Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938

By Francis Booth

'How wonderful is the field of the history of art. How much work there is here for us Communists.'

Lenin to Lunacharsky

 

History is written by the winners and art history is no exception. The winners in America's history of art are the abstract painters who, subsidised by the CIA from the early 1940s, showed the world the avant garde art American democracy and freedom could produce. The losers were the artists working in the figurative tradition, who were seen from then on as old-fashioned and derivative. And the artists who had political leanings have been virtually erased from the story of American art. I would like to try to put them back.

 

From the late 1920s to the late 1930s, many artists in America became radicalised and moved politically to the far left. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 created extreme poverty, especially in rural America, culminating in the Dustbowl of 1934, immortalised in writing by Steinbeck and others but forgotten in art history. Many artists embraced the idea of revolution and determined to become revolutionary artists, some travelling to the Soviet Union, some fighting in the Spanish Civil War, all wanting to use their art to serve a revolutionary cause. The main aim of this book is to answer the question: what made a revolutionary artist?

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wu Wei Press
• Release date: Jul 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227226495

Francis Booth

As well as Maeterlinck's Marionettes, Francis Booth is the author of several books on twentieth century culture: Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1960 (published by Dalkey Archive) Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938 No Direction Home: The Uncanny In Literature Text Acts: Twentieth Century Literary Eroticism Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant Garde A Girl Named Vera Can Never Tell A Lie: The Fiction of Vera Caspary Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-20th Century Woman's Novel Francis is also the author of two novel series: The Code 17 series, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s and featuring aristocratic spy Lady Laura Summers Young adult fantasy series The Watchers

Book preview

1. background

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introduction

History is written by the winners and art history is no exception. The winners in America’s history of art are the abstract painters who, subsidised by the CIA from the early 1940s[1], showed the world the avant garde art American democracy and freedom could produce. The losers were the artists working in the figurative tradition, who were seen from then on as old-fashioned and derivative. And the artists who had political leanings have been virtually erased from the story of American art. I would like to try to put them back.

From the late 1920s to the late 1930s, many artists in America became radicalised and moved politically to the far left. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 created extreme poverty, especially in rural America, culminating in the Dustbowl of 1934, immortalised in writing by Steinbeck and others but forgotten in art history. Many artists embraced the idea of revolution and determined to become revolutionary artists, some travelling to the Soviet Union, some fighting in the Spanish Civil War, all wanting to use their art to serve a revolutionary cause. The main aim of this book is to answer the question: what made a revolutionary artist?

The 1920s are often portrayed as the Golden Age in America but in fact the decade saw appalling poverty in rural areas and among textile and mine workers. There were also several celebrated examples of American injustice, racism, prejudice against the foreign-born and anti-Semitism. Many artists and intellectuals were both Jewish and foreign-born and in the late 1920s even those who were not had sympathy for their causes. Artists and writers became radicalised by several famous causes and became involved in both organising and portraying them: the strikes and attendant police brutality at the Passaic textile works in 1926 and the various miners’ strikes starting in 1927/28 with their attendant starvation and police brutality;

Also of deep concern to artists were the 1927 trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists executed in Massachusetts in 1927 for involvement in a bomb incident; the Scottsboro Boys case, where a group of black teenagers were accused in 1931 of raping two white girls; the attempts to free Tom Mooney and Warren Billings - labour organisers held unjustly in jail since 1916 - and Angelo Herndon, a black labour agitator jailed in 1932. Above all the continuing horror of lynching all exposed the racism and anti-worker bias in American justice and drove writers and artists to protest.

By 1932 the Depression had started to affect the whole of society. Capitalism seemed to have failed, while the Soviet Union seemed to be booming under Communism. In Europe, Fascism had taken hold in Italy and Germany, and artists, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jews and dissidents were being victimised. The situation in Spain was also growing worrying. It seemed to the intellectuals that traditional liberal progressivism had failed: the intellectual had to choose between Fascism and Communism. A group of prominent intellectuals signed an open letter[2] to the ‘Intellectual Workers of America’ advocating they vote for the communist party’s candidates Foster and Ford in the forthcoming presidential election. Many did, despite the Communist Party’s hard-line ‘third period’ stance (from 1928-1932) which excluded fellow travellers and branded socialists as ‘social-fascists’.

