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Abstract
During the 1930s, artists working across the United States responded to contemporary environmental calamity, particularly in the Dust Bowl, with a host of poignant paintings and prints. From intimate woodcuts to large-scale public murals, artists produced shocking images of drought, erosion, and dust storms, as well as destitute farmers and down-and-out "Okie" migrants. Such paintings and prints of the Dust Bowl were collected and exhibited widely during the 1930s, from the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, to the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and they received generally favorable reviews and even prestigious art awards. This dissertation examines such images of the Dust Bowl in relation to the environmental, social, artistic, economic, and political context in which they were created.
The dissertation is divided into six chapters. Chapter I examines Dust Bowl images in relation to mainstreams in American art during the 1930s, and particularly the regionalist and social realist movements. Chapter II discusses the ways in which New Deal programs provided artists with the financial and artistic support necessary to explore the Dust Bowl aesthetic. Chapter III examines the ways in which artists borrowed from, yet ultimately transformed, contemporary photographs of environmental calamity. Chapters IV and V examine prevalent themes in environmental art of the 1930s, with Chapter IV focusing on dust storms, drought, and erosion, and Chapter V addressing images of human, rather than environmental, tragedy in the Dust Bowl. Finally, Chapter VI examines the reception of Dust Bowl images by art critics and curators as well as the general public.
The dissertation draws on a variety of sources, including contemporary newspapers, exhibition catalogues, art as well as popular journals, letters, films, government documents, scientific and agricultural treatises, as well as personal interviews with surviving artists. In examining these lesser-known images of the Dust Bowl, this dissertation both broadens our understanding of American art and artists of the thirties, and provides insights into contemporary attitudes towards natural disaster and human suffering in the 1930s.
