Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956
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.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.