Home Photo Gallery Classroom Documents For the Present We Are Busy Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano Let us work in the most modern media in the world: stainless steel, Duraluminum, and the noncorrosive alloys. Let us work in the hardest media in the world: granite and porphyry. Let us work directly in our material, for the things we have to say are unevasive and unsentimental. Let us commemorate the great men of our time and the great cities: Pasteur, Einstein, Sun Yat-sen, Steinmetz, and St. Francis. Our art must become as democratic as science and the children in the playgrounds of our cities. That is why I have sculptured Pasteur for one of our high schools, Sun Yat-sen for our Chinese quarter, granite frogs, bears, and seals for our recreational parks, and St. Francis for Twin Peaks--a symbol of the city that bears his honored name, big enough to belong to everybody, too big for anyone to put in his pocket and call his own. We ask no more than this, but if we are to do these things we must have help. We must have money for our granite, we must have tools for our metals. We must have men who have schooled themselves in the crafts to help us produce. Art, to have power, must have these things. If we are to create a living art for a living world, we must have help. Long before the WPA/FAP came into existence, I offered my services to several communities at day-labor wages if they would supply the materials and let me work. There must have been many artists with this same spirit, enough so that their voices could be heard beyond the provincialism of their own towns. Movements like a government art project are not an accident; they come from great needs, the need of the artist to give something to the world as much as from his need to survive. An artist today must, in order to be classed with the living, play a part in the contemporary scene. This does not mean that he cannot experiment in abstractions and other testing grounds of creative work. But he must not fail to recognize that both a need and an opportunity exist today in which it is incumbent upon him to make his contribution. We have only just begun to glimpse a vision of the great genius of the American people. Their desire for a fuller abundance and their eagerness to acquire education relating to the arts, the sciences, and most important, human relations--all these add up to an exciting fact. It is a demonstration that we have within ourselves the opportunity to create a greater civilization and a greater culture, a culture that might well guide the future course of world destiny to a better way of living. And on our scientists, architects, statesmen, painters, musicians, writers, and sculptors is the responsibility of leadership fixed. Theirs is the powerful medium for the dissemination of true universal principles. The vastness of our country inclines our engineers to think in broad terms. Witness our dams and our bridges. They have pointed the way toward our American culture. Their very designs reflect public service and functional objectives. That is why they are remarkably beautiful. And that is why our great American public make pilgrimages to these public monuments as Europeans do to shrines. Industry too has inadvertently contributed to the raising of our aesthetic standards. Our airplanes, our automobiles, our streamlined trains--all embody in their designs that economy of line that is true art. But herein lies a paradox. Too many of the same public who would object to a 1908 Ford as a modern means of transportation will object to a sculptor using pure forms in interpreting his message. Yet this same group readily accepts the sculptural forms of ancient Egypt, because they have been authoritatively told that these forms are good. Apparently there has been a lack of education in aesthetic appreciation. Johnny and Mary have been taught Salesmanship and how to punch a cash register. They have not received as yet the fuller measure of knowledge embodying less transient values and more permanent happiness. Those engaged in the arts can supply that. Many who call themselves "American artists" have borrowed some decadent European form and have pursued it in true merchant fashion. If sales were being made in the "Barbizon School" technique, these "artists" would supply them. In New York they would adapt the "Barbizon" palette for scenes of the Catskills. In California the locale would be Monterey. What the hell! Mix the paint by the gallon. Get a mess of picture postcards and enlarge them to overmantel size. Hand-painted, by God! Roll them out of the studios like belt-line production, and our children laugh at these chromos as they laugh at the clothes mother wore when she was a girl. We need artists who are interested in creating a universal culture. In being alive. In having something to say. And in saying it--ready to consider no sacrifice too great in making themselves heard. Artists who are concerned with universal truths. Artists whose natural instincts are to grow, to move forward. Artists who will be the ambassadors of time into Time. Men who will ultimately be favorably judged on what they have created for the benefit of their fellowmen. WPA/FAP has laid the foundation of a renaissance of art in America. It is the open sesame to a freer art and a more democratic use of the creations of the artist's hand and brain. It has freed American art. No longer must the artist be forced into social associations where the only claim to attention is the individual's financial means. Means that meant material with which to work--stodgy dinners where the humiliation of being lionized was the price of the meal. Meals where artists were assembled to "sing for their supper"--portraits of overstuffed children and lazy women the only means of an artist's expression and survival. One couldn't expect these "patrons" to like the Project. It interfered with their opportunity to buy things of enduring beauty for pittances, under the guise of "helping struggling artists." I have before me now a letter of whining complaint and recrimination from an "ex-patron" of mine. He was incensed at the idea of my engaging in work which could not adequately fit over a fireplace or decorate a room. The idea of a monumental St. Francis horrified him. To quote: "Your earlier instinct used to be for the small; babies with wobbly heads and no seeing in their eyes, the little lapis-lazuli-blueglaze fountain in our court, two children clinging together playfully under the shower of water, and that marble group of puppies which I delivered to Mrs. S. by your order, young rabbits, and such small deer without character or intelligence. You did these beautifully, as so you did any subject with its own compelling lines." Referring to St. Francis, he says: "The creation of such a statue would require a truly great sculptor--a truly great artist. You did not want that. You wanted a figure of rustless steel boilerplate, so high no one could see or care what face it wore. I think, Benvenuto, that is what you want. I think that is what San Francisco will get, with the help of the WPA/FAP--a rustless steel mechanical stunt." How can such a man understand the Sun Yat-sen or the Statue of Peace? I sculptured "Peace" in the form of a projectile, to express the idea that if peace is to be preserved today it must be enforced peace--enforced by the democracies against Fascist barbarism. Modern warfare, which involves the bombing of women and children, has no counterpart in a peace interpreted by the conventional motif of olive branches and doves. How can cultural tastes be developed in a people? How can their lives be made fuller if they have no opportunity to play a part in creating things of beauty? How can a cultural pattern be developed for America if art and the artists are subjugated to the whims and idiosyncrasies of a few overfed decadent merchant princes, carryovers from the days of feudalism? WPA/FAP has been the hope of the greatest cultural renaissance in recent times. For the present we have steel, stone, and tools. We have the spirit of great men and great cities to move us. We are busy.
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