Abstract
Dale Hilton, an educator at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), describes his professional experiences at CMA and shares his knowledge of WPA art and history, including local examples.
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Interviewee
Hilton, Dale (interviewee)
Interviewer
Mitchell, Tim (interviewer); Hons, Justin (participant)
Project
Cleveland Artist Foundation: WPA Art in Cleveland
Date
8-3-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
57 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Dale Hilton interview, 03 August 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 900013_901013.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/856
Transcript
Tim Mitchell [00:00:00] Okay. All right, we ready to go? It's August 3rd, 2006, and we're sitting with Dale Hilton, an Art Historian at the Cleveland Museum of Art, in her beautiful home in Euclid. And Dale, we're gonna just start with a little background about you, and I guess if you could tell us a little bit about, you know, your educational and professional background and sort of how you got to the point where you're working for the Education Division at the Cleveland Museum of Art. We appreciate it.
Dale Hilton [00:00:34] Well, I've always loved museums as a way to understand life and history of the past. So it's been a dream of mine since childhood to work at a museum. I'm very fortunate to be doing that every single day. My educational background includes studies in Printmaking, Art History, and Interior Design. I have a Master's Degree in Art History from the University of Chicago with a Concentration on Abstract Expressionism and an Undergraduate Degree in Modern Art History and a Minor in Printmaking, which was always a great joy to me later in life. I studied Interior Design at the University of Akron and now have a small, informal interior design practice as well.
Tim Mitchell [00:01:28] What drew you to Art and Art History?
Dale Hilton [00:01:30] Originally a set of books that my mother had that had beautiful reproductions in them. I used to just love looking at the colors, looking at the scenes that artists imagined. It seemed a panoply of remarkable richness every day of my childhood to look at these books.
Tim Mitchell [00:01:52] Did you practice art growing up?
Dale Hilton [00:01:53] Oh, yes. We always had art supplies around the house, and I used to paint. I'd get ideas about scenes I could do. Sometimes they'd be pictures of the woods, sometimes they'd be still lives. And I always drew from as long as I can remember. So I was fortunate in that the town I grew up in, Richmond, Virginia, had an absolutely wonderful art school, and I studied printmaking there and developed a respect for the responsibility of being an artist. How difficult it is in terms of making artistic decisions every minute. The responsibility of seeing your environment. And I mean that in the physical sense, looking around you, observing the way the light strikes an object. I can remember once that under the rubric of the responsibility to see completely and to try to use that perception and turn it into something else. I can remember a statement that an art teacher of mine said to me early on, which helped me understand and respect the practice of being an artist. One of my art teachers in undergraduate school in a drawing class once said, oh, as you're looking at anything, a still life or a model or a landscape, concentrate and try to See the colors that aren't there. In other words, pay attention to those low level perceptions that are just on the edge of consciousness and that will make your vision deep and rich.
Tim Mitchell [00:03:49] Can you tell us a little bit about your work at the Cleveland Museum of Art now?
Dale Hilton [00:03:54] It's tremendously satisfying. I'm in the education department and because of that, I get to deal with arts of all culture and all periods, even though many of us in the education department do have specialties. I have a particular interest in American art, in abstract expressionism, in printmaking, and in ukiyo-e prints of Japan, mostly 19th- and early 20th-century prints, even though I have a particular interest and some familiarity with those things. What I like best about being in the education department is the opportunity to lecture on a variety of subjects, to study new exhibitions as they come to the museum, to research them, to convey something of the excitement that I have for those things to the public. No, next line. That we've never hooked up. And it's probably, you know, something that's saying, you know, forget, you know, we have a mortgage for you at usurious rates.
Tim Mitchell [00:05:06] You were, you were saying in the chance to review new exhibits and do additional research. I know you also do this interactive. Are we on?
Justin Hons [00:05:16] Yeah.
Tim Mitchell [00:05:17] This distance learning thing. Tell us about that distance learning thing.
