Well, the good news,
as we heard from Susan Eck of Western New York Heritage Magazine, is that so far only
the newer portions of the A.D. Price Courts (formerly Willert Park Courts)
housing complex have been demolished. That is, only the portions without
the public art that Steel wrote about this week in an
article initiated by photos posted by David Torke of Fix Buffalo. The bottom line: the community still has the
opportunity to preserve these significant examples of Depression-era public
works art.
And this art is
significant not just because the stunning slice-of-life designs capture the
style and art-as-social-force spirit of an age, but also because it represents
a serendipitous collaboration of two significant talents who came together
through the WPA Federal Art Project. The Willert Park art is considered
the most significant work that they created during their time with FAP.
In 1938, the FAP put
Robert Cronbach (1908-2001) in charge of creating the art at the Willert Park
public housing project in Buffalo. Although he was only 20 at the time
(see entry image), he had already studied for several years in the US and
Europe with significant artists such as sculptor Paul Manship, whose most visible
work is "Prometheus" in Rockefeller Center. Buffalo-born artist
Harold Ambellan (1912-2006), who was even younger at the time, knew Cronbach
from other FAP projects, and was asked by Cronbach to work with him in Buffalo.
Ambellan has a Wikipedia entry that unfortunately does not do justice to him
and his career, does not have his correct birth date, and even spells his first
name incorrectly.
Cronbach came from a
well-to-do background, while Ambellan, during the Depression, found himself on
relief. The circumstances of the Buffalo project are described by
Cronbach in a memoir he wrote for the compilation, The New Deal Art Projects (Francis V. O'Connor,
ed.):
One must remember that the WPA/FAP was
subjected to continual violent political attack. This was one of the
major factors in the whole scene. As a result of these attacks, the
minority of non-relief artists in all media was constantly whittled down.
By the end of 1938 very few non-relief artists remained on the Project.
Some qualified for relief--this was still the Depression. I was kept on
because of a special situation. The Project had an opportunity to make
some sculpture for the Willert Park housing project, which was a United States
Housing Authority-assisted program in Buffalo. The sculptor would have to
be self-supervised as the Buffalo WPA/FAP was not staffed or equipped to handle
this work. I was offered the job and accepted. For this reason I
was kept on the sculpture division until the job was finished. I returned
to New York during the summer of 1939.
In the Willert Park situation the phrase
"self-supervised" was no empty label. I planned the sculpture
with an architect, found a suitable vacant city-owned building and arranged for
its use as a studio, worked out the casting and installation procedures for the
tamped concrete sculpture with the concrete contractors who were working on the
housing project, and brought a fellow Project sculptor, Harold Ambellan, from
New York to join me in carrying out the work. Naturally, the New York
City Project had to approve all the important esthetic or procedural decisions,
but except for the initial sketches this was done at a distance an rather
infrequently.
Although these artists
came from different backgrounds, they had stylistic compatibility. But
what they especially shared was a belief--strongly shared with many New
Deal-era artists of all kinds--in art as a social force. Eileen Fort, in The
Figure in American Sculpture, pointed out that although Cronbach used
traditional techniques and media, "His modernity lay in his themes:
Cronbach focused on the life of the working class. Since his art
concerned city life, he often presented figures in conjunction with urban
architectural forms, such as a girder from an elevated railway. Although
he believed in the importance of ready comprehensibility in art, in his
noncommissioned work Cronbach often distorted parts of the human body to
suggest the stresses and demands of social and political conditions."
Both artists were heavily involved in artist and union organizing. Those
involvements brought Ambellan, who was also a musician, into contact with the
significant figures of the American folk music movement such as Woody Guthrie,
Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly.
For the remainder of the Depression, Cronbach went on to work
for the Treasury Department on the creation of public art for federal
buildings, including the prominent heroic bronze for the Social Security
Building in Washington, DC (see plaster model, below). Ambellan is
credited as one of the artists creating animal sculptures at the gate to the
Buffalo Zoo, as well as a plaster relief sculpture for a post office.
In the war, Cronbach served in the Merchant Marine, and
Ambellan, in the U.S. Navy, was involved in the Normandy invasion. Taken with France, Ambellan would
return to spend much of his later life there. For two decades after the war, Ambellan and his first wife,
Elisabeth Higgins Ambellan (1914-2002), hosted prominent blues and folk
musicians in their New York loft.
Examples of Amballan's work are shown below.
Later in life,
Ambellan found kindred spirits in France, especially in the region around
Arles, an area with strong association with artists, including Picasso and Van
Gogh. After his death, his friends placed a beautiful tribute on the official Arles website to his
friendship, and his mastery of both the visual arts and folk music.
Cronbach was also prominent in the post-war New York art world, securing several prominent sculptural commissions including the Fashion Institute of Technology, a wall sculpture outside the Meditation Room at the UN General Assembly, and Exploitation, now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Examples of Cronbach's work are shown below.
Although the last decade has claimed both of these
artists, the significance of their New Deal Buffalo collaboration hasn't quite
faded from local memory. University at Buffalo Professor of History Dr. Gail Radford, author of Modern Housing for America, about the origin of public housing
during the New Deal, has conducted field trips with her classes to Willert Park
Courts, along with UB Professor (and former chair of the Urban Planning
program) Alfred D. Price, for whom the housing is now named. Among the
assigned reading is Cronbach's account of his experience creating art for
public projects in the New Deal.
This art
is significant not just for its aesthetic value, but also for what it
represents and teaches about the circumstances of its creation--and the
collaboration of two very gifted artists. Buffalo can't let it become
forgotten or lost.
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well said, what an interesting piece of history. From Buffalo public housing to Arles! That's a pretty significant connection. One that we were and probably will just tear down and throw out because we have let our own history be forgotten.
How many stories like this never get told again or uncovered. These are great sculptures and even greater when put into such a rich history. The web of ideas and people is astounding sometimes.