Swing Landscape

An insightful study of the progressive politics animating a great work of modernist mural painting

In 1936 the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project commissioned Stuart Davis (1892–1964) to paint a mural for the Williamsburg Houses, a New York City housing project. Though the mural, Swing Landscape, was never installed in its intended location, it survives as an impressive testament to Davis’s energetic, colorful brand of abstraction and the progressive politics that animated it. This study explores the painting, one of the greatest of twentieth-century America and arguably Davis’s most ambitious work.
 
This book challenges the prevailing tendency to separate Davis’s leftist activism from his art and contextualizes Swing Landscape within 1930s abstract mural painting in New York, emphasizing the politics of abstraction. The book also offers the first comprehensive look at the Williamsburg mural commission, including works by Willem de Kooning, Ilya Bolotowsky, and others. The result is an indispensable resource on interwar modernism, mural painting, and urban development.
 

Un studiu perspicace al politicii progresiste care anima o mare lucrare de pictura murala modernista In 1936, Proiectul federal de arta al Works Progress Administration l-a insarcinat pe Stuart Davis (1892–1964) sa picteze o pictura murala pentru Williamsburg Houses, un proiect de locuinte din New York City. Desi pictura murala, Swing Landscape, nu a fost niciodata instalata in locatia propusa, ea supravietuieste ca un testament impresionant al energiei, coloratei marci de abstractizare a lui Davis si a politicii progresiste care a animat-o.