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George Williams College had kept
him quite busy over the last several years, and although
he was still active in promoting the sociological benefits
of arts and crafts in everyday life, by the early 1940s,
Haydon must have been beginning to think more about his
own career as a professional fine artist. With all his
other activities, Haydon had not been exhibiting his own
work very much. From 1934-1944 he only showed three times
at the Art Institute's annual Chicago and Vicinity exhibition.
There were two group shows, one in 1940 and the other in
1941 at the Hyde Park Art Center. And, the only exhibit
for which he received any mention in the newspapers was
a four-man show in 1942 at the Chicago Woman's Aid Club.
For a young artist who in 1931 was so sure that he had
discovered in the binocular vision technique an important
new approach to painting, he had made no progress in promoting
that view. It is only possible now to speculate, but the
question does come to mind: Did Haydon sacrifice promoting
his own career as an artist by being caught up with the
progressive educational efforts at George Williams College?
That is a difficult question to answer. There is no indication
that Haydon ever regretted his time there, or that he thought
his time misspent. Further, Haydon decided on a career
as an artist in 1932, which of course was one of the worst
years of the Depression. At that time, keeping steady work
in any capacity was a challenge, working with art, even
at a modest level, must have seemed a blessing.
As with the nation as a whole, everything within the art world ground to a
halt during those early desperate years before relief arrived. When it did
arrive, from the PWAP (December 1933 - June 1934), "The Section" (1934-1943),
TRAP (1935-1939), and the WPA (1935 - 1943), which is the most well known of
the projects, Federal relief allowed artists who had no other means of financial
support to continue working and exhibiting. As one of the fortunate ones with
employment, Haydon was not eligible for most of WPA relief assistance, although
he is listed as having been a project artist. His illustrations for two game
and recreation books for soldiers in 1943 were probably WPA related, but most
of Haydon's participation came in the form of committee work for the WPA Community
Recreation Service. Between 1939 and 1941 he was on the "Advisory Committee
on Training," the "Sub-Committee on Arts and Crafts," the "Subject
Committee for Training School, Arts and Crafts," and the "Governmental
and Civic Coordinating Committee."
From descriptions of the times, the Depression era was as hard a time for artists
as for other members of society, but for artists these years have also been
described as good times, lively, even exciting times to be within the camaraderie
and fellowship of a newly formed, vital, artistic community.38 Gone was the
old elite of a small group of wealthy patrons, and in its place was a new patron,
the people, by way of federal tax dollars being administered by regional committees
of artists, dealers, curators and other administrators sympathetic to artists.
In addition to employing professional artists, by the late 1930s art teachers
in Chicago were also on the relief rolls, enlisted to staff about 25 art teaching
centers established as part of a joint program administered by the federal
government and the Chicago Board of Education. Beyond employment and economic
recovery, these programs were an effort to increase public awareness of and
appreciation for the arts, to bring quality art within the lives of average
citizens. Exactly Haydon's goal in his work at George Williams College, and
it must have appeared to him and his colleagues at the College as well as throughout
social service agencies across the country that their work, which they had
developed and refined for decades was needed more desperately now than ever
before. Now was the time to serve, to teach, aid and bring relief to others.
It was in Haydon's nature; it grew out of his upbringing and the influence
of his family and friends.
But still, did Haydon miss his "window of opportunity" to develop
his artistic career? It was probably more likely that the times and events
tended to be the conspirators which kept his art career in check. The Depression
and the collapse of the art market were the primary villains. And of course,
Haydon was not a selfish or self-promoting type of person. To carve out a career
and be taken seriously as a professional artist takes a single minded ambition
that is difficult to maintain even in the best of economic times, let alone
during a Depression. Further, the art of the Depression era, as sponsored through
the government assistance programs, focused on the American Scene, in other
words to look at the lives, the work and the history of the American people
in a realistic and representational style that the majority of Americans could
understand. While abstract art was patronized and accepted under the WPA programs,
it was not a time in Chicago for highly intellectual theories and radical departures
from the conventions of traditional art.
Then, in the late 1930s and into the 1940s as a result of World War II, there
was an influx of European avant-garde artists who brought both abstraction
and surrealism to the United States. Their influence was strong and they began
moving American art away from the social realism of the 1930s and into an art
which sprang more from emotional and psychological sources than from the provincial
realism of the American Scene style. The complex forces that merged and evolved
into Abstract Expressionism during the late 1940s and that continued through
the 1950s did not spring from the triumphs of early 20th century scientific
discoveries and the clear shining light of reason. Rather they grew out of
an anxiety and despair that only a massive economic collapse and a world war
could create. While a variety of artistic styles followed abstract, realist
or surrealist paths during the 1940s, the main currents of art were not looking
to the scientific world for inspiration as much as to the internal psychological
world or the realm of pure abstraction.
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