One of the Great Depression artists was called Morris Kantor. He was born in Russia and he came up with a painting called Baseball at Night. He used a style that depicted a dusty competition in West Nyack, New York. This style was in such a way that it might provoke nostalgia in some audiences today. The other artist during this period is Earle Richardson. He came up with a work called Employment of Negroes in Agriculture. This work was done to show stylized group of pickers in a farm of what appears suspiciously like cotton balls sold in a drugstore. On the other hand, the abstract expression artist includes Max Weber. Weber came up with Still Life (1991). This work incorporates the essential elements of Cubism through the multiple points of view and flattened pictorial space. This can be witnessed in the draped background, which is portrayed as a combination of objects in the foreground. Max Weber adopted the practically monochromatic palette of early Cubism
The Great Depression caused a lot of social unrest among people. The Federal Emergency Relief Act, a model of the New Deal work relief program started to help the poor workers. The Federal officials were hesitant to include artists in the beneficiary program. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized Harry Hopkins to include the artists in the program. As a result, the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was introduced in the country. Artists were hired to produce paintings, crafts, and sculptures, and murals for government buildings all over the country. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) later became the successor of PWAP. The program helped an artist such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. The government wanted the artists to paint images of the American scene at that moment. Therefore, the artists
transformed industrial scenes, landscapes, and cityscapes by the yard, for instance, gold mines, lumber mills, and harbors.
Types of Artworks
Some paintings portrayed the state of people who did not have enough money when three quarters of the people in the country were employed. For instance, Filling the Ice House is an incredible artwork by Harry Gottlieb which shows how men from New York wielded pikes skid blocks of ice alongside wooden chutes. On the other hand, Morris Kantor painted a town that had come together to watch a baseball game. The painting is called Baseball at Night. In the political arena, Jacob Getlar Smith painted a spectacular painting indicating the different classes that existed in the society. Snow Shovellers, Jacob’s painting, displays how unemployed men trekked to make a few cents by clearing park pathways.
The WPA had three main agendas for hiring artists and writers during the Great Depression era. Apart from raising their standards of living, the government wanted to create a national culture that would unite people. The government provided jobs for different artists to recreate the American scene in their paintings. The program also aimed to explore the consequences of government interventions concerned with the standardization and the development of the American culture. They wanted to compare the different artworks of artists and construct a tangible American culture.
Emergence of Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism is a type of painting that transition from traditional processes to utilize unconventional materials including house paint. It is regarded as an advanced mode of painting since its ideas originate in media like sculpture and drawing. In 1919, Abstract
Expressionism was associated Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian artist. The term became popular in the Post WW II and associated with American Art. In 1929, Alfred Barr, an American citizen, was the first to use the term.
Surrealism and Cubism influenced the two main groups of Abstract Expressionism. They include Gestural Painters and Color Field Painters. In Color Field Painters: Clyfford Still, Barnett, and Mark Rothko used unified blocks of color to make their paintings. The Gestural Painters: Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Hofmann utilized Surrealist methods of automatic art. These artists’ works focused on the dynamic, energy gesture rather than a reflective, mind focus, which emphasized on a field of colors.The images were basically in abstract mode. Cubism occurred between 1900 and 1925. It is during the early years of the 20th century. Most of the hallowed principles of conventional or traditional plastic art were swept away by cubism, which triggered an experimentation wave in sculpture. The sculptors of this period rejected representational art in favor of new movement and new abstract expressions of space. This new movement was synonymous with the use of non-conventional materials that had never been used before. The most important influences during this period were the 1917 Russian Revolution as well as World War I, which took place between 1914 and 1918. These events triggered such movements as Constructivism and Dada. There was the start of the production of the works of art by modern artists who made sculptures using found objects like readymades. This reflected new design concepts and new icons like machine (Ruhrberg & Walther, 2000). Surelism occurred 1925 and 1960. It is the era of the mid-20s. During this period, Dada was replaced by Surrealism. Surrealism turned to be a very influential movement which brought together geometric abstraction and classical realism. There was the exploration of new forms of organic abstraction by other sculptors of the 20th century. There was also the pioneering of
kinetic motion and mobile sculpture on both sides of the Atlantic. There was no emergence of a school of sculpture after World War II either in Paris or New York to compare or match with the Abstract Expressionism, the leading painting style. However, there was significant originality, mostly in the use of materials as well as a growing atmosphere of conceptualism. There was the emergence of assemblage art, which was made often from industrial junk. It involved multi-media works that combined sculpture, collage, painting as well as other forms of modern art (Boström, et al., 2008).
Distinction of Abstract Expressionism and The Great Depression’s Artwork
Abstract Expressionism was created in the context of different sources and inspirations to make paintings. Abstract Expressionists focused on creating artwork depicting the dark side of men after the post war period. On the other hand, of the Great depression era focused on regionalism and social realism. The Great Depression also facilitated the introduction of the Work Progress Administration that gave artists jobs to improve their quality of life.
Abstract Expressionist Artist
Abstract expressionism advanced in the context of diverse, inspirations and overlapping sources. Most young artists who are young started being expressionists in 1930's. Two art movements did not do well including, regionalism and social realism. The two changes did not satisfy the artists desire to find something which made sense about social responsibility. The great disappointment did not yield the promotion of government relief programs as required. Works progress administration (WPA), was the program's, it allowed many Americans to participate, leading to artists establishing a career path. However, this was exposure to European modernism which set the stage for most advanced American arts.