WPA/FAP

so i've been checking to both borders and barnes and noble almost daily to see if they have the new ReadyMADE issue in stock. it's obsessive, i know, but i've been trying to figure out what kind of bed/apt ware that i want-i am moving this week! (p.s. i will have a room!) so that said, i finally picked up a copy today and while i found no inspiration for my bed (my elusive ideal bed.... maybe i should just hang a definition of a bed where my bed should be and just go back to the couch), i did find some interesting posters. 5 graphic designers were commissioned , by the magazine, to look at some WPA/New Deal posters and create one referential to our time/current financial/environmental meltdown. i'm sure most of you are aware of this, but i was not: part of the New Deal included the FAP (Federal Art Projects)- which commissioned artists to create poster/murals to instill optimism in the public and offer slogans of change. all i could think of were obama posters and how he's become this jesus christ/fdr figure to us.

and all cynicism aside, change is needed. however much a buzzword that may be (runner-up to "progress").

i wrote my contemporary art research paper, a while back, on a specific muralist, but spent quite a bit of time researching populist murals. both murals and posters (and relevant to our time-graphic design) are for the people, regardless of class-they aren't meant to be covered in glassine, tucked away in a box and archived until it is sold someday at an auction at Christie's. Nor are they hung inside a towering office building representative of not missing a step when it comes to accumulating wealth. if anything, they would be painted on the outside of the building. the streets become the gallery of the people. i like prints (in the traditional sense) though. and i like painting. but that's not the point. the point is, who is it for? the FAP did support painters ,though, such as Jacob Lawrence, Philip Guston, Pollock, and Lee Krasner. surely, the work of those artists have at one point or another been sold for multi-millions at an auction house. i'm mostly interested, though, in the notion that FDR found it necessary to keep the artists as an important part of the New Deal, and what they found important to display to and for the public.




below, i have posted some WPA/FAP posters- the goal was to focus on nationalism ( my feelings on nationalism are another discussion ) and what each region/state had to offer, also encouraging travel, work safety, venereal disease awareness, basic health, art and education:










i'm not too excited by the idea of creating propaganda pieces, but sounds like a great idea for helping artists in the financial crisis that was the Great Depression.