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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2013 Abbott Laboratories: Provisioning a Vision Brandon Burrell

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COLLEGE OF VISUAL ARTS, THEATER & DANCE

ABBOTT LABORATORIES: PROVISIONING A VISION

By

BRANDON BURRELL

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2013 Brandon Burrell defended this dissertation on March 20, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Karen A. Bearor Professor Directing Dissertation

Valliere Richard Auzenne University Representative

Adam Jolles Committee Member

Robert Neuman Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

ii

Dedicated to my Jessica and Callista.

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the tireless dedication of Dr. Karen Bearor, the support of my committee members Valliere Richard Auzenne, Adam Jolles, and Robert Neuman. I would also like to thank Mrs. Kathy Braun, the Florida Education Fund (McKnight Fellowship), and my parents.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures vi

Abstract xii

1. INTRODUCTION 1

2. WHAT’S NEW? 15

3. THE ABBOTT LABORATORIES’ YEAR OF PERIL 49

4. PLANE-AIR PAINTING 93

5. PROVISIONING A VISION 145

6. CONCLUSION 194

APPENDICES 200

A. FIGURES 200

B. NAVY ART COLLECTION CLEARANCE 237

C. VAGA IMAGE CLEARANCE 238

BIBLIOGRAPHY 239

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 248

v LIST OF FIGURES

2.1 Dr. Abbott’s first advertisement, printed in The Medical World 9, no. 6 (June 1891) 200

2.2 Cover, The Alkaloidal Clinic 7, no. 2 (February 1900) 200

2.3 Cover, The Alkaloidal Clinic 8, no. 2 (February 1901) 201

2.4 Croup Kills Advertisement, printed in The Alkaloidal Clinic 10, no. 12 (December 1903) 201

2.5 Title Page from The American Journal of Clinical Medicine 23, no. 8 (1916) 202

2.6 Page 37 of The American Journal of Clinical Medicine 23, no. 8 (1916) 202

2.7 Lester Beall, Radio, 1937, silkscreen, 40 x 30”. Lester Beall Archive, Rochester Institute of Technology 203

2.8 Joseph Hirsch, Sodium Pentothal advertisement, back cover, What’s New 63 (October 1942) 203

2.9 Lester Beall, What’s New cover, 1938. Published by Abbott Laboratories. Collection Graphic Design Archive, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York 204

2.10 Lester Beall, Here it Comes, 1939, silkscreen, 40 x 30” 204

2.11 Lester Beall, What’s New cover, 1941. Published by Abbott Laboratories. 205

2.12 Penicillin Manual Advertisement, What's New, November 1944. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois 205

2.13 Pollen Extract Advertisement, What's New, April 1945. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois 206

2.14 Brief Summaries and Abstracts, What's New, October 1944. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois. 206

2.15 Brief Summaries and Abstracts (Gonorrhea), What's New, March 1945. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois 207

2.16 Postage-Paid Order Card, What's New, October 1944. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois 207

vi 3.1 Thomas Hart Benton, Starry Night, 1942. Oil on canvas. 30 x 24". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T. H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. 208

3.2 Thomas Hart Benton, Again, 1942. Oil and tempera on canvas mounted on panel. 47 x 56". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. 209

3.3 Thomas Hart Benton, Indifference, 1942. Oil on canvas. 21.25 x 31.25". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. 209

3.4 Thomas Hart Benton, Casualty, 1942. Oil on canvas. 21.25 x 31.25". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY 210

3.5 Thomas Hart Benton, Sowers, 1942. Oil on canvas. 28 x 39". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. 210

3.6 Thomas Hart Benton, The Harvest, 1942. Oil on canvas. 27.5 x 39". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. 211

3.7 Thomas Hart Benton, Exterminate!, 1942. Oil on canvas. 97.5 x 72". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. 212

3.8 Abbott Laboratories, The Year of Peril: A Series of War Paintings by Thomas Benton,1942. Pamphlet, 12.5 x 9.75”. Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY 213

3.9 USS Shaw wrecked in floating drydock YFD-2, December 7, 1941. Official US Navy Photograph # 80-G-19939. Courtesy of The National Archives, Washington, DC. 214

vii 3.10 Abbott Laboratories, Page 6 from The Year of Peril: A Series of War Paintings by Thomas Benton, 1942. Pamphlet, 12.5 x 9.75”. Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY 215

3.11 Thomas Hart Benton, Invasion, 1942. Oil on canvas. 48 x 78". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/ UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY 216

3.12 “When your doctor delegates responsibility...” Upjohn Advertisement, printed in Life (April 24, 1944): 63. 216

3.13 “We’ve come a long, long way in pneumonia” Upjohn Advertisement, printed in Life (May 22, 1945): 92. 217

3.14 George Strock, Photograph of dead American soldiers at Buna Beach, printed in Life (September 20, 1943): 35. 217

4.1 Paul Cadmus, The Fleet's In, 1934. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 218

4.2 Joseph Hirsch, Food for the “Yellow Peril,” 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 219

4.3 Joseph Hirsch, Back from Patrol, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 220

4.4 Joseph Hirsch, On the Mark, 1943. Charcoal. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 220

4.5 Georges Schreiber, Training in Homicide, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 221

4.6 Georges Schreiber, Classroom Flight, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 221

viii 4.7 Robert Benney painting The Kill for Abbott Laboratories “Our Flying Navy” Collection, 1943. Photograph. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 222

4.8 Robert Benney, The Kill, 1943. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 222

4.9 Lawrence Beall-Smith, In the Briny, 1943. Oil on Board. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 223

4.10 Lawrence Beall-Smith, A Fighter Hits the Sack, 1943. Oil on Board. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 223

4.11 Lawrence Beall-Smith, The Scuttlebutt Session, 1943. Charcoal. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 224

4.12 Howard Baer, Busy Hands, 1943. Gouache. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 224

4.13 Howard Baer, A Woman’s Task, 1943. Oil on Canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 225

4.14 Howard Baer, Fuel for the Air Fleet, 1943. Gouache. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 226

4.15 Howard Baer, WAVE on a Wing, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 227

5.1 Thomas Hart Benton, Score Another for the Subs, 1943. Oil and tempera on board. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 227

5.2 Georges Schreiber, Who Are You?, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 228

ix 5.3 U.S. Department of the Treasury, Fire Away!: Buy Extra War Bonds, 1944. Poster. Courtesy of The U.S. Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC 229

5.4 Reginald Marsh, Yawning Bow, 1944. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 230

5.5 James Baare Turnbull, Ambulance Being Unloaded, 1945. Goache. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 230

5.6 Thomas Hart Benton, All Work, 1944. Ink and wash on paper. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 231

5.7 Franklin Boggs, Jungle—Ally of the Enemy, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC. 232

5.8 Ernest Fiene, Life-Giving Plasma, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 233

5.9 Joseph Hirsch, Blasting Mosquito Infected Swamps, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 233

5.10 Franklin Boggs, Pill Call, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 234

5.11 Manuel Tolegian, Pretty Nurses, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 234

5.12 Abbott Laboratories, Typical Design Layout for Abbott’s “Abstracts and Summaries: What’s New in Military Medicine,” What's New, March 1945. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois 235

5.13 Howard Baer, Jungle Operating Room, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 235

5.14 Howard Baer, Open Wide – Dental Set-up, 1944. Ink on Paper. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 236

x 5.15 Kerr Eby, War is Hell (Shell Shock), 1944. Charcoal. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC 236

xi ABSTRACT

From 1941 to 1945, the Chicago pharmaceutical corporation Abbott Laboratories, a major military medical supplier during the Second World War, commissioned dozens of artists in a unique contractual agreement to produce hundreds of paintings and drawings creating advertisements and illustrations for both its medical journal What’s New and for the United

States Government’s War Department. The contract specifically barred direct company profit from the imagery or advertisements created by commissioned artists yet simultaneously demonstrated Abbott’s goodwill and “altruism” by donating the proceeds from public art exhibitions and the sales of color reproductions directly to the government’s Treasury

Department. Artists participating in the combat arts program received payment, travel expenses, and commissions as full-fledged active-duty military officers in exchange for works over a breadth of war subjects.

Despite Abbott Laboratories’ large expenditure for these projects, it fulfilled its contractual obligation to turn over all of the commissioned paintings and drawings to the federal government’s War Department in June 1945. The terms and conditions of this contract, the tri- partite corporation-patron-artist relationship, the works created through Abbott Laboratories’ various art initiatives, and the mass reproduction and mobilization of these images for popular culture constitute the focus of this dissertation. Abbott skillfully designed a system of corporate patronage that masked both its intentions and its benefits to result in artistically rich and commercially viable propaganda.

In order to understand Abbott’s wartime patronage, one must consider the company’s need to rehabilitate its corporate image and its consequent negotiations of the projection of that image, its patronage within the context of 1940’s corporate sponsorship and the broader context

xii of wartime patronage, the circumstances surrounding the commission and creation of the individual words within its collection and the circumstances leading to the exhibition, distribution, and final ownership of the artwork. Finally, understanding Abbott’s patronage is critical to providing insight into the 1940’s American artist’s mediation of art and advertising.

xiii CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

From 1935 to 1945, the Chicago pharmaceutical corporation Abbott Laboratories, the military’s primary medical supplier during the Second World War, commissioned dozens of artists to produce hundreds of paintings and drawings creating advertisements and illustrations for both its medical journal What’s New and for the United States Government’s War

Department. Although What’s New began in 1935 as an illustrated monthly publication intended to promote the company and increase the sale of its medical supplies, by 1940 the magazine began to include images detailing and supporting the war effort. Following an overwhelmingly positive public response to the Abbott’s purchase and reproduction of Thomas Hart Benton’s

Year of Peril series in the April 1942 issue of What’s New, the company began commissioning artists for a combat arts program by forging a unique contract with the United States government.

This covenant specifically barred direct company profit from the imagery or advertisements created by commissioned artists. The agreement also demonstrated Abbott’s good will by mandating that the government’s Treasury Department would retain all proceeds derived from the art’s public exhibition and reproduction. Despite Abbott Laboratories’ large expenditure for these various art projects, the company fulfilled its contractual obligation to turn over all of the commissioned paintings and drawings to the federal government’s War Department in June 1945.

Though outwardly patriotic and philanthropic, Abbott’s patronage of art during World War

II was in reality a pursuit of propaganda—an extension of its earlier print campaigns and a vehicle to rehabilitate a deteriorated corporate image by aligning itself with the government in order to secure a place in the hearts and minds of the medical community and the American public. An understanding of the Abbott public relations machine at work provides a deeper

1 connection to the art the company sponsored both prior to and during the war. It also places the pharmaceutical company’s philanthropy within the broader context of corporate patronage, advertising, and propaganda studies to chart new territory and enrich the scholarly discourse in these areas.

From as early as 1891, Abbott’s management embraced visual imagery in order to fashion a corporate image and spur sales. Evolving from that point until the beginning of the war, its advertising and What’s New layouts drew from sources as varied as turn-of-the-century medical advertising, popular print media of the late 1930s, and government-sponsored art extending from the mid-1930s into the early war years. Yet, Abbott’s business model for its appropriation of

Benton’s Year of Peril and its subsequent artist correspondent programs from 1942 to 1945 represents a unique convergence of corporation-government-artist in the production and dissemination of war art. Even the combat art initiatives of Life magazine and Standard Oil of

New Jersey (SONJ), the programs most similar to Abbott’s, reveal key critical differences reflecting a more traditional two-party system of patronage. An attempt to adequately categorize

Abbott’s tripartite corporation-government-artist relationship poses new questions of the current corporate patronage scholarship as well as propaganda studies.

The fact that Abbott donated all of the war art it commissioned to the government challenges the patron-artist paradigm by severing the direct connection between patron and commodity. Additionally, the ubiquitous struggle between high and low art, so often addressed in prevailing corporate philanthropy scholarship, has lesser consequence in Abbott’s artist correspondent campaigns. Abbott’s act of patronage, isolated from the cultural artifact through the company’s donation of the work, carries much more significance to the corporation than content or style. The company could afford to sponsor works that did not specifically reflect its

2 products or align with its edgier graphic style because, during the war, patronage itself became the commodity. To argue this point, as well as provide context for the various stages of Abbott’s corporate patronage, I have drawn upon scholarship in corporate patronage, advertising, and propaganda in my analysis of surviving archival resources and Abbott’s publications. I engage in the various ways in which advertising and propaganda overlap throughout the company’s history of art patronage.

No comprehensive study of Abbott Laboratories’ art programs exists; however, several works on the company help to complement archival data. Herman Kogan’s 1963 The Long White

Line: The Abbott Laboratories delivers a detailed history chronicling the transformation of the small pill business into the pharmaceutical behemoth that it is today. Although fewer than five pages of this three-hundred-page book mention the art produced through the organization,

Kogan’s chronology and record of scientific, technological, and financial progress aid in the reconstruction of the period and a comprehension of the company’s imperatives behind artistic patronage. Brian Lanker and Nicole Newnham’s They Drew Fire: Combat Artists of World War

II (2000) offers first-hand interviews with several of the surviving artist correspondents who recollected their unique service to the United States military.

Several key scholarly works inform each chapter’s synthesis of archival data, newspaper clippings, and Abbott artist interviews. Mark W. Rectanus’ 2002 Culture Incorporated:

Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships looks at corporate patronage as a form of cultural politics, providing critical theory helpful in understanding philanthropy’s nexus of culture, economics, and politics. His analysis of the high and low art dichotomy in corporate sponsorship is particularly applicable to Abbott’s funding as well as World War II corporate advertising in general. Although she deals almost entirely with corporate collecting, Rosanne Martorella’s 1990

3 Corporate Art provides a social history of business philanthropy that helps to recognize the many hidden incentives to art funding. Her research also provides several case studies and models of corporate collecting through which Abbott’s philanthropy can be analyzed.

In regards to wartime corporate sponsorship specifically, Roland Marchand’s 1998

Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American

Business presents the most comprehensive look at general trends in wartime advertising and promotion. Michele H. Bogart’s 1995 Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art also provides an excellent look at this period, detailing art sponsorship during the war by companies like IBM,

American Tobacco, Upjohn, and SONJ. Stephen Benedict’s 1991 anthology Public Money and the Muse: Essays on Government Funding for the Arts lends a critical analysis of government patronage through diverse essays from several preeminent scholars in the field, such as Milton C.

Cummings Jr. and Paul J. DiMaggio. While Michel Foucault’s 1982 essay “The Subject and

Power” and Jacques Ellul’s seminal Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1973) have profoundly influenced my perspective on propaganda, more recent works looking at propaganda’s operation within the museum setting are particularly pertinent to this study. For example, Mary Anne Staniszewski’s essay “Installations for Political Persuasion” in her 1998

Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art, focuses on that museum’s displays of government-sponsored wartime propaganda between 1942 and 1945.

Abbott Laboratories emulated preexisting combat art programs, such as the one sponsored by Life magazine, and, because the pharmaceutical giant also concurrently published its own magazine, What’s New, it is critical to look at the existing scholarship on Life and other pictorial magazines during the 1930s and early 1940s. In Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA

Photographs (2003), Cara A. Finnegan focuses on how the photographic medium was used by

4 print media to construct a narrative of human adversity during America’s depression years. FSA photography demonstrated how the successful blend of image and advertising could influence the populace. New Deal art practices served as a model that periodicals such as Life and What’s

New would follow to convince their readers to renew subscriptions or purchase war bonds.

Looking at Life (2001), a collection of essays edited by Erika Doss, spans nearly four decades of the print magazine’s most influential, and America’s most tumultuous, years to explore a wide variety of issues, including modernity, the Second World War, racism, and gender.

Of all the artists involved with Abbott Laboratories, Benton’s participation in three of the company’s major art campaigns makes him one of the most significant. The state of the literature on Benton is as nuanced as it is profuse. Matthew Baigell and Erika Doss are the most widely- cited authorities on the artist, and the two scholars have published several articles and books focusing on Benton. Baigell’s monograph, Thomas Hart Benton (1975), and subsequent Art

Journal articles in the 1970s revised and revitalized the scholarly appreciation of Benton’s oeuvre. Doss’ extensive scholarship on 1930s art and popular culture has covered not only mass media, as cited above, but also the regionalists and American scene painters, with a particular focus on Benton. Her Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to

Abstract Expressionism (1991), for example, examines the stylistic shift from regionalism to the emergence of abstract expressionism, using Benton and his famous student, Jackson Pollock, as her protagonists. In the course of her study, she describes Benton’s relationship to Reeves

Lewenthal and his Associated American Artists (AAA), in whose New York gallery Lewenthal opened an “Art for Advertising Department” to serve the needs of industrial clients. Doss provides more focused analysis of this relationship in “Catering to Consumerism: Associated

American Artists and the Marketing of Modern Art, 1934-1958,” also published in 1991. Leo G.

5 Mazow and Henry Adams have recently introduced new perspectives on the life and works of the artist in each of their texts Shallow Creek: Thomas Hart Benton and American Waterways

(2007) and Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

(2009), respectively. Justin Wolff’s Thomas Hart Benton: A Life, published in 2012, is the most recent biography, although this author pays little attention to Benton’s association with

Lewenthal. When assessing Benton’s ideas regarding war and more subjective concepts, his own autobiography An Artist in America, first published in 1937, best reflects the impetus behind his patriotic initiatives.

While Benton plays a key role in Abbott’s promotional campaign during World War II, he is only one of the many artists who worked for the Abbott-federal government partnership during this period. This unexamined relationship and the art produced under its auspices is the focus of this study. Each chapter here examines a critical stage in Abbott’s brand development beginning with the company’s inception in Chapter Two. This chapter, titled What’s New, covers four major phases instrumental to Abbott’s development of its corporate image prior to World War II.

The first involves the company’s early usage of advertising art in the 1890s and early 1900s to build a corporate brand. The second concerns the 1893 launch and redesign of Abbott’s first in- house promotional publication, The Alkaloidal Clinic, as well as subsequent attacks from both the American Medical Association and the larger medical community regarding the veracity of

Abbott’s printed claims. Following these attacks, Abbott launched a corporate rebranding campaign, marking the third phase. Hallmarks of this period are the company’s March 1906 retitling of its The Alkaloidal Clinic as The American Journal of Clinical Medicine, likely to distance itself in its journal from laudanum and other opiate alkaloids, so associated with the patent medicine scandal dominating headlines that year, and the official 1915 renaming of The

6 Abbott Alkaloidal Company to The Abbott Laboratories. Finally, company president Simeon

DeWitt Clough’s May 1935 launch of What’s New marks the final phase. At this time Abbott contracts with Lewenthal and his agency, the AAA, to provide artists for the magazine, itself indebted to 1930s print culture. The focus of this chapter will be to demonstrate how Abbott used its corporate advertising through these four phases to create and reinvent its brand, circumvent tightened legislation on drug advertising, integrate itself into popular culture, and ultimately establish a business model that serves as a prototype for its future wartime patronage.

Despite the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, mislabeling, hucksterism, and duplicitous advertising bred a general distrust of the drug industry leading up to the depression years. New

Deal initiatives and the reorganization of the Food and Drug Administration led to the 1938

Wheeler-Lea Act, extending protection to consumers, as opposed to corporate competitors already covered, from deceptive trade practices, and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of the same year, expanding safety standards for food, drug, and cosmetic products. The

Wheeler-Lea Act revealed the continued transgressions of the drug industry and set strict regulations on all labels and advertisements directed to the general public. Nevertheless, by printing and distributing its own publications to a specific audience of doctors and pharmacists,

Abbott could exercise greater control over advertisements and editorial content, while facing fewer governmental restrictions upon its products’ claims. In addition, pharmaceutical manufacturers like Abbott Laboratories and The Upjohn Company, both of which suffered tremendous blows from muckraking and harsh media criticism, sought to refine their public images through advertising. Clough’s commissioning of artists to produce covers and illustrations for the magazine reveals the company’s desire to appear cutting edge by employing a visual language already appearing in other popular publications at the time. The imagery in

7 What’s New needed to reinforce the same ingenuity and innovation inherent in Abbott’s line of products and state-of-the-art research facilities.

This awareness of contemporary trends and the company’s focus on influencing its target audience through imagery provokes several familiar and specifically new questions: How did these particular artists negotiate between their creativity, the needs of the journal, and the demands of modern art world? How was What’s New both symptomatic of and revolutionary in an era that fostered the rebirth of Life magazine under Henry Luce? Although the current visual studies and word and image discourses have elucidated the significance of popular pictorial publications like Life and Look to the development of the photo-essay and hence to the shaping of national identity and national responses to cultural crises, specialized in-house magazines like

What’s New were not distributed to the public and have not been considered. Unlike contemporaneous popular magazines like Life and Yank, Abbott’s in-house publication was an ancillary product that could not have its success measured by advertisement space sold or subscriptions alone. It operated as an arm of the organization charged with the task of rehabilitating the company image—as well as that of its products—following a tumultuous and controversial time for the American pharmaceutical industry at large.

Chapter Three, Abbott Laboratories’ Year of Peril, focuses on Benton’s initial involvement with the pharmaceutical corporation in 1942. Attention has been given to the now-legendary account of how Benton, devastated following the attacks on Pearl Harbor, sequestered himself in his studio and over the course of nine weeks cathartically exploded upon eight canvases his emotional outrage. The resulting series caught the attention of many Americans, including

Abbott Laboratories’ enterprising director of advertising, Charles Downs, who purchased the paintings and reproduced them in the pages of What’s New and war bond posters. Perhaps it is

8 the vitriolic and racist undertones of several of the images that, despite their wide dissemination at the time, has resulted in few reproductions and even sparser scholarly attention surrounding

Abbott’s role in the promotion and distribution of the series. Whereas the previous chapter dealt with Abbott’s patronage of the visual arts for its advertisements and print publications, chapter three focuses on the dynamics involved in the purchase and dissemination of a preexisting series.

Benton’s Year of Peril series represents a highly emotional knee-jerk visual reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor that aligned perfectly with Abbott’s earlier advertising tactics and allowed the company to arouse an emotive public response through fear-based image propagation.

Abbott’s appropriation of the Year of Peril series for this purpose is detailed in five stages of the chapter. The first briefly introduces the works through Benton’s writings and various scholarly accounts of the content and production of the series. The artist’s own acknowledgement of the works as propaganda is significant; however, this assertion will be measured against criteria commonly outlined in the scholarship on the subject to provide context for both the Year of Peril series as well as Abbott’s subsequent war art. This chapter next looks at Abbott’s patronage of the series by detailing Clough’s negotiations with Benton and

Lewenthal, his arranging for pamphlet, poster, and postcard reproductions, and the government’s participation in image distribution. The subsequent analysis details both of Abbott’s sponsored exhibitions of Year of Peril at Lewenthal’s 711 Fifth Avenue New York gallery: the first on

April 6, and the second on August 31,1942. Records detailing how the works were exhibited for the public provide new insight into the series and shed light on some of Abbott’s key decisions regarding promotion of the art. Next, the chapter places the pharmaceutical company’s sponsorship of Year of Peril within the context of contemporary corporate wartime patronage, advertising, and museum exhibition. In addition to identifying key public relations and financial

9 incentives obtained by many companies at the time, specific attention to the art patronage of

IBM and Upjohn demonstrates the unconventional nature of Abbott’s art sponsorship even prior to its war correspondent campaigns. Finally, this chapter reveals how the Year of Peril series aligned with Abbott’s earlier advertisements predicated on fear and why the work was necessary.

Government censorship prevented popular magazines from reproducing photographs of deceased or severely wounded soldiers during the initial war years. The first published photograph of dead soldiers did not occur until Life magazine’s September 20, 1943, issue, following the War

Department’s loosening of restrictions. Through Year of Peril, Abbott again found a way to bend the rules and circumvent government regulation by reproducing and distributing the emotionally charged images of maimed and decapitated corpses through the medium of paint.

Chapter four, Plane-Air Painting, explores the specifics of Abbott Laboratories’ and the

U.S. government’s initial agreement to commission artists as military personnel through the company’s first artist-correspondent campaign, Our Flying Navy. Overseen by Clough and

Lewenthal, the program drew from several precedents but most closely resembled artist George

Biddle’s initial design for the 1941 Naval Combat Art Program. Biddle, a former staff sergeant for the Army who assumed his role as chair of the War Department’s Art Advisory Committee in

January 1943, applied his knowledge of art and the military to assist Abbott. Along with payment, travel expenses, and commissions as active-duty military officers, Abbott artist correspondents had much more flexibility than the 1930s New Deal government-sponsored artists in their choices of medium, subject and style. Advised by Biddle, the company selected artists and sent them to military locales around the globe to capture aspects of the war and submit their finished works to the War Department for approval. Once approved, the images were turned into war bond posters, published in What’s New, and thematically grouped for touring museum

10 exhibitions, war bond drives, and publication. While Abbott’s war correspondent campaigns derive from several precedents, chapter four positions Biddle as the single greatest influence to the program through his conception, design, and operation of what would eventually become

Abbott’s most successful promotional vehicle.

Abbott Laboratories’ first promotional campaign, Our Flying Navy, consists of over one hundred paintings recording naval aviation created by artist correspondents and AAA members

Howard Baer, Lawrence Beall-Smith, Robert Benney, Adolf Dehn, Don Freeman, Joseph Hirsch, and Georges Schreiber. The works capture everything from preflight preparations to fighter planes and dirigible airships and serve as the backdrop in this chapter for discussing the genesis and operation of Abbott’s artist correspondent programs. The chapter first looks at several precedents that served as templates for Abbott’s campaigns, which include New Deal art initiatives, Biddle’s engineering of the 1941 Army War Art program, and Life magazine’s funding of war art. Like Life, Abbott stepped in to provide financial backing to the Biddle’s program, and this chapter gives special attention to determining why the corporation might have deemed this action advantageous. Next, this chapter focuses on the launching of Abbott’s first campaign by outlining Biddle’s involvement, exploring the terms and conditions of the artists’ contracts, and highlighting the alignment of corporate and governmental interests in the creation of Abbott war art. The approval, selection, and exhibition processes, discussed in the third section, provide insight into how the finished works were fashioned into a collection. Art by

Abbott’s correspondents had to pass through two phases of approval prior to becoming part of a collection like Our Flying Navy: first the War Department’s selection process, and next

Abbott/Lewenthal’s. A closer look at the works ultimately selected as part of the final collection reveals Abbott’s goal for corporate messaging. Finally, this chapter looks at other war art

11 programs, specifically those launched by Yank magazine and SONJ, to provide context for

Abbott’s initiatives. Returning to the central purpose of this manuscript, this study will look at how Abbott’s program is different from the others, how it relates to propaganda/advertising, and how Our Flying Navy fulfills the company’s objectives.

The fifth chapter looks at Abbott Laboratories’ other artist correspondent campaigns, Silent

Service, Amphibious Operations, and Men Without Guns, to address one of the most peculiar aspects surrounding the corporation’s World War II art patronage: Why did Abbott agree to donate all its war art, including Benton’s Year of Peril, to the government following the conclusion of the war? Because Abbott has throughout the years exercised a practice of, as David

Lai has noted, “routinely destroying material every few years,” determining the reasons behind the corporation’s charitable act has required considerable probing and reflection.1 In an attempt to answer this query chapter five proposes three interconnected reasons that likely motivated

Abbott’s decision to donate the works. Each of the three reasons, which serve as major bullet points for this chapter, engage this body of research as well as the current scholarship on corporate patronage, advertising, and propaganda to lend a critical voice to Abbott’s philanthropy and enrich the discourse.

The first point presents the argument that Abbott opted not to retain the works for a corporate collection because its content did not directly highlight the company. Images from the

Silent Service and Amphibious Operations campaigns will provide a few examples to support this claim, and comparisons to other corporate art collections will demonstrate how incongruous the war art was to the post-war pharmaceutical company. Unlike SONJ, whose commissioned war art’s subject matter can be directly linked to the company’s commercial products, images of planes and submarines would seem out of place in the company’s gallery or on the walls of its

1 David C. Lai, Pentothal Postcards (West New York, NJ: Mark Batty, 2005), 7.

12 Chicago headquarters. Even imagery from the company’s series Men Without Guns does not always highlight a specific Abbott product. Furthermore, from the perspective of the corporation in 1942, once the war ended in a year or two, the images would appear too dated for a cutting- edge and innovative company image. Content for Abbott’s art, apart from its wartime patriotic or nationalistic benefit, becomes fairly negligible, as the act of funding the artist and promoting that sponsorship is much more significant than the art’s subject matter or commercial value. The company’s relative disinterest in content, and the knowledge that the finished art would become government property, helps to explain the unparalleled freedom that Abbott artists were given. It also reveals the Abbott promotional strategies, for which whatever the product might be, whether it is Benton’s overtly propagandistic and hyper-violent Year of Peril images or Adolf Dehn’s peaceful scenes of Navy blimps, each fuels the same machine. This exercise engages the very nature of propaganda and the relevancy of content.

Point two proposes that Abbott donated all of the art it commissioned during the war because the style did not align with its own corporate style. A look at the art from Abbott’s Men

Without Guns series as it appeared within the pages of What’s New reveals this startling disparity.

Abbott’s magazine to doctors promoting state-of-the-art medicine employed a wide range of abstract or experimental styles in an effort to appear avant-garde. The juxtaposition of the realist paintings intended for a broader populist audience appears anachronistic against the magazine’s interior design elements. A key proponent of modernism, Katherine Kuh, provided a 1946 critique of Abbott art as “competently factual but largely lacking in quality, imagination, or intensity.” 2 Her standing on the opposite side of figures like Benton and Biddle in the American art debate underscores the perceived divide between art that more or less illustrated the war and

2 Katharine Kuh, “The War and the Visual Arts,” The Antioch Review 6, no. 3 (Autumn 1946): 399-400.

13 emerging trends in abstraction. This section explores these issues as they apply to Abbott’s war art and the company’s decision to give it away.

Thus, in the final pages of chapter five I submit that Abbott opted to not retain the war art for a corporate collection because the style and content of the work itself was essentially insignificant. During the war, government provisioning and tough corporate competition for military contracts forced companies like Abbott to revise their company strategies. While previous chapters reveal the company’s desire to rebrand itself in the eyes of the public, this section looks beyond the public relations incentives of the artist correspondent programs to discuss the other ways in which Abbott Laboratories benefitted. From public exhibitions to war bond rallies, penicillin and Adabrin to sodium pentothal, Abbott relied upon its relationship with the government to keep contracts from going to its competitors and survive during the war years.

In this new economic system imposed by the war, Abbott essentially operated as an arm of the government, merging the private with the public in the production of government advertising.

Sponsoring war art provided the company with opportunities to meet with government officials, build rapport with them, and hobnob with admirals and senators at art exhibitions. In this patronage machine, the Abbott’s act of sponsorship, exhibition, and distribution relegates the art to the status of ephemera. Similar to the act of reading the newspaper and tossing it, cutting the abstract cards out of the issue of What’s New and throwing the issue away, or the company practice of “routinely destroying material,”3 Abbott no longer needed the art once the war ended.

It was disposable.

3 Lai, Pentothal Postcards, 7.

14 CHAPTER TWO

WHAT’S NEW?

The story of how an 1888 Chicago-born one-man medicine operation developed into

Abbott Laboratories—today a multi-billion dollar global leader in pharmaceutical sales—closely follows the trajectory of three of the company’s leaders and their respective marketing campaigns. Company founder Wallace Calvin Abbott and successive presidents Simeon DeWitt

Clough and Charles Downs each understood art’s capacity to influence public perception.

Through their promotional ventures each of these leaders contributed to both the growth of

Abbott Laboratories and the careers of numerous American artists. Downs’ leadership of

Abbott’s War Art program from 1942 to 1945 remains the most noteworthy of these endeavors.

However, none of Downs’ projects could have reached the public without Clough’s 1935 creation of What’s New, the vehicle for distributing Abbott Laboratories-sponsored art. Building upon company precedents established by Wallace Abbott’s initial 1891 advertising of the company in medical trade journals and his subsequent acquisition of a company journal The

Alkaloidal Clinic in 1893, Clough recognized the efficacy of the visual arts in advertising.

What’s New, an in-house print journal emulating the size and layouts of contemporary mass media publications to reach its target audience more effectively, helped the company negate the control of advertising salesmen and publishers and circumvent the governmental regulation of patent drug advertising.

As this chapter will show, company publications The American Journal of Clinical

Medicine, the rechristened descendent of The Alkaloidal Clinic, and What’s New allowed Abbott

Laboratories to create a direct and uncensored advertising channel to it customers as well as reinvent itself by demonstrating the safety of its products during periods of intense scrutiny

15 towards the drug industry. Prevailing hucksterism, the need for revised drug laws, and Abbott’s unflattering public battle with the American Medical Association (AMA) necessitated the company’s rebranding, and print media helped to redefine the pharmaceutical corporation.

What’s New, in particular, relied heavily on visual imagery, with design elements communicating its cutting-edge aesthetic. Thus, the discussion of Abbott’s company publications in this chapter examines the relationship between their pictorial content and related developments in the arts and in mass media.

Even during the earliest stages of his medicine business, Abbott was a savvy businessman who realized the significance that effective advertising could play in stimulating consumer interest. After three years of producing alkaloidal drug granules in his small Chicago apartment, in 1891 he purchased a quarter-dollar advertisement publicizing the clinical benefits of his kitchen-created granules (figure 2.1).4 The ad, which appeared in the June 1891 issue of The

Medical World, simply stated, “WANTED: Every reader of The Medical World using or interested in DOSIMETRIC GRANULES to send me their address at once. Dr. W. C. Abbott,

Ravenswood, Chicago, Ill.”5 The simplicity of the advertisement, void of illustration or decorative typesetting, corresponds with the doctor’s meager advertising budget for his fledgling pill company. The response to the advertisement was positive, netting the doctor over $8 in orders and proving the effectiveness of targeted marketing.6 The wide circulation of The Medical

World, published by doctors (and brothers) Charles F. and James J. Taylor of Philadelphia, not only augmented Abbott’s sales but also helped to build his reputation among the medical

4 S. DeWitt Clough, “The Story of the Abbott Alkaloidal Company,” in Backbone (Chicago: The Abbott Press, 1911), n.p. 5 “For Ourselves and Others,” The Medical World 9, no. 6 (June 1891): 231. 6 Clough, Backbone, n.p.

16 community.7 Alkaloid pills were not very popular at the time, and the doctor believed that through marketing he could bring attention to their advantages over “old-fashioned” medicine.8

Following advertising successes and pill revenues nearly tripling in only three years,

Abbott believed that increased exposure in trade journals could further boost the sales of his burgeoning enterprise. In 1893 Dr. Abbott assumed control over The Alkaloidal Clinic, a small monthly pamphlet previously sponsored by Chicago doctor William T. Thackery.9 Officially rereleased in January 1894 under Abbott’s direction, the publication increased to twelve pages due to the addition of more articles, letters and editorial content. 10 Along with the new journal came the official titling of the company in 1900 as The Abbott Alkaloidal Company, referencing the business’ primary product and further aligning the corporate identity with its channel of media distribution. Initially, monthly issues of The Alkaloidal Clinic cost ten cents a piece, or a dollar for an entire year. During this period, the publication expanded its page numbers to include several pages of illustrated advertisements in each issue, and it began to demonstrate an overall greater incorporation of graphic elements. For example, the cover of the February 1900 issue reveals Abbott’s incorporation of an asymmetrical stylized acanthus leaf filigree and a bold, ornate typography popular in graphic design in the U.S. in the late 1890s (figure 2.2). This cover, in striking contrast to the far plainer design of earlier issues, appeared through the January 1901 issue. The cover changed radically with the February 1901 issue, which introduced a symmetrical tendril design, simpler yet loosely reminiscent of that seen in the Art Nouveau panels of the Porte Dauphine Métro entrance in Paris, inaugurated in December 1900. The

7 Herman Kogan, The Long White Line: The Story of Abbott Laboratories (New York: Random House, 1963), 3-5. 8 Clough, Backbone, n.p. “The alkaloids and other proximate plant principles were not widely used in America in those days…. Dr. Abbott was one of the few who had used them…. He had found the active-principle granules easy to administer, much more pleasant for the patient to take than the old-fashioned drugs, convenient to carry, capable of accurate dosage, uniformly potent….” 9 Kogan, Long White Line, 27. 10 Ibid., 27.

17 fashionable Art Nouveau style had been popularized at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, which had closed in November 1900. (figure 2.3). The February 1901 cover’s association with the world’s fair in Paris was hardly coincidental, as the fair exhibited the latest in chemical and pharmaceutical arts, among all its other attractions. Subsequent issues of The Alkaloidal Clinic included ads from a New York manufacturer of artificial limbs touting its gold medal from the exposition, suggesting the attention the medical community had paid to the exposition.

The primary motivation informing Abbott’s decision to promote the company through its in-house publication, rather than pre-established medical agency journals like the Journal of the

American Medical Association, resulted from the paucity of advertising space in these other publications and funding issues.11 Prior to the increased advertising budgets of the 1920s, drug manufacturers competed for small ads in the periodicals of organizations like the American

Medical Association (AMA). Rather than allocating valuable marketing dollars on a few advertisements, and thereby providing institutional support to another entity, Abbott preferred to establish his own promotional mechanism that, once operational, could continually advertise at a fraction of the cost. By investing in his own infrastructure, Abbott would no longer need to rely on intermediaries, agents, and the internal politics of the larger medical community. By producing and distributing The Alkaloidal Clinic, Abbott simultaneously became a primary source for medical information and a dominant presence in the pharmaceutical field.

In his 1911 publication “The Story of the Abbott Alkaloidal Company,” Clough explains the doctor’s early emphasis on print advertisements: “Shortly after the company erected its first permanent structure, a fine brick building, of three stories and basement, 58 by 160 feet, in which was installed the plant of The Clinic Publishing Company (changed in 1911 to The Abbott Press),

11 Howard R. Roberts, Medicine Ave: The Story of Medical Advertising in America (Huntington, NY: The Medical Advertising Hall of Fame, 1999), 16-7.

18 a closely affiliated enterprise, of which Dr. Abbott is also president and principal owner. This was the home of The Alkaloidal Clinic, the organ of the alkaloidal movement.”12 Abbott’s new print center and advertising headquarters produced drug labels, catalogs, pamphlets, and prescription blanks, while also distributing his Alkaloidal Clinic.13 Sent directly to the company’s mailing list comprised of more than 60,000 physicians, the Alkaloidal Clinic allowed the company to advertise its various alkaloidal drugs to a specific target audience.14 Wallace

Abbott’s decision to own and operate a publishing company rendered securing advertising space an easy feat. However, the real ingenuity in this decision emerges in the editorials of The

Alkaloidal Clinic. Abbott had complete control of layout and formatting and could place content, such as case studies and testimonials, literally on the same page as a related product. The company created a virtual one-stop-shopping experience in which prospective customers could receive Abbott’s education on innovative new products and order these panaceas all in the same place.

Looking back, Wallace Abbott’s 1904 hiring of Clough—at the time an advertising expert and former sales manager for American Printer, Newspaperdom, and Business World—further solidified the company’s public relations’ objective.15 Clough explains:

The Abbott Alkaloidal Company is one of the most liberal medical advertisers in America. We also send out by mail vast quantities of advertising booklets, circulars, etc., these being for the most part of marked educational value to the doctor. In addition to these forms of promotion we also publish a ‘trade’ magazine, which is sent to the profession every two months. This equals in literary quality, and typographically, any medical journal published. . . . This publication is better

12 Clough, Backbone, n.p. 13 Kogan, Long White Line, 26-32. 14 Clough, Backbone, n.p. “Today The Abbott Alkaloidal Company manufactures a large share of the alkaloids and other active principles which it markets, buying the raw materials literally by the ton from all parts of the world. We now manufacture alkaloids like aconitine, colchicine and emetine; glucosides like digitalin, bryonin and arbutin; we are probably the largest makers of the phenolsulfphonates (sulpocarbolates) of zinc, sodium, copper, and calcium in the world; we make our own nuclein from the germ of wheat; and our own lecithin from the brains of domestic animals….”14 15 Kogan, Long White Line, 40-1.

19 known as ‘Helpful Hints for the Busy Doctor.’ It is sent free. . . . Some conception of the extent of our mail-order promotion and the business which has grown out of it can be reached when it is understood the Abbott Alkaloidal Company pays to Uncle Sam from $25,000 to $35,000 every year for postage alone, this including the cost of stamps used in mail-order shipments.16

Clough emphasized the company’s didactic mission, and, through The Alkaloidal Clinic,

Abbott attempted to distinguish itself from its competitors by promising information, integrity, and transparency to the customer.17

Although The Alkaloidal Clinic eventually began to include other medical companies’ advertisements, Abbott initially printed its own products exclusively. An early advertisement from the December 1903 issue underlines another reoccurring marketing tactic (figure 2.4). The illustrated advertisement for Calcidin (Iodized Calcium) takes a much more aggressive and fear- mongering marketing approach by warning of the detriment of croup. In “Croup Kills,” a sinister skeleton chokes the life from an infant as a visual metaphor for the threat the disease posed to the young. The ad’s text appeals to the medical community: “It works like magic, quickly, safely, and pleasantly. Doctor, you should have it on hand, for when you need it. . . . No time to send then, the time is now. . . . Directions for use, and recorded experience of physicians who use it successfully, sent on request.”18 The medical community receiving Abbott’s message is charged with the imperative to prepare itself against child mortality by using a trusted product from a respected distributor with references available upon request. A similar advertisement appearing in issue nine of the 1905 Medical Insurance uses text rather than an image to scare doctors into

16 Clough, Backbone, n.p. 17 Ibid., n.p. Clough later explains, “We have rearoused faith in therapeutics by giving the profession, through right means and measures, courage to resume its old optimistic, commanding position in the sick-room…. Modern surgery has taught the world a lesson. It has lifted this great branch of the profession from the barber’s pole to its present status of exactness and success…. We make ‘no dope for quackery.’ We seek the confidence and the preference of the profession, to whom we give a ‘square deal’—always.” 18 Kogan, Long White Line, 46. According to Kogan, a mailing campaign accompanied Abbott’s Croup Kills promotion. As he wrote,“Thousands of special pamphlets describing Calcidin and its many uses were printed and distributed by salesmen and through the mail. On the cover a rough drawing of the skeleton of death choking an infant served as a grisly background for a red-lettered message: ‘CROUP KILLS. CALCIDIN SAVES LIFE.’”

20 purchasing Abbott’s products. An oversized bold font warns “Pneumonia Can be Aborted. ~Do

Not Let Your Patients Die~,” intimidating medical practitioners and setting a revealing a pattern of fear-based marketing.19

Abbott’s scare tactics and its usage of a medical journal to promote its products displeased several of the company’s competitors and detractors. In a proactive attempt to police itself prior to the 1906 Food and Drug Act, the AMA in 1905 launched its Council on Pharmacy and

Chemistry as an effort to regulate drug distribution and go after unethical patent drug purveyors.20 According to Howard R. Roberts, the organization’s publication New and Non-

Official Remedies “became the Bible on drugs for physicians, and medical publications like The

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) used it in deciding whether to accept advertising on a product.”21 Despite promoting its products through its own journal, Abbott faced increased scrutiny during this period. In March 1906 the company announced The Alkaloidal

Clinic’s title change to The American Journal of Clinical Medicine. This change, Abbott alleged, better demonstrated the company’s wider influence22 Abbott historian Herman Kogan, on the other hand, noted the complaints from non-alkaloidal physicians and competitors. They asserted that because the Alkaloidal Clinic functioned as one huge company advertisement instead of a trade journal, it should not receive “second-class mailing privileges.”23 In seeming response to this criticism, in addition to The Alkaloidal Clinic’s name change came a major overhaul to the layout of Abbott’s revamped publication. The American Journal of Clinical Medicine

19 “Abbott Alkaloidal Company Advertisement,” Medical Insurance: Devoted to the Insurance Examiner and Clinical Diagnostician, no. 9 (1905): n.p. 20 Roberts, Medicine Ave, 12. 21 Ibid., 12. 22 “News of the Services,” Journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 18 (1906): 64. “The American Journal of Clinical Medicine is the new title of the Alkaloidal Clinic and indicates a wider development of that very popular publication. Under the energetic management of Drs. Abbott and Waugh and their associates, the changed journal will be sure to increase in influence and value.” 23 Kogan, Long White Line, 50.

21 significantly reduced its overt promotion of Abbott and began featuring more favorable coverage of other companies’ products in the articles as well as the ads. Nevertheless, shortly following the passage of the 1906 Food and Drug Act, attacks on the Abbott Alkaloidal Company greatly intensified.

