Associated American Artists
Encyclopedia
Associated American Artists is an art gallery
and business established in 1934 in New York City
. The gallery marketed art to the middle class
es, first in the form of affordable prints and later in home furnishings and accessories, and played a significant role in the growth of art as an industry.
but he quickly expanded into artists' agent, working as a publicist for British artist Douglas Chandor. By the 1930s Lewenthal had a clientele of 35 groups including the National Academy of Design
and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design
. Realizing the limited possibilities in selling high-priced art to high-class dealers, and the correspondingly huge potential in marketing affordable art to the much-larger middle classes, he left his public relations
work to try his hand at this new business model.
Prints being relatively cheap to produce, Lewenthal decided to focus on that medium. Before the 1930s, fine-art prints were usually limited edition
s which sold for $10–$50. During the Great Depression
the Federal Art Project
had resulted in hundreds of thousands of prints, but these were distributed free (mostly to schools) thus the artists made nothing. Lewenthal's idea was to combine quality, affordability, and profit. In 1934 he met with several well-known American artists, including Thomas Hart Benton
, and proposed hiring them to produce lithographs which he would then sell to middle-class buyers for $5 apiece plus $2 per frame, paying the artist $200 per edition
. At the same time, corporation
s began hiring famous artists to work on advertising campaign
s -- Dole Pineapple, for example, hired artist Georgia O'Keeffe
to "create pictorial links between pineapple juice and tropical romance" . This convergence of art, business, and consumerism was the perfect environment for Lewenthal's new Associated American Artists enterprise.
When Lewenthal commission
ed his first lithographs in 1934, the American economy was still limping towards recovery from the Depression; high-priced art was an impossible luxury
for most people and the old galleries that had always supported artists were finding it difficult to broker their work. AAA was thus "an agent of economic salvation" for numerous American artists including Peggy Bacon
, Aaron Bohrod
, John Steuart Curry
, Luigi Lucioni
, and Grant Wood
, despite the fact that signing with AAA usually meant being fired from their higher-end gallery.
By the fall of 1934 Lewenthal had contracts with fifty department stores to carry his "signed originals by America's great artists."
choice, and as "art for the people" rather than "art for the wealthy." He also began marketing direct to the public via mail-order in magazines such as Time
magazine and Reader's Digest
, and by phrasing it in terms of upward mobility—in the same way as buying Listerine ("The Dentifrice of the Rich," according to one ad campaign), owning modern art raised one's life socially. (Somewhat counter-intuitively, AAA's success led them to open a gallery on New York's posh Fifth Avenue in the late 1930s.) In 1944, AAA had 107 artists under contract and sold 62,374 lithographs, for a net income of $1 million per month; they also began to expand into slightly higher-end (but still affordable) paintings.
In addition to its mainstream marketing strategy, AAA chose art and artists with populist
appeal. Representational and regional
art made up the bulk of their lines; particularly popular were the works of Benton, Curry and Wood. These artists avoided gritty realism and created positive images of an idealized, strong, capable America, a viewpoint which accorded well with the political environment of the New Deal
and was in some senses therapeutic
for the anxiety and weakness pervasive during and just after the Depression. Typical of this was Hart Benton's Plowing It Under, released shortly after the federal government arranged the plowing under of millions of acres previously devoted to cotton production in order to increase farm revenue; Benton's work reassured the public that the government was working in the best interests of the people.
and advertising in the minds of corporate planners, or consider that their art might be used to inspire confidence in a product. They were soon to learn. Hart Benton's original works for R.J. Reynolds' Lucky Strikes, for example, showed black sharecroppers at work, but corporate headquarters were not interested in "Negroes doing what looked like old-time slave work." They demanded pictures that showed not realism but idealism, leading Benton to complain that "Every time a patron dictates to an artist what is to be done, he doesn't get any art, he just gets a poor commercial job." Increasingly, rather than deal with AAA and its artists, companies built in-house art department
s that could produce art in the Regionalist style. This appropriation of the regionalist/representational style culminated in the propaganda posters of World War II.
) contributed to its decreasing popularity and to the rise of abstract
and surrealist
art after World War II. When AAA opened galleries in Chicago
and Beverly Hills, it stocked them with modern works by American and—a first for AAA—European artists. (When Lewenthal offered Jackson Pollock
an art-for-business commission like those he had offered his artists in 1934, Pollock turned him down.) In its press releases and articles AAA talked about exploring "new frontiers," "new trends" -- and made no mention of the $5 mail-order line and the artists who had helped it succeed twenty years earlier. Thomas Hart Benton resigned from AAA in 1946.
AAA continued to find new ways to sell art, however, branching out into Stonelain porcelain, fabric, and housewares such as ashtrays, playing cards, and lamp shades as vehicles for work in abstract and other modern styles. By the mid-1950s, Lewenthal was quoted as saying, "Today's artist is a designer, not an Ivory Tower
tenant. His is a field of practical creativity and every American room can become a showcase for his genius.". Now, rather than bringing modern art to the masses, AAA was bringing mass consumer commodities into the world of art.
