“So who’s the lucky gal tonight? Marilyn? Rita? Zsa Zsa…?”
A soldier memorializes his buddy in a cartoon drawn in a letter home, giving us a glimpse of what it was like to be stationed in Germany just after V-E Day. The War Department would have you be a little more vigilant…but why would you do that with girls hanging around named Zsa Zsa??? The spoils of war…
“Mine eyes have seen the glory”
“He’s in the artillery, and can he shoot a line!”
What Was The War Poster Competition?
The national War Poster Competition was sponsored by Artists for Victory, the Council for Democracy, and the Museum of Modern Art, with the cooperation of the Office of Civilian Defense, and with the approval of tho Treasury Department, the War Production Board, and the Office of War Information.
Assembled in mid-1942, a board of judges made up of prominent artists and curators invited American artists from all over the country to submit pieces in all forms of mediums.
The organizers stated three reasons for holding the competition:
- To assist in the national war effort by making available to the U. S. Government visual material which will express the principles for which our country is fighting and the results it hopes to achieve by that fight.
- To supply artists with a specific and concrete means of making their talents part of the national war effort. The Competition wMl greatly increase opportunities for artists of this country to work directly with Government war agencies.
- To give artists an opportunity to raise the entire standard and effectiveness of poster design, particularly through the development of a direct and powerful technique for war posters.
More than 2,000 entries were submitted, with exhibits held in Washington D.C., New York City, and Philadelphia. Eventually, the Artists for Victory sent a selection of winning entries to England to be used in a cross-Atlantic goodwill exhibition celebrating wartime art.
Many artists got their start in the competition and it helped standardize the growing propaganda and war effort machine run under the auspices of the Office of War Information. The War Poster Competition stands out as one of the more well-organized competitions in American art history and was the shining achievement of government-sponsored art and design in America that had begun during the Great Depression.
Something I Should Have Done But Didn’t Do (The Door) by Ivan Albright
Albright received the First Medal in the 1942 National War Poster Competition, but was the overall winner. He refused to accept the top honors because he wouldn’t part with the painting that took ten years to finish. Nevertheless, it was remembered in curator Hyatt Mayor’s December 1942 Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin announcing the competition’s victors.
Albright’s Door is an example of paintings entered in categories not necessarily created directly for the war effort, but exemplified the very best of America’s art. In a way, this category helped memorialize the cultural fabric of a nation under extreme crisis.
An Interview With Met Curator A. Hyatt Mayor
- HM: Yes, yes. I think the most touching result of all my writing was a story I heard of a man who was in our Navy during the war and who was on that terribly dangerous run to give the Russians supplies up in Siberia -- where did they go to? -- what was that port they went to way up north? -- Any way it was right through the German submarine fleet. And very few came through. And of course if you got in that icy water you sank in five minutes and that was the end of you. I heard of a man who brought along my Bibiena book to cheer him and keep him going. I think that touched me, really touched me, to think of that going up on that frightful run under those awful conditions to cheer somebody along.
- PC: It's amazing that one out of 900 would be traveling across the ocean like that.
- HM: Yes.
- PC: Well, have you enjoyed writing the books?
- HM: Oh, yes. That's what I always liked doing best when I was working in the Museum. That was the fun. But it was something that I always felt I was playing hookey when I did it. I would just say to my colleagues, "Now you keep the job while I go write." You can't do that very often.
- PC: Are there any other things that you've written? I notice there's the Artists for Victory exhibition where you've done a foreward.
- HM: Oh, yes. Those were just small jobs.
- PC: That really had an enormous impact, didn't it? -- That series of exhibitions?
- HM: I think it did. I think so.
- PC: Because as I talk to people they say, "You know I had a painting in that show."
- HM: Yes. It was really quite interesting.
- PC: It's a point that's always been made by a number of people.
- HM: John Taylor Arms judged the prints there. He was chairman of the jury. And I shoved around, was his errand boy. And John was absolutely a marvelous man. He wore himself out. He wanted to do everything. He wanted to unwrap the packages, carry them around. You had to just jump around and be ahead of him to save him a little bit so he could do the things that only he could do.
Henry Hobart Nichols was the wartime chairman of Artists For Victory, Inc
Why Fighting Posters?
When the Artists For Victory, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced their National War Poster Competition, they included statements from President Roosevelt and Artists for Victory, Inc. Chairman Henry Hobart Nichols.
FDR attributed the competition to America’s desire to prosecute the war against aggression. Nichols took it a step further, saying the entire artist community was behind the President in his efforts to wage the war. Clearly, the 2,224 “fighting posters” were a significant opportunity for artists to contribute to their country.
This blog shares the story of the competition, its participants, organizers, and the larger impact of art and American wartime culture.
“Fighting Posters” explained. Hope you enjoy the blog!
The Museum And The War
A look at MOMA’s 2008 exhibit detailing the history of the U.S. art community during WWII and its involvement in wartime advertising, recruiting, and pro-war campaigns.
In 1943, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. displayed over 200 of the top submissions to the National War Posters Competition. They were later sent on a goodwill gallery tour to other Allied nations.
I have seen the report by Artists For Victory on its National War Poster Competition. It is proof of what can be done by groups whose ordinary occupations might seem far removed from war. More than two thousand war posters were produced by the artists of the country, not as a chore that they were asked to do but as a voluntary, spontaneous contribution to the war. The very name of your organization is symbolic of the determination of every man and woman in every activity of life throughout the nation to enlist in the cause to which our country is dedicated.
Karl Koehler (American, born 1913), Victor Ancona (American, 1912-1998) and Stephen Ancona (American, born 1932)
Winner of the of R. Hoe & Coe Inc Award and 6th Place overall in the Paintings category.
