An extensive investigation of the U.S. communist publications New Masses,
Art Front, and The Daily Worker
gives this collection of political art real context and bite, and provides an invaluable resource for students of the era's cultural criticism. A British scholar who has written about art in the context of 19th-century urban culture and bourgeois society, Hemingway explores exhibitions at John Reed Clubs and the Whitney Museum, and provides an in-depth analysis of the New Deal's art projects. Anecdotal histories of feuds between artist and editor Stuart Davis and critic Charles Humboldt and a section on the controversy over Anton Refregier murals at the Rincon Annex Post Office in San Francisco (depicting labor struggles) are generously illustrated. Painters Alice Neel, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine, Robert Gwathmey and Anthony Toney are well-represented here; Philip Evergood's Dream Catch
and Raphael Soyer's Nude in Studio
look great. Hemingway's aim here is not formalist criticism—of the four pages devoted to Refregier's murals, one paragraph addresses the work on artistic grounds. (Nov.)
FYI:Documenting the preservation and history of 437 murals,
Art for the People: The Rediscovery of Progressive- and WPA-Era Murals in the Chicago Public Schools, 1904–1943, by Chicago Conservation Center vice president Heather Becker, is due in January and features over 250 illustrations, many in color. (Chronicle, $45 248p ISBN 0-8118-3640-1; $29.95 paper -3579-0)
