1936: Meyer Schapiro, Art Front, and the Popular Front

PATRICIA HILLS

On November 27, 1935, Stuart Davis wrote to Meyer Schapiro soliciting an article for Art Front, the monthly magazine of the Artists' Union, then edited by Davis. 'I would be extremely pleased if you could find a way to propose an article on some topic within our general policy. A critical article on some outstanding figure in the field of art (who is in the news at the time of publication) would be very welcome.' Davis adds that he hopes Schapiro can attend an editorial meeting scheduled for the next day. Such meetings served as forums where ideas could be shared, attacked, debated, modified and tested out in practice, and Davis knew that Schapiro, as a Marxist polemicist, would contribute to the debates.1 Davis's invitation to Schapiro to become involved with Art Front came at a time, 1935-36, when the tactics of the Popular Front strategy of the Communist Party were still being worked out. The Artists' Union was firmly in the communist movement even if not all members were card-carrying Communists; the Union had, after all, been largely organized by Party members.2 By the end of 1935 Schapiro had also been immersed for several years in the movement: he had written Marxist analyses for New Masses as early as 1932, had voted the Communist Party ticket in the elections that year,3 and had lectured at the John Reed Club School of Art during the 1934-35 season.4 But a year later he had moved away from the Party. The strains in his relationship with the Artists' Union and the Party point not just to Schapiro's independent Marxist position, but they highlight some of the contradictions inherent in the Popular Front strategy. During 1935, the CPUSA, in line with the response of the Third International to fascist threats to the Soviet Union, called for a 'united front' - a broad alliance of the Communist Party with other democratic groups and parties to fight fascism.5 In the cultural field this meant that Party members and fellow-travellers would phase out the sectarian, proletarian culture organizations, such as the John Reed Clubs, and develop broadbased organizations of artists where leadership would be shared with non-Communists.6 The result was a wooing of nonCommunist writers and artists considered progressive without overtly recruiting them or otherwise making political demands on them. The two occasions created by the Party to do this were the American Writers' Congress, the first conference held by the League of American Writers in April 1935, and the American Artists' Congress, just then being planned by Davis and others for a conference

in February 1936.7 The two Congresses would both cultivate professional artists, in contrast to the John Reed Clubs which sought to erase distinctions between amateurs from working-class ranks and academically trained professionals. The editorial policies of Art Front reflected the coming to terms with this new strategy. At the time when Schapiro was being asked to submit an article, Davis and the active members of the editorial board were hammering out their ambitious plans to revamp the December 1935 issue into a more professional art magazine. Previously, from its first issue dated November 1934, Art Front had been an eight-page tabloid hawked at demonstrations called by the Artists' Committee for Action and the Artists' Union. It had provided a forum for union activities, had cheered on social content in art and had carried on a scrappy debate with Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry, whom, along with other Regionalists, they accused of 'self-glorification'.8I n contrast, the new version of Art Front was to be smaller in format, expanded to sixteen pages, contain better reproductions, and be more diverse in its articles. The new guidelines stated: Eachi ssueo f ArtF rontc ontainsr eportso f activitieso f the Union and similar groups throughout the country, critical articles on outstanding art events, articles by experts on the social and economic positions of the artists to day [sic], essays of opinion on esthetic directions, on the social significanceo f various' schools'o f art, critical analyses of outstanding figures in contemporary art,
articles on the technique and craft of painting, editorial comment and of course important drawings, reproductions and photographs.9

Davis, an incorrigible list-maker, enumerated issues 'which must be kept to the fore in Art Front', one of which was 'controversial articles by artists and critics
- not in A.U'.10

The decision by the editors of Art Front to feature contributors outside the Artists' Union - particularly men and women of well-known expertise - also conformed to the new Popular Front strategy. Schapiro would have been seen as a rising star. He taught at Columbia College and had written brilliantly on Romanesque sculpture as well as on the Post-impressionists; he would obviously lend stature to the revamped publication. Other major intellectuals and writers not in the Communist Party (at least not openly in the Party), were also invited to write, such as Lincoln Kirstein and Irwin Edman, professor of philosophy at Columbia. The artista Charmion von Wiegand, wife of New Masses editor Joseph Freeman, and Elizabeth McCausland, art critic for the Springfield(M assachusettsR) epublicanw ho wrote under the pen name 'Elizabeth Noble', had

