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Critics wrote the work off as kitsch for the masses. But a set of murals celebrating Social Security—now threatened with destruction—show that such sweeping judgments went too far. by Judith Shulevitz {{IMG:/magazines-images/atlantic-2026-05-02/020.jpg}} Ben Shahn’s mural on one wall of a corridor in the Cohen building portrays unemployed men before the advent of Social Security. On the opposite wall, he painted his vision of bustling life afterward. (U.S. General Services Administration) To forge a new social contract is one thing. To explain it to people is another. The bureaucrats of the New Deal understood that very well. They also knew that art and architecture could be powerful spreaders of political ideas. As it brought America out of the Depression, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration built or funded courthouses, post offices, town halls, gyms, pools, auditoriums, and much more—tens of thousands of public buildings and facilities—and its arts programs employed as many as 10,000 artists to decorate them. The Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, originally the Social Security Board Building, exemplifies New Deal art and architecture at their best. It’s the “ Sistine Chapel of the New Deal ,” in the words of the founder of the Living New Deal , an organization dedicated to documenting and preserving the history and culture of the period. In 1935, Roosevelt’s Social Security Act changed the covenant between the American people and the state. Social Security enshrined a new right to be protected against economic vicissitudes, reversing the assumption that Americans would scrape by on the strength of “rugged individualism”—a phrase made popular by Roosevelt’s predecessor Herbert Hoover, who was being blamed for America’s woes. Seeking muralists and sculptors to work on the new building, the office in charge of the most prestigious commissions, the U.S. Treasury’s Section of Fine Arts, held competitions and published an essay that effectively provided the theme. Its title was “The Meaning of Social Security.” The result is an uncommonly lovely New Deal mission statement. The Cohen building (it was renamed in 1988 for the first professional employee of the Social Security Board, who later became the secretary of health, education, and welfare) is a 1.2-million-square-foot edifice covering a city block across from the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The architect, Charles Z. Klauder, gave it strong, modernized classical lines and Egyptian Revival and Art Deco flourishes. It is a vision of big government rooted in the past and reaching toward the future. The interior proclaims the beauty of efficient bureaucracy. Once inside the door, the presumed public servant is led straight to bronze-clad elevators and escalators , and from there whisked to his duties. Green marble covers the walls, rounding corners with sinuous Art Moderne curves. Ben Shahn and Philip Guston, who went on to join the ranks of the most-renowned American artists of the 20th century, won plum commissions on the ground floor, as did Seymour Fogel, a respected muralist. (Ethel and Jenne Magafan, Colorado painters, collaborated on a mountain landscape for the fifth-floor boardroom.) Shahn got the most prominent assignment: two murals, each roughly 70 feet long and 24 feet high, on either side of a central corridor. One wall