Past Exhibitions
The Ins and Outs of Self-Taught Art
Reflections on a Shifting Field
January 10, 2012 - April 7, 2012
The Lady and the Tramp
Images of Women in Austrian and German Art
October 11, 2011 - December 30, 2011
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
July 5, 2011 - September 30, 2011
Decadence & Decay
Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz
April 12, 2011 - June 24, 2011
Self-Taught Painters in American 1800-1950
Revisiting the Tradition
January 11, 2011 - April 2, 2011
Marie-Louise Motesiczky
Paradise Lost & Found
October 12, 2010 - December 30, 2010
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
July 13, 2010 - October 1, 2010
Käthe Kollwitz
A Portrait of the Artist
April 13, 2010 - June 25, 2010
Seventy Years Grandma Moses
A Loan Exhibition Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Artist's "Discovery"
February 3, 2010 - April 3, 2010
Egon Schiele as Printmaker
A Loan Exhibition Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Galerie St. Etienne
November 3, 2009 - January 23, 2010
From Brücke To Bauhaus
The Meanings of Modernity in Germany, 1905-1933
March 31, 2009 - June 26, 2009
They Taught Themselves
American Self-Taught Painters Between the World Wars
January 9, 2009 - March 14, 2009
Elephants We Must Never Forget
New Paintings Drawings and Prints by Sue Coe
October 14, 2008 - December 20, 2008
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 24, 2008 - September 26, 2008
Hope or Menace?
Communism in Germany Between the World Wars
March 25, 2008 - June 13, 2008
Transforming Reality
Pattern and Design in Modern and Self-Taught Art
January 15, 2008 - March 8, 2008
Leonard Baskin
Proofs and Process
October 9, 2007 - January 5, 2008
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 5, 2007 - September 28, 2007
Who Paid the Piper?
The Art of Patronage in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
March 8, 2007 - May 26, 2007
Fairy Tale, Myth and Fantasy
Approaches to Spirituality in Art
December 7, 2006 - February 3, 2007
More Than Coffee was Served
Café Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna and Weimar Germany
September 19, 2006 - November 25, 2006
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 6, 2006 - September 8, 2006
Parallel Visions II
"Outsider" and "Insider" Art Today
April 5, 2006 - May 26, 2006
Ilija!
His First American Exhibtion
January 17, 2006 - March 18, 2006
Coming of Age
Egon Schiele and the Modernist Culture of Youth
November 15, 2005 - January 7, 2006
Sue Coe:
Sheep of Fools
September 20, 2005 - November 5, 2005
Recent Acquisitions
And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market
June 7, 2005 - September 9, 2005
Every Picture Tells a Story
The Narrative Impulse in Modern and Contemporary Art
April 5, 2005 - May 27, 2005
65th Anniversary Exhibition, Part II
Self-Taught Artists
January 18, 2005 - March 26, 2005
65th Anniversary Exhibition, Part I
Austrian and German Expressionism
October 28, 2004 - January 8, 2005
Sue Coe: Bully: Master of the Global Merry-Go-Round and Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 8, 2004 - October 16, 2004
Animals & Us
The Animal in Contemporary Art
April 1, 2004 - May 22, 2004
Henry Darger
Art and Myth
January 15, 2004 - March 20, 2004
Body and Soul
Expressionism and the Human Figure
October 7, 2003 - January 3, 2004
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 24, 2003 - September 12, 2003
In Search of the "Total Artwork"
Viennese Art and Design 1897–1932
April 8, 2003 - June 14, 2003
Russia's Self-Taught Artists
A New Perspective on the "Outsider"
January 14, 2003 - March 29, 2003
Käthe Kollwitz:
Master Printmaker
October 1, 2002 - January 4, 2003
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 25, 2002 - September 20, 2002
Workers of the World
Modern Images of Labor
April 2, 2002 - June 15, 2002
Grandma Moses
Reflections of America
January 15, 2002 - March 16, 2002
Gustav Klimt/Egon Schiele/Oskar Kokoscha
From Art Nouveau to Expressionism
November 23, 2001 - January 5, 2002
The "Black-and-White" Show
Expressionist Graphics in Austria & Germany
September 20, 2001 - November 10, 2001
Recent Acquisitions (And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 26, 2001 - September 7, 2001
Art with an Agenda
Politics, Persuasion, Illustration and Decoration
April 10, 2001 - June 16, 2001
"Our Beautiful and Tormented Austria!": Art Brut in the Land of Freud
January 18, 2001 - March 17, 2001
The Tragedy of War
November 16, 2000 - January 6, 2001
The Expressionist City
September 19, 2000 - November 4, 2000
Recent Acquisitions (And Some Thoughts on the Current Art Market)
June 20, 2000 - September 8, 2000
From Façade to Psyche
Turn-of-the-Century Portraiture in Austria & Germany
March 28, 2000 - June 10, 2000
European Self-Taught Art
Brut or Naive?