Dale Hilton [00:05:22] One of the most delightful parts of my years at the museum has been an opportunity to work with distance learning. The way we define it at this point in time, which is 2006 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, is educational video conferencing. It combines the pleasure of looking carefully, of dealing with an object, and of conveying one's enthusiasm for these objects with an ability to reach out to students all over the country. Because our medium of communication is not the three the galleries lecture, as so many other programs at the museum successfully are, but rather video conferences where through a television like situation, we connect with students in a variety of states. In fact, 35 states at present. We are able to talk to students all over the country about what goes on at the Cleveland Museum of Art and also the incredible variety of human imagination looking at the arts of 5,000 years. These are the raw materials that we use to create video conferences to students around the country. For example, we have the pleasure of working with groups of teachers. Tim, you're one of the teachers that we've so enjoyed working with and working with these teachers. We take objects from the Cleveland Museum of Art that someone like myself may see as an art historical artifact. And with the input of well prepared teachers like yourself. We understand these objects as resonant with historical meaning that extends far beyond art history. We understand these objects as objects that embody the idealism, the technology, even something like the mercantilism of their age. And teachers who represent a broad variety of backgrounds help bring these additional points of view to us. And taking those multiple points of view, we can bring a broader interpretation to any one object in the gallery and then link that object and the interpretation of that object to the types of curricula that are important for students. And that's the conceptual underpinning of our video conferencing. Each video conference, and we have about 40 different topics at this point in time, consists of 15 or so museum objects that we put in an academic context, such as social studies, language arts, or math and science. So the great pleasure for me of working at the museum is to see these beautiful and remarkable objects which communicate the values of another time, to see these in an expanded realm of meaning and to be able to convey that to students and teachers around the country and to get their responses too.
Tim Mitchell [00:08:42] I still see a lot of regional differences, and that makes it tremendous fun, in terms of your audiences.
Dale Hilton [00:08:43] Yes.
Tim Mitchell [00:08:46] So you really are drawing. Initially, I know it seemed like a lot of the participants were Ohio or even Northeastern Ohio schools. So now it's really expanded far beyond that.
Dale Hilton [00:08:56] It sounds like, yeah. The states that have made a commitment to technology and under. Excuse me. The states that have made a commitment to technology and education are the states that connect often with us for video conferencing. And I see cultural differences from region to region and the speed of the way people talk, the expressions they use, and even the way they interpret things in a painting.
Tim Mitchell [00:09:24] Can you give us one story about that?
Dale Hilton [00:09:27] My favorite is looking together with a group of students who are from Texas at a painting by Velazquez. And the painting depicts a court jester whose name was Calabazas. And this court jester is holding in his hand a pinwheel. It's made out of metal, and it's hard to tell what the object is unless you know something about the history but of this exemplary Baroque painting. So I know that he's holding a pinwheel because it is meant to be a symbol of his profession, which is to make people laugh. He was kind of a professional fool. Pinwheel meant he was sort of a clown, an idiot, if you will, but in a professional sense. In any case, looking at this. Looking at this painting with a group of Texas students. Students. One day I was asking them about the attributes, what the jester Calabazas was wearing and what he was holding in his hand. And I asked if they knew what it was expecting for them to say either, We don't know what it is, or it looks like a modern pinwheel. Is it? But the answer I received was, Yes, ma'am, I know what that is. It's a cattle brand.
Tim Mitchell [00:10:56] That's a good start. Let's work with it. Well, so what- Just out of personal curiosity, what are the states that have really made the commitment? I mean, where are our audiences now?
Dale Hilton [00:11:10] Certainly New York, Wisconsin, Michigan. We're beginning to see a little activity in California, in Pennsylvania and others. The most interesting connection in recent times was with the inter council tribal. I'm going to call it a synod. I'm afraid I have the title incorrect at this point. Nevertheless, there is some federal money from the Bureau of Indian Affairs that is available for remedial education to some trust that have been physically remote in the Pacific Northwest. And these tribes, The Five Tribes, as they're known, received funding for video conferencing. So despite a massive time difference, we are delighted to stay until 7 or 8 O'clock at night in order to run after school programs for the Squamish tribe. And it's just marvelous to have the opportunity to have a dialogue with them.
Tim Mitchell [00:12:11] Yeah, fantastic. Well, let's change gears here a little bit. We want to focus a little bit on the 1930s and early '40s and the Federal Art Program. How did you first learn about the WPA and the Federal Art Program?
