We the People: The Great Depression brought suffering to Spokane – but also – art
In the We the People series, The Spokesman-Review examines a question from the Naturalization Test immigrants must pass to become United States citizens.
Today’s question: What was the Great Depression?
In the 1930s during the Great Depression, cash was tight for working-class and middle-class Americans – so money toward nonessentials, including the arts, dried up as people saved what they could.
“It was a real tragedy on a lot of different levels,” Washington State University history professor Matthew Sutton said, “Not only did Americans struggle with issues of unemployment and hunger and fear about what was happening both in the country and abroad, but they also lost those little moments of escape.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal tried to stabilize the American economy and society.
“New Deal policies saved a lot of people from poverty and hunger,” author and journalist Timothy Egan said. “They brought us Social Security for the elderly and farm subsidies for those getting kicked off their land because they couldn’t afford to pay their taxes or mortgages.”
Massive losses in stock prices often are often among the first ill omens of a faltering economy, including in 2008 for what became known as the Great Recession and in 1929 – the Great Depression.
The Dow Jones Industrial average dropped more than 1,000 points this past Monday. That happened after the Dow dipped more than 1,000 points in the two days prior. It has since regained some of that plunge, but the dip led some to speculate that America could slip into a recession.
The economic collapse resulting from the 1929 stock market crash leading to the Great Depression was characterized by high unemployment, low financial stability and an uncertain future. In Eastern Washington, the agriculture-dependent economy suffered greatly from the crisis.
In 1938, the Work Progress Administration opened the Spokane Art Center, one of many art centers across the nation. The purpose was ensuring the American people wouldn’t lose a generation of artistic talent and to keep artists employed.
The center quickly became a pillar of the community and the art world in general. People from all walks of life attended free classes at the center, which taught art history and artistic skills such as painting, sculpting and lithography.
The staff of the center included acclaimed artists from all around the country: Carl Morris, Guy Anderson, Z. Vanessa Helder and Robert Engard, to name a few.
Renowned abstract expressionist artist Clyfford Still frequently visited and even exhibited at the Center. Still’s art was particularly influenced by the depression.
“We see how he expressed himself in his more representational works of figures that were downtrodden or really struggling given the circumstances of society,” said Bailey Placzek, the curator of collections, catalogue raisonné research and project manager at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. “That experience of taking what he was seeing in the hardship around him and translating that through art really propelled his art forward.”
The work from the art center’s teachers and contacts was massively influential in the eventual Northwest school of art.
Despite positive reception from the community and the caliber of staff and students, the center always had issues with funding and high employee turnover. When the U.S. entered World War II, it proved the final blow as community attention was drawn to the war effort.
While the original center is long gone, its legacy of artistic education continues today in the Corbin Art Center, where children and adults can enjoy taking art and cultural classes.
The Corbin Art Center was opened in 1952 as the Spokane Art Center under Washington State University. The new center had years of community success until WSU ended the project in 1965. An initiative then began to restart the program in the Corbin House as part of the city’s parks and recreation division, where it’s been since.
The Corbin Art Center’s art programs span all types of media – painting, drawing, writing, and more. In the years following COVID-19 lockdowns, the demand has only increased.
Ryan Griffith, Spokane parks’ assistant recreation director, described the rebound as “almost like a Renaissance period where everybody came back together and really started saying, ‘This is what I have been missing from my life.’ ”
It’s no coincidence both center’s gained massive popularity following national hardship. Hard times inspire people to create.
“Hard times produce creative times among writers, artists and filmmakers,” Egan said, “There was an extraordinary amount of cool, creative stuff that came out of the Depression.”
Griffith said it’s about more than just the art itself.
“Art is such an amazing way for adults and youth to escape the screen, or just the general hustle and bustle of everyday life,” Griffith said, “It gives them an outlet to relax. It gives them an outlet to be creative, to be around other people that are looking to do the same thing.”
Placzek agreed and said art gives people the ability to discuss difficult issues and create community.
“Art really provides a jumping-off point for discussion but also refuge,” Placzek said, “It helps us connect with one another through time, so we see that our hardships and struggles that we’re having now, others have gone through and triumphed and it helps us feel a part of a larger society, and it reminds us of our humanity and what makes us human and connects us.”
Placzek said it’s crucial that communities provide resources and opportunities for the arts – Great Depression art projects did just that. New Deal art initiatives like the Spokane Art Center put art in the hands of the people, which changed American art of the 20th century.
“It expanded audiences in really important ways because suddenly you didn’t need money to be able to go see the orchestra,” Sutton said.
“So what it did was it actually kind of rebounded in a positive way and exposed a whole new generation to the arts that may not have otherwise.”