January 18, 2000 - March 11, 2000
Saved From Europe
In Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Galerie St. Etienne
November 6, 1999 - January 8, 2000
The Modern Child
(Images of Children in Twentieth-Century Art)
September 14, 1999 - November 6, 1999
Recent Acquisitions
(And a Look at Sixty Years of Art Dealing)
June 15, 1999 - September 3, 1999
Sue Coe: The Pit
The Tragical Tale of the Rise and Fall of a Vivisector
March 30, 1999 - June 5, 1999
Henry Darger and His Realms
January 14, 1999 - March 13, 1999
Becoming Käthe Kollwitz
An Artist and Her Influences
November 17, 1998 - December 31, 1998
George Grosz - Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler
Art & Gender in Weimar Germany
September 23, 1998 - November 11, 1998
Recent Acquisitions
(And Some Thoughts About Looted Art)
June 9, 1998 - September 11, 1998
Taboo
Repression and Revolt in Modern Art
March 26, 1998 - May 30, 1998
Sacred & Profane
Michel Nedjar and Expressionist Primitivism
January 13, 1998 - March 14, 1998
Egon Schiele (1890-1918)
Master Draughtsman
November 18, 1997 - January 3, 1998
The New Objectivity
Realism in Weimar-Era Germany
September 16, 1997 - November 8, 1997
Recent Acquisitions
A Question of Quality
June 10, 1997 - September 5, 1997
Käthe Kollwitz - Lea Grundig
Two German Women & The Art of Protest
March 25, 1997 - May 31, 1997
That Way Madness Lies
Expressionism and the Art of Gugging
January 14, 1997 - March 15, 1997
The Viennese Line
Art and Design Circa 1900
November 18, 1996 - January 4, 1997
Emil Nolde - Christian Rohlfs
Two German Expressionist Masters
September 24, 1996 - November 9, 1996
Breaking All The Rules
Art in Transition
June 11, 1996 - September 6, 1996
Sue Coe's Ship of Fools
March 26, 1996 - May 24, 1996
New York Folk
Lawrence Lebduska, Abraham Levin, Isreal Litwak
January 16, 1996 - March 16, 1996
The Fractured Form
Expressionism and the Human Body
November 15, 1995 - January 6, 1996
From Left to Right
Social Realism in Germany and Russia, Circa 1919-1933
September 19, 1995 - November 4, 1995
Recent Acquisitions
June 20, 1995 - September 8, 1995
On the Brink 1900-2000
The Turning of Two Centuries
March 28, 1995 - May 26, 1995
Earl Cummingham - Grandma Moses
Visions of America
January 17, 1995 - March 18, 1995
Three Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah Höch, Käthe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mam
September 13, 1994 - November 5, 1994
55th Anniversary Exhibition in Memory of Otto Kallir
June 7, 1994 - September 2, 1994
Drawn to Text: Comix Artists as Book Illustrators
May 15, 1994 - January 7, 1995
Sue Coe: We All Fall Down
March 29, 1994 - May 27, 1994
The Forgotten Folk Art of the 1940's
January 18, 1994 - March 19, 1994
Symbolism and the Austrian Avant Garde
Klimt, Schiele and their Contemporaries
November 16, 1993 - January 8, 1994
Art and Politics in Weimar Germany
September 14, 1993 - November 6, 1993
Recent Acquisitions
June 8, 1993 - September 3, 1993
The "Outsider" Question
Non-Academic Art from 1900 to the Present
March 23, 1993 - May 28, 1993
The Dance of Death
Images of Mortality in German Art
January 19, 1993 - March 13, 1993
Art Spiegelman
The Road to Maus
November 17, 1992 - January 9, 1993
Käthe Kollwitz
In Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the Artist's Birth
September 15, 1992 - November 7, 1992
Naive Visions/Art Nouveau and Expressionism/Sue Coe: The Road to the White House
May 19, 1992 - September 4, 1992
Richard Gerstl/Oskar Kokoschka
March 17, 1992 - May 9, 1992
Scandal, Outrage, Censorship
Controversy in Modern Art
January 21, 1992 - March 7, 1992
Viennese Graphic Design
From Secession to Expressionism
November 19, 1991 - January 11, 1992
The Expressionist Figure
September 10, 1991 - November 9, 1991
Recent Acquisitions
Themes and Variations
May 14, 1991 - August 16, 1991
Sue Coe Retrospective
Political Document of a Decade
March 12, 1991 - May 5, 1991
Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka
Watercolors, drawings and prints
January 22, 1991 - March 2, 1991
Egon Schiele
November 13, 1990 - January 12, 1991
Lovis Corinth
A Retrospective
September 11, 1990 - November 3, 1990
Recent Acquisitions
June 12, 1990 - August 31, 1990
Max Klinger, Käthe Kollwitz, Alfred Kubin
A Study in Influences
March 27, 1990 - June 2, 1990
The Narrative in Art
January 23, 1990 - March 17, 1990
Grandma Moses
November 14, 1989 - January 13, 1990
Sue Coe
Porkopolis--Animals and Industry
September 19, 1989 - November 4, 1989
Galerie St. Etienne
A History in Documents and Pictures
June 20, 1989 - September 8, 1989
Gustav Klimt
Paintings and Drawings
April 11, 1989 - June 10, 1989
Fifty Years Galerie St. Etienne: An Overview
February 14, 1989 - April 1, 1989
Folk Artists at Work
Morris Hirshfield, John Kane and Grandma Moses
November 15, 1988 - January 14, 1989
Recent Acquisitions and Works From the Collection
June 14, 1988 - September 16, 1988
From Art Nouveau to Expressionism
April 12, 1988 - May 27, 1988
Three Pre-Expressionists
Lovis Corinth Käthe Kollwitz Paula Modersohn-Becker
January 26, 1988 - March 12, 1988
Käthe Kollwitz
The Power of the Print
November 17, 1987 - January 16, 1988
Recent Acquisitions and Works From the Collection
April 7, 1987 - October 31, 1987
Folk Art of This Century
February 10, 1987 - March 28, 1987
Oskar Kokoschka and His Time
November 25, 1986 - January 31, 1987
Viennese Design and Wiener Werkstätte
September 23, 1986 - November 8, 1986
Gustav Klimt/Egon Schiele/Oskar Kokoschka
Watercolors, Drawings and Prints
May 27, 1986 - September 13, 1986
Expressionist Painters
March 25, 1986 - May 10, 1986
Käthe Kollwitz/Paula Modersohn-Becker
January 28, 1986 - March 15, 1986
The Art of Giving
December 3, 1985 - January 18, 1986
Expressionists on Paper
October 8, 1985 - November 23, 1985
European and American Landscapes
June 4, 1985 - September 13, 1985
Expressionist Printmaking
Aspects of its Genesis and Development
April 1, 1985 - May 24, 1985
Expressionist Masters
January 18, 1985 - March 23, 1985
Arnold Schoenberg's Vienna
November 13, 1984 - January 5, 1985
Grandma Moses and Selected Folk Paintings
September 25, 1984 - November 3, 1984
American Folk Art
People, Places and Things
June 12, 1984 - September 14, 1984
John Kane
Modern America's First Folk Painter
April 17, 1984 - May 25, 1984
Eugène Mihaesco
The Illustrator as Artist
February 28, 1984 - April 7, 1984
Early Expressionist Masters
January 17, 1984 - February 18, 1984
Paula Modersohn-Becker
Germany's Pioneer Modernist
November 15, 1983 - January 7, 1984
Gustav Klimt
Drawings and Selected Paintings
September 20, 1983 - November 5, 1983
Early and Late
Drawings, Paintings & Prints from Academicism to Expressionism
June 1, 1983 - September 2, 1983
Alfred Kubin
Visions From The Other Side
March 22, 1983 - May 7, 1983
20th Century Folk
The First Generation
January 18, 1983 - March 12, 1983
Grandma Moses
The Artist Behind the Myth
November 15, 1982 - January 8, 1983
Kollwitz
The Artist as Printmaker
September 28, 1982 - November 6, 1982
Aspects of Modernism
June 1, 1982 - September 3, 1982
The Human Perspective
Recent Acquisitions
March 16, 1982 - May 15, 1982
19th and 20th Century European and American Folk Art
January 19, 1982 - March 6, 1982
The Folk Art Tradition
Naïve Painting in Europe and the United States
November 17, 1981 - January 9, 1982
Austria's Expressionism
April 21, 1981 - May 30, 1981
Eugène Mihaesco
His First American One-Man Show
March 3, 1981 - April 11, 1981
Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele
November 12, 1980 - December 27, 1980
Summer Exhibition
June 17, 1980 - October 31, 1980
Kollwitz: The Drawing and The Print
May 1, 1980 - June 10, 1980
40th Anniversary Exhibition
November 13, 1979 - December 28, 1979
American Primitive Art
November 22, 1977
Käthe Kollwitz
December 1, 1976
Neue Galerie-Galerie St. Etienne