Dale Hilton [00:12:32] Well, as an art history student in college and someone who really enjoyed looking at and thinking about Abstract Expressionist Paintings, in investigating the personal history of the first generation of Abstract Expressionist Artists, one discovers, of course, that many of them worked on the WPA or certainly were coming of age during its most active period. So it was really through art history. But I did begin to notice post office murals in public buildings in which I would find myself as well. So I would say a little bit of personal experience in viewing these works of art. I was fortunate several years ago when I worked for the Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio, to be part of an initiative called the Ohio Outdoor Sculpture Inventory. And in collecting the information that. It is really wonderful, isn't it?
Tim Mitchell [00:13:40] You were talking about your connection with the Ohio Outdoor Sculpture Center.
Dale Hilton [00:13:44] Yeah. As a staff member on the Ohio Outdoor Sculpture Inventory, I was able to collate and examine a lot of material based on community art that the volunteers for this organization, volunteer surveyors, would turn into us. And so I became aware too, of Some of the WPA sculpture and architectural embellishments that remained extant in Ohio. So that's another way that I became aware of outdoor sculpture, sculpture, publicly supported art and the like.
Tim Mitchell [00:14:29] Since the Abstractionists or Abstract Expressionists that you focus much of your study on were sort of the next generation, somebody who doesn't know as much. So we'll assume they're sort of the next turn of the wheel in 20th century art. How did Abstract Expressionists contemplate what had been, you know, federally sponsored through the 1930s under the Federal Art Program?
Dale Hilton [00:14:59] Well, because they were a group of people who didn't think of themselves as a school, just as the Impressionists didn't think of themselves as a school. It's hard to speak for an entire generation of artists, but I would guess that some of them early on, those who actually worked on federally funded art programs were very grateful for those jobs. And no experience that an artist has is ever wasted. It may be repurposed in another form later on. So I think if you would look at the individual history of these Abstract Expressionists, or even if one had the opportunity to talk with them, you'd find out that their interpretation of the WPA probably varied. But I think they were probably very grateful for the jobs that they were given at a time when it was extremely hard to make a living.
Tim Mitchell [00:16:01] I know there were also a wide variety of Federal Art Programs. And media is used as a part of this. Would you describe certain characteristics that were typical or identifiable as a part of the Federal Arts Movement, though?
Dale Hilton [00:16:20] I can think of a couple that stand out. And I'm not a student of this period. I haven't done much research at all. So these will be personal impressions. One of the things that that salient are the images of muscle bound laborers in environments like public schools or post offices. So I would say the idealization of labor as a virtue would be one characteristic of WPA mural art. Then you contrast that with the type of photographic record left by artists such as Dorothea Lange. And you see a type, you see a segment of society that has very little about it that can be idealized. You see people standing in breadlines. You see agricultural workers who've been devastated by poverty. And this forms the polar opposite, I think, of healthy muscle bound workers who are being viewed adoringly by their families as they swing an axe or a hammer. So those would be two characteristics that I see. The idealization of labor. And also, on the other hand, very partisan views of the effects of the Depression.
Tim Mitchell [00:18:02] Do you find this, you know, I guess I'm thinking more about the murals and the prints. That would be that more idealized image that you're discussing. Do you- Do you find those compelling images? I mean, are they interesting for you as an art historian? I know it's, again, not your particular area of focus, or are there aspects of that that you find compelling?
Dale Hilton [00:18:31] I find them curious and interesting and at this remove in time, nostalgic. And one of the things I like about him is that to the extent that these workers are idealized, it's a point of view. Our dogs just discovered that he can ram the basement door. One of the things that's remarkable about these works of art is that they look very nostalgic. The idea of idealizing much of anything anymore seems quaint. And so to have miners with rippling muscles and faces illuminated in the half light of their lanterns seems remarkably nostalgic. And from that standpoint, they're interesting to me. They're not to me personally, compelling because the sensibility of the images are so manipulated. This is a story that's as old as the Renaissance, at least, because the patron always is able to manipulate the point of view of the story. And so you might have the Medici family or the Borghese in the Renaissance dictating to an artist the way a statuary portrait might look or the right way to show a particular incident from the New Testament, because it serves their ends. It serves the ends of the church. In the same way, the government, by supporting these artists and asking them to decorate public buildings, was actually entitled to manipulate the story. And I find that manipulation very obvious in and a little bit laughable and out of step with contemporary life, but very revealing of a particular moment in history. So it has its own particular charm.
