1930s
1939 world's fair
A01=Jody Patterson
abstract art
abstraction
american art
american modernism
Author_Jody Patterson
Category=AFCM
Category=AGA
commissioned art
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fiorello la guardia
governent art
large scale painting
modernism
new deal
new york city
political art
public art
public mural
realism
urban history
wnyc
WPA
Product details
- ISBN 9780300241396
- Dimensions: 203 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 27 Oct 2020
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A mural renaissance swept the United States in the 1930s, propelled by the New Deal Federal Art Project and the popularity of Mexican muralism. Perhaps nowhere more than in New York City, murals became a crucial site for the development of abstract painting Artists such as Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Lee Krasner created ambitious works for the Williamsburg Housing Project, Floyd Bennett Field Airport, and the 1939 World’s Fair. Modernism for the Masses examines the public murals (realized and unrealized) of these and other abstract painters and the aesthetic controversy, political influence, and ideological warfare that surrounded them. Jody Patterson transforms standard narratives of modernism by reasserting the significance of the 1930s and explores the reasons for the omission of the mural’s history from chronicles of American art. Beautifully illustrated with the artists’ murals and little-known archival photographs, this book recovers the radical idea that modernist art was a vital part of everyday life.
Jody Patterson is Roy Lichtenstein Chair of Art History at Ohio State University.