A Documentary Exhibition
May 1, 1976
Martin Pajeck
January 27, 1976
Georges Rouault and Frans Masereel
April 29, 1972
Branko Paradis
December 1, 1971
Käthe Kollwitz
February 3, 1971
Egon Schiele
The Graphic Work
October 19, 1970
Gustav Klimt
March 20, 1970
Friedrich Hundertwasser
May 6, 1969
Austrian Art of the 20th Century
March 21, 1969
Egon Schiele
Memorial Exhibition
October 31, 1968
Yugoslav Primitive Art
April 30, 1968
Alfred Kubin
January 30, 1968
Käthe Kollwitz
In the Cause of Humanity
October 23, 1967
Abraham Levin
September 26, 1967
Karl Stark
April 5, 1967
Gustav Klimt
February 4, 1967
The Wiener Werkstätte
November 16, 1966
Oskar Laske
October 25, 1965
Käthe Kollwitz
May 1, 1965
Egon Schiele
Watercolors and Drawings from American Collections
March 1, 1965
25th Anniversary Exhibition
Part II
November 21, 1964
25th Anniversary Exhibition
Part I
October 17, 1964
Mary Urban
June 9, 1964
Werner Berg, Jane Muus and Mura Dehn
May 5, 1964
Eugen Spiro
April 4, 1964
B. F. Dolbin
Drawings of an Epoch
March 3, 1964
Austrian Expressionists
January 6, 1964
Joseph Rifesser
December 3, 1963
Panorama of Yugoslav Primitive Art
October 21, 1963
Joe Henry
Watercolors of Vermont
May 1, 1963
French Impressionists
March 8, 1963
Grandma Moses
Memorial Exhibition
November 26, 1962
Group Show
October 15, 1962
Ernst Barlach
March 23, 1962
Martin Pajeck
February 24, 1962
Paintings by Expressionists
January 27, 1962
Käthe Kollwitz
November 11, 1961
Grandma Moses
September 7, 1961
My Friends
Fourth Biennial of Pictures by American School Children
May 27, 1961
Raimonds Staprans
April 17, 1961
Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Alfred Kubin
March 14, 1961
Marvin Meisels
January 23, 1961
Egon Schiele
November 15, 1960
My Life's History
Paintings by Grandma Moses
September 12, 1960
Watercolors and Drawings by Austrian Artists from the Dial Collection
May 2, 1960
Martin Pajeck
February 29, 1960
Eugen Spiro
February 6, 1960
Käthe Kollwitz
December 14, 1959
Josef Scharl
Last Paintings and Drawings
November 11, 1959
European and American Expressionists
September 22, 1959
Our Town
One Hundred Paintings by American School Children
May 23, 1959
Marvin Meisels and Martin Pajeck
May 1, 1959
Gustav Klimt
April 1, 1959
Käthe Kollwitz
January 12, 1959
Oskar Kokoschka
October 28, 1958
Village Life in Guatemala
Paintings by Andres Curuchich
June 3, 1958
Two Unknown American Expressionists
Paintings by Marvin Meisels and Martin Pajeck
April 28, 1958
Paula Modersohn-Becker
March 15, 1958
The Great Tradition in American Painting
American Primitive Art
January 20, 1958
Jules Lefranc and Dominique Lagru
Two French Primitives
November 18, 1957
Margret Bilger
October 22, 1957
The Four Seasons
One Hundred Paintings by American School Children
June 11, 1957
Grandma Moses
May 6, 1957
Alfred Kubin
April 3, 1957
Franz Lerch
March 2, 1957
Egon Schiele
January 21, 1957
Josef Scharl
Memorial Exhibition
November 17, 1956
Irma Rothstein
May 19, 1956
Käthe Kollwitz
April 16, 1956
A Tribute to Grandma Moses
November 28, 1955
As I See Myself
One Hundred Paintings by American School Children
May 20, 1955
Juan De'Prey
April 19, 1955
Erich Heckel
March 29, 1955
Freddy Homburger
March 2, 1955
Masters of the 19th Century
January 18, 1955
Oskar Kokoschka
November 29, 1954
Isabel Case Borgatta and Josef Scharl
October 12, 1954
James N. Rosenberg and Eugen Spiro
April 30, 1954
Per Krogh
April 2, 1954
Cuno Amiet
February 16, 1954
Eniar Jolin
January 14, 1954
Irma Rothstein
December 8, 1953
Josef Scharl
November 11, 1953
Grandma Moses
October 21, 1953 - October 24, 1953
Wilhelm Kaufmann
September 30, 1953
Lovis Corinth, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele
May 27, 1953
A Grandma Moses Album
Recent Paintings, 1950-1953
April 15, 1953
Streeter Blair
American Primitive
February 26, 1953
Paintings on Glass
Austrian Religious Folk Art of the 17th to 19th Centuries
December 4, 1952