is a somber portrait of Americans suffering the effects of child poverty, old age, and unemployment. The other is a paean to life after Social Security : basketball games, public works, a bountiful harvest. Shahn named the murals simply The Meaning of Social Security . He considered them his best, and many critics agree. Now, however, the building may be sold, and quite possibly demolished. If so, Shahn’s and Fogel’s murals, painted directly onto the walls, would be very hard to remove. Last year, the Cohen building was added to a list of federal properties marked for “accelerated disposition,” meaning fast-tracked sale. Living New Deal is leading the campaign to save the building, but the battle will be tough. According to sworn testimony, the Trump administration is already soliciting bids to tear down the Cohen and three other federal buildings, bypassing the usual reviews. Meanwhile, the regulations meant to protect historic buildings are being weakened. The current president is just as adept as Roosevelt was at using public space to define the state. That is why Trump razed the White House’s East Wing and plans to replace it with a huge gilded ballroom; wants to erect a triumphal arch; and has announced that his overhaul of the Kennedy Center will take the structure down to “the steel.” We don’t know whether Trump would be involved in putting up another building should the Cohen be leveled, but he is clearly not finished remaking Washington in his image. Culture made by government fiat is generally labeled propaganda, especially when it promotes unpopular ideas. In a liberal society, it is an article of faith that only totalitarian regimes force artists to shape public opinion, airbrushing this, glorifying that, especially the great leader. Critics dismissed New Deal art as propaganda in its day, and for decades afterward. The complaints came from the right (the art was Soviet-adjacent) and from the left (it glossed over harsh realities and shored up capitalism). Later, criticism also came from arbiters of high modernism, such as Clement Greenberg, who wrote off New Deal art as kitsch for the masses. Such sweeping judgments went too far. The huge body of work produced for arts relief programs during the Depression varied widely in quality. Among the most experienced muralists were the Cohen building artists, and the phrase social security held out untapped possibilities for invention. The gist seemed simple: By safeguarding citizens against penury, the good nation ensures that they flourish. But flourishing comes in many forms. If you’re looking for the meaning of social security, you won’t find it here. From the December 2020 issue: Sarah Boxer on photography and race in the Great Depression I visited the Cohen building on a sunny day in February to see for myself what it had to say. Four delicate bas-reliefs in granite embellish the pediments over its four entrances. Sunlight bounced off the snow and the building’s monumental limestone facade, and the friezes almost disappeared in the glare. I paused to study one called Family Group , by Emma Lu Davis , an unusually domestic tableau to see on the exterior of a public building. A worker holding a lunch box places his free hand on the shoulder of his seated wife, as if to say goodbye for the day. She looks up at him, and the toddler at her feet looks up at her and tugs her dress, and the three form a circle. But the story doesn’t end