Art In New Mexico? Who Sez? Where? Why? Starving Artists Edition

Carlos Vierra, painter of New Mexico scenes, c. 1917

On to the next talk at the New Mexico Museum of Art's series, "New Mexico: The Artists' Century."

• October 21: Depression and War Years

Independent Scholar, Lois Rudnick, has organized a session including presentations by Kathy Flynn of the National New Deal Preservation Association and Tey Marianna Nunn, Visual Arts Director at the National Hispanic Culture Center.

Now, this talk was really outstanding, I thought, in part because it got into aspects of Art (Big A) in New Mexico that I'm intrigued with and drawn to, including the Transcendental Painters and the extraordinary works of Hispanos during the Depression and War Years -- and before.

The premise basically was that were in not for New Deal programs (almost too many to list), Art (Big A) in New Mexico would literally have withered away. The support that had previously existed was scant to begin with, and when the Crash came, artists would have starved if not for the PWA, WPA and Kaune's (a well-known Santa Fe grocery store that extended credit to artists who stuck it out.)

Re: Catching Up -- Trancendental New Mexico

Emil Bisttram, "Indian Ceremonial" 1959

As a member of the New Mexico Museum of Art, I attend talks up in Santa Fe periodically that delve into the rather intricate questions of the origins and development of (fine) art and the artists specific to New Mexico.

The most recent talk I attended was geared to New Deal artists and arts projects in New Mexico and their legacy for the present. Kathryn Flynn and others presented the case that without the New Deal projects, almost all artists would have left New Mexico because there was no market for (fine) art any more thanks to the Depression. Some artists were literally starving or on the verge of starving. Were it not for the good graces of merchants like Santa Fe grocer Kaune's, and the credit they provided to artists during the toughest times, the situation for artists in New Mexico would have been much more perilous prior to the advent of New Deal programs like the WPA and PWA.

If they did nothing else, the New Deal projects and programs maintained a core community of artists in New Mexico through the Depression, and for years the the federal arts programs and projects replaced the market that had disappeared due to the financial collapse. Even so, at least one artist of renown and repute "gave his life" for the WPA. Gerald Cassidy was commissioned by the WPA (or perhaps it was the PWA, or even some other program, accounts vary) to paint murals for the Federal Courthouse in Santa Fe. He was painting them on canvas in a poorly heated warehouse on the edge of town. The heating equipment was malfunctioning, though apparently he didn't know it. Carbon monoxide was being released by the heater into the warehouse while he was working and he was getting sick day by day. He would go home and recover sufficiently to return to his work the next day, only to get sick again. Finally, he got sick and didn't recover. He died in 1936 of carbon monoxide poisoning.