The 1906 media’s coverage of the food and drug industries exposed big business’ deficiencies and the necessity for immediate reform; however, from the corporate perspective excessive muckraking had exaggerated or obscured the truth in its search for scandalous and enticing headlines to fill its pages. Pharmaceutical companies like Abbott experienced greater difficulty advertising through a medium that simultaneously disseminated messages diametrically opposed to their own. On December 21, 1907, Dr. George Simmons of the AMA, at one time a friend of Abbott, launched a formal written attack regarding claims that The

Journal of Clinical Medicine made while promoting its Hyosin-Morphin-Cactin tablet.24 In the long and scathing indictment Simmons begins by explaining Abbott’s strategies for advertising

HMC, promoted by the company as a revolutionary breakthrough in obstetrics:

Over a year ago the Abbott Alkaloidal Company put on the market as a “new” anesthetic, a tablet said to contain one-hundredth grain of hyoscin, one-fourth grain of morphin and one-sixty-seventh grain of a product called "cactin." During the past year this tablet has been exploited to an extent and in a manner as has no other medicinal preparation in this or in any other country. Full page advertisements and reading notices, all extravagantly laudatory of the preparation, have appeared in medical journals of all kinds. More original articles highly praising it have been published than have ever appeared in the same length of time on any other one medical subject.25

24 Ibid., 62-3. 25 “Miscellaneous,” Texas State Journal of Medicine 3 (January 1908): 267-8. Simmons’ attack, as well as excerpts from Abbott’s original advertisement, were reprinted in regional medical journals throughout the country. Abbott’s original HMC ad boasted, “But greatest of all is the triumph the new remedy has won in the field of obstetrics. Nothing like it has ever appeared. Women who had taken chloroform in previous confinements say that the new remedy is incomparably superior. Every day 1 receive letters from men who assert that they are ‘scooping in the neighborhood’ of obstetric practice since beginning the use of these tablets. Women are canceling their engagements with their old physicians to secure the attendance of those who employ the H. M. C. Comp. tablets. Men write to us that they are extinguishing the fear of childbirth, putting a stop to family quarrels, and one man goes so far as to

22 After analyzing the chemical composition of the drug, Simmons points out that both hyoscin hydrobromid and scopolamin-morphin, the scientific names for the first two components of Abbott’s product, are the same alkaloid.26 He also reveals that not only is the product not new, but that it is imported from Germany’s Merck pharmaceutical company, who discovered the drug sixteen years prior to Abbott’s promotion.27 Simmons concludes, “The Abbott Alkaloidal

Company, therefore, has been misleading the medical profession of the United States regarding hyoscin in its ‘H-M-C’ tablets, and has been doing this either deliberately, with the intention of deceiving for commercial gain, or from ignorance of well-known facts. . . . We have shown that the "H-M-C" tablets of the Abbott Alkaloidal Company are simply scopolamin-morphin plus

"cactin." What is "cactin"? There is no such drug in the Pharmacopeia of the United States, or in any other pharmacopeia.”28

Simmons’ statements were damaging enough on their own, but their multiple reprints in regional medical journals throughout the United States, and all over the world for that matter, publicized the allegations. While many of the journals remained unbiased, reprinting only the facts surrounding both Abbott’s and the AMA’s claims, other publications seized the opportunity to kick the alkaloidal company while it was down. The Journal of the Indiana State Medical

Association, for example, praised the AMA and validated Simmons’ claims: “For a long time it has been known by some physicians that the Abbott Alkaloidal Company and its journal, The

American Journal of Clinical Medicine, have shamefully prostituted the medical profession to

predict an increase in the birthrate of the American women as a result! When one is daily overwhelmed with shoals of such encomiums as these he can scarcely avoid becoming somewhat enthusiastic himself.” 26 Ibid., 267-8. 27 Ibid., 267-8. 28 Ibid., 267-8.

23 commercial ends, but it remained for the Journal of the American Medical Association, to publicly expose some of the disreputable practices adopted to exploit the medical profession.”29

Rather than replying to the AMA directly, and desiring to present The Journal of Clinical

Medicine as a neutral publication, Abbott decided to print a separate public response in July 1908.

This 48-page pamphlet, defending both the company and his reputation as a doctor, bore the lengthy title: An Appeal for a Square Deal: An Answer to Attacks Made in the Journal of the

American Medical Association Upon the Abbott Alkaloidal Company and Dr. Abbott Personally:

Showing Every Derogatory Statement Made to be a Falsehood Or a Simple, Innocent Fact

Perverted for Ulterior Purposes. The AMA, unimpressed with Abbott’s defense, circulated a response on July 22. In it the organization doubled down on its accusations and claimed that its investigation was complete and Abbott was banned for its false claims, for using its publication and its editorials for marketing, and for inducing “physicians to become financially interested in its business and thus users and promoters of its products.”30 To add insult to injury the AMA also criticized Wallace Abbott’s 48-page defense:

This is a 48-page booklet with a full-page frontispiece of Abbott in his shirt- sleeves, together with thirty-five pictures of the company's plant, from the sugar- coating to the circular-sending department, which have no direct bearing on the text. The reading matter varies in substance from an appealing whine to the

29 “Editorial Notes,” The Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association 1 (April 1908): 153. 30 “Concerning the Abbott Alkaloidal Company,” California State Journal of Medicine 6, no. 11 (November 1908): 394-5. The AMA found Abbott culpable in five major areas: “A thorough investigation has been conducted into the affairs of the Abbott Alkaloidal Company, with the result of laying painfully bare its modern schemes of high finance, together with its methods of working the medical profession. The evident conclusions are: (I) That the president of the Abbott Alkaloidal Company has used, and is now using, his position as a member of the medical profession as a commercial asset; (2) That the company is publishing what purports to be a medical journal devoted to the medical sciences and to the interests of medical practitioners, but which, to all intents and purposes, is a house organ devoted to the interests of the company and to the advertising of its products; (3) That the president and vice- president of the company, though engaged in commercial lines, are members of medical societies and use this membership in medical meetings to advance the interests of their firm; (4) That the same officers, for the same reason, flood the reading pages of medical journals with so-called original articles, which are but thinly veiled advertisements. e. g., 48 articles by Dr. Abbott, who is not in active practice, appeared in various medical journals during 1907, almost all of which dealt with the treatment of different diseases; (5) That by glowing promises the company has induced physicians to become financially interested in its business and thus users and promoters of its products.”

24 heights of braggadocio. It certainly is not an argumentative document, and a careful perusal of its full contents serves in no way to convince the thoughtful reader that the charges of the American Medical Association were at all un founded or exaggerated. In fact, the whole thing is a huge, palpable advertisement, and we can only express our sympathy for those who may be gullible enough to be at all taken in by it. Any possible show of dignity is absolutely lost by the all- pervading atmosphere of commercialism and Abbottism and the ever-present grasping out for the cash. . . . Not for one moment does the man seem to be able to divorce himself from his dollar-getting schemes, either in his business, his literature, his journal or his personal defense.31

The damage had been done. It would take several years for The Abbott Alkaloidal Clinic to rebuild its reputation. Advertising in larger publications was for the most part futile because even if the journal permitted it, Abbott ran the risk of having its ad printed alongside a negative editorial or letter from one of its detractors.

Fortunately for the company it still had complete control of its in-house Journal of Clinical

Medicine and a base of loyal doctors to advertise to. It also had time and Clough’s marketing strategies to help change public perceptions. In 1911 Clough published a booklet through the company press titled Backbone. In it, he chronicled the less controversial aspects of Abbott

Alkaloidal Company’s rise to prominence and emphasized the business’ didactic mission and ethical practices. Excelling in public relations strategies, Clough focused on the company’s perceived deficiencies and developed a new business statement: “Our purpose always has been and always will be to help the medical profession to a higher plane of usefulness by furnishing the doctor with the most reliable and effective drugs it is possible to produce, as well as by supplying all known information as to how to best use them.”32 The First World War also helped

Abbott to rebuild its reputation. The conflict particularly affected the pharmaceutical industry as transatlantic trading with Germany, a leading global supplier of medicine, had rapidly diminished. This dearth of vital supplies, exacerbated by the rising number of wartime casualties,

31 Ibid., 394-5. 32 Clough, Backbone, n.p.

25 created a unique opportunity for Abbott, which responded with increased drug and chemical production.33 When the government licensed the America’s medical manufacturers to develop replacements for vital German drugs, Abbott focused on developing procaine to replace the

German-imported Novocain. 34 The company also produced chlorazene and barbital tablets.35

During this period Abbott’s Journal of Clinical Medicine and its advertising style also changed. The publication took on a more reserved approach to promotion and seemed to mirror the more academic journals at the time. Issues often showed little connection to Abbott, as evidenced by the title page of August 1916 edition (figure 2.5). Other than the small “W.C.

ABBOTT” printed in the upper left among the names of the editorial staff and the finely printed

Ravenswood Avenue address, the page shows very little connection to the company.36

Compositionally speaking, the eye is drawn to the two pointing fingers, positioned a third of way down the page on either side of the referral note. It is almost as if they are directing the viewer to skip past the header and to begin reading at the table of contents. Titles of scientific articles and editorials fill the page, and a preview of upcoming studies for the next month’s journal is listed at the bottom. Although the journal still contains advertisements, unlike the earlier issues of The

Alkaloidal Clinic, only a handful of the promotions are for Abbott products. An example in the same issue reveals just how great an impact the AMA had on the company (figure 2.6). No longer resorting to shock tactics, the ad features a neatly dressed doctor peering through a microscope. The image merges what Roland Marchand categorizes in Advertising the American

Dream as “Advertisement as Social Tableaux,” with the visual cliché of “Master of all he

33 Kogan, Long White Line, 89. 34 “What the Chemical Companies are Doing: Abbott Laboratories’ Medical Research,” Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly 22, no. 38 (1942): 19. 35 Ibid., 19. 36 “Title Page,” the American Journal of Clinical Medicine 23, 8 (1916): 2.

26 Surveys.” 37 The well-dressed doctor is literally on top of the world and represents a different type of executive looking into a different type of window at the world below him. He represents an ideal that readers should strive for in his mastery of his discipline, his strong command of his trade, and his use of high-powered technology. The text “Made in America” alludes patriotically to the war and the need for homegrown ingenuity in replacing German imports. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the image that demonstrates Abbott’s change in advertising following the kerfuffle with the AMA is the detailed description of each product in the text circles surrounding the doctor—the circular shapes being suggestive of the doctor’s view through the microscope, linking his research directly to the resulting drugs. Abbott’s visual imagery from this time echoes

Clough’s didactic mission by clearly outlining the traits of Abbott’s products and demonstrating transparency to the customer. This transition, as well as the company’s July 1915 announcement of a company name change from The Abbott Alkaloidal Company to the Abbott Laboratories, marks the beginning of a new era for the pharmaceutical corporation.38

Abbott’s advertisements through the late 1920s continued demonstrating the company’s trust in the graphic image to capture the viewer’s attention, effectively transmit meaning beyond the text, and lead to greater revenues. It also reflected broader trends in the advertising industry, as ads became more visual, especially in the 1920s, with the tremendous rise in the number and power of advertising companies and their embrace of psychology and consumer testing methods.

Rather than merely promoting products, advertisers began to associate products with aspects of people’s lives and sentiments. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Chicago, in

37 Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 238-47. 38 “The Abbott Alkaloidal Company Changes its Name,” The Urologic and Cutaneous Review 19, no. 7 (July 1915): 420. “The Abbott Alkaloidal Company has issued the following important and significant statement: Owing to the rapid expansion and broad generalization of its business as manufacturing and importing chemists, The Abbott Alkaloidal Company has deemed it expedient to change its incorporate name to The Abbott Laboratories, and has done so. No change in personnel or policies.”

27 particular, experienced rapid commercial growth and advertising development. Prior to World

War I, Chicago, in several ways, failed to measure up to other major American cities in its infrastructure and city management. However, as historian Fairfax M. Cone notes, advertising was an important exception.39 Chicago served as a center for many of the nation’s leading printmakers, engravers, and lithographers.40 For entrepreneurs looking to purchase print machinery, the city also housed industrialists who manufactured and distributed printing equipment.41 During World War I, Chicago’s artistic activity, specifically print, illustration, and graphic design, increased dramatically. One of the main reasons for this increase, as Michele H.

Bogart suggests, stems from the government’s initiatives to employ artists to “sell patriotism.”42

Following the war, Abbott and other Chicago businesses continued their increased marketing campaigns. However, once the actual conflict ended, they transitioned to advertising their businesses through trade journals, brochures, magazines, and mail order catalogues.43

Strategic advertising evolved to the point that it established itself a marketable commodity, and third-party firms specializing in tactical advertising began to emerge throughout Chicago. As early as 1921, Harry C. Phibbs, Inc., the first purely medical advertising agency founded in

Chicago, opened its offices to pharmaceutical companies looking to augment their sales.44 Five

39 Fairfax M. Cone, With All Its Faults: A Candid Account of Forty Years in Advertising (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), 148-9. 40 Neal Harris, Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 364. Print companies headquartered in Chicago include Barnhart Brothers, Blomgren Brothers, Barnes-Crosby, R.R. Donnelley, the Franklin Company, Ludlow Typograph, Magill- Weinsheimer, Miehle Printing Press, Spindler and Curt Teich. 41 Ibid., 364. Print companies headquartered in Chicago include Barnhart Brothers, Blomgren Brothers, Barnes- Crosby, R.R. Donnelley, the Franklin Company, Ludlow Typograph, Magill-Weinsheimer, Miehle Printing Press, Spindler and Curt Teich. 42 Michele H. Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 61. 43 Harris, Cultural Excursions, 364. 44 Roberts, Medicine Ave, 14-5.

28 years later, journalist and consumer-relations specialist William Douglas McAdams began his medical advertising agency, also headquartered in Chicago.45

Clough’s launching of What’s New in 1935 in many ways reflected the 1930s marketing research and pictorial advertising boom taking place in America and particularly strong in

Chicago. The city’s 1933-1934 Century of Progress International Exposition, for example correlated with this larger trend, and it offered Chicago-based companies like Abbott an opportunity to witness firsthand the benefits of consumer analysis. Upholding the grand tradition of world’s fairs, the Century of Progress Exposition showcased modernity by highlighting advancement in areas such as transportation, industry, architecture, city planning, arts and science.46 For the city’s corporations and marketing professionals, the various exhibitions throughout the fair provided opportunities for sales, networking, investments, and, most importantly, the microscopic examination of consumer patterns.47 Advertising firms meticulously studied the public’s response to individual exhibitions to track buying trends and determine which aspects of promotions statistically drew the largest crowds. Marchand notes an ad man’s astute observation of the exposition: “Describing the Chicago fair as ‘a great human- nature laboratory,’ a speaker at a forum at the J. Walter Thompson agency observed that the visitors, as much as the exhibits, had been on display. He entitled his analysis ‘Twenty-Two

Million Gold Fish.’”48

Continuing this line of observation, it stands to reason that the exposition provided exhibitors the same type of training in effective promotional strategies. Companies located

45 Ibid., 14-5. 46 Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-1934: Chicago), Official Guide Book of the World’s Fair of 1933 with 1934 Supplement (Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1934), 11. The central theme of the exposition read as follows, “As two partners might clasp hands, Chicago’s growth and the growth of science and industry have been united during this most amazing century.” 47 Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (Berkeley: The University of California Press), 265-6. 48 Ibid., 279.

29 within the same pavilion or hall had the opportunity to view their competitors’ displays and recognize which tactics drew crowds, and which were ineffective. For Abbott Laboratories, as well as the other medical and pharmaceutical companies participating in the fair, its Hall of

Science served as a training ground. Among the many scientific displays—some noteworthy, others immediately forgettable—one monumental attraction demonstrated the irresistible, almost hypnotic, allure the visual arts can sustain on its target audience.

Designed and organized by William Allen Pusey and Eben J. Carey, the first-of-its-kind

Hall of Science showcased innovation in three fields of science: medicine, pharmacology, and dentistry.49 Pusey was a dermatologist, author, pioneer in dermatological radiology, and president of the AMA from 1923-1924. Carey was an anatomist, also a pioneer in radiology and author, and the newly appointed dean of Marquette University’s medical school. More important in this context, Carey was an award-winning designer of medical exhibits at various medical conventions. Since 1931, he had been the Director of Medical Exhibits at Chicago’s Museum of

Science and Industry, which led to his becoming the Director of Medical Exhibits for the fair.

On the building’s ground floor, at the northern end connecting each of the medical sections, stood the Hall of Science’s central attraction: a human-sized acetate sculpture titled the

Transparent Man. The fair’s Official Guide Book from 1933 teases, “He is six feet tall, and rises from a pedestal three and one-half feet high. He is transparent. As though you were suddenly endowed with X-Ray eyes you may view the inside of the human body.”50 Produced in Dresden, the sculpture required $10,000 and eighteen months to construct, and for planners Pusey and

Carey, it proved itself a worthy investment.51 Capitalizing upon the public’s interest in X-Ray

49 Lenox R. Lohr, Fair Management: The Story of A Century of Progress Exposition (Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1952), 121-2. 50 Century of Progress International Exposition, Guide of World’s Fair 1933, 39. 51 Ibid., 39.

30 technology, fair promoters expected visitors to flock to the Transparent Man, and an intense publicity campaign helped lure thousands of viewers each day.52 Lesser-visited presenters, such as Abbott Laboratories and its exhibit demonstrating the “properties and applications of the vitamins,” observed throngs of spectators quickly pass their own displays to pore over scientific sculpture.53

One might speculate that the art displayed at the fair also served as inspiration for Abbott’s representatives, particularly as the company had already demonstrated interest in contemporary art associated with a world’s fair, as in the cover design for The Alkaloidal Clinic. In addition to the art displayed in many of the international exhibits at the Century of Progress, fair organizers dedicated seven galleries to housing works exclusively produced by American artists.54 Although

New York had the largest number of artists of any U.S. city at the time, Chicago held a strong second, with triple the number of artists working in Philadelphia. Chicago’s large artistic community stemmed from the city’s print industry as well as the students, teachers, and alumni from the Art Institute of Chicago—at the time the largest art school in the country.55 Several of the city’s artists exhibited at the Century of Progress, and an Art Institute trustee and chair of the art committee for the exposition, Chauncey McCormick, coordinated with more than two hundred and fifty galleries, private collectors and museums to borrow over one thousand paintings for the fair’s galleries.56

Whether or not Abbott executives recognized in these artists’ works their future marketing potential, the fact remains that within two years of the exposition, Clough had heavily integrated

52 Lisa D. Schrenk, Building a Century of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago’s 1933-34 World’s Fair (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 39-41. 53 The Journal of Chemical Education, “Some Century of Progress Exhibits of Interest to Chemists,” Journal of Chemistry Education 10 (September 1933): 551. 54 Lohr, Fair Management, 159. 55 Harris, Cultural Excursions, 363. According to Harris, by the late 1920s, the Art Institute of Chicago enrolled over forty-five students each year. 56 Lohr, Fair Management, 159.

31 popular American art into nearly every aspect of the company’s advertising campaign. These efforts helped to spur financial growth for the pharmaceutical corporation during one of

America’s worst periods of economic decline. Yet some background information is necessary to place these efforts in context.

While the Depression impacted the lives of millions of American laborers, artists faced even greater challenges finding employment. The economic and artistic prosperity of the 1920s, followed by a steep financial decline in the 1930s, created a surplus of artists unable to market their services—which were widely deemed as non-essential.57 The government’s 1932 establishment of the Emergency Work Bureau (EWB), which operated as a precursor to

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives, provided assistance to unemployed artists.58 Roosevelt’s 1935 launch of the Resettlement Administration (RA)—which became the

Farm Security Administration (FSA) a year later—developed programs aimed to reduce unemployment by offering government-sponsored jobs to some artists and photographers.59

During this period, various programs, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the

Rural Electrification Administration (REA), hired artists to promote American labor, progress, and the benefits achieved by Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives.

In 1937, for example, the REA, operating under the Department of Agriculture, launched a poster campaign promoting the advantages of a widespread electrical network spanning throughout rural America.60 REA hired American artist Lester Beall to produce a series of six

57 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 257. 58 Ibid., 257. 59 Cara A. Finnegan, Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2003), 27-8. 60 Gabriel P. Weisberg, “Graphic Art in America: The Artistic and Civic Poster in the United States Reconsidered,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 16 (Summer 1990): 109.

32 posters emphasizing the benefits of electrical distribution (figure 2.7).61 Beall, whose artistic style at the time was heavily influenced by European graphic design, focused on representing technology that improved the American quality of life: the light, the radio, climate control, farm equipment, running water, and the washing machine.62 Gabriel P. Weisberg notes Beall’s preference for a straightforward visual language in saying, “The use of extremely simple visual symbols and signage was designed to reach even those who might have difficulty in comprehending the written word. Basic color zones and minimal use of words made this a pure design that showed how an effective pattern could be molded to make a statement on the betterment of the public welfare.”63

The success of other New Deal art sponsorships, like REA’s Beall campaign, helped to restore public faith in the government following its mishandling of the economy. Roosevelt had essentially re-branded America, and central to his public relations campaign were the government-funded sculptures adorning public offices, photographs documenting the plight of migrant workers in the Midwest, and frescoed murals decorating post offices across the United

States. Despite their strong anti-Roosevelt sentiment, shrewd corporate executives and advertising agencies took note of effective aspects of the president’s rebranding of America and acted quickly to emulate some of those strategies.

In his well-known 1935 speech at a convention for the National Association of

Manufacturers (NAM), marketing tycoon Bruce Barton, creator of the character “Betty Crocker” and author of numerous articles on how to achieve success—and a vocal opponent of Roosevelt

61 R. Roger Remington, Lester Beall: Trailblazer of American Graphic Design (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), 74. 62 Ibid., 23. After receiving his formal training in Chicago, Beall developed a professional interest (through the journal Cahiers d’Art) in the work of El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, Man Ray, Jan Tschichold, Tristan Tzara and Piet Zwart. 63 Weisberg, “Graphic Art in America”, 109-12.

33 and the New Deal—argued that businesses could improve their corporate images by publicly promoting their contributions towards societal betterment.64 Corporations needed to demonstrate to the consumer how their goods and services created more jobs and improved the average

American’s quality of life. Furthermore, manufacturers must convince the public that consumer spending actually helps the country. To accomplish this, and despite his antipathy toward the president’s policies, Barton contended that manufacturers ought to examine Roosevelt’s demeanor during his “fireside chats” and strive to emulate the president’s populist approach.

Marchand concludes that after “recognizing that the secret of Roosevelt’s success lay in his capacity to speak the ‘language of the common man,’ they [manufacturers] urgently pursued their own quest for a popular idiom in which to translate their corporate messages and enlighten the economically illiterate.”65

Soon, corporations began increasing their advertising budgets to create commissions for artists. These manufacturer-patrons would later use the artwork in advertisements and professional journals to promote not just their products but their cultural sponsorship as well.66

Companies such as Abbott Laboratories, American Tobacco, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Life searched for popular painters, illustrators and designers to create imagery meant to re-brand their organizations. American artists, hungry for work and creative expression during a depressed economy, clamored to fill these commissions.67

To improve their employment opportunities in a highly competitive market, artists often hired sales agents or a marketing business like the Associated American Artists (AAA). Started

64 Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 151-2. 65 Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul, 206. 66 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 154-5. According to Doss, “During the middle years of the Depression the National Association of Manufacturers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on newspaper ads and radio programs to promote big business.” 67 Erika Doss, “Catering to Consumerism: Associated American Artists and the Marketing of Modern Art, 1934- 1958,” Winterthur Portfolio 26, no. 2/3 (Summer-Autumn, 1991): 144.

34 in 1934 by press agent and public relations specialist Reeves Lewenthal, who had spent several years working in Chicago as a reporter, the AAA began as a mail-order scheme to make art affordable for every American during the Depression.68 Art dealer and later gallery owner Sylvan

Cole, who began working for the Associated American Artists Gallery in 1946, recalled AAA’s genesis during a 2000 interview for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art: “And whether this is apocryphal or not, I’m not sure, but supposedly, Reeves took ill, spent quite some time in the hospital, and during that period of 1933, ’34, conceived the idea of Associated American

Artists. It was the height of the Depression. He felt that the one work of art that people could afford across the country was an etching or a lithograph or a woodcut, priced at five dollars. And he then proceeded to contact, when he got out of the hospital, a group of artists, who met with him and formed Associated American Artists.”69 Lewenthal’s mail-order art program prospered, and by 1941 revenues grew to half-a-million dollars per year.70

Increased public exposure to Lewenthal’s program and his artists prompted the entrepreneur to create AAA’s “Art for Advertising” division—a department established to negotiate contracts between corporations and AAA members.71 Advocating the regionalist style as an unpretentious and clear-cut visual language, he developed strong liaisons with the corporate world and secured multiple contracts with companies like Standard Oil, American

Tobacco, and Abbott Laboratories.72 Cole notes artists’ reliance on Lewenthal and the AAA’s early contracts with Abbott: “Reeves had literally supported these artists. He-–One of our biggest clients was Abbott Laboratories. And they put out a publication called What’s New, on medical

68 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 258. 69 Sylvan Cole, interview by Avis Berman, June-October 2000, transcript, Oral History Interview, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC. 70 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 259. 71 Ibid., 259. 72 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 166. “Magazines including Time, Life, Fortune, Esquire, McCall’s, Holiday, Look, Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, The Farmer, and Coronet also became regionalist patrons through the AAA.”

35 things. And it was probably one of the outstanding medical publications put out by a pharmaceutical company. And the illustrations. If a woman was taking a certain pill because she was pregnant, there’d be a Raphael Soyer woman, pregnant woman, and all these, and-–and fees were gotten for all this.”73

Lewenthal and his AAA artists played a critical role in furnishing art for nearly all of

Abbott Laboratories’ marketing campaigns. While an explanation and analysis of the company’s medical journal What’s New forms the remainder of this chapter, several precedents to the magazine greatly influenced Clough’s decision to heavily integrate artwork within the pages of the publication. These prototypes require a brief mention as the increasing popularity of

American pictorial publications during the late 1930s subsequently shaped Clough’s layout and formatting of What’s New’s pages.

After witnessing the success of pictorial publications in Europe, Fortune- and Time- founder Henry Luce bought the long-lived entertainment magazine, Life, and re-launched it as a weekly news magazine, the first all-photographic news magazine, in 1936. Luce measured the marketability of an American photographic magazine wisely; every copy of the premiere issue— which featured Margaret Bourke White’s now iconic Fort Peck Dam photograph—sold within the first day of its November 23rd release. Within one year, distribution increased from 250,000 to 1.5 million units per week, according to Cara A. Finnegan, who chronicles Life magazine’s proliferation in Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs.74

73 Sylvan Cole, interview by Avis Berman, June-October 2000, transcript, Oral History Interview, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC. 74 Finnegan, Picturing Poverty, 169-76.

36 The popularity of the magazine stemmed from its capacity to speak, through the photographic medium, a language easily understood by the public at large.75 Not only did its revolutionary coated paper maintain a high degree of image quality, but its layout emphasized the photographs over text. With dozens of its fifteen-by-eleven-inch pages devoted to imagery, the text was essentially reduced to tiny captions. Reading the newsmagazine meant looking at visuals—the photo-essays and advertisements, the latter of which were heavily pictorial, as well.

In Looking at Life Magazine, Erika Doss provides detailed statistics on the publication’s success. According to her, “By 1939, with a circulation of more than 2 million (and ad rates substantially raised), Life had become one of the most widely consumed magazines in America.

In the late 1940s Life reached ‘21 percent of the entire population over 10 years old’ (around

22.5 million people) and took in 19% of every magazine advertising dollar in the country.”76

Luce’s competitors took note of his success, and in an attempt to create a similar revenue stream they adjusted both the content and style of their publications to replicate Life’s. Corporate executives also recognized the public demand for pictorial publications, and, within months of

Life’s release, they too began seeking artists for their company newsletters and journals.77

Within one year of Life magazine’s launch, the total number of corporate in-house and employee magazines increased by 47%.78 Replete with photographs and illustrations, these corporate publications imitated Life’s style and layout, and several upstart magazines—such as

General Motors periodical GM Folks—were particularly egregious in their blatant duplication of

Luce’s format.79

75 Roland Marchand, “Life Comes to Corporate Headquarters,” in Looking at Life Magazine, ed. Erika Doss, 123- 137 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 125. 76 Erika Doss, “Introduction,” in Looking at Life Magazine, ed. Erika Doss, 1-21 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 2-3. 77 Marchand, “Life Comes to Corporate Headquarters”, 125. 78 Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul, 216. 79 Marchand, “Life Comes to Corporate Headquarters”, 133.

37 Fortunately for Lewenthal and his AAA members, corporations at the time demonstrated a preference for realism over abstraction due to its wider public appeal and its ability to more effectively convey information.80 Artists also benefitted from the expansion of corporate advertising departments, their increased budgets, and the spirited competition of manufacturers in the same field. Abbott, for example, saw other Chicago-based businesses, such as the

Container Corporation of America, funding photographers and graphic designers to create artwork for product packaging.81 Additionally, Abbott witnessed the expansion of its pharmaceutical competitors, and it needed to maintain its edge against companies like Roche,

Sharp & Dohme and Upjohn (who would subsequently launch its own magazines, Image,

Seminars, and Scope).82 Clough, who had taken over as president of company in February 1933, recognized the increased competition among drug manufacturers. As a result, in 1937 he and

Downs—who had assumed Clough’s old position as Director of Marketing—re-launched a new and improved version of Abbott Laboratories’ What’s New, with greater focus on imagery.83

An editorial containing Clough’s mission statement for the publication and the company appeared in the first issue of the re-launched What’s New. Clough wrote, “Through What’s New we propose to amplify our contacts with physicians and strengthen our relations with the medical profession. . . . We shall keep you in touch with developments in our research laboratories and pass on to you such information as we believe may be of mutual interest.”84 This editorial serves as a continuation of Clough’s corporate philosophy previously noted in his 1911 writings.85

80 Harris, Cultural Excursions, 368. 81 Mitchell Douglas Kahan, introduction to Art Inc.: American Paintings from Corporate Collections by Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Montgomery, AL: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1979), 11. Based upon the recommendation from the N.W. Ayer Advertising Agency, the Container Corporation began commissioning artists as early as 1937. 82 Roberts, Medicine Ave, 33. 83 Kogan, Long White Line, 151-8. 84 Ibid., 158-9. 85 Clough, Backbone, n.p.

38 Along with Downs and Joseph S. Dunham, a former Chicago Tribune editor, Clough delivered company news and advertising content to its doctor and pharmacist subscribers throughout the

United States.86

As Clough’s responsibilities as president of the company grew, he began delegating greater autonomy to Downs in obtaining content for What’s New, and managing subsequent marketing campaigns. In addition to his background in advertising, Downs developed a deep appreciation for art and realized its potential as a marketing tool. In a 1942 letter to AAA member and Abbott artist Adolf Dehn, Downs commends the painter for his work on a highly successful promotional folder campaign. He writes:

When your beautiful and amusing illustrations for the ‘amulet’ mailing folder arrived here in the latter part of 1940, we were all immensely pleased – but, frankly, we had no idea that they would so greatly influence the reactions of physicians as they actually did. . . .You see the mailing folder advertised a group of products of highly competitive nature, manufactured by nearly every firm in our industry, and which had already had nearly everything said about them that could be said. With the mailing folder we only hoped to remind physicians that Abbott, too, supplied the drugs and that these were of as good a quality as we were able to provide. Imagine our surprise, then, when more than thirteen percent of the doctors to whom the folder was sent responded by asking for more detailed information about our brand or drugs! . . . This, however, is not all for which we owe you thanks. The ‘make magic’ mailing folder was designed to advertise the same drugs as the earlier one. Again you did the illustrations – and did them beautifully – but again we expected no great response. To the second folder, a few more than a thousand more physicians responded than to the first!87

Along with thanking Dehn for personal prints he received from the artist for Christmas,

Downs’ letter praises the artist’s skill and informs him of his significance to the company’s sales.

The correspondence speaks to the advertising director’s rapport-building skills and his close relationship with several of the Abbott artists. Downs’ efforts to secure artwork for What’s New

86 Kogan, Long White Line, 158-9. 87 Charles Downs to Adolf Dehn, 17 January 1942, Adolf and Virginia Dehn Papers (1912-1987), Box 3 Folder 29, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

39 helped to lay the groundwork for The Abbott Laboratories’ future wartime art sponsorship, discussed in the following chapters.

What’s New was much larger than The Abbott Laboratories’ previous publications, closely emulating the format of Life magazine. Measuring approximately 9.75 by 12.5 inches, each issue contained nearly thirty pages featuring editorials, photographs, and color reproductions of drawings and paintings. Artists’ creations vividly adorned the pages of What’s New, and Joseph

Hirsch, member of the Lewenthal’s AAA stable of artists, recalled the association’s early transactions with the pharmaceutical giant.88 In a 1970 interview he explains, “The Associated

American Artists Gallery obtained commissions for its artists. As well as selling easel pictures occasionally, it frequently obtained commissions for artists. These commissions were of a commercial nature. . . . Abbott Laboratories publishes a monthly magazine called What’s New that is sent to all doctors in the United States. It is profusely illustrated. They commissioned drawings on the fearful child and anesthesia and they wanted something to dramatize the trauma that can be inflicted on a child in connection with a minor operation, say, a tonsillectomy when it is not handled properly.”89

Abbott’s What’s New aligned with a larger trend in pharmaceutical advertising of the late

1930s and early 1940s. In Medicine Ave: The Story of Medical Advertising in America, Howard

R. Roberts explains medical ad agency William Douglas McAdams’ decision to focus exclusively on professional advertising rather than public marketing campaigns:

In 1939 the decision was made to concentrate only on professional advertising to physicians. This decision expressed a faith in the future growth of medical advertising, for pharmaceutical promotion prior to World War II was a backwater compared to the boom that general advertising was experiencing. . . . The combination of a plethora of heavily advertised consumer products (automobiles,

88 Ibid., 159. 89 Joseph Hirsch, interview by Paul Cummings, November 13, 1970, interview tape 1, transcript, Oral History Interview, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC.

40 household appliances, soaps, foods, cosmetics, and cigarettes) with effective media (color enhanced magazines, radio, outdoor, and newspapers) and fueled by mass-marketing philosophy, created the giant Madison Avenue advertising agencies and hundreds of lucrative smaller shops around the country. In contrast, pharmaceutical promotion was an unglamorous trade exercise that stressed salesperson rapport and service to physicians and pharmacists. There was little product differentiation since the companies were, for the most part, marketing generic drugs.90

In light of these circumstances, Abbott had to use imagery to better mobilize its proprietary and generic products. An early Sodium Pentothal advertisement by Hirsch, which appeared on the back cover of the October 1942 issue of What’s New, provides an example of the type of illustration Clough requested from his artists (figure 2.8). Abbott’s proprietary drug, which shall be elaborated upon in chapter five, receives a full-page description and benefits analysis upon a torn sheet of paper. Footnotes accompany anesthesiologist George J. Thomas’ breakdown of the drug, which lend legitimacy to the advertisement’s written word (Thomas was a pioneer in the use of Sodium Pentothal, Abbott’s trademarked name for sodium thiopental).91 Additionally, the phrase “Quoted from more than 400 published papers” suggests to the reader that Sodium

Pentothal has endured a thorough clinical testing phase prior to its market release. Hirsch’s illustration of a hypodermic needle against a linear backdrop subtly suggests the drug’s method of delivery without overpowering the advertisement’s content. Behind the needle, orthogonal lines converge on an abstracted factory resting on the horizon line. The moonlit sky implies that the creative minds at Abbott tirelessly work around the clock to deliver innovative products to the medical community.

In addition to demonstrating a heavy influence of surrealism, Hirsch’s use of simple visual shapes and symbols recalls the techniques Beall employed while creating his 1937 REA poster series. Beall’s graphic style permeated Abbott’s corporate image and advertising in the years

90 Roberts, Medicine Ave, 16. 91 “We Salute…… George J. Thomas, M.D.,” Anesthesia and Analgesia 38, no. 4 (July-August 1959): 24-5.

41 leading up to the war; it should come as no surprise that as early as 1938, the graphic artist developed a reputation as Abbott Laboratories’ preeminent poster artist. Despite the difficulties illustrators and graphic artists often experienced in getting their work publicly exhibited, Beall holds the unique distinction as the first American graphic designer to receive a one-person show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.92 Resulting from the popularity of his REA posters, the

1937 MOMA exhibition increased both Beall’s national visibility and commercial viability.

After studying at both the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago, Beall began a professional graphic design career in the early 1930s.93 In 1933 he participated in the

Chicago Century of Progress International Exposition by creating murals for both Chicago’s

Crane Company and the Public Service Company of Northern Illinois.94 Beall’s penchant for experimental European graphic design and typography reveals itself in a 1938 cover for What’s

New (figure 2.9). Collaged cutouts of multicolored hearts cover the white throat, arms, cheek and chest of a woman’s outstretched upper torso. This cover was produced the same year as Beall’s famous collaboration with L. Sandusky in the PM article “The Bauhaus Tradition And The New

Typography,” which featured work by Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Archipenko, Walter

Gropius, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, among others—the leading figures in constructivist and Bauhaus graphic design and typography, whose art Beall personally selected for this article.

By 1939 Beall began work on a second series of posters commissioned by the REA (figure

2.10). For this new series, he relied more heavily on photomontage. Rather than visually representing the abstract benefits of rural electrification, he depicts instead everyday Americans

92 Lorraine Ferguson and Douglass Scott, “A Time Line of American Typography,” Design Quarterly, no. 148 (1990): 45. 93 Remington, Lester Beall: Trailblazer, 19. 94 Ibid., 28.

42 enjoying the its advantages: a woman knitting by electric lamp, a man listening to the radio, smiling farm youth and a happily employed electrical technician.

Beall’s 1941 cover for What’s New (figure 2.11) depicts a healthy and vibrant young woman, likely Olympic champion skater Sonja Henie, on whose smiling face is superimposed her figure leaping through the air. Three white streamers echo the leaper’s movement and frame the composition’s right side, while a pink rose at the lower left balances the composition. His use of overlapping planes in this cover is illustrative of his essay published in October of that year in American Printer, “Design as Applied to Advertising.” He explained here that three- dimensionality in contemporary graphic design was achieved through associated planes of form, color, and texture.95 Clearly he used each of these design elements, plus the use of shadow, to cause the skater’s figure to leap out toward the viewer, while the scale, placement, and color of the rose forces itself into the immediate foreground.

Beall had a particular interest in designing covers for What’s New. According to his biographer, R. Roger Remington, he considered this to be the most important house organ to emerge in “this golden age of pharmaceutical advertising, when companies had generous budgets to produce lavish promotional tools.”96 Because of his work for Abbott, particularly in his development of cutting-edge design techniques for these covers, Beall considered himself the pioneer of modern design in the pharmaceutical field.97 He went on to create covers and advertisements for other drug manufacturers, including Upjohn and its in-house publication

Scope. The bimonthly magazine, also targeted specifically to medical professionals, “covered a

95 Ibid., 53. 96 Ibid., 56. 97 Ibid., 56. According to Remington, Beall considered Abbott Laboratories the most influential to the “golden age of pharmaceutical advertising.” When asked about his involvement in pharmaceutical design, he responded, “I think it can be accurately stated that because of this work, I ‘pioneered modern design’ in the pharmaceutical field.”

43 variety of subjects, from specific maladies and the drugs with which they were treated to acupuncture and art.”98

While Beall’s style heavily influenced drug advertising and subsequent Abbott commissions, many additional American artists, significant scientists, and distinguished

American authors contributed to the changing face of What’s New magazine. Beyond the magazine’s decorated covers, the pages of What’s New offered poetry, essays, and short stories from acclaimed authors such as Conrad Aiken, Robert Frost, James Hilton, Edna St. Vincent

Millay, Carl Sandburg, William Saroyan and Jean Stafford.99

Additionally, editors meticulously researched medical journals and visited facilities to provide up-to-date accurate scientific information detailing new treatments for diseases and drug innovations.100 Abbott offered this information to doctors at no additional charge, providing pharmaceutical training alongside its line of products. A penicillin advertisement from the

November 1944 issue of What’s New demonstrates the company’s desire to educate its consumer

(figure 2.12). A thick blue manual labeled “Penicillin” accompanies the large central text encouraging the viewer to send for a free copy. Beneath the central illustration, Abbott recommends that doctors subscribing to the publication request a free copy of their “new, 136- page book, A Review of the Present Information Concerning Penicillin.”101 In an attempt at transparency, the advertisement also explains that the book provides an “extensive bibliography” for further research. Through this penicillin announcement, and similar advertisements, Abbott nurtured the image of a responsible, unbiased educator guiding doctors towards the paramount quest for knowledge. Naturally, Abbott provided the maps for this journey, free of charge.

98 Ibid., 63. 99 Kogan, Long White Line, 160. 100 Ibid., 159-60. 101 Abbott Laboratories, “Penicillin Advertisement,” What’s New 86 (November 1944): 29.

44 Other What’s New promotions, like the April 1945 advertisement for pollen extracts, relied more heavily on the artistic image to demonstrate benefits exclusive to Abbott’s pharmaceutical line (figure 2.13). In this image Abbott boasts the advantages of its proprietary pollen extracts engineered with isotonic dextrose menstruum. As the doctor gently administers the injection, the smiling young girl emanates a golden halo and angelic wings. “Do your patients behave this way?,” the advertisement inquires, asking doctors whether their current brand provides the benefits of nearly painless injection, faster desensitization, and mitigated irritation. By engaging the physician’s desire to reduce patient suffering, the Abbott illustration stages an idealized representation of health care. Once again, the company educates the doctor about the benefits of their medical innovation.

In addition to the popular authors’ writings, scientific editorials, and illustrated advertisements, each issue of What’s New also contained a section consisting of three-by-five- inch cards titled “Brief Summaries and Abstracts.” Detailing various ailments and the medical innovations that can treat them, the abstracts provide doctors with quick-reference instructions.

Of course, they also list the order quantities for Abbott’s exclusive sodium and sulfate compounds (figures 2.14-2.15). Physicians who may have missed an issue of the magazine could request additional abstract cards directly from the company by submitting a postage-paid order card attached to every issue of What’s New (figure 2.16). This practice emphasizes the ephemeral nature of What’s New issues and how quickly medical information became outdated.

Contributing to the scarcity of extant issues is the fact that they were not collected in public libraries, as the public was not their audience. In addition, Abbott adopted the questionable practice of systematically destroying out-of-date and archival material.102

102 Lai, Pentothal Postcards, 7.

45 After reviewing both where What’s New is situated within the broader context of 1930s print culture as well as the content and layout of the publication, I would like to return to the central focus of this study to assess how What’s New fit within the larger company objectives.

Just as previous publications The Alkaloidal Clinic and The American Journal of Clinical

Medicine allowed Abbott to exercise greater control over advertisements, editorial content, and face fewer restrictions upon its products’ claims, What’s New allowed the company to circumvent legal restrictions on medical advertising. Prior to the tumultuous congressional battles leading up to the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and the highly publicized Elixir

Sulfanilamide death toll—which inarguably served as the final catalyst for American pharmaceutical reform—Abbott Laboratories had already launched several marketing campaigns through its in-house organs.103 In Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art, Michele Bogart explains how the drug industry’s sordid history with the American public served as the impetus for the massive public-relations campaigns launched by pharmaceutical manufacturers during the late 1930s:

Under the New Deal, Food and Drug Administration chief Walter Campbell and Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford G. Tugwell began a campaign— backed by the American Medical Association—to control substance labeling, advertising, and sales. The culmination of negotiations between these groups, the Wheeler-Lea Act of 1938, sought to place new, more stringent restrictions upon the food, drug, and cosmetics industries, especially with regard to ingredients and directions for use. . . . The act also regulated advertising, so that certain kinds of drugs could be promoted only to physicians. . . . The art collecting and publicity activities of pharmaceutical manufacturers Abbott Laboratories and the Upjohn Company were outgrowths of these events.104

103 James Harvey Young, The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 184-6. “Headlines the country over broke the news of the mounting death toll from ‘Elixir Sulfanilamide.’ The report was especially disturbing since sulfanilamide had been widely heralded in the press as a miracle medicine, a chemotherapeutical breakthrough. . . . The ‘Elixir,’ according to FDA calculations, brought death to at least 107 persons, many of them children.” 104 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 275-6.

46 Clough’s primary motivation for launching What’s New seems to stem from the Tugwell bill mandates described by Bogart. Originally proposed in 1933, this proposed legislation calling for drug reform had endured countless edits, truncations, and revisions to appease a handful of legislators’ demands for smaller government before passage. Responding to the demands of lobbyists and special interest groups funded by the pharmaceutical corporations deep pockets, legislators filibustered passage of the Tugwell bill based upon its threat to big business. In James

Harvey Young’s The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-

Century America, the author discusses the bill’s original provisions pertaining to labeling.

