. The
means by which he made this transition was through the art that had
inspired Benton-that of the Mexican muralists. Their images, al–
though representational, were not naturalistic or even for that matter
realistic.
Before it arrived in the United States, the idea of modern wall
painting had to travel from Paris to Mexico. There the new revolu–
tionary government began a program of public art patronage in
1922. In their ambitious fresco cycles, Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros
and others replaced the neo-Platonic geometry of Mondrian and the
modern graphic style of Leger with images illustrating the history of
Mexico and celebrating the culture and religion of its Indian popula–
tion. They based their art not on Cubism but on Renaissance proto–
types . Their iconography was pointedly both ethnic and Marxist. Its
objects were clearly as much moral as, if not more than, aesthetic.
They believed in art as propaganda.
Although its stated purpose was not such, the W.P.A. Art
Project was also basically a propaganda vehicle for the New Deal.
There were no official directives regarding subject matter. However,
not surprisingly, the iconography of the W.P.A. murals was fre–
quently that of the New Deal itself: the work of building and rebuild–
ing America. The murals celebrated the labor of the worker on the
farm and in the factory. Their iconography was, unlike that of the
Mexican muralists who portrayed fat, greedy capitalists, rarely criti–
calor satiric, but instead optimistic and supportive of working peo–
ple generally. Criticism and satire were left to political cartoonists .
Rarely did they appear in easel paintings and never, as far as one
can ascertain, did a critical dimension find its way into murals,
which were subject to greater control because they were public art
works.
Painting people at work, the artist identified with the public at
large . The artist's job, creating art for the people, seemed necessary
and dignified. That one could live from one's art gave it a new status
in the eyes of the artist as well as in the eyes of fellow Americans,
most of whom came into contact with art for the first time as a result
of the W.P.A. educational programs. The principal subject matter
of the murals was the optimistic theme of man's progress through the