A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 124)

evident in the fields of Louisiana’s sugar cane plantations. There he sketched and studied the field laborers as they worked under the heat of the Louisiana sun, using only a limited range of hand tools, in demanding jobs where mechanization had not yet replaced the human presence.24 Benton later painted these scenes from his sketches, incorporating them into works such as the Deep South panel in America Today, the famous murals he painted for the New School for Social Research in New York (1930). Considered radical at the time, his mural figures were depicted in realistic American garb (studied and sketched with an historian’s eye for detail), including the Louisiana field workers. He incorporated these studies into easel paintings as well, such as Rice Planting in Louisiana (1929) and Sugar Cane (1943). Benton, also an accomplished teacher and writer, described his experiences in his popular autobiography, An Artist in America (1937). “Who knows the South? It is a land of beauty and horror, of cultivation and refinement, laid over misery and degradation. It is a land of tremendous contradictions.” Continuing, he offered a conclusion. “In spite of the above, the South remains our romantic land. It remains so because it is. I have seen the red clay of Georgia reveal its color in the dawn, and the bayous of Louisiana glitter in the magnolia-scented moonlight. There are no crude facts about the South which can ever kill the romantic effect of these on my imagination.”25 Beginning as the American Scene movement in the 1920s, evolving into what the popular press called Regionalism in the 1930s, the art of this era often focused on the observed realities of daily life, as evident in Benton’s works and that of artists such as his well-known student, John McCrady. However, as Benton wrote in 1951, he found the term Regionalism to be inaccurate. “The name Regionalism suggested too narrow a range of inspiration to be quite applicable…I was after a picture of America in its entirety…I ranged from north and south and from New York to Hollywood and back and forth in legend and history.”26 Yet, after his self-portrait appeared on the December 24, 1934, cover of Time magazine, and the magazine suggested that he was part of a Regionalist “movement” with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry (although the three artists barely knew each other then), he came to be regarded as the leader of the “Regionalists.” Reflecting Curry’s ongoing fame, Life magazine commissioned him to create a major painting, reproduced in its May 6, 1940, issue under the title, Hoover and the Flood, to document the historic 1927 Mississippi River flood.27 As these developments advanced in the art world, the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the ensuing years of economic decline impacted Louisiana notably. Influenced by American Scene and Regionalist art, and the hardships of the Great Depression, the nation’s art became increasingly focused on American subjects (historic and contemporary), often well expressed in these styles. In Louisiana, a new political power arose when Huey Pierce Long was elected governor (1928-32), then Senator (1932-35). 124 LOUISIANA: THE NEW CENTURY Long was a populist who soon became a major patron of art and artists, as well as of architects (especially the Weiss, Dreyfous, and Seiforth firm), in the years before the founding of federal relief programs. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President (1933), the era of the New Deal in Louisiana began, as evident in programs and projects including the Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration), the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Works Progress Administration, the Post Office Art program, the Federal Art Project, the Federal Writers Project, the Federal Theater Project, the Federal Music Project, and the Historical Records Survey. Huey Long’s legacy is evident in a range of buildings, schools, highways, bridges, and public facilities across the state, yet the most significant of these was his new Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge. Initiated during the Great Depression, reflecting major financial and political commitments, it was nationally significant, both as a building and as a symbol, reflecting Long’s political power and his twentieth-century vision for Louisiana, bridging the cultures and styles of the 1920s and 1930s. The design of the capitol’s architecture came from New Orleans architects, Emile Weil and the firm of Weiss, Dreyfous, and Seiforth, who were also responsible for planning the Capitol’s ambitious arts program and hiring the artists to complete it.28 The architects of Long’s new capitol building were aware of the Beaux-Arts architectural and aesthetic legacies (and their moral and inspirational implications), and also of new modern aesthetics and brought national artists including Lorado Taft, Lee Lawrie, and Charles Guerin, to Louisiana to incorporate them into the state’s new skyscraper-style capitol. Unlike those other state capitols (except one under construction then in Nebraska), Long wanted a modern, skyscraper-style office tower incorporated in his building, a symbol of classical traditions and history, as well as a symbol of Louisiana’s entrance into modern times, of the twentieth century as reflected in its modern Art Deco lines. Louisiana’s story and history was to be told in art, by national artists such as Taft, Lee, and Guerin, as well as Ulric Ellerhusen and Adolph A. Weinman, and a range of Louisiana artists including Conrad Albrizio, Angela Gregory, Albert Reiker, Juanita Gonzales, John Lachion, and Rudolph Parducci. In scope, despite the rapid construction schedule, it was intended to serve as an epic overview of Louisiana history, themes, myths, and symbols, an encyclopedic overview of the history and evolution of the state, culminating (by implication) in the Long administration. It also served as a major work program for the state, employing contractors, skilled laborers, and a range of firms and businesses, as well as many national and state artists, before the beginning of FDR’s federal programs. The impact of the capitol’s aesthetic and historical programs began outside, with the surrounding landscape and design environment created to elevate it from the surrounding urban context. Lorado Taft’s two major sculptural groups, The Pioneer and The Patriot groups, flank the doorway and tower over  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1266 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=583 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1340 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1262

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A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

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