i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

Art on the Left in the 1930s / 65Nisonoff, Herman Rose, Max Schnitzler, and Joseph Vogel, with Neel as thesole woman. 70 In contrast to The Ten, which had declared itself opposed tothe political use of art, 71 the New York Group remained committed to art’s politicalfunction. Yet in these turbulent years their solidarity could not last: thegroup dissolved after its second exhibition. Its joint statement, printed in thebrochure of the ƒrst of its two exhibits at the ACA gallery, situates the NewYork Group squarely at the center of Popular Front concerns: the reconciliationof social realism with modernism, of local with international politics:The New York Group is interested in those aspects of contemporary life whichre„ect the deepest feelings of the people . . . However . . . [t]here must be no talkingdown to the people; we number ourselves among them . . . The New YorkGroup, while it wishes most of all to maintain its local and national character, at thesame time wishes most of all to avail itself of the best international traditions. Inshort, we wish to be artistically and socially progressive. 72The political position of these artists was clear: they continued the basic tenetof social realism that the artist was to ƒnd his subject in and through labor, toconsider himself a laborer, for if labor was seen less and less as the source ofrevolution, it was nonetheless the “bedrock” of life experience.The titles of the works in the exhibition conƒrm their continuing social realistconcerns: Jules Halfant exhibited The Eviction, Herb Kruckman RailroadWorkers, Louis Nisonoff, On the El, and Max Schnitzler, WPA Lunch Hour.Neel submitted two early works. The ƒrst, Poverty (Futility of Effort), was a logicalchoice, as it had been published two years earlier in Art Front, but theEnsor-like (Well) Baby Clinic, 73 had been made ten years earlier and wouldnot have appeared particularly germane in its subject, although it surely wouldhave been the most radical example of expressionism. Although Art News,quoting Kainen’s statement directly, reviewed the 1938 exhibition favorably, itconcluded on an equivocal note: “With underlying unity in their philosophytoward art and variety in their particular styles, one looks forward to more oftheir work.” 74 The New York exhibition schedule also appeared to afƒrm thedirection these artists were taking: the May 14, 1938, issue of Art News enthusiasticallyreviewed three concurrent gallery exhibits of the German Expressionistartist Kathe Kollwitz. 75 Kollwitz’s reputation as the prototypical Social Realistdid not reconcile the New York Group to its one woman member, however.Neel summarized the majority attitude in the New York Group quite directly:“They were so embarrassed because I was a woman, but I didn’t feel any differentfrom them. They didn’t understand.” 76By the time of the second and last exhibition of the New York Group,February 1–18, 1939, the membership had been whittled down from eight to