Hasan Kaptan
Paintings of a Ten-Year-Old Turkish Painter
October 29, 1952
Margret Bilger
May 10, 1952
American Natural Painters
March 31, 1952
Ten Years of New York Concert Impressions by Eugen Spiro; Four New Paintings by
January 26, 1952
I-Fa-Wei
Watercolors of New York by a Chinese Artist
December 1, 1951
Käthe Kollwitz
October 25, 1951
Drawings and Watercolors by Austrian Children
May 21, 1951
Grandma Moses
Twenty-Five Masterpieces of Primitive Art
March 17, 1951
Roswitha Bitterlich
January 18, 1951
Oskar Laske
Watercolors of Vienna and the Salzkammergut
October 14, 1950
Tenth Anniversary Exhibition
Part II
May 11, 1950
Austrian Art of the 19th Century
From Wadlmüller to Klimt
April 1, 1950
Chiao Ssu-Tu
February 18, 1950
Anton Faistauer
January 1, 1950
Tenth Anniversary Exhibition
Part I
November 30, 1949
Autograph Exhibition
October 26, 1949
Gladys Wertheim Bachrach
May 24, 1949
Oskar Kokoschka
March 30, 1949
Eugen Spiro
February 19, 1949
Frans Masereel
January 13, 1949
Ten Years Grandma Moses
November 22, 1948
Käthe Kollwitz
Masterworks
October 18, 1948
American Primitives
June 3, 1948
Egon Schiele
Memorial Exhibition
April 5, 1948
Miriam Richman
February 7, 1948
Vally Wieselthier
Memorial Exhibition
January 10, 1948
Christmas Exhibition
December 4, 1947
Fritz von Unruh
November 10, 1947
Käthe Kollwitz
October 4, 1947
Grandma Moses
May 17, 1947
Lovis Corinth
April 16, 1947
Hugo Steiner-Prag
March 15, 1947
Mark Baum
January 11, 1947
Eugen Spiro
November 25, 1946
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
May 17, 1946
Ladis W. Sabo
Paintings by a New Primitive Artist
April 8, 1946
Georges Rouault
The Graphic Work
February 26, 1946
Käthe Kollwitz
Memorial Exhibition
November 21, 1945
Fred E. Robertson
Paintings by an American Primitive
June 13, 1945
Max Liebermann
The Graphic Work
April 18, 1945
Vienna through Four Centuries
March 1, 1945
Eugen Spiro
January 20, 1945
Grandma Moses
New Paintings
December 5, 1944
Käthe Kollwitz
Part II
October 26, 1944
A Century of French Graphic Art
From Géricault to Picasso
September 28, 1944
Max Liebermann
Memorial Exhibition
June 9, 1944
Juan De'Prey
Paintings by a Self-Taught Artist from Puerto Rico
May 6, 1944
Abraham Levin
April 15, 1944
Lesser Ury
Memorial Exhibition
March 21, 1944
Grandma Moses
Paintings by the Senior of the American Primitives
February 9, 1944
Betty Lane
January 11, 1944
WaIt Disney Cavalcade
December 9, 1943
Käthe Kollwitz
Part I
November 3, 1943
Will Barnet
September 29, 1943
Lovis Corinth
May 26, 1943
Josephine Joy
Paintings by an American Primitive
May 3, 1943
Oskar Kokoschka
Aspects of His Art
March 31, 1943
Eugen Spiro
February 13, 1943
Seymour Lipton
January 18, 1943
Illuminated Gothic Woodcuts
Printed and Painted, 1477-1493
December 5, 1942
Abraham Levin
November 4, 1942
Walt Disney Originals
September 23, 1942
Documents which Relate History
Documents of Historical Importance and Landmarks of Human Development
June 10, 1942
Honoré Daumier
April 29, 1942
Bertha Trabich
Memorial Exhibition of a Russian-American Primitive
March 25, 1942
Alfred Kubin
Master of Drawing
December 4, 1941
Egon Schiele
November 7, 1941
Betty Lane
June 3, 1941
Flowers from Old Vienna
18th and Early 19th Century Flower Painting
May 7, 1941
Weavings by Navaho and Hopi Indians and Photos of Indians by Helen M. Post
January 29, 1941
Georg Merkel
November 7, 1940
What a Farm Wife Painted
Works by Mrs. Anna Mary Moses
October 9, 1940
Saved from Europe
Masterpieces of European Art
July 1, 1940
American Abstract Art
May 22, 1940
Franz Lerch
May 1, 1940
Wilhelm Thöny
April 3, 1940
French Masters of the 19th and 20th Centuries
February 29, 1940
H. W. Hannau
Metropolis, Photographic Studies of New York
February 2, 1940
Oskar Kokoschka
January 9, 1940
Austrian Masters
November 13, 1939
WORKERS OF THE WORLD
Modern Images of Labor
ARTISTS
Arntz, Gerd
Coe, Sue
Daumier, Honoré
Evergood, Philip Howard
Felixmüller, Conrad
