enough to live on: the arts of the wpa hello there! · 2016. 3. 17. · benjamin sheer poster for...
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Enough to Live On: The Arts of the WPAMarch 11, 2016 6:56 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅ Matt
In the depths of the Great Depression, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt took a bold stance in
allocating federal money toward putting artists – artists! – on the U.S. government payroll. The legacy of
that ambitious plan, the Works Progress Administration or WPA, gets examined in the engaging
documentary Enough to Live On: The Arts of the WPA.
The WPA was a sprawling umbrella for a bunch of different federal programs – some accomplished basic
things like road construction and building new structures. Others had a more vague purpose of putting
people to work while boosting the morale of a cash-strapped citizenry. For Enough To Live On, writer-
director Michael Maglaras focuses on the WPA’s arts programs, efforts that relied on the talents of visual
artists, writers, performers and photographers. During the program’s glory years of roughly 1936-41, the
arts programs resulted in hundreds of public murals, plays and musicals, sculpture, paintings, posters,
educational texts and books providing a picturesque guide to the customs of all 48 states in the union.
When one considers the fierce opposition the WPA faced during its entire lifespan, the sheer volume of
what got accomplished is remarkable – and much of it still holds up (I still enjoy the historic murals at my
local post office, for one).
Enough To Live On casts a wide net, packing a lot of info within 98 minutes. It’s a bit like an episode of
PBS’s American Experience, although instead of a wide variety of expert commentary there’s just one
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historian and an older gentlemen who supplies eyewitness memories of volunteering for the WPA as a
youth. Mostly it relies on Maglaras’ own narrative, a comprehensive historic overview with some subtle
opining on what made the WPA succeed in its day and why it was important. Maglaras himself does the
voice-over narration as well – I thought he conveyed a lot of gravitas, although my viewing partner found
him self-important. The film delves into a lot of cool, relatively overlooked WPA projects, such as the Index
of American Design, a cataloguing effort that required more than 20,000 detailed watercolor renderings
of examples of classic design from America’s past. Famous names are mentioned here and there,
although I most enjoyed hearing about lesser-known figures such as the African American sculptor
Augusta Savage. The film is handsomely produced with plenty of examples of WPA art, presented in
beautiful, color-saturated images. Come to think of it, the only thing better than this documentary would
be for the WPA itself to come back.
The 217 Films DVD release of Enough to Live On: The Arts of the WPA sports great picture quality with
sharp, detailed reproductions of the art being discussed. The dynamic visuals in the movie carry through
to the package design, a slim digipack with appealing design used on the package and the accompanying
12-page booklet. The DVD is available for purchase at 217 Films or Amazon.com.
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WPA poster for Cleveland Housing Authority, unknown artist, c. 1939.
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