both written for New Masses; they now began writing for Art Front as well. These, along with staff writers Harold Rosenberg, Joe Solman, and Clarence Weinstock, and frequent contributors Louis Lozowick, Jacob Kainen, Grace Clements and others, would make Art Front the most intellectually stimulating magazine of art and politics of the mid-1930s.1l Much has been written about the effects that the CP's Popular Front strategy had on the fellowtravellers, liberals, Lovestoneites, and Trotskyists of the period.12 Many of these began to accuse the Communist Party of selling out to capitalism when it toned down its talk of communist revolution and joined with the forces of Roosevelt's New Deal. To most Communists, on the other hand, it was a war measure, necessitated by the fact that the Soviet Union was having difficulty making strategic alliances with France, Great Britain and the United States.13 With the Popular Front strategy in place, Communist Parties of each nation could build support for the Soviet Union through citizen groups and professional organizations. Inevitably, problems arose when the Marxist rhetoric of Party functionaries began to accommodate too readily to a liberal and, in the United States, to a Democratic Party audience. For example, whereas Party Chairman Earl Browder still spoke of the 'class struggle' between workers and capitalists when he addressed the American Writers' Congress in April 1935, two years later, at the Second Congress of June 1937, he assured delegates that 'the two great warring camps' are democracy and fascism.14 Dissenting factions wanted something more radical - more Marxist than the mouthing of platitudes about bourgeois democracy and exhortations to support Roosevelt and the New Deal. It is against the background of these changes within the communist movement, at the moment when the Popular Front strategy was being implemented, that we should consider Schapiro's partisan, prescriptive criticism - that criticism which urges artists to action. He was an intellectual in the movement, active in artists' organizations such as the Artists' Union and the American Artists' Congress, but not committed to any line. For his independence, he obviously won the admiration of many artists. Moreover, artists did act on his suggestions. But in an era of realpolitikh e also opened himself to criticism by activist artists that he wasj ust an ivory tower scholar advancing 'left extremism' when circumstances called for pragmatism.15 Schapiro was one of many critics developing a prescriptive art criticism. The agitational thrust of partisan art criticism came out of the collective meetings of the early 1930s of the John Reed Clubs when Party members and fellow-travellers articulated

what it meant to be an intellectual. For example, one book project meeting of 1930, in which artist Louis Lozowick participated, outlined on paper the role of intellectuals: a. The intellectualc rystallizesf,o rmulatesa, nd interprets the motivating forces at work in any age. He thinks, writes, paints, etc. his feelings about the society in which he lives.b . In this sense, intellectualsa re the chroniclers and interpreteros f the movemento f events.c . They feel the currents and forces underlying movements before those currents and forces reach the surface, and through theira rtsa nd lettersb ringt hem to publica ttention.d . In a veryr eal sense,t hereforei,n tellectualsm ay be pioneers and forerunners.16 To Lozowick's committee, the tasks of American intellectuals are 'propaganda among the workers', 'helping the workers to articulate both their daily needs and their class goal', and 'filling strategic positions on the cultural front', which meant assuming leadership responsibilities of organizations and editorships of their publications. Clearly to Lozowick's group, the intellectual's role is to diagnose the current situation, to prescribe strategies and tactics for, in Lenin's words, 'what is to be done', and then to join cadres working for such goals.17 Through the early 1930s Lozowick and others in the communist movement had thoroughly internalized these principles, and hence prescriptive art criticism became the norm. Movement critics differed only in the degree to which each advocated stylistic imagination and experimentation and in the forcefulness with which each reminded the audience of the primacy of working-class concerns. Even into the Popular Front period of 1936, the term 'revolutionary artist' was still used with great enthusiasm, although the rhetoric of 'working-class revolution' was becoming more and more toned down by Party
members.18

Schapiro's earliest forays into prescriptive art criticism were his occasional pieces written in 1932, 1933, and 1934, for New Masses.19 Relevant to Schapiro's later Art Front articles was his review, written as 'John Kwait', for the February 1933 issue of New Masses that criticized the John Reed Club exhibition 'The Social Viewpoint in Art'.20 In Schapiro's analysis, the exhibition could not qualify as a success since, 'more than half the objects shown express no revolutionary ideas; and of the rest, only a few re-enact for the worker in simple, plastic language the crucial situations of his class'. Critical of the inclusion of Thomas Hart Benton, whose stereotypes of blacks he deplored, Schapiro added: 'Better to have a small show of twenty good, genuinely militant paintings than two hundred mixed works of unequal quality and of all shades of

social opinion.' To Schapiro the purpose of the exhibition should have been to encourage the artist 'to confront life and to ally himself with the workers', but instead the exhibition offered the artist 'no bearings, no technical aid, no definite model of action'. Although he wants to narrow the exhibition to message pictures, he would broaden the range of subjects to re-enact 'in a vivid, forceful manner the most important revolutionary situations', and would include the popular arts, including 'examples of cooperative work by artists - series of prints, with a connected content, for cheap circulation; cartoons for newspapers and magazines; posters; banners; signs; illustrations of slogans; historical pictures of the revolutionary tradition of America. Such pictures have a clear value in the fight for freedom'. To Schapiro the purpose of such an exhibition was persuasion: 'The good revolutionary picture is not necessarily a cartoon, but it should have the legibility and pointedness of a cartoon, and like the cartoon it should reach great masses of workers at little expense.' And he ends the article with the suggestion that the John Reed Club undertake the publication of a series of agitational prints. In fact, his article can be considered one of the best of the agitprop essays to be printed by New Masses. Not everyone responded favourably to Schapiro. In the April 1933 issue of New Masses, artist Jacob Burck, in an essay 'Sectarianism in Art', took 'Kwait' to task for his 'dangerous tendency to approach the problem of proletarian culture from a purely mechanical viewpoint without taking into account existing cultural conditions and traditions, and the problems they present to the revolutionary artist'.21 To Burck, Kwait/Schapiro misinterpreted the intention of the exhibition which was to show the range and uneven development of artists in the movement and to contrast Club members (who had their membership noted on the accompanying labels) to those, like Benton, who were not members. Burke then accuses 'Kwait' of 'extreme leftism', by taking the stance of a 'Marxian purist'. This, to Burck, shows the influence of Trotsky: Throughouth is entiret reatmento f this enterpriseo f the club therer unst he conceptt hat proletariana rt( painting and sculpture) must either await the final victory of the working class, or be abandoned as a peculiar bourgeois phenomenon, and that the only art suitable for the working class is agitational, i.e., 'cartoons, black and white prints,p osters,b anners,s igns, and illustrationso f slogans'. The idea is not new, of course. It comes very closet o the formulationT rotskym adei n his Literatuaren d Revolutioyne ars ago. Namely, that proletariana rt can exist only in a classless society. The fallacy of such a

