Twenty five percent of the labor force was unemployed. Once-busy cities were grinding to a stop.

Roosevelt worked to rally a demoralized people with his inaugural address: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

The New Deal put the U.S. on the road to recovery. Business which suffered a $2 billion loss in 1932 had a $5 billion profit in 1936, but labor was still behind (5 million people were out of work) and totalitarian regimes were gaining power abroad.

Many artists rejected fashionable, intellectual abstractions; they wanted to paint perfectly real, recognizable subjects.

- American Scene painters emphasized virtues of idealized rural past

The latter included Ben Shahn, Raphael. Moses and Isaac Sover, Reginald Marsh, Philip Evergood, Peter Blume, Jack Levine and George Tooker.

From 1933 on, artists were assisted by variety of government bureaus: Farm Security Administration, Federal Housing Administration and especially Works Progress Administration.

architects: design housing projects

photographers: record tragedies of ruined farmers and eroded land

writers: record state and regional histories

composers and playwrights: produce symphonies and plays for people who previously had known only second-hand recorded music and movies

painters: cover walls of public buildings with murals, supply pictures for small-town museums, schools, traveling exhibits

Murals illustrated familiar scenes appropriate to their settings in bus and airline terminals. radio stations, schools, housing projects: trains pulling into stations, crowds at work, events in history of transportation and communication. Unfortunately, many were destroyed or painted over. The artists were influenced by

The latter influence involved:
1- vigor of style
2- protest against economic and social injustice
3- images strong in allegorical or religious meaning

American artists became convinced art should serve higher purpose.

The WPA made important contributions even though few murals or other art of any consequence have survived. It radically altered the relationship of art and artist with the art audience and society. Effects of the WPA included:

1) no formal distinction between abstract and
representational art - both equally "American."
2) opportunity to paint full-time - sense of professionalism.
3) providing materials and time - develop skills and
technique to new level.
4) throwing artists together - esprit de corps (brotherhood).
5) sponsorship of exhibitions and classes - aroused
consciousness of art throughout country.
6) murals for large walls - large-scale paintings of later
decades.

These artists sometimes took active roles in politics. In 1936 they organized the Artists' Congress dedicated to propagandizing antifascism.

One of principal themes involved the worker and his plight. Social Realism emerged from a graphic tradition of magazine illustration and poster art, sometimes consisting of little more than stylized drawing. Art was seen primarily as a means of communicating a social message.

American Scene: caricatures
Social Realists: cartoons

For some artists, the reality of the 1930s was too oppressive to deal with realistically, so they excaped to personal fantasy (such as Surrealists).

Social Realists believed that art was an integral part of society.

The artists came from a wide range of backgrounds, from exclusive prep schools and Ivy League universities to Jewish and black ghettos. Their styles were also different.