An editorial by the artist Philip Evergood (1901 - 1973) who believed that the Federal Arts Project of the Thirties had not simply made the lives of artists a little better but has also created a far better society: "The Federal Arts Project has pointed the way to an American Culture. It has set a weight in motion, it has let loose a force that has affected hundreds of thousands of lives. It has made murals depicting the history of our country and the lives of our people have been placed on the walls of our schools, hospitals, libraries and public buildings making them of greater beauty and of greater community interest - monuments and small sculpture have been added in equal numbers, easel paintings and prints now hang in thousands on the walls of public buildings..." Evergood likened this government funding to the Renaissance, when the church served as the artist's patron and culture flourished. Click here if you would like to read a 1939 article about the closing of the Federal arts funding program.
Click here to read a 1942 article by Rockwell Kent on the proper roll of American artists during wartime. An art review of the American painter, Grant Wood (1891 – 1942), and his efforts to illustrate a 1935 children's book titled Farm on the Hill . Wood, a reigning member of the Regionalism School in American art, had come into the public eye some six years earlier with the creation of his painting, "American Gothic, is quoted in this article concerning his creative process and the importance his vision of Iowa plays while painting: "...Mr Wood seceded from the neo-meditationists of Paris because when he began to meditate he realized that 'all the really good ideas I'd ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.'" Click here to read a 1942 article by Rockwell Kent on the proper roll of American artists during wartime. A late Thirties art review of Paul Cadmus (1906 - 1999), one of the finest and most scandalous artists of the W.P.A.:
"Paul Cadmus was thrust into national prominence at the age of 26 when his canvas, 'The Fleets In', painted for PWAP in 1933, stirred up a storm of protest. Since then controversies have dogged his art but with them has come recognition...Like the contemporary writers Thomas Wolfe and Aldous Huxley the reaction of Cadmus against present day 'civilization' is one of repulsion tinged with hatred. This note of protest seems to be the battle cry of the younger generation of artists and writers. Mrs Overdressed Middle class to be viewed by the public..." An art review concerning a 1936 Brooklyn Museum exhibit of woodcut prints by avant-garde German, Russian and French artists. The reviewer details how the medium was rediscovered. "Before Franz Marc (1880 – 1916) was killed in the war he strengthened woodcut design in his departure from pretty and representational decoration toward more rugged abstraction...Almost all of these German, Russian and Frenchmen have concentrated their attention on human life. There is no pretty landscape, no picturesque architectural rendering, no still life, no sporting print. Froma a few prints the actual human form has been abstracted. One of these by Wassily Kandinsky 'looks like a diagram of the contents of a madman's waste basket'. The rest of the prints are chiefly tragic, mostly pitiful, occasionally derisive comments on the failure of man as an animal." A quick read on the subject of that uneasy union that existed between art and industry during the 1930s. References are made to the work of muralists Dunbar D. Beck (1902-1986), Arthur Watkins Crisp (1881 - 1974), Kenneth B. Loomis, Charles S. Dean and Charles Louis Goeller (1901 - 1955). Here is a petite notice that appeared in a 1915 issue of VANITY FAIR heralding a new portrait by the British painter William Orpen (1878 - 1931), which depicted the likeness of a popular American stage actress Mrs. Oscar Lewisohn (Edna May Pettie 1878 - 1948). The anonymous reviewer compared the portrait styles of Orpen with that of London's reigning portrait painter, John Singer Sargent: "Sargent had a way of showing his sitters as they didn't think they looked. On the other hand, Orpen has a trick of making his sitters look like what they would like to be." | 