In a strange reversal of its "market to the masses" philosophy, many early AAA prints which sold originally for $5 go to art collectors for thousands of dollars today.
Art gallery
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...
and business established in 1934 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The gallery marketed art to the middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
es, first in the form of affordable prints and later in home furnishings and accessories, and played a significant role in the growth of art as an industry.
History
Associated American Artists was begun by Reeves Lewenthal. Lewenthal's first job was as a reporter for the Chicago TribuneChicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
but he quickly expanded into artists' agent, working as a publicist for British artist Douglas Chandor. By the 1930s Lewenthal had a clientele of 35 groups including the National Academy of Design
National Academy of Design
The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, founded in New York City as the National Academy of Design – known simply as the "National Academy" – is an honorary association of American artists founded in 1825 by Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E...
and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design
Beaux-Arts Institute of Design
The Beaux-Arts Institute of Design was an art and architectural school at 304 East 44th Street in Turtle Bay, Manhattan, in New York City...
. Realizing the limited possibilities in selling high-priced art to high-class dealers, and the correspondingly huge potential in marketing affordable art to the much-larger middle classes, he left his public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
work to try his hand at this new business model.
Prints being relatively cheap to produce, Lewenthal decided to focus on that medium. Before the 1930s, fine-art prints were usually limited edition
Special edition
The terms special edition, limited edition and variants such as deluxe edition, collector's edition and others, are used as a marketing incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints or recorded music and films, but now including...
s which sold for $10–$50. During the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
the Federal Art Project
Federal Art Project
The Federal Art Project was the visual arts arm of the Great Depression-era New Deal Works Progress Administration Federal One program in the United States. It operated from August 29, 1935, until June 30, 1943. Reputed to have created more than 200,000 separate works, FAP artists created...
had resulted in hundreds of thousands of prints, but these were distributed free (mostly to schools) thus the artists made nothing. Lewenthal's idea was to combine quality, affordability, and profit. In 1934 he met with several well-known American artists, including Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton (painter)
Thomas Hart Benton was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, almost sculpted paintings showed everyday scenes of life in the United States...
, and proposed hiring them to produce lithographs which he would then sell to middle-class buyers for $5 apiece plus $2 per frame, paying the artist $200 per edition
Edition
In printmaking, an edition is a number of prints struck from one plate, usually at the same time. This is the meaning covered by this article...
. At the same time, corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
s began hiring famous artists to work on advertising campaign
Advertising campaign
An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication...
s -- Dole Pineapple, for example, hired artist Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
to "create pictorial links between pineapple juice and tropical romance" . This convergence of art, business, and consumerism was the perfect environment for Lewenthal's new Associated American Artists enterprise.
When Lewenthal commission
Commission (remuneration)
The payment of commission as remuneration for services rendered or products sold is a common way to reward sales people. Payments often will be calculated on the basis of a percentage of the goods sold...
ed his first lithographs in 1934, the American economy was still limping towards recovery from the Depression; high-priced art was an impossible luxury
Luxury good
Luxury goods are products and services that are not considered essential and associated with affluence.The concept of luxury has been present in various forms since the beginning of civilization. Its role was just as important in ancient western and eastern empires as it is in modern societies...
for most people and the old galleries that had always supported artists were finding it difficult to broker their work. AAA was thus "an agent of economic salvation" for numerous American artists including Peggy Bacon
Peggy Bacon
Margaret Frances "Peggy" Bacon was an American printmaker, illustrator, painter and writer.-Biography:Bacon was born May 2, 1895 in Ridgefield, Connecticut to artists Charles Roswell Bacon and Elizabeth . The eldest of three children, Bacon's two younger brothers died in infancy leaving her an...
, Aaron Bohrod
Aaron Bohrod
Aaron Bohrod was an American artist best known for his trompe-l'oeil still-life paintings.Bohrad was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1907, the son of an emigree Russian grocer. Bohrod studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York between 1926 and 1930...
, John Steuart Curry
John Steuart Curry
John Steuart Curry was an American painter whose career spanned from 1924 until his death. He was noted for his paintings depicting life in his home state, Kansas...
, Luigi Lucioni
Luigi Lucioni
Luigi Lucioni was an Italian-born American painter. He lived and worked mainly in New York City, but also spent time working in Vermont. His still lifes, landscapes, and portraits were known for their realism, precisely drawn forms and smooth paint surface...
, and Grant Wood
Grant Wood
Grant DeVolson Wood was an American painter, born four miles east of Anamosa, Iowa. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the 20th century.- Life and career :His family moved to Cedar Rapids after his...
, despite the fact that signing with AAA usually meant being fired from their higher-end gallery.
- I knew the regionalists were popular because their names were in the art magazines all the time. But they weren't popular enough, and they weren't making any money. Why, when I first went to Tom Benton's New York apartment he was living in utter squalor. I more or less rescued him.
By the fall of 1934 Lewenthal had contracts with fifty department stores to carry his "signed originals by America's great artists."
Populist appeal
Lewenthal marketed his prints as educational resources, as a patrioticPatriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
choice, and as "art for the people" rather than "art for the wealthy." He also began marketing direct to the public via mail-order in magazines such as Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine and Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest is a general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace...