Gropper, William
Grosz, George
Grundig, Lea
Hasse, Sella
Heartfield, John
Jansen, Franz M.
Klutsis, Gustav
Kollwitz, Käthe
Liebermann, Max
Masereel, Franz
Millet, Jean François
Overbeck-Schenk, Gerta
Rivera, Diego
Schmitz, Hans
Soyer, Raphael
Tschinkel, Augustin
ESSAY
Although work is a central fact of life, its popularity as an artistic subject has waxed and waned over the course of the past 150 years. Not surprisingly, labor first seriously began to interest a broad spectrum of European artists following the Revolution of 1848. Workers had appeared sporadically in art prior to the nineteenth century (particularly in Northern Europe), but they usually played minor roles. With the Church and the aristocracy as their principal patrons, artists for the most part painted portraits of the upper class or grand themes from religion and history. However, the rise of bourgeois capitalism not only altered the terms of artistic patronage, but also generated social and political upheavals that artists felt compelled to address. After the 1848 Revolution, laborers came to embody the nascent spirit of democracy and to constitute, for the first time, a primary subject for major paintings and sculpture.
Though most artists were born into—and supported by—the middle class, the turn to proletarian subjects was often a protest against the inequities of modern bourgeois society. Realism, the dominant style of the period throughout Europe, was likewise a protest against the falsifying idealizations of the past, part of a quest for literal “truth” that paralleled the scientific explorations of the period. Artists sought to represent contemporary life honestly, in all its aspects, and the worker was seen as the quintessential modern subject. Even those artists who were not overtly political bowed to an egalitarian spirit that commanded them to accord all social strata equal attention and dignity.
Despite artists’ shared allegiance to realistic truth telling, the images of labor that emanated from late nineteenth-century Europe reveal a variety of stylistic and sociological orientations. Honoré Daumier, with a relatively light touch, used caricature to deflate bourgeois pretensions. Jean-François Millet’s romantic depictions of toiling peasants championed a seemingly timeless connection to the soil at the very moment when rural folkways were rapidly being overtaken by industrialization. Adolph von Menzel’s factory workers are similarly ennobled by grueling physical labor, though they, too, may soon be replaced by machines. Käthe Kollwitz, on the other hand, did not see work as ennobling. Her peasants are depicted as brutalized, exploited animals, and her urban workers are prey to abuse, poverty and unemployment. Though Kollwitz thought workers were intrinsically beautiful, right-wing critics reviled her choice of subject matter and her unvarnished approach.
The elevation of labor as an artistic subject in the second half of the nineteenth century reflected two key unifying concerns. The first of these concerns was a need to see art as inseparable from—and therefore accountable to—its social context. On a more personal level, many artists shared a desire to distance themselves from their middle-class milieu and to ally themselves with forces they found both nobler and more just. Liberal intellectuals saw themselves as a separate class of “brain workers” who had somehow transcended their bourgeois origins and therefore could lead the way toward a new, egalitarian era. However, such socially-oriented visions diminished with the advent of Symbolism and then modernism. Artists who engaged humanistic issues at the turn of the twentieth century were inclined to address them in idiosyncratic, individualized terms. Formulating a modern pictorial vocabulary may have been perceived by some as subversive, but most modernist pioneers were more concerned with aesthetics than with politics.