Tim Mitchell [00:21:05] Do you know much about the process of how these murals, for example, were the subject and style were determined. You're talking about, you know, sort of the federal government as patron. And there does seem to be, you know, shared characteristics in these. In these pieces across the country. But some have also theorized that there was a tremendous amount of local control over what the final product looked like as well. So I'm just curious about sort of that interaction.
Dale Hilton [00:21:53] Well, I think every age has patterns of dealing with imagery that, to a later age, become recognizable. So that's why we know what Abstract Expressionism looks like. That's why we're able to see the patterns in it and call it a school, even though it wasn't in its own day. So to that extent, I think the WPA murals of the 1930s and so forth, have a recognizable look as well. I don't know how much of it was dictated by any central authority. I think that it had more to do with what you might call the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the time and the way artists always look around them at the other art that's being created. Of course, the Mexican Mural Movement was there as a cogent example of how imagery might be presented and what point of views might be promulgated. I think socialist workers are too, may have had an influence. And there. There would be a clear political message, certainly a desire on the part of the government to promote the virtues of labor. So I think those elements may have played into the fact that these workers are always remarkable physical specimens. It's very interesting if you look at the musculature of laborers in a WPA mural, and then if you look at laborers today on a construction site or look at the crew that gets out of a moving van, you'll see all types of people. You'll see people who are extremely strong, but might be physically scrawny, or you might see somebody on a scaffold who has a bit of a paunch. So these images of labor, I think, were only tangentially related to the way people actually look. And I think that had to do with the political aims of the government and also the way other art at the time looked. There was a recognition that these murals were being created for the public as an example of an ideal. So if something is going to be publicly available, if the point is public access, and that was the point in these federally sponsored programs, certainly mural programs, then you tend to clean up the untidy bits. And that may have led to the fact that we do see these very virile looking houses, healthy farmers, miners and construction workers in WPA art.
Tim Mitchell [00:24:49] When you talk about a spirit of the time, and I guess I'm thinking about, you know, in terms of the development of art in the century, you know, the rise of modernism, the Armory show, all of that, you know, preceding us. And. And then we sort of have this almost like a fallback period where we have much more realistic imagery in the '30s. And then obviously the move to Abstract Expressionism that follows that. So does it make sense then that, or would that be evidence then that artists were being dictated to more about the subject, subject matter, or being controlled in that fashion because it seemed like art was moving in a particular direction and then sort of went back towards more realistic images through the '30s and early '40s with these Federal Art Programs?
Dale Hilton [00:25:51] I'm glad you asked that because I happen to have a passage from a book right here with me that answers that question very cogently. Here it goes. Many had learned the formal lessons of modernist abstraction in New York or Paris or Berlin, but decided that a more literal narrative rendering of the world around them was necessary in order to make their work meaningful to a larger segment of the population.
Tim Mitchell [00:26:20] Were there any members of the school that's not a small school? Abstract Expressionists who, you know of that were important contributors to the Federal Art Program or sort of were able to survive as artists through the course of the '30s because of the WPA.
Dale Hilton [00:26:40] We're going to have to cut out this next comment because I don't know for sure and I would really have to check that. So, you know, off the record, my guess. Yeah, sure. I think there were many artists who are now considered prime Abstract Expressionists who took part in the Works Progress Administration, and their story is well told in the annals of art history. On a personal level, I had a terrific professor of art history in undergraduate school whose name was Maurice Bonds. And as a very young man in New York in the 30s, he had worked on the WPA himself. And he remembered Arshile Gorky actually getting a job on the WPA and probably had some interaction with him on various job sites.
Tim Mitchell [00:27:33] Interesting. Does CMA have any WPA artifacts, prints?
Dale Hilton [00:27:41] Yes, the Cleveland Museum of Art has a good representation of WPA work. We do have a lot of work by Louis Lozowick, who is quite interesting as a printmaker. Lozewicz was also a committed Marxist, and if one researches this period, you see him advocating the formation of an artist union. So he himself was very active on the WPA and is a terrific printmaker that's very well represented in the Cleveland Museum of Art. I'm sure there are others. I mean, I would imagine there would be people like Rockwell Kent. But again, off the record and not having that kind of information with me, and I can get it for you later if you want me to go back and look up these things. I'd be glad to.