, and by phrasing it in terms of upward mobility—in the same way as buying Listerine ("The Dentifrice of the Rich," according to one ad campaign), owning modern art raised one's life socially. (Somewhat counter-intuitively, AAA's success led them to open a gallery on New York's posh Fifth Avenue in the late 1930s.) In 1944, AAA had 107 artists under contract and sold 62,374 lithographs, for a net income of $1 million per month; they also began to expand into slightly higher-end (but still affordable) paintings.
In addition to its mainstream marketing strategy, AAA chose art and artists with populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
appeal. Representational and regional
Regionalism (art)
Regionalism is an American realist modern art movement that was popular during the 1930s. The artistic focus was from artists who shunned city life, and rapidly developing technological advances, to create scenes of rural life...
art made up the bulk of their lines; particularly popular were the works of Benton, Curry and Wood. These artists avoided gritty realism and created positive images of an idealized, strong, capable America, a viewpoint which accorded well with the political environment of the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
and was in some senses therapeutic
Therapy
This is a list of types of therapy .* Adventure therapy* Animal-assisted therapy* Aquatic therapy* Aromatherapy* Art and dementia* Art therapy* Authentic Movement* Behavioral therapy* Bibliotherapy* Buteyko Method* Chemotherapy...
for the anxiety and weakness pervasive during and just after the Depression. Typical of this was Hart Benton's Plowing It Under, released shortly after the federal government arranged the plowing under of millions of acres previously devoted to cotton production in order to increase farm revenue; Benton's work reassured the public that the government was working in the best interests of the people.
Commercialization of art
The Regionalists by and large were in favor of businesses and advertising using their works, believing that fine art could raise the consciousness of business. They did not fully realize how art figured into corporate brandingBrand management
Brand management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand.The discipline of brand management was started at Procter & Gamble as a result of a famous memo by Neil H...
and advertising in the minds of corporate planners, or consider that their art might be used to inspire confidence in a product. They were soon to learn. Hart Benton's original works for R.J. Reynolds' Lucky Strikes, for example, showed black sharecroppers at work, but corporate headquarters were not interested in "Negroes doing what looked like old-time slave work." They demanded pictures that showed not realism but idealism, leading Benton to complain that "Every time a patron dictates to an artist what is to be done, he doesn't get any art, he just gets a poor commercial job." Increasingly, rather than deal with AAA and its artists, companies built in-house art department
Art department
Art department in movie terms means the section of a production's crew concerned with visual artistry. Working under the supervision of the production designer and/or art director, the art department is responsible for arranging the overall look of the film as desired by the film director...
s that could produce art in the Regionalist style. This appropriation of the regionalist/representational style culminated in the propaganda posters of World War II.
Post-WWII
The increasing association of regionalist and representational art with commercialism and advertising (and in some eyes, with fascismFascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
) contributed to its decreasing popularity and to the rise of abstract
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
and surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
art after World War II. When AAA opened galleries in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and Beverly Hills, it stocked them with modern works by American and—a first for AAA—European artists. (When Lewenthal offered Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
an art-for-business commission like those he had offered his artists in 1934, Pollock turned him down.) In its press releases and articles AAA talked about exploring "new frontiers," "new trends" -- and made no mention of the $5 mail-order line and the artists who had helped it succeed twenty years earlier. Thomas Hart Benton resigned from AAA in 1946.
AAA continued to find new ways to sell art, however, branching out into Stonelain porcelain, fabric, and housewares such as ashtrays, playing cards, and lamp shades as vehicles for work in abstract and other modern styles. By the mid-1950s, Lewenthal was quoted as saying, "Today's artist is a designer, not an Ivory Tower
Ivory Tower
The term Ivory Tower originates in the Biblical Song of Solomon , and was later used as an epithet for Mary.From the 19th century it has been used to designate a world or atmosphere where intellectuals engage in pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life...
tenant. His is a field of practical creativity and every American room can become a showcase for his genius.". Now, rather than bringing modern art to the masses, AAA was bringing mass consumer commodities into the world of art.
AAA today
AAA was a victim of its own success in some ways. Having been so successful, it was adopted as a model by other companies that began to compete with AAA—marketing fabric, for example, as "etching by the yard" or commissioning artists to do designs for lines of china or wallpaper. Steubenville China marketed its "American Modern" line of place settings as "art translated into dinnerware." In 1958 Lewenthal took over management of Rust Craft Greeting Cards, handling all AAA's decorative arts lines, while Sylvan Cole took responsibility for the New York gallery and the fine art market.In a strange reversal of its "market to the masses" philosophy, many early AAA prints which sold originally for $5 go to art collectors for thousands of dollars today.
Sources
- Doss, Erika. "Catering to Consumerism: Associated American Artists and the Marketing of Modern Art, 1934-1958." Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 26, No. 2/3. (Summer - Autumn, 1991), pp. 143–167.
External links
- Associated American Artists records, ca. 1934-1981 at Smithsonian Archives of American Art
- Art for the masses: Associated American Artists Prints at Tacoma Art Museum
- Associated American Artists Records at Syracuse University