there. They are in turn encircled by a thin line, which I realized after a moment is the profile of a man. He bows his head in thoughtful concern, and I understood that he represents the benevolent paternal state; he holds the family in his thoughts. A rather claustrophobic image, I felt, until it occurred to me that during the Depression, being held close by the government would have come as a relief. Like any historical artifact, the Cohen building demands that you enter into the spirit of the past. {{IMG:/magazines-images/atlantic-2026-05-02/021.jpg}} A postcard from the 1940s shows the Social Security Board Building shortly after its completion. (Tichnor Brothers Collection / Boston Public Library) The building in its current state was disturbing. The main entrance is now closed, so I went in through another and found myself in a cramped, dim vestibule. Still bedazzled by the bright, hopeful exterior, I felt as if I had entered a much-diminished present. The main hallways were wide but silent and empty. When I toured the upper floors, I grasped the dimensions of the emptiness. One of the building’s longtime occupants, the Department of Health and Human Services, has been gutted by the Trump administration. The other occupant, Voice of America, the federal news agency founded to combat Nazi propaganda, has been slashed by the president, who has called it “a total left-wing disaster.” All but a few of its radio programs have shut down , and those few barely operate. (A federal judge has since voided the VOA layoffs .) I opened doors into unlit newsrooms and broadcast studios. In some of them, the equipment had been ripped off the walls, leaving cut wires dangling and bits of plastic scattered across desktops and floors. Occasionally, I passed a clump of engineers and, more rarely, a lone broadcaster talking into a microphone. What sense of life remains in the building radiates from the murals on the ground floor, especially Shahn’s post–Social Security mural. In the foreground of an urban scene, young men leap into the air , vying for a basketball. They’re slightly oversize, as if almost too close to us, and their muscular heft is underscored by smaller figures playing handball in the background. Nearby, men drill the girders of a bridge ; the iron beams make bold crisscrosses, moving the eye diagonally. Farther along, the frame of a house and the carpenters reaching to hammer its beams sweep the eye upward. The mural fills the entire wall, punctuated only by three doors, and Shahn cleverly integrates their lintels into his narrative. Bricklayers build a wall on top of one. In another scene above a door, a mother seems to have brought a baby and two sons to watch some construction workers. One of the sons leans on the lintel; behind them, an older man—their grandfather?—gets ready to kiss the baby. By contrast, the opposite wall, which shows America before Social Security, is divided into separate panels, and its figures are still. In one panel, children maimed or exhausted by labor stare out bleakly ; in another, unemployed men in a small industrial town sit or stand around. This mural ought to feel static, and yet here, too, Shahn creates a sense of motion. Behind the children, we see that a door opens onto a vista of men working in a mine. In another panel, a man and child walk away from the town along a railroad track that curves up and to the left, and then disappears. The jury that chose Shahn