The Body Politic
During the Great Depression, issues surrounding health often were addressed as national concerns—focused on productivity and stability—rather than individual ones. Americans were urged to remember that strength depended upon the united behavior of its citizens. This framework of a Body Politic dated back to ancient Greece and had been referenced so often that it seemed natural: the “head” of a society (usually its monarch) provided its will; the different parts each needed to fulfill their own roles, yet act in concert; a “disease” in one part of society could imperil the whole. Two public health posters created by the Federal Art Project show this set of priorities: stern governmental advice regarding proper actions shades into a nearly militarized war on tuberculosis. Individual health was important because it impacted the whole.
The Body Politic is a masculinist metaphor, with “the crown” and the “head of household” each holding dominion within their spheres. It affirms men’s role in the labor force as a family’s breadwinner. Even the most progressive New Dealers deferred to tradition: they praised working-class men for their hard labor and acknowledged how the loss of employment felt like a loss of identity. Along with the nation’s precarious economy, however, the social structures of gender roles also were shifting—most notably with passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Were women to remain the domestic, nurturing heart of the Body Politic? All of this is to say that visions of collective health (and illness) during the 1930s were intricate: analogies between social, political, and economic factors inform how individual and collective bodies are represented. It demands attention beyond artworks explicitly representing hospitals and doctors.
A man humbly dressed in overalls receives a clarity and mass that’s distinct from the sketched bodies that whirl around him. His anonymous face, concentrating upon its task, is centered in Leonard Pytlak’s The Repair Man (c. 1935). The specifics of his work are less important than his valued role: a person who knows how to keep society running. Even Moses Oley’s East River Landscape is a vision of collective health, despite an almost complete absence of humans. Its warm tones, idealized tugs and loading cranes, and tidy rows of cargo show a vigorous economy. And this shipyard is just one of many: passing tugs and smokestacks imply a healthy circulation beyond its frame. Artwork of muscular men on docks or building bridges, groups walking to work, buildings and heavy productive industries—all come together to present an ideal image of America that is strong, productive, and orderly.