Tim Mitchell [00:28:31] Well, it's- It's- [telephone rings] Dale Hilton [00:28:46] [laughs] This is the Friends of the Police League calling. Can we have your donation today? Let's see. I'm going to make a list for myself representing the CMA. Rockwell can't. I mean, I know that we have prints by Lozowick and Rockwell Kent and I'm sure many others. You know, we have lots of photographs by Dorothea Lange, for example. We know that because you and I look through that book so often.
Tim Mitchell [00:29:10] I was trying to think, what's the other big name photographer in that era?
Dale Hilton [00:29:18] Well, there was Lewis Hine, but Clarence White. I don't think Lewis Hine was employed. You would think of him as earlier, but actually, even that iconic Man with the Wheel [Man with the Machine] was actually done- It must have been done in the '20s, but maybe slightly prior to the stock market crash. We have Dorothea Lange- [crosstalk] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tim Mitchell [00:29:49] Although I don't know if those were a part of the WPA efforts.
Dale Hilton [00:29:54] I don't either. Dorothea Lange was definitely on the WPA because that Angel Bread line that we, you know, so often made use to was one of the commissioned works.
Tim Mitchell [00:30:07] When- I don't know. How many of the murals in the Cleveland area have you had an opportunity to see many of the murals in the Cleveland area?
Dale Hilton [00:30:16] There's one in the post office on 155th Street by an artist of Hungarian extraction. I'm assuming it's a WPA mural, but I don't know for sure. It's painted in sepia tones, and it seems to represent transportation. There are people with a river in the background and all sorts of packet steamers. It also has a historic view of United States history. There are trunks piled up at a wharf, and I think there are stagecoaches and the like. So this is one that I've had experience looking at. Of course, most people in Cleveland are well aware of the Guardians of Transportation which were created during this period. I don't know personally if they were funded by the government, but they're very related stylistically to much of the Art Deco work. I'm sorry, much of the WPA work that we see. I mean, there's a healthy admixture of Art Deco in the repeated patterning on the garments of the Guardians of Transportation. And that's something to look into.
Tim Mitchell [00:31:33] Are you familiar with Karal Ann Marling?
Dale Hilton [00:31:36] I know the name as a scholar.
Tim Mitchell [00:31:38] She used to be at Case. She wrote a book on the Federal Art Program in Cleveland. I think it was published in '74. I think she now teaches at University of Minnesota. She just published a book on Grandma Moses.
Dale Hilton [00:31:57] I'm aware of her reputation.
Tim Mitchell [00:31:59] So in her book, that is 1974 in Cleveland, and sort of some of the stories we've heard from other folks around that time, as she was gathering the resources to put this together, that there was. I mean, she ended up, you know, putting together an exhibit for the Clean Public Library, who obviously was a holder of many Federal Art pieces and murals. But there was this sense that the art museum was not all that enthused about it. Nor all that supportive of it. Or maybe there was a sense that somehow that at that point the art museum maybe didn't hold great value in the works that had been created under that program or from that era. Do you? Would you? I mean, do you think there was a bias in some fashion towards that style of art at that time?
Dale Hilton [00:33:01] Or the- [beeping sound in background] There goes the coffee pot. It's turning itself off. One has no idea the quantity of ambient noise in the environment until you start an interview, turn on a microphone. I think the Cleveland Museum of Art has been so fortunate to have access to international art of all eras that it may have seen that at one time as its primary mission in terms of building a collection. I think the museum is tremendously interested in art of the region now, art that conveys something of this environment. When Caroline Marling wrote her book, there may have been a different understanding of what the collecting mission was, but I don't know that for a fact. I think all along there has been a building of the collection to represent local arts, local crafts. And I think sometimes, with the benefit of retrospection, you can go back and re. Evaluate those things. So I think the museum may not have seen that as its primary mission, if that's even true. And I wasn't here then, but I think there's always been an appreciation on the curatorial level for those types of objects. And indeed the museum did, did collect them.
Tim Mitchell [00:34:41] You know, you mentioned sort of a regional perspective. Some have also suggested that they developed a Cleveland, sort of a Cleveland style, or that indeed there is. I guess my question is, do you think there is a regional style that would be identifiable?
