I was reading an article on the plane this week about WPA posters. Now honestly I did not know much about the WPA- only that when my cousin named her daughter with the initials of WPA her mother made a big deal about it and we were all like "What?"
I must have been applying lip gloss and writing in bubble letters on my folder during that history class session. It is actually kinda embarrassing that my British husband is constantly refreshing my knowledge of my own country. How can I memorize massive parts of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons but be unable to say much about Franklin Delano Roosevelt? My brain is not right.
Anyhoo, it is kinda cool shit. It was basically from what I gather that contemporary artists were paid to make gorgeous propaganda silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters. They ranged from art to health education. The social messages mixed with amazing art has made me crazy.
I love these. Around 2,000 posters were created by artists working for the New Deal Era Works Progress Administration.
I would love to have one now.
I might have found something to collect after all these years.
title post- Ferris Bueller's Day Off 1986
photos from the Library of Congress
5 comments:
These are fabulous - I wonder if your 'just happens' to have one in the attic...
They are very cool! A very belated Happy New Year!
Without the WPA, there is no Rogers & Hammerstien. Without the WPA, there is no National Endowment for the Arts. Government should never be responsible for selecting art, just funding it.
Perhaps part of Obama's economic stimulus plans for public works and the like can include another round of help for artists.
These are really great.
Nice nod to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
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