Crafting an American Identiy
The United States has always been unique in that it is a country of all different cultures and values, with immigrants still making up about 11.5% of the population by 1930. With so many people from different countries immigrating to the US, and bringing in their cultures and values, the US did not really have its own individual identity. Instead, the United States adopted a universalist identity in the multitudes of cultures that it contained. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) made an effort to be equitable in its employment of artists, hiring women and people of color, with Women made up about 13.5 percent in 1938, and Black Americans making up about 15 percent of its workforce in 1935. By 1939, the WPA had employed over 400,000 Black men and women, or about every one in seven WPA workers. This created a diverse array of artists and voices in American art.
Through the Federal Arts Project, artists crafted an identity that was unique to the US, one that reflected “American” values of labor, rough energy, and a strong work ethic. At a time when so many people were out of work, the American Dream focused upon finding work and being able to feed families. The New Deal artists immortalized that ideal in public murals, group exhibitions in underserved communities, and sharing skills in free art lessons. Shared work created unity. In Hugh Pearce Botts’ Steel Workers, laborers look strong and competent, working together and in the process developing a sense of community and shared values. Their actions are dramatically backlit by flames, and they wear minimal safety equipment. That massive burst at the print's center is barely balanced, visually, by the plant's equipment and steelworkers. Labor was building the nation, not wealthy industrialists. Yet most of the individual figures are not detailed in their faces, creating people who could be anyone—people that viewers could see as themselves. By creating this art, the artists themselves became the laborers they depicted, working to create this shared sense of national identity.
Works Consulted
-- Austin, Algernon. "When the WPA Created Over 400,000 Jobs for Black Workers." Center for Economic and Policy Research 9 Feb. 2023. Link
-- "The Steel Business." Andrew Carnegie: The Richest Man in the World. PBS: American Experience. 1997. Link
-- United States Census Bureau. 1930 Census: Volume 2. Population, General Report, Statistics by Subjects. 1933. Link