Nevertheless, early modernism encompassed an inchoate protest against bourgeois values that was only waiting to assume a political dimension. This pivotal transformation was wrought by World War I and its revolutionary aftermath. The sheer brutality and senselessness of the war forged a new bond between the artist-soldier and his working-class comrades-in-arms, while at the same time opening a chasm between the fighting masses and the wealthy capitalists who had cravenly sent them to the slaughter. The privations of war generated the proletarian alliance necessary to topple the Russian Czar in 1917, and when the German regime fell a year later, it was widely assumed that a Communist revolution would follow. In both the U.S.S.R. and Germany, many avant-garde artists rallied to the socialist cause.
Artists initially sought to remake art according to Marxist principles, assuming that the proletariat would naturally respond. This creative enterprise entailed a number of sometimes overlapping theoretical formulations. Almost everywhere, socialist artists were committed to print: posters were handy to get out the word, and multiples countermanded the bourgeois preciousness of the unique art object. Stylistically, too, artists sought to create work that eschewed all signs of individuality. In Cologne, the Group of Progressive Artists, whose members included Gerd Arntz, Hans Schmitz and Augustin Tschinkel, invented a visual language of flat, black pictographs. Revealing no trace of the artist’s touch, these easily read symbols transformed people into anonymous ciphers, defined only by their surroundings and the trappings of their professions. Photomontage, invented more or less simultaneously by George Grosz, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch in Germany, and by El Lissitzky and Gustav Klutsis in the U.S.S.R., was likewise seen as an impersonal, revolutionary artistic tool.
Notwithstanding the fervor with which German and Russian artists greeted the new political age, their ostensible alliance with the proletariat quickly broke down. From the pure abstractions of the Russian Constructivists to the Expressionistic and Dadaist distortions of the Germans, the avant-garde produced imagery that the masses found at best incomprehensible and at worst offensive. In the early 1920s, the Constructivists decided to turn their attention from art to the design of utilitarian objects. The Soviet regime, looking for a more accessible visual style, reverted to realism, which had previously been rejected on account of its bourgeois associations. Among all the new styles, only photomontage proved sufficiently intelligible to a broad, unsophisticated public. Unsullied by any retrograde connotations, this technique dominated the posters produced under Stalin in the late 1920s and ’30s.
As the Communist revolution took hold in Russia, the creation of visual propaganda was subjected to increasingly doctrinaire state control. Solidifying support for the new government, after the bloody post-revolutionary civil war had been won by the Reds, demanded an outpouring of sunny images. Farmers and industrial workers were portrayed in nothing less than heroic terms, and Soviet production was effusively extolled. In Germany, where the entrenched capitalist faction was forcefully reasserting itself, left-wing artists painted a much bleaker picture. Grosz, Lea Grundig, Kollwitz and others catalogued the rampant injustices of the reigning social order, depicting German workers as pitiful, downtrodden victims. Increasingly, this attitude was frowned upon by Moscow, which deplored both the negativism and the creative independence of their German comrades.
Beyond the thorny issue of artistic freedom under Communism lay the equally touchy (but less often discussed) matter of artists’ primary class allegiances. The nineteenth-century ideal of the artist as a special class of “brain worker” found some echo in early Soviet cultural policy. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenin’s close collaborators, viewed artists as a kind of worker elite: manual laborers who, because of their talent and training, might qualify as inspirational leaders. This was the viewpoint adopted by Trotsky’s friend, the Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Rivera was one of a number of muralists employed by the Mexican government in the early 1920s to proselytize on behalf of the recent revolution. After the Mexican government took a reactionary turn in 1924, many of these artists looked to the United States for commissions. Although Rivera did not abandon his leftist leanings, his subsequent work for clients such as the Ford Motor Company and the Rockefellers highlights the difficulty that artists in a capitalist society had sustaining an ideologically pristine identification with the proletariat.
On the other hand, the fact that capitalists such as Ford and Rockefeller would hire a Communist like Rivera in the first place highlights the manner in which America’s democratic populism softened the European concept of class conflict. Because the U.S. lacks an aristocratic tradition, social distinctions are defined by what is perceived as a flexible continuum of wealth, rather than by rigid class boundaries. Whereas the European bourgeoisie has been widely reviled, the American middle class is the group that U.S. citizens, rich and poor, most readily identify with. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, labor became a national preoccupation, and workers were seen as heroic symbols of patriotic unity. Take away the Marxist references, and a Communist mural easily became a paean to American capitalism.