liked his entry because of “the variety in the tempo and texture.” Art-history encyclopedias generally associate New Deal art with Socialist Realism, a dourly idealizing style identified with Soviet communism, but it was only one influence among many. Artists took imagery and iconography from Regionalism—think Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton—which leaned toward heartland nativism. German Expressionism and Surrealism, deemed degenerate by Nazis and Soviets alike, show up in stylized figuration, spatial distortion, and a dreamlike atmosphere. Shahn, Philip Guston, and Seymour Fogel also learned from the masters of an older generation of revolutionary Mexican muralists. Shahn and Fogel assisted Diego Rivera on his doomed Rockefeller Center project in 1933 (the Rockefellers destroyed it when he would not remove Lenin’s face). Rivera produced monumental, socially conscious murals, but he borrowed exuberantly from other sources: Aztec art, Renaissance frescoes, Cubism, and more. The subject matter of New Deal art was more constrained and at times boosterish. According to John P. Murphy’s excellent introduction, New Deal Art , Edward Bruce, the founder of Roosevelt’s arts programs, prided himself on giving artists their freedom — as long as they eschewed abstraction, nudity, and overtly political proselytizing. What he wanted to see was “the American scene in all its phases”—city and countryside, farmers and factory workers, fields and recreational spaces, mines and railroads. The packet that Bruce assembled for the Social Security competition stressed that government support shored up the traditional family the way that pioneering families had helped one another; the effect was to associate the new policy with the American frontier, rather than radical collectivism. From the August 1935 issue: Edward Bruce on art and democracy Shahn more or less ignored the hint. The only family in his murals was the one squeezed atop the lintel. His interest lay in society and its diversity—a very familiar notion today, but not back then. Murals commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts (especially in the South) tended to shy away from the realities of Black life, and Black people were often shown in subservient roles. Shahn didn’t make a big point of integration, but his people are Black and brown as well as white. Their bodies are squat and bulky, tall and alarmingly skinny. The beneficiaries of Social Security don’t exhibit fake cheer—they aren’t sad, but they don’t smile, either; they are intent on their work. Those still in need of assistance are grim but have their dignity. In a nice touch by Shahn, a swarthy man in a fedora who assumes a proud, defiant stance—his arms are crossed and he scowls, as if to say, “Show me!”—appears in both murals unchanged. In the before scene, he waits in a line of unemployed men. In the after, he waits in a line of men signing up for Social Security. He’s a skeptic; he’ll wait and see. That’s his right, and Shahn respects it. Shahn’s realism extended to noting Social Security’s flaws. To win votes from Southern Democrats, Roosevelt had agreed to deny Social Security to agricultural and domestic laborers—excluding a large percentage of Black workers. Laura Katzman, an art-history professor at James Madison University and the curator of a recent Shahn retrospective whom I spoke with, pointed out that Shahn made sure to include farmworkers