The New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Memoirs

From dust jacket notes: "Between 1933 and 1943 the course of art in America was profoundly influenced by the New Deal art projects. Out of the misery and despair thrust upon creative artists by the Depression grew the need for sustained public support of the visual arts. Under a variety of 'alphabet soup' labels - WPA, PWAP, TRAP - thousands of artists found in the patronage of the federal government the freedom to create, and to preserve their skills. Among them were names now associated with the 1930s - Ben Shahn, Jack Levine, Peter Hurd, William Gropper, Reginald Marsh - and others, such as Jackson Pollock, David Smith, Mark Rothko, and Philip Guston, who succeeded during the 1940s and 1950s in putting America on the map as an international art center. It has been there ever since. For this wide-ranging collection of memoirs, Francis V. O'Connor has assembled contributors who were active participants in the art programs of the New Deal. They recall with vivid narration, humorous anecdotes, and the wisdom and nostalgia of experience a watershed in America art. The sixty-three black and white illustrations were chosen to fill the visual needs of each memoir and constitute by themselves the first extensive pictorial anthology of the art of the Projects...."