positioni s now quite evidentt o any revolutionaryw ho has passedo ut of the cafeterias tageo f 'Marxism'.22 Burck's last remark snidely refers to those who sat in cafeterias discussing Marxism as opposed to those in the thick of the class struggle - artists and writers who joined strikes and marches, passed out leaflets, and went to union meetings. To Burck, himself an active member of the John Reed Club, an exhibition such as 'The Social Viewpoint in Art' was part of a processo f education of the viewers and of the artists themselves. Burck continues: The future classless culture will not spring full -blown fromt he browo f the proletariatI.t is up to the revolutionarya rtistst o help pavet he way fora completeb reakw ith bourgeois culture by developing new plastic revolutionary expressions which are an outgrowth of the class struggle and which embody the aspirations of the working class for the desired classless state.23 Schapiro was, in fact, an admirer of Trotsky's writings; whether or not he made that known to the circle of Jacob Burck in 1933 is not known.24 Burck's critique of 'Kwait' was not all that negative; Burck admits that he 'correctly points out the necessity for participating in the every day struggles of the workers when he says that "the artist who must produce daily a trenchant pictorial commentary on daily events for a workers' newspaper quickly develops an imagination and form
adequate for his task" .25 But Burck follows up that

remark by turning to a critique of the studio artist and the armchair critic: 'The revolutionary artist (this applies equally to the revolutionary critic) cannot remain aloof from the class struggle and expect to create revolutionary art. He must consider himself as a unit in the struggle. In no other way can he acquire vitality and development in his work and escape from an individualistic subjectivity.' While the remark was clearly directed at Kwait/Schapiro, we might assume that it was done in the spirit of comradely criticism - a criticism that exhorts rather than crushes its opponent.2 In the same New Masses issue of April 1933, Kwait/ Schapiro writes a 'Reply to Burck'. His remarks are brief. He was not against 'a united front as such, but the obvious weakness of this particular front, its vague enemy, its unallied members, its lack of a conspicuous leadership'.27S chapiroc hooses not to address the accusation Burck leveled against him of a reductive 'extreme leftism' and 'Marxian purity'. In spite of Burck's accusation of Schapiro's 'left extremism', the next major exhibition of the John Reed Club seems to have incorporated many of Schapiro's points. The exhibition, called 'The World Crisis Expressed in Art: Paintings Sculpture, Drawings, Prints on the Theme Hunger[,] Fascism[,]

War', opened on December 8, 1933 and ran until January 7, 1934. The catalogue introduction is sharp and focused. In holding exhibitions on specific themes related to the social struggle, the John Reed Club hopes to collect and show in one Exhibition works of artists who have been motivated by the militant upsurge of the workers. We hope that these exhibitions serve not only to show what has already been done, but exert an influence which may inspirea nd encouragea rtistst o expresst heirr eactionst o
economic turmoil... 28

The introduction continues by stating that it is up to the artist to decide 'what style, manner, school of form is best suited to the artistic expression of the struggles of the oppressed'. But the artist must take a position, and only those artists will be shown at the John Reed Club Gallery 'who take the side of the revolutionary working class in its fight against hunger, fascism and war'. Indeed, the artists exhibited were those whose names appear frequently in political exhibitions of the 1930s; neither Benton nor the regionalists were included. Furthermore, the titles of the artworks make it clear that the majority of works had a sharp political message.29 While Schapiro may have noted that the changes in the exhibition policy of the John Reed Club were more in line with his earlier suggestions, he had another agenda in these years. As a scholar he was intent on developing a social history of art. He tested these theories out to a live, Popular Front audience when he delivered a paper, 'The Social Bases of Art', to the first closed session of the American Artists' Congress held at the New School for Social Research in Februry 1936.30 He begins by explaining that the enterprise of the social history of art is not reductive: 'When we speak in this paper of the social bases of art we do not mean to reduce art to economics or sociology or politics. Art has its own conditions which distinguish it from other activities.'31 To understand diversity, he adds, we need to understand the social aspect of art: 'It is as members of a society with its special traditions, its common means and purposes, prior to themselves, that individuals learn to paint, speak and act in the current man ner.' 32 This process, to Schapiro, is dynamic and responsive to changing conditions: 'And it is in terms of changes in their immediate common world that individuals are impelled together to modify their no longer adequate conceptions.'33 Schapiro reviews earlier art and sees parallels and differences between the aesthetic qualities of the past and the modern period, and notes: 'The conception of art as purely aesthetic and individual can exist only where culture has been detached from practical and collective interests and is supported by individuals