According to Young, “a drug was misbranded, according to the Tugwell bill, if its labeling made any therapeutic claim, even by ambiguity or inference, that was ‘contrary to the general agreement of medical opinion.’. . . . No longer would the names of only eleven drugs appear on labels; the draft bill required that all proprietary medicine labels list the common names and quantities of all medicinal ingredients.”105 Young continues, “The promotion of drugs, as well as of foods and the newly included cosmetics, must adhere, in general, to the strict standards that were to apply to labeling. With respect to certain ailments, indeed, for which self-treatment was considered dangerous or futile, no remedies at all could be advertised to the lay public.”106 While the mandates on advertising posed the largest threat to patent drug manufacturers—reluctant to divulge all their ingredients to a highly competitive market—the aspect of the bill most critical to

Abbott’s marketing strategy was the new demarcation drawn between over-the-counter drugs and prescription medicine. Tugwell proposes that a new, stricter set of regulations govern the advertisements intended for the “lay public.”

105 Young, The Medical Messiahs, 164-5. 106 Ibid., 165-6.

47 If Abbott Laboratories, a company with huge expenditures towards research and development, were to advertise its newly designed pollen extract in a lay publication, it risked both accusations of misinformation and susceptibility to corporate poaching. After seeing the

1933 mandates proposed by the Tugwell bill, Clough developed a strategy to circumvent the legislation if and when it should pass. When the bill finally passed in 1938, What’s New emerged unscathed, bypassing the public at large and continuing to speak directly to doctors in a textual and visual language catered to them.

This circumvention of government regulation in Abbott’s promotional models manifests as a reoccurring theme throughout the company’s history. It also reveals a lesson learned by Abbott on the significance of media control. Just as Abbott’s in-house Journal of Clinical Medicine kept the company afloat during a period when AMA blacklisting prevented them from advertising in other medical journals, What’s New provided a safeguard against future attacks from the company’s detractors and competitors. The theme of circumvention also plays a key role in the next chapter’s discussion of Abbott’s wartime art patronage. What’s New—an advertising vehicle that grew out of the company’s necessity for a direct connection to its mailing list of doctors and pharmaceutical suppliers—would, during the war years, become a public relations behemoth, showcasing the company’s medical and artistic contribution to the war. The company’s purchase of Thomas Hart Benton’s Year of Peril series, the first war art images it would reproduce and distribute through the pages of What’s New, represents yet another instance of circumvention and is the focus of the following chapter.

48 CHAPTER THREE

THE ABBOTT LABORATORIES’ YEAR OF PERIL

Let those radicals on the one hand, those conservatives on the other, those who think that democratic controls over production have not gone far enough or have gone too far, let them consider what will happen if they nurse too much their differences in this time. Already, in the face of what actuality presents, these differences are academic. With this war lost, they will be academic forever.107 Thomas Hart Benton, Introduction to The Year of Peril, 1942

Among the great myths of creative genius dwells the artist who finds inspiration or awakening through personal or national trauma. Shortly after Thomas Hart Benton’s self- imposed painting sabbatical in 1941, following his dismissal from the Kansas City Art Institute, he found himself awakened by a surge of emotions resulting from the December 7 Japanese attack of a U.S. military installation in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This historical moment, several scholars note, caused Benton to abruptly conclude a speaking engagement in Cincinnati and return to his Kansas City studio to paint his visual reaction to both the attack and the Axis aggressors responsible for it.108 The resulting series, The Year of Peril, consists of eight paintings detailing the various atrocities committed by the Axis enemies. 109 Rendered in a manner referred to by Doss as “cartoons in paint,” the series embraces the abject for an over-the-top depiction of deceased, dismembered, and disemboweled corpses.110 Benton’s own words have coaxed the scholarly assessment of both the genesis and impetus for his series. He explains, “Was lecturing

107 Thomas Hart Benton, The Year of Peril (Chicago: Abbott Laboratories, 1942), n.p. 108 Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 282. 109 Thomas Hart Benton, An Artist in America, 4th ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983), 298. Although Benton describes in his autobiography creating, “ten large-scale poster-like paintings dealing with the war,” the artist’s Embarkation - Prelude to Death and The Negro Soldier were created after the eight original Year of Peril images Starry Night, Again, Indifference, Casualty, The Sowers, The Harvest, Invasion, and Exterminate. Benton gave The Negro Soldier to the Missouri State Historical Society’s collection during his lifetime and bequeathed Embarkation as an estate gift, bestowed after his death in 1975. All ten paintings appeared in the organization’s 2012 Year of Peril exhibition (held March 3 to mid-August). 110 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 282.

49 in Cincinnati, Ohio, when news of Pearl Harbor was released. Returned to Kansas City and commenced series of war paintings designed to help awaken American public to dangers of the moment. This series was purchased by Abbott Laboratories of Chicago.”111 Abbott’s sponsorship, reproduction, and distribution of Benton’s series differs from both its previous patronage of

What’s New illustrations as well as its subsequent artist correspondent programs. Funding of

Benton’s series came after its completion, so no company mandates or strictures interfered in

The Year of Peril’s creation. This chapter will look at why Abbott Laboratories decided in 1942 to purchase and disseminate Benton’s already-completed series.

I argue that The Year of Peril was an overzealous artistic reaction to the Pearl Harbor attack that perfectly aligned with Abbott’s earlier advertising strategies to allow the company to once again capitalize upon fear to provoke a highly emotional public response. After briefly introducing The Year of Peril and determining its status as propaganda, this chapter will examine the details regarding Abbott’s purchase, reproduction, and multiple exhibitions of the series.

Next, this study will place The Year of Peril within the broader context of wartime patronage, advertising, and museum exhibition, to determine its significance and viability to Abbott’s advertising goals. Just as Abbott’s American Journal of Clinical Medicine and What’s New allowed the company to circumvent restrictions imposed by both the AMA and the government,

Benton’s series made it possible for Abbott to sidestep the War Department’s censorship of graphic war imagery. The overwhelming public response to Abbott’s exhibition and distribution of The Year of Peril’s images marked the company’s inaugural war art sponsorship a success and set the template for its subsequent artist correspondent initiatives.

For clarification purposes, it is helpful to distinguish between Benton’s original Year of

Peril series of eight paintings and the 1942 The Year of Peril: A Series of War Paintings

111 Benton, An Artist in America, 385-6.

50 pamphlet produced and distributed by Abbott Laboratories. The latter includes a foreword by

Archibald MacLeish, an introduction by Benton, and reproductions of seven of the original images: Starry Night, Again, Indifference, Casualty, The Sowers, The Harvest, and Exterminate

(figures 3.1-3.7). Understanding Abbott’s patronage and production of the pamphlet, as opposed to the original paintings, is crucial to this study as it focuses on the pharmaceutical corporation’s goal for the series, rather than the artist’s initial intent. Benton’s introduction and lengthy captions, as well as Archibald MacLeish’s foreword, offer a unique opportunity to consider both the text and the image in tandem. As Abbott gave the final consent on the content of the captions, the word also serves as an indicator of what the company attempted to publicly convey. The Year of Peril’s reproduction in the pages of What’s New also serves as a demarcation between AAA artists making art for Abbott’s advertisements prior to the war and the artists creating works that do not refer to an Abbott product during the war. Rather than directly promoting an Abbott product, like sodium pentothal or pollen extracts, the art promoted the country’s war effort, a distinction that articulates these two very different categories of Abbott’s art patronage.

From Matthew Baigell’s 1975 monograph on Benton to Justin Wolff’s recent 2012 biography Thomas Hart Benton: A Life, over forty years’ worth of scholarship on The Year of

Peril series and the artist have contributed to this study. Although Baigell’s 1975 monograph only briefly mentions series, his 1989 article “Thomas Hart Benton and the Left” proves indispensible in securing insight into the artist’s political leanings prior to and during the Second

World War. 112 Similarly, Cécile Whiting devotes several pages of her Antifascism in American

Art to describing Benton’s series and its assault upon fascism.113 Erika Doss, on the other hand, delves deeper into The Year of Peril, using it as a framework for a broader examination of

112 Matthew Baigell, “Thomas Hart Benton and the Left,” in Thomas Hart Benton: Artist, Writer, and Intellectual, ed. R. Douglas Hurt and Mary K. Dains, 1-33 (Columbia: The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1989). 113 Cécile Whiting, Antifascism in American Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 23-4.

51 Regionalism’s decline during the 1940s.114 Suggesting a thematic and stylistic source for the series in both her 1989 essay, “The Year of Peril: Thomas Hart Benton and World War II,” and her 1991 Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract

Expressionism, Doss posits that after seeing a Salvador Dalí exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Benton appropriated the artist’s formal models and emotional tenor for his own imagery.115 She later positions Benton’s paintings as a reaction or manifestation of his disappointment in the promise the New Deal once held for America.116 While Doss and Whiting both provide a detailed examination of The Year of Peril’s formal qualities, this chapter’s goal is to focus more on the promotion of the series by Abbott Laboratories.

In his 2002 Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships, Mark W.

Rectanus provides valuable insight into corporate cultural sponsorship in general, which can be specifically applied to understanding Abbott’s impetus for purchasing Benton’s series. In the context of arguing that corporate patronage of “high culture” masks its participation in constructing social relations and identities, Rectanus writes:

Sponsorships deflect attention away from the corporation’s own functions as a cultural producer, promoter, or mediator by projecting the image of an institutional entity standing outside the cultural marketplace. Corporate cultural politics not only attempt to maintain social legitimation, but they also respond to dynamic social forces and public policies (e.g., alcohol and tobacco legislation, environmental issues) that the corporation can particularly defuse or strategically redirect but not completely control. Culture cannot be isolated from social and political agendas.117

114 Erika Doss, “The Year of Peril: Thomas Hart Benton and World War II,” in Thomas Hart Benton: Artist, Writer, and Intellectual, ed. R. Douglas Hurt and Mary K. Dains, 35-63 (Columbia: The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1989), 35-63. 115 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 292-3. 116 Ibid., 293. “Benton’s assimilation of Daliesque surrealism, and the overwhelming horror of what he chose to paint, disclose his personal despondency over the bankruptcy of the liberal reform in New Deal America.” 117 Mark W. Rectanus, Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 5.

52 While Rectanus writes about today’s culture, one can see Abbott’s earlier agenda in a similar light. Through its cultural sponsorship the corporation attempted to establish itself publically as a philanthropic entity, while obscuring its commercial objectives. This philanthropic body— superficially prioritizing the altruistic and patriotic support of Benton’s war message above its big business instinct to maximize its profits during wartime—has in reality already calculated the pecuniary value of the public relations boon. In keeping with Rectanus’ argument, Abbott’s sponsorship and distribution of The Year of Peril, while seemingly supportive of an artist’s work and vision, becomes tantamount to Abbott’s purchasing a twenty-five cent advertisement in The

Medical World. Both investments advertise to the public a perceived benefit to the individual consumer, whether medicinal, as in a product ad, or, as is the case in Abbott’s sponsorship of

Benton’s series, motivational in America’s war effort and society as a whole. Keeping in mind

Rectanus’ assertion that cultural, social, and political agendas are inextricably connected in corporate sponsorship, I will now look at the details surrounding the Year of Peril’s creation, purchase, distribution, and exhibition to determine why Abbott selected Benton’s series as its first major wartime promotional vehicle.

In his 1951 addition to his autobiography An Artist in America, Benton recalled emerging from his studio after six weeks of painting his response to the Pearl Harbor attack. He wrote,

“These, departing from any of my precedents were deliberate propaganda pictures, cartoons in paint, dedicated solely to arousing the public mind.”118 Benton continued by explaining that prior to Lewenthal’s visiting his Kansas City home in February 1942 and convincing him of the value of the series to the global war effort, the artist had intended to hang the images in city’s Union

118 Benton, An Artist in America, 298.

53 Station, “where milling travelers would see them, and be shocked, maybe, by the violence of their subject matter, into a realization of what the United States was up against.”119

Benton’s own characterization of The Year of Peril as propaganda corresponds with the series’ promotion and aligns with the scholarly assessment of the works. Whiting labels the series as “war propaganda that situated the regionalists’ America in the middle of a swirl of terrifying international events provoked by the rise of fascism.” 120 Wolff, on the other hand, describes the works as “tense, violent, and overwrought paintings” directed towards “fascist sympathizers and American isolationists.”121

In consideration of Benton’s characterization, one might consider looking at Oscar W.

Riegel’s classic Mobilizing for Chaos: The Story of the New Propaganda (1934), which defined the topic for the decade. The author, a journalist whose authority on the subject led to his becoming the propaganda analyst for the Office of War Information (OWI) during World War II, responded directly in his book to Joseph Goebbels’ promotion of official state propaganda with the Reich Press Law in October 1933. Nevertheless, Goebbels was only the most extreme example, as Riegel believed that the technologies of his day—telegraph, cable, and radio—had become “servile to the demands of nationalism” in all parts of the globe and, analogously, that news stories in the U.S. “must not differ too widely from what the average American wants and expects to read about his own country and foreign countries.” Further, his 1935 essay on

“Propaganda and the Press,” although less widely read, helped expose corporate propaganda,

119 Ibid., 298. Benton continues, “ My friend, Dr. Picard, head of the station’s medical department, was arranging for their showing when my promoter partners of the Associated American Artists, Lewenthal and Liederman, showed up in Kansas City. I had written them that it was hopeless to expect further pictures from me for the present and had told them of my Union Station project. They were exceedingly skeptical about this and came to see me, no doubt, to persuade me that it was utterly foolish to drop my regular painting for so impractical a business.” 120 Whiting, Antifascism in American Art, 112. 121 Justin Wolff, Thomas Hart Benton: A Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 308-10.

54 which, like other forms, influenced opinion by “concealed and carefully studied means” using

“technological devices, professional skill, and a concentration of mass and group effort.” 122

If Riegel’s analysis might help to explain Benton’s own understanding of the term, one might turn to another early contribution to the topic, Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, first published in French in 1962, for a more sophisticated analysis. Ellul, a

French philosopher, sociologist, self-described anarchist, and a leader in the French resistance during World War II, was one of the first scholars to recognize that propaganda depended both on psychological and sociological factors in its success in affecting the behaviors of its targeted audience. This point of view is evident in the following passage:

Man can be captured and mobilized only if there is a consonance between his own deep social beliefs and those underlying the propaganda directed at him, and he will be aroused and moved to action only if the propaganda pushes him toward a timely action. . . . Propaganda can have solid reality and power over man only because of its rapport with fundamental currents, but it has seductive excitement and a capacity to move him only by its ties to the most volatile immediacy. And the timely event that man considers worth retaining, preserving, and disseminating is always an event related to the expression of the myths and presuppositions of a given time and place.123

Key in this passage is Ellul’s tying of propaganda to a “timely event,” and Benton’s knee- jerk reaction to the Japanese attack certainly qualifies. His series’ topical currency rendered it highly effective as propaganda and as a means for the perpetuation of national anxiety to effect action. Lewenthal, with his background in public relations, quickly realized the value of the works to both the war effort and the AAA brand.124 He convinced Benton to sell his Year of

122 O[scar] W. Riegel, Mobilizing for Chaos: The Story of the New Propaganda (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), 17, 138; O[scar] W. Riegel, “Propaganda and the Press,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 179 (May 1935): 201. 123 Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, tr. by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 43. 124 Benton, An Artist in America, 298. Benton remembers Lewenthal’s reaction to the Year of Peril series. “After the first shock caused by the difference in content and appearance between the war pictures and my work in general, Lewenthal, following his quick and sure instincts for public promotion, said: ‘‘Tom, this is no local affair you have

55 Peril series and its reproduction rights to Abbott, a deal that was brokered for the corporation by

Charles Downs.125

Some coaxing was surely in order as Benton, who took issue with big business in general, had recently endured stifling artistic control while working on a commission for the American

Tobacco Company—another contract brokered by Lewenthal.126 Nevertheless, the artist reached an agreement with Abbott, and the company reproduced seven of the Year of Peril images,

Starry Night, Again, Indifference, Casualty, The Sowers, The Harvest, and Exterminate, in the

April 1942 issue of What’s New. The eighth painting of the series, Invasion, had not been completed in time for the printing of What’s New.127 Abbott historian Herman Kogan notes,

“Between an article on ‘Cod Liver Ointment and Tissue Dressing for Burns’ and another on hay fever plants, ragweed, and other pollen producers headed ‘Enemy Aliens and Native

Saboteurs’—all seven appeared, with typical Bentonian prose.”128 The transaction represented a large payday for Benton as well as Lewenthal, who received a large commission on the $20,000 sale.129

Downs clearly understood the significant impact that high-quality art could have on the company’s promotional efforts. He continually corresponded with Lewenthal and his artists, and as recently as April 1941 the New York Times had published his statements regarding fine art’s

here. It’s a national one. Forget the Union Station business. Leave these pictures to me and I’ll put them over the whole country.’ He did.” 125 Ibid., 298-9. Benton recalls Reeves contacting Abbott regarding Year of Peril, “Getting in touch with Abbot [sic] Laboratories in Chicago, the better part of whose artistic advertising the Associated American Artists handled, Lewenthal got their instant cooperation and almost immediately thereafter the cooperation of the newly set-up wartime agencies of the Federal Government [the OFF and its successor, the OWI] which were working to impress on the minds of the people the dangers of the moment.” 126 Baigell, “Thomas Hart Benton and the Left,” 17. 127 “Benton’s War Paintings,” New York Times, April 7, 1942. The author of this review of the April exhibition of all eight paintings at the Associated American Artists Galleries notes that Invasion, although not illustrated in the “catalogue,” which was the pamphlet—because he quotes from it and mentions Benton’s introduction—was finished in time for the exhibition. 128 Herman Kogan, The Long White Line: The Story of Abbott Laboratories (New York: Random House, 1963), 211. 129 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 282.

56 efficacy in corporate advertising.130 Despite his strong business sense, Downs also demonstrated great concern for the individual artist and the sanctity of the work. Excerpts from his letter to

Adolf Dehn, noted in the previous chapter, portray Downs as a sincere art enthusiast who exhibited respect for both Dehn and for the integrity of the visual object.

Benton’s recollection of his personal interaction with Downs corroborates this assessment:

“At their own expense the Abbot [sic] people, after paying me handsomely for my work— something I had not counted on when I painted my series—reproduced most of the paintings in pamphlet and poster form and in full color.” Benton continues, “Charles Downes [sic], head of

Abbot’s [sic] advertising department, worked furiously to get good reproductions, taking me around to the various Chicago printers for my approval of inks and processes.”131 Downs wanted to ensure that the reproductions that doctors saw printed in What’s New were of a quality consistent with the artist’s original intent for the work.

In addition to the What’s New circulation of Benton’s images, Abbott Laboratories printed a ten-page 12.5 by 9.75 inch full-color pamphlet titled The Year of Peril: A Series of War

Paintings by Thomas Benton (figure 3.8). Among other purposes, this publication served as a catalogue for the exhibition of the paintings at the Associated American Artists Galleries, April 6 through April 25, 1942, for which the What’s New printing of the series was clearly coordinated.132 Decorating the front cover of the pamphlet, Benton’s Starry Night directly refers to the Pearl Harbor attack and the media’s coverage of the smoldering remains of the USS Shaw

(figure 3.9). The pamphlet’s cover sets the tone for the remainder of the series by capturing the

130 “Advertising News and Notes: Sales Spurred by Fine Arts,” New York Times, May 9, 1941. The author of the article wrote, “Charles T. Coiner of N. W. Ayer said that the use of fine art for its purely cultural effect has no place in advertising. But tests have shown that it is an attention device and may serve as an effective means of appealing to a given audience, he said. Charles S. Downs, advertising manager of Abbott Laboratories, North Chicago, also contended that fine art increases returns.” 131 Benton, An Artist in America, 299. 132 “For All Americans Who Will Look,” Time 39, no. 14 (April 6, 1942): 65.

57 sense of anguish and despair exhibited by the image’s foreground figure. Flailing his hands toward the sky, the soldier gasps his last tortured breath just before the sea and flames engulf him.

Reproductions of the series’ other works appear within the pages of the pamphlet, each accompanied by a short paragraph from Benton providing his interpretation of the image. The pamphlet illustrates the same seven paintings as in What’s New, although all eight paintings were exhibited, which is confirmed by reviewers’ comments and the inclusion of a black-and-white reproduction of Invasion at the head of the review in Art Digest.133 Along with Benton’s captions and lengthy introduction, a foreword by Archibald MacLeish, famed poet, Librarian of Congress, and the newly-appointed director of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures (OFF), the forerunner of the OWI, provides additional text to aid the viewer’s experience of the Abbott pamphlet. Altogether, the company printed over one hundred and sixty thousand copies of The

Year of Peril: A Series of War Paintings by Thomas Benton.134

To place this figure in perspective, it is instructive to note that Lewenthal’s Associated

American Artists, which served its mission of democratizing art through illustrated catalogues and traveling exhibitions of etchings, lithographs, color reproductions and original paintings to hundreds of colleges, universities, and civic organizations each year, reportedly had a mailing list of more than one hundred thousand by September 1943.135 The Year of Peril pamphlet was undoubtedly circulated to a mailing list of similar size by Lewenthal, spreading news of Abbott’s patronage of the paintings to a far broader audience than the corporation’s own What’s News subscriber list.

133 “The War and Thomas Benton,” Art Digest 16, no. 14 (April 15, 1942): 13. 134 Benton, An Artist in America, 298-9. 135 “Exhibit,” Sixty-Third Season, 1943-1944 Concert Bulletin of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc., 1943), 5.

58 According to the back cover of the pamphlet, Abbott had already arranged for the gift of

Benton’s original paintings to the U.S. government, and this was widely reported in reviews of the Associated American Artists Galleries exhibition. As the author of the Time exhibition review commented, the effect of the gift had already split the OFF, with MacLeish in favor of government acceptance, and William B. Lewis, head of the radio division, opposed, on the basis that the paintings were too horrific to inspire the public.136 The New Republic made a more oblique reference to the “raging” controversy over the paintings’ gruesome qualities and their questionable efficacy in stimulating a complacent public to support the war effort.137

The government ultimately rejected the gift, allowing Abbott to give the paintings to the

State Historical Society of Missouri in 1944, where they are now located, but not before it had exhausted the paintings’ usefulness as propaganda. This is also indicated by the back cover text, which said that the pamphlet and the widespread granting of reproduction rights “to appropriate agencies” were to benefit the “National War Effort.”138 MacLeish’s participation, more significantly, also suggested the intention to use Benton’s images on behalf of the government’s own propaganda mission. At OFF, the forerunner of the Office of War Information, which came into existence in June 1942, MacLeish helped to shape the nation’s antifascist propaganda and to mobilize citizens to support the Allies. His choice as the writer of the pamphlet’s foreword was also appropriate in light of the publication of his recent booklet, The American Cause (1941).

Here he sought to encourage artists, who had felt marginalized by the U.S. economy, to help in his antifascist cause, “for it is the simple truth that the mobilization of the possibilities of a free

136 “For All Americans,” 63. 137 Manny Farber, “Thomas Benton’s War,” New Republic 106, no. 16 (April 20, 1942): 542. 138 Abbott Laboratories, The Year of Peril (Chicago: Abbott Laboratories, 1942), n.p.

59 people is inconceivable without them [artists].”139 Benton’s paintings as reproduced in the pamphlet thus became the perfect fulfillment of MacLeish’s call for artist-citizens to produce art opposing fascist forces abroad.

Apart from the fact that Benton had already painted the series, a major question arises as to why a large corporation like Abbott chose Benton, a staunch proponent of agrarian values, for its advertising campaign. While Downs had an appreciation for American art and likely knew

Benton’s work from Chicago’s 1933 world’s fair, Lewenthal’s influence and recommendation of the artist clinched the deal.140 Lewenthal had negotiated contracts for many of Abbott’s What’s

New artists, and, from a corporate perspective, Benton seemed the most commercially viable.

Altogether the AAA sold over twelve thousand prints by Benton, and his popularity and wide audience at the time served as a guaranteed track record for future marketing campaigns.141 As proof, critic Manny Farber, writing for the New Republic two weeks after the opening of the

Associated American Artists Galleries’ exhibition, said of Benton and his Year of Peril paintings,

“When Mr. B. paints a picture, almost like magic the presses start rolling, cameras clicking, and before you know it everyone . . . is talking about Tom’s latest painting. . . . Already more people have seen these Bentons than anything since Van Gogh or GWTW [Gone with the Wind].”142

Additionally, Benton’s espousal of American agrarian values was ideal for a corporate entity attempting to align itself with a populist sentiment and connect their corporate image with

139 Archibald MacLeish, The American Cause (New York: Soan and Pearce, 1941), 39, quoted in Peter Buitenhuis, “Prelude to War: The Interventionist Propaganda of Archibald MacLeish, Robert E. Sherwood, and John Steinbeck,” Canadian Review of American Studies 26, no. 1 (1996): 9. 140 James M. Dennis, Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry (Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 1998), 26. 141 Erika Doss, “Catering to Consumerism: Associated American Artists and the Marketing of Modern Art, 1934- 1958,” Winterthur Portfolio 26, no. 2/3 (Summer-Autumn, 1991): 152. 142 Farber, “Thomas Benton’s War,” 542.

60 a vision of American agricultural fecundity.143 America’s farmland served as a supply center to the United States and its Allies through Roosevelt’s 1941 Lend-Lease Act. A closer look at

Benton’s caption for The Year of Peril image The Harvest (figure 3.6) helps to provide a clue as to why values promoted by the series would have appealed to Abbott:

Farmers of America, who yet look comfortably over your quiet fields, you are going to be called upon this year to work harder than you have ever worked in your lives. Respond to the call that those who are fighting for you may keep their bellies full and their muscles hard. Without your help the soldiers and sailors who battle for the safety of your land cannot maintain their strength. If they fail in their strength, your strength will be of no avail when the planes of the enemy come over the hills and down the valleys of America to reap your fields with fire. 144

The Harvest features a rural American family under aerial attack from the Axis enemy. In the painting a woman, presumably a mother, places her hands on either side of her face as she gasps at the sight of her dead child. Sprawled across the foreground, her husband’s corpse lies beneath the steps and vertical post of a demolished house that the family once inhabited. A pillar of smoke and fire rise into the sky, and the airplanes responsible for the atrocity fly from the scene leaving only flames to engulf the barn and fields below.

Although The Harvest carries with it a heavy emotional charge, it represents the series’ painting most analogous to works within Benton’s oeuvre reflecting the ordinary hero. Through the caption, the image connects the noble American farmer directly to the war effort, and Benton

143 Margaret E. Wagner et al., eds., The Library of Congress World War II Companion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 862. “American agriculture passed from depression into an unheard-of prosperity during the war years. In the United States, unlike the other major combatants, people were eating more food, not less, as the war progressed, despite rationing. Civilian spending on food products increased from $14 billion to $24 billion between 1940 and 1944. The government played a role in agriculture’s newfound prosperity. In 1942, at the urging of the Farm Lobby, Congress set ceilings on farm prices that were proportionately higher than those on industrial prices. To keep consumer food prices from rising, the government subsidized agriculture by buying at these high prices and selling to retailers at a loss. While the country’s overall inflation rate during the war was 28 percent, farm prices rose nearly 50 percent in the same period. Farm income increased more than 100 percent.” 144 Benton, The Year of Peril, n.p.

61 offers an admonition to the viewer of the potential disaster resulting from a reduction in agricultural productivity.145

Human loss remains the paramount concern in the Year of Peril series as evident in another work from the series, Indifference (figure 3.3). In the painting, American planes crashed upon an earthen mound spill the corpses of deceased, defeated, and decapitated pilots across the canvas.

Again Benton contextualizes the imagery with an ancillary description. The caption for

Indifference laments loss of life and industry resulting from the sneak attack: “Young men died and machines were needlessly destroyed before we even knew that War was upon us.”146 This text engages the reader by evoking the media’s photographs of the smoldering USS Shaw and other military technology destroyed by Japan’s surprise attack.

The image Casualty continues this emphasis on machinery (figure 3.4). Here Benton depicts a dead soldier whose body has been seized by rigor mortis. His arm and leg jut into the air while the fingertips of his left hand clench the blood-soaked rock beneath. To the right of the dead soldier, a disembodied head and forearm of another soldier litter the foreground, while a blazing battleship sinks in the background. Casualty’s inclusion of the sinking vessel among the dead bodies again places focus on the destruction of military machinery, and the caption for the image bears a similar sentiment as well: “If comfort is derived from reports that ‘casualties’ in some remote action were few, be reminded of the real meaning of the word. It means that living men’s bodies have been pierced and torn apart and probably also that valuable instruments of war have been destroyed with them.”147

145 Wolff, Thomas Hart Benton, 308-10. In his recent biography on the artist, Wolff offers a new interpretation to Benton’s Harvest image. He argues that the painting combines regional and wartime themes to deliver a potent message to rural America, “Benton’s message here is plain: unless isolationist farmers come to their sense and join the war against evil and the battle for reform, they will be overrun by brutality.” 146 Benton, The Year of Peril, n.p. 147 Ibid., n.p.

62 This value placed on industry—as well as Benton’s painted details of factories, tanks, and weaponry aiding the war effort— would have appealed to Abbott, and Benton’s several rewrites of his introduction and captions were likely influenced by Downs, who had the final say on the pamphlet prior to printing. While promoting Benton’s nationalistic attack on fascism, as well as the efforts of Lewenthal and the AAA, Abbott retooled its public image by demonstrating its magnanimous support of the arts and the war effort.148 Indeed, the review of the exhibition by

Art Digest noted that Abbott Laboratories was “a firm that has long made use of art in its business affairs,” and that its allowing reproduction rights to be so widely granted would “spread the message of the series from coast to coast.”149 The OWI Domestic Operations Branch, for example, circulated posters based upon Abbott’s collection in 1943, while the U.S. Treasury used other paintings for War Bonds posters, and copies of the pamphlet and other reproductions of the paintings, including stamps and stickers, were distributed by the OFF and the OWI.

Paramount Picture filmed the exhibition at the AAA Gallery and included excerpts in a newsreel shown widely in movie theaters.150 Lithographs after the paintings appeared in various sizes, and while most reproductions were smaller (like the 20.5 x 23.5 inch reproduction of Again), others were available in nearly the same size as the original (including the border, one of the lithographs for The Sowers measures 31.5 x 41 inches; the painting is 28 x 39 inches). The ubiquity of Benton’s series aligns with the systemic distribution of information required to achieve what Ellul described as total propaganda, in which modern propaganda must use all available media.151

148 Leo G. Mazow, “Regionalist Radio: Thomas Hart Benton on Art for Your Sake,” Art Bulletin 90, no. 1 (2008): 118. 149 “War and Thomas Benton,” 13. 150 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 283. 151 Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation, 9-10. The author explains, “Propaganda must utilize all the technical means at its disposal—the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. Modern propaganda must utilize all of these media.”

63 Including the initial one hundred and sixty thousand Year of Peril pamphlets, Benton’s estimation of over fifty-five million reproductions of the painting consists of over two million magazine reproductions, twenty-six million newspaper reproductions, twenty-two million newsreel showings in the U.S. and England, and three hundred and twenty-six thousand cards and posters.152 The sweeping promotional campaign guaranteed Benton a much broader public audience than he had initially expected.

Year of Peril represented to Benton what World War II poster art should strive to achieve.

It marked his rejection of the previous war’s popular poster themes for a more blunt portrayal of war’s horrors. Pin-ups, manicured men, and “diaphanously clothed damsels” had succeeded as past visual tropes, but for Benton the bloodshed at Pearl Harbor now rendered them obsolete.153

A messier war called for a messier war painting. In his introduction to Abbott’s Year of Peril,

Benton explains:

There are no bathing beauties dressed up in soldier outfits in these pictures. There are no silk-stockinged legs. There are no pretty boys out of collar advertisements to suggest that this war is a gigolo party. There is no glossing over of the kind of hard ferocity that men must have to beat down the evil that is now upon us. There is no hiding of the fact that War is killing and the grim will to kill. In these designs there is none of the Pollyanna fat that the American people are in the habit of being fed.154

Benton exploited heightened levels of uncensored death and carnage for a traumatic, almost caricatured, visual message. Through Abbott’s acquisition and distribution of these gruesome works, images spread throughout America providing an intensified glimpse of the horrors of war à la Benton.

152 Benton, An Artist in America, 298-9. 153 The Museum of Modern Art, “Posters for Defense,” The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 8, no. 6 (September 1941): 5. 154 Benton, The Year of Peril, n.p.

64 Page six of the Abbott’s pamphlet, for example, features The Sowers with the following text from Benton, “Are we to stand by at let them reap? These sowers of death, bloated with their gorge of human blood, are right now marching over the curve of the earth straight toward us, leaving fires of destruction in every furrow of the lands they traverse” (figure

3.10).155 Clearly an admonition to the country regarding the dangers of isolationism, the text continues, “They will not be halted by our refusing to see them nor will they be softened by cajoleries of appeasement. They want what we have and with their brigands they will take it unless we can find again some of the iron that was in the souls of our fighting forefathers.”156

Through his description of the painting, Benton attempts to scare the viewer and deliver a wake-up call to the public. Using Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting The Sowers as a pictorial source, Benton creates an alternate vision of a dystopic future realized through

America’s inaction.

The Year of Peril’s Starry Night and The Sowers both share their titles with Van Gogh paintings, indicating a deliberate effort by Benton to reference the Dutch artist’s works.

Roger Medearis, a former pupil of Benton’s, writes that although his mentor did not teach his students the painting techniques of Van Gogh, Benton nevertheless remained fond of the post-Impressionist’s work.157 Van Gogh’s 1881, 1888, and 1889 versions of The Sower, today in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum (1881) and the Otterlo Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller

(1888 and 1889), stemmed from the artist’s admiration and emulation of Jean-François

Millet’s 1850 version.158 With overt Christian references in the series, although the paintings

155 Ibid., n.p. 156 Ibid., n.p. 157 Roger Medearis, “Student of Thomas Hart Benton,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art 4, no. 3/4 (Summer – Autumn 1990): 47. 158 Judy Sund, “The Sower and the Sheaf: Biblical Metaphor in the Art of Vincent van Gogh,” The Art Bulletin 70, no. 4 (December 1988): 660-1. Millet’s Sower of 1850 is currently held in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

65 themselves have no particular religious message, Benton, as Van Gogh had done before him, likely saw in Millet’s subject a reference to Christ’s parable of the sower, in which the seed cast on good soil yielded a crop a hundred times more than was sown. Benton’s own painted

“parables” often connect bucolic or pastoral imagery with much loftier themes that, like 17th- century Dutch painting, are deeply spiritual but not overtly religious. While his Sower sows death, Benton clearly wanted his own horrific “parables” to yield, as he wrote in the pamphlet, “new Americans who, born again through appreciation of their country’s great need, find themselves with new shares of patriotism and intelligence, and new wills to see what is what and come to grips with it.”

Benton’s deliberate selection of titles like “Starry Night” and “The Sowers” subverted viewers’ pre-conceived ideas about what the titles signified, creating a rupture between expectation and visual experience. The Axis sowers spread seeds of death upon the barren landscape, and the scene becomes all the more atrocious when considering the spirit of fecundity represented in Millet’s and Van Gogh’s paintings. The Sowers, like the rest of the series, was designed to shock and scare.

In addition to depicting the aftermath from attacks (Starry Night, Indifference, Casualty, and The Harvest), The Year of Peril also capitalized upon the fear of axis enemies’ attacking

Christianity. In the painting Again, a modernization of the iconic Crucifixion of Christ scene, the traditional Roman centurion takes the form of three caricatures representing the Axis countries (from left to right) Germany, Japan, and Italy. Together they drive a spear into the side of Christ, as a swastika-bearing fighter plane simultaneously shoots Him in the same region. Under Hitler, the Nazis were responsible for the severe oppression of Christianity; their goals to supplant organized religion with a Nationalist Socialist doctrine led to the

66 imprisonment or execution of religious leaders, the iconoclastic destruction of churches and

Christian imagery, and the classification of Christian visual representation as degenerate.

This all-out attack on Christianity and religious freedom, the very foundation of America’s inception, found its way into Hollywood war films and government-sponsored pro-war propaganda.159 Within this context, Again can be read as a premonition revealing the consequences of isolationism and its ensuing outcomes: defeat, takeover, indoctrination, and persecution. Benton’s image becomes a visual metaphor akin to documentary filmmaker

Frank Capra’s famous brick-through-a-stained-glass-church-window in his film series Why

We Fight (1943-45). Both images intend to startle the average American into action through fear and by attacking what s/he holds most sacred.

The Year of Peril painting Invasion continues the series’ exploitation of fear by graphically detailing the atrocities awaiting the American people if they maintain the stance of isolationism

(figure 3.11). In the image innocent civilians, not soldiers, face defeat and torture by an army of degenerate, almost simian, marauders. While details like dead children, an arm-less broken toy, and a farmer with a bayonet rammed down his throat add to the abject and ultra violent tone of the scene, by far the most horrifying element of the entire painting is the brutal manhandling and implicit rape of the central female personification of America. The vicious depiction recalls

Benton’s earlier representation of Native Americans assaulting colonists in his American

Historical Epic’s “Retribution” panel (1919-1924). In Invasion however, there exists a troubling, slightly eroticized element to the female figure’s representation.160 Along with identifying the central blonde victim as a stock figure from Benton’s subsequent paintings, Achelous and

159 Michael S. Shull and David Edward Wilt, Hollywood War Films, 1937-1945 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1996), 223-4. 160 Victim’s facial expression identical to Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa (1647-52). Being a Rubens’ fan, Benton also possibly referenced Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (1618), particularly the victim’s arm and palm.

67 Hercules (1947) and Poker Night (1948), James M. Dennis notes the artist’s “propensity for imaging women as sexual prey.”161 While the sensuality of Benton’s central female figure in

“Invasion” in no way implies acquiescence, her silver screen-like beauty, see-through garment, exposed breast, and the horrifying subject of rape, all combined to make Invasion far more provocative than the series’ other images.

One of the most interesting aspects of Abbott’s sponsorship and promotion of a series of fear-provoking images is the way in which Benton’s paintings seemed so relevant and so significant to the war effort. Two Abbott-sponsored exhibitions at Lewenthal’s New York gallery in 1942—the first, the Year of Peril painting exhibition in April, and the second, The

Abbott War Poster Work Exhibition, an exhibition of more paintings from Abbott’s larger collection of war art, on view August 31 through September 15. The Abbott War Poster Work

Exhibition combined fine art and posters into one show designed to generate direct financial and popular support for the government’s war effort. The show consisted of paintings by Benton and thirteen other AAA artists, as well as posters designed from each of the paintings. At least one of the Year of Peril series, Again, and the painting now known as Negro Soldier, which would become ultimately become part of the ten-painting Year of Peril series as it currently exists at the

State Historical Society of Missouri, were included in the show.162 Not all of the eight original paintings in the series had been made into posters as of this exhibition. For example, National

Archives and Records Administration records indicate that the poster after The Sowers was not commissioned by the OWI Domestic Operations Branch until 1943. Those paintings not yet reproduced in poster form would not be included in this exhibition. Other paintings in the show,

161 Dennis, Renegade Regionalists, 131-3. 162 Edward Alden Jewell, “War Poster Work Put on Exhibition,” New York Times (September 1, 1942): 16. Benton added The Negro Soldier to the Historical Society’s collection during his lifetime and bequeathed Embarkation as an estate gift, bestowed after his death in 1975.

68 with their accompanying posters, included George Schreiber’s America There’s a Job to Be

Done, Joseph Hirsch’s Together We Fight for Their Right to Live!, Paul Sample’s Lifeline of

Freedom: The Merchant Marine, and Aaron Bohrod’s He Serves Too.163

Edward Alden Jewell’s review from the day after the exhibition’s opening describes the unique layout of the gallery:

Fourteen artists have thus far participated in the project, which has thus enjoyed the close cooperation of various government agencies. . . . In nearly every instance the original painting is exhibited beside the poster that has been made from it, and sometimes the posters themselves are shown in more than one size. The original painting by John Steuart Curry, ‘Our Good Earth—Keep it Ours,’ was not available at this time, but posters in two sizes are on hand.164

According to the Wisconsin State Journal, the paper in Madison, where John Steuart

Curry was artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, Curry’s painting Our Good

Earth (1940) was to be released on August 31 by the U.S. Treasury Department as a War

Bonds poster, so the painting undoubtedly had not yet been returned. The War Bonds poster, printed by the Government Printing Office, itself shows a farmer standing with his two children in a field of wheat, with the caption: “Our Good Earth . . . Keep It Ours. Buy War

Bonds. Make Every Market Day Bond Day.” [ellipsis in the original caption] The State

Journal closed its short article with the following: “At the close of the exhibition the poster paintings by fourteen of America’s most famous artists will be donated to the government by

Abbott Laboratories of Chicago, which is sponsoring the entire project.”165

According to the New York Times, Lewenthal’s gallery acted as “adviser on assignments and details” in arranging the donation of the paintings shown in this exhibition to the government and in facilitating their reproduction as posters for the war effort. Stating

163 “Art Draws a Weapon,” New York Times (August 30, 1942): 16. 164 Jewell, “War Poster Work,” September 1, 1942. 165 “Curry War Poster Will be Exhibited in New York City,” Wisconsin State Journal (August 30, 1942): 18.

69 the obvious, given the nature of the exhibition, the Times indicated that posters based upon several of the paintings were already in use by the government.166 What is even more significant in terms of what this exhibition foretold, an article announcing a special war art exhibition to be held in conjunction with the annual Boston Herald Book Fair at Boston’s

Symphony Hall in October 1943 indicated that “Abbott Laboratories has furnished in the past year the material for 80 per cent of the Treasury’s War Bond posters.” Significantly, at the

Boston exhibition, in addition to thirteen canvases by some of the other artists represented in

Abbott’s collection, Benton’s eight Year of Peril paintings were exhibited together for only the second time.167

While not unique to this exhibition, considering Lewenthal’s mission of democratizing art,

Abbott’s exhibition of posters alongside the fine art originals merges high art with low art to provide a unique chance to explore how the two categories of visual representation collectively promoted the pharmaceutical company. Rectanus evaluates the dichotomy between high and low art in relationship to corporate cultural programming to assert that the difference between the two is “only relevant to the extent that they correspond to target markets and the products or images directed toward those markets.”168 He continues by explaining that cultural pluralism remains paramount in deciding the type of art to mobilize for communicating with the public.169

The poster-ization of Benton’s and his fellow artists’ works, while not necessarily pandering to the lowest common denominator, represents a democratization of the original visual objects. This attempt at cultural pluralism takes the artist’s painting or drawing and superimposes

166 “Art Draws a Weapon,” 16. 167 “Book Fair at Symphony Hall Exhibit,” Sixty-Third Season, 1943-1944 Concert Bulletin of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc., 1943): 68. The writer of the article, obviously seeing the exclusion of Invasion from the Abbott pamphlet, announced in error to his Boston audience that Invasion would be seen for the first time with the rest of the series. The poster exhibition traveled to Boston, where it was exhibited in January 1944 at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts under the title “Art for Bonds.” 168 Rectanus, Culture Incorporated, 63. 169 Ibid., 63.

70 short phrases or slogans to impart clearer or entirely new meaning to the finished poster. The resulting poster art acquires a new status as an art object and can be, depending on the text and the graphic artist’s execution, less or greater than the sum of its parts.

The Abbott War Poster Work Exhibition allowed its viewers to observe and critique the two mediums side by side. Consequently, Jewell’s review of the show describes some of the better- executed, as well as the less successful, poster designs:

One of the best posters is that made by Lawrence Beall Smith entitled ‘Don’t Let That Shadow Touch Them.’ . . . In most cases (such as the Lawrence Beall Smith painting) it will be observed that perpendicular oblongs lend themselves for more effectively to poster use than do paintings that are not upright but horizontal in shape. . . . Irrespective of the shape of the illustrative material, some of the posters are poorly designed—for example, the one on which is reproduced Aaron Bohrod’s ‘He Serves Too.’ The brilliantly graphic Andrew Wyeth poster, ‘The Minutes We Lose Our Enemies Will Use,’ ought to be electrifying on a large scale; in a small poster scale here shown it leaves something to be desired.170

Jewell also noted the poster-ization of Benton’s Year of Peril paintings, observing very minimal alteration to the works: “The Benton paintings, among them the familiar Crucifixion theme, ‘Again,’ are for the most part well reproduced, though if the posters (intended, I believe, largely for European distribution) include [anything] other than the caption line, the remaining printed matter is not indicated on the posters now on display.”171 In comparison to the modifications made to posters from the other AAA artists at the same exhibition, the very different treatment Benton’s paintings received prompts new considerations. Perhaps Benton’s artistic status at the time rendered his work exempt from slapping a huge “BUY WAR BONDS” across the front of it. Perhaps the clarity of propagandistic message in his Year of Peril imagery made additional text redundant. Jewell’s speculation that the Benton images were intended for a

170 “War Poster Work,” September 1, 1942. 171 Ibid., September 1, 1942.