Dale Hilton [00:35:08] There are a group of artists that were identified with Cleveland by virtue of having gone to school here, lived here, painted here. Cleveland School artists, largely painters that probably represent the first several decades of the 20th century. I can't say personally that there is a particular style. Again, they are all individual artists. There could be some commonality in the scenes that they paint for obvious reasons. If you see steel workers, shacks and bungalows and the banks of the Cuyahoga, then there would be a common view that would find its way into the. The type of subject matter that they chose. But I feel that stylistically they were quite individual.
Tim Mitchell [00:36:14] What do you think the legacy of the WPA Federal Art Program has been for this area or even just in a general sense? Because there seems. You know, I don't know if this would be fair to say, but, you know, like the exhibit Sharon Dean's putting together for this fall, the Cleveland Artists Foundation. It just seems like there's sort of been a rebirth in interest in preserving some of the WPA Murals in the area. And just curious about what you do you see a legacy of this? I mean, has it been influential in art that's been made since that time?
Dale Hilton [00:36:57] I think there is a legacy. And the legacy may take the nature of activism on the part of the government rather than a stylistic heritage. So the percent for art programs which exist now, when you build a new building, you have to put aside certain monies for the embellishment of the building. To me, this expresses a kind of political will that is a heritage of the implicit activism of the WPA. I think the idea that a government can step in and help people find employment is an important thing to keep in mind, which could be a legacy. Things were drastic in the 1930s. The unemployed population in 1932 reached 15 million. Roosevelt felt that he had to create these, make work projects, but he could do so to really add value to people's environment, to expand the infrastructure structure in terms of bridges and roads of the country so that everybody could benefit. And if there's one legacy that we get from the WPA, I would say it's recognition that the government can play a role in supporting people in organizing art programs and doing something to a alleviate poverty.
Tim Mitchell [00:38:37] I'm going to change gears here a little bit. This is sort of maybe sort of a philosophical question. Maybe not all that philosophical, but what do you. I mean, in a very general way, what do you think makes art sort of pop for people? You know, why? Why would people look at? If they? You know, I mean, I'll admit I- When I look at- I do like sort of stylistic style that I see within a lot of these murals. Somehow I connect with it. And I don't know if it's because of politics or otherwise, but what's your sense of what makes art pop for people? What makes images compelling for people?
Dale Hilton [00:39:26] Oh, I think it's related to a couple of things. One is subjectivity and a person's education. So I think it has. I think individual response has to do with emotional resonance. One finds in certain types of art. You may not even know you have these feelings until you see a certain work of art that really speaks. Speaks to you deeply. And of course, experience in looking has a great deal to do with the type of art that would appeal to you. So the idea of what makes people respond to certain works of art really depends on that person's life experience and education, but also ability to be receptive to a non verbal form of communication. I think that's very important. Let me also comment that one of the reasons why I think people are interested in WPA art now, particularly mural art, is this sort of quaint attitude that I mentioned before. And the idea that it would even be possible at one time to create some such a concentrated and optimistic view of society. It's like looking at television of the 1950s. If we look at a television show that shows a nuclear family gathered around the dinner table and an indulgent paterfamilias advising junior on how to approach a girl, this reaffirms our ideals about the structure of the family. Harmony, peace, optimism, that life will continue. Compare that scene of a television show several decades old with reality television or. Or even the type of television that would go into the family environment of Ozzy Osbourne. And the premise there is that optimism and idealism is no longer possible in this post industrial age. So I think the appeal of WPA art, particularly these murals for some people, is that it shows an idealized world where optimism and vitality and agreed upon virtue was even possible. Not that it was realistic then, because we agree that the photographs of this era don't look particularly like these publicly supported murals. But it was possible as a photograph form of public agreed upon expression to create an image that proposed such optimism. And to me that is part of the appeal, but also part of the quaintness and the nostalgia that I spoke of before that may make WPA Art appeal to some people.
Tim Mitchell [00:42:50] Does, does Abstract Expressionism appeal to you? I mean, is that what resonates most with you or that just happens to be in sort of an academic area of interest?