The Communist Party of the USA[3] became well represented in the arts and literature - so much so that many writers and artists even came to believe that they would be disadvantaged if they were not members of the Party. Despite this, by 1935 the Communist movement worldwide had realised that its rejection of ‘social fascists’ was counter-productive and launched the Popular Front to welcome fellow travellers from the broad left. In the art world this had some success, as artists’ groups like the Artists Union and American Artists Congress could become affiliated with the left without joining the Party. However, it also meant that the explicitly communist John Reed Clubs, which had done so much to bring together, exhibit, promote and teach young, working-class artists and writers, together with their publications, were shut down.

By 1936 many intellectuals had started to worry about the persecution of Trotsky, who was popular in America and about Stalin’s behaviour; the exposure of the Moscow Trials soon helped drive away all but the hardliners. Then in 1939, the Hitler/Stalin pact drove the final nail into the coffin of American Communism as a home for the majority of artists and intellectuals. The opposition Communism/Fascism, which in the early 1930s had seemed so important became the opposition totalitarian/democratic. Communism became associated with un-Americanism  and remained so until the end of the Cold War[4].

There have been several histories of the left wing intellectuals involved in this period, but from the point of view of the history of art they share certain problems which this book will try to address:

1.  They generally do not cover visual art[5].

2. Most of the secondary sources rely heavily on the later autobiographical writings of the protagonists[6], some of which were written during the Cold War, when many of the intellectuals like Wilson, Hicks, Phillips and Rahv who were closely associated with Communism either denied they had ever been associated with it, ignored this period altogether, or predated their ‘conversion’ away from Communism.

There are also many histories of the art of the New Deal[7], but these do not generally cover any of the left wing activities of the artists, who naturally hid them to get accepted on the New Deal projects.

This study will therefore be based entirely on a wide reading of the original sources of left wing art and criticism in the period without reliance on any later or secondary sources. For works originally written in other languages, like the works of the Russian revolutionaries, only those which were available in the U.S. and translated into English at the time and therefore available to the artists and critics concerned will be considered.

sources

The main source for the ideas and images in this book is the magazine New Masses. This was the leading left wing journal of the time, both in terms of its circulation, which reached 25,000 in 1934, and its status as an authority. Although its exact links with the Communist Party of the U.S.A. and in Russia varied and were not always clear it was widely regarded as carrying the ‘official’ views of the Party.[8] New Masses was formed in 1926[9] as a continuation of the Liberator (1918-1924), which itself was the continuation of the Masses, which had run from 1911 to 1917 before being shut down by the government[10].

Michael Gold, the leading voice of the far left and the main driving force behind New Masses for much of its life defined well the moment in the late 1920s at which American intellectuals moved towards to the left. He nodded to the bohemian heritage of the Masses but said that ‘there is no doubt that the Russian Revolution has brought a wiser, harder intellect into being; and this intellect cannot accept the muddle of individualism and Communism that appeared in the Masses pages.’[11]

New Masses went through several phases: in the early days, from May 1926 until 1928, it shared the original bohemianism of the old Masses; it was radical rather than revolutionary and open to all kinds of radical thought. The first few issues were large and expensively produced with colour, and much of the art was not explicitly political. From mid-1928 Mike Gold was sole editor, and he followed the communist ‘third period’ hard line. The art also became more political under Hugo Gellert’s art editorship. From 1934, when Partisan Review was spun off to cover cultural issues (though it never carried any artwork), New Masses became a purely political weekly and even though it remained an illustrated magazine, the amount of art declined dramatically (even the covers were not illustrated after the end of 1934), until 1937, when more illustrations began to appear again.

magazines

However, despite the prominence of the New Masses there were many other outlets for artists which I want to look at. Almost nothing has ever been published about the revolutionary art and criticism contained in these sources.

For the left wing or socially-concerned artist, writer and worker the mainstream presses were mostly closed – many major newspapers were owned by Randolph Hearst, a major hate figure for the left, and most publishers would not touch Marxist literature. In any case, most of these artists and critics would not want to be associated with them. Also, many artists on the left either refused or were unable to work for the various government New Deal art programmes, and when they did there was censorship. Many socially-aware artists also refused to be involved in the ‘fine art’ marketplace and the gallery system, both  public and private (even if it would have them) and satirised it mercilessly. Nevertheless, there were several sources of and outlets for work (unpaid – most of the magazines did not pay for contributions), advice and inspiration.