71 broader international audience, though, is key, in that English text would restrict the distribution of the posters to English-speaking countries.

Despite the controversy roiling within the government over Benton’s series, most reviewers took a measured tone in reporting on the paintings. A New York Times review of

The Year of Peril’s New York exhibition focuses on Benton’s painting method and the graphic nature of the images equally:

A just completed set of paintings by Thomas Benton—paintings that refer directly, and savagely, to the present war—was placed on view last night at the Associated American Artists Galleries, 711 Fifth Avenue. The pictures may be seen by the public beginning today. The widely known American artist took up this task on the eighth of last December. . . . The paintings, horrible in theme, are meticulously and often powerfully worked out in Benton’s accustomed style, which while naturalistic in a sense, involves rigorous stylization. His color is considerably stepped up. Subjects are concerned with death and destruction at sea and on land. The largest is a symbolic picture representing ultimate extermination of the ‘lusting brigandry of the German and Japanese militarists.’172

Apart from the assessment quoted here, the Times reviewer took no stance on Benton’s series; the bulk of the article is given over to a quotation of Benton’s caption for Extermination. Edward

Alden Jewell’s review of the closing art season in the same publication exactly two months later, however, places relatively lesser emphasis on content and instead praises the artist for his ambition and audacity: “Thomas Benton . . . unfurled at the Associated American Artists

Galleries a war theme much more impressive [than William Gropper’s war paintings at the ACA

Gallery]—in part because his entire show was unified by the collective appellation ‘This Year of

Peril’; in part because, however shrilly they might scream their urgent propaganda, those canvases betrayed no compromise in the matter of an artist’s meticulously formed style.”173 This retrospective consideration reinforced what he had said in his earlier Times review of the Year of

172 “Benton’s War Paintings,” New York Times, April 7, 1942. 173 Edward Alden Jewell, “Season Just Closing Stressed War: Artists, Museums and Galleries Rallied to the Nation’s Need Unhesitatingly—Outstanding Exhibitions in Other Fields,” New York Times, June 7, 1942.

72 Peril exhibition, where he wrote “the pictorial message is violently phrased, but for all the melodramatic shrillness and luridness, this is an urgent message that deserves to be read.”174 The generally favorable public response toward the April exhibition, which Benton estimated drew over 75,000 visitors, directly corresponds with the timeliness of the propaganda.175 (Lewenthal’s estimation of this number was a more conservative 50,000, based on the press information supplied to the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1943.)176 The recent attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, along with the negative, cartoonish stereotypes of German and Japanese soldiers already so prevalent in mass media, inevitably colored the audience’s reception of the imagery.

Indeed, a common critique of Benton’s The Year of Peril series, and consequently

Abbott’s reproductions, was that while some of the series’ images were not tactful, others bordered on hatred in their exploitation of xenophobic and racist stereotypes. In the days following the Pearl Harbor attack, the media made it quite clear that the assault represented a coordinated effort stemming from the September 1940 Tripartite Pact between Japan,

Germany, and Italy. The press even aided in disseminating rumors that Hitler’s Luftwaffe bore responsibility for the aerial raid and that, “some of the airplanes bore swastikas.”177

Supporting this account, the plane in Benton’s Again also bears a swastika on the tail wing.

Shrouded in this initial misconception was the premise that Japanese pilots were unskilled, myopic, and lacking in the physiological traits necessary for the airstrike. During the 1940s,

American film studios and print outlets propagated exaggerated and derogatory caricatures of

174 Edward Alden Jewell, “Academy and Independents Approach: One-Man Shows,” New York Times, April 12, 1942. 175 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 283. 176 “Book Fair at Symphony,” 68. 177 Martin V. Melosi, The Shadow of Pearl Harbor: Political Controversy over the Surprise Attack, 1941-1946 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1977), 4.

73 Italians and Germans; however, comparatively speaking, the sub-human characterization and denigration of the Japanese far exceeded that of the Axis’ other members.178 The ape-like representation of the enemies in Benton’s Again and Exterminate aligns with this practice, and there exists a significant physiognomic difference between the white and non-white aggressors. In his book War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, John W.

Dower comments on the ideological assumptions prevalent at the time: “While Hitler and the

Nazis also occasionally emerged as simians, this was a passing metaphor, a sign of aberration and atavism, and did not carry the explicit racial connotations of the Japanese ape.”179 Roeder also notes wartime efforts to dehumanize the enemy through propaganda, explaining that imagery typically compared the Japanese to “rats, monkeys, snakes, and vermin.”180

The written word, once again, proved vital to the understanding of Abbott’s series.

Perhaps the most deliberate and elucidating reflection of the ideology behind The Year of

Peril was Benton’s selection of the final image’s title: Extermination. With this word Benton implies that merely winning the war does not alone guarantee victory and peace.

“Extermination” suggests to the viewer that the enemy, like a rodent or cockroach, must be eradicated to prevent re-infestation. Although Benton did not pioneer this phrasing for propagandistic effect, he nevertheless would have been aware of the word’s loaded meaning.

“Extermination” also connotes the idea that the enemy must suffer a complete annihilation to avoid the risk of future retaliation. The German Army’s resurrection after its World War I defeat exacerbated the perceived necessity to “exterminate” the enemy, and fear of a

178 Shull and Wilt, Hollywood War Films, 222-33. “In addition to the recurrent use of ‘Jap’ and ‘Nip,’ the Japanese were frequently dehumanized by literally comparing them with animals (usually simians), insects and vermin (almost always rats).” 179 John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 86- 7. 180 George H. Roeder, Jr., The Censored War: American Visual Experience During World War Two (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 86.

74 superhuman or supernatural enemy popularly found its way into 1940s Hollywood horror films in the form of the Nazi zombie or Japanese vampire.181 Benton’s caricature of the

Japanese enemy has a vampiric thirst for blood, sharp fingernails, pointy ears and prominent teeth. He is a twisted Nosferatu, whose spilled chain-link intestines reveal that he is an inhuman killing machine. Extermination represents the final scene in Benton’s Hollywood- style horror series: the protagonist triumphantly defeats the vampire by plunging his wooden stake (or in this case, bayonet) deep into the monster’s heart.

Benton, who had spent time in Hollywood as a set painter early in his career, studied the movie-making industry for his 1937 Life magazine editorial.182 Just as he would have recognized the loaded meaning in the title “Extermination,” his exposure to B-movies, popular culture, and print media would have familiarized him with the word “peril” and its anti-Japanese subtext. Dower describes the ubiquity of the term and its implications: “The

Yellow Peril was naturally the stuff of fantasy and cheap thrills, a fit subject for pulp literature, comics, B-movies, and sensational journalism. . . . Some, like the Hearst newspapers, warned of a ‘Yellow Peril’ led by Japan as early as the 1890s, and maintained an unwavering editorial policy of anti-Oriental polemics over the next half-century.”183 1941 was for many Americans the year that the Yellow Peril became a reality.

As far as his racist caricatures are concerned, several scholars have recently come to

Benton’s defense, claiming that the artist employed stereotypes to make his images more exoteric, a technique he learned while working for the motion picture industry.184 While this explanation does not completely exonerate Benton for perpetuating stereotypes through

181 Rick Worland, “OWI Meets the Monsters: Hollywood Horror Films and War Propaganda, 1942 to 1945,” Cinema Journal 37, no. 1 (Autumn 1997): 57. 182 Benton, An Artist in America, 384. 183 Dower, War Without Mercy, 157. 184 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 123.

75 exaggerated caricature, his usage of “stock types” facilitates the transmission of a clear message to the common American. This attribute contributes to the accessibility of Benton’s work and is crucial to the efficacy of propaganda and populist art. Furthermore, the success of Benton’s The Year of Peril as a vehicle for propaganda relies on the works’ ability to exploit the common myths and preconceptions already inherent in its viewers. Ellul explains:

The power of propaganda to incite action has often been challenged by the alleged fact that propaganda cannot really modify or create anything in man. . . . A Communist or a Christian with strong beliefs is very little, if at all, shaken by adverse propaganda. Similarly, a prejudice or a stereotype is hardly ever changed in propaganda . . . . What people think of Negroes, Jews, bourgeois, or colonialists will be only slightly altered by propaganda attempts. Similarly, a reflex or myth cannot be created out of nothing, as if the individual were neutral and empty ground on which anything could be built.185

Paintings like Again and Extermination exploited the prevailing xenophobia intensified by the Pearl Harbor attack to capitalize on America’s fear and provoke the public into action.186

This action, whether manifested through diminished isolationism or the increased purchase of war bonds and posters, is critical to the effective operation of propaganda.

Within the broader context of corporate wartime patronage, Abbott’s pamphlet for The

Year of Peril represents a visually aggressive approach. Comparison to the art sponsorship of corporations Upjohn and IBM, as well as several government-funded museum exhibitions, reveals the ways in which Abbott’s program was both similar and different from that of its contemporaries. Even prior to the war, the prolonged vilification of the America’s corporations

185 Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation, 33. 186 Ibid., 20-1. Ellul argues that propaganda must be rooted in action, and this can be applied to Abbott’s (and the government’s) integration of war bond sales into its war art exhibitions. “A great error, which interferes with propaganda analysis, is to believe that propaganda is solely a psychological affair, a manipulation of symbols, an abstract influence on opinions. A large number of American studies on propaganda are not valid for that reason. These studies are concerned only with means of psychological influence and regard only such means as propaganda, whereas all great modern practitioners of propaganda have rigorously tied together psychological and physical action as inseparable elements. . . . As long as no physical influence is exerted by an organization on an individual, there is no propaganda. . . . Propaganda cannot operate in a vacuum. It must be rooted in action, in a reality that is part of it.”

76 intensified with the scapegoating of big business following the economic collapse of the 1930s.

Through his fireside chats Roosevelt framed the country’s financial troubles as the natural result of deregulated commercialism run rampant. 187 In an effort to purge negative public perception and restore faith in America’s big business, large corporations—including Abbott Laboratories— emulated the successes of Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives by engaging beleaguered Americans through new marketing methods that championed populism and commerce.188 Photography, drawing, painting, theater, and radio all served as tools to reach new demographics of consumers through rigorous advertising campaigns.

Due to decreased consumer activity during the earliest stages of the war in Europe,

American corporations desperately needed to revamp sales strategies. After initially struggling to make a profit, due to wartime rationing and increased tariffs, many businesses altered their production to meet the needs of the government. In turn, advertisements shifted from promoting company goods to detailing the sacrifices corporations were making by supporting the war effort.

By the time the U.S. officially entered the war, a battery of successful corporate public relations strategies and the unification of the American ethos in the face of a new external group of axis villains helped the previously vilified corporations to regain the trust of the public.189 After realizing that advertising dollars could be better spent on strengthening a corporation’s image, companies used patriotism and the iconography of the war to fuel their own PR campaigns.190

Months prior to Abbott’s debut of The Year of Peril series, the War Advertising Council was established to aid businesses in their promotion of the war effort. In All Out for Victory:

187 Stuart Ewen, PR!: A Social History of Spin (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), 259-60. 188 Roland Marchand, “Life Comes to Corporate Headquarters,” in Looking at Life Magazine, ed. Erika Doss, 123- 137 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 126. 189 Ewen, PR!: A Social History, 339. 190 Ibid., 343.

77 Magazine Illustration and the World War II Home Front (2009), John Bush Jones describes the organization and its central strategy:

From its inception, the Council’s stated aim was to serve as the liaison between the advertising industry, advertisers, and the media on the one hand, and Washington on the other. . . . First, it was usually the Office of War Information (OWI) with which the Ad Council worked as a liaison between the federal government and the advertising industry. Hence, whatever government agency wanted something publicized, it would take its request to the OWI. The OWI in turn contacted the Council about it. . . . The Council then turned the matter . . . over to one of its more than a dozen ‘coordinators’ who specialized in specific aspects of the war effort.191

In addition to serving as a liaison to the government through the OWI, the War Advertising

Council also hierarchically categorized the different types of war advertisement. According to

Jones, the first, dubbed the “All-Out” advertisement, “promotes some aspect of citizen involvement in the war by the advertiser.”192 The second, called the “double-barreled” method, simultaneously promoted the war effort and the company’s product.193 The third, known as the

“Sneak Punch,” is when the company somehow surreptitiously integrates its product into the promotion.194 The fourth category, called “A Plug in a Slug,” includes advertisements that appear non-war related but include a small message like “Buy War Bonds.”195 Finally, the least valuable advertising method was called the “Business as Usual” approach, and it referred to an “ad and advertiser who go on their merry way selling their wares with no mention of the war.”196

Members of the War Advertising Council actively petitioned the few advertisers who employed

191 John Bush Jones, All Out for Victory: Magazine Illustration and the World War II Home Front (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2009), 30-1. 192 Ibid., 33. 193 Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1998), 320-1. 194 Jones, All Out for Victory, 33. 195 Ibid., 33. 196 Ibid., 33.

78 the last method by attempting to demonstrate the benefits to “All-Out” and “Double-Barreled” promotions.197

By publicly broadcasting their contribution to the country during the war, companies were able to enhance their “moral legitimacy” among a cynical American public.198 One particularly effective advertising tactic incorporated the average soldier as a stock figure for the viewer to identify with. This “GI Joe” or “Leatherneck Joe” served as a stand-in or allegory for bravery or self-sacrifice to the viewer.199 According to Marchand, “the military uniform defined and homogenized a whole contingent of supremely meritorious common men—the enlisted men, or

GI Joes—of all the services.”200 The soldier archetype also represented a persuasive tactic that advertisers would use to inspire action in consumers: the “he’s doing his part, and so should you” parable. This strategy is significant to understanding the driving psychological force behind the purchase of war bonds, which were often promoted within individual corporations through payroll deductions and company contests.201

Within this context, corporate promotion of the war effort represented shrewd public relations maneuvers designed to prove to the nation that big business maintained a deeply vested interest in helping America win the war, even if it meant a substantial blow to company profits.

However, due to a 1935 amendment to the Internal Revenue Tax Code, corporations could write off up to five percent of their net income as a charitable contribution.202 Because of this incentive, and an additional 1942 tax break on wartime advertising, America’s corporate public relations

197 Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul, 320. 198 Ibid., 320. 199 Ibid., 324. 200 Ibid., 324. 201 Ibid., 316. Marchand continues, “The corporate effort expended on staging the various pageants, revues, and more prototypical E-award ceremonies found ample justification not only in a sense of patriotic service but also in labor relations.” 202 Rosanne Martorella, Corporate Art (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 25-6.

79 expenditures increased from “$1 million in 1939 to $17 million by 1943.”203 For company accountants, this meant that the corporation could offset advertising costs by sponsoring art with funds that would have otherwise gone towards paying the ninety percent wartime excess-profits tax. Abbott and other companies could essentially reap all the public relations benefits of corporate art sponsorship without spending a dime. According to Bogart, these incentives made corporate art patronage quite attractive to American businesses, and “big corporations became interested in experimenting with fine art painting explicitly as institutional publicity and as a means to circumvent high wartime excess-profits taxes.” Bogart continues, “To these ends, three large and controversial companies, Standard Oil of New Jersey (today's Exxon), Abbott

Laboratories, and the Upjohn Company, bought or commissioned paintings and used them for public relations and product advertising.”204 Due to its similarities with Abbott’s program,

SONJ’s commissioning of war artists is addressed within Chapter Four’s coverage of the pharmaceutical company’s artist correspondent campaign. Upjohn’s wartime advertising, on the other hand, provides an interesting comparison to Abbott’s sponsorship of The Year of Peril.

Despite a corporate history strikingly similar to Abbott Laboratories’, The Upjohn

Pharmaceutical Company employed an altogether different type of marketing strategy both prior to and during the war. In 1905 Upjohn, like Abbott, was also banned from advertising in the

Journal of the American Medical Association. According to Upjohn historian Robert D.B.

203 Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul, 320. “In May 1942, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau announced that the federal government would consider ‘ordinary and necessary’ advertising costs—those that bore ‘a reasonable relation to the business activities in which the enterprise is engaged’—as deductible for corporations before calculating their profits. This deduction was of great importance, since an excess profits tax of 90 percent was in effect. Rather than allow money to be siphoned off into the federal treasury at that rate, companies could spend these funds on advertising at minimal cost….” 204 Michele H. Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 274.

80 Carlisle, the AMA believed that Upjohn misled its customers through unethical advertising.205

Company founder W.E. Upjohn was so outraged by the AMA’s actions, that he gave up print advertising altogether and relied instead on company salesmen to telephone potential customers.206 Upjohn acknowledged the significance of art as the “intellectual and creative center of a community,” and in 1928 he purchased property to construct an “Art Center” that would later become The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.207 Nevertheless, he refused to advertise in any trade publications until the AMA finally lifted its ban on Upjohn in 1937.208 Carlisle describes the first print ads from the company after its thirty-five-year abstinence:

The company decided in 1939 to place in the JAMA a series of institutional ads and mailings to physicians. These were followed the next year by a generous schedule of ads and mailings to physicians. This 1940 thrust included 12 four- color inserts detailing “Studies in the Avitaminoses” (vitamin deficiencies). Reaching beyond the AMA’s publication, Upjohn placed ads in 80 medical and drug magazines. The next year the company lengthened its stride, placing institutional ads with the theme “Why Your Doctor Knows” in lay publications such as Time and Saturday Evening Post. A sequel to this “Your Doctor Speaks,” told of progress physicians were making in treating specific diseases. Four-color fine art paintings ran as companions to these messages.209

Geared toward projecting a positive image of the pharmaceutical industry, the Upjohn advertisements’ most significant difference from Abbott’s ads (as indicated in the quote above), was their distribution to a lay public. Because Abbott promoted through What’s New to an audience of doctors and pharmaceutical personnel exclusively, the company circumvented advertising restrictions imposed by the 1938 Wheeler-Lea Act, as discussed earlier in this study, and had more freedom to market its specific products.

205 Robert D.B. Carlisle, A Century of Caring: The Upjohn Story (Elmsford, NY: The Benjamin Company, 1987), 80-1. 206 Ibid., 80-1. 207 Ibid., 56. 208 Ibid., 82. 209 Ibid., 82.

81 Upjohn’s marketing to a public audience, on the other hand, was limited to elevating the company status through more general ads promoting abstract concepts like honesty or integrity.

The Upjohn advertisement appearing in the April 24, 1944, issue of Life magazine reinforces this assertion (figure 3.12).210 The ad includes a painting depicting a mother and her child visiting the local pharmacy to pick up medicine. Rather than mentioning a specific product, such as Upjohn’s famous line of vitamins or Kaopectate, the image instead celebrates maternity, trust, and responsibility. The infant in the stroller innocently looks up at his mother as she hands the friendly druggist a prescription. The implication is trust, as the baby’s health depends on the quality of the drug and the doctor’s analysis. An excerpt from the accompanying text by Upjohn reads, “When the pharmacist fills your prescription he is sharing with the doctor in the responsibility for your welfare. Your doctor can delegate so confidently because your pharmacist’s training in compounding and dispensing prescriptions has been intensive.”211

Upjohn’s advertisement ignores the war altogether, and if categorized within the War

Advertisement Council’s hierarchy outlined by Jones it would fall under the classification of

“Business as Usual.” This marked difference from Abbott’s wartime art sponsorship—at least as far as it was represented by Benton’s series—is further accentuated by Upjohn’s process for acquiring works for promotional purposes. Rather than securing its artists through Lewenthal’s

AAA, Upjohn contracted the William Douglas McAdams medical advertising agency.212 Then, instead of selecting artists for specific projects, the agency would choose already completed works to best highlight preselected themes.213 For example, the Upjohn ad for pneumonia

210 “Upjohn Advertisement,” Life, April 24, 1944, 63. 211 Ibid., 63. 212 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 276-7. 213 Ibid., 277. Bogart elaborates, “The company also utilized procedures that, in contrast to those of American Tobacco, would show their commitment to painters and free creativity. Upjohn selected the themes, then had representatives from the Midtown Gallery in Manhattan scour galleries, studios, and exhibitions for suitable contemporary American paintings. Once a work of art had been purchased for the collection, the McAdams agency

82 originally appearing in the Jan 22, 1945, issue of Life used Wilford S. Conrow’s already- completed portrait of book designer Bruce Rogers (figure 3.13).214

Upjohn’s unique form of corporate cultural patronage stood apart from most of its contemporaries, and in Life’s May 14, 1945, issue the magazine devoted a full three-page spread to detailing the pharmaceutical company’s sponsorship. The article explained Upjohn’s process:

“In planning their campaign the Upjohn Company first made a list of the most important health problems that face everyone in daily life. Then they hunted in museums, galleries and in artists’ studios for the best American easel paintings that would dramatize each subject.”215 While the article seemed to genuinely praise Upjohn’s ingenuity, the fact that the company regularly purchased advertising space in Life likely influenced the editorial, which essentially serves as one big advertisement about advertising. Furthermore, although the content contrasts dramatically with The Year of Peril series, Abbott set a precedent for Upjohn’s method of patronage by purchasing Benton’s finished series first and then shoehorning it into a promotional campaign. Like Abbott, Upjohn gathered the works it acquired through various advertisements and in 1946 it also organized a touring exhibition of American art.216

Upjohn and Abbott were not the only corporations to organize touring museum exhibitions for contemporary American art. Thomas J. Watson, president of International Business Machines

(IBM), began a company collection of fine art in 1937.217 This collection, titled Contemporary

Art of 79 Countries, included pieces from each of the nations where IBM conducted international would prepare copy and color layout. The paintings, rendered in an ‘expressionist-realist’ style, were clearly selected for their conservatism.” 214 “Art in Advertising: Fine U.S. Paintings Dramatize Health Care,” Life, May 14, 1945, 75. 215 Ibid., 77. 216 Ibid., 77. 217 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 273. In 1940, six years before Container Corporation of America launched its United States series, IBM established a collection of contemporary American art representing an artist from each of the forty-eight states. Such actions were clearly calculated, coming precisely at the moment when artists’ antagonisms toward business and their involvement with the left were having a notable effect on the cultural scene.”

83 business.218 The company decided to mobilize its collection for promotional purposes and after showcasing the exhibition at New York World’s Fair and at the Golden Gate International

Exposition in 1939, the company collection began a tour on December 1, 1940, at the Corcoran

Gallery of Art in Washington.219 IBM’s Contemporary Art of the United States, a second collection that toured the country from 1941 to 1945, featured “artists with two works from each state and territory.”220 In addition to serving as a vehicle for the company to promote its cultural sponsorship and enhance its image, the IBM corporate art collection had a high investment value.221 The collection continued to grow in value and was finally auctioned off through

Sotheby’s in 1995 after the recession of the early 1990s forced the company to downsize.222

Like IBM, Abbott , through Lewenthal, also organized touring exhibitions to promote The

Year of Peril and works from its subsequent artist correspondent campaigns. However, instead of creating a permanent collection from the paintings and drawings it commissioned, Abbott donated all of the works to the War Department per its original contract with the government, with the exception of the Year of Peril series, as noted above.223 Abbott’s clear desire to get rid of the series will receive a thorough exploration in Chapter Five’s look at the various reasons motivating the corporation’s decision to donate the works to the government. The vitriolic nature of Benton’s series, commented upon—and most often in a negative way—by virtually all reviewers has been seen by all Benton scholars as a primary reason for the government’s rejection of the gift. The rifts occurring within the OFF over the efficacy of the horrific images as

218 Chin Tao Wu, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention Since the 1980s (London: Verso, 2002), 222. 219 “Art of Two Fairs to Tour Nation,” New York Times, November 17, 1940. 220 Chin, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art, 222. 221 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 273. 222 Chin, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art, 211. 223 Nancy Moen, “Surreal Showstoppers: Thomas Hart Benton’s Seldom-Seen Paintings Show the Nightmare of War,” Mizzou Wire, March 12, 2012, http://mizzouwire.missouri.edu/stories/2012/year-of-peril/ (accessed March 27, 2013).

84 propaganda constitute another aspect of the same problem. A brief look at one final wartime exhibition strengthens the case.

In June 1942, two months after Abbott’s opening of The Year of Peril at Lewenthal’s gallery, the Museum of Modern Art unveiled the government-sponsored Road to Victory exhibition. The photography exhibition, directed by Edward Steichen, designed by Herbert Bayer, and captioned by Carl Sandberg, resembled Abbott’s exhibition more than any other show during the war.224 In The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of

Modern Art (1999), Mary Anne Staniszewki details the ingenuity of the Road to Victory: “The show was, in one respect, an ambitious reworking of the documentary photography that had developed under the aegis of the Farm Securities Administration. Most of the non-militaristic images in the exhibition came from the FSA.”225 Like The Year of Peril, the Road to Victory represented a similar knee-jerk reaction to the Pearl Harbor attack, in this case incorporating pre- existing photographs from the previous decade. Just like Benton’s series, the MoMA exhibition attempted to persuade isolationists that inaction could be catastrophic for the country.226

Stanisewki describes the experience of walking through exhibition’s layout:

On the left was a Dorothea Lange photo of a farmer with a halo-like cloud encircling his head; on the right, and image of the Destroyer Shaw’s magazine exploding at Pearl Harbor on which was printed ‘December 7, 1941’. Underneath the picture of Pearl Harbor was a photograph of Japanese Ambassador Nomura and Peace Envoy Jurusu laughing. The farmer was captioned, ‘War—they asked for it—now, by the living God, they’ll get it.’227

Similar to Benton’s reference to the USS Shaw in Starry Night and Casualty, the Road to Victory exhibit was designed to remind viewers of the Axis aggressors’ transgressions and evoke anger.

224 Mary Anne Staniszewki, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1998), 210. Sandberg was Steichen’s brother-in-law at the time. 225 Ibid., 215. 226 Ibid., 223. “The exhibition, originally conceived in 1941, was intended to help eliminate vestiges of what had been a powerful isolationist movement before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.” 227 Ibid., 212.

85 The MoMA exhibition’s juxtaposition of the Shaw imagery with a photograph of laughing

Japanese leaders attempted to further incense the public and provoke action. Like The Year of

Peril’s Harvest, The Road to Victory also used agrarian symbols—such as farmers carrying corn, children with livestock, and vast fields of grain—to directly connect the war to rural America and its agricultural production.228 The MoMA show launched within months of Benton’s Pearl

Harbor response also to strike while the iron was still hot. However, despite this timely usage of propaganda by both, one major difference distinguishes the government-sponsored photography exhibition from Abbott’s The Year of Peril. Although both shows meet several of Ellul’s criteria for determining propaganda, The Road to Victory “was a sanitized, patriotic portrayal of the war.”229 Stanisewki elaborates, “It contained no images of young G.I.s, with their brains blown out, no hospitals filled with U.S. amputees, no Japanese children maimed by American soldiers.”230 Benton’s series, on the other hand, wallowed in the macabre through its representations of bloody decapitations, infanticide, and disembowelment. This key differentiation, governed in part by the government’s strict censorship of photographic content and in part by sheer humane sensitivities on the part of museum open to the public, returns this examination of Abbott’s series back to the central argument for this chapter and the manuscript as a whole. By sponsoring Benton’s series of painted images responding to Pearl Harbor, rather than photography, while yet maintaining its tradition of supporting fine art, Abbott could circumvent government restrictions upon photography in its pursuit of propaganda for fear-based promotional strategies.

The government’s policy of “visual silence” proved necessary not only to safeguarding confidential strategic information, such as troop movements and weaponry, but it also helped to

228 Ibid., 212. 229 Ibid., 223. 230 Ibid., 223.

86 prevent the public from becoming “demoralized or impatient for peace” following a series of initial military setbacks during the early phases of the war.231 In addition to implementing measures restricting information that could directly compromise operations, the government established broad guidelines that prohibited the distribution of any “material that could be

‘distorted’ and ‘used as propaganda against the war effort.’”232 In The Censored War: American

Visual Experience During World War Two—a comprehensive study of the government’s control of information during the war—author George H. Roeder, Jr. describes the airtight policing of photography:

Nothing was voluntary about censorship in American combat zones. There the military allowed only accredited photographers pledged to abide by its rules, which varied over time and among services. Typically photographers submitted exposed film to field censors, who after classifying photographs in accordance with policies set by military and civilian leaders would send them back to the United States for further review and for distribution.233

Once the photographs passed the field censors and reached the US, the government’s

Office of Censorship would next determine whether or not the images were safe for the public.

In addition to withholding photographs that were overtly sexual or problematic for the country’s race relations, the censors suppressed imagery depicting dead or severely wounded American soldiers.234 The extremely graphic photographs entered a vault at the Pentagon dubbed the

“Chamber of Horrors,” where they remained tucked away until the war’s conclusion.235 In 1943 the OWI, then under Elmer Davis’ direction, pushed for more governmental transparency through the release of photographs depicting American casualties.236 Davis argued that a large percentage of the public had grown apathetic to the prolonged war, and he believed that exposure

231 Roeder, Jr., The Censored War, 8. The author notes, “Officials were especially worried that a significant portion of the population would press for a compromise settlement with Germany.” 232 Ibid., 8. 233 Ibid., 9. 234 Wagner et al., World War II Companion, 801-13. 235 Staniszewki, The Power of Display, 223. Not all of the images were released. 236 Wagner et al., World War II Companion, 801-13.

87 to the photographs would help to recharge national morale, halt the decline in voluntary enlistments, and reduce the number of strikes and “worker absenteeism.”237

After much debate the censors finally agreed to permit the publication of government- approved photographs of deceased military members, and shortly thereafter the first image of a dead soldier appeared in Life magazine’s September 20, 1943, issue (figure 3.14).238 Text accompanying the Life photo attempted to temper the reception of the blunt image by validating its necessity: “Here lie three Americans. What shall we say of them? Shall we say that this is a noble sight? Shall we say that this is a fine thing, that they should give their lives for their country? Or shall we say that this is too horrible to look at? Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore? Is it to hurt people? To be morbid? Those are not the reasons. The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels.”239

The editorial explains that the photograph was originally taken for a story published seven months earlier in Life’s February 22 issue, but that the image was not reproduced until the

September issue. The magazine then refers to the government’s new position on graphic war imagery: “And the reason we print it now is that, last week, Elmer Davis and the War

Department decided that American people ought to be able to see their own boys as they fall in battle; to come directly and without words into the presence of their own dead.”240 Davis later explained to the War Information Board in January 1944 that the major impetus behind his drive

237 Roeder, Jr., The Censored War, 15. 238 “Three Americans,” Life, September 20, 1943, 34. 239 Ibid., 34. 240 Ibid., 34.

88 to grant access to photographs of “Japanese atrocities” was to mitigate any future opposition to the “bombing of Japanese cities.”241

The use of dead soldier’s photographs to shape public opinion and create support for foreign policy reveals the government’s necessity for propaganda. Ellul’s paradigm further elaborates this process of ideological calibration within a modern democracy:

The masses are incapable of resolving the conflict between morality and State policy, or of conceiving a long-term foreign policy. . . . As a government cannot follow opinion, opinion must follow the government. One must convince this present, ponderous, impassioned mass that the government’s decisions are good and that its foreign policy is correct. The democratic State, precisely because it believes in the expression of public opinion and does not gag it, must channel and shape that opinion if it wants to be realistic and not follow an ideological dream. . . . But there is more: in a democracy, the citizens must be tied to the decisions of the government. This is the great role propaganda must perform. It must give the people the feeling—which they crave and which satisfies them—“to have wanted what the government is doing, to be responsible for its actions, to be involved in defending them and making them succeed, to be “with it.”242

Through this sophisticated propaganda machine and the promotional vehicles detailed throughout this chapter, Japan’s aggression against the United States is rendered into a visual experience. Works such as Abbott’s The Year of Peril, MoMA’s The Road to Victory, or Life magazine’s photograph of dead soldiers, each contributed to the alignment of public opinion and foreign policy. Public support for the invasion or bombing of an enemy during the war is not gained overnight; instead, it represents a slow drip process in which timely and total propaganda gradually shifts public perception.

Abbott’s sponsorship of The Year of Peril, launched nearly eighteen months prior to Life magazine’s publication of dead soldiers, represents a more savage version of exactly the same beast. While Life’s editorial reveals a more evolved descendent, both propaganda vehicles share the same goal of rallying public support for the war through the visual representation of the axis

241 Roeder, Jr., The Censored War, 15. 242 Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation, 125-7.

89 enemy’s atrocities. Directly comparing the brutality depicted in Benton’s series to either The

Road to Victory exhibit or the Life publication becomes problematic when considering that neither of the latter were permitted to photographically record the same content allowed in The

Year of Peril paintings. Just as Benton’s content mellowed in his later two paintings depicting the war (The Negro Soldier and Embarkation – Prelude to Death), one could suggest that completely unrestricted photography taken within days of the Pearl Harbor attack might have appeared much more offensive. Benton’s paintings, because they faced no government-imposed restrictions, contained the adrenaline and raw charge of emotion from a fresh wound; consequently, they were uncompromising in their vitriol, anxiety, and conviction.

Abbott’s investment broke ground in terms of funding and scale.243 American artists, such as Benton’s student Medearis, created their own visual responses to the war and to Year of

Peril.244 Magazine advertisements subsequently emerged with artists blending elements of the series’ theme and composition to create very similar arguments in support of the war effort.245

From an advertising perspective the ubiquity of Benton’s The Year of Peril, due to its reproduction and massive distribution, indicated that both the series and the company had succeeded. From a critical standpoint, however, several of Benton’s fiercest critics used the series as an opportunity to attack the artist. Samuel Kootz described the images as “pungent hatred of Japanese barbarism” with the emotional expression of “cheap melodrama.”246 Others, such as Art News’ editor Alfred Frankfurter and the New Republic’s critic Manny Farber

243 Jones, All Out for Victory, 4. 244 Medearis, “Student of Benton,” 56-9. 245 Jones, All-Out for Victory, 55-6. Jones notes a March 20, 1943 advertisement in which a killed soldier is rendered as Christ. “Lying face up this time is another dead GI, unshaven, bare chest and arms exposed, rifle lying across his body, his arms outstretched, bloody palms up, with barbed wire encircling his head; in the background, as if this weren’t enough, is a broken cross also entangled in barbed wire; the caption, superimposed on the picture itself, reads, ‘BY HIS DEEDS…MEASURE YOURS.’” 246 Samuel M. Kootz, New Frontiers in American Painting (New York: Hastings House, 1943), 4.

90 condemned the exaggerated theatrical and cartoon-like representations.247 The worst, and perhaps most frustrating, critiques leveled at the artist overlooked the entire purpose of the series to resubmit accusations that Benton supported fascism. Although artist Stuart Davis and critic

Stephen Alexander previously drew similarities between the “Regionalist’s” boosterism of

American agrarian life and the Nationalist Socialist propaganda advocated by Hitler, art historian

H.W. Janson delivered the most sustained denunciation of Benton’s work.248 Benton wrote off much of the denunciation to the work, explaining that the critics’ “aesthetic diatribe was not only irrelevant, but indicative of a complete disregard of governmental policy and of a clear need, in a dangerous time, for public stimulation.”249 The artist’s history of controversial statements alienated many of his contemporaries and likely contributed to the vehemence of lingering criticism that seemed to follow him for the remainder of his career.250

Interestingly, the government’s 1944 refusal of Abbott’s donation of the series failed to shake Benton’s perception of The Year of Peril’s significance to American art and the war. In his autobiography, the artist confidently asserts the significant impact his series made on artists, corporations, and patronage during the war:

The success of my effort went, however, far beyond mere personal acclaim. It drew general attention to the value of art as a public and patriotic instrument and suggested a way for the war-time employment of artists, a use of their representational talents on a large scale. ‘The Year of Peril’ initiated that long series of war pictures which the great corporations and the popular magazines

247 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 297-300. “Manny Farber at the New Republic called them ‘Benton’s bad paintings.’ Compositions were chaotic and colors clashed, the overall design was ‘spotty and falls apart.’ And, said Farber, the pictures failed as effective propaganda too, having ‘so little emotional truth’ that he expected curtains to go down ‘and the figures to get up and walk off the stage.’ Farber’s criticism was echoed by many in the art press as well. Art News editor Alfred Frankfurter found that Benton’s mixture of ‘vague Baroque mannerism’ with the ‘‘boys’-book imagination’ led to a series of work ‘which so overplays its theme of blood, thunder, and destruction that it ends in looking like the silliest scene in Donald Duck’s mix-ups with Jim and fly-paper.’” 248 Dennis, Renegade Regionalists, 69-78. 249 Benton, An Artist in America, 298-9. 250 Henry Adams, Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 12. The same critics that lambasted Benton and his series continued to attack the artist after the War’s conclusion, and through their tirades and influence over art historical pedagogy and scholarship, both the artist and his paintings were figuratively buried until Matthew Baigell’s excavation in the mid 1970s.

91 went in for during the period of conflict. In this way, it may be fairly said, I helped provide a living for a great number of artists who, without my initial propaganda step, might have had a tough time during the war.251

Benton was correct. Abbott Laboratories achieved such unprecedented success through the promotion of The Year of Peril that the series served as both the catalyst and template for the pharmaceutical corporation’s subsequent aviation, naval, and medical art programs.252 In the succeeding war years, Downs would create four additional major artist correspondent campaigns, coordinate numerous touring exhibitions, employ dozens of artists, and commission hundreds of works for Abbott, the pages of What’s New, and the United States government. The first of the artist correspondent campaigns, Our Flying Navy, constitutes the next chapter’s focus and continues this exploration of Abbott Laboratories’ wartime art patronage.

251 Benton, An Artist in America, 300. 252 Kogan, Long White Line, 212.

92 CHAPTER FOUR

PLANE-AIR PAINTING

Although Lewenthal served as a middleman for Downs’ solicitation of artists for Abbott

Laboratories’ marketing pamphlets and What’s New magazine, the Abbott-AAA partnership fundamentally remains a two-party traditional patron-artist relationship. The advent of the

Second World War brought with it the addition of a third party, the United States government, to this collaboration. As early as 1943, Abbott and the U.S. military began selecting artists to accompany sailors and soldiers to the various theaters of war. Charged with the assignment to create images capturing America’s involvement in the war, these artists joined the military ranks as officers. Several previous models for government-sponsored art, such as the War

Department’s Combat Art Program and the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, established a template for Abbott, and, while the pharmaceutical corporation’s combat art program is unique, it borrows heavily from these predecessors.

The greatest influence on the program, came from George Biddle, whose establishment and operation of previous war combat art programs, perseverance against a parsimonious Congress, and tenure as chairman of the War Department’s Art Advisory Committee, aided in the inception and operation of Abbott’s program. Biddle’s involvement, his political influence, and his unique vision for American art demonstrated the program’s necessity and elevated its legitimacy in the eyes of both government officials and the commercial art world.

Yet Biddle’s contributions, as essential as they were, remain only part of the story. It should also come as no surprise that Lewenthal was hand-selected to direct Abbott’s artist correspondent program, choose the artists, assign themes, and help organize exhibitions of the works. Abbott Laboratories and the U.S. government’s agreement to commission artists as

93 military personnel resulted in hundreds of paintings recording the war. Artists like Adolf Dehn,

Franklin Boggs, Georges Schreiber, Howard Baer, Joseph Hirsch, Ker Eby, Lawrence Beall-

Smith, and Robert Benney captured everything from preflight preparations and fighter planes to dirigible airships. Coverage of these artists and their works in this chapter is brief. Each deserves more scholarly attention; however, this study instead focuses on Abbott’s combat art program itself, how the sponsorship of artist correspondents during the war aligned with the company’s advertising tactics and goals, and the critical ways in which Biddle contributed the company’s strategies. Discussion of individual artists’ works is subsumed to this overarching purpose.

Exploring how Biddle, in collaboration with Downs and Lewenthal, designed and organized the pharmaceutical company’s artist correspondent campaigns first requires a look at several prototypes for Abbott’s program. New Deal art initiatives, Biddle’s launch of the 1943

Army War Art program, and Life magazine’s war art sponsorship each contributed to the design and operation of Abbott’s campaign. This chapter then examines, through artist’s contracts and funding details, the convergence of governmental and corporate interests within Abbott’s program. The negotiation of the contracts as well as the mandate given to the artists was essential, not only to the resulting style and content of the works, but also to avoiding offense or embarrassment, as with the case of Paul Cadmus’ 1934 painting The Fleet’s In.253 Organizers and artists had to gauge public sentiment, balance confidence with desperation, and maintain an image of might and righteousness in the cinema newsreels and country’s newspapers. This imperative not only guided the War Department’s approval process for the works, but it also steered Abbott’s selection and exhibition of artist correspondent collections. A closer

253 Paul Cadmus, interview with Judd Tully, March 22 – May 5, 1988, transcript, Oral History Interview, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC. The Secretary of the Navy called for the removal of Cadmus’ painting from the Corcoran’s 1934 Public Works of Art Program exhibition following its poor public reception and irreverent portrayal of service members.

94 examination of the dominant themes chosen for the Our Flying Navy collection reveals Abbott’s curatorial process and its goal for corporate messaging. Finally, this chapter provides context for

Abbott’s patronage by looking at analogous artist correspondent programs during the war. A comparison with campaigns launched by YANK magazine and SONJ reveals how Abbott’s patronage operated differently, how the pharmaceutical corporation’s sponsorship connected to its previous advertising/propaganda campaigns, and why funding artist correspondents would have appealed to the company.

Prior to discussing Abbott’s World War II art patronage, a little background in the history of combat art in the U.S. provides much-needed context. While the practice of recording battle or conflict in a visual medium or system of symbols is arguably as old as the concept of war itself, the earliest “American” combat art constitutes depictions of the country’s revolutionary struggle for independence from Britain. It is important to define the parameters of this assessment by distinguishing America conceptually from America geographically. Certainly, indigenous peoples or Native Americans created images and clothing commemorating or representing battle prior to 1776. Scholars Brian Lanker and Nicole Newnham suggest that John Trumbull served as

America’s first combat artist while sketching enemy encampments during nighttime reconnaissance missions ordered by General George Washington.254 Trumbull’s subsequent tableaux, steeped in the tradition of European history painting, transformed these sketches into epic scenes of struggle, sacrifice, valor, and victory, themes that would ultimately help to codify both the visual language and the identity of a burgeoning nation. Similarly, combat or war art from America’s later conflicts, both foreign and domestic, could not only capture the details of battle but also kindle the viewer’s fiery patriotism, pride, or support for the national cause.

254 Brian Lanker and Nicole Newnham, They Drew Fire: Combat Artists of World War II (New York: TV Books, 2000), viii-ix.

95 Effective war art celebrated the spirit of sacrifice, defined perseverance, recruited soldiers, and sold war bonds.

The government-funded art campaigns of World War I, the Great Depression, and early

World War II served as precursors that helped to shape the strategies of Abbott Laboratories’ combat art initiative. Prior to the pharmaceutical company’s war art efforts, these noteworthy programs ultimately trained the American citizen in how to see and emotionally respond to government-sponsored art. For these reasons, each of these forerunners merits a brief mention.

World War I, the first of these predecessors, created unprecedented opportunities for artists and illustrators working in the poster medium. Commercial art was ubiquitous during the first decades of the twentieth century, as noted in chapter two’s discussion of Abbott’s early promotional strategies. Technological advancements in printing methods, such as silk screening, allowed for the easier and faster production of posters.255 Coupled with the wartime need for the rapid distribution of cogent information, posters became America’s primary weapon for ideological calibration. War recruitment became an immediate concern, and organizations such as the Red Cross, Liberty Loans, and the Food Commission launched massive poster campaigns to visually and emotionally compel able-bodied civilians to enlist in the armed services.256 In response to a call by the National American Woman Suffrage Association for all suffrage organizations to cooperate in the service of the war, New York City’s Woman Suffrage Party distributed twenty thousand posters indicating the national sense of urgency throughout all five boroughs a mere eight days after the war’s April 6, 1917, declaration.257 According to Bogart,

255 Terrence H. Witkowski, “World War II Poster Campaigns: Preaching Frugality to American Consumers,” Journal of Advertising 32, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 71. 256 Michele H. Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 62-4. 257 “20,000 Enlistment Posters: Women Make Distribution in All Boroughs of the City,” New York Times, April 15, 1917. “Women working in the patriotic campaign of the Woman Suffrage Party placed 20,000 posters, calling for enlistments and urging service to the United States, in the five boroughs of the city yesterday…. The National

96 artists designed “over 700 posters, 122 placards for cars, stores, and buses, 310 advertising illustrations, and 287 cartoons” for the national war effort.258

Posters and placards, however, constituted only part of contribution American artists made to the war effort. While civilian men commonly abandoned their given trade to join the military, many artists during the first World War sought supportive roles that would still allow them to draw upon their areas of expertise. For example, artist Kerr Eby, whom Abbott would later commission for its 1943 combat art program, painted camouflage for the Army’s 40th Engineers

Artillery Brigade.259 Despite his failed attempts to acquire an official artist’s commission, Eby captured war scenes while deployed in northeastern France (Meuse-Argonne and Belleau Wood) and later created a print series based on these sketches.260

Although the government did not sanction Eby’s efforts, the War Department eventually decided to send eight artists to France to record the war. Selected by Charles Dana Gibson, these artists accompanied the American Expeditionary Forces with the instruction to create a visual account of the “terrain, uniforms, equipment, and actions of the war.”261 This initiative indicated the government’s early awareness of the significance of creating a public visual record; however, the largest mobilization of artistic efforts for a national cause occurred in the face of an entirely different type of war. Pictorial representation would demonstrate its efficacy during one of

America’s toughest domestic struggles since the Civil War: the Great Depression.