and a caregiver in his cast of characters. In one of the pre–Social Security panels, a woman holding a child “looks Latino” and is probably a nanny, Katzman said, observing that “the child is very blue-eyed” and has red hair. I noticed later that the woman’s white dress resembles a maid’s uniform. Fogel’s murals, two frescoes just inside the original main entrance, weave a streamlined Futurism and bright Mexican Modernism into their Socialist Realism. Wealth of the Nation depicts a utopia peopled by broad-shouldered heroes of the new economy—a scientist, an architect, two construction workers, and, in the background, a giant, half-naked proletarian, back muscles popping as he strains to pull the lever for two huge cogwheels. Security of the People demonstrates what the wealth of the nation is for: to provide respite to the nuclear family, shown outdoors engaged in leisure activities. On further inspection, though, the mood changes. In both murals, each figure occupies a separate space. Nobody looks at anybody else, with one exception: In Security of the People , a woman holding a naked child gazes balefully at a man immersed in his newspaper. In early studies for the project, Fogel had depicted Dickensian insecurity (a starving woman, homeless men, a punishing workplace). The dystopian gloom seems to have infected the new Eden. Perhaps Fogel, a fervent leftist, chafed at having to celebrate the family, that bourgeois institution. {{IMG:/magazines-images/atlantic-2026-05-02/022.jpg}} Philip Guston’s triptych, evoking the Last Supper and a Madonna and Christ child, has the aura of an altarpiece in the Cohen building’s auditorium. (U.S. General Services Administration) Guston’s Reconstruction and the Well-Being of the Family —a triptych on wood panels—is mounted on the stage of the auditorium and dominates the hall like an altarpiece in a nave. The painting is erudite; it packs in allusions. The father stretches out his arms, Jesus-like, evoking the Last Supper, and the mother holds a toddler on her lap, face forward, the way the Madonna might present the Christ child. The side panels show men at work, one digging in a surreal desert, two breaking Cubist-looking rocks. All of the figures have elongated limbs, Picasso-style, and they gaze into the middle distance like early-Renaissance saints (Piero della Francesca was one of Guston’s favorite painters). In the early 1940s, as Guston was painting this mural, he had begun to turn away from political art to introspective easel painting, and one wonders whether the religious references idealize the New Deal family or half-mock its idealization. Compared with the other muralists in the Cohen building, Shahn comes off as the ultimate New Deal artist. He is the least subversive, the most sincere. And yet his murals have aged the best. His individuals are truly individual; they have an unquenchable vitality and collectively convey an adamant humanism, a subversive ideology in its own right. Shahn had worked for an art journal with Communist Party ties in the early 1930s, but he turned against the party after Stalin’s show trials and pact with Hitler later in the decade. And Shahn had just spent three years working as a photographer for the Resettlement Administration, later the Farm Security Administration, traveling around the country in the company of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and others to document the American people. The job