Art in the Age of the New Deal

Catalog description

In this course we examine art in the age of the New Deal; that is, the art of the 1920's and the 1930's, with a particular emphasis on the artwork produced through the programs of the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal. These programs sponsored the visual arts, as well as film, theater, literature, music, and dance. We study the art produced through this sponsorship in the context of the evolution of twentieth century modernism, mostly European, that had begun to influence American art. We will look at the stylistic and ideological affinities of the figurative style, known as the American scene, with the Mexican muralists of the 1920's and examine other government-sponsored social realist art of the 1930's, notably German and Russian.