Spurred by the United States’ stock market crash of 1929, sustained debilitated economic conditions and skyrocketing domestic unemployment rates during the early 1930s resulted in the

American Woman Suffrage Association issued a statement yesterday calling for co-operation by all organizations of women for war service.” 258 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 62-4. 259 Loramy Gerstbauer and Don Myers. “Peace Profile: Kerr Eby,” Peace Review 18, no. 2 (April-June 2006): 290. 260 Ibid., 290. 261 Marian R. McNaughton, “The Army Art Program,” in A Guide to the Use of Military History, ed. John E. Jessup and Robert Coakley (Washington, D.C.: The Center of Military History, 1979), 320.

97 worst global financial crisis in history. By designing work relief programs, the Roosevelt

Administration created jobs for the sake of employing the jobless, feeding the hungry, and bestowing beleaguered Americans with a renewed sense of purpose and pride. While many of these programs led to a direct improvement to the country’s infrastructure, such as road work, levee building, and the previously discussed Emergency Work Bureau (EWB) and Rural

Electrification Administration (REA), other programs provided jobs focusing on the amelioration of much more abstract concepts, such as the spirit and beautification of America.

The most significant of these programs, the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), aimed to create opportunities for the country’s artists to find employment by adorning public spaces and government buildings with paintings and sculptures commemorating America’s spirit and fecundity. Harry Hopkins, one of the president’s advisors and a key figure in the creation of the

New Deal programs, began placing New York artists in jobs, as well as in several pedagogical positions, beginning in 1932.262 Started in December 1933 under the management of the

Treasury Department’s Edward Bruce, the PWAP extended Hopkins’ initiatives throughout other regions of the United States in order to provide artists with gainful employment.263 The program lasted only seven months, at which point the Treasury’s Section of Fine Arts assumed control of its projects; however, during that time it commissioned more than 15,000 works by nearly 3750 artists.264 A string of subsequent sister programs with new leadership and different acronyms increased the output of the visual arts to staggering numbers. According to Erika Doss, from

1935 to 1943, the funding from various New Deal agencies resulted in “some 2566 murals,

17,744 sculptures, 108,099 easel paintings, 250,000 prints, 2 million posters, and 500,000

262 Marjorie Garber, Patronizing the Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 60-1. 263 Marcia M. Mathews, “George Biddle’s Contribution to Federal Art,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 49 (1973/1974): 505. 264 Garber, Patronizing the Arts, 60-1.

98 photographs. . . . Some twelve thousand artists were hired through government relief projects and hundreds of thousands more saw their creative output at the 450 exhibitions which traveled to city halls and public schools.”265

Perhaps the most iconic visual records of the Depression era came by way of the thousands of photographs commissioned by the Historical Section, Division of Information, Resettlement

Administration (RA), which was absorbed by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1937.

From 1935 until 1943, the Historical Section Photographic Unit’s team of photographers fell under the leadership of Roy Stryker.266 The FSA’s Historical Section played an integral role not only in documenting the faces of the Depression, but also in increasing the photographic medium’s currency in popular culture and print media.267 News magazines, advertisers, and corporations took note of the photograph’s general popularity as well as its capacity to modify public perception during a tumultuous economic period when faith and support for the government waned.

Even with the promise of steady employment for artists during the Depression and the opportunity to reach a broader audience, the New Deal commissions came with significant drawbacks, which often disappear in the grand narrative of art overcoming adversity. The first of these disadvantages came in the form of diminished creative control. Artists adhered to strict mandates regarding content, as themes were limited to subjects such as agriculture, regional industry, local history, and indigenous plants or wildlife.268 Granted, the imposition of boundaries or stipulations is typically inherent to the very nature of the artist-patron relationship

265 Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 135. 266 Cara A. Finnegan, Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2003), 41. 267 Ibid., 53. 268 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 136.

99 throughout art’s history. Instances in which patrons grant commissioned artists complete autonomy are, generally speaking, an exception to the traditional practice. Nevertheless, in its attempt to appeal to the masses, New Deal art by its very nature was anti-pretense, or what

Clement Greenberg would years later refer to as pre-digested kitsch. The avant-garde would subsequently decry New Deal art, as well as commercial art of the AAA and Abbott, as a baser form of creative expression. Although Bruce set up juried competitions to assess the most talented artists for public projects, other government officials, such as FAP program director

Holger Cahill, contended that employing the jobless should be the Treasury Department’s utmost concern.269

Opposition to New Deal art initiatives also came from conservative politicians who sought to take a swipe at Roosevelt by attacking his programs. In The Reluctant Patron: The United

States Government and the Arts, 1943-1965, Gary O. Larson notes conservative efforts to eradicate the programs, “Nonaesthetic, political, and often simply irrelevant criteria were used to pry open chinks in Roosevelt’s armor, as conservative foes of the New Deal both in and out of

Congress hoped to put a halt to the ‘ever-expanding’ federal government.”270 Opponents cited the president’s programs as hotbeds for breeding Communism, and in early 1938 congressional conservatives launched an attack on The Federal Writers’ Project and the Federal Theater

Project.271 The right’s attempt to reduce government spending by cutting public funding to the arts continued into the 1940s and would later create opportunities for private enterprises to pick up the tab.

269 Garber, Patronizing the Arts, 68. 270 Gary O. Larson, The Reluctant Patron: The United States Government and the Arts, 1943-1965 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 14. 271 Ibid., 14.

100 The business world quickly noticed the popularity of WPA art and photography among the beleaguered American public, and it soon began to use work-relief images for its own commercial media distribution. Magazines such as Fortune, Life, Look, Newsweek, Saturday

Evening Post, Time, and Survey Graphic included FSA photographs in their editorials and commentary on the economic crisis, and shortly the visual syntax of the government’s programs became a template for corporations.272 Stuart Ewen elaborates, “In many ways, the American mass media actively participated in the promulgation of the FSA way of seeing. Magazines not only used FSA images directly, they also began to hire FSA photographers or photographers with an akin sensibility to produce photo essays for their pages.”273 Painters also benefitted, and

Benton and Evans, for example, received commissions from magazines American Economic Life,

Fortune, and Life.274 Once World War II commenced, corporations would learn from both the government’s programs and the media to expand their marketing campaign in even broader directions.

Of all the prototypes Abbott would later incorporate for its combat art program, George

Biddle and his government-sponsored art initiatives were by far the most significant. No stranger to politics or the Chicago art scene, Biddle exhibited at the 1933 Century of Progress, where he created a mural entitled Agriculture. 275 His profound impact on both war art and the larger discipline of American art has received minimal scholarly attention. Save for Marcia M.

Matthew’s 1973 article on Biddle, the magnitude to which the artist and bureaucrat influenced government affairs during the 1930s and 1940s has been greatly underestimated. Understanding

Biddle’s aspirations for American art prior to and during his involvement with Abbott provides a

272 Stuart Ewen, PR!: A Social History of Spin (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), 285. 273 Ibid., 286. 274 Ibid., 286. 275 George Biddle, Transcript of Diaries, April 23, 1933 – November 6, 1938, George Biddle Papers Reel 3621, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

101 critical understanding for the formation and operation of the company’s series of war art programs.

Broadly categorized as a social realist during the 1930s, Biddle worked primarily in murals and drew great inspiration from the Mexican mural movement after a stay in Mexico City in

1928.276 During this time Biddle worked alongside Diego Rivera for six months, sharing ideas, learning the fresco buono style, and reassessing his criteria for a more socially conscious

American art.277 On May 9, 1933, he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt suggesting that an artistic undertaking similar to Mexico’s mural movement would align with the administration’s efforts to improve the American spirit. Biddle writes, “The Mexican artists have produced the greatest national school of mural painting since the Italian Renaissance. Diego Rivera tells me that it was only possible because Obregon allowed Mexican artists to work at plumbers’ wages in order to express on the walls of the government buildings the social ideals of the Mexican

Revolution.”278 Biddle continues by explaining to the President that America’s young artists are equally eager to convey “the social ideals you (Roosevelt and his administration) are struggling to express,” and that the government’s aid in this endeavor would prove mutually beneficial.279

Within ten days, Roosevelt responded with an enthusiastic letter to Biddle, whom he addressed on a first name basis. He wrote, “It is very delightful to hear from you and I am interested in your suggestion in regard to the expression of modern art through mural paintings. I wish you would have a talk some day with the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Robert, who is in charge of the

Public Buildings’ work.”280

276 Robert Henkes, World War II in American Art (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2001), 43. 277 Mathews, “George Biddle’s Contribution,” 499. 278 George Biddle, An American Artist’s Story (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939), 268. 279 Ibid., 268. 280 Ibid., 269.

102 According to Garber, Biddle’s prestigious background granted him an audience with the president. She explains, “Biddle himself was a scion of an old and moneyed family, a classmate of Roosevelt’s at Groton and at Harvard (which is doubtless why his letter was not only written to FDR but also read and answered). His commitment to socially conscious art, and to government funding for the arts led to works like The Tenement, a federally commissioned mural for the Department of Justice Building in 1935.”281 Cummings connects Roosevelt and

Biddle as former prep school roommates, and he explains that the latter’s 1933 letter to the newly appointed president greatly influenced the New Deal art programs.282 Biddle actively participated in the government cultural sponsorship he helped to shape by repeatedly securing funding for several of the administration’s mural projects. He also developed many lasting connections to D.C. officials—connections that were indubitably assisted by his friendship with the President and the fact that Biddle’s brother was the United States Attorney General.283 These factors, as well as the artist’s attainment of the rank of Army staff officer during World War I, qualified Biddle as the perfect candidate for the government’s future war art initiatives.

Biddle’s successful navigation of the spheres of both art and politics increased throughout the 1930s and culminated during the Second World War. This phenomenon was by no means isolated to Biddle, as the war had caused a dramatic shift in the lives, careers, and politics of

American artists. Shortly after expressing his interest in Biddle’s proposition, Roosevelt sent another letter conveying trepidation with some of the more radical ideas coming from the artistic left, as evidenced by Rivera’s Rockefeller Center mural:

281 Garber, Patronizing the Arts, 65-6. 282 Milton C. Cummings, Jr., “Government and the Arts: An Overview,” in Public Money and the Muse: Essays on Government Funding for the Arts, ed. Stephen Benedict, 31-79 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), 41. 283 Christopher Hanson, “Drawing Flak: George Biddle and the Army’s World War II Unit,” Archives of American Art Journal 47, no. 3-4 (2008): 52.

103 Dear George: You talked of Rivera and “social ideals” and “the Mexican revolution.” You stuck out your neck. I can’t have a lot of young enthusiasts painting Lenin’s head on the Justice Building. They all think you’re communists. Remember my position. Please.284

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, several artists who had previously embraced a more radical political philosophy attempted to distance themselves from some of the highly controversial principles of the left by demonstrating their loyalty to the American war effort. Peter Blume, who also painted for Abbott, explained in a 1992 interview how some of his fellow members of the Artist’s Congress reacted to America’s involvement in the war. “I was involved with the organization of the first Congress, which was primarily, as it was called, a

‘congress against war and fascism.’ But of course when the war came, especially when the

Russians and the Nazis made a pact together, that was very, very disturbing and threw a tremendous number of people off. They were very much bewildered by this—not only bewildered but horrified and repelled at the idea that the Communist Party would possibly make a treaty with Hitler.”285 In January 1942, nearly thirty artists’ organizations united to form Artists for Victory, a coalition that pledged support for America’s war effort through the creation of propaganda.286

In October 1942, the Historical Section Photographic Unit was re-structured as a division of photography within the Bureau of Publications and Graphics, Domestic Operations Branch, of the OWI. Headed by experienced radio broadcaster Elmer Davis, the OWI disseminated war information and overseas propaganda through various distribution channels, including radio,

284 Biddle, An American Artist’s Story, 273. 285 Peter Blume, “Interview with Peter Blume,” Archives of American Art Journal 32, no. 3 (1992): 12. 286 Cécile Whiting, Antifascism in American Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 135.

104 press, theater, and film.287 Through the OWI and Artists for Victory organization, painters and designers created images to guide public sentiment, boost morale, and sell war bonds.

The idea of giving artists commissions as military officers, however, began with a request from artist Griffith Baily Coale to the Roosevelt administration. Within one week of the March

11, 1941, passage of the lend-lease act, Coale volunteered his services in a letter addressed to the

Navy. In the document he describes his love for the sea and his background in nautical art. He also offers to paint the Navy’s shipyards and vessels in an effort to contribute his unique skill set to the war effort.288 Coale received a commission the following August, and he was detached to western Iceland as a tank commander.289 While there, he painted the October 31 sinking of the

U.S.S. Reuben James, a destroyer class U.S. naval ship and the “first warship in the Battle of the

Atlantic” torpedoed at sea.290 Based upon the attention Coale’s paintings received from

American newspapers and magazines, the government decided to launch a full war-art campaign consisting of “officer artists.”291

When it came to choosing a chairman in charge of overseeing the selection of war-artists, the War Department’s Art Advisory Committee found that George Biddle fit perfectly. In

January of 1943 Major-General Frederick H. Osborne of the Special Services Division issued the order to Lieutenant General Brehon B. Somervell for a team of artists to be sent “to active

287 Ewen, PR!: A Social History, 341. 288 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 89. The Authors quote Coale’s letter, “As I am an artist who has made a lifetime study of maritime lore, as well as historical research…. And as I am a small boat sailor and thorough lover of the sea and ships, I would like to offer my services to my country by applying for a commission as a reserve officer in the United States Navy. I propose to make paintings from sketches and drawings sure and afloat of ships, yards, docks, and all the intricacies incorporated in the running of a mighty Navy.” 289 Ibid., 89. 290 “Reuben James Hit: First American Warship Lost in War Torpedoed West of Iceland,” New York Times, November 1, 1941. 291 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 89. Editorials like Nancy MacLennan’s August 15, 1943 “Our Naval Exploits: A Pictorial Record,” printed in the New York Times, highlighted Coale’s work as a combat artist and the tragedy in which 100 men died from the German attack.

105 theaters to paint war scenes.”292 Somervell sent for Biddle, who was living in Rio de Janeiro at the time and painting a mural for the National Library.293 The following month, Biddle outlined the objectives of the War Department’s Art Advisory Committee in a February 10th letter to

Secretary of War John J. McCloy:

Since our Committee is charged with the responsibility of creating an historical and pictorial record of the war, it is essential that all members clearly envisage an all-embracing program. . . . The sending of artists to theatres of war operations will constitute only one element of our program. If we do a first rate job we must: (1) Send artists to active theatres of military operations. (2) Cover the home front by giving artists specific assignments under the War Department contracts. . . . Soldier artists should be contacted and advised that any paintings, drawings, water colors, etc., that they might do of camp or training activities should be submitted to the War Department Art Advisory Committee for examination.294

Along with his petition for a central headquarters, Biddle also outlined the Committee’s organization and created a position within the project tailor-made for his résumé:

A Committee member should be commissioned with the highest Army rank possible to serve as a liaison officer between the Committee and the Army. It is necessary to have an officer rather than a civilian assume those duties since the right sort of authoritative and understanding contact must be maintained if our operation is to proceed smoothly. Further, it is highly desirable that this liaison officer be an artist who will actively participate in the program and who will serve abroad. Such a liaison officer will be in a position to know both the artist and military points of view, and will be able to settle justly any problems that might arise in the field.295

Of course Lewenthal was also involved in the selection process, as he had the greatest connections to artists through his AAA agency.296 Together Somervell, Lewenthal, and Biddle handpicked forty-one “artist-correspondents” to accompany military personnel to the various theaters of war.297 Acclaimed author John Steinbeck also served on the Committee, contributing

292 Mathews, “George Biddle’s Contribution”, 518. 293 Ibid., 518. 294 George Biddle to Secretary of War John J. McCloy, 10 February 1943, George Biddle (Mural and War Art) Reel P17, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., n.p. 295 Ibid., n.p. 296 McNaughton, “The Army Art Program,” 320. 297 Hanson, “Drawing Flak,” 52.

106 to Biddle’s vision for the program. In a March 30, 1943, letter to Reginald Marsh, Biddle elaborates upon the artist selection process, Steinbeck’s input, and his program’s goals. He wrote,

“In making their selections, the Committee generally recognized the importance of graphic reportage. But it was looking for something more. John Steinbeck, another of our Committee, wrote: ‘A total war would require the use not only of all the material resources of the nation but also the spiritual and psychological participation of the whole people, and the only psychic communication we have is through the arts.’. . . Our choice was difficult. Many of our finest artists were physically or emotionally unsuited for this work.”298 Of the artists selected, twenty- three were already enlisted in the military, and the remaining were civilians.299

Each artist was eligible for detachment to one of the following five theaters of war: the

Caribbean/South America, Southwest Africa, England/Iceland, Northwest Africa/Near East, and

Asia (India/Burma/China).300 Biddle, at fifty-eight, was initially considered too old to serve, but he ended up filling one of the slots for North Africa, and within months he was serving alongside soldiers in Tunisia.301 Shortly after receiving this assignment, he wrote to his fellow artists on

April 16, 1943, with the information that “Reeves Lewenthal, Executive Secretary of the War

Department Art Advisory Committee, will take my place while I am away.”302

Biddle’s diary, which he began during his time stationed in Tunisia and continued throughout his deployments to Sicily and Italy, was published in 1944 as Artist at War.

Recording the artist’s experiences as an Army war correspondent from April 23, 1943, to

December 13, 1943, the diary provides unparalleled real-time insight into Biddle’s program. His

298 George Biddle to Reginald Marsh, 30 March 1943, Correspondence: War Art Unit, 1943-1944, Box 2, Folder 34, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 299 Margaret E. Wagner et al., eds., The Library of Congress World War II Companion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 832-3. 300 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 2-6. 301 Mathews, “George Biddle’s Contribution,” 518. 302 George Biddle letter to War Art Units, 16 April 1943, George Biddle (Mural and War Art) Reel P17, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

107 daily entries also capture the sense of optimism and uncertainty often obscured by hindsight.

These entries reflect the musings of an artist correspondent who has no idea when the war will end. The text also provides a glimpse into Biddle’s expectations for his Army War Art program.

His July 15, 1943, entry reveals:

I have always felt, but felt more keenly as this black catastrophe burst upon the world, that art to survive must take upon itself an active status in restoring the balance of civilization. . . .When life is radiant art can reflect its splendor; when the world is crumbling through evil into chaos, art must voice its protest. This is not a moral sanction; it is our will to live. . . . The program set up an organizational mechanism which would be needed in the postwar years, the years of planning and of moral rehabilitation when art, as a spiritual therapy, would be so needed in our world. 303

Aligning with thoughts expressed in a memorandum sent to the National Resources

Planning Board the previous year (in which he petitioned for the formation of a Bureau of Fine

Arts), Biddle believed that his war art program could establish a framework for the revitalization of government-funded art programs after the war’s conclusion.304 Despite his lofty goal, Larson notes that the artist’s Army War Art program, which required a mere $35,000 to start, “hardly signaled a rebirth of the FAP.”305 Nevertheless, Biddle believed in his program and was willing to brave treacherous conditions alongside other soldiers in order to advocate for it.

Christopher Hanson explains the rigors encountered by Biddle and his cadre of painters:

“The first small teams of artists began arriving in the Aleutians and South Pacific in March 1943.

Despite sniper and artillery fire, blizzards, malarial swamps, and even paint-eating vermin on one particular island, the artists braved on and were soon sending batches of work back to the

Pentagon, sturdily packaged for rough ocean crossings that often took weeks.”306 As difficult as it was for these artists to protect their supplies while deployed, painting or sketching still held

303 George Biddle, Artist at War (New York: Viking Press, 1944), 57. 304 Larson, The Reluctant Patron, 18. 305 Ibid., 18. 306 Hanson, “Drawing Flak,” 52.

108 several advantages over photography at the time. Photographers, burdened with heavy equipment, were ill suited for this service. Painting, on the other hand, offered artists greater facility with color and night scenes, as well as the ability to alter or mask certain details not meant for public dissemination.307

Despite the advantages painting and drawing held over photography, each artist- correspondent received a camera, filter, and light meter to aid them in their work. On August 16,

1943, Lewenthal distributed letters to each of the artists explaining to them that, although the

War Department would provision these supplies, they would remain the property of the government and “are non-expendable, are presumably signed for by the individuals and are to be returned to the Government upon conclusion of the field work.”308

Contracts and pay stubs reveal that artist-correspondent positions offered highly competitive wages in addition to photographic equipment and other art supplies. Artist David

Stone Martin’s September 10, 1942, transfer paperwork categorizes him under the CAF-12 pay grade with the title of Senior Visual Information Specialist and an annual salary of $4600.309

Although employment lengths did not last a full year, and subsequent wage records drafted by the United States War Department’s Engineer Office indicate Martin received a P-4 rating with payment of $3800 per annum (plus 25% differential duty for deployment in Cairo, Egypt), both salaries far exceeded wages paid to both enlisted personnel and most officers.310 In fact, in 1943 a Navy seaman first class earned $1886 per year after taxes, nearly half of what an artist-

307 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, ix. 308 Reeves Lewenthal, memorandum, August 16, 1943, David Stone Martin Papers, 1939-91, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 309 U.S. Government Office of Emergency Management, David Stone Martin Transfer Orders, September 10, 1942, David Stone Martin Papers, 1939-91, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 310 War Department’s Engineer Office, Report of Field Personnel Action for David Stone Martin, May 6, 1944, David Stone Martin Papers, 1939-91, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

109 correspondent received.311 Wage records from the 1945 NAVPERS (Navy Personnel Command) indicate that in order for an officer to receive a similar annual base pay of $3750 in 1943, they needed to earn the rank of Lieutenant and have served a minimum of 17 years in the military.312

While most of the artists seemed pleased with these arrangements and their assignments, others, such as Marsh, appeared much more demanding in regards to location and ancillary duties. On February 15, 1943, Biddle wrote to Marsh, “There seemed to be the general feeling that you were not entirely happy in some of your recent war assignments, and this indeed is borne out by your letter. It is just possible however, as the work may shape up along rather broader lines than we had first anticipated, that there may be just the sort of limited assignments of which you spoke, and in this case you may be absolutely sure that I’ll insist on keeping your name before the committee.”313 Six weeks later, Biddle followed up addressing Marsh’s concerns with his billet, “I was convinced, as I told you, that you would be one of the very first to be selected by our Committee as soon as they were aware that you wished to accept assignment without reserve. As soon as we know exactly what fronts are opened and exactly which artists have accepted, I will give you a telephone call and consult you on what sort of assignment you would be most interested in.”314 Marsh eventually agreed to his contract stipulations, and he created over a dozen paintings while detached with an LST training fleet during Abbott Laboratories’ Amphibious Operations project.315

311 T. Horodysky, “Truth about Salaries, the Draft, Unloading Ships, and Court Martials,” American Merchant Marine at War, http://www.usmm.org/salary.html (accessed June 11, 2011). 312 U.S. Navy, “Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officer of the United States Navy and Marine Corps,” NAVPERS 15013, July 1, 1945, quoted in Bluejacket, “Navy Officer Annual Pay and Allowances 1943-1945: Annual Pay and Allowances of Commissioned and Warrant Officers, Navy and Naval Reserve,” http://bluejacket.com/usn_pay-scale_1943-1945_officer.html (accessed June 19, 2011). 313 George Biddle to Reginald Marsh, 15 February 1943, Correspondence: War Art Unit, 1943-1944, Box 2, Folder 34, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., n.p. 314 Ibid., n.p. 315 Abbott Laboratories 1944 artist correspondent program, Amphibious Operations, is covered in chapter five of this manuscript.

110 Altogether, a total of thirteen teams of artists were sent to war zones between February and

August 1943.316 During this period two thousand paintings and drawings, fifteen hundred of which were approved by the War Department’s Art Committee, were created.317 Unfortunately for Biddle and these artists, the program lasted a mere six months, at which point congressional funding cuts ceased operations. Biddle, still stationed in Tunisia when Congress made its decision, received a letter from Lewenthal on July 16, 1943, alerting him to the news:

Dear George: My letter to you of two days ago telling you that we had come out whole in the Congressional action was premature. . . . In conference between the House and Senate, our project was killed! Not only were we eliminated, but the Section of Fine Arts was liquidated, Special Service in the Army involving painting was stopped, and the Graphics Division of the OWI was eliminated. This indeed is a blackout of Art in America. There is little more I can tell you except that the liquidating process is a heart-rending affair. Upon instructions from Washington, I’ve had to speak with each of the nineteen men we have here who are awaiting transportation. There is little more, George, that I feel that I am capable of writing. I know you will understand. Blessings, Reeves.318

In a rare display of anger, an upset Biddle responded to Lewenthal’s news: “I do not think you can entirely kill—thus in a moment of political conference jobbery among a few tobacco- spitting Congressmen from the Bible Belt—the most intelligent and generous art program that any warring country has ever organized for its artists.”319 But once again, Biddle’s optimism quickly reemerges a few lines later: “This you cannot so easily kill. Still one must make the best of it. Salvage something from the ruins of the Congressmen’s spite. Begin building anew.”320

316 McNaughton, “The Army Art Program,” 321. 317 Ibid., 321. 318 Reeves Lewenthal to George Biddle, 16 July 1943, quoted in George Biddle, Artist at War (New York: Viking Press, 1944), 57‐8. 319 Biddle, Artist at War, 58. 320 Ibid., 58.

111 Despite the proportionally small budget for the Art Program (only $125,000 was allocated from the Army’s $71.5 billion 1943-44 budget), the House of Representatives meticulously explored the budget to see where cutbacks could be made.321 The program’s strongest proponent,

Representative A. Willis Robertson of Virginia, advocated the program over photography for its

“vision and artistic skill;” however, Congressman Joe Starnes of Alabama dismissed Biddle’s program as a “piece of foolishness.”322 Larson identifies the congressional attack on Biddle’s program as residual hostility towards New Deal cultural programs reemerging to strike down publicly funded art.323 Ultimately, Congress voted not only to eliminate all funding to the program, but it also mandated that after August 31, 1943, the Army could no longer sponsor overseas art programs.324 All active-duty participants would be transferred to other duty stations, and civilian artists’ employment would be terminated.325

There remained one major loophole in the congressional ruling. If Biddle could acquire funding from a non-governmental source, and if he could attain cooperation with the various branches of the armed forces, then he could continue the program. Biddle persisted to lobby for funds for his program, and on November 26, 1943, he finally had the opportunity to petition none other than General Dwight D. Eisenhower. While deployed in Algiers, Biddle met the general for a half hour portrait session and said to him, “I will cut off five minutes from the half hour if you will let me have that five minutes to talk to you about a phase of my program, which

I feel has a real effect on soldiers’ morale.”326 The general nodded in agreement and Biddle, after

321 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 7. 322 Ibid., 7. 323 Larson, The Reluctant Patron, 19. “The episode was important as a reminder that the spirit that killed the New Deal art projects war far from dead—Congress could still find the cultural needles in the haystacks of federal spending—and as a warning that the arts could expect similar treatment at the hands of Congress in the years to come.” 324 Hanson, “Drawing Flak,” 55. 325 Ibid., 55. 326 Biddle, Artist at War, 239.

112 finishing his sketch in twenty-five minutes, explained to Eisenhower the program’s significance and demise at the hands of Congress.327 After listening to Biddle’s proposal, the general asked that the artist provide him with a memorandum outlining the program, to which Biddle gratefully obliged:

It has been my experience, based on six months’ contact with the One, Three, and Nine Divisions in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, that the attachment of members of the Army Art Corps to combat divisions is of immediate benefit to troop morale. The front line soldier, the dog-face, feels subconsciously that in his humble, anonymous way, he is part of destiny; and he is proud that the incidents of his daily life should be historically recorded. Almost more important than this, however, is the fact that the war artist shares the life of the soldier; carries his own equipment, sleeps and marches with him in all sorts of weather; and undergoes whatever danger he encounters. The soldiers view the artist a little as they view the regimental padre. He is their agent, working for them.328

Biddle concluded his letter by explaining to Eisenhower that even with non-governmental funding, the congressional cuts prevented the War Department from continuing the program unless it received permission from the various “commanders of the different war theaters.”329

The program was eventually granted approval on a case-by-case basis provided that it could obtain private sponsorship. Fortunately for Biddle, Lewenthal, and their team of war correspondents, Life magazine’s editor Daniel Longwell stepped in to help.

Longwell realized that by funding the program Life would not only garner good faith among the American public, but it could also obtain vital access to imagery from the warfront.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the magazine had already dealt with government strictures regarding photographic content too gruesome for publication, and it was not until the middle of

1943 that the War Department relaxed these guidelines.330 Because of this censorship, and the

327 Ibid., 238-9. “I broached the matter about which I wanted to speak to him. I told him in a few words of the organization of our project, and the fact that Congress had withdrawn the funds necessary to continue the program.” 328 Ibid., 238‐9. 329 Ibid., 238-9. 330 Doss, “Introduction,” 12.

113 strict regulations on war photography, Life had already sent painters to document the war prior the United States’ involvement. For example, after the government’s fall 1941 refusal to allow a

Life photographer to document its lend-lease transports, the magazine petitioned to send a painter instead.331

The Navy Public Relations department granted artist Tom Lea access, and Life published his images in its May 25, 1942, issue.332 This event marks Lea’s second commissioning for the magazine, as he and several other Life artists had already appeared in the magazine’s July 7,

1941, feature “Defense Paintings: Life Recruits Major Artists.”333 The article highlights Paul

Sample, Henry Billings, Fletcher Martin, Aaron Bohrod, Barse Miller, and Tom Lea for their contributions to the program. “Life commissioned seven of the nation’s leading artists, shown on this page, to do the paintings reproduced hereafter. Now owned by Life, they constitute

America’s first gallery of defense art.”334

Given a specific subject and three weeks to paint it, artists visited domestic armed forces bases, shell factories, and service clubs to provide Life readers a glance at military preparations five months prior to the country’s official involvement in the war.335 While Life’s prewar sponsorship of artist correspondents serves as precursor to Biddle’s Army War Art program (as well as Abbott’s), the major differences in the magazine’s early efforts are the length of projects, the artists’ civilian status, and the company’s retention of works created for its corporate art collection.336 Nevertheless, the magazine’s patronage served as a prototype for Biddle’s wartime art program, which eventually commissioned three of Life’s painters as military artists.337 In this

331 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 115-7. 332 Ibid., 115-7. 333 “Defense Paintings: Life Recruits Major Artists.” Life, July, 1941, 60-4. 334 Ibid., 60. 335 Ibid., 60. 336 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 120. 337 Ibid., 117. Edward Laning, Millard Sheets and Aaron Bohrod joined Biddle’s Army Art program in 1943.

114 context, Longwell’s sponsorship of Biddle’s program after congressional cuts serves as a natural extension of the magazine’s prewar artist correspondent campaigns. Longwell met with the

Secretary of War shortly following the cuts to the program, and the two agreed that the Army would provide lodging and transportation to the artists as long as Life paid their wages.338

While Longwell’s support of Biddle’s program prevented it from extinction, the artist’s initial proposal to the Secretary of War indicates that Biddle hoped for and likely anticipated auxiliary funding. In section three of his letter Biddle states that one of the main goals of his program is to “encourage the press, industry, and private organizations to commission artists to record certain phases of military activity. The stimulation of such private initiative can result in valuable benefits, and well may prove to be the vehicle which will supply a certain amount of pictorial matter which will make the difference between a completed and uncompleted program.”339 Biddle’s expectation of non-governmental financial backing from the onset of his combat art program has until now passed unnoticed. His foresight made the nearly seamless transfer of war art funding from the Treasury to the private sector possible. Consequently, Life magazine established a precedent that Abbott would soon follow, and during the next two years combat artists would create over twelve thousand drawings and paintings.340

The impact of the war sent tremors through Chicago, and businesses quickly reacted to the pecuniary and public relations prospects newly available to them.341 Abbott Laboratories recognized the congressional shutdown of Biddle’s war art program as a unique opportunity to aid the struggling artists and spread their good will; however, their first step towards continuing

Biddle’s initiatives had begun several years earlier when they secured the services of Reeves

338 McNaughton, “The Army Art Program,” 321. 339 Biddle to John J. McCloy, 10 February 1943. 340 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, vii-viii. 341 Fairfax M. Cone, With All Its Faults: A Candid Account of Forty Years in Advertising (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), 148.

115 Lewenthal. In addition to what has already been covered here, his previous work securing contracts for magazines like Life and Time, as well as corporations like Standard Oil and the

American Tobacco Company, made him the perfect fit for overseeing Abbott’s combat art program.342 Abbott artist Joseph Hirsch recalls his dealings with both Lewenthal and Abbott in a

1970 interview: “He [Lewenthal] involved Abbott Laboratories of Chicago during the war in sending artists to the fighting fronts. I went on three assignments for him that were underwritten by Abbott Laboratories who gave the pictures. It was a series of documentary pictures. The theory was that the camera could not censor itself, that artists could get the kind of visual information. The pictures were pretty successful. I would say there were about twenty artists involved altogether. The majority of these concerned themselves with medical activities you know Abbott Laboratories is a pharmaceutical company. It was the medical aspects of men in uniform.”343

Franklin Boggs, another Abbott artist demonstrates Lewenthal’s significance in enlisting artist support for the program: “‘Reeves Lewenthal called me on the phone. He says, ‘get ready.

We’re gonna make a war-correspondent out of you.’. . . It was really Reeves Lewenthal's imagination. He went to Abbott Laboratories and convinced them that they could make a real contribution by doing something about the Medical Corps in the war. I thought it was a great idea and went ahead with it.”344

Lewenthal’s relationships with artists helped to fill Abbott’s roster; however, Biddle played the critical role of defining the parameters of the project and establishing the guidelines and provisions of the artists’ contracts. His initial memorandum to the combat artists indicates both

342 Ibid., 145-56. 343 Joseph Hirsch, interview by Paul Cummings, November 13 – December 2, 1970, interview tape 1, transcript, Oral History Interview, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC. 344 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 159.

116 his expectations for the program and his desire that each individual artist involved maintains his or her unique vision. He writes:

You are not sent out merely as news-gatherers. You have been selected as outstanding American artists, who will record the war in all its phases; and its impact on you as artists and as human beings. The War Department Art Advisory Committee is giving you as much latitude as possible in your method of work, whether by sketches done on the spot, sketches made from memory, or from notes taken on the spot, for it is recognized that an artist does his best work when he is not tied down by narrow technical limitations…. Any subject is in order, if as artists you feel that it is part of the War; battle scenes and front lines; battle landscapes; the wounded, the dying and the dead; prisoners of war; filed hospitals and base hospitals; wrecked habitations and bombing scenes; character sketches of our own troops, of prisoners, of the natives of the country you visit.345

In the same letter, Biddle also emphasized the program’s significance within the larger canon of art history. He wrote, “Try to omit nothing; duplicate to your heart’s content. Express if you can – realistically or symbolically – the essence and spirit of War. You may be guided by

Blake’s mysticism, by Goya’s cynicism or savagery, by Delacroix’s romanticism, by Daumier’s humanity and tenderness; or better still follow your own inevitable star. We believe that the

Army Command is giving you an opportunity to bring back a record of great value to our country.”346

Artists responded positively to the creative flexibility promised by the combat art program, and Biddle cleverly appealed to potential candidates by challenging the perception of stifling government patronage. RA and FSA art funding, for example, brought with it notoriously stringent guidelines that soured artists’ perceptions of government sponsorship.347 The private sector proved that it could be just as repressive, as American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike campaign had recently grown a reputation among AAA artists as too restrictive.348 Biddle knew how to

345 Biddle to War Units, 1 March 1943, n.p. 346 Ibid., n.p. 347 Ewen, PR!: A Social History, 275. 348 Doss, “Catering to Consumerism,” 159.

117 entice his fellow artists by providing an opportunity for them to create art and serve their country while preserving their artistic vision.

Although Biddle encouraged inspiration and creativity among the program’s artists, the

War Department’s Office of the Chief of Engineers negotiated the final say in approving the works shipped back to their headquarters. Article 3h of their official regulations governing the organization and operation of the program specified that “no written or pictorial matter may be released, or showings made, except by specific authority from the Public Relations Branch of the

War Department.”349 The military had learned a valuable lesson from the controversy sparked by

Cadmus’ The Fleet’s In, and it made certain subsequent contracts clearly secured the right of refusal for all works (figure 4.1). Cadmus, in a 1988 interview with Judd Tully, describes the fallout from the painting: “It rather alarmed me at first because I did get threats on the phone too, people going to come and beat me up – sailors and things like that. For a little while, I kind of hid. . . . I showed what they thought was a disgraceful aspect of our Armed Forces. I mean the sailors were human beings who went around with prostitutes and behaved drunkenly, and they didn’t want that mentioned. They only wanted them known as heroes and – well, goody-goodies is what they wanted sailors to be. Which they’re not. I mean they weren’t in those days anyway.”350 By requiring a submission and approval process for Biddle’s combat art program, the Public Relations Branch of the War Department proactively prevented any controversial imagery from ever reaching the public.

Additionally, article four of the regulations included in the February 1943 memorandum entitled “Organization of the War Department Art Advisory Committee” strictly prohibited any

349 War Department Office of Engineers, memorandum, “Organization of the War Department Art Advisory Committee”, 20 February 1943, George Biddle (Mural and War Art) Reel P17, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., n.p. 350 Cadmus, interview with Judd Tully, March 22 – May 5, 1988.

118 official portraiture produced without prior approval from the Office of the Chief of Engineers.351

Exceptions for higher ranked military officials occurred on a case-by-case basis, and artists were occasionally granted permission to create portraits; however, these types of images were not for public distribution, as evidenced by John Steuart Curry’s portrait of Brigadier General Roy C.

Heflebower. The general writes to Curry on May 23, 1945, “One of my officers brought to me a copy of the April issue of ‘What’s New’, and I was delighted to see there colored reproductions of some of your work. Of course, Camp Barkeley was very dear to my heart and the records in color, some of the things we did there, are most interesting to me. If they make any colored reproductions of the portraits you made of me, I would be glad, indeed, to have a copy.”352 Curry respectfully responds to Heflebower’s public relations executive officer, Captain W.E. Laswell,

“I am very chagrined that they did not reproduce the General’s portrait. I liked it and certainly did a lot of hard licks on it. I understand from my agent that the War Department put thumbs down on individual portraits in all the Abbott series. I am sorry about it, and I am going to write to Charlie Downs of Abbott Laboratories and see if they will send a reproduction, if they have made one, directly to the General.”353 Wasting no time, Curry writes to Downs to relay

Heflebower’s request:

I received the ‘What’s New’ with the reproductions of my work and I think you have done a very fine job on the reproduction. Even my under painting seems to count and gives the reproductions a fine quality. I just have received a letter from Brigadier General Roy C. Heflebower, Headquarters Hospital Center, Camp Butner, North Carolina, asking me if it is possible to obtain a reproduction of the portrait which I did of him. I wonder if you could send on a good-sized photograph. As you know, he was the commanding general at Camp Barkeley and gave me his personal quarters to live a work in. I do feel obligated to him in a way

351 War Department Office of Engineers, memorandum, “Art Advisory Committee”, n.p. 352 General Roy C. Heflebower to John Steuart Curry, 23 May 1945, Correspondence and Project Files: Army Medical Department Art Project, 1944-1945, Box 1, Folder 30, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 353 John Steuart Curry to Captain W. E. Laswell, 25 May 1945, Correspondence and Project Files: Army Medical Department Art Project, 1944-1945, Box 1, Folder 30, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

119 and a little chagrined that his portrait could not have been reproduced. He worked hard sitting for it.354

This series of letters highlights many details regarding the nature of Abbott’s program, the stringent image selection process established by the War Department, and the general treatment war artists received from their military commanders. This correspondence is also significant because it reflects the cordial relationships between Downs and the Abbott artists. Finally,

Curry’s letter to Downs sheds light upon the artist’s expectations and appraisal of Abbott’s reproduction, providing a glimpse into his own working methods and consummate professionalism.

Although Abbott Laboratories agreed to pay all costs connected to creating the artworks

(art supplies and framing, artist pay, uniform costs, living expenses and insurance), the produced works would remain the property of the United States Government.355 Upon completion, the sponsored drawings and paintings were categorized as gifts, and the government barred both

Abbott Laboratories and the artists from deriving any profit from these works. While the contract also prevented Abbott from publicly broadcasting the details regarding its donation of the works to each of the military branches, the company negotiated permission to reprint copies of the approved images in its publications.356

Perhaps the greatest curiosity and misconception regarding Abbott’s war correspondents is the extent to which the artists yielded to the military aspects of their new positions. Not all of them received the general’s living quarters as Curry had. Artists’ contracts and correspondence suggest that the officer-artist was expected to do more than just wear a uniform and paint. As early as their recruitment, Abbott artists received treatment similar to military personnel and

354 John Steuart Curry to Charles Downs, 25 May 1944, Correspondence and Project Files: Abbott Laboratories, 1945, Box 1, Folder 23, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 355 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 153-4. 356 Ibid., 153-4.

120 agreed to adhere to the Articles of War, the same set of regulations governing all soldiers. The first article of their contracts clearly stated that, “as a civilian accredited to the Army of the

United States within or without the territorial limits of the United States, I am subject to the

Articles of War and all regulations for the Government of the Army deemed pursuant to law, when with such forces.”357 Even prior to deploying to their various theaters, the artists were to follow to military protocol, and on May 5, 1943, Lewenthal needed to remind to Marsh of this:

Security officials in Washington are concerned by the loose talk of the artists selected by the War Department Art Advisory Committee for overseas assignments. We have been instructed to call the attention to each artist to the articles of the Espionage Act. Overseas destinations must never be divulged. By revealing such destinations enemy agents are afforded opportunities to gain clues as to the dispatch of convoys, since it is only necessary to keep track of the individual and note his departure to surmise the departure of ships for a particular area. All War Art Unit Members’ attention is also called to the fact that no employee of the War Department should give any interviews nor news items to publications. All releases must be issued by the War Department Bureau of Public Relations.358

The War Department also expected artists to obtain consent prior to releasing any information to the public, even after the program’s conclusion. This mandate has most certainly contributed to the paucity of information surrounding the program, as only official documents and contracts survive to help piece together details of the artists’ involvement. Each artist agreed to the contractual provision that he would “submit to the War Department for purposes of censorship all such material written after my return, if the interviews, written material, or statements are based on my observations made during the period or pertain to the places visited under this authority. This includes all lectures, public talks, ‘off the record’ speeches, and all photography intended for publication or release, either while with the armed forces of after my

357 War Department Bureau of Public Relations artist contract signed by Joseph Hirsch, 23 December 1943, Joseph Hirsch Reel (Clippings and Scrapbook) D-387, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 358 Reeves Lewenthal to Reginald Marsh, 5 May 1943, Correspondence: War Art Unit, 1943‐1944, Box 2, Folder 34, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

121 return, if they are based upon my observations during this period or pertain to the places visited.”359 Artists’ contracts also contained a clause that would require them to perform additional duties as seen fit by their command’s leadership “under the direction of the Special

Services Division.”360 Tasks included, but were not limited to, the decoration of public spaces, such as recreation rooms, administration buildings, mess halls, and classrooms.361 Not only did artists assigned to the Navy receive watch duty while their ships were underway, but they were also required to undergo officer training.362

Serving alongside the military in various war zones posed numerous dangers, and the artists’ contracts accounted for the possible loss of life or limb that soldiers faced. To account for these dangers, the third article of the combat artists’ contracts stated: “I waive all claims against the United States for losses, damages, or injuries which may be suffered as a result of this authority.”363 Additionally, war correspondents received military supplies and weaponry, as

Abbott artist Franklin Boggs notes in his interview with Lanker and Newnham. According to

Boggs, “When I really got to where the action was taking place, I flew in a B-25 bomber with

General Chase and three of his colonels. On the plane they said, ‘Here’s your parachute and your kit. . . . By the way, here’s an automatic weapon, and here’s some hand grenades. You may need those.’”364 Correspondence from Captain O. B. Andrews to the C.W.S. Supply Officer on March

359 War Department contract Hirsch, 23 December 1943, n.p. 360 Ibid., n.p. 361 Ibid., n.p. 362 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 91-2. “They would occasionally be called upon to render other services that call upon their skill as artists, such as observing color conditions to aid in camouflage, or drawing charts and identification silhouettes.” 363 War Department contract Hirsch, 23 December 1943, n.p. 364 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 159.

