Federal art and national culture

by Harris, Jonathan

Federal Art and National Culture examines the role of the visual arts in the United States during the 1930s. Analyzing the Federal Art Project, a New Deal agency that organized workers in programs designed to put the unemployed back to work, it draws on theories of the state, cultural production and ideology as they pertain to Roosevelt's social agenda. This study also considers visual art of the Depression years in the context of a broader American culture, at a time when radical politics of the Left and Right were rampant. It engages, moreover, in debates over modernism and modernity in culture and the visual arts.