changed both Shahn’s politics and his paintings. The trips brought him into contact with the particulars of a reality that was beyond his imagination. He met idiosyncratic characters he couldn’t have made up, and saw suffering he hadn’t understood before—perhaps because he had prioritized political theory over direct experience. “Everything I had gotten about the condition of miners or cotton pickers I’d gotten on Fourteenth Street,” he said in a 1965 interview, presumably alluding to his own neighborhood, New York’s Greenwich Village, then home to many radicals. Photography made him abandon Social Realism for what he called “personal realism,” he wrote in his book The Shape of Content . From the September 1957 issue: Ben Shahn on nonconformity Shahn had a radical’s take on political art, though. He refused to accept that art is not art if it is propaganda. All that claim meant, he said, is that the art had social content. And even if it was intended to persuade, that didn’t make it bad. “ Propaganda is to me a noble word,” Shahn said in a 1968 oral history. “It means you believe something very strongly and you want other people to believe it; you want to propagate your faith.” No one claims that European art was the
by Judith Shulevitz
{{IMG:/magazines-images/atlantic-2026-05-02/020.jpg}} Ben Shahn 在 Cohen 建築走廊的一面壁畫描繪了 Social Security 出現前失業的男性。在對面的牆上，他則描繪了之後繁榮生活的景象。(U.S. General Services Administration)
Ben Shahn 在 Cohen 建築走廊的一面壁畫描繪了 Social Security 出現前失業的男性。在對面的牆上，他則描繪了之後繁榮生活的景象。(U.S. General Services Administration)
建立一個新的社會契約是一回事。向人們解釋它又是另一回事。New Deal 的官僚們深知這一點。他們也知道藝術和建築可以成為傳播政治思想的有力媒介。隨著這項計畫將美國帶出大蕭條，Franklin D. Roosevelt 行政部門建造或資助了法院、郵局、市政廳、健身房、游泳池、禮堂等等——數以萬計的公共建築和設施——其藝術項目甚至僱用了多達 10,000 位藝術家進行裝飾。
Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building，最初是 Social Security Board Building，完美體現了 New Deal 時期的藝術與建築巔峰之作。根據致力於記錄和保存該時期歷史文化的 Living New Deal 的創始人所言，它簡直就是「New Deal 的西斯廷教堂」。1935 年，Roosevelt 的《Social Security Act》改變了美國人民與國家之間的盟約。Social Security 確立了一項新的權利，使人們能夠免受經濟起伏的衝擊；這反轉了過去認為美國人可以依靠「rugged individualism」勉強維持生計的假設——這是 Roosevelt 的前任 Herbert Hoover 使流行的詞彙，而當時他正被指責導致美國陷入困境。負責最負盛名的委託案的辦公室 U.S. Treasury’s Section of Fine Arts 尋求為新建築物繪製壁畫和雕塑作品，舉辦了比賽並發表了一篇論文，有效地提供了主題。該論文的標題是《The Meaning of Social Security》。
其成果是一份非凡美麗的 New Deal 使命宣言。Cohen building（它於 1988 年更名，以紀念第一位任職於 Social Security Board 的專業員工，此人後來成為衛生、教育和福利部長）是一座佔地 1.2-million-square-foot 的建築物，坐落在 Washington, D.C. National Mall 對面的一個街區。建築師 Charles Z. Klauder 為其賦予了強勁、現代化的古典線條，並融入了 Egyptian Revival 和 Art Deco 的裝飾風格。它是一個植根於過去、指向未來的「大政府」的願景。室內宣揚著高效官僚體系的之美。一旦走進門口，預期的公務員就會被直接引導到鍍青銅的電梯和扶梯旁，並從那裡迅速被帶往他的職責崗位。綠色大理石覆蓋了牆壁，在轉角處以蜿蜒曲折的 Art Moderne 線條收尾。
Ben Shahn 和 Philip Guston 之後成為 20 世紀最著名的美國藝術家之一，他們都獲得了豐厚的委託案；受人尊敬的壁畫藝術家 Seymour Fogel 也一樣。 (Ethel and Jenne Magafan，科羅拉多州畫家，為五樓會議室繪製了一幅山景圖。) Shahn 獲得了最主要的任務：在中央走廊的兩側各繪製兩幅壁畫，每幅長約 70 feet、高 24 feet。其中一面牆描繪了遭受童貧困、年邁和失業影響的美國人蒼涼肖像。另一面則是一曲對「Social Security」之後生活的讚歌：籃球比賽、公共工程、豐收的農作物。Shahn 將這些壁畫簡單地命名為《The Meaning of Social Security》。他認為這是他最好的作品，許多評論家也同意這一點。
然而，這棟建築現在可能出售，甚至有可能被拆除。如果真是這樣，直接繪製在牆上的 Shahn 和 Fogel 的壁畫將非常難移除。去年，Cohen building 被列入一項標記為「accelerated disposition」的聯邦房產名單，這意味著加速處置（即快速出售）。Living New Deal 正在帶頭運動挽救這棟建築，但戰鬥會十分艱苦。根據宣誓證詞，Trump administration 已經在尋求拆除 Cohen 和另外三座聯邦大樓的報價，繞過了通常的審查流程。與此同時，旨在保護歷史建築的法規正在被削弱。
現任總統在利用公共空間來定義國家方面，和 Roosevelt 一樣精湛。這就是為什麼 Trump 拆除了 White House 的 East Wing，並計劃用一個巨大的鍍金舞廳取代它；他想豎立一座凱旋門；並且宣布他對 Kennedy Center 的改造會將結構拆到「the steel」的程度。我們不知道如果 Cohen 被夷為平地時，Trump 是否會參與建造另一棟建築，但他顯然還沒完成用自己的形象重塑 Washington。