122 1, 1943, requests gas-protective equipment for Joseph Hirsch, another Abbott artist detached with the army.365

Participation in a war art program could also prove deadly, as was the case for war correspondent and celebrated American illustrator McClelland Barclay. Barclay had already served two domestic tours for the United States Navy, one in 1938 and the other in 1940, where he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander.366 Along with his standard military duties, Barclay employed his artistic skills to design aircraft camouflage and recruiting posters while stationed in New York.367 After a short four-month tour in the Pacific, he petitioned to redeploy to the region in March of 1943 to serve as a war correspondent.368 During his last detachment, he perished during a Japanese attack on his ship. According to the Department of the Navy’s Historical Center:

LCDR Barclay made short tours of duty in both the Atlantic and the Pacific on the U.S.S. Arkansas (BB-33), U.S.S. Pennsylvania (BB-38), U.S.S. Honolulu (CL- 48), and U.S.S. Maryland (BB-46). On 18 July 1943, Barclay was aboard LST- 342 (Group 14, Flotilla 5) when it was torpedoed by Japanese submarine Ro-106 at 1:30 a.m. He had been on board since the first of the month, sketching and taking photographs, during which time LST-342 had been carrying ammunition and supplies to Rendova, New Georgia in the Solomon Islands from Guadalcanal. The torpedo struck the aft portion of the ship where officers and others, including Barclay, were berthed. The stern sank immediately. Barclay, along with most of the crew, perished.369

Barclay received various posthumous accolades, including a commendation from Admiral

Chester William Nimitz of the Navy and the celebrated Purple Heart medal.370 His death stood as a reminder to artists of the risks connected to serving as war correspondents. While the Axis

365 Captain O.B. Andrews Jr., Letter to C.W.S. Supply Officer, 44 Grosvenor Sq., 1 March 1944, Joseph Hirsch Reel (Clippings and Scrapbook) D-387, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 366 Patricia Gostick, “McClelland Barclay: More than Beautiful Women,” Illustration 7, no 28 (Fall 2009): 50-3. 367 Ibid., 50-3. 368 Ibid., 50-3. 369 Naval Historical Center, “The Art of McClelland Barclay in the Naval Art Collection,” The Department of the Navy, http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/artist/b/barclay/barclay%201.html (accessed June 11, 2011). 370 Gostick, “McClelland Barclay,” 50-3.

123 provided the constant threat of military attack, treacherous conditions of the war front posed additional hazards to soldiers and artists alike. Kerr Eby, another artist who also served as a camoufleur during World War I, caught a debilitating tropical disease while deployed by Abbott in Bougainville in 1943.371 Even after returning to the United States, his health never fully recovered, and he died within the next two years.372

The various aspects of Naval Aviation—from pre-flight preparation and physical training, to aerial drills, equipment repairs, and dirigible surveillance—constituted Abbott Laboratories’ first unified war art exhibition, Our Flying Navy. For this project, Biddle, Lewenthal and Downs collaborated to recruit artists Howard Baer, Robert Benney, Adolf Dehn, Don Freeman, Joseph

Hirsch, Georges Schreiber, and Lawrence Beall Smith. The paintings and drawings included in

Abbott’s Our Flying Navy collection reveal works that passed through two separate review phases. The first, administered by the War Department, determined whether or not the artists’ images adhered to regulations dictated by the government. A criterion for selection was based primarily upon the work’s ability to reflect the military and its members in a positive light. The second review phase, conducted by Downs and Lewenthal, decided which works sufficiently highlighted the AAA artists and corresponded with the themes or values promulgated by Abbott

Laboratories. A brief look at a selection of works from Our Flying Navy reveals this set of dominant themes prevalent in Abbott’s reproduction, exhibition, and marketing of the artist correspondents’ images.

The first major theme emerging in Abbott’s Our Flying Navy series focuses on technology in depictions of military vehicles and weaponry. Just as Abbott’s The Year of Peril’s text and images Starry Night, Indifference and Casualty mourned the destruction of military technology

371 Gerstbauer and Myers, “Peace Profile: Kerr Eby,” 291. 372 Ibid., 291.

124 (and Exterminate celebrated factory production), the pharmaceutical corporation’s aviation project reflected the company’s emphasis on industry. For example, Hirsch’s paintings for the collection capture pilots and crewmembers preparing for battle, emphasizing the theme of military might through modern machinery. Naval PBM patrol bombers, Beachcraft transports, and SOC scouting planes receive just as much focus as the men servicing and operating them.

His 1943 painting Food for the “Yellow Peril” (figure 4.2) reflects this attention to mechanization and precision. In this image a flight cadet sits upon the wing of the Navy’s N3N-3 training biplane while he and his machinist’s mate fuel the tank. Popularly referred to as the

“Yellow Peril,” this biplane provided students with their first opportunity to practice flying outside the classroom simulators. One part descriptor and the other an admonition, the nickname derived from the bright yellow color accorded to the vehicle and the danger a cadet faced if he failed to pass the final solo flight examination.373

Flight cadets demonstrated a respect for their equipment through routine maintenance, cleaning, and inspection of their vehicles. Hirsch captures this deference for the “Yellow Peril” and other war machines throughout the series, and in his 1943 painting Back from Patrol (figure

4.3), the romantic rendering of the beaching crew’s admiration of massive mechanical power borders on the sublime. Staffage figures in the foreground look upon an immense Navy PBM, the Martin Mariner, as it gently floats towards them in preparation for tethering. Based upon the cool palette of blues and greys with the splashes of brown, as well as the rendering of the rightmost staffage figure, Back from Patrol loosely pays homage to Caspar David Friedrich’s

1818 painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. The machinist’s mate stands with his back

373 Mid-Atlantic Air Museum, “Naval Aircraft Factory N3N-3 ‘Yellow Peril,’” Mid-Atlantic Air Museum, http://www.maam.org/aircraft/n3n.html (accessed June 16, 2011). At the time, the term “Yellow Peril” also referred to the Japanese enemy.

125 towards the viewer, left leg forward, bent right elbow with hand on hip, admiring the overwhelming power of the PBM, an immense symbol of military might.

The monumentality rendered in Hirsch’s work garnered much attention from the military high command. Shortly following the completion of Hirsch’s aviation series, surgeon General of the Navy Admiral Ross McIntyre specifically requested that the war correspondent join the ranks of artists selected to document Navy medicine in the South Pacific.374

While a large number of Abbott artists received overseas billets, many of them found themselves initially detached to domestic military installations. The collection Our Flying Navy showcases several series of paintings created by artists assigned to naval air stations and training centers. Just miles away from Abbott’s Chicago headquarters, the Navy trained pilots and aviation personnel at its Great Lakes military installation.375 The collection, which details various aspects of aeronautics training, flight preparation, skirmish, surveillance, crew readiness, and the

WAVES, demonstrates above all a great variety in theme and style. Even in the case of duplicate tasks, such as Hirsch and Schreiber’s overlapping 1943 assignment to the Navy’s Pensacola training facility, artists still managed to deviate from one another in the handling of their subjects.

Hirsch’s charcoal sketch On the Mark for example, depicts nearly the same subject from the same angle as represented in Schreiber’s 1943 watercolor Training in Homicide (figures 4.4-4.5).

Hirsch however focuses on the psychological intensity of the scene by presenting a closer view of the Navy Gunnery candidate and his instructor. The teacher furrows his brow as he leans over the shoulder of his focused younger student to give his instruction or critique, and the gunner focuses on his target through the sights on the meticulously rendered flexible anti-aerial rear-seat machine gun. The detailed weaponry emphasizes machinery’s significance in the second war and

374 Ibid., 100. 375 The Art Institute of Chicago, “Exhibitions,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1907-1951) 38, no. 3 (March 1944): 51.

126 fuses with young gunner, whose torso harness supports and binds him to his weapon. Hirsch captures movement in this still image by rendering the ghostlike reverberation of the trainee’s right arm.

On the other hand, Georges Schreiber’s 1943 painting Training in Homicide focuses less on the mechanical details of the weapon and more on the group of men involved in the firing drill. The intensity and concentration of the gunner and his instructor, as seen in Hirsch’s sketch, give way to an overall sense of greater relaxation. Schreiber’s figures, while attentive, lean against the rails of the artillery station noting their classmate’s level of accuracy and awaiting their own turns. Schreiber, who a few months later would join Benton as part of the two-man war-correspondent team aboard the U.S.S. Dorado naval submarine, paints in a style similar to the celebrated regionalist. The sinewy, slightly twisted figures and loose billowy folds of their blue work uniforms hint at Benton’s figural rendering and manifest themselves to an even greater degree in Schreiber’s Classroom Flight (figure 4.6). In this painting, also executed at Pensacola’s

Naval Air Station in 1943, Schreiber draws even more heavily upon Benton’s style by adding a skewed perspective to the undulating lines of the furniture and interior space. Floor planks converge at a false vanishing point and multiple light sources create peculiar shadows in which the classroom’s shape contracts and expands as if breathing. Again, technology serves as the central focus in the painting, providing training to the student and preparing him for battle. The student sits in a LINK apparatus, while his instructor acts as flight command and records the simulator’s movement. From the distorted operator’s chair and desk to the compressed right wing of the LINK (which would without extreme foreshortening pierce through the classroom window), Schreiber presents a scene in a style reminiscent of the dynamic interiors created by

Benton. The vignette “Frankie and Johnnie” on south wall of Benton’s 1936 Missouri capitol

127 mural St. Louis and Kansas City, for example, uses a similar style to collapse perspective, compress space, and create movement for a wildly expressive effect.

Robert Benney, who also contributes to Abbott’s focus on technology, took a more conventional approach to the program’s concept of war correspondents by creating romantic war tableaux featuring epic aerial battles. Merging the grand tradition of British Naval painting with modern aviation and his own theatrical flourishes, Benney creates intense action scenes chronicling historical skirmishes at sea. Benney began painting at age nineteen after working as an assistant to the director of New York’s Board of Transportation.376 There he developed an affinity for constructing miniature models of city transit vehicles, and he carried this fascination into his later work. Photographed here painting The Kill (1943), Benney continued to use miniatures, such as the tripod-mounted model of the Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber, in the construction of his highly-detailed action scenes (figure 4.7). In The Kill, a navy torpedo bomber drops a depth charge upon a surfaced German U-boat. The seamen on the enemy ship defend themselves while the bomber returns fire from a rear-mounted machine gun (figure 4.8). Benney works in a painterly manner rendering a scene from an exhilarating vantage point that places the viewer in the middle of battle. Rather than recording the subject based upon firsthand experience, as the previously discussed artists typically did, he uses models and his knowledge of military warfare to create a scene based open an extrapolation of the events. Benney’s caption for the The

Kill, “All the vivid action in this scene has been repeated many times in actual combat by U.S.

Navy and Marine airmen,” further establishes the image as a symbol or distillation of air-to-sea battle, rather than a specific moment.377 In this way, just as Biddle had proposed to the War

Department, painting proves much more efficient than photography in capturing the spirit or

376 United States’ Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations and Abbott Laboratories, Our Flying Navy, 101. 377 Ibid., 170.

128 essence of a concept. Benney captured multiple scenes at the height of dramatic intensity by comprising them from pastiche elements and models. The intricacy of detail and frenetic action in Benney’s work provided variety in Abbott’s aviation collection and serve as a foil for the more personal scenes depicting the soldiers involved in the Navy’s department of aviation.

These more intimate representations of armed services men and women provided Abbott

Laboratories with a second major theme for its Our Flying Navy collection. Focused heavily on the human component of the war, this theme embraced both teamwork and the prevalent

“everybody is doing his/her part” ethos of America during this period. Abbott artists Lawrence

Beall Smith and Howard Baer emphasize these subjects through their representations of teamwork, camaraderie, and the WAVES program. Smith, more than any other artist correspondent hired for the navy aviation program, highlights the peaceful, intimate moments between military members. In works like In the Briny (1943) and A Fighter Hits the Sack (1943), he showcases the human side of military might in scenes that focus on teamwork and camaraderie. In the Briny depicts a bomber that has expended all of its fuel prior to reaching its aircraft carrier’s flight deck (figure 4.9). Grumman torpedo bombers serve as the backdrop to the flight officers and handling crews as a rescue team battles the wind and waves first to safely recover the pilot and then prepare the plane for reclamation by a nearby destroyer class vessel.

The theme of teamwork amid the natural forces of the sea evoke American painter Winslow

Homer’s heroic marine scenes. Smith, who received his formal artistic training at the Art

Institute of Chicago, would have undoubtedly been familiar with Homer’s late work.378 Homer’s paintings, such as The Life Line (1884), Undertow (1886), and the Art Institute’s The Herring

Net (1885), convey the central theme of bravery in the face of the an overwhelming omnipotent

378 The Art Institute of Chicago, “The Herring Net,” Collections, http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/25865?search_no=2&index=0 (accessed June 20, 2011).

129 sea. The leitmotif of rescue and teamwork also emerge throughout all of Smith’s work for

Abbott’s aviation series. In A Fighter Hits the Sack, individuals in the landing crew cooperatively taxi a Grumman fighter back into its parking place (figure 4.10). Through the linear progression of figures and the central theme of young men cooperatively engaged in a united physical imperative, Smith projects the notions of teamwork and collective strength.

In his painting Smith also focuses on a concept overlooked by his war-correspondent colleagues and most war artists at large: that of leisure. Military preparedness required systematic drills, scheduled watches, and crew readiness, and the attack on Pearl Harbor further demonstrated the significance of constant vigilance. Whether standing watch duty or just managing downtime, soldiers filled gaps of inactivity with fellowship, games, and idle chatter.

One such practice, nicknamed the “scuttlebutt,” roughly equates to the rumors often circulated at work near or “around the water cooler.” The scuttlebutt, a cistern containing fresh drinking water aboard the deck of ships, offered seamen a moment of pause and refreshment. It also formed the conceptual locale and appellation for a military rumor mill. Smith’s The Scuttlebutt Session

(1943) candidly captures a plane handling crew waiting for the return of navy air squadrons

(figure 4.11). Each sailor takes advantage of the downtime differently, and while some engage in the latest gossip, others use the bodies of their shipmates as makeshift pillows in order to take a quick nap. Smith quickly sketches the forms of bodies, loosening the delineations between figures to echo the cohesion of the men as they rest, recuperate, and bond.

Military officials, aware of the psychological benefits of camaraderie and scheduled breaks, encouraged downtime recreation by implementing morale-boosting initiatives down the change of command. Smith recognizes the significance of the leisurely moment captured in The

Scuttlebutt Session, and while it is not nearly as dramatic as Benney’s dogfight tableaus or

130 Hirsch’s reverence for sublime military might, Smith’s portrait of soldiers relaxing remains just as significant to the Abbott collection and the war effort.

Abbott’s war-correspondent program also carried with it an additional morale-boosting effect to soldiers deployed with an artist attached to their squadron. Just as street caricaturists literally and figuratively draw a crowd as they work, Abbott artists received much attention from other military personnel interested in their creative processes. Lanker and Newnham describe this interaction as having a “profound impact” on the soldiers.379 Upon returning home artists often received correspondence from soldiers or their families requesting copies of recently published images created abroad. This was especially the case when soldiers lost their lives or went missing-in-action. Curry, for example, wrote to Downs in July 1945 after learning of the death of a young man he had used as a model for the cover of What’s New in 1942:

I am enclosing a clipping about the death of Dave Schriener on Okinawa. He was the boy I used as a model for my studies for the football cover I did three years ago for What’s New. About six months ago his father wrote to me and asked if I had a color representation of the painting. I did not. I have been looking around desperately for the studies which I made of Dave and when I find them I will send them to Mr. and Mrs. Schreiner. I do not know what you expect to do with that cover that I made for What’s New, but if it is not being exhibited or kept for any special purpose I am sure his father and mother would appreciate very much having it if the Abbott Laboratories allow them to have it. I have said nothing about this to his parents. He was a wonderful boy and this is one of the dreadful fruits of war.380

Style remained fairly consistent among the Abbott artists. War correspondents, like many of their New Deal predecessors, chose to render their subjects in a representational rather than abstract manner. Adopted by popular illustrators and the majority of commercial artists at the time, this clear-cut visual style appealed to the masses and proved the most effective for

379 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, x. 380 John Steuart Curry to Charles Downs, 2 July 1945, Correspondence and Project Files: Abbott Laboratories, 1945, Box 1, Folder 23, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

131 conveying an accessible populist message.381 Fittingly, an illustrator was also among the ranks of

Abbott’s artists. Howard Baer, who worked for Esquire, travelled to Norman Oklahoma’s Flight

Training School and Anacostia Maryland’s Naval Base to document the Navy’s WAVES program.382

Intended to fill vacant technical and mechanical support positions in the Navy, the WAVES program trained and employed women in vocations ranging from machinist and aerographers’ mates to parachute riggers.383 Although women could serve in the military as Yeomen as early as 1917, duties were limited to clerical and typist positions.384 The 1942 passage of Roosevelt’s act expanding women’s roles in the military led to the authorization of the Women’s Reserve on

July 31, 1942.385 The following year, almost 4000 women were placed in essential engineering jobs at approximately forty different naval air stations.386 The accompanying write-up to

Abbott’s Our Flying Navy print publication details the program by striving to highlight progressive themes of gender equality:

This new organization is the WAVES—the Women’s Reserve of the Naval Reserve—a trim, capable contingent vastly outsizing its predecessor and supplying a multitude of skills in what used to be exclusively a man’s Navy. The WAVES were incorporated into the Navy—they are neither a corps nor an auxiliary—for a specific purpose: to take a fighting man’s place ashore. Their responsibilities and duties are cast in the same Navy mold as are those of their male shipmates; they are subject to the same rigid discipline, enjoy the same rights and privileges, and perform the same tasks.387

Baer’s 1943 painting Busy Hands showcases WAVES demonstrating their technical proficiency as they mend engine cowlings. Dressed in denim coveralls with their hair safely wrapped in blue turbans, the women work alongside their male machinist counterparts, asserting

381 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 11. 382 United States’ Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations and Abbott Laboratories, Our Flying Navy, 99. 383 Ibid., 55. 384 Ibid., 54. 385 Ibid., 54. 386 Ibid., 55-6. 387 Ibid., 52‐3.

132 themselves as equals in a trade traditionally assigned to men only (figure 4.12). Baer transforms the muted greys of the hangar workshop into a vibrant and colorful scene by replacing neutral metallic tones with cornflower blue, indigo, and deep iridescent pinks. His loosely rendered strokes lend a fluidity to the precision and solidity of the tools and machine parts, further accentuating the malleability of the cowling and mastery of the machinists. Like Hirsch and

Schreiber, Baer focuses on technology and teamwork in his images for Abbott. His representation of female technicians recognizes America’s all-encompassing effort to win the war.

Naval aircraft frequently required routine maintenance and repair, and WAVES were called upon to inspect fuel lines, patch wings and even calibrate the structural integrity of fuselages.388

In Baer’s 1942 painting A Woman’s Task (figure 4.13), three WAVES and two male machinist’s mates work on the engine of a naval amphibian. The composition’s central figure, a blue coverall-clad WAVE twists a socket wrench with her left hand while her other hand holds the mounting bracket in place. The woman’s uniform, her headscarf, and her muscled right forearm recall J. Howard Miller’s We Can Do It for Westinghouse. While Miller’s image has become iconic for World War II in recent years, and it was created a year prior to Abbott’s series, it is improbable that Baer could have seen it.389 Nevertheless, Baer, like Norman Rockwell and other artists, capitalized upon the popular theme of women acquiring traditionally male vocations during the war. Both the image and the caption embrace the notion that the Navy’s WAVE program expands the role of women in the workforce and allows for greater gender equity. The

388 Ibid., 56. 389 James Kimble and Lester Olson, “Visual Rhetoric Representing Rosie the Riveter: Myth and Misconception in J. Howard Miller’s ‘We Can Do It’ Poster,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 9, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 533-569.

133 caption for A Woman’s Task reads, “If she’s a Navy WAVE, then woman’s task may be anything that a man’s task may be, and it’s a good bet that she will handle it efficiently.”390

Baer’s images and captions for his WAVES series highlight the Navy’s progressivism during the war years; however, many captions bear nuances of gendered or sexist bias. 391 While it may be unfair to hold these ideas to the light of modern scrutiny, they present a fascinating glimpse into the environment in which Baer created these images. Fuel for the Air Fleet, for example, depicts a WAVE fueling a Navy tank truck and bears the caption “Perhaps it wasn’t long ago that this WAVE was dispensing beauty oils and creams. She is still dispensing—but for the Navy now.” (figure 4.14).392 Other images of parachute packing and fabric work propose that woman have innate proficiencies perfect for certain tasks. Baer’s WAVE on a Wing (1943) depicts a woman holding a thread and needle as she repairs an aileron. The text for this image, perhaps the most egregious example of a caption’s embedded gender bias, reads “WAVES’ familiarity with the sewing machine and kindred feminine skills has many definite advantages in the Navy.” (figure 4.15).393

Additionally, nearly all of the captions for Baer’s series affirm, in one way or another, how astounding or extraordinary it is for women to carry out the same tasks as men. By constantly overstating or overcompensating for the inequality, they compound and accentuate its existence.

Despite Roosevelt’s 1942 passage of the initiative leading to the WAVES program—and Baer’s series of paintings showcasing the working women—this inequality still existed in the very

390 United States’ Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations and Abbott Laboratories, Our Flying Navy, 145. 391 Maria Elena Buszek, Pin Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006): 202-3. Interestingly, Howard Baer’s earlier depictions of women for Esquire are much different than his depictions of WAVES for Abbott. The captions, however, correspond with his earlier work. “Esquire’s women were, like the ‘wild west’ female stars of the pre-Code movie fanzine, represented in the various stages of undress and often humorous, modern sexual situations. The cartoons were part of Esquire’s appeal. . . . Illustrators E. Simms Campbell, Alex Raymond, and Howard Baer helped to construct the modern ideal of the Esquire woman in the magazine’s one-panel comics.” 392 United States’ Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations and Abbott Laboratories, Our Flying Navy, 148. 393 Ibid., 147.

134 regulations prescribed for female military members. Waves were restricted from serving outside the continental United States, and under no circumstance could they ever “exercise military authority over men.”394 Nevertheless, Baer’s series of paintings depicting WAVES offered diversity to the collection showcased in Abbott’s Our Flying Navy, and it drew huge support throughout Abbott Laboratories’ massive promotional campaign.

Once the artists’ paintings met both the War Department’s qualifications for reproduction and public dissemination, Abbott Laboratories utilized several different, yet interconnected channels of distribution. The first and most natural government-approved vehicle for transmission was What’s New. As discussed in the second chapter, Abbott’s print journal had established a track record of featuring works from Lewenthal’s artists for its marketing campaigns. Full-color reproductions of the combat art program’s paintings and drawings appeared in the pages of the company journal. The War Department also approved of the use of

Abbott imagery for the production of war bond and recruitment posters.395 Local pharmacies, which carried the company’s prescription and over-the-counter products, proudly displayed the patriotic full-color reproductions of the Abbott-sponsored paintings in their shops.396 Department stores and car dealerships also received copies of the images, and Abbott cleverly provided instructions to local businesses on how to transform these reproductions into displays.397 While

Abbott’s agreement with the government prevented the company from directly profiting from the images, distribution of the reproductions directly stimulated war bond purchases.

From the start of the company’s involvement in the war, Abbott also began featuring a series of editorials under the heading “News and Views of Abbott War Painting Projects.” These

394 Ibid., 58. 395 Kogan, Long White Line, 212-3. 396 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 156. 397 Ibid., 156.

135 brief What’s New editorials discussed the cursory details of the program permitted by the government. They also provided a report of the various museum exhibitions of the Abbott collection of war correspondents’ drawings and paintings. Like Abbott’s The Year of Peril exhibition, Our Flying Navy also toured throughout the nation, and proceeds from the shows and their accompanying war bond drives accounted for huge sums of money generated in support of the war effort. At the Art for Bonds exhibition, for example, opening on April 9, 1943, at the

Brooklyn Museum in honor of Bataan Day, the government received pledges totaling roughly eight hundred million dollars.398 Kogan details the popularity of these drives as well as government’s involvement in them: “Individual paintings also were sent to training camps and hospitals, and when the entire batch of 250 works in the Abbott Collection of Medical

Department War Art was presented to the Army in June, 1945, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in

Washington, Major General Norman T. Kirk, the Army’s Surgeon General, praised the collection as ‘an eloquent contribution to the war effort which will be far reaching and everlasting.’”399

A November 22, 1943, New York Times review of Abbott’s Our Flying Navy exhibition describes the integration of photography into the show:

Secretary Knox today accepted for the government nearly 100 Naval paintings and drawings, the work of seven civilian artists under commission to Abbott Laboratories, pharmaceutical company. . . . The paintings . . . were hung beside a showing of black and white naval photographs done by a unit under Comdr. Edward J. Steichen, USNR. Contrast between the two media was brought out keenly by ‘The Kill,’ an oil by Mr. Benney showing a torpedoed submarine, and ‘Dive Bomber Over Wake,’ a picture of a plane approaching the island. . . . After Dec 12 the show will leave the gallery for a tour throughout the country. The artists obtained the material from life, working at naval stations. The result from the civilian spectator viewpoint particularly, deepens, colors and dramatizes the perception of war.400

398 Kogan, Long White Line, 212-3. 399 Ibid., 212-3. 400 “Civilian Paintings Accepted By Navy: Knox, at Exhibit in Washington, Welcomes Work of 7 Artists as Aid to the Service,” New York Times, November 22, 1943.

136 The show’s subject and inclusion of naval photography reveals the broader governmental effort to expose Americans to the “new air age.”401 Steichen, who was in charge of the Naval

Photographic Unit, previously showcased military aviation in the MoMA show Airways to

Peace: An Exhibition of Geography for the Future.402 Held from July 2 to October 31, 1943— shortly following the success of Road to Victory—Airways to Peace preceded Abbott’s Our

Flying Navy in its design to demonstrate to the public the ways in which air transportation changed the face of battle.403 Similar campaigns, such as Power in the Pacific (held at the

MoMA from January 25 to March 20), also attempted to show the power of America’s air forces.404

Abbott’s collection differed from Steichen’s MoMA exhibitions in large part due to the company’s sponsorship of painting instead of photography. However, even among contemporaneous art-correspondent programs, Abbott’s patronage greatly contrasted. Yet, of all the prototypes for Abbott’s wartime art campaigns, YANK Magazine’s war art program is not only the most similar, but it represents the truest artist correspondent program. Painters and writers in the program were all enlisted Army soldiers assigned the task of creating content for the publication. If for any reason the program was cut, YANK artists, unlike Abbott officer-artists, would remain in the military under new orders. Initiated in May 1942 by New York advertising executive Egbert White, YANK Magazine was designed to improve troop morale by providing soldiers with entertainment, editorials, and most importantly, a voice.405 Franklin S. Forsberg explains, “YANK editorially is strictly ‘by and for’ enlisted men. The best writers, photographers

401 Mary Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1998), 227. 402 Ibid., 227. 403 Ibid., 227. Staniszewski explains, “ “At the entrance was a wall-size photomural of sky and clouds. Near the top of the image was an airplane from which two lines ran downward to a picture of a falling Icarus.” 404 Ibid., 224-5. 405 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 123.

137 and artists in khaki are sought in camps in the U.S. and abroad and ordered to duty with Yank.

Soldiers first, writers second, Yank’s own staff is fighting on every front with guns, typewriters, cameras and sketch pads.”406

Similar to What’s New in its distribution to a specific audience of military personnel— rather than the public at large—YANK was published weekly through the War Department’s

Special Service Division.407In YANK, The Army Weekly: Reporting the Greatest Generation, author and former YANK correspondent Barrett McGurn describes the magazine and its impact at the time:

YANK was the friend and colleague of the World War II soldier and was itself part of the enlisted U.S. Army. It let off soldier steam with ‘Mail Call’ letters to the editor allowing troops to air their beefs at a global level. With its ‘What’s Your Problem?’ section providing frank, if not always wished-for answers, it was a sort of secular chaplain. With its pinup pictures of gorgeous women back home YANK spoke to the longings of young men who sometimes went months without seeing a woman. With its eyewitness staff reports of courage and death on battlefields around the world, the soldier weekly helped ease the strain of combat by sharing in the very horror.408

Prior to YANK’s distribution to the armed forces, military officials expressed trepidation in relinquishing complete editorial control to enlisted men and requested that Secretary of War

Henry L. Stimson first preview the magazine.409 Stimson approved the magazine sans the pin-up section; however, the feature was later reintroduced, “amidst the chaos of wartime.”410 Believing that soldiers would not read what was given to them for free, editors priced YANK at a nickel a copy and began the mass distribution of the magazine to domestic bases and military installations

406 Franklin S. Forsberg, “Yank Illustrates the War,” The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 10, no. 4 (April 1943): 12. 407 Ibid., 12. Brig. General Frederick H. Osborn was in charge of the War Department’s Special Service Division at the time. 408 Barrett McGurn, YANK, The Army Weekly: Reporting the Greatest Generation (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2004), vii. 409 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 123. 410 Ibid., 123. “ According to Art Weithas, former art director of Yank and himself a combat artist, Mrs. Stimson felt that the full-page pin-ups of glamour girls included in the issue pandered to the ‘baser instincts’ of the enlisted men. The Secretary of War ordered them deleted.”

138 worldwide.411 Paintings from Army artist correspondents provided enlisted men with views from other theaters through the eyes of their brothers-at-arms. Through its relevance, front-line reporting, and full-page pin-ups, the magazine’s circulation rapidly grew to an estimated ten million readers by the end of the war.412

The quality of YANK’s content also greatly contributed to the magazine’s huge success.

Paintings, drawings, comic strips, and photography were first-rate due to the large amount of high-level talent culled from the military’s massive recruiting efforts.413 The high enlistment rate also provided YANK with a substantial audience for its worldwide circulation. McGurn points out that this “total mobilization” necessary for YANK’s success will likely never reoccur, further revealing why the magazine is such an inimitable historical phenomenon.414 YANK also offers a unique perspective on World War II visual culture because it was in large part comprised of reader contributions, democratizing both its content and its production.

Unlike contemporary publications Life and What’s New, the Army magazine did not advertise any products or corporate organizations. Its sole promotion of the lives and experiences of Army soldiers does not preclude it from qualifying as propaganda. However, the extraction of corporate interest reveals a war art model most similar to Abbott’s. By donating the completed works from its artist correspondent campaigns, Abbott attempted to extract its overt corporate interest in promoting the war effort. What’s New and YANK magazines’ publication of their respective artist correspondents’ works provides another parallel to the two programs. YANK,

411 McGurn, YANK, The Army Weekly, viii-ix. 412 Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire, 124. Lanker and Newnham explain, “In November 1942 the first foreign edition of the magazine was printed in London. By war’s end, the magazine was published in twenty-one editions, in every active theater of war and defense command around the world. It had a paid circulation of more than two million and was thought to be read by ten million.” 413 McGurn, YANK, The Army Weekly, ix. 414 Ibid., ix.

139 like Abbott, also organized an exhibition of its war art, and from March 16, 1943 to April 18,

1943, the MoMA provided America with its “first public view” of the magazine and its art.415

If YANK’s artist correspondent program and exhibitions serve as one end of a scale representing wartime art production without corporate interest—with Abbott’s campaigns located somewhere in the center—SONJ provides the opposite end. SONJ featured the work of its artist correspondents, Adolf Dehn, David Fredenthal, Reginald Marsh and Millard Sheets, in its September 29, 1944, war art exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of art. 416 Installed on the museum’s fifth floor gallery, the set of thirty-six paintings, all watercolors, depicted the “various aspects of the oil industry ‘at war.’”417 Dehn and Marsh reported to Standard Oil’s Baton Rouge refinery for the project, while Fredenthal and Sheets were already overseas on assignment with

Life magazine.418 Besides the size of the SONJ program, the major difference between it and

Abbott’s earlier artist correspondent campaign is its direct endorsement of the company’s product. Whereas Abbott artists received assignments to highlight a particular aspect of the war,

SONJ’s correspondents were required to create works that promoted both the war and oil’s contribution to the conflict. Additionally, while it is certainly possible that all four artists coincidentally chose to paint all thirty-six works in watercolor, it is far more likely that SONJ either set restrictions on the medium or excluded completed non-watercolor works from its exhibition.

Bogart notes that SONJ, like Abbott, commissioned war artists to rebuild its corporate image.419 Following wartime accusations that the company had assisted the Nazis through a 1929

415 Forsberg, “Yank Illustrates the War,” 12. 416 “Brooklyn Museum Displays War Art: Oil Industry’s Part in World Struggle Depicted in the Work of Four Artists,” New York Times, September 29, 1944. 417 Ibid., n.p. 418 Ibid., n.p. 419 Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and Borders, 274-5. Bogart explains, “A 1929 cartel agreement with the German petro chemical company I.G. Farbenindustrie was later alleged to have helped the Nazi military by delaying

140 contract with German company I.G. Farbenindustrie, SONJ developed a public relations division and solicited the AAA’s stable of artists to create works for purpose of corporate rebranding.420

Standard Oil’s second major artist correspondent program, exhibited at Lewenthal’s gallery on January 9, 1946, again featured paintings celebrating oil’s importance to the war. This time

SONJ commissioned sixteen artists from AAA, which included previous participants of Abbott’s program: Thomas Hart Benton, Adolf Dehn, Georges Schreiber, Ernest Fiene, Howard Baer,

Robert Benney, Francis Criss, Kerr Eby, Carlos Lopez, Franklin Boggs, and Lawrence Beall

Smith.421 Despite the similar touring exhibition, partnership with Lewenthal, and the commissioning of nearly a dozen of the same artist correspondents, Standard Oil’s war art program differs from Abbott’s in terms of its subject matter and the company’s intent for the works. A January 6, 1943, newspaper feature describes the content of the show: “Canvases portraying oil as it comes from the ground, from the Arctic Circle and jungles; the conversion of oil to finished products and its transportation art part of this collection.”422 The review continues,

“Of especial interest are those paintings by artists who traveled to war theatres as combat correspondents and recorded their impressions of the transportation of oil on the seas, over the

Led-Burma Road, into Russia through Iran and across Europe.”423

While SONJ collaborated with the government in executing its program, the art commissioned had much more specific mandates in regards to subject matter and can be directly linked to the company’s commercial goals. Because the commissioned work openly represents oil, the company’s decision to keep the paintings for its corporate art collection is a forgone

American development of synthetic rubber.” Bogart also notes that SONJ reproduced the AAA images in The Lamp, its company publication. 420 Ibid., 274-5. 421 “Story of Oil in War Recorded by Artists,” New York Times, January 6, 1946. 422 Ibid., n.p. 423 Ibid., n.p.

141 conclusion. In SONJ’s sponsorship model, both the patronage and the works provide value to the company. Abbott’s model, on the other hand, contractually obligates the donation of the works and thereby negates the arts’ investment and commodity value to the company. This key critical difference separates Abbott’s sponsorship from all other corporate war art patronage. It also plays a major factor in the following chapter’s attempt to answer the question: how significant was content to Abbott’s war art patronage?

From 1942 until the end of the war, the government produced an estimated fifty million war bond posters from Abbott-commissioned paintings.424 After earning several decorations from the military for his meritorious contribution to the war effort, Abbott head Clough received the following commendation from Commander of the Army Service Forces, General Brehon

Sommervell at the war’s conclusion: “Your company has played a very important part in producing the equipment and supplies which have been such a decisive factor in winning the war.

You and your associates and employees must have a deep sense of satisfaction as you look back upon your accomplishments on the war production front.”425 The victory also belonged to

Lewenthal and Biddle, whose efforts to revitalize government art programs, once impeded, created sponsorship opportunities for Abbott and other wartime corporations.

Even after the war Biddle continued to advocate for contemporary American art and artists.

In his impassioned 1949 letter to the president of the Metropolitan Museum, Biddle encourages the exhibition of American artists’ work in an effort to keep with the times. He specifically cites the success of the exhibitions of war art resulting from his artist-correspondent programs. He wrote, “I join wholeheartedly with this protest against the declaration of the Museum that it is

‘concerned primarily with the visual arts of the past.’. . .What would you think of the New York

424 Kogan, Long White Line, 212. 425 General Brehon Sommervell, quoted in Kogan, Long White Line, 213. Abbott Laboratories received four stars on the Army-Navy ‘E’ pennant.

142 Public Library, if it excluded all books published during the twentieth century?”426 Biddle mentions recent Hearn Fund acquisitions of works by living American artists, and he requests that the museum give these artists their proper due. “Are all these works stored in the vaults of the Museum, for they are certainly not on view? Of its many galleries let the Museum set aside at least two, in one of which there will be a permanent exhibition of the acquired paintings of contemporary American artists. . . . The Artists for Victory Exhibition, organized by the

Metropolitan Museum in 1943, was perhaps the most important showing of contemporary art ever held in the United States.”427

Biddle’s advocacy of realist art continued into his late life, and in 1964 he argued that almost all art is regional; furthermore, Americans should celebrate their own regions rather than others.428 French Impressionist Monet, for example, represented his region during his time, and, as Biddle argues, “You very seldom get an artist that is above the thing we call regionalism,

Michelangelo was, Blake was.’”429 Biddle maintained the vision for a homegrown national art that he had cultivated nearly forty years earlier while living in Mexico. World War II provided him an opportunity to implement his ideas through a war-art program, and cutbacks in congressional spending created a timely opening for Abbott Laboratories’ public relations division.

Although Our Flying Navy projected themes compatible with Abbott Laboratories’ corporate brand, such as technological progress and achievement through teamwork, the collection for the most part represented a fill-in-the-blank opportunity for the company.

Congressional cuts to Biddle’s program created a promotional vehicle that virtually any company

426 George Biddle, “Concerning the Metropolitan,” College Art Journal 8, no. 3 (Spring 1949): 209-10. 427 Ibid., 209-10. 428 Mathews, “George Biddle’s Contribution”, 519-20. 429 George Biddle, The Biddle Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, quoted in Mathews, “George Biddle’s Contribution”, 519-20.

143 could drive, and Our Flying Navy would have arguably looked identical whether Abbott, Life

Magazine, or IBM signed the check. In fact, the ease in which Abbott could transition into the role of benefactor to Biddle’s program likely provided an additional incentive to Downs and the pharmaceutical corporation. Like the company’s earlier sponsorship of The Year of Peril, the most significant difference between Abbott’s patronage and its contemporaries’ philanthropy was its explicit decision to donate all of the work that it commissioned. The following chapter dissects and analyzes Abbott’s contribution of its war art through an examination of the pharmaceutical corporation’s final three artist correspondent campaigns: The Silent Service,

Amphibious Operations, and Men Without Guns.

144 CHAPTER FIVE

PROVISIONING A VISION

With Abbott Laboratories contractually barred from profiting from its artists’ images, all expenses attached to the war correspondents program—from the generous stipends, uniforms, and supplies, to the transport and framing of finished works—were billed to the company. The most glaring of unanswered questions in the scholarship involving Abbott’s full sponsorship and funding of artists is why the company chose to donate all the works it commissioned rather than keep them for a corporate collection. All works created became property of the United States government and were ultimately turned over to each represented branch of the military. This critical component of Abbott’s philanthropy not only distinguishes it from its contemporaries, but it also challenges the corporate patronage paradigm through the company’s negation of the art’s investment and commodity value. So, why did Abbott Laboratories contractually obligate itself to donate The Year of Peril and all the works from its subsequent artist correspondent campaigns to the government? To answer this question, this chapter extends beyond the conventional public relations incentives of corporate art sponsorship to examine the various additional ways Abbott significantly gained advantage from its patronage. By examining three of the company’s final artist correspondent campaigns —The Silent Service (1943), Amphibious

Operations (1943-1944), and Men Without Guns (1944-1945)—in relation to Abbott

Laboratories’ own cultural production and corporate image, this chapter offers three interconnected reasons guiding the company’s decision to donate the works: (1) content in the majority of sponsored images did not directly reflect the company or its production; (2) the style of Abbott’s commissioned paintings and drawings greatly differed from the company’s much more progressive design; (3) the works and their commodity value were of negligible worth to

145 Abbott, their having been subservient to a larger wartime patronage/propaganda machine designed to promote the company and its charity while churning out ephemera.

Each of these interconnected implications for Abbott’s donation of its sponsored art provides an avenue to critically engage the company’s philanthropy. The first suggestion, that

Abbott chose not to retain the art because its content represented neither the company nor its production, emerges in the discussion of The Silent Service and Amphibious Operations campaigns. Select works from each of these series—Thomas Hart Benton’s Score Another for the Subs, Georges Schreiber’s Who Are You, Reginald Marsh’s Yawning Bow, and James Baare

Turnbull’s Ambulance Being Unloaded—demonstrate how varied and disparate the series’ content is from Abbott’s commercial production. Furthermore, a final image from Amphibious

Operations, Benton’s All Work, reveals how insignificant content was to fueling Abbott’s promotional efforts. Contrasting the works commissioned in Abbott’s later war art campaigns with the images from its first, The Year of Peril, allows us to question the significance of content in the pursuit of propaganda. Additionally, Abbott’s apparent indifference towards content justifies the unparalleled freedom that the company gave its artists. Unlike contemporary corporate patrons like SONJ, Abbott did not directly promote itself through all of its sponsored arts’ content. This critical difference helps to explain why there was little incentive for the company to keep the majority of the works following their public promotion.

Like Our Flying Navy, Abbott’s follow up artist correspondent campaigns continued

Biddle’s initial war art program by commissioning drawings and paintings chronicling the war effort. The company’s final series, Men Without Guns, was the only collection to feature imagery directly relating to the company’s production. Like SONJ’s multiple series commissioning AAA artists to promote oil’s contribution to the war, the majority of the images in Men Without Guns

146 showed the various ways in which military medicine aided frontline battle. Despite the clear alignment between the series’ content and the company’s medical production, Abbott

Laboratories nevertheless donated all the drawings and paintings from this project to the government as well.

This action prompts consideration of the second implication regarding Abbott’s decision not to keep at least some of the art it commissioned during the war. The realist style of the commissioned works, designed for a broader populist audience, clashed with the company’s edgier image. To its private audience of doctors Abbott promoted itself as a state-of-the-art company at the forefront of innovation in the medical field. In an attempt to appear avant-garde, the company embraced a wide range of experimental design styles in its advertisements and company magazine.

After briefly exploring Men Without Guns’ creation and a few of the images directly highlighting Abbott’s medical contribution—such as Franklin Boggs’ Jungle – Ally of the Enemy,

Ernest Fiene’s Life Giving Plasma, Joseph Hirsch’s Blasting Mosquito Infected Swamps, and

Boggs’ Pill Call—this portion of the chapter looks at corporate patronage scholarship to examine

Abbott’s decision to promote itself through realism rather than incorporate its historically edgier style. A look at the feature of Manuel Tolegian’s series of Army nurse training (part of the Men

Without Guns collection) in the March 1945 issue of What’s New reveals the disparity between the artist’s realism and the more abstract design elements elsewhere in the magazine. This consideration of style will also look at Katharine Kuh’s 1946 denunciation of Abbott-sponsored war art. Interestingly, her blistering statements against the “bastard art” elucidate the company’s decision not to keep any of the commissioned works.430

430 Katharine Kuh, “The War and the Visual Arts,” The Antioch Review 6, no. 3 (Autumn 1946): 399-400.

147 Finally, this chapter exposes the multiple benefits gained from Abbott Laboratories’ philanthropy to assert that the work commissioned through the company’s art programs served as a means to an end. Abbott donated the work because it was an insignificant byproduct of the company’s greater promotional goal. Abbott, like many companies during the war, had to revise its corporate strategy in the face of government provisioning and fierce competition for military contracts. Prior to the war the company struggled to rebrand itself in the eyes in the American public and medical community. Once the conflict began, a new economic system emerged in which Abbott’s relationship with the government became critical to the company’s survival.

