1. American Social Realism
by Carolyn Scharf and Tori Berels

2. “The [American] Social Realists gave the Depression a
face, an identity that has endured.”

3. History
Stems from European Realism
• based off of Industrial
Revolution conditions and
concerns surrounding them
• Key artists: Gustave Courbet,
Jean-Francois Millet, etc.
Art form made famous by USSR
• Used as political propaganda

4. American Social Realism
• An art movement consisting of realist artists who draw
attention to living conditions and lifestyles of urban, lower-
class citizens
• Criticizes social and political structures
• Artists focus on issues such as:
• Unemployment, poverty, political corruption/injustice,
labor-management conflict and “excess of American
materialism

5. Timeline of Social Realism
• Industrialization- Children working in factories
• Immigration- Living conditions in urban areas
• Great Depression
• Post World War II- more commercialized version during
Civil Rights

6. The Ashcan School
• 1900’s realist artists
challenging American
impressionists
• realistically portrayed
how the city and working
class lived
• Robert Henri (1865-
1929)- mentor to Ashcan
painters
• George Luks
• William
Glackens
• Everett Shinn
• John Sloan
• George Bellows
Paddy at the Met
(1908) George Bellows

7. The Ashcan School
• “Ashcan” comes from George Bellow’s painting “Disappointments of an Ash Can”
• The ‘school’ consists of urban realists who supported Henri’s mantra “Art for Life’s Sake”
• Interested in studying societal activities
• Not social critics or reformers
• Avoided civil unease and class tensions
• Selective of subjects and scenery during unsettling times in American society

8. John Sloan• * The Sixth Avenue Elevated atThird Street (1928)
John Sloan

9. Jacob Riis
• Danish native, originally a
police reporter
• Wrote How the Other
Half Lives
• showed desperate and
squalid conditions of
immigrant America
• Gave motivation for
sanitation reform
• “Children of the Poor
(1892)
• Had little hope in the
government to reform
“Untitled”- How the Other Half Lives
Jacob Riis

10. Lewis Hine• Photographer who
expressed social
concerns (social
documentarist)
• Worked for
National Child
Labor Committee
• Exposed urban
scenes of immigrant
children
• Led to stricter child
labor laws in the
1930’s and 40’s
“Untitled”-Lewis
Hine

11. Sacco andVanzetti (1927)
Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn
• Ben Shahn encompassed the idea that artists could
change the way people view socio-economic issues
and injustices
• During the Sacco andVanzetti trial, his work hit
home by focusing on “not so thought about”
aspects of political decisions

12. Diego Rivera
• Native of Mexico
• A Marxist
• Used Italian fresco painting methods, chosen art form- social
inequality
• Incorporated relationship between nature and industry, technology
and the past
• Used walls of public places as a medium for his art (murals)
Detroit Industry Murals
-Diego Rivera, DIA

13. “An artist is above all a human being, profoundly
human to the core. If the artist can’t feel everything
that humanity fuels, if the artist isn’t capable of loving
until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if
necessary, if he won’t put down his magic brush and
had the fight against the oppressor, then he isn’t a
great artist.” -Diego Rivera

14. • Led to reinvention of public art in the US
• Led to the Federal Art Program of the 1930s
• “Craftsman at the service of the community”
• Initiated government reform in the 1930’s with FDR
• Federal Art Project
• Works Progress Association
Diego Rivera
Detroit
Industry
Murals-
Diego
Rivera,
DIA

15. Diego Rivera- Projects• 1930
• American
Stock
Exchange
Luncheon
Club
• California
School of Fine
Arts
• Showed
working
class
problems
Allegory of
California (1931)
-Diego Rivera

16. Diego Rivera
• controversial
• 1933
• Man at Crossroads for the Rockefellers
• also controversial

17. Rivera and the End of Social
Realism
• Less sought after in the 1940’s with the rise of
Cubism, DADA, and Surrealism because of fleeing
European immigrants.

18. Dorothea Lange • After Crash of 1929-
Focused on social
realism and
photography
• Joined the Farm
Security Admin- a
group of
photographers who
took pictures of
migrant workers
• Documented
internment of Japanese
Americans during
WWII
Migrant Mother
(1936)
Dorothea Lange

19. Dorothea Lange
• Methods
• talked to people about their
lives
• wanted natural photos of
them
• shows an overall atmosphere
rather than single events
• “White Angel Breadline” (1929) put
her in the national spotlight.

20. Federal Government
Involvement
Federal Art Project of the Works Progress
Association
Employed by FDR from 1929 to 1943
Led to the start of community art centers.
Employed artists during Great Depression
Government wanted to combine art and
patriotism to lift spirits during hard times.

21. • Section of Painting and Sculpture- government made a
department to give Americans jobs by choosing art to be put on
buildings, such as murals
• Public Works of Art- hired artists with the New Deal- first
program of its type. (1933-1934)
• Federal Art Project- project lasting from 1935-1943 which
helped make 200,000 pieces in the forms of murals, posters,
paintings.
Public Art Works
Heroic Consumerism

22. Materials and Methods
• Paintings
• Murals
• Photography
• Sculptures (mostly done by federal
government)
• Propaganda
• cartoons
• poetry
•
“We Can Do It!” -J. Howard
Miller
(Rosie the Riveter)

23. Public Reaction
• Public Supported- wanted reform
• Reacted to: cruelty of industrialization, materialism,
commercialization, control of federal government,
(economic) prejudice/inequality.
• Government Reaction- suppressed the art, later used as a public
service program to turn art into an industry

24. Literature
• Sister Carrie-Theodore Dreiser (1900)
• about a Midwestern girl who becomes a
prostitute in Chicago
• Wasn’t distributed widely because of the
subject matter, and the realistic portrayal.
• Carrie isn’t punished for her
lifestyle, differing from literature of
the time.

25. “Chicago” by Carl
Sandburg
HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,

26. Literature
• The Grapes ofWrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
• migrant family moves to California
where they still face bad luck
• written during the Depression- a public
and critical success
• Technique- features the Joad family, and
then talks about nameless migrant
families.

27. The Grapes of Wrath Film (1940)
• Incredibly popular and successful
Al Joad:Ain't you gonna look back, Ma? Give the ol' place a last look?
Ma Joad:We're going' to California, ain't we? All right then let's go to
California.
Al Joad:That don't sound like you, Ma.You never was like that before.
Ma Joad: I never had my house pushed over before. Never had my family
stuck out on the road. Never had to lose everything I had in life.
• Quote shows the attitude of the time.

28. Grapes of Wrath Film Clip
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zNfpLJV6dw
• Clip shows the attitude during the Depression and the
impact of it based on the times.