alone.'34 The class of people who support and patronize art determines the character of the art. Schapiro elaborates the process - and describes the art of the late nineteenth century when typical patrons came from the urban rentier class of consumers, not producers. 'The older stable forms of family life and sexual morality have been destroyed; there is no royal court or church to impose a regulating pattern on his activity. For this individual the world is a spectacle, a source of novel pleasant sensations, or a field in which he may realize his 'individuality', through art, through sexual intrigue and the most varied, but non-productive, mobility.'35 This situation affects artists: 'Even the artist of lower middle-class or workingclass origin comes to create pictures congenial to the members of this upper class, without having to identify himself directly with it. He builds, to begin with, on the art of the last generation and is influenced by the success of recent painters.'36 Schapiro points out the marginalized status of the artist who 'repudiates [bourgeois society's] moral standards and responsibilities'. Unable really to 'act on the world', this artist: shows in his art an astonishing ingenuity and joy in transformingth e shapes of familiart hings. This plastic freedom should not be considered in itself an evidence of the artist'sp ositivew ill to changes ocietyo r a reflectiono f realt ransformingm ovementsi n the every-dayw orld.F or it is essentiali n this anti-naturalistiacr t that just those relations of visual experience which are most important for action are destroyed by the modern artist.37 Abstract art, in other words, cannot incite actioncannot act to change the world. The abstract artist remains characteristically passive, but so too does the figurative artist whose 'figures look at each other or at a landscape or are plunged in a revery or simulate some kind of absorption'.38 Schapiro will not make moral judgements of this disengaged art, because it has sprung from the social conditions of the artist's life. However, the consciousness of this process might embolden the artist to change and to join the struggle. Here Schapiro leaves the historical analysis of art and his diagnosis of the current situation, as he shifts to a prescriptive programme: In recognizing the dependence of his situation and attitudes on the character of moder society, the artist acquires the courage to change things, to act on his societya nd for himselfi n an effectivem anner. He acquiresa t the same time new artisticc onceptions. Artistsw ho arec oncernedw ith the worlda roundt hem in its action and conflict, who ask the same questions that are asked by the impoverished masses and oppressed minorities - these artists cannot permanently devote

themselves to a painting committed to the aesthetic moments of life, to spectacles designed for passive, detachedi ndividualso, r to an arto f the studio.39 Moreover, such artists will finally come to realize the unfortunate situation that they 'are able to achieve such freedom only because of the oppression and misery of the masses'. To Schapiro the only meaningful 'freedom' is in a society without economic oppression.40 The basic premise that the needs and concerns of the working classes must be kept in the forefront of the artist's consciousness informs the two major essays that Meyer Schapiro wrote for Art Front in 1936. 'Race, Nationality and Art' opens with a generalization about artists and their beliefs about national ism: Many artists agree as a matter of course that the art of a
German must have a German character, of a Frenchman, a French character, of a Jew, a Jewish character. They believe that national groups, like individual human beings, have fairly fixed psychological qualities, and that their art will consequently show distinct traits, which are unmistakable ingredients of a national or racial style.

Schapiro then goes on to point out that this attitude translates into 'propaganda for war and fascism'. He deplores the racialist theories of fascism that 'call constantly on the traditions of art'.41 Schapiro then turs to the cultural nationalism of American critics and their similar emphasis on 'blood and soil' theories that restricted what was 'American' to those of Anglo-Saxon blood and to homegrown products uninfluenced by foreign arts. Schapiro sees the debate within the context of the social conditions of the 1930s: As political reaction grows, every argument which supports the notion of fixed racial and national differences, a cquiresa new relevance.I t provokesp owerful divisionsw ithint he masseso f the people,w ho areb ecoming more articulatea nd aggressivein theird emandsf ora decent living and control over their own lives. The basic antagonism of worker toward capitalist, debtor toward creditor, is diverted into channels of racial antagonism, which weakens and confuses the masses, but leaves untouched the original relations of rich and poor. A foreigne nemy is substitutedf ort he enemy at home, and innocenta nd defenselessm inoritiesa re offereda s victims fort he blind rageo f economicallyf rustratedc itizens.42 To Schapiro what makes one nation's art seem to look different from another's is not 'blood' and 'soil', but, rather, the complex circumstances of time and place, 'the common culture in which [artists] grew up and produced their art' and the psychology of the dominant class which patronizes art.43

He asserts that for an artist to follow only his or her specific ethnic traditions would mean the donning of an artistic straitjacket that would breed further racism. As an example he points to 'Negro liberals who teach that the American Negro artist should cultivate the old African styles, that his real racial genius has emerged most powerfully in those styles, and that he must give up his effort to paint and carve like a white man'. This view, Schapiro maintains, plays into the hands of reactionaries who would keep blacks in an infer ior status. Schapiro reminds his reader that African art resulted from its special circumstances - very different from those of contemporary black Americans. For a modern artist to attempt to emulate classical African art would result in 'only inferior pastiches, like the European fakers who fabricate pseudo-African sculpture for ignorant tourists'.44 Schapiro ends his article by deploring racism and by repeating that American conditions are 'varied and in constant change ... [W]hat is or should be American is determined in the last analysis by the history, tradition, means, interests and mode of life of the different classes in society.'45 Again, as in his paper for the American Artists' Congress, Schapiro maintains that class needs are a crucial element in the production of art. A response to Schapiro's article came in a letter to the editor written by Jennings Tofel and published in the May 1936 issue of Art Front.46T ofel misses the thrust of Schapiro's argument and accuses Schapiro of holding the view 'that nationality is an illusion and nationalism a source of danger'.47T ofel accuses Schapiro of advocating the suppression of the historical heritages of different ethnic groups including languages, folklore and Bibles and Korans. Tofel admits that an aggressive nationalism has been fomented by Mussolini and Hitler, but he still feels 'that nationalism can be a source of great good'. And while Tofel encourages artists to learn from one another, he argues that authenticity in art depends on the artist's 'identification with the national and cultural group he springs from'. At the end, Tofel makes a plea: 'Do not wish to take away from the artists of the minority peoples particularly, their own cultural heritage when you offer them yours, in the manner of religious missionaries. Tolerate but each one to develop his own in the open sight of all - and we shall perhaps all be the wiser for it in time.'48 Schapiro briefly replies to Tofel in the same issue.49 Testily he urges the artist to re-read his articles more carefully. A shared culture, to Schapiro, is more important than race in determining artistic production. Moreover, 'traditional customs