Abbott’s patronage of art provided content for the government’s production of war propaganda.

The company’s exhibitions of this art likewise drove the sales of war bonds, providing additional support to the government. This support—far more significant than creating a company collection—created a close relationship between Abbott and the government officials responsible for keeping the armed forces supplied.

After detailing the highly competitive process for securing governmental defense contracts, this chapter looks at two of Abbott’s most significant wartime drugs: Sodium Pentothal and penicillin. While Sodium Pentothal was a proprietary Abbott product, penicillin plays an equally critical role in understanding the company’s philanthropy during the war. The pharmaceutical industry’s fierce struggle to obtain samples of penicillin following the government’s requisition of the drug reveals the terrain for Abbott’s patronage. Despite the company’s inexperience in the synthetic production of the antibiotic, the government made a special exception for Abbott’s redistributing it. This concession, as well as the millions of dollars available for defense contracts, reveals the immeasurable value of a corporation’s positive governmental relations. Sponsoring imagery for War Department posters and touring exhibition bond drives provided Abbott with

148 the opportunity to meet with military officials and politicians, build rapport with these figures, and unite in the mutual support of the war. The act of patronage itself, and all the benefits gained from it, far exceeded the company’s valuation of the visual objects, which ultimately rendered them disposable.

Designed and executed similarly to the Our Flying Navy war art project, Abbott’s Silent

Service and Amphibious Operations recorded the war maneuvers of the United States Navy submarine U.S.S. Dorado and Landing Ship Tank (LST) fleet through America’s vast waterways and ports. The two programs, though distinctly different in terms of subject matter and artist roster, took place within months of one another. In October 1943 Benton and Schreiber reported to the Naval Submarine Training School in New London, Connecticut, to go underway aboard the Dorado.431 The artists’ time within the confined quarters of the submarine resulted in intense action scenes as well as several intimate portraits of soldiers resting, eating, and bonding.

After looking at one of the more popular actions scenes from the series, Benton’s 1943 painting Score Another for the Subs, it quickly becomes quite clear why the work has received notice from scholars (figure 5.1). The exhilarating vitality of the scene’s subject explodes through Benton’s charged execution. The rhythmic qualities of line seem to echo upon each reverberating shockwave as a frothy wave crashes upon the starboard side of the Dorado. Blasts of fiery metal spray from the ship, itself a bullet, piercing the air and sea as the disabled target spews its deathly flames and clouds of black smoke. Benton historian Linda Weintraub calls the scene a merger of “contradictory approaches, one dynamic and one static,” noting the solid

431 Quentin Reynolds, “Take ‘er Down,” Collier’s (November 4, 1944): 16. Under the command of Admiral Charles W. Styer, the New London Naval Submarine Training School was the first and only submarine training base at the time.

149 central structures amid the fluid sea and sky.432 Robert Henkes observes how the strict and unchallenged diagonals of the ship and bullets create dynamism by forcing the viewer to “retrace the visual distance between the two extremities of action.”433 Henkes also notes the elongation of the sailors on the deck of the surfaced ship as a typical element of Benton’s work, and it is this type familiarity, along with the energy of the scene, that makes the painting so popular.434 In addition to execution, the central figures of Benton’s Score Another for the Subs evoke a familiar subject for the viewer. The central theme of work, so deeply entrenched in America’s founding ideology and inextricably connected to recovering contemporary capitalism, had dominated the visual arts of the depression years.435

Another painting from the series, Schreiber’s Who Are You?, similarly captures the exterior of the Dorado as its bow crashes through the water, thrusting white waves into the dark edges of the composition (figure 5.2). One of the sailors stationed at the deck gun looks though his binoculars presumably to try to recognize a ship in the distance. The other sailor perched above him operates the ship’s blinker in an attempt to signal to the foreign vessel to acquire its identity.

Schreiber’s description for the image elucidates, “If the answer does not come quickly enough, or proves unsatisfactory, orders will be immediately given either to crash-dive or man the deck gun.”436 The artist’s rendering of the night sky adds to the sense of danger in the scene and provides the viewer with a rare visual account of the night watch, substantiating claims that artist correspondents could capture certain events much better than photographers. The same impact of

Benton’s style apparent in Schreiber’s Training in Homicide and Classroom Flight—painted for

432 Linda Weintraub, World War II Through the Eyes of Thomas Hart Benton, ed. Jean Williams-Sherrill (San Antonio: Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, 1992), 22. 433 Robert Henkes, World War II in American Art (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2001), 7-8. 434 Ibid., 7-8. 435 Erika Doss, “Looking at Labor: Images of Work in 1930s American Art,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 24 (2002): 233. 436 Thomas Hart Benton and Georges Schreiber, The Silent Service: Paintings of the U.S. Navy Submarine Force, ed. Abbott Laboratories (Chicago: Abbott Laboratories, 1944), n.p.

150 Abbott’s Our Flying Navy exhibition—again appears in the younger artist’s Dorado image.

Although Schreiber received his formal artistic training in Elberfeld, Germany he clearly admired Benton, and the two worked closely together on the Abbott assignment, resulting in similarities between their action-packed exterior submarine scenes and their more intimate compositions.437 The artists had also previously painted together while on assignment for

Lewenthal’s AAA.438

Although Benton’s Score Another for the Subs and Schreiber’s Who Are You? represent two of the more overtly militaristic images from the series, neither really reflects Abbott

Laboratories or its medical production. After Schreiber’s painting passed through the War

Department’s approval and the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s reproduction of the image as a poster in 1944, the work said nothing about the company behind its inception. Once Abbott surrendered its reproduction rights to the government, apparently without demanding attribution, its association with the image was lost altogether.

In the resulting Treasury poster, Fire Away!: Buy Extra War Bonds, several elements have been altered from the original painting (figure 5.3). The red text “FIRE AWAY!” has been superimposed onto the blinker’s ray of light, which appears a stronger yellow here. Additionally, the words “BUY EXTRA BONDS” appear in white at the bottom of the poster alongside the stamp for the 5th War Loan Bond Drive. While Schreiber’s signature remains barely visible at the left edge of the image, disappearing into the darkness of the signalman’s pants, his “New

London, Conn.,” written next to his name in original painting, has disappeared. The words “IN

MEMORY U.S.S. ‘DORADO’” appear in the poster’s upper left corner, referencing the

437 George Schreiber Files, Clippings and Photos, George Schreiber Reel 2673, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC. 438 Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 294.

151 submarine and crew’s unfortunate demise.439 Apart from these changes, the poster has been reworked with more line detail in the waves and texture of the sailors clothing. The addition of new detail and the slight color alterations, adjustments likely made for the purposes of cleaner poster reproductions, also include an American flag squeezed in between the deck gun and the elongated blinker.

Despite lacking anything reflecting Abbott’s patronage, the poster provides a glimpse into how the government mobilized the pharmaceutical company’s images. In “‘Don’t Let Him

Down!’: WWII Propaganda Posters,” Susan B. Barnes argues that government officials and advertising executives joined forces to engineer extremely effective propaganda during the war years.440 She explains, “Cooperation among these groups brought the art of propaganda to its pinnacle and laid the groundwork for advocacy mass persuasion. Advocacy mass persuasion is the combination of propaganda techniques with mass media distribution.”441 This mass media distribution, noted earlier in chapter three’s discussion of Abbott’s The Year of Peril and Ellul’s concept of “total propaganda,” explains why poster reproductions were so integral to America’s wartime ideological calibration. In spite of technological innovations in cinema and radio, which also helped to create a system of total propaganda, the poster medium remained one of the most efficient and cost effective ways to reach the public.442

439 Benton’s grimly recalls the boat’s fate following his departure: “Two days after we left this vessel she was sunk and all on board were killed.” Thomas Hart Benton, An Artist in America, 4th ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983), 300. 440 Susan B. Barnes, “‘Don’t Let Him Down!’: WWII Propaganda Posters,” in Visual Impact: The Power of Visual Persuasion (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2009), 97. 441 Ibid., 97. 442 Ibid., 105. “The U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) acted as a clearinghouse for government poster design and distribution. . . . An overlapping distribution system was established to place posters in post offices, railroad stations, schools, restaurants, and retail stores. Members of volunteer defense councils selected posting places, established posting routes, and ordered posting supplies. Volunteers were encouraged to avoid waste and treat posters as if they were ‘war ammunition.’ Posters were also referred to as the ‘weapons on walls.’”

152 Recognizing the poster’s power to persuade, Barnes argues, “World War II poster designs were used as an ideal agent to make the war aims the personal mission of every American citizen.”443 A painting such as Schreiber’s Who Are You? could reach thousands of Americans through the pages of What’s New or through exhibition in Lewenthal’s gallery. However, once rendered into poster form, the image Fire Away!: Buy Extra War Bonds has its area of influence multiplied exponentially. While reproduction of the image makes it possible to reach a much larger audience, strategic placement of the poster in high traffic areas or transportation hubs can create multiple exposures for individual subjects. The ephemeral nature of posters also contributes to the medium’s efficacy. If the Fire Away!: Buy Extra War Bonds poster in a public located never changed, the viewer might become accustomed to the image and eventually ignore it. Peripheral glances would suffice to recreate the rough details of the image as background information. However, by replacing the poster each month with the latest poster based on an

Abbott or OWI design, the viewer is constantly bombarded with new visual data.

In this context, Abbott’s commissioned art feeds a government propaganda machine responsible for approving the image, superimposing text on it to create a poster addressing the most current needs of the war, strategically distributing the poster in high visibility areas, and eventually replacing it with a different image to introduce new visual stimuli. Schreiber’s Who

Are You? provided the Treasury Department with a particularly useful poster canvas because of its dramatically skewed perspective and wide banner created by the Dorado’s blinker. However,

Fire Away!: Buy Extra War Bonds, like many posters before it, ran its course, its utility to the government, or the utility to Abbott of the watercolor upon which it was based, came to an end.

Retaining any of the works from The Silent Service project provided little value to Abbott

443 Ibid., 106.

153 Laboratories, who after exhibiting the images and reproducing them in What’s New, would finally donate them to the government in a very public ceremony.

For Abbott’s next series, Amphibious Operations, Benton and six other artists—Robert

Benney, Kerr Eby, Joseph Hirsch, Carlos Lopez, Reginald Marsh, and James Baare Turnbull— visually documented the construction and operation of various Naval Landing Craft.444 In the foreword to Abbott’s catalogue, Vice Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, U.S.N., Commander of the

Seventh Amphibious Force, writes that the project’s didactic goal was to showcase the Navy’s sea-to-land transport vehicles and provide Americans with a “graphic representation of where these craft came from, how they were operated, and how the officers and crews who manned them were trained.”445 Designed to breach enemy lines first, the ships could then land upon a beach or shore and deliver their cargo of infantry, tanks, or a mixture of both.

To begin visually documenting the assembly and operation of these transport ships—such as the Naval LCI (Landing Craft Infantry), LST and LSM (Landing Ship Medium)—Abbott artists visited inland construction sites and training facilities as well as overseas warzones to visually record the Naval amphibious vehicles in action. Admiral Barbey, who at the time had directed fifty-six amphibious campaigns in the Southwest Pacific and was colloquially referred to as the “founder of modern amphibious warfare,” describes the significance of the transport ships and the task of the artists in Abbott’s program:

The Amphibious Forces are a branch of the Naval Service which must appeal particularly to the hearts of Americans since they are in a very real sense ‘the infantry of the Navy,’ and their personnel and equipment, because of their front- line duties, form the ‘fightingest team’ afloat. . . . The artists, whose work is here displayed, have felt and captured the deep and essentially American spirit of the Amphibious Forces. Wisely eschewing any attempt to glamorize their subject,

444 Reynolds, “Take ‘er Down,” 16. 445 Vice Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, U.S.N., foreword to Amphibious Operations, ed. Abbott Laboratories (Chicago: Abbott Laboratories, 1944), n.p.

154 they have done us all the great service of presenting their subject in the clear strong light of reality. The result is brilliant and stirring—it is the truth.446

Artist’s assignments differed significantly. Benton initially reported to the American

Bridge Company’s and Dravo Construction Corporation’s Pittsburgh shipyard construction sites.447 After documenting the construction and launch of several ships, he later accompanied an

LST down the Ohio River, through the Mississippi, and into the Gulf of Mexico. Marsh, on the other hand, reported to amphibious training facilities in Little Creek and Camp Bradford,

Virginia. Lopez also remained in the continental United States, reporting to Florida’s Fort Pierce to document the rigorous training of elite Army, Marine, and Naval assault teams.448 The remaining four artists assigned to the Amphibious Operations project received overseas assignments to strategic locations in the Pacific theater. Turnbull deployed to the Philippines and participated in in the January 9, 1944, invasion of Lingayon, Benney accompanied the Army and

Marines to Saipan, Hirsch landed at Guadalcanal, and Eby joined the Marines in their attack on

Tarawa.

Throughout Abbott’s series these artists celebrated military might and preparation by showcasing the construction, training, and operation of the Amphibious Fleet. Benton’s earliest images from the series document naval vessels at different phases of construction.449 In his drawings he captures the birth of an LST and continues the journey of the vessel through several stages of its construction, baptism, launch, and voyage. Marsh’s paintings for the series likewise show the behemoth naval transports, but the images also include more figural representations of sailors learning how to operate and service the ships. Scenes include crewmembers hoisting the

446 Ibid., n.p. 447 Weintraub, Through the Eyes of Benton, 23. 448 Abbott Laboratories, Amphibious Operations (Chicago: Abbott Laboratories, 1944), n.p. 449 Matthew Baigell, Thomas Hart Benton (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975), 73-4. Benton glorified the American worker throughout most of his career, and Baigell notes this theme in the artist’s 1930-1931 New School Murals of industry: Steel, Mining, Instruments of Power, and The Changing West.

155 ships’ signal flags, sailors practicing drop anchor and man overboard drills, seamen training to put out fires aboard the ship, and soldiers manning the LST’s 40-mm anti-aircraft gun.

Marsh’s Yawning Bow (1944), for example, depicts a docked landing ship tank opening its wide cargo doors and extending its ramp onto the shore (figure 5.4). Marsh’s representation anthropomorphizes the ship, rendering the interior in a pink tone and lending a fleshy impression to the hard metal. “Teeth” emerge from the door’s inner walls and the ramp is transformed into a massive tongue jutting from the ship’s mouth. Marsh’s title and caption for the watercolor also personify the ship: “Many times this type of bow has yawned at the foe during an amphibious landing.”450 Although the ship is the central focus of Marsh’s composition, crew on either side of the LST provide a reference for the viewer to determine the vessel’s enormity.

Marsh’s Yawning Bow, like the majority of the Amphibious Operations images created at domestic installations, does not convey the same sense of action captured in the work of Abbott artists sent to overseas assignments. Additionally, artist correspondents closer to the front lines were more likely to document content related to Abbott’s commercial production. Works from previous Abbott art campaigns The Year of Peril, Our Flying Navy, and The Silent Service, made no mention of medicine at all. Amphibious Operations, on the other hand, incidentally references medical aid due to the very nature of the naval transport ship. Despite the focus on military aviation and the popular theory that the war would be won through aviation, the navy amphibious vessel was still one of the most efficient ways to launch infantry, unload large quantities of medical supplies, and transport casualties. Because of the naval transport’s connection to medical supply, a few of the images from the series depict the treatment of wounded soldiers. Turnbull’s Ambulance Being Unloaded, for example, shows an ambulance backing up into an LST hospital ship (figure 5.5). The wounded soldiers from the attack at

450 Abbott Laboratories, Amphibious Operations, n.p.

156 Lingayen Gulf could receive immediate critical care aboard the LST and later transfer to a mercy ship for convalescence.451

Amphibious Operations also contains several images that completely diverge from any subject beneficial to the military or the war effort. Abbott’s previous artist correspondent campaigns produced works of ranging value to OWI propaganda production. Some Abbott images, such as those from Benton’s Year of Peril, Schreiber’s Who Are You?, and Lawrence

Beall Smith’s Don’t Let that Shadow Touch Them (noted in chapter three), translated into extremely successful poster campaigns. Other works, while less suitable as bond drive imagery, still attempted to capture a subject worthy of poster reproduction. Amphibious Operations contains images whose content fails to represent the company product or the military. Looking at one of these works, Benton’s drawing All Work (1944), it is initially difficult to imagine that the artist ever intended for this image to function as tool of government propaganda (figure 5.6).452

However, these images were intended for exhibition rather than conversion into posters, and, as

Barbey’s foreword reminds us, they were intended as an unglamorous appeal to the “heart” of the average American.

Benton recalls the circumstances surrounding the creation of All Work, arising from an unexpected detour while on assignment: “The ship to which I was attached ran into a sand bar on the way down the Mississippi River and damaged its propeller shaft. This forced a stay in New

Orleans for repairs.”453 This brief diversion, and the port calls attached to it, provided the artist with the subject for the drawing.

451 Ibid., n.p. 452 Although Benton created All Work while assigned on the Amphibious Operations project, the Navy includes the drawing as part of its Abbott Collection of Submarine Paintings. 453 Benton, An Artist in America, 308.

157 Benton appreciated the large port cities as well as the little towns connected to the

Mississippi’s network of waterway trading.454 Particularly fond of Memphis, St. Louis, and New

Orleans, he recorded his observations and experiences in America’s river communities in his writings.455 Familiar with port calls from his early years in the Navy, Benton uses All Work to capture the vivacity of both the city of New Orleans and his crewmates on liberty there. In the image the seamen riotously funnel themselves into entrance of a nightclub, releasing the energy and enthusiasm accumulated while pent up inside the ship’s tight quarters. An officer and his date lead the line, while other couples appear through the window and in the doorway, already enjoying some of the club’s amenities. A woman stands between the steps into the building and the enlisted men, gesticulating angrily at two of the enlisted men who presumably angered her through their lechery. The sailor closest the foreground lifts her skirt while his shipmates lean in for a closer look. Discarded papers and a bottle litter the ground as an amorous couple on a balcony above the gaiety watches the revelry. Across the entrance, two locals stand above drunken sailor who has fallen. While one of the civilians helps the man up, the other casually smirks at him, either taking pity or sizing up his vulnerable new prey.

Benton effectively captures the same spirit of the city in his autobiography:

New Orleans is a great whore town and gamblers’ resort. For ignorant river boys on the loose with a pocket of pay it offers the ultimate in gaiety. . . . But open gambling and the flaunting of sexual divertissement have always been traditional in the city. It must be said of New Orleans, however, in great contrast with the other southern towns, that she takes her vices with an air. She is a fine lady and if her skirts are a little dirty she makes up for it with perfumed gowns and graceful gestures. Her nickel-a-dance halls are quite truly gay. The hard-faced but charming little sluts, who for the benefit of their pimps take the up-river boys, the sailors, and outlying parish sports, have manners and voices that are not found in other southern underworlds. Though viciousness is thoroughly developed in New Orleans, there is laid over it somehow the grace of Latin friendliness and the

454 J. Richard Gruber, Thomas Hart Benton and the American South (Augusta, GA: Morris Museum of Art, 1998), 35. 455 Ibid., 35.

158 flavor of catholic understanding. It is not repulsive as in the cities of the upper South, where a hypocritical bible-belt denial of its existence, like the hard crust over a carbuncle, makes it fester and ferment into a stinking poison. The vice of New Orleans has been shown to me not as a snickering secret but as an open affair, recognized by everyone.456

Benton’s All Work presents the city’s vice as a matter of fact. Drinking, dancing, and prostitution entice the sailors who in turn embrace the bacchanal without reservation. Benton had earlier depicted civilian sailors making a port call in his 1940 painting Shore Leave, a work commissioned through the AAA for the promotion of United Artist’s new film The Long Voyage

Home, and featured in Life and an exhibition that had traveled to twenty-three cities.457 Yet neither work approaches the level of debauchery suggested in Paul Cadmus’s Shore Leave, nor the intimations of homosexuality of his Fleet’s In. As noted in chapter three, the latter painting caused such a stir during its exhibition at the Corcoran that the Secretary of the Navy deemed it a gratuitous affront to the Navy and called for its removal.458

As evidenced by Benton’s All Work, images do not have to convey an overt pro-war message in order to promote the government and its efforts. A patriotic subject is helpful, of course, but it is not essential to the operation and success of Abbott’s wartime promotional machine. Although Rectanus primarily analyzes current corporate sponsorship trends (providing case studies as recent as 2001), his theory regarding the insignificance of content reinforces my point and reveals just how progressive Abbott’s promotional machine was in the early 1940s:

Indeed, the promotional strategies of sponsors and arts institutions suggest that the representation of culture frequently supersedes the audience’s own participation in it; participation is reduced to consumption rather than critical engagement. In

456 Benton, An Artist in America, 150‐1. 457 Doss, Benton, Pollock, and Modernism, 242. “United Artists went a step further, hiring Benton, Wood, and seven other American scene artists to promote The Long Voyage Home, a war-at-sea picture based on several plays by Eugene O’Neill…. They were given their own studios on the UA lot, free access to the stages during production, rushes of each day’s shooting, and their choice of what to paint. In conjunction with the film’s release in October, their eleven canvases were displayed at the movie’s premiere in New York and then toured museums across the country.” 458 Henkes, World War II American Art, 116.

159 other words, the promotional value of events or cultural programs, or their economic success (for the cultural institution), has in many cases become more important than their content, which becomes a form of packaging for the event itself.459

By 1944, Abbott’s well-oiled promotional apparatus could effectively market an image like

Benton’s All Work in the same manner that it promoted the overtly propagandistic Year of Peril imagery to achieve nearly the same success. The artist’s later works in which “accuracy of observation replaced the visual sloganeering of the Year of Peril paintings” could feed the same machine previously fueled by Benton’s emotionally-charged response to Pearl Harbor.460

Abbott’s mobilization of the wartime image calls into question not only the significance of content to corporate sponsorship, but also its importance to propaganda’s efficacy. Within

Abbott’s patronage system content was negligible, and because most the sponsored art did not directly reflect the company or its products, Abbott could afford to part with it.

Interestingly, the artist correspondent would still get paid regardless of whether the content of his work was approved by the War Department. Artists’ salaries and stipends were agreed upon prior to a correspondent’s deployment. The artist did not have to rely on a gallery selling the finished work, or the back and forth process of modifying or repainting that Benton, for example, faced with his American Tobacco commission through the AAA. Prepayment created a new level of freedom for artist correspondents that surpassed even the flexibility of Lewenthal’s sale of art prints. Additionally, while guidelines regarding war correspondent productivity might have been implied, artists’ contracts did not specifically dictate the quantity of works each correspondent was expected to submit. Of course, each artist represented his own professional brand, and underperforming while commissioned for Abbott could impair the prospect of future

459 Mark W. Rectanus, Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 67. 460 Linda Weintraub, “Thomas Hart Benton: Navy Artist,” in World War II Through the Eyes of Thomas Hart Benton, ed. Jean Williams-Sherrill (San Antonio: Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, 1992), 11.

160 commissions through the company as well as the artist’s relationship with the AAA.

Nevertheless, Abbott’s program created an unparalleled freedom for the artist extending beyond content restriction.

Abbott Laboratories’ final artist correspondent campaign poses a challenge to the argument that the company donated all the art it commissioned solely because of content. The Men Without

Guns series includes over two hundred and fifty drawings and paintings of Army medicine— content clearly related to the company’s production. Although Abbott donated all of the other works it commissioned, the company could have kept Men Without Guns as part of its corporate collection, showcasing its unique medical contribution to the war. However, Abbott still decided to donate the works instead. The second major argument regarding why the pharmaceutical corporation opted to not keep the works is that the style of Abbott’s commissioned paintings and drawings greatly differed from the company’s much more progressive design in its own publications.

Featuring the medical imagery from over a dozen artist correspondents—which includes

Howard Baer, Robert Benney, Peter Blume, Francis Criss, John Steuart Curry, Joseph Fiene,

Marion Greenwood, Joseph Hirsch, Irwin Hoffman, Fred Shane, Lawrence Beall Smith, and

Manuel Tolegian—Men Without Guns provides a fascinating window on the horrors of battle and miracles of frontline medical procedures. Abbott’s medical art program evolved as a spin-off from the company’s previous aviation art campaign, Our Flying Navy. The brainchild of

Lieutenant Colonel Howard F. Baer, M.A.C. (Medical Administration Corps), the program was designed to glamorize the medical aspects of the military.461 As it turns out, there was a need to glamorize medicine, for, with the onset of the war, the industry found itself in a dire predicament.

461 Abbott Laboratories and DeWitt Mackenzie, Men Without Guns: The Abbott Collection of Paintings of Army Medicine (Philadelphia, PA: The Blakiston Company, 1945), ix.

161 Worker patriotism blended with civic duty created a sudden vacuum in the “non-essential” manufacturing plants across the United States. Dewitt Mackenzie, war analyst and author of the exhibition catalogue to Abbott’s Men Without Guns collection explains, “It was difficult to prevent workers who were making hypodermic needles, surgical instruments, surgical dressings,

Atabrine, and the hundred and one other things urgently needed by the medical department, from believing that much greater service could be rendered by leaving these jobs and taking others in plants manufacturing bombs and like instruments of war.”462 Lt. Col. Baer, not to be confused with the Abbott artist Howard Baer, met the painter in May 1943 while the latter was already working for Abbott painting aviation scenes.463 Believing that the same type of publicity campaign could greatly benefit the dwindling interest in military medicine, Lt. Col. Baer contacted the War Department, which had already been collaborating with Downs and

Lewenthal, and set the wheels in motion for yet another Abbott-sponsored war art program.

Abbott’s previous artist correspondent campaigns and exhibitions informally provided field-testing for future projects, which adapted to governmental and popular desires. Prevalent themes such as technology, training, and women in the military—which found great success in

Our Flying Navy, The Silent Service, and Amphibious Operations—reemerged throughout the final collection. Hirsch’s paintings of mechanical contraptions, Curry’s rendering of officer training schools, and Tolegian’s pictures of nurse and female field medics bear witness to this.

Men Without Guns also provided Abbott and its artists with the chance to explore new themes and topics that were not previously possible. Themes included: the military’s interaction with noncombatants in various war theaters; medicine, pills, and disease prevention; emergency wound treatment and surgery; and rehabilitation and occupational therapy. Each central theme

462 Ibid., 2. 463 Ibid., 2.

162 highlighted an aspect of military medicine and strategically showcased Abbott’s contribution to both the war effort and the technological advancement of modern medicine.

One of the main themes featured in Men Without Guns was the Army’s struggle against infectious disease. Works depicting the medical treatment of various strains of bacteria highlighted Abbott’s line of drugs while visually documenting a major wartime concern. Due to close quarters, adverse conditions, and increased fatigue, infectious disease’s overwhelming toll on soldiers throughout war’s history led to unprecedented initiatives to thwart its transmission and mitigate its effects on American soldiers during World War II. Part of this effort included the inoculation and vaccination of both service members and civilians. Besides debilitating cold and flu strains, malaria and typhus posed the biggest threats to soldiers. By administering preventative medicine to native populations, Army doctors could significantly reduce the risk of contagion. Abbott’s own line of sulfa drugs helped to reduce cases of bacillary dysentery, and thanks to widespread preventative measures, infectious disease (which had played such a major role in previous wars), led to the deaths of “only 585 soldiers,” from November 1942 to the war’s conclusion.464

Despite many preventative measures taken, various skin diseases, colloquially termed

“jungle rot” or the “creeping crud” among soldiers, thrived in the moist, bug-infested tropical regions of the South Pacific. In his painting Jungle – Ally of the Enemy (figure 5.7), Boggs captures a medic treating an advanced case of “jungle rot.” Flesh-eating lesions cover the back, thigh, and buttocks of a standing nude soldier, while the medic swabs the lesions with silver nitrate, which stains the skin purple.. McKenzie details just how easily the “jungle rot” spreads:

The fighting men have to live like rats in the first few days of an invasion. They live in dirt—in the ground. They can’t wash their clothes. Because of constant rain and perspiration in intense humidity, their clothes never are dry. Insects get

464 Ibid., 25.

163 on them and the men start scratching. The men scratch this dirt into themselves and get their skin infected. The first stage produces running and crusty sores. Then come blisters which break, and the infected water spreads to other places. . . . In some cases the scaling, oozing patches get into the ears and around the eyes and they want to scratch themselves all the time.465

Boggs’ medic, like so many of the doctors and nurses represented in Abbott’s Men Without Guns collection, relied upon the curative powers of the modern-day medicine. Solutions, ointments, pills, tonics, and injections helped medics combat all types of injuries and ailments along the battlefront, and the Army prepared for the absolute worst scenario when ordering these supplies in preparation for battle, resulting in staggering quantities of stockpiled medicine and equipment.

For the Normandy D-Day invasion alone, for example, the Army medical corps had stockpiled

“800,000 pints of blood plasma; 600,000 doses of penicillin with 600,000 more ready for shipment in July; 10,000 pounds of sulfa drugs; 650,000 morphine syrettes (1/2 grain each); adequate supplies of anesthetics; more than 2,000,000 surgical instruments; 2,000 doses of tetanus toxoid (for booster shots following a wound), and 8,000,000 first-aid packets.”466 Abbott manufactured and supplied the majority of these products as well as peripheral supplies essential for the non-wounded soldiers, such as Halazone tablets.467 Distributed by the millions, these capsules eradicated bacteria in stagnant and muddy waters, enabling soldiers to render nearly any source potable through purification.468

In addition to supplying medicine to the armed services, Abbott Laboratories was a pioneer in plasma synthesis, and in October 1941 it brokered a contract with the War Department to become one of the largest providers of plasma to the military.469 Blood’s weight, susceptibility

465 Ibid., 16. 466 Ibid., 9. 467 Ibid., 9. 468 Herman Kogan, The Long White Line: The Story of Abbott Laboratories (New York: Random House, 1963), 202-3. 469 Ibid., 200.

164 for contamination, and need for refrigeration made it cumbersome to transport to the war front.

Scientists at Abbott perfected a sophisticated process for extracting plasma from the blood cells and then drying it without altering its chemical makeup.470

In his painting Life Giving Plasma (1944), Fiene captures the preliminary stages of this process (figure 5.8). Here, a young nurse manually siphons the plasma from the blood in preparation for further synthesis. Fiene, who received the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to study in Italy, created ten works for the Abbott collection while assigned to several Army labs situated throughout the United States.471 These Army laboratories worked in close collaboration with the Abbott company, and because plasma synthesis and the pre-separation procedure were so time consuming, Abbott enlisted the help of neighboring off-duty service members and their spouses—stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center and Fort Sheridan—to assist in processing plasma.472 Curiously the caption for Life Giving Plasma, “artist Fiene’s brush brings this picture from one of the great laboratories where plasma is processed for the Army Medical

Department,” does not mention the location of the laboratory. Omission of this detail within the context of the collection’s other detailed captions and their tendency to specify all military equipment, personnel, and locales suggests that the facility may not belong to the Army. Because of the close relationship between Abbott and military medicine, the fact that the pharmaceutical corporation donated many of its Chicago spaces to the government during the war, and the ambiguity of Life Giving Plasma’s caption, it is possible that the Fiene’s painting actually captures the interior of one of Abbott Laboratories’ plasma processing facilities.

Nevertheless, Abbott’s leadership in the field of plasma research and processing, as well as its contract as a plasma provider to the military, rendered the company immensely significant to

470 Ibid., 200. 471 Abbott Laboratories and DeWitt Mackenzie, Men Without Guns, 4. 472 Kogan, Long White Line, 200.

165 the war effort. The quick delivery of plasma to a hemorrhaging or dismembered soldier meant the difference between life and death. Closer to the battle front the Army set up emergency medical centers, called shock tents, to receive newly injured soldiers and provide immediate plasma support. Abbott’s synthesis of plasma helped to bring more of the life-saving fluid to the war front by reducing its bulk and eliminating the need for refrigeration. The powdered plasma was much easier to transport and could subsequently be reconstituted with clean or Halazone- purified water. Included in every Army medic’s kit, the dried plasma pack’s convenience, portability, and life-saving potential continued its implementation for nearly two more decades, when the practice was eventually abandoned during the 1960s due to the threat of Hepatitis transmission.473 Soldiers who needed immediate an plasma transfusion—whether due to the severity of their injuries or their distance from the shock tent—could rely on the field medic’s kit as a portable shock tent.

Abbott’s ingenuity also proved consequential in the battle against malaria. According to

Kendall Hoyt’s research for the Journal of Public Health Policy, World War II was one of the first wars in which Armed Forces’ fatalities from infectious disease were less than the number of deaths accumulated on the battlefield.474 Even during peacetime, military personnel stationed at bases and war camps come into close contact with men from all over the world carrying different types of bacteria (good and bad).475 This human petri dish, combined with moist climate, anxiety and fatigue, provides the perfect spawning grounds for infectious disease.476 Echoing the title of

Boggs’ previously discussed painting Jungle – Ally of the Enemy, Hoyt argues that, “for the

473 Alexandra Hemmerly-Brown, “Dried Plasma may be Approved for Army use within Five Years,” The Official Homepage of the United States Army, http://www.army.mil/article/43845/ (accessed December 24, 2012). 474 Kendall Hoyt, “Vaccine Innovation: Lessons from World War II,” Journal of Public Health Policy 27, no. 1 (2006): 51-2. 475 Ibid., 51-2. 476 Ibid., 51-2.

166 military, therefore, fighting disease is, and always has been, equally important, to fighting the enemy.”477

Due to its high rate of communicability, malaria presented one of the greatest threats to soldiers during the war. Through DDT treatment and swamp blasts, as detailed in Hirsch’s 1943

Blasting Mosquito Infected Swamps (figure 5.9), the Army medical corps attempted to mitigate malarial spread by targeting the carrier Anopheles. However, it was Abbott, partnered with the

Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), who provided the greatest breakthrough in antimalarial research.478 Responsible for a slew of technological innovations, medical breakthrough’s, and sophisticated weaponry during the war, the OSRD had practically no limitation on research funding and, by the end of the war, had spent over $450 million.479 Abbott sought to treat malaria chemically and forwarded more than two thousand drug compounds to the

OSRD’s Committee on Medical Research.480 German pharmaceutical Bayer had developed the chemical compound found in Atabrine prior to the war, but America’s synthesis of the drug would make it possible for the military to circumvent shortages caused by wartime trade embargoes. Abbott’s efforts, along with data submitted from other pharmaceutical companies, culminated in an American-manufactured anti-malarial tablet, which Abbott in turn produced and distributed to the military.481

Boggs’ Pill Call (1944) shows malaria-stricken soldiers lining up for their daily dosage of

Atabrine (figure 5.10). The sickly men, canteens in hand, receive the drug from a medical

477 Ibid., 51-2. 478 Kogan, Long White Line, 202. 479 The Library of Congress, “Technical Reports and Standards,” The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) Collection, http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/trsosrd.html (accessed December 11, 2012). In addition to funding the Manhattan Project, the OSRD invested in “more powerful and accurate weapons, more reliable detonators, safer and more effective medical treatments and more versatile vehicles.” 480 Kogan, Long White Line, 202. 481 Ibid., 202. German pharmaceutical Bayer had developed the chemical compound found in Atabrine prior to the war, but America’s synthesis of the drug made it possible for the military to circumvent shortages caused by wartime trade embargoes.

167 lieutenant, who marks the recipients off his checklist one by one. The soldiers’ painful expressions and the jaundice-like hue of their skin, a temporary byproduct of the medication, renders them all the more frail and sickly. Soldiers were required to swallow the pills in the presence of military medical personnel, for reasons that Abbott artist Boggs elucidates in his

2000 interview with Lanker and Newnham:

One of the things that I depicted was pill call. Malaria was so prevalent out there, and the Japanese had cut off all our supply for quinine from the Philippines, so we invented something called Atabrine. When you take these pills it doesn't cure malaria, it just keeps the fever and the shock down so its bearable. So everybody is supposed to take these little yellow pills, but a lot of guys thought, ‘if I can hang onto this malaria and can have it really bad they won't send me to the front.’ Well, the Army wanted them to get well and go back to the front, even if they were yellow-green in color. So they had to have pill call, and they had to watch these guys put it in their mouth and with a canteen of water swallow those pills.482

Due to Atabrine and other malarial medications the death toll and transmission of the disease steeply decreased from one case for every 700 soldiers in 1943 to one for every 14,000 soldiers by 1944.483 Abbott’s close collaboration with the OSRD achieved great success in such radical amelioration, and it also helps to place the company’s artist correspondent program within the greater context of its overall contribution to the war. This relationship with the OSRD would continue to play a significant role in Abbott’s prosperity through the company’s research and development of two additional miracle drugs: Sodium Pentothal and penicillin.

The strong focus on medicine in Abbott’s Men Without Guns collection, instead of the emphasis on military combat seen in earlier campaigns, likely reflected the shifting dynamics of the war. By the time the entire collection debuted at Washington’s Corcoran gallery on May 13,

1945, Germany had just surrendered, Mussolini and Hitler were already dead, and Allied troops in Europe were celebrating V-E day. Japan was the last axis enemy remaining, so the majority of

482 Franklin Boggs, interview by Lanker and Newnham, They Drew Fire: Combat Artists of World War II (New York: TV Books, 2000), 162. 483 Abbott Laboratories and DeWitt Mackenzie, Men Without Guns, 25.

168 the images in the collection focused on the war in the Pacific and medicine’s aid in that struggle.

Although the Times notes the Corcoran exhibition of “more than 250 oils, water-colors and sketches depicting the war” as “the first public showing of the Army medical service war paintings,” several of the works had already been exhibited by Abbott.484 In an editorial titled

“News and Views of Abbott War Painting Projects,” the October 1944 issue of What’s New details the September 10 debut of the six artists’ medical paintings in Washington’s National

Gallery.485 The editorial, which touts the record-breaking museum attendance draw of 25,023 people, “the largest in the history of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,” featured several photographs of the reception.486 Successful works from this first exhibit were subsequently integrated into Abbott’s larger collection Men Without Guns. The notion that

Abbott culled medical-related images from previous artist correspondent campaigns and set them aside for the larger 250-plus work series suggests that the company might have at one point considered assembling a corporate collection. If this were ever the case, Abbott executives eventually reconsidered the option and decided instead to bequeath the series to the War

Department.

A look at Abbott’s March 1945 What’s New issue featuring Manuel Tolegian’s paintings for the series provides insight into why the company would not have wanted to keep the images.

Tolegian, who earlier in his career studied under Curry, was assigned to Oregon’s Camp White

Army Nurse Corps training school where he created ten paintings and two drawings of the female medics training in hospital, laboratory, and battlefield conditions.487 The artist’s assignment, a clear follow-up to the critical success and popularity of Howard Baer’s WAVES

484 “Hartley Data: Washington, D.C.,” New York Times, May 13, 1945. 485 Reeves Lewenthal to Julian Levi, 29 August 1944, Julian Levi Reel 483, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 486 Abbott Laboratories, “News and Views of Abbott War Painting Projects,” What’s New 85 (October 1944): 5. 487 Abbott Laboratories and DeWitt Mackenzie, Men Without Guns, 5.

169 series for Abbott’s Our Flying Navy, continued the theme of women’s contributions to the war effort. If the bandana and overall sporting female mechanics of naval aviation garnered museum crowds and spurred war bond sales for Abbott and the War Department, then a series of paintings showcasing uniform-clad combat nurses braving life and limb to rescue fallen soldiers would surely do the same. Tolegian, who had been found medically unfit for military service prior to the program, recalled Lewenthal’s recruitment of him for Abbott’s medical art campaign:

They wanted to know if I would be interested and I said yes. I had volunteered just before that and had been turned down because of my ear, my ear has got a hole in it. So just when this news came so I said, well here’s my opportunity to do something, so I did. . . . Yes, this was a project developed by Abbott Laboratories and the Surgeon-General, he was given the full authority to do whatever he wanted to do with it and of course all the pictures reverted back to the government. . . . Well the other artists were all sent overseas and I was just going to be sent overseas when the war ended in 1945, but I covered the army nurses training and their various activities. . . . people coming back, soldiers coming back, wounded soldiers coming back, how they treated them.488

In a somewhat ironic turn of events, Abbott’s program provided Tolegian the opportunity to overcome his own medical injury and fulfill his sense of duty to his country by painting scenes of Army medicine. His images, reproduced in full color within What’s New, reveals in a narrative fashion the arduous preparation for conflict on the front lines. He documents nurses learning to purify water, administer emergency aid to fallen soldiers, set up shelter tents, and evacuate casualties. In his painting Pretty Nurses, which appeared as the two-page centerfold image of the March 1945 issue, Tolegian captures a controlled gas attack drill (figure 5.11). One of the greatest unforeseeable, and often unseen, attacks medics potentially faced came in the form of chemical warfare. Unpredictable by its very nature, a gas attack’s potential to float great distances presented a threat to unarmed medics as well as nurses who, despite their isolation from the front lines, still found themselves susceptible. To prepare for these types of attacks, the

488 Manuel J. Tolegian, interview by Betty Hoag, February 12, 1965, transcript, Oral History Interview, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC.

170 Army Nurse Corps training schools integrated gas warfare survival tactics and drills into their already rigorous field-training programs. In the image several nurses, equipped with anti-gas gear and breathing apparatuses, calmly maneuver through ominous billows.

Each of Tolegian’s paintings, like the majority of the work commissioned for Abbott’s artist correspondent campaigns, presents a clear figural representation of the nurses in their training environments. Scenes are rendered realistically, presenting an unchallenging image to the viewer. While the images fit perfectly within the context of the gallery or on the pages of the exhibition catalogue, they appear somewhat out of place reproduced in What’s New. Unlike the work commissioned in the artist correspondent campaigns, Abbott’s printed advertisements and the layout for its medical summaries pages integrate abstract and biomorphic design elements

(figure 5.12). Resembling an almost space-age aesthetic encountered in the design of artists like

Herman Miller and Gilbert Rhode, these designs, in keeping with the early covers for its predecessor, the Alkaloidal Clinic, made What’s New much more avant-garde in its incorporation of experimental styles. Abbott’s effort to project an edgier visual style parallels the company’s own corporate brand as a cutting-edge research organization promoting state-of-the-art medicine.

Even the magazine’s title implies that the company is abreast of the most recent developments in medicine and intends to disseminate them to the medical community through the publication.

Tolegian’s realist paintings of nurses, originally intended for a broader public distribution, appear anachronistic juxtaposed against What’s New’s more experimental design choices.

So, since Abbott’s company style was much more cutting-edge, why not sponsor works that were equally pioneering? In Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in Mission &

Constraint, Paul J. DiMaggio suggests that company cultural sponsorship typically strives for

171 pluralism by granting accessibility to “the middle class at least.”489 He explains, “Corporations are generally ill equipped and little inclined to support serious innovation or experimental work, access beyond the middle class, or pluralism that extends beyond already popular or commercial forms.”490 Marchand likewise notes the corporate effort not to leave the “common folk” behind while performing the role of patron, citing AT&T’s sponsorship of its “music for everyone” radio program.491 This corporate imperative to prevent sponsored art from becoming too high- culture and risk going over the heads of the general public explains why Abbott chose to fund works that appealed to that audience. The demographic of doctors subscribing to What’s New, as opposed to the lay public, clearly gave Abbott the confidence to embrace more experimental styles in its magazine’s layout.

Recognizing the contrast between Abbott’s company style and the realist art that it commissioned through its AAA artists helps to understand why the corporation chose to donate the works from Men Without Guns despite the series’ depiction of medicine. The works offered little value to Abbott beyond their sponsorship and promotion; however, during this promotional period a clear and easy-to-consume style proved essential to the image’s operation as propaganda.

Catering to the public’s taste meant more than a shining exhibition review in the weekend section of Friday’s newspaper. For Abbott’s artist correspondent exhibitions, success could be measured quantitatively rather than qualitatively through the war bond drives accompanying the shows. Museum patrons spoke directly with their wallets, supplanting the art establishment’s shrewdest professional art critics, by purchasing war bonds. Fortunately for the War Department,

489 Paul J. DiMaggio, Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in Mission & Constraint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 79. 490 Ibid., 79. 491 Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (Berkeley: The University of California Press), 336.