政府頒布的文化作品通常被標籤為宣傳，特別是當它推廣不受歡迎的想法時。在一個自由社會裡，人們普遍認為只有極權政權才會強迫藝術家塑造公眾輿論——美化這個、光大那個，尤其是「偉大的領袖」。評論家們當年就將 New Deal art 視為宣傳，並在之後的數十年內持續這樣批評。抱怨來自右翼（藝術作品帶有蘇聯色彩）和左翼（它掩蓋了嚴酷的現實並鞏固了資本主義）。後來，批判甚至來自像 Clement Greenberg 這樣的現代主義權威人士，他曾將 New Deal art 貶為大眾化的「kitsch」。
如此武斷的判斷走得太遠了。在蕭條時期為藝術救濟計畫所產生的龐大作品群，其品質差異極大。其中最有經驗的壁畫藝術家就是 Cohen building 的創作者們，而「social security」這個詞彙蘊含著未被發掘的創造可能性。核心概念似乎很簡單：透過保護公民免於赤貧，一個美好的國家確保了他們的繁榮。但「繁榮」的形式是多樣化的。如果你在尋找「social security」的真正意義，你不會在這裡找到它。
來自 2020 年 12 月刊物：Sarah Boxer 談論大蕭條時期的攝影與種族
我在二月一個陽光的日子造訪了 Cohen building，想親眼看看它能訴說些什麼。四個精緻的花崗岩浮雕裝飾著其四個入口上方的山牆。陽光從雪地和建築物宏偉的石灰岩外觀上反射出來，連壁柱上的紋飾幾乎都消失在耀眼的閃光中。我停下來研究了一件名為 Family Group 的作品，作者是 Emma Lu Davis，這是在公共建築外部看到一個異常居家場景。一位拿著午餐盒的工作人員將空閒的手放在坐著的妻子肩膀上，彷彿要說再見。她抬頭看著他，腳邊的小孩也抬頭看著她並拉扯她的裙子，三個人形成了一個圓圈。但故事並沒有到此結束。他們輪流被一條細線環繞，我過了一會兒才意識到那是一根男人的側臉輪廓。他低著頭，帶著深思的關切，我明白了這代表了仁慈的父權國家；他在心中懷念著這個家庭。我覺得這是一個有點幽閉恐懼的畫面，直到我想起在 Great Depression 期間，受到政府緊密保護會是一種慰藉。和任何歷史文物一樣，Cohen building 要求你進入過去的精神時光。
{{IMG:/magazines-images/atlantic-2026-05-02/021.jpg}} 一張來自 1940 年代的明信片顯示了 Social Security Board Building 在竣工後不久的景象。（Tichnor Brothers Collection / Boston Public Library）
一張來自 1940 年代的明信片顯示了 Social Security Board Building 在竣工後不久的景象。（Tichnor Brothers Collection / Boston Public Library）
建築物目前的狀態令人不安。主入口現在已經關閉，所以我從另一個門進去，發現自己身處一個狹小、昏暗的前廳。儘管外觀依然閃耀著明亮、充滿希望的光芒，我卻感覺像是走進了一個衰退了許多時光的現在。主要的走廊很寬但一片寂靜空曠。當我在樓上參觀時，體會到了那種空虛的尺度感。這座建築物長期以來的一位佔用者 Department of Health and Human Services，已經被 Trump administration 掏空。另一位租客 Voice of America，這個最初為對抗納粹宣傳而成立的聯邦新聞機構，則遭到了總統削減，他稱其為「一個徹底的左翼災難」。幾乎所有的廣播節目都已停擺，剩下的幾個也勉強運作著。（一位聯邦法官後來宣布了 VOA 的裁員行為無效。）我打開了那些沒有照明的新聞室和廣播工作室的門。在其中一些地方，設備已經被從牆上扯下，只留下垂掛的電線和散落在書桌與地板上的塑膠碎片。偶爾，我會經過一小群工程師，而更少見的是一位獨自對著麥克風說話的廣播員。
從地樓層的壁畫中，散發出何種生命的氣息，特別是 Shahn 的 post–Social Security 壁畫。在一個都會場景的前景，年輕男子們躍入空中，爭搶著一顆籃球。他們的身形略顯過大，彷彿近得幾乎能觸及，而背景處玩手球的較小人物，更突顯了他們結實的肌肉線條。附近有男人們在鑽探一座橋樑的桁架；鐵樑畫出粗獷的交叉線條，引導著視線呈對角移動。再往遠處，一棟房子的框架和正在敲擊橫樑的木匠，將目光向上帶去。這幅壁畫填滿了整面牆，僅有三扇門作為間歇點，Shahn 巧妙地將這些門楣融入了他的敘事中。一位磚工在一道門上方砌起了一堵牆。在另一個門上方的場景裡，一位母親似乎帶著一個嬰兒和兩個兒子來觀看一些建築工人。其中一個兒子靠在門楣上；他們身後，一位年長的男人——或許是他們的祖父？——正準備親吻那個嬰兒。
相比之下，對面的牆壁描繪了 America before Social Security 的情景，被劃分成獨立的面板，其中的人物都是靜止的。在一塊面板中，一些因勞動而殘疾或筋疲力盡的孩子們茫然地望著；在另一塊，一個小型工業城鎮裡失業的男人們坐著或站著。這幅壁畫本應給人一種靜態感，然而在這裡，Shahn 依然創造出了一種運動感。在孩子們的身後，我們看到一扇門開向礦場工作人員的景觀。在另一個面板中，一個男人和一個孩子沿著一條向上、向左彎曲、然後消失的鐵路軌道走離了城鎮。選出 Shahn 的評審團喜歡他的作品，是因為「the variety in the tempo and texture」。
藝術史百科全書通常將 New Deal art 與 Socialist Realism 聯繫起來，這是一種與 Soviet communism 一同相關聯的、過度理想化的風格，但它只是眾多影響之一。藝術家們從 Regionalism——想想 Grant Wood 和 Thomas Hart Benton——汲取了意象和圖徵，那種傾向於心臟地帶本土主義（heartland nativism）的風格。German Expressionism 和 Surrealism，這些被 Nazis 和 Soviets 一樣視為墮落的藝術流派，則體現在風格化的人物描繪、空間扭曲以及夢幻般的氛圍中。Shahn、Philip Guston 和 Seymour Fogel 也從前一代革命墨西哥壁畫大師們那裡學習了技藝。Shahn 和 Fogel 曾協助 Diego Rivera 在 1933 年進行他注定的 Rockefeller Center 項目（當他拒絕移除 Lenin 的臉孔時，Rockefellers 就摧毀了它）。Rivera 創作了許多宏偉、具有社會意識的壁畫，但他從其他來源也大量借鑒：Aztec art、Renaissance frescoes、Cubism 等。
New Deal art 的主題內容更受限制，有時甚至帶有一點過度鼓吹性（boosterish）。根據 John P. Murphy 出色的介紹指出，Edward Bruce，即 Roosevelt 藝術計畫的創始人，自豪地認為他給予了藝術家們自由——只要他們避免抽象化、裸體描繪和明顯的政治宣傳。他想看到的是「the American scene in all its phases」——包括城市與鄉村、農民與工廠工人、田野與休閒空間、礦場與鐵路。Bruce 為 Social Security 競賽組裝的資料包強調，政府的支持就像先驅家庭互相幫助一樣，支撐著傳統家庭；其效果就是將新的政策與美國邊疆（American frontier）聯繫起來，而非激進的集體主義（radical collectivism）。
From the August 1935 issue: Edward Bruce on art and democracy