Dale Hilton [00:43:03] For me, Abstract Expressionism is such a direct emotive response to some feeling that I find it affirming. And Abstract Expressionism makes the materials that an artist work with extremely visible. And so I like that, as somebody that's thought a bit about color myself and how colors work together or react against each other. As I've thought about the eloquence of a stroke of paint or a delicate calligraphic line. All these things, all of these raw materials, all these tiny building blocks of art in the 20th century have been seen as expressive bits in themselves. The same thing has happened in music. So for me, there's great sensitivity in the way an artist works with something like a brushstroke or a pen line or a wash of watercolor, or puts two unusual colors together. And I find that extremely resonant of the Types of sensitivities. Or the types of feelings I might have as I go through the day. So that's what I like. I like the direct emotional expression that I find in Abstract Expressionism. Now, what's absent is a sense of somebody else's narrative. And that's another thing that is a of part to some folks about WPA art. Because there's always a narrative. And while I love looking at that. For me, the absence of a narrative gives me a greater feeling of identification. With those emotions experienced by the artist. Because there's no narrative. That is an element that I have to deal with. It's just emotional expression.
Tim Mitchell [00:45:05] In terms of public art, I mean, are there a couple of pieces of public art in the Cleveland area, that you like particularly or find interesting?
Dale Hilton [00:45:16] I absolutely adore the Guardians of Transportation. It's been said that they have a perhaps hidden reference to the art of the Maya people. It's very vigorous. There are some repeated patterns. There's extreme undercutting. So that light and shadow are an expressive element. I like the perhaps veiled reference to classicism. There were in the Roman Empire something called terms. That marked the way of these big publicly funded roads, way stations, mile markers, that kind of thing. Of course, miles was not a unit of measure then. But I find that the guardians of transportation seem to relate in my own mind to that sort of thing. Where a road or a journey is so much a part of one's experience. That to even mark that transit from one road to the next, from land to river. Marking those points in a journey, I think is a wonderful thing to do. To make one's daily experience important. And I think the Guardians of Transportation do that in an emphatic and impressive way also. They are so full of Art deco references. That they seem to express a certain style. That's no longer in our environment. With particular directness. And I just love that about them that they make such strong statements. I absolutely love the little conveyances they hold. The trucks, the stage coaches. And it's if they are walking the line between literalism and abstraction. These Guardians of Transportation are not real people. They're idealized figures that represent the concept of transportation. It's a personification, if you will. And yet they literally hold in their hands these little vehicles. That you might recognize from an earlier age. And so I like that dialogue between the literalism of the trucks and the stagecoach. Combined with this expression of a big concept like transportation. And how that idea would look if you had to personify it.
Tim Mitchell [00:47:58] Any other pieces in the area that you like? I appreciate that description, by the way. No, you like Free Stamp?
Dale Hilton [00:48:07] I do. I like the way the Free Stamp causes you to look. Some of the things I like about the Free Stamp would also apply to the guardians of transportation, and that is their gigantism. You know, they really make an impact on the environment around them. But, I mean, if you think about public art, the first thing that comes to mind are the guardians of transportation. For me, are there.
Tim Mitchell [00:48:39] You know, I don't know if I have other questions about the WPA and the Federal Arts Program, but if there's anything else that you'd like to add or other angles on this that we didn't think of?
Dale Hilton [00:48:55] No, I really- I really feel like we covered everything to the limits of my lack of familiarity with this period. [laughs] And cut. [laughs] Tim Mitchell [00:49:16] Is there anything else that you thought of that you might want to ask?
Justin Hons [00:49:18] I did want to ask one question, kind of going back to how photography during this period was so much different than the art, particularly the murals. And I guess I was curious as to if you could maybe say a little bit more about, one, why you thought that the artists, the mural artists, were so swept up in the idea of idealizing labor, but photographers weren't. And where the divergence of artists who were during that same period but using different mediums, portraying two kind of very different ends of the spectrum.
Dale Hilton [00:50:02] Well, you know, I don't really know why that is. And this is- You know, we can record it, but it's off the record because most of these are kind of personal responses that are not really based on any research. So they may be completely wrong. But, you know, my guess would be that there was always a recognition that something like a mural was going to be very large scale, it was going to be decorating a public place, and that lots of people would see it. And so it was meant to inspire. It was meant to be a form of propaganda. It really wasn't a record. It wasn't a- It wasn't documentary in any sense. I think the artists knew it, and I think the government knew it. And everybody agreed that this was the appropriate style and the appropriate imagery for a public place. On the other hand, I think photography, at least then, was something that was intimate. You know, it existed. You viewed it in kind of a private way, whether it be in an unbound portfolio or in a book or perhaps if there was a photo exhibition. As you confronted each photograph, they were not large format necessarily, so you'd stand and look. So I don't think that most Photographers felt they had an obligation to convey any kind of official message. Now, again, I may be absolutely wrong, but I think it has to do with what the intended purposes were of those things and also the way people view them. It's just a guess.