and institutions are double-edged; they may serve as the basis for asserting the human capacities of the oppressed group and its claims to political and cultural autonomy. But these customs and traditions may also be a brake on such aspirations; they may teach passivity, conservatism, submission.' And Schapiro points out the many instances when European colonialists encouraged native art and customs 'as a means of retarding the struggle for independence'. And finally, to designate nationalism as good and bad merely confuses the issues. Schapiro finishes with an example close to the current situation in 1936: 'Wars are not due to 'avaricious nations', but to the needs of the dominating classes of capitalist nations; they need new lands for raw materials, for new markets or new fields of investment. Or they fight in order to consolidate their possessions or to maintain a threatened status quo.' Schapiro's argument did not deviate from that of most other Marxists, then and now. That Schapiro was becoming a critical force among artists is evident from Balcomb Greene's review of an Artists' Union show held in May 1936.50 Greene begins by admitting that the editors of Art Front had difficulty in finding a critic to write about a group show, since 'the prevailing opinion on Art Front now is that a group show is dull, per haps ought not to be held, much less reviewed, unless it has been organized for a purpose'.51T o Greene there are two kinds of criticism - the adjective style and the thesis style. The former style describes the critic who strings together adjectives of praise. For the second kind of criticism, he points to Meyer Schapiro, for whom he has ambivalent respect. His remarks on Schapiro are quoted here in full:

Let Meyer Shapiro [sic] review a show of modern work. He's a learned man and teaches at Columbia. He believes that most modern art, from Cezanne on became introvertedc,r amped,f ussy,a nd essentiallyd ecadent.H e gives examples. Somewhere in the course of his verbal adroitnessis the assumptionw, hicho ughtt o be a premise open to inspection, that his examples of 'modern' are a fair representationo f the achievemento f fortyy ears of painting. At some point he ought to distinguish between the experiments and what we call the fruit of revolutionary effort. There is no excuse, in the absence of Mr Shapiro [sic], for disputing him any further. The point is that the analyticalr evieww ith a point of view, if thep remiseis wrongb, ecomesm orem isleadingt he furtheri t is carried, the more comprehensive it seeks to be, and the more enforcedi t is by historicald ata.

Let the academic theorist talk in the clouds about you artists! or let the critic get down in the dust like a newshawk and smell around your feet!52 Greene here is tacitly voicing the complaint that Schapiro's premise as to what represents 'the modern', rests on a canon, or rather a pantheon, of artists whose agenda did not include making an art of revolutionary social content. Moreover, when Greene (himself an abstract artist) asserts that Schapiro 'ought to distinguish between the experiments and what we call the fruit of revolutionary effort', he is probably alluding to the debates, growing out of Russian constructivism, that made distinctions between the 'laboratory art' of abstract experimentation on the one hand, and abstract art and design at the service of revolution on the other; the former was justified as a prelude to the second.53 Greene ends by urging artists to create their own forum for criticism and to paint and model while being fully engaged with life. Privately, Schapiro considered his writing activity not simply as that of an 'academic theorist' talking 'in the clouds', but as advancing the cause of a Marxist revolution. In a letter he wrote to Aline Bernstein Louchheim on August 18, 1936, he defended 'intellectual work', a phrase in common parlance in communist movement circles.54 To Schapiro 'fight against bourgeois society takes place
on every front - economic, political and cultural -

and when the showdown comes, we will all take to arms or everything we value will be lost'. As regards art historians and their profession, his remarks are the clearest Marxist statement to come out of the 1930s as to the role and responsibilities of the art historian intellectual. These remarks deserve to be quoted at length: Arth istoriansk nowo nly too well that theirw orkb elongs to a decadent culture, that their ideas, if exposed to a largerc riticism,w ill seem preciousa nd trivial& that the academicp ursuito f attributionsi s a dull game, that is ultimately tied to the market interest in pictures and to the vanities of possession and pedigree. But an art historian,w ho is a Marxist,h as at once a whole serieso f problems and responsibilities which tie his work & teaching to an every day world and to a future which he can anticipatew ith enthusiasmB. ourgeoisa rt-studya, s a professioni,s usuallys ervile,p recious,p essimistica, nd in its larger views of history, human nature and contemporaryl ife, thoroughlyr eactionaryW. e do not overcome theset hingsb y abandoninthge studyo f art,b ut by givingi t a Marxistd irection.W e mighta s well abandonp oetryo r sociology,b ecauset he officialp ractitioneras re sterile.I f we give up the study & teaching of art, we leave this large field in the hands of the reactionariesa, nd we give no guidance and expert knowledge to the thousands of

