“State-sponsored art” conjures the specter of menacing regimes and authoritarian leaders imposing turgid styles on “official artists.” Conform or else! But 75 years ago, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched his plan for national recovery with the founding of the New Deal, under whose auspices the Works Progress Administration (WPA) oversaw the Federal Art Project (FAP), state sponsorship was not a dictatorial command but a generous invitation for artists of all stripes to take part in the moral rejuvenation of a United States besieged by economic calamity—or what Jon Stewart dubs “the first Great Depression.” 

American art has never been so liberally supported by government as it was during the critical years between 1933 and 1943. The FAP served a dual purpose: It gave unemployed artists work while demonstratively branding the virtues of the nation through rousing mass communication. The WPA Poster Division was mandated to promote the cultural and social programs that FDR’s administration took great pains to foster. The posters supported hygiene, education, sports, vacations, conservation, community, theater, dance, and music; they cautioned about workplace safety and venereal disease. Although many artists were employed by a slew of different regional agencies as disparate as the New York City Art Project; the Cleveland Division of Health, Food and Drug Administration; and the San Francisco Junior Chamber of Commerce, a WPA graphic style was fairly consistent across the board. It was not as overly rendered as socialist romanticism or as dramatically gritty as American Ashcan School realism. Instead, WPA artists turned to an early form of universal symbolism that involved a streamlined variant of art moderne (or art deco), a hint of Russian constructivism, a smattering of cubism, and a dose of surrealism that gave the posters the aura of timely modernity. The style was a nod to the progressive approaches introduced in the 1920s by European avant-garde art and design movements.

Almost all of the posters (many of which are published in Posters for the People: Art of the WPA, by Ennis Carter, Quirk Books, September 2008) were produced as silkscreen prints, and only drawn or posterized graphics—no photographs—were used which accounted for the flat colors and bold, readable sans serif and slab serif typefaces endemic to the genre. Yet what distinguished these images from the era’s ham-fisted propaganda in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (although on rare occasions they were, in fact, indistinguishable) was a colorful vibrancy and comic wit that contributed to the sense of optimism they were meant to inspire. And though some were much more virtuosic than others in terms of composition and conception—especially given the huge annual output and the speed with which they were done—the overall quality was incredible. 

Given the current economic meltdown, this 75th anniversary of the New Deal has particular resonance. How might the current government stem the tide of economic and psychological depression? Can artists and designers help in similar ways today? It’s curious that the WPA style has been reprised in the recent past as a quaint retro conceit, but today may be an opportune time for a brand-new graphic language—equal in impact to the original initiative, but decidedly different—to help rally the cause of hope and optimism. 

With the intention to usher in a new era of social action art, ReadyMade asked illustrators and designers Nick Dewar, Christopher Silas Neal, Christoph Niemann, Open, and Mike Perry (click names to download posters) to conceive and draw out the iconic messages of our day. On the following pages, we showcase their work, along with the original WPA posters from which they took their inspiration.