| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Robert Gwathmey: The Life and Art of a Passionate Observer. By Michael Kammen. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. viii, 240 pp. Cloth, $49.95, isbn 0-8078-2495-X. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-8078-4779-8.)

"Every work of art done with conviction is autobiographical," Robert Gwathmey asserted in a 1960 interview. Michael Kammen takes the artist at his word in this absorbing biography, exploring the life and work of a man who remains tantalizingly elusive. 1

Born in Virginia in 1903, Gwathmey studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. A member of the Artists Union, Artists Equity in New York City, and the American Artists Congress, Gwathmey participated in the social movements of the Left and joined the Communist party in the 1930s. His 1930s painting, mostly destroyed by the artist who saw it as apprentice work, included a post office mural for Eutaw, Alabama, commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts. (In his discussion of this project, Kammen perpetuates the pervasive confusion between the Treasury Section and the Federal Art Project. The Treasury Section, which awarded commissions by anonymous competition, was not part of the Works Progress Administration; its employees did not have to qualify for relief funding.) . . .

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