Shahn 的 murals 描繪的家庭，只有懸掛在門楣上的那個。他的興趣點在於社會及其多樣性——這在今天是一個非常熟悉的概念，但在當時卻並非如此。由 Section of Fine Arts（特別是在 South）委託的壁畫傾向於避開 Black life 的真實面貌，而 Black 人們經常被描繪在從屬的角色中。Shahn 並沒有強調融合，但他的人物群體既是 Black、Brown，也是 White。他們的身體形態呈現出矮壯笨重，或是高大到令人擔憂地纖瘦。領取 Social Security 的人不會表現出虛假的歡樂——他們並不悲傷，但也沒有微笑；他們全心投入於自己的工作。那些仍需要援助的人雖然神色嚴肅，卻保有他們的尊嚴。Shahn 在一個很好的細節處理中，描繪了一位身著 fedora、膚色較深的男子，他擺出一個驕傲而反抗的姿態——雙臂抱胸，皺著眉頭，彷彿在說：「讓我看看！」—這個角色在兩幅壁畫中都保持不變。在「before」場景中，他排著一列失業男子的隊伍等待。而在「after」場景中，他則在一群簽署 Social Security 的男子中等候。他是一個懷疑論者；他會觀望一番。這是他的權利，而 Shahn 也尊重這一點。
Shahn 的寫實主義甚至延伸到了指出 Social Security 的缺陷。為了贏得 Southern Democrats 的選票，Roosevelt 同意不將 Social Security 提供給農業和家庭勞工——這排除了一大比例的 Black 工作者。我與一位在 James Madison University 擔任藝術史教授、並策劃了近期 Shahn 回顧展的策展人 Laura Katzman 交談時，她指出 Shahn 特別確保納入了農場工人和照護者的角色。Katzman 觀察說，在一幅關於 Social Security 前的面板畫中，一位抱著孩子的女性「看起來是 Latino」，很可能是一位保姆，她提到「孩子有非常藍色的眼睛」和紅髮。我後來注意到，這位女性的白色洋裝很像女僕制服。
Fogel 的壁畫位於原始主入口內側，兩幅 Frescoes 將流暢的 Futurism 和明亮的 Mexican Modernism 融入了 Socialist Realism 中。《Wealth of the Nation》描繪了一個由新經濟時代寬肩英雄們構成的烏托邦——一位科學家、一位建築師、兩名建工工人，以及在背景中一個巨大的、半裸的無產階級，他肌肉緊繃地拉著兩個巨大齒輪的拉桿。而《Security of the People》則展示了國富何用：為核家族提供喘息空間，壁畫描繪他們戶外從事休閒活動。
然而，進一步觀察後，氣氛卻有所變化。在兩幅壁畫中，每個人物都佔據了一個獨立的空間。沒有人看別人，唯一的例外是：《Security of the People》中，一位抱著赤裸孩子的女性正帶著惡意的目光凝視著一個沉浸在報紙中的男子。在該項目的早期研究中，Fogel 曾描繪了狄更斯式的不安全感（挨餓的女人、無家可歸的男人、殘酷的工作場所）。這種反烏托邦的陰鬱似乎感染了這個新的伊甸園。或許 Fogel 作為一位熱情的左翼分子，對必須頌揚家庭——這個資產階級的制度——感到不滿。
{{IMG:/magazines-images/atlantic-2026-05-02/022.jpg}} Philip Guston 的三聯畫，喚起了《Last Supper》和聖母及基督幼子（Madonna and Christ child）的意象，散發出 Cohen 建築禮堂祭壇畫般的氣質。（U.S. General Services Administration）
Philip Guston 的三聯畫，喚起最後的晚餐和聖母與基督幼子，具有 altarpiece 在 Cohen building 禮堂的莊嚴感。(U.S. General Services Administration)
Guston 的《Reconstruction and the Well-Being of the Family》—這幅木板三聯畫—掛在禮堂的舞台上，像中殿裡的祭壇畫一樣主導著整個空間。這幅畫極具學識；它充滿了典故。父親伸出雙臂，如同 Jesus-like，讓人聯想到最後的晚餐；而母親抱著一個幼兒放在膝上，面向前方，就像 Madonna 呈現 Christ child 的方式。側翼展示了正在工作的人們：一人在超現實的沙漠中挖掘，兩人則打破著具 Cubist 風格的岩石。所有人物都擁有拉長的四肢，是 Picasso-style 的風格，他們凝視著遠處的中景，如同早期文藝復興時期的聖徒（Piero della Francesca 是 Guston 最喜歡的畫家之一）。在 1940 年代初期，當 Guston 繪製這幅壁畫時，他已經開始從政治藝術轉向內省式的畫架繪畫，讓人不禁懷疑，這些宗教性的典故究竟是理想化了 New Deal 的家庭，還是半開玩笑地嘲諷其理想性。
與 Cohen building 其他的壁畫藝術家相比，Shahn 給人的感覺是最典型的 New Deal 藝術家。他是最不具顛覆性、最真誠的。然而，他的壁畫卻是歲月感最好的。他描繪的人物是真正個體化的；他們擁有不竭的生命力，並且集體傳達了一種堅定的人文主義，這本身就是一種具有顛覆性的意識形態。Shahn 在 1930 年代初期曾為一份與 Communist Party 有關聯的藝術期刊工作，但在十年代後期經歷了 Stalin 的公開審判和與 Hitler 的協定後，他轉而反對該黨。此外，Shahn 還剛度過了三年時間，擔任 Resettlement Administration，後來是 Farm Security Administration 的攝影師，與 Walker Evans、Dorothea Lange 等人一同遊歷全國，記錄美國人民的生活。這份工作改變了 Shahn 的政治觀念和他的繪畫風格。
這些旅行使他接觸到超出其想像的現實具體情況。他遇到了那些無法憑空捏造的特立獨行的人物，也看到了自己以前不曾理解的苦難——或許是因為他過於將政治理論置於直接經驗之上。「我所了解的礦工或棉花採摘工人的狀況，都是在 Fourteenth Street 得到的，」他在 1965 年的一次訪談中說道，這很可能指的是他自己的社區，當時 New York 的 Greenwich Village 是許多激進分子聚集的地方。他寫在他的書《The Shape of Content》中：「攝影讓他放棄了 Social Realism，轉而追求我所稱的『personal realism』。」
From the September 1957 issue: Ben Shahn on nonconformity
不過，Shahn 對政治藝術也有著激進的觀點。他拒絕接受「如果它是 Propaganda，那就不是藝術」這種說法。他表示，所有這些主張僅代表這件藝術品具有社會內容。即使它的目的是為了說服人，那也不會讓它變得不好。「對我來說，Propaganda 是一個高尚的詞彙，」Shahn 在一次 1968 年的口述歷史中說。「它的意思是，你非常相信某件事，並且希望其他人也相信；你想傳播你的信仰。」他接著說：「沒有人會主張歐洲藝術因為宣揚了基督教神學而變得更差。『當 Giotto 在 Assisi 畫壁畫時，你知道嗎，那也是一種具有 Propaganda 性質的藝術作品。』」
在 1940 年代初期，New Deal arts programs 的資金逐漸枯竭。Shahn 的《The Meaning of Social Security》，於 1942 年完成，是他為 Roosevelt administration 繪製的最後幾幅壁畫。後來成為 Abstract Expressionists 的畫家們——其中許多人本身就是 New Deal 藝術家——拒絕了「American scene」藝術那種過度的感傷色彩。不過話說回來，他們是在戰後才創作作品的，當時民主似乎正在獲勝。八十年後，隨著各國逐漸走向專制主義，一門由民主衝動所啟發的藝術，為自身提供了更強而有力的論點。它提出美國人與其政府之間一種相互連結的關係——一個關於我們應得的安全感以及我們回報的忠誠度的願景。這種互惠性至今仍是一個未完成的項目。現在，正在被拆除的不是政府機構，而是正在建立起來的。如果 Cohen building 沒有被拆除，它或許能提醒後代什麼是愛國精神。
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