Michelle E. Lee and Dr. Mark Magleby, Art History
During the tumultuous years following the crash of the New York Stock Market in October 1929 and the Great Depression, a great need emerged to provide the millions of unemployed with some type of meaningful employment. One of the groups to be hit the hardest was the country’s struggling artists. As one historian aptly stated, “There had never been a time in our history when artists were so personally affected by physical need, so involved in economic action, so moved to political expression and organization, or so caught up in esthetic debate.”1 Because so many had been touched, artists became heavily involved in addressing the problems of society. Many supported Roosevelt’s New Deal, while the reaction of others was to simply record what they saw around them in their art.
One such artist, Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), viewed the disheartening effect of the Depression upon the American people with a sympathetic eye – he saw their feelings of insecurity as they were no longer able to support themselves. Soyer was drawn to these emotions and with as much empathy as possible, transferred them truthfully to his canvas. Like most of the Depression-era artists, Soyer chose to depict those images that he saw everyday while living near Union Square. However during such a emotionally charged time, Soyer’s work uncharacteristically displays Depression-era subjects without any kind of obvious political bias. Soyer’s “thematic focus was on the dignity and strength of character of the individual rather than on a conscious attack upon the capitalist system per se.”2 As evidenced in his work, Soyer’s lifelong mantra was that “art should describe and express people, their lives and times.”3 He felt that art should not glorify life, but give a true representation of what it really was. The lower working-class girls who filled the streets of New York were some of his favorite subjects.
His series of seamstresses at work perfectly portrays this widespread disillusion. The women in these paintings are all busy at work, even so, one particular and crucial aspect of their craft is missing. The mannequins that normally display the clothing as it is sewn are uniformly bare. Due to the fact that Soyer’s mannequins repeatedly remain bare in the seamstress series, it is recognizable that he is trying to communicate the seamstresses’ feelings of isolation and unfulfillment by never directly portraying the women with any products of their trade. This obvious lack of completion echos the feelings that many Americans felt during the hard years of the Depression when work was scarce. This is directly evidenced in another of his paintings, The Seamstress (Fig. 1). Here a young woman sits completely absorbed in her task of pinning something to the waist of a mannequin. Patterns hang on the wall behind her and one small scrap of cloth lays haphazardly on a chair next to her, but there are no evidences of a final product – nothing that will bring this woman any kind of tangible income.
Raphael Soyer wrote that his drawings “are not only a record of my years of work, but I hope they are also, to some degree, a reflection of the life and condition of our times.”4i Through his 1Milton Brown, Social Art in America: 1930-1945 (New York: ACA Galleries, 1981), 6. art, Soyer had successfully been able to mirror the conditions of his times. Ever aware of the conditions around him, this particular artist responded to the Depression by portraying Americans as he saw them. Soyer metaphorically represented the lower class seamstress’ sense of unfulfillment through the absence of any kind of product.
In finding information about Raphael Soyer, I often found it frustrating that there was not adequate documentation about his works. Dates and locations of his paintings were hardly included which caused problems in trying to construct a time-line of his work. Furthermore, I had not previously been extremely knowledgeable about the New Deal. As I researched many historical records and first-hand texts, however I gained a greater understanding of not only the New Deal policies, but the sentiments that were experienced by the nation. This project helped me to enlarge my capacity to discover possibilities through interdisciplinary research due to the scope of my topic. Overall, I feel that this experience has drastically improved my ability to research and solve problems in new ways.
References
- Milton Brown, Social Art in America: 1930-1945 (New York: ACA Galleries, 1981), 6.
- Howard E. Wooden, Raphael Soyer: The Shape of Human Dignity (Witchita: Witchita Art Museum, 1988), 6.
- Raphael Soyer and Patricia Hills, Raphael Soyer’s New York: People and Places, exhibition catalog for Cooper Union, NY exhibit (Boston: Boston University of Art, 1984).
- Janet A. Flint, Raphael Soyer: Drawings and Watercolors (Washington, DC: 1977), 13.