A01=Jennifer McComas
A32=Jody Patterson
abstract mural
abstract painter
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american art
art for public housing
Author_Jennifer McComas
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brightly colored painting
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Category=AGC
COP=United States
cubism
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eskenazi museum
famous painting
federal art project
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Format_Hardback
housing project
Language_English
mural
new york mural
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political art
preparatory sketches
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single artwork
softlaunch
williamsburg
WPA commission
Product details
- ISBN 9780300250671
- Format: Hardback
- Dimensions: 241 x 279mm
- Publication Date: 08 Sep 2020
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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An insightful study of the progressive politics animating a great work of modernist mural painting
In 1936 the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project commissioned Stuart Davis (1892–1964) to paint a mural for the Williamsburg Houses, a New York City housing project. Though the mural, Swing Landscape, was never installed in its intended location, it survives as an impressive testament to Davis’s energetic, colorful brand of abstraction and the progressive politics that animated it. This study explores the painting, one of the greatest of twentieth-century America and arguably Davis’s most ambitious work.
This book challenges the prevailing tendency to separate Davis’s leftist activism from his art and contextualizes Swing Landscape within 1930s abstract mural painting in New York, emphasizing the politics of abstraction. The book also offers the first comprehensive look at the Williamsburg mural commission, including works by Willem de Kooning, Ilya Bolotowsky, and others. The result is an indispensable resource on interwar modernism, mural painting, and urban development.
Published in association with the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
(February 5–May 22, 2022)
In 1936 the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project commissioned Stuart Davis (1892–1964) to paint a mural for the Williamsburg Houses, a New York City housing project. Though the mural, Swing Landscape, was never installed in its intended location, it survives as an impressive testament to Davis’s energetic, colorful brand of abstraction and the progressive politics that animated it. This study explores the painting, one of the greatest of twentieth-century America and arguably Davis’s most ambitious work.
This book challenges the prevailing tendency to separate Davis’s leftist activism from his art and contextualizes Swing Landscape within 1930s abstract mural painting in New York, emphasizing the politics of abstraction. The book also offers the first comprehensive look at the Williamsburg mural commission, including works by Willem de Kooning, Ilya Bolotowsky, and others. The result is an indispensable resource on interwar modernism, mural painting, and urban development.
Published in association with the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Exhibition Schedule:
(February 5–May 22, 2022)
Jennifer McComas is curator of European and American art at the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University. Jody Patterson is associate professor and Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Chair of Art History at Ohio State University.
