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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
In the early 1930s, a significant number of American artists who were aligned, either practically or theoretically, with the Communist Party became supporters of the New Deal. Artist members of the John Reed Club, a Party-directed cultural organization, were enjoined to develop “revolutionary art” as a vehicle for the type of social change that had transformed tsarist Russia into the Soviet Union. Yet many of them found Roosevelt's “peaceful revolution” worthy of the highest accolade they could bestow on a subject: its inclusion as an affirmative theme in their work. In so viewing it, they ran counter to the Party's stated policy in opposition to socioeconomic reform—a policy that was later reversed to accommodate the New Deal and thus vindicate the artists's position. From its inception, the New Deal seemed to offer artists an attractive alternative to the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions predicted by Marx and promulgated by the Communists.
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3. Taped interview with Anton Refregier, January 2, 1975. He recalls that founding artist members were Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, Fred Ellis, Louis Lozowick, Joseph Pass, and himself. I am grateful to Mr. Refregier for hi s comments and advice on this paper.
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17. Advertisements appeared in Art Front, the magazine of the Artists Union.
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22. From an unpublished history of the ACA Gallery by its director, Herman Baron, ACA Gallery papers, Archives of American Art, microfilm roll D304, frames 673–74.
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29. Taped interview with Max Spivak, December 19, 1974.
30. Ibid.
31. Interview with Frances Avery, August 13, 1972.
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33. Quoted in O'Connor, Francis V., Federal Support for the Visual Arts: The New Deal and Now (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1969), p. 96.Google Scholar
