Scale, Patriotism and Fun: Crossing the Last Frontier of Fantasy

According to the rhetoric of a debate that erupted in Germany in 1933 under the leadership of Hermann Broch and was brought to a raging boil in America by Clement Greenberg in 1939, the California Sphinx is a prime example of kitsch

Review of \u3ci\u3eKansas Murals: A Traveler\u27s Guide\u3c/i\u3e By Lora Jost and Dave Loewenstein

This is a perfectly amazing little book-part toss-it-in-the-backseat tourist\u27s guide and part scholarly tome filled with amazing facts and trenchant observations about some ninetyodd works of art embellishing various public walls, silos, grain elevators, and culverts scattered from one end of Kansas to the other. The authors, who paint murals themselves, have a delightfully catholic taste in art, too. The examples illustrated in all their luscious, technicolor glory run the gamut from community projects involving school kids and senior citizens to Beaux Arts maidens in cheesecloth borrowed from World\u27s Fairs of the nineteenth century, to earnest New Deal paeans to honest agriculture and local history, to acknowledged masterpieces, like Kansas-born John Steuart Curry\u27s controversial depiction of abolitionist John Brown lighting the prairie fire that would only burn itself out in the inferno of the Civil War. Given the scope and quality of these Kansas murals, one is tempted to wonder what other artistic riches lurk unnoticed upon the walls of other Great Plains states? The Curry murals in the Kansas State Capitol (1937-42) outraged many worthy citizens of the day. Shown as a wild-eyed Moses clutching the Good Book in one hand and a rifle in the other, Brown did not, said the Kansas Council of Women, reveal the best side of a law-abiding, progressive state. And furthermore, the left side of the picture was dominated by a nasty tornado headed straight for the viewer. As if MGM\u27s The Wizard of Oz (1939) had not already given the impression that Kansas was a dangerous place to visit, now Curry had intimated that the state was populated by dangerous freaks as well. Today, the authors note, the statehouse murals remind Kansans that the defining issue for which Brown fought was human equality-a problem still very much on the national agenda. But most of the other murals have been a source of unending pleasure and pride both in the making and in the seeing. There is the mural inside the Kansas Space Center (2002), the work of sci-fi and NASA master illustrator Robert McCall. There is the surreal triptych in the Hoisington Post Office (1990) that recasts and celebrates the original mural, still on the east wall, painted in 1938 by Iowa Regionalist Dorothea Tomlinson. The new offering by one-time farmer Bob Booth celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the older mural and suggests the changes time has wrought in Plains agriculture. There is the big panel in the lobby of Westar Energy\u27s headquarters in Topeka created by Thomas Hart Benton\u27s grandson, Anthony Benton Gude, in 1999-a history of electrical energy in Kansas based on the dynamic style of his forebear, the founder of modern Regionalist art. And more, in this delightful romp through the heart of the Great Plains beloved by Benton and Tomlinson and Gude-and all the others honored here

Book Review: The Texas Post Office Murals: Art for the People

Stodgy university presses, in these hard economic times, have begun to produce books that have a broad appeal to scholars and casual readers alike, and The Texas Post Office Murals is a splendid example of the genre. Beautifully designed and printed, mostly in vivid color, Parisi\u27s book becomes both a superb tourist\u27s guide to 1930s art in Texas and a primary research document for students of American art and culture. Given the size of the state of Texas, he has also performed a valuable service by saving all of us a lot of dusty mileage along blue highways