Tim Mitchell [00:51:35] I think I can answer that. I'm tired of being a- [inaudible] Dale Hilton [00:51:38] Oh, please, please.
Tim Mitchell [00:51:40] Well, my understanding is that people like Dorothea Lange worked for the Farm Services Administration and FSA photographers were given the task that you described, which was to document what the challenges and problems were out there for people. Okay. And there. I don't think they're ever really. I mean, now maybe people would look at those as, you know, as an artistic photograph in some fashion. Maybe their artistic sensibilities played a role, and I'm sure-
Dale Hilton [00:52:12] I think they did.
Tim Mitchell [00:52:14] Probably pulled it together, but their task was not- I mean, these weren't going up on the post office walls, you know, to let everybody know about really how bitter the plight was out on the Great Plains or, you know, mothers suffering with their children kinds of things. But it is interesting, out of the federal government, we, you know, we do end up with both those stories as some, you know, testament to what we saw.
Dale Hilton [00:52:44] I mean, it's utterly remarkable that the government would sponsor something like that. You look at those photographs now and you can, you know, one of the first things that leaps out at you is the sufferings of these people and that the government would collect evidence like that and that it would be publicly accessible. I'm not sure if it was intended to be originally, but now it's accessible. You can see these images. In fact, interestingly enough, you can go online and see a lot of them in the Smithsonian. Smithsonian Digital Archives. So the government today is supporting access to these images that were quite incriminating in the past. So I think that's kind of an interesting contrast. I can't imagine the government today going out and documenting that kind of thing. I mean, if you think of the type of. Of suffering that was visited on New Orleans recently, with the failing of the government to understand how serious the predictions were, the inadequacy of the preparations of FEMA, you look at all of this, I don't really know how the government is documenting it. I don't know if they are. But I'd be interested if they're documenting it with images. You know, it may be a lot of statistical reports about who still is living in a FEMA trailer or how much property damage there was in a quantitative sense. I mean, I don't know, maybe they're digital images. There probably are of some of the damage, but I don't know if it's at that personal level of showing individuals responding to their circumstances. And that's what's remarkable about Dorothea Lange's work. You know, you see the faces of these farmers, of these mothers, and you can read a story there. It's really on the personal level. So I think it conveys much more strongly the effects on an individual level of these massive sweeps in the economy. I don't know if the government's doing anything like that today, but it would surprise me if there were.
Tim Mitchell [00:54:54] Think about the fact that this administration won't even allow photographers to take pictures of returning caskets.
Dale Hilton [00:55:00] Well, see, that's- That's what I mean. I mean, it's. I think it's- I think it's an age that's very- Our age is an age that's very suspicious of anybody with a camera. The- I think he was Palestinian. I'm not going to be clear on his heritage, but there is a geography professor from the University of Akron who was recently arrested and detained by the Israelis for probably close to a month. Now, he was just released, but he was actually taking pictures. So the story goes for a textbook that he was working on. And I think he was standing somewhere near the Lebanese border and the Israelis, because he had a camera, the Israelis apprehended him. So I think this kind of suspicion of anybody documenting anything is widespread throughout the developing world. [crosstalk] Yeah.
Tim Mitchell [00:56:03] Anything else?
Dale Hilton [00:56:04] No, not a thing. But I wish I were better informed about this because it was nice to have your answer about why Dorothea Lange's photographs look the way she looked the way they did, because she was working for different agencies and it had a different purpose. And so not knowing any of those things made my answers rather personal. And while there may be some anecdotal value to that, it would be better to be better informed. And I'm sorry that I wasn't.
Tim Mitchell [00:56:33] No, you were so gracious.
Dale Hilton [00:56:35] It's a pleasure.
Tim Mitchell [00:56:36] I knew we were taking you out of familiar waters a little bit. It wasn't expected.
Dale Hilton [00:56:41] That was quite interesting observations, really interesting questions. Tell me a little bit about you.
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