American Artists' Congress

AMERICAN ARTISTS’ CONGRESS. A smaller and less remembered version of the Congress of American Writers, the American Artists’ Congress (AAC) rallied a wide variety of greater and lesser notables for an antifascist program. The John Reed Clubs, primarily literary in purpose, had launched numbers of exhibitions in 1933–1934 showcasing political, class-oriented work. With the turn toward the Popular Front and the convocation of the first national Writers Congress in 1935, leading figures of the Reed Clubs sought a more inclusive artistic expression. Stuart Davis, one of the prominent Masses artists twenty years earlier, served as executive secretary for a proposed artists’ congress. Committees including Hugo Gellert, George Ault, Louis Lozowick, Ben Shahn, and others put together a planning committee (which also included former Masses artist Henry Glintenkamp). Many notables, such as Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, and Max Weber, participated in the “call” for a congress.

The first meetings of the congress, held at New York’s Town Hall and the New School for Social Research in February 1936, emphasized solidarity against fascism and war, so much so that the usual Left artists’ criticisms of conservative regionalism or American Scene art virtually ceased. With the disappearance of that familiar critical edge, the avid Left promotion of social realist art practically faded from the AAC also. The lionization of the Soviet approach to social art, by Margaret Bourke-White and Louis Lozowick, only hinted at the utility of social realism for US artists. Censorship (such as the effacement of Diego Rivera’s Rockefeller Center murals) was viewed as a facet of the imminent danger fascism posed to world culture. Max Weber delivered the rhetorical high note of the congress, connecting art with the revolutionary transformation of society and embracing modern art’s innovations as essential. Artist groups’ representatives spoke at length about the economic and social conditions of their members and efforts at collective improvement. Leading figures of the congress described it as the greatest event in American art since the Armory Show of 1913.

After the congress, working AAC branches sprang up in New York, Cleveland, Saint Louis, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Chicago, symposia were widely held, and various shows (including a noted print show, “America—1936”) and annual exhibitions were opened. Meanwhile, the congress lobbied for a permanent federal arts program, helped establish an American Artists and Writers Ambulance Corps for Spain, and defended controversial art from suppression.

From 1937 to 1939, the same type of activity continued, with lower-key national meetings and much local politically oriented activity. Meanwhile, critics increasingly charged Communist domination (a prospect that Stuart Davis, promised autonomy, had resisted in practice). Ultimately, the compulsion to defend the Moscow Trials and the Hitler-Stalin Pact proved too much. Davis himself grew weary of Communists’ bloc-voting and sought to reduce the AAC’s purview to solely artistic affairs. A 1940 vote to approve a report favoring Russia’s invasion of Finland precipitated Stuart Davis’s resignation and a minority report charging Communist Party domination of the AAC. The organization limped on, with Henry Glintenkamp as chairman, and a variety of loyalists (including William Gropper, Raphael Soyer, Philip Evergood, and Art Young) in tow. It officially dissolved in 1942.

“The American Artists’ Congress: Its Context and History.” Introduction to Artists against War and Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists’ Congress, edited by Matthew Baigell and Julia Williams. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

Andrew Hemingway, Andrew. Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Whiting, Cecile M. Antifascism in American Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.

Williams, Julia. Artists Against War and Fascism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.