Literature

This manuscript relates to Gorky's Aviation: Evolution of Forms Under Aerodynamic Limitations (P141), his WPA/FAP-commissioned murals for the Administration Building at Newark Airport in New Jersey. It was originally commissioned by the Washington Office of the WPA/FAP for a national report consisting of an anthology of statements by Project artists and administrators. The publication was to be titled Art for the Millions and edited by Emanuel Benson with editorial input from Holger Cahill. The known edited versions of the manuscript are catalogued as: Gorky c. 1936b, Gorky c. 1936c, and Gorky c. 1936d. The publication was never released by the WPA, but was later edited by the art historian Francis V. O'Connor and published in 1973 (O'Connor 1973). 

This is the only known handwritten version of the manuscript and it is presumably that which Gorky submitted to the WPA/FAP in December 1936. According to the research of Matthew Spender, it is in the hand of Gorky’s older sister Satenig Avedisian (née Adoian, c. 1901–1989). It is located in the Ruth Bowman Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (Box 5, Folder 1). An identical, typed version of the manuscript, which was prepared by Emanuel Benson according to the research of O’Connor, is located in the Dorothy C. Miller Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (Box 20, Folder 11).

See Supplemental Materials below for a PDF of the handwritten manuscript.

Reprinted in: the exhibition catalogue for 1978–80 Newark, Spender 2009 and Mattison 2009. Partially reprinted in: Matossian 1998b and O'Connor 1973.