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Commentary
In August 1935, Gorky was assigned to the Mural Division of the Works Progress Administration's newly established Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP). In January 1936, his first commission for a 720-square-foot, single panel, aviation-themed mural for the Administration Building at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, was transferred to the newly opened Administration Building at Newark Airport, New Jersey. This was, in part, due to then New York mayor, Fiorella H. La Guardia's (1882–1947), criticism of Gorky's studies for Floyd Bennett Field. As quoted in the New York Herald Tribune on the opening of the Federal Art Project Gallery's exhibition, Murals for Public Buildings, in December 1935: "[Mayor La Guardia] attended the opening . . . and found that several of the murals scheduled to adorn public buildings in New York City were beyond his comprehension. . . . Mr. Gorky told the Mayor that the abstractionist did not use 'old fashioned colors,' tried to show all sides of an object at the same time, and viewed a round ball as flat. The Mayor wrinkled his brow. 'I'm a conservative in my art, as I am a progressive in my politics,' he said. 'That’s why perhaps I cannot understand it.'"1
Gorky's revised aviation-themed commission—titled Aviation: Evolution of Forms Under Aerodynamic Limitations, by the WPA/FAP, and exhibited as such in September 1936—consisted of a ten-panel mural cycle for the building's second-floor foyer, executed in oil on canvas, and measuring approximately 1,530 square feet. By December 1936, Gorky had assigned distinct titles for each of the four walls on which the ten panels were installed: Activities on the Field (north wall), Modern Aviation (south wall), Mechanics of Flying (east wall), and Early Aviation (west wall). Each wall displayed a total of two panels, with the exception of the four-panel south wall (see D0642, D0643, D0644, and D0641).2 The known preparatory drawings for the project (see related work) and the two remaining panels (P141v and P141w) are catalogued under Gorky's titles.
Gorky's final designs for Newark stemmed, in large part, from his earlier designs for Floyd Bennett, but no longer incorporated the photographs of Wyatt Davis (see D0635 and D0638). Due to their size, the ten panels were painted off-site in the seventh-floor workshop of the FAP's midtown headquarters at 6 East 39th Street. Following a failed first attempt to affix the panels to the walls, in June 1937, the completed mural cycle was unveiled to the public, secured by a newly developed fixative formula of "lead white-resin varnish."2 According to an internal WPA memo dated June 25, 1937, a day after the murals' formal acceptance: "Mr. Gorky has a few minor changes to make now that they are all installed. It was [also] decided that the walls between the mural paintings are to be white, the pillars in the center of the room light gray."3 In an unpublished statement submitted in December 1936, at the request of the WPA/FAP's Washington office, Gorky offers: "In these times, it is of sociological importance that everything should stand on its own merit, always keeping its individuality. I much prefer that the mural fall out of the wall, than harmonize with it. Mural painting should not become architecture. . . . [I]t should never be confused with walls, windows, doors, or any other anatomical blueprints."4
Gorky's murals were met with mixed reviews. At the request of the WPA, Alfred H. Barr Jr. (1902–1981), director of the Museum of Modern Art, submitted a written statement in defense of Gorky's designs, observing: "Any conservative or banal or reactionary decorations would be extremely inappropriate. It is dangerous to ride in an old-fashioned airplane. It is inappropriate to wait and buy one's ticket surrounded by old-fashioned murals."5 Gorky, notably, never traveled by airplane.
Between April 1941 and March 1948, the Administration Building was requisitioned by the War Department. During this time, all ten of Gorky's panels were concealed by structural remodeling and repainting. In 1972, under the direction of Ruth Bowman (1923–2018), then a curator at New York University’s Art Collections, traces of canvas thread were discovered beneath fourteen layers of paint. In late 1976, after extensive restoration work, both east wall panels were recovered (P141v and P141w). They are the only two remaining panels.
There are three known photographs of the completed murals as installed at Newark, in which, only four of the ten panels are pictured (P141w; two of the four-panel south wall series, Modern Aviation; and one of the two-panel north wall series, Activities on the Field).6 The west wall, Early Aviation, is the only wall for which there is no visual documentation, aside from the miniature gouache studies in the lost model (see supplementary images). In Gorky's description, Early Aviation "sought to bring into elemental terms the sensation of the passengers in the first balloon to the wonder of the sky around them and the earth beneath."7
1. “W.P.A. Murals are Too Much for LaGuardia: ‘If Abstractions Are Art, I Belong to Tammany,’ He Says at Gallery Debut,” New York Herald Tribune, December 28, 1935.
2. Arshile Gorky, "My Murals for the Newark Airport: An Interpretation," December 1936, handwritten manuscript, AGF Archives (Gorky 1936).
3. The updated fixative formula was developed by the WPA's Technical Services division. On the failed first adhesion, see: Ruth Bowman, "Arshile Gorky's Aviation Murals Rediscovered," in Bowman, Murals without Walls: Arshile Gorky’s Aviation Murals Rediscovered, exh. cat. (Newark, N.J.: Newark Museum, 1978), 39. See also: Letter from Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, 1937, Arshile Gorky/Mooradian Archive, Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York; Arshile Gorky to Vartoosh Mooradian, 1937, in Matthew Spender, ed., The Plow and the Song: A Life in Letters and Documents, trans. Father Krikor Maksoudian (Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018), 148. The murals' acceptance date is confirmed by: Olive M. Lyford (Special Representative, WPA/FAP, N.J.), "Newark Airport Projects [minutes for meeting held on June 24, 1937]," June 25, 1937, AGF Archives.
4. See Gorky 1936 for additional information about the origins of this written statement for the WPA/FAP, which was only published posthumously, and for information about the various edited versions of it that are known to exist, including: Gorky c. 1936b, Gorky c. 1936c, and Gorky c. 1936d. Gorky, iv.
5. Letter from Alfred H. Barr Jr. to Olive M. Lyford (Special Representative, WPA/FAP, N.J.), October 14, 1936, AGF Archives.
6. The three photographs are dated April 17, 1940, and credited to a WPA photographer identified only as "Allen"; the only known prints are held in the Newark Museum Archives. Gift of Dorothy C. Miller, 1979 (Object numbers: 79.850, 79.851, and 79.858).
7. Gorky, vi.
Theme: Mural
