ENGENDERING CULTURE (New Directions in American Art)

Product description Using the iconography of New Deal murals and plays to interpret the cultural history of the 1930s, Engendering Culture demonstrates that the visual and dramatic images of each form contain an underlying vocabulary of gender: a stock of commonly used poses, subjects, settings, and dramatic roles that encode recognizable characteristics of manhood and womanhood. From Library Journal In this earnest and well-researched book, Melosh examines the visual politics of two New Deal art programs. The Treasury Section of Fine Arts funded murals and sculpture in public buildings and is often confused with the larger Federal Arts Project of the Work Projects Adminstration (WPA). Both programs created a set of cultural images rooted in the paternal liberalism of the times, and Melosh examines dozens of artworks as subtle or overt conveyors of sexual and racial symbolism. With its small illustrations, extensive notes, and somewhat spare analysis, this book will be of most interest to academics.- David McClelland, Temple Univ. Lib., PhiladelphiaCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.