One of the most successful meldings of artist and worker occurred in Depression-era America. The collapse of the American economy after the stock market crash of 1929 destroyed, in one fell swoop, much of the capitalist infrastructure that had previously sustained an insular art world. Suddenly no different from other unemployed workers, artists became instantly politicized. The specific hardships engendered by the Depression merged with a more generalized desire to reform the injustices believed to be inherent in the capitalist system. Many artists rallied to the cause of Proletarianism, the Americanized version of Communism. And just as artists now saw themselves as workers, so workers were seen as potential artists. The Marxist periodical New Masses encouraged laborers to engage in all manner of creative enterprises and ran a regular column headlined “Workers’ Art.”
The art community’s socially oriented position helped shape the various art programs run by the U.S. government in the 1930s under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration. Partly because the artists themselves demanded it, the Roosevelt administration treated them like common laborers, assigning them to projects that paid hourly wages, in addition to doling out more conventional commissions. The W.P.A. also literally brought art to the people, both by dispatching commissioned artists throughout the country, and by establishing Community Art Centers to hold art classes and host exhibitions. Many of the more politically radical American artists of the early ‘30s—including Philip Evergood, William Gropper and Ben Shahn—painted murals for the W.P.A.
Like the Mexican, Russian and German regimes, the Roosevelt administration discovered that art is a powerful social tool. Public commissions could be used to cement national identity, and posters hailed the success of the government’s various programs. As in Europe, it became evident that a realist style worked best. Photomontage, employed by Lester Beall in his posters for the Rural Electrification Administration, also proved a popular success. And straight abstraction, it turned out, was better tolerated than the realist distortions perpetrated by the Expressionists and the Surrealists. As the decade of the 1930s wore on, artistic styles began to acquire specific political connotations. The fact that both Stalin and Hitler detested modernism lent its adherents increased moral weight. On the other hand, the socially conscious realism practiced by many W.P.A. artists, steeped as they were in early ‘30s radicalism, acquired a Communist taint.
The apotheosis of modernism as America’s national aesthetic credo was completed after World War II.
Granted, there were some right-wing congressmen who (not incorrectly) identified modern art with prewar European socialism. In order to become politically acceptable, modernism had to be Americanized—as it was through the cowboy persona of Jackson Pollock—and stripped of all ideological associations. American proponents of “art for art’s sake” lauded abstraction as the antithesis of Nazi and Soviet propaganda. Because it was ostensibly content-free, abstract art proved an ideal repository for the projected values of democratic freedom and ultimately became a cornerstone of America’s Cold-War-era cultural policy. Though Pop Art in the 1960s reintroduced representational subject matter, modernism never again directly engaged social realities in the manner that was common, both in Europe and the U.S., before World War II. The capitalist system had recovered from the Depression, the insular art world had re-established itself, and most artists were content to go back to serving the upper classes. Sue Coe has been one of the few contemporary artists to maintain a concerted activist stance. Labor has figured prominently in her work, while fading from view on the larger art scene.
The dogma of “art for art’s sake” notwithstanding, however, art is seldom politically inert. During the period of social upheaval and crisis that stretched from the mid-nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth centuries, avant-garde artists routinely abandoned their bourgeois class allegiances to identify with the proletariat, in the hopes that a united front would yield a more just world. Artists recognized the potential power of their work, and governments responded accordingly, viewing art either as a means of asserting control, or as a destabilizing threat. Depoliticizing art was one way of neutralizing its disruptive capabilities. But as the American State Department’s use of abstraction during the Cold War demonstrates, even supposedly apolitical art can serve political ends. Although artists throughout history have usually worked for the rich, this does not mean that art is merely a dispensable luxury good. The economic and social ramifications of art are considerable, even (or perhaps especially) when these ramifications are being fervently denied. The stark dwindling of the worker as a subject for contemporary art—at a time when globalization is transforming the labor market at home and abroad—speaks volumes about the level of denial that is necessary to sustain our current socio-economic order.
We would like to convey our heartfelt thanks to the many colleagues and friends who contributed works to this exhibition. Special mention must be made of Andrew Breslau, who first called our attention to Giacomo Patri’s classic picture novel, White Collar, and to the artist’s son, Piero Patri. White Collar, a Depression-era attempt to dramatize the common interests shared by white- and blue-collar workers, served as the inspiration for the present exhibition. We would also like to thank Merrill Berman, who was as ever extremely generous with his advice. Checklist entries include catalogue raisonné numbers, where applicable. Unless otherwise indicated, image dimensions are given for the prints and full dimensions for the posters and all other works.