There were several magazines, of varying degrees of political commitment,  which represented the left in art and criticism in this period [12]. Called by Robert Minor (a leading cartoonist on the Masses) ‘the poor man’s art gallery’, they were the most prominent outlets for art work.

daily worker[13]

This was the main organ of the Communist Party, published in Chicago from 1924. Its staff cartoonists included Fred Ellis and Jacob Burck. It did not cover artistic issues, though Mike Gold wrote a regular Thursday column that often covered culture.

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international literature

This was the journal of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers, formed after the Kharkov Conference and originally called Literature of the World Revolution. It was published in three languages in four cities: Moscow; London; New York and Berlin. It had an International Board, of which several New Masses editors were members, and mainly published critical works by Russian authors, though it covered and sometimes illustrated art and had an international section.

art front

The journal of the Artists Union, with, among others, Hugo Gellert and Stuart Davis on the editorial board, this was more concerned with the conditions of artists than with theory or general politics, though it did include some theoretical pieces and some illustrations.

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john reed club magazines

The origins of Partisan Review are disputed, but it was formed in 1934, probably by Joseph Freeman[14] and others from New Masses who wanted a magazine to represent the John Reed Club of New York[15] to handle cultural issues so the New Masses could concentrate on politics. It briefly merged with Jack Conroy’s poetry magazine Anvil then closed in 1936, reforming in 1937 as a left-liberal journal which took an anti-Stalinist stance. John Reed Clubs in other cities also had their own magazines.

modern quarterly/modern monthly

This was founded and edited throughout its life by the extremely prolific V.F. Calverton as a vehicle for his own views, which were radical but not exclusively Marxist: he was as much interested in sexual liberation as political. During the mid-1930s it became anti-Stalinist and a rallying ground for Trotskyist views - Trotsky himself contributed as did Max Eastman, and Diego Rivera was listed as art editor, though it published almost no art.

new theatre

New Theatre  shared views and contributors with New Masses but with specialised coverage: Joseph Freeman contributed and introduced Charmion von Wiegand; Gropper and others designed covers.

dialectics

Published irregularly in the late 1930s by the ‘Critics Group’ a loose association of Marxist and party-oriented critics opposed to Trotskyism, Dialectics carried only theoretical articles and reprints of works by Russian authors. The Critics Group also published a series of book-length works of Marxist criticism around this time.

the left

This was a very short lived but influential journal of theory which included Calverton among its contributors.

new republic

The New Republic: A Journal of Opinion, published in New York weekly throughout the period. Although a liberal rather than a left journal, it included both Malcolm Cowley and Edmund Wilson as editors and contributors, who both tried in its pages to propound Marxist criticism.

african american magazines

Following the ‘Harlem Renaissance’ of the 1920s there was a flourishing literary and artistic movement among black Americans, though mainly centred on New York. However, black groups generally resisted being associated with Communists and their activities, though the reverse was far from true: the far left always associated itself with black causes wherever possible, and was committed to ending racism and anti-immigrant sentiments. (Hugo Gellert’s Capital in Lithographs for instance specifically confronts racism; Marx said that race was a false issue – the real issue was class; the working class of one race or country had no quarrel with that of another.) Very few black artists and writers appeared in New Masses or joined the John Reed Clubs.

books

Although the far left had an outlet in International Publishers, connected to the Party through its head, Alexander Trachtenberg, very few book length works of criticism or theory appeared. Calverton published several books and pamphlets, but the only other book length attempts to set out and American Marxist criticism are Granville Hicks’s The Great Tradition and James T. Farrell’s A Note on Literary Criticism. Kunitz and Lozowick’s book about Soviet art, Voices of October, was almost the only book available in America at the time to treat Soviet art in depth. Several artists managed to produce illustrated books at a time when many working people, especially the foreign born, would not have been able to read English well or at all. Hugo Gellert’s Capital in Lithographs made Marx understandable, his Aesop Said So rewrote and illustrated Aesop’s fables as anti-capitalist, and Comrade Gulliver rewrote Gulliver’s Travels as a satire on the strangeness of American capitalist society.

Art Young also satirised capitalist America, showing it as Hell, using Dante as Gellert used Swift. Young also produced a Socialist Primer for workers.

In a similar vein, artists like William Gropper and Jacob Burck illustrated socialist pamphlets for workers.

Phil Bard and William Siegel wrote works on social themes almost entirely in pictures, some of them designed specifically for young people.