artists, students and workers to whom art is a fundamental activity, which certainly will survive the revolution, and more than that, plays a real part in the cultural life of the revolutionarmy ovementt oday. What formo f activityo ne choosesi s a personalm atter dependingo n one's characteri,n terestsa nd abilities:B ut once you are convincedo f the correctnesso f the revolutionaryp hilosophy,y ou are bound to put it into practice in your chosen field of work. Naturally, there is a gap between what you wish to do and what you actually do, but this has to be judged in the light of conditions and results. I must add, finally, that a Marxist history of art, which yet remains to be built, does not give up the techniques of researchi nto details& factd evelopedd uringt he last 100 years- on the contraryi,t insistsu pon scientificm ethod throughout: but it rejects as unscientific the typical methods & theories of Wolfflin & Dvorak (the best of the moderna rt historians)f or scientificr easonsw hich must be obvious to you. Schapiro ends by telling Louchheim that he 'was delighted' with her 'account of the Paris demonstrations' and he admires the enthusiasm of the French workers. Typical of a writer touched by the communist movement, he returns his discussion to the worker. In his second long article for Art Front, 'Public Use of Art', which appeared in the November 1936 issue, he turns to the existing cultural conditions of the Federal Art Project artists. Recall that Burke in 1933 had advised Kwait/Schapiro to take into account existing conditions for artists; by 1936 Schapiro seems to have been in the thick of artists' discussi ons and to have come face-to-face with the facts of their 'uneven development'. In this year not only did he participate in the American Artists' Congress, but he also attended the Artists' Union convention for the Eastern District of the United States held in New York in early May 1936. During the three-day convention that focused on the economic situation for artists, Schapiro spoke on 'Art and Art Projects'.55I t might have been this talk that sculptor Robert Cronbach described to Helen Harrison in 1976. Schapiro electrified his audience, Cronbach recalled: I remember a discussion following a meeting of the Artists Union at which Meyer Schapiro spoke. Paul Block, who was an active member of the Union, was talkinga bouti t with otherp eople.M eyerS chapirom ade the very valid point that if we wanted the [FAP] to
continue - and all the artists certainly did - we had to

find more direct uses for the work we produced, not just wait for some accidento r benefactort o find it. So, some time in the weeks following that, the Public Use of Art Committee was set up.56

The newly formed Committee at first focused on art for subways, which seemed the appropriate sites for a public art. In the paper as published, Schapiro begins by lauding the twin benefits of the Federal Art Project: the creation of a public art and financial security for artists. But what more can be done, he asks, to advance 'toward a really public art?'57 Schapiro points out that although artists on the projects have become like workers, there are still fundamental differences between the interests of the two groups. Industrial workers on the projects receive wages below what their skills could command in better days; they want to return to regular work with social insurance: 'Artists on the other hand would rather maintain the projects than return to their former unhappy state of individual work for an uncertain market.' Moreover, workers and artists differ in their class interests and the role they play in society. Unlike industrial workers, artists produce hand-crafted luxury items which they 'peddle to dealers and private patrons. They employ an archaic technique and are relatively independent and anarchic in their methods of work, their hours of labor, their relations with others.' Once industrial workers are fully employed, artists will have to enlist their support by convincing workers of the need for an artists' project and the benefits of a public art: It is necessaryt hat the artistss how their solidarityw ith the workers both in their support of the workers' demands and in their art. If they produce simply pictures to decoratet he officeso f municipala nd state officials,i f they serve the governmental demagogy by decorating institutionsc ourtedb y the presentr egime,t hen theira rt has little interest to the workers. But if in collaboration with working-clasgs roups,w ith unions, clubs, cooperatives and schools, they demand the extension of the programt o reacha widerp ublic,i f they presenta planf or art work and art education in connection with the demands of the teachers for further support of free schooling for the masses of workers and poor farmers, who without such public education are almost completely excluded from a decent culture, then they will win the backing of the workers.58 Schapiro then examines the nature of public art, which, he maintains, already exists in the form of comics, magazine illustrations and the movies. If artists want workers to enjoy such things as landscapes and abstractions, then workers need 'a degree of culture and a living standard possessed by very few... We can speak of a public and democratic enjoyment of art only when the works of the best artists are as well known as the most popular movies, comic strips and magazine pictures.' The contradiction is that most artworks are 'luxury-objects, signs

of power and wealth' which are viewed by workers as 'an instrument of snobbery and class distinction'.59 To Schapiro, the achievement of a public art necessitates two conditions: 'that the art embody a content and achieve qualities accessible to the masses of the people, [and] that the people control the means of production and attain a standard of living and a level of culture such that the enjoyment of art of a high quality becomes an important part of their life'.60 For the people to 'control the means of production' was the code phrase, from Karl Marx, for a communist revolution. At a time when the CP was eager to make the Popular Front strategy work, such talk coming from independents could be condoned, but were it voiced by a CP member, he or she would be privately chastened. In anticipation of such criticism, Schapiro adds: 'Now it may seem to some of you that this talk of socialism has carried us too far from the present program, that we ought simply to stick to our demand that the government extend the art projects to reach a wider public.'61 But he pushes his previous point and urges artists not to be short-sighted, not to ignore the possibility that they might become 'dependent on a brutal fascist regime', which already happened to artists in Germany and Italy. He warns artists to beware of government support of art; not only might it abruptly end but it 'may divert the attention of the artist and the members of the unions from the harsh realities of class government and concealed dangers of crisis, war and fascist oppression'.62 Schapiro drives the argument home that: 'Artistic display is a familiar demagogic means', and he supplies an historic example to clinch his point. As to the present era Schapiro points out the 'conventional images of peace, justice, social harmony, productive labor, the idylls of the farms and the factories' favoured as mural subjects by the government. But, he continues: 'In their seemingly neutral glorification of work, progress and national history, these public murals are instruments of a class; a Republican administration would have solicited essentially similar art', but with a different cast of artists. In his conclusion Schapiro calls for nothing short of revolution when he exhorts the artist to create a solidarity with the workers and 'combat the illusion that his own insecurity and the wretched state of our culture can be overcome within the framework of our present society'.63 The radicalism of Schapiro's statement is in sharp contrast to the article 'Official Art', written by Elizabeth McCausland, using the pen name 'Elizabeth Noble', which appeared in that same November issue. She, too, points out that the government in