172 in addition to raising awareness of the war effort and boosting bond revenues, public and critical reception of the Abbott museum exhibitions exceeded expectations.492

However, the few negative reviews of the exhibitions were particularly harsh, as evidenced by critic Katharine Kuh’s scathing 1946 diatribe:

One cannot say that the popular war records in the form of illustrations for Life magazine, for various branches of the Armed Services, and for occasional industrial organizations such as Abbott Laboratories, constitute a war art of serious stature. It is unfortunate but not surprising that the slick-paper magazines specialized heavily all during the war in a patriotic type of bastard art that should have been labeled news illustration. The museums of the country, large and small, jumped on the nationalistic band wagon and exhibited these collections, many of which were composed chiefly of paintings competently factual but largely lacking in quality, imagination, or intensity.”493

Kuh, who friend and biographer Avis Berman notes was “fierce in delivering her opinions and unabashed in voicing her disagreements,” was a staunch proponent of modernism and believed that art should continually evolve.494 Her statements on the exhibition of war art reflect an altogether different conflict simultaneously taking place in America’s art museums. Even prior to the war, art institutions constantly faced the challenge of showcasing America’s modern artists while highlighting the European canon. Homegrown art thrived during a period of intense jingoism, but as Kuh’s review reflects, regional and representational art often encountered resistance from critics who embraced greater experimentation. Kuh, who fought an uphill battle to promote contemporary art during the 1930s as a Chicago gallery owner, believed that rather than advancing art through new forms of visual expression, the works sponsored by Abbott and other government-partnered corporations during the war was a “recapitulation of the past.”495

492 Brian Lanker and Nicole Newnham, They Drew Fire: Combat Artists of World War II (New York: TV Books, 2000), 155. 493 Kuh, “War and Visual Arts,” 399‐400. 494 Kuh, My Love Affair, xxii. 495 Ibid., 4. Kuh explains, “During the 1930s the term modern art was anathema in the Midwest—a label of opprobrium. To sell contemporary work was an uphill push all the way, and only the blithe neophyte would have been brash enough to even consider trying it. It almost seemed as if the daring imagination that Chicago had

173 While figures like Lewenthal and Biddle believed that war art representing a unique

American experience should grace the walls of America’s museums, critics like Kuh saw Abbott art as derivative. The very fact that Abbott aligned with the government to design a democratized visual experience of the war would have challenged Kuh’s assessment of art for the masses as well as government-supported art. In her “autobiography,” My Love Affair with Modern Art:

Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator, she asserts:

As for the general public, the idea that art is for everyone, regardless of personal sensitivity or the benefit of an experienced eye, is questionable. Everyone, to be sure, is entitled to intelligent exposure to the visual world, but the uninformed public per se cannot be the final arbiter for art, any more than it can for science. Our own Congress, for which art and morality are too often oversimplified and mindlessly confused, is a glaring reminder. As a rule, if an artist is worth his salt he is in advance of his times and not necessarily accepted by the public or its political representatives.496

If Abbott Laboratories could have produced art for the government that more closely represented its corporate style and line of products—art that it could have subsequently kept in its company collection—then it probably would have. Along with providing a morale boost to company employees, art collections are typically viable investments for corporations, as was the case for IBM.497 DiMaggio notes that in addition to improving employee morale, a “flourishing cultural climate” proves advantageous to business.498 Yet, Abbott could not just go about sponsoring any art it chose. The company needed to commission paintings and drawings that would serve the three major propaganda requirements of the government: the work needed to be clear and easily consumed by the masses; it had to highlight some aspect related to the war; and

expended on commerce exhausted its ability to cope with visual innovations other than the field of architecture, which, to be sure, depended on the city’s industrial life.” Kuh also provides her impression of art during the twentieth century on page 58: “The two halves of our century confront each other as antagonists. The later years have forged few, if any, momentous landmarks. Chiefly reactive, they have either rejected or retooled vital prior commitments.” 496 Ibid., 25. 497 Rosanne Martorella, Corporate Art (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 26. 498 DiMaggio, Nonprofit Enterprise, 103.

174 finally, it had to be profuse. The hundreds of images Abbott sponsored from 1941 to 1945 met all of these criteria. However, the post-war era promised a different future.

This point leads to the third and final suggestion as to why Abbott Laboratories chose to donate all of the art it commissioned to the government. Because of tax incentives, Abbott’s war- correspondent program provided the company with a win-win scenario in which it could promote its corporate image and support for the war effort while ultimately saving money. The fiscal benefit to the company alone would have validated the program as a success. However, a closer look at Abbott Laboratories’ wartime relationship with the United States government reveals several additional, and even more substantial, benefits to corporate patronage.

Even prior to the United States’ official entry into the war, Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease Act created numerous production opportunities for American corporations. A New York Times article from April 9, 1941, reporting the War and Navy Departments’ awarding of nearly $19.7 million in supply contracts for businesses in the New York metropolitan area alone, reveals Abbott

Laboratories as one of the many recipients.499 By September of the following year, Robert P.

Patterson, Under-Secretary of War, and James V. Forrestal, Under-Secretary of the Navy, honored Abbott and a select group of wartime manufacturers with the prestigious Army-Navy

Production Award pennant.500 A 1942 press report published by Barron’s National Business and

Financial Weekly three months prior to the Pearl Harbor attack details Abbott’s early concentration on war production:

Emphasis on a program of selective research to develop new wartime drug and chemical products has been added this year to Abbott Laboratories’ already active manufacturing schedule. Within recent weeks, the company has put on the market a series of sulfa drugs in tablet and powder form for the emergency treatment of war wounds in the field and in base hospitals; an eye ointment employing the latest sulfa discovery; a liquid acid treatment for severe burns, and new ‘Victory

499 “Defense Contracts in Day $19,698,788,” New York Times, April 9, 1941. 500 “Army-Navy Award Given to Arsenals,” New York Times, September 9, 1942.

175 formula’ high-potency vitamin products for safeguarding the health of both military forces and civilian workers on the industrial front. . . . Abbott was one of the first pharmaceutical houses in the country to devote a part of its facilities to processing blood plasma for the Army and Navy.501

The press report shows Abbott’s wasting absolutely no time producing drug supplies for the military months before Benton would create his Year of Peril series. Defense contracts were extremely competitive, and not every pharmaceutical company experienced the same success as

Abbott in winning government bids. In A Century of Caring: The Upjohn Story, Upjohn historian

Robert D.B. Carlisle details the tremendous difficulty the company experienced attempting to obtain contracts. Following months of losing to other pharmaceutical corporations, Upjohn finally secured a its first contract for Vitamin C Concentrate Caps after it had “lost out on 54 straight biddings.”502

Roosevelt’s support of Great Britain through passage of the Lend Lease Act—and

America’s subsequent entry into the War—severed trade with major German medical distributors and brought about the necessity for increased domestic production.503 Military medical expenditures throughout the war continued to rise, and winning large governmental contracts not only provided a financial boon to an individual pharmaceutical corporation, but it also prevented close competitors from obtaining the sale. Even at subsidized rates, the military’s medical expenditures for drugs and surgical supplies alone during fiscal years 1943 and 1944 accounted for nearly $803 million dollars.504 Adjusted for inflation, these medical expenditures in the year 2012 would equate to over $10.7 trillion dollars.505 Pharmaceutical supply was then,

501 “What the Chemical Companies are Doing: Abbott Laboratories’ Medical Research,” Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly 22, no. 38 (1942): 19. 502 Robert D.B. Carlisle, A Century of Caring: The Upjohn Story (Elmsford, NY: The Benjamin Company, 1987), 87-8. 503 Abbott Laboratories and DeWitt Mackenzie, Men Without Guns, 7. 504 Ibid., 9. 505 The United States Department of Labor, “Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject: CPI Inflation Calculator,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm (accessed November 12, 2012).

176 as is the case today, an extremely lucrative enterprise. Securing large military medical contracts through the government translated into massive revenues for Abbott Laboratories and its competitors.

Although competitive pricing typically determined which company acquired a supplier contract, good will programs such as war bond exhibitions and private donations helped to grease the cogs by building rapport between contractors and the government. Katharine Kuh points out that in addition to a public relations boost and advertising tax credits, corporate CEO’s and marketing directors enjoyed many of the fringe benefits connected to art patronage. She explains, “Not to be overlooked were the elaborate cocktail parties, dinners, and receptions, celebrating the various openings and previews, which could be charged off to business expenses rather than to taxes.”506 Edward Alden Jewell’s Times review of Abbott’s Our Flying Navy exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum corroborates Kuh’s assertion:

The Abbott Collection of ‘Naval Aviation’ paintings has been installed in the balcony that extends round the upper part of the entrance gallery at the Metropolitan Museum. There was a private opening last night at 9, to which ranking officers of the Third Naval District, State and city officials and members of the museum were invited. This was followed by a party, given by Abbott Laboratories, on the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria. The exhibition opens to the public today and will remain through Feb. 6.507

Rooftop parties allowed Abbott executives to hobnob with government and military officials and strengthen or develop new liaisons. Throughout the war Abbott would use its connections to promote additional initiatives that would demonstrate the company’s support of the war effort. These types of G.R. campaigns (government relations) emerge through Abbott’s contribution of company spaces and training facilities during the war. As Kogan elaborates,

“During World War II Abbott Hall served as a United States Navy midshipman’s training school,

506 Kuh, “War and Visual Arts,” 400. 507 Edward Alden Jewell, “‘Naval Aviation’ Depicted in Art: Work of Seven Painters, Done for Abbott Laboratories, is Put on Display Here,” New York Times, January 12, 1944.

177 turning out more than 20,000 officers.”508 Located at Chicago’s Northwestern University, Abbott

Hall cost over $2 million dollars and its spaces, originally intended for professional students researching mouth disease, were transformed into midshipmen instructional facilities.509

Whether direct or indirect, Abbott’s large financial contributions to the military—in the form of charity, training facilities, and artists’ wages—helped the company to garner good faith with the government and public.

By continually strengthening its relationship with the government, Abbott could compete for general contracts as well as encourage acquisitions departments to place orders for several of its proprietary products, such as Sodium Pentothal (Sodium Thiopental). Popularly nicknamed the “truth serum,” Sodium Pentothal was discovered by Abbott scientists in 1936 in an effort to improve the speed of the company’s previous sulfur anesthetic Nembutal (pentobarbital).510

Patented in April 1939, Pentothal instantly became one Abbott Laboratories premiere drugs because of its ease to administer, its rapid activation, and the calming properties it releases upon its recipient.511 Abbott rolled out an extensive advertising campaign for the product and targeted doctors by listing in the pages of What’s New the many benefits of the drug in surgical procedures. What’s New editorials also provided expert analysis and proposed suggestions for mixing the drug to achieve the best performance. The March 1945 issue of What’s New, for example, reviews the state of the medical literature and recommends combining intravenous

Pentothal injection with a gaseous anesthesia of half oxygen, half nitrous oxide to “retain the desirable features of Pentothal Sodium anesthesia without excessive depression of respiration and to avoid a large total dose of the drug which would tend to cause prolonged postoperative

508 Kogan, Long White Line, 193. 509 Ibid., 193. 510 Lai, Pentothal Postcards, 9. Abbott introduced Nembutal in 1929. 511 Abbott Laboratories, “News of the New,” What’s New 90 (March 1945): 7-8.

178 depression” and “produce mild hypnosis in nervous individuals undergoing operation under local anesthesia, to supplement local anesthesia that is inadequate or wearing off, and to make local anesthesia more satisfactory for certain abdominal operations.”512 Because of Pentothal’s hypnotic characteristics and the drug’s side effect of respiratory depression, it remains today the drug of choice for euthanasia and lethal injection.513 In fact, of the 590 total death penalties administered in United States from 2001 to present, 98.5 percent of the executions have been by

Pentothal lethal injection.514 However, if administered properly and in smaller doses, Pentothal provides tremendous benefits with very little risk. World War II Army doctors relied heavily on

Pentothal as yet another one of Abbott Laboratories’ miracle drugs, and it was particularly useful in performing surgeries, dentistry, and the treatment of psychological or neurological trauma.

In terms of surgery, Sodium Pentothal supplanted other anesthetics during the war for several reasons. For one, unlike gaseous mixtures, Pentothal was not explosive—a critical determinant when considering its necessity in combat zones and the additional hazard combustible cargo presents to already vulnerable supply ships.515 Additionally, it was much easier to transport than the bulky tanks and masks required to store and administer gas-oxygen anesthesia.516 Because medics could carry the Pentothal with them, like the previously noted plasma kits, emergency surgeries were not restricted to the collecting stations. 517 Minor operations requiring a small dosage of anesthesia, “such as removal of shrapnel or bullets, suturing lacerations, or setting of fractures,” could be performed virtually anywhere.518 This

512 Ibid., 7-8. 513 Jonathan Groner, “Lethal Injection and the Medicalization of Capital Punishment in the United States,” Health and Human Rights 6, no. 1 (2002): 65-6. 514 Death Penalty Information Center, Execution Database, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org (accessed October 8, 2011). Eight executions have been electric chair and one has been by firing squad. 515 Kogan, Long White Line, 172-3. 516 Ibid., 172-3. 517 Ibid., 172-3. 518 Ibid., 172-3.

179 added mobility increased the already high value of the effective easy-to-use wonder drug, and

Abbott Laboratories, creator, manufacturer, and distributor of Pentothal, benefited tremendously from its popularity.

Baer’s Jungle Operating Room, is just one of the many images from the Men Without Guns collection that showcases surgical procedures in a variety of locales ranging from beachheads and thatched-roof huts to jungle floors (figure 5.13). In this painting, Army surgeons located in

Burma have commandeered a native hut and transformed it into an operating room. Two wounded soldiers receive plasma and urgent medical care while shielded in a protective dome of mosquito netting. Thanks to training, minor lighting, medical equipment and Abbott Laboratories’

Pentothal, Army medics are able to transform nearly any structure into a makeshift hospital.

Baer produced this painting and fifty-four other images while stationed in the Burmese jungle under legendary General Joseph Stilwell’s command during one of the most significant campaigns of the Burma-India-China Theater.519 There he recorded with gritty realism the aftermath of human destruction and the intense battles medics waged to save the lives of fellow soldiers. Baer candidly discusses his working method and reveals his ingenuity while painting in the harsh climate of the Burmese jungle:

I painted and sketched operations. I never had seen an operation before. Usually I can sketch very rapidly but when the surgeons were at work I found it very difficult to follow the operation, not knowing what was going on. Then, too, there was the smell of ether, and it was very hard to get used to the sight of wounds. . . . I sketched with fountain pen on typewriter bond-paper. I did have watercolor paper but I soon discovered that the moisture from the rains wouldn’t leave the heavy paper, so I had to use a thinner bond. After sketching with a fountain pen I immediately would slap in water-color so that I would have a more complete sketch for development when I got home. The dampness was so persistent that most of my sketches stayed moist until I eventually got hold of a 105 mm. shell- tube—a fiber tube with metal ends which holds the shell—and I rolled my

519 Abbott Laboratories and DeWitt Mackenzie, Men Without Guns, 3.

180 sketches up and kept them in that, along with rice. The rice absorbed the moisture and kept my work dry.520

Baer’s preliminary fountain pen sketches were occasionally completed uncolored, as seen in his drawing Open Wide – Dental Set-Up (figure 5.14). Here Baer quickly sketches an Army dentist working on his patient under another canopy-covered makeshift clinic. While dentistry may not immediately come to mind when considering military medicine, several of the works in the Abbott collection focus on the Dental Corps, a major division of military medicine. Extreme cases of poor oral hygiene could impair a soldier’s ability to fight, and the additional detriment to morale called for the implementation of routine oral inspections alongside scheduled physical examinations. In fact, during the war years the Dental Corps expanded from three hundred doctors and technicians to fifteen thousand.521 The anesthetic’s utility and popularity among doctors expanded to other medical specialists, and soon oral surgeons began selecting Abbott’s

Pentothal over nitrous oxide for procedures lasting longer than twenty minutes.522

Perhaps the most glamorous aspect of Sodium Pentothal’s attributes, and the feature that has gained the most traction in the public perception of the drug, is its purported application as a truth serum. Spurred by fictional espionage thrillers and other pop culture machinations, the idea that this wonder drug can delve deep into its recipient’s subconscious and force him to unknowingly and unwillingly reveal his innermost thoughts has been refuted by numerous doctors and scientists, including Abbott Laboratories.

Despite studies dismissing Pentothal’s usefulness as a truth serum, claims of the drug’s psychotropic abilities bore a mark of authenticity. Even when administered for strictly anesthetic purposes, the drug’s side effects on the patient include extreme relaxation, garrulousness, and

520 Howard Baer, quoted in Ibid., 41. 521 Abbott Laboratories and DeWitt Mackenzie, Men Without Guns, 7. 522 Kogan, Long White Line, 170-1.

181 diminished reticence.523 Realizing the drug’s utility in extracting suppressed or repressed thoughts and memories, scientists experimented with the drug through “narcoanalysis.”524

Increased cases of severe psychological trauma in soldiers following enemy engagements led the military to adopt new measures that could address neurological disorders. According to Hans

Pols, the gruesome campaign in Tunisia against German field marshal Erwin Rommel resulted in heavy casualties, 20 to 34 percent of which were “neuropsychiatric in nature.”525 Military officials quickly assessed the enormous financial and wartime expense of shipping soldiers back to the U.S. for psychiatric treatment. To save money and reduce the attrition rate of physically able-bodied men, the military began recruiting psychiatrists to handle its growing number of psychologically afflicted.526 Army doctors received additional psychiatric training as well, participating in four-week crash courses on military psychiatry at Lawson General Hospital in

Atlanta.527 Taught by field expert Colonel William C. Porter, and begun in January 1943, these classes instructed military doctors in how to recognize and treat various types of neurological trauma. 528 Among the disorders addressed is one of the most ubiquitous and troublesome psychotic disconnects to occur during the heat of battle: shell shock.

Eby’s charcoal drawing War is Hell (Shell Shock), reveals the startling face of traumatic shock (figure 5.15). Two soldiers restrain a fellow warrior whose ghastly countenance bears witness to the horrors of war and the complete mental breakdown debilitating him. Eby’s energetic line work adds to the manic tone of the image, as surrounding bushes and trees seem to burst into flames. The crazed soldier manifests the initial signs of shock, but his outward

523 Jason R. Odeshoo, “Truth or Dare?: Terrorism and ‘Truth Serum’ in the Post-9/11 World,” Stanford Law Review 57, no. 1 (October 2004): 214-5. 524 Ibid., 214-5. 525 Hans Pols, “War Neurosis, Adjustment Problems in Veterans, and an Ill Nation: The Disciplinary Project of American Psychiatry During and After World War II,” Osiris 22, no. 1 (2007): 77. 526 Ibid., 77. 527 Ibid., 77. 528 Ibid., 77.

182 appearance only reflects the preliminary phases of his deep-seated trauma. Interestingly, because the OWI restricted the photographic representation of any “psychoneurotic casualties,” Eby’s image represents one of the few pictures of what we now refer to as posttraumatic stress disorder.529 After increased diagnoses of psychiatric trauma in soldiers, the Office of the Surgeon

General finally conducted a study in May 1944 to determine that the average “infantryman could

‘last’ about two hundred days before breaking down.”530 Psychiatrists John P. Spiegel and Roy G.

Grinker, well versed in psychosomatic medicine, believed that Abbott’s Sodium Pentothal could aid front-line soldiers dealing with extreme cases of shock.531 Recruited by the Air Force, the two doctors hinged their practice on the theory of traumatic regression. They believed that pentothal-induced soldiers subjected to a re-enactment of the trauma would revert to a childlike state, and with the physician’s assistance they could successfully overcome it.532 According Pols, the psychiatrists used Abbott’s Pentothal to “induce a state of twilight sleep that aided in bringing repressed traumatic memories to the surface.”533 The drug proved essential to relaxing the traumatized patient, and its primary usage in surgical and dental procedures insured that the military medical corps had plenty of it stockpiled.

Sodium Pentothal’s viability in trauma cases extended well beyond Grinker and Spiegels’ preliminary application. After the initial manifestations of shock subsided, repression and posttraumatic stress disorder made it difficult and sometimes impossible for soldiers to resume their careers and lives. Military doctors soon discovered that unlike physical injuries, psychological wounds were harder to accurately measure and could be simulated by soldiers

529 George H. Roeder, Jr., The Censored War: American Visual Experience During World War Two (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 16. 530 Ibid., 16. 531 Pols, “War Neurosis, Adjustment Problems,” 77-8. 532 Ibid., 77-8. 533 Ibid., 77-8.

183 seeking to evade battle. As the war endured, malingering became a major concern for military officials, who in turned developed systems to more accurately assess mental health. To this end, military doctors administered Abbott’s Pentothal in instances where commanding officers either suspected or accused their soldiers of feigning mental injury.534 The sedative properties of the drug could theoretically reduce the malingerer’s inhibitions through relaxation and cause him to accidentally disclose his true motives. While hardly effective enough for the title “truth serum,”

Pentothal nevertheless developed a reputation as a tool to aid interrogation. Criticism of the drug stemmed from the concern that, as Jason Odeshoo explains, “it is clear that these substances lower inhibitions and increase loquacity, [but] they provide no assurance as to the truthfulness of the information obtained.”535

Whether used in “narcoanalysis,” dentistry, or field surgery, Abbott’s Sodium Pentothal provided many advantages to the armed forces during the war. So great was Abbott’s contribution of the drug, that the company received the rare and prestigious Army-Navy “E” pennant with a commendation from the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery chief, Rear

Admiral Ross T. McIntire.536 Admiral McIntire exalts, “No reward for your war efforts could possibly be greater than the satisfaction of knowing that your products are directly helping to ease the pain and speed the recovery of our fighting men.”537 Abbott made its mark on the war through its provisioning of Sodium Pentothal; however, this contribution pales in comparison to the company’s pioneering research and production of another even more valuable World War II drug: penicillin.

534 Odeshoo, “Truth or Dare?: Terrorism,” 217. 535 Ibid., 215-21. Odeshoo, who explores the history of Sodium Pentothal and its context in the Global War on Terror, notes that Article 17 of the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War prohibits the drug’s usage. 536 Kogan, Long White Line, 203. 537 Rear Admiral Ross T. McIntire, quoted in Ibid., 203.

184 Roosevelt’s June 28, 1941, executive order creating the OSRD spurred unprecedented scientific progress in the United States and its laboratories, hospitals, and factories.538

Technological and medical advances played a pivotal role in determining the outcome of World

War II, and one of the greatest victories of the conflict—and the era—was the chemical synthesis and mass production of penicillin. The drug’s active ingredient “Penicillium rubrum,” discovered in a moldy petri dish on August 1928 by scientist Alexander Fleming, effectively fights a wide range of bacterial infections.539 Before penicillin, bacterial infection of a wound often presented a greater threat to a soldier’s life than the actual wound itself. Fleming’s discovery made it possible to save the lives of military personnel and civilians whose massive injuries would have in past wars required a mercy killing.

Abbott artists assigned to the warfront as well as hospitals in the United States regularly witnessed the tragic aftermath of war, and Hirsch, who served in multiple campaigns for the pharmaceutical company, was particularly pensive. In a lengthy 1970 interview with the

Smithsonian, the former Abbott war correspondent reflected upon his interaction with the military:

It was hard and unforgettable and lonely and sometimes frustrating running into the real McCoy. You know, talking with – I saw soldiers in hospitals – I had been in many hospitals in Philadelphia as my father was a doctor. The three trips I went on had to do with naval air training at Pensacola, Florida; then naval medicine in the Pacific; and army medicine in Italy and North Africa. I was of course moved most by the two medical assignments because I saw wounded kids. It was a very good experience. And the drawings that I did – I did about twenty-five pictures on each assignment, most of them done from sketches made on the spot. I didn’t have any camera with me. Not having a camera simplified everything because there was no censorship. The majority of the work was done immediately upon my return. I’d go out for a couple of months and come back and spend another three or four months doing perhaps a dozen paintings and as many drawings both for the aviation series and the naval medicine and the Army medical. . . . I

538 John Patrick Swann, “The Search for Synthetic Penicillin during World War II,” The British Journal for the History of Science 16, no. 2 (July 1983): 157-8. 539 Ibid., 154.

185 suppose the most vivid experiences were down in Guadalcanal with the Marine Corps. I watched a hospital set up from landing until it was in operative condition in less than three hours from landing on the beach and set up in eight tents the entire thing with portable X-ray – everything within the space of three hours.540

Hirsch’s time with the armed forces allowed him to capture some of the most iconic images of injured American soldiers from the Second World War. Critically wounded men, once stabilized abroad and cleared for transport, returned to domestic military hospitals for convalescence. There, depending on the severity of the injury, they endured months of rehabilitation, physical and occupational therapy. Abbott artists Marion Greenwood and Peter

Blume—who were assigned to Atlantic City’s England General Hospital and Staten Island’s

Halloran General Hospital respectively—painted and sketched the government’s efforts to rehabilitate the wounded in order to insure an adequate and expedited reintegration back into society or return to the armed forces.

Both domestic rehabilitation facilities and military collecting stations at the front struggled with accommodating the high numbers of wounded troops. Frontline medics in crisis relied on split-second decision-making and guidelines establishing a hierarchy of injuries. Most severe and life-threatening injuries obviously required immediate care. However, others could prove just as detrimental if left unattended. Injuries and ailments sustained intentionally—whether due to carelessness, negligence or because a soldier failed to take the proper preventative measures— were extremely frowned upon and received the pejorative appellation of “gold-bricking.” For example, prior to the implementation of the supervised distribution of Atabrine, as previously described by Boggs’ discussion of his painting Pill Call, soldiers could “gold-brick” and intentionally circumvent taking the medicine. By allowing themselves to become more seriously ill, they could avoid service or return home prematurely. This form of malingering hurt the

540 Joseph Hirsch, interview by Paul Cummings, November 13 – December 2, 1970, transcript, Oral History Interview, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC.

186 armed forces tremendously because it not only reduced troop numbers, but it also unnecessarily wasted valuable medical staff and resources on soldiers who were essentially stealing from the future wounded.

Venereal disease quickly became one the easiest and most initially enjoyable methods of

“gold-bricking.” Despite the military’s intense measures to provide soldiers with prophylactics, with the exception of malaria cases in the Pacific Theater, sexually transmitted diseases infected more soldiers than any other disease.541 McKenzie attributes this phenomenon primarily to youth, stress, and alcohol consumption: “A kid was subjected to nervous strain and tension during battle, and on his leave he didn’t deliberately decide to find a female and become infected with venereal disease . . . but he simply got drunk and careless.”542 Hirsch, on the other hand, seemed much less forgiving when recalling a conversation regarding the issue of men rendering themselves ill through carelessness:

There are two sides to this problem. On the one hand you have doctors invoking the Hippocratic oath that a patient is a patient and should be so treated. But on the other hand, a man of about 50 said to me in great heat: “Hirsch, you are an artist. You want to get back and paint pictures. I want to get back to cardiology. Everybody wants to get back. And those who deliberately or accidentally become infected venereally, in spite of all the provisions that the Medical Corps has to prevent infection, are absenting themselves from their jobs in the Army. They are occupying hospital beds where bad cases should be. They are prolonging the war.”543

In terms of prolonging the war, unnecessary diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea required weeks and sometimes months to eradicate.544 Part of penicillin’s popularity stemmed from the fact that in addition to its application for pneumonia and other life-threatening ailments, it could also successfully treat a host of venereal diseases in a fraction of the time that previous methods

541 Abbott Laboratories and DeWitt Mackenzie, Men Without Guns, 29. 542 Ibid., 29. 543 Joseph Hirsch, quoted in Ibid., 30. 544 Ibid., 7.

187 could.545 In this way, a little booster shot administered to groups of soldiers following a major port call could catch the diseases in their preliminary gestation phases and greatly reduce attrition rate while keeping the sick bays clear. In Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World

War II, Albert E. Cowdrey notes the administration of penicillin to non-military personnel:

“Venereal diseases—in those pre-AIDS days, a roster that included syphilis, gonorrhea, and some lesser infections—were a kind of occupational complaint of soldiers, and they spread rapidly as both long-continent American and hungry German women sought sex among the ruins. . . . Penicillin treatment was authorized for Germans, in order to interrupt transmission back to Americans.” 546 Unfortunately for the government, despite penicillin’s efficacy and its many uses, the drug took some time and great expense before coming to the forefront of modern medicine.

Within the context of the Second World War, pharmaceutical companies waged a parallel epic struggle for scientific, technological, and commercial supremacy. This battle, or “Penicillin

War,” as I have come to call it, came at great cost to the companies involved. According to John

Patrick Swann, who chronicles this international drug race in his article “The Search for

Synthetic Penicillin during World War II,” initial attempts at creating a synthetic version of the drug were hampered due to its high cost.547 Because of the rarity of penicillin cultures and complications with their contamination during natural production, demand for the drug far exceeded its supply.548 Swann explains, “Based on the cost of one gram of crude material containing, on average, five percent pure penicillin—at least $100—the value of one pound of

545 Ibid., 7. 546 Albert E. Cowdrey, Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 290. 547 Swann, “Search for Synthetic Penicillin,” 159. 548 Ibid., 159.

188 pure penicillin as late as April of 1944 was about $45,000.”549 To overcome this, scientists and pharmaceutical companies sought to create a synthetic version of the drug. Unfortunately for them, identifying the chemical construction of penicillin for the purposes of synthesis still required samples of the naturally occurring (and expensive) form of the drug. Consequently, initial synthesis attempts during the early 1940s resulted in tremendously low yields.550

In typical fashion Abbott Laboratories, which consistently placed itself at the forefront of medical innovation, recognized the efficacy and commercial viability of penicillin and expanded its laboratories to aggressively research its natural production. In less than three months the company completed a $500,000 renovation to add an entire building floor dedicated to penicillin research and production.551 Led by Chairman A.N. Richards, the government’s Committee on

Medical Research (CMR)—which was later absorbed by the OSRD—also realized the value of penicillin, and it quickly enacted several measures to requisition the drug for military purposes.

Swann elaborates:

In June 1943, Richards requested the WPB (War Production Board) to assume ownership of all penicillin in this country and allocate it to the armed services, to the manufacturers for their own research purposes, to the OSRD for investigations as recommended by the CMR, and to the Public Health Service. On July 16, 1943, the WPB assumed control of all penicillin stocks. . . . On September 22, 1943, the WPB informed the Penicillin Producer’s Industry Advisory Committee that, henceforth, research into the chemistry of penicillin would officially be under the control of the Office of Scientific Research and Development.552

Within days of the WPB’s procurement, Abbott promptly reacted to the news by announcing through What’s New that it would focus all of its efforts to ramping up its penicillin research and development.553 This public proclamation proved to be yet another shrewd

549 Ibid., 159. 550 Ibid., 159. 551 Kogan, Long White Line, 207-9. 552 Swann, “Search for Synthetic Penicillin,” 160‐1. 553 Kogan, Long White Line, 207-9.

189 maneuver for the company, as over the next few months Richards and the OSRD began coordinating the redistribution of its newly procured penicillin supply.

After deliberating for several months, in October 1943, Richards and officials from both the OSRD and the WPB finally selected nine pharmaceutical companies and eight firms to receive shares of the requisitioned penicillin and participate in the government-supervised research project.554 Although each company received a letter from the OSRD soliciting its participation, these initial invitations did not disclose how much of the precious natural penicillin each company stood to receive. The subsequent “Penicillin War” consisted of aggressive attempts on behalf of pharmaceutical corporation CEOs and presidents. Well aware of the prestige and financial windfall that it stood to gain by successfully synthesizing and more cheaply producing penicillin, each company fervently advocated why it should receive a larger share of the drug for research purposes. Pharmaceutical corporations Pfizer, Squibb, and Merck, for example, all contended that only companies with preestablished experience in penicillin research—and facilities already dedicated to its study—should receive a ration.555 Furthermore, they felt that this allotment should be directly related to the size of the company and its preexisting penicillin laboratories; the companies claimed, as Swann has noted, that “to bring laboratories not already engaged in chemical research on penicillin up-to-date would be a waste of time and material.”556 While Pfizer, Squibb, and Merck appealed to reason with their request, their specifying companies engaged in researching the chemical aspects of the drug intentionally excluded organizations that devoted more research in clinical applications.

Prior to the WPB’s requisition of penicillin, Abbott Laboratories’ had focused its study on the clinical aspects of the drug. Pfizer, Squibb, and Merck sought to analyze penicillin in order to

554 Swann, “Search for Synthetic Penicillin,” 161-2. 555 Ibid., 161-2. 556 Ibid., 161-2.

190 create a cheaper and more stable synthetic version of the drug. Abbott, on the other hand, allocated its resources towards clinical study in hopes of reducing the cost, increasing the efficiency, and stabilizing the process of mass producing natural penicillin. Clough contended that his company’s early investment in clinical research was just as valuable as his competitors’ chemical studies, and he pleaded with Richards and the WPB for a comparable allotment of penicillin. 557 Despite the OSRD’s push towards penicillin’s synthetic production, the committee agreed to overlook Abbott Laboratories’ relative inexperience in the chemical research of the drug and included them among the other allotment recipients.558

Although Abbott received a special exception from the OSRD to work on the synthetic penicillin project, the company wisely decided not to jettison its previous research efforts to improve the production of natural penicillin. Instead, it worked on both projects simultaneously, in accordance with OSRD stipulations. By 1944 the company increased penicillin production to more than nine pounds a day, a tremendous upsurge considering that America’s total production for the previous year had amounted only to fifteen pounds.559 The natural production of penicillin proved so successful and superior to the drug’s synthesis that the OSRD eventually canceled its program. Swann explains:

Several circumstances necessitated the termination of the OSRD penicillin synthesis project. First, based on the extremely low yield of synthetic penicillin, the production of penicillin by synthesis would cost at least 50 times more than the manufacture of natural penicillin. . . . For example, the yield of naturally produced penicillin approached 50% - far better than the best yield available by synthetic means, about 0-1%. Also, most of the production plants were completed in 1944. Production during July of 1943 approximately equaled the total output of the six previous months; within a year and a half monthly production rose 1000- fold; and by July of 1946 monthly production of penicillin increased 2500 times over the July, 1943 output. . . . These improvements helped to drastically decrease

557 Ibid., 161-2. 558 Ibid., 163-4. Other companies included in the OSRD’s penicillin research team along with Abbott were Cyanamide, Lilly, Merck, Parke-Davis, Pfizer, Roche, Squibb, Upjohn, and Winthrop. 559 Kogan, Long White Line, 209.

191 the cost of penicillin. From July, 1943 to July, 1946, the cost of 100,000 units of penicillin fell from 20 dollars to about 55 cents; by 1949, the price dropped to less than ten cents.560

Abbott Laboratories viewed its accomplishments in natural penicillin production as a huge victory in the Penicillin War. Not only did the company receive an appointment to the OSRD’s synthetic penicillin task force—despite opposition from Pfizer, Squibb, and Merck—but Abbott also proved that its method for natural production exceeded the cumulative efforts of the government’s and the pharmaceutical industry’s foremost scientists and researchers. The March

1945 issue of What’s New featured a three-page spread showcasing the company’s progress in the field of penicillin. Black-and-white photographs of Abbott’s cutting-edge production facilities highlighted the company’s state-of-the-art filters, pumps, refrigeration units, and five thousand gallon fermentation drums.561

In part due to Abbott’s successful mass production of the drug, the government restriction of penicillin strictly to military-use dissolved. The What’s New editorial in the same March issue proudly informed the reader that beginning March 15th, local pharmacies would carry and distribute Abbott Penicillin by prescription.562 The editorial continued, “Today, with Penicillin made generally available, it is natural to think back to the time, a mere two years ago, when so little of the drug came from the virtual laboratory-scale production methods that a few thousand units were watched over like so many rare gems. The race against time that followed. . . . From the first, Abbott Laboratories has been a leader in the production of Penicillin and in the hard- driving research which necessarily paced any improvement in Penicillin-manufacturing methods.”563 While other corporations made significant progress in creating synthetic penicillin,

560 Swann, “Search for Synthetic Penicillin,” 181-2. 561 Abbott Laboratories, “News of the New,” 2-3. 562 Ibid., 3. 563 Ibid., 3.

192 these advancements paled in comparison to the contribution made by Abbott’s research and development of the drug’s natural cultivation. The most telling aspect of the Penicillin War—in regards to the true nature of Abbott’s relationship with the government—remains the company’s inclusion in the OSRD’s program.

The special exception made on behalf of the OSRD to include Abbott Laboratories despite its inexperience in chemical research no doubt resulted from several key factors, including: the government’s confidence in the company’s research staff and facilities; the fact that Abbott had remained one of the military’s biggest providers of medicine, medical supplies, and plasma from the onset of the war until its conclusion; and the tremendous rapport between Abbott executives and government officials resulting from the company’s charitable contributions to the military, donation of laboratory and instructional spaces, and public relations initiatives demonstrating support for the war effort. With this understanding, Abbott’s war-correspondent program functions as a signifier much more complex than the cursory impression often afforded it. While jingoism and public relations certainly played a role in Abbott’s funding of war art, a closer inspection of the company’s peripheral connections to the military reveals a deep and prolonged corporate/government partnership. This affiliation, mutually beneficial and built upon successive give-and-take transactions between both parties involved, resulted in a circle of reciprocity that combined private enterprise with government control to form a unique amalgam.

193 CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION

After closely examining and attempting to understand Abbott Laboratories’ patronage of the visual arts throughout the pharmaceutical corporation’s history, one major theme emerges: circumvention. From the company’s inception to its final artist correspondent campaign, Men

Without Guns, leaders at Abbott combined the visual image with clever marketing strategies as a way of circumventing contemporary pitfalls and obstacles to become one of the largest and most successful pharmaceutical corporations in the world. Wallace Abbott’s June 1891 purchase of an advertisement in The Medical World represents the first of over fifty years of marketing initiatives that would position Abbott Laboratories as a global leader in medicine by the end of

World War II. With Doctor Abbott’s initial investment, he found a way to distinguish his alkaloids and himself from other, less scrupulous patent medicine dealers at the time. After realizing how effective advertising could be for his products, Abbott took over Thackery’s publication The Alkaloidal Clinic in order to control his own marketing vehicle and avoid paying high ad rates through other journals.

By erecting his own printing press and establishing The Clinic Publishing Company, which became The Abbott Press in 1911, Wallace Abbott could advertise directly to doctors and control the editorial content in the company’s The Alkaloidal Clinic. Despite vicious attacks from

George Simmons of the American Medical Association in 1907—and the eventual blacklisting of Abbott from The Journal of the American Medical Association—Abbott Alkaloidal

Company’s ownership of its own company journal allowed it to persevere in the face of persecution by a large portion of the medical community. Unlike the Upjohn Company, which stopped advertising following attacks from the AMA, Abbott’s in-house publication—now titled

194 The American Journal of Clinical Medicine—allowed the company to avoid the bureaucracy of the AMA and continue advertising directly to an audience of loyal doctors. The American

Journal of Clinical Medicine ultimately serves as a prototype for Abbott president Simeon

DeWitt Clough’s May 1935 launch of What’s New.

What’s New provided Abbott with a Life-like promotional vehicle that could avoid regulations on advertising imposed by the 1938 Wheeler-Lea Act. Because Abbott mailed the publication directly to doctors, and not to the general public, the company could promote its products with less government interference. The company could also emulate contemporary trends in advertising and hire professional artists through Reeves Lewenthal’s Associated

American Artists agency to promote its drugs. Once World War II began, the company would continue its relationship with the AAA to sponsor art in support of the war effort. Beginning with

Thomas Hart Benton’s The Year of Peril series, Abbott began its corporate patronage to avoid paying the ninety percent wartime excess-profits tax and take advantage of tax credits. The Year of Peril also allowed Abbott to reproduce and distribute extremely graphic propaganda images of badly wounded and deceased service members, circumventing the government’s strict censorship of photographic content.

After Congress eliminated all funding for George Biddle’s Army Art program in July 1943, the artist and Lewenthal discovered a loophole in the congressional legislation that would allow the program to continue if it could secure private funding. Abbott seized the opportunity to take advantage of this loophole and shortly began funding artist correspondents at various military installations and war theaters to create a lasting visual record of the war. Works produced by the

Abbott artists were later published in the pages of What’s New, reproduced as war propaganda posters, and shown in touring museum exhibitions connected to war bond drives. Despite the

195 strains on corporations brought on by wartime rationing and stiff competition for government defense contracts, Abbott found a way to prosper during the war through the company’s innovation, resilience, and close relationship with the government.

Abbot’s patronage during the war represented an unorthodox method of corporate art sponsorship. Many corporations commissioned art specifically advertising a product, like Lucky

Strike. Other companies like Standard Oil of New Jersey commissioned artists with the explicit directions to promote the company’s contribution to the war effort through its commercial output.

The Upjohn Company purchased already completed paintings that aligned with the same values or spirit that the corporation wished to embrace. Magazines like Life used works from its artist correspondent campaign to sell magazines, which can be connected back to circulation, ad space, and ultimately the promotion of company products. IBM also commissioned and exhibited its art; however, the company kept the work for its corporate art collection.

Abbott Laboratories’ corporate art patronage was unique because the sponsorship, promotion, and exhibition of the art was more important than the art itself. Abbott instructed its correspondents to paint whatever they chose because as long as the imagery was war related, the content was sufficient. The subject and theme of the works were so inconsequential to the company that once disseminated through various media channels, the art was eventually donated to the government. Through its very public contribution of the artist correspondents’ paintings and drawings, Abbott negated the art’s investment and commodity value to give the work instead to the war effort. Like a wealthy fifteenth century mercantile family donating a triptych or chapel wing to a church, Abbott’s donation to the war effort, at the time considered a higher cause, demonstrated the corporation’s civic righteousness.

196 After the war ended Abbott’s art sponsorship waned. The company continued to distribute

What’s New to its private audience, and during the 1950s it launched a Sodium Pentothal postcard promotional campaign in which “about 170 different cards promoting the Sodium

Pentothal anesthetic products shipped from 70 countries, all with local stamping, franking, or both, each featuring in some way the flavor of the moment when they were sent, and the culture of the country from which they came.”564 The company’s patent on its propriety drug was set to expire in 1954, and Lai theorizes that in addition to showing its global presence, Abbott’s postcard campaign was a way for the company to “maintain Pentothal’s market share.”565

The company’s decreased emphasis on its visual marketing campaign paralleled Clough’s diminished involvement in the company operation. His February 1, 1960, obituary in the New

York Times reveals his monumental impact on the company’s success: “Mr. Clough became president of the company in 1933. He reported that the concern had a profit of $549,578 in that year. When he stepped up to the board chairmanship in 1946, he reported that the annual earnings were $3,156,795 and that 611 new products had been added.”566 Even accounting for inflation, Clough’s contribution to the success of the company is indisputable. Abbott’s positive stock reports during the war years confirm that despite wartime requisitioning, tough competition, and the funding of multiple artist correspondent campaigns, Abbott Laboratories continued to prosper.567

564 David C. Lai, Pentothal Postcards (West New York, NJ: Mark Batty, 2005), 3. 565 Ibid., 6. 566 “S. DeWitt Clough, Led Drug Concern,” New York Times, February 1, 1960. 567 “Other Corporate Reports: Abbott Laboratories,” New York Times, November 13, 1941. “Abbott Laboratories— Nine months to Sept 30: Net Profits $1,814,901, after $1,418,900 provision for Federal income and excess profits taxes. This is equal, after preferred dividends, to $2.34 each on 755,204 common shares and compares with a revised net of $1,815,192, or $2.34 a common share, in 1940 period, after $772,763 provision for Federal taxes.” See also “Other Corporate Reports: Abbott Laboratories,” New York Times, March 8, 1942; See also “Other Corporate Reports: Abbott Laboratories,” New York Times, May 12, 1944.

197 The popularity and success of Abbott’s artist correspondent programs attests to the mass appeal of the works, the country’s nationalistic fervor at the time, and the efforts of the engineers behind it: Clough, Biddle, and Lewenthal. War bond sales exceeded the cost of funding the program, and, despite the fact that all the revenue collected went directly to the Treasury, the war art endeavor proved advantageous for the company. With all of its private medical contracts and research grants from the government, Abbott gained exponentially more than it spent. The subsequent donation of all the artworks produced by Abbott’s artist correspondents marked a final gift to a government whose close relationship throughout the war years continued the company’s economic prosperity, positioned it as a pharmaceutical leader globally, and helped to save the lives of thousands of armed forces members.

In a 2000 interview with the Smithsonian, Sylvan Cole fondly recalled some of the artists he worked with through Lewenthal and the AAA. Noting how history has neglected all but a very few of these figures he explained, “I would say that thinking back as to who art – which artists really became great, great American artists, beyond Benton, Curry and Wood, there were not very many. . . .History’s gonna have to see what happens to some of them.”568 Abbott

Laboratories’ contribution to American art endures through the archives of the artists involved, the interviews and microfilmed clippings from them, and the storage closets packed with imagery from the artist correspondents’ unique perspective. At the time of this writing (April

2013) the Naval History and Heritage Command’s Historical Archives have been temporarