WPA- Coit tower murals

The Coit Tower murals were done under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal federal employment programs for artists. Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim successfully sought the commission in 1933, and supervised the muralists, who were mainly faculty and students of the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), including Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Ray Bertrand, Rinaldo Cuneo, Mallette Harold Dean, Clifford Wight, Edith Hamlin, George Harris, Robert B. Howard, Otis Oldfield, Suzanne Scheuer, Hebe Daum and Frede Vidar.^[4]

These Diego Rivera-inspired murals, many depicting the struggles of working class Americans, were completed in 1933-34. Rivera had recently completed two frescos in San Francisco—one, Making a Fresco, at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute) and another at the San Francisco Stock Exchange. Several of the Coit Tower artists had worked with or assisted Rivera. Another Rivera Mural,Pan American Unity a 22 by 74-foot masterpiece produced on Treasure Island for the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition, is on display at City College of San Francisco.

After Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads mural was destroyed by its Rockefeller Center patrons for the inclusion of an image of Lenin, the Coit Tower muralists protested, picketing the tower. Sympathy for Rivera led some artists to incorporate leftist ideas and composition elements in their works. Bernard Zakheim's "Library" depicts fellow artist John Langley Howard crumpling a newspaper in his left hand as he reaches for a shelved copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital with his right, and Stackpole is painted reading a newspaper headline announcing the destruction of Rivera's mural; Victor Arnautoff's "City Life" includes The New Masses and The Daily Worker periodicals in the scene's news stand rack; John Langley Howard's mural depicts an ethnically diverse Labor March as well as showing a destitute family panning for gold while a rich family observes; and Stackpole's Industries of California was composed along the same lines as an early study of the destroyed Man at the Crossroads.^[5]

 The simple, stylized approach to the figures and lighting might be a good one to take for segments of "Topaz." I like the organic, "compressed" feel of the compositions as well; giving a real feel for the hustle and bustle of San Francisco in the 1930's.

Poster art of the WPA

In  the early 1930's, America was deep in the middle of the "Great Depression." To help stimulate the economy, in 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (the name was changed to Work Projects Administration in September of 1939), as part of his New Deal program to put millions of unemployed Americans back to work. In July of 1935, Federal Project Number One (Federal One) was established within the WPA as a central administration for the arts-related projects. Federal One provided funds specifically for artists, musicians, actors, and writers through the Federal Art Project (FAP), the Federal Music Project, the Federal Theatre Project, and the Federal Writer's Project. FAP employed more than five thousand artists in various art projects including the many poster divisions that were created throughout the United States.

Though originally hand painted, one by one; the art, and posters created by the WPA were eventually designed to be massed produced by way of silkscreen printing. This created a unique graphic style which became associated with American design and art of the late 1930's/ early 1940's. I have always envisioned certain portions of "Topaz" to make use of this style.

The images shown on this post are from the Library of Congress collection By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943. The collection consists of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. These striking silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The posters were made possible by one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts and were added to the Library's holdings in the 1940s.

Here are some highlights from the library of Congress collection: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaposters/highlights.html