its mural programme 'wants from art safe and harmless cliches, allegorical justice triumphing over a fictitious evil'.64H er conclusion is that decisions about aesthetic merit should be removed from the bureaucracy of the Treasury Department, which administered all of the murals in post offices and government buildings. Speaking for artists, she says: 'We are not willing to have the Treasury usurp the function of superintending creative pictorial and plastic functions of which (by the testimony of its own deeds) it knows little or nothing.'65 It was not revolution, but a reform of the system that McCausland was calling for. The debate about public art continued in the December issue of Art Front. In an article 'Public Art in Practice' staff writer Clarence Weinstock reports on the activities of the Public Use of Art Committee, which had petitioned the regional director of the FAP, Audrey McMahon about the possibility of placing artwork in union halls. Although nowhere in his article does Weinstock refer to Schapiro's article, he yet manages to answer some of the issues raised by Schapiro. A new audience would mean that 'the artists need no longer paint what the administration considers appropriate for its mythical public but what the real public of hundreds of thousands of trade unions thinks appropriate for itself.66 To put these plans into practice, the Public Use of Art Committee contacted various unions to ascertain the kinds of subjects their union membership would like. For example, the Union of Dining Car Employees 'needs works showing the effect of speedup on dining-car employees; the battle for union recognition on the Santa Fe; anti-war subjects; exploitation of women employed in hotel dining rooms and kitchens; anti-lynching subjects; scenes in the culinary industry; Negro discrimination'. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters offered detailed suggestions for both subjects and a content that would show 'a pattern of struggle, sacrifice and
fighting'.67

As if to rebut Schapiro, Weinstock asserts that: 'The artist's mission is not to 'teach' the workers but to educate himself. He is not there to lead the workers gently away from their concrete demands to sympathy for the "higher" forms of art.'68 While Weinstock praises the success of the agitational work of the Committee for the Public Use of Art, he declines to raise the issue of revolution or 'class struggle'. Instead he follows the Party line and displays Popular Front rhetoric, ending with the plea to artists to 'join in their common struggle for a rich, free, truly modern life'.69 Schapiro's veiled attack on the Roosevelt administration would have made the Communists in the

Artists' Union uncomfortable, to say the least, since it was published in November 1936, the month that Roosevelt won an overwhelming majority of the vote in a campaign that involved the active (if sub rosa) support of the CP. Schapiro, however, had no reason to pull his punches, since he was independent of the Party, and, in the speech codes of the time, wanted to make that clear. Although in 1932 he had voted the Communist ticket, in 1936 he voted for the Socialist Party, headed by Norman Thomas.70 Thomas, whose Party in 1936 had merged with the American Trotskyists led by James P. Cannon, had refused to join the united front of the Communists. As the Socialists and the Trotskyists were both critical of the CP for its support of Roosevelt and the New Deal, they would have wholeheartedly approved Schapiro's conclusions.71 Moreover, November was also the month when Norman Thomas and the Trotskyists announced the formation of the Provisional American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky to be headed by John Dewey, the distinguished Columbia professor.72 Trotsky along with other old Bolsheviks, had been accused by the Soviet Union of various crimes against the state, but Trotsky had not taken the stand at the Moscow Trials because he was in exile. To the editors of New Masses, a CP publication, the Trotsky defense committee was one more bit of mischief-making at a moment when 'all the forces of darkness and reaction throughout the world are unleashing a violent campaign against communism in general and against the Soviet Union in particular'.73 While many of the Art Front regulars would be uneasy with Schapiro's rhetoric of class struggle (even while they appreciated some of his suggestions), his overt alliance with the Trotsky defense committee would spell the end of his relationship with the Artists' Union. Schapiro recalled in 1976 to Helen Harrison that 'a resolution was passed at a meeting of the Union denouncing me for having signed a protest against the Moscow trials and calling on me to withdraw from the present committee ... It was merely a pro forma affair managed by the Communist members of the Union, perhaps at the instigation of a party representative. I was not invited to meetings of the Union after that time, nor kept informed of the activities of the [Public Use of
Art Committee].'74

On March 13, 1937, he wrote to his friend Aline Louchheim explaining that his involvement with the Trotsky defense committee was a principled one.75 He asks if she has had a chance to read the pamphlets from the committee and gives a spirited defense of his own actions: so that you will at least know the reasons why many

people, who are obviously not 'counter-revolutionaries and traitors'h, avej oined the committee.I myselfa m not a Trotskyist, and in joining this committee have had to suffer [the] abuse and ill-will from people who were formerlyd earf riends.B ut in this matter,m y consciencei s clear; if I said nothing about the trials, the burden would be much heavier to bear. Schapiro wants to make it plain that any dictatorship is abhorrent to him:
The issue of these trials is vastly more important than

Trotsky; and I am confident that as time goes on and more and more evidence accumulates, I will be confirmed in my view that the whole future of socialism is at stake,t hatt he democratizingo f the SovietU nion depends
on the consciousness of the world working-class, aroused to the dangers and perversions of dictatorship by just such crucial experience as these trials.

