Early Modern

 

        The Great Depression happened during 1929 to 1939 and was a economic crisis where the whole world got impacted. A market bubble bursted on October 24, 1929 and the whole stock market crashed. The biggest effects from this were widespread unemployment, homelessness, and a significant decrease in the standard of living. A new president, Franklin Roosevelt, got elected 1933 with the agenda to start new employment programs and increase the standard of living again for the Americans. Through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), many artists were a part of employment programs around the whole United States. Two years later, Roosevelt created the Federal Arts Project (FAP) where the agency tried to administer more artist employment programs, federal art commissions, and community art centers. Roosevelt believed that art fostered pride in the American culture and history. 

Photographer: Unknown

        As previously mentioned, it was a very tough time during The Great Depression with increased unemployment and so on. After a while where friends and family were still unemployed and lived a worse life than before The Great Depression, people had enough and started to show their anger towards the government and presidency. This photograph shows many artists out demonstrating against the leaders of the country to start employment programs for the artists around the United States. This photograph was taken before 1933 where Roosevelt got elected. This was essentially also the starting point, after many demonstrations from artists around the whole United States, showing their frustration with the leaders, where Roosevelt started employment programs through agencies such as WPA and FAP. 

        My first reaction watching this photograph is that the artists still look in a good mood where they are smiling, even though I believe they are frustrated since they are demonstrating for the cause of themselves. The photograph is in black white which adds another level of depression in my eyes, even though it was impossible to get colors during this time. I like this picture and the meaning behind it, since the artists are fighting for their own careers here, showing that they are not pleased and will not accept how they were treated at the time. We can see that Roosevelt got impacted by this since he started specific employment programs for artists which help them a lot. 

Thomas Hart-Benton, Departure of the Joads

        Thomas Hart-Benton was a major American artist that lived from 1889-1975. His paintings were and are famous for illustrating normal people doing common things in life. It was both landscape paintings as well as scenes of people at work in farms, in the factory, or people in busy cities. 

        This painting is, as the two photographs in black and white which caught my eye right away. I am guessing that Hart-Benton wanted to express the dark times that were happening here during The Great Depression where many people lost their jobs, and the overall United States economy were down bad. The painting is a scene where we can see people working at a farm, which Hart-Benton was known for. 

        Hart-Benton became the leader of a movement in American art called regionalism which meant that he based his art on personal observation where he showed working people across America, He made common people into heroes and usually gave them big bodies with lots of muscles, using deep and rich colors which increased the effect of this. We can see a good example of a common scene in the painting Departure of the Joads. Personally, I like this painting and I would believe that if I was American, a painting like this illustrating your own people being the hero in a painting, I would gladly own a piece of this art work. Since I am not American, I find it more difficult to connect to the painting, even though I can see the meaning and background to it. 

Photographer: Dorothea Lange

        Dorothea Lange is one of the best-known women photographers ever and also one of the most influential photographers of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). In this photograph, we can see migrant agricultural workers in Nipomo, California. She captured this image of struggling migrant workers and I find a lot of emotions in this photo. 

    Lange was witnessing a lot of things in her life in which she captured with photographs, and I believe she found the difficult beauty and power in what he witnessed. In this photograph, it is clear to me that she was a great photographer after seeing some of her photos from the Depression era when I see the struggle the woman in the photograph is going through. It feels like I can see and feel the emotions this woman was feeling during this time, thanks to face expression and how Lange captured a perfect moment with eye contact into the camera. 

    Overall, I would say that The Great Depression had a great influence on art during this time because of the New Deal programs and employment programs that created opportunities, funding, and space to work out new cultural forms for the artists. This was clearly a tough time for the American people, and that is something I can visualize from the painting and the two photographs because of the black and white colors in the painting, where Hart-Benton tried to express the dark times that the Americans were going through during this time. In the photographs, especially the one taken by Lange, I can see the sadness in the woman's eyes and a lot of emotions in the photograph. 

Sources:

History.com Editors. “Artists of the New Deal.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 13 Sept. 2017, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/artists-of-the-new-deal.

“Art and the Great Depression.” Great Depression, https://www.nga.gov/learn/teachers/lessons-activities/uncovering-america/great-depression.html.