Schapiro ends by saying that although he does 'not want to be alienated from friends by political differ ences', he supports the investigation into Trotsky's case on principle, 'even if I thought Trotsky guilty for he has never been tried, and, above all, he has not confessed'. He adds that he thinks the trials a frameup anyway. Schapiro was not the first intellectual to leave the Communist Party orbit at the time of the Moscow trials. Other events occurred that split and fragmented the communist movement even further, such as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, and the invasion and occupation of Finland by the Soviet Union in November 1939.76 More often than not such events were not the reason, but the occasion for the independent Marxist intellectuals to go in other directions: to realign themselves, form new loyalties or leave politics altogether. The issue of Trotskyism vs Stalinism that has become a staple of recent analyses of left politics in the 1930s diverts attention away from an analysis of what the Party thought it stood for at the end of 1936 and the internal contradictions of its strategy. Perhaps the best spokesperson for attitudes within the Communist Party is Michael Gold, editor of New Masses. Shortly after the Provisional American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky was formed, Gold took the opportunity to publish 'Migratory Intellectuals', for the December 15, 1936 issue. Naming Sidney Hook, James T. Farrell, and Anita Brenner specifically, but alluding to others as well, Gold castigates careerist intellectuals who spout theory in New York without knowing the reality of anti-communism in California's Imperial Valley where wealthy growers and shippers terrorize

Communist union organizers and workers through vigilante groups: It is easy, damned easy, to claim to be a Communist, but not a 'Stalinite'C ommunist;o h, no! n ot the sorto f lowbrow Communist who goes into Imperial Valley to organize workers and spread socialism, does the job, in brief, and doesn't know there is a little group of Phi Beta KappaT rotskyiteisn New Yorkw ho thinkh arshlyo f him. Ah, thesew onderfuvl ictorieso n papero f the New York super-Leftistst,h ese stern attitudest hey strike in their vacuum, these monuments of sterile theory they erect!77 Referring to Hook in the early 1930s, when Hook first came around the Party, Gold continues with his typical pugnacious sarcasm: What pompous and formal schemes they offered, what elaboratep rojectsf ori nnerr eform,w hat revolutionsa nd revelationsW! hen their programsw ere not immediately accepted, they felt injured. It was the 'mediocre' leadership that could not, or would not, understand their superior plans. Never once did it enter the deeps of their bookish minds that it is one thing to spin a plan, even the most perfect plan, and another thing to put it into
practice.78

Gold would never accept the thesis of these intellectuals that Marxist 'practice' could bejust the teaching of Marxist principles in the university or simply writing a class analysis of art and culture. To Gold practice meant engaging in the 'class struggle' of actual workers. Moreover, the Communist Party followed the Leninist principle that there needed to be a party in which ideas were collectively pooled and debated. Hence, meetings - whether of the CP's central committee or of the editorial board of Art Front - played a prominent role for both the leadership and the rank-and-file. A keystone of Party organization was democratic centralism, which meant that debate preceded decisions; those decisions, once made, should be collectively supported.79 These are the premises behind Gold's remarks; he is adamant that Communists have to recognize the necessity of loyalty to the decisions of the Party, 'otherwise the party dissolves into chaotic particles'.80 The contradiction thus emerges: Gold and the CP were calling for 'class struggle' in practice (out in the fields organizing workers to fight bosses), but were committed to the CP's Popular Front strategy that deliberately suppressed revolutionary rhetoric when advancing theories of art, culture, and society. Party members, even if they privately disagreed with the line - and the Popular Front strategy still is justifiably controversial - would not sabotage it. Hence, the Party sacrificed a sharp cultural critique of capitalism to political expediency. At the same time, independent intellectuals like Schapiro in their writings called for 'revolution' for artists and cultural

workers, but remained aloof from collective action and the struggles in the streets. Democratic centralism had no restraining influence on such independents, and they did not hesitate to join breakaway groups whenever they disagreed with the majority opinions.81 Schapiro was no exception. Almost fifty years later, in 1983, he confessed to Helen Epstein in her long biographical study written for Artnews: 'In the early '30s, I had to make a decision between joining the Communist party and doing my work. I could not commit myself wholeheartedly to it', but adds that he did admire people who were 'able to pursue scholarship, teaching and politics - and do it well'.82 Schapiro had the freedom to say what he wanted, for the very reason that he was not accountable to the collective discipline of a party. But once removed from the CP and its activist programme, he was also removed from the class struggles of union activities. It is not surprising, then, that after 1936 the phrase 'class struggle' disappears from the concerns of his criticism.83I n fact, he leaves prescriptive criticism altogether and concentrates on the social history of art. Nevertheless, during the mid-1930s, when Schapiro was at the centre of the discourse taking place about the relationship of art to economic and political conditions, he made his own unique contributions. His prescriptive art criticism was brilliant and timely, and I have quoted at length from it to demonstrate the subtlety with which he builds his arguments. In his 'Race, Nationality and Art' essay, he advanced arguments against a sentimental multiculturalism that would stimulate heated debates today. In his 'Public Use of Art' essay, he proposed theories that translated into practice - not just the practice of art (as Clement Greenberg's theories would later do) but the practice of artists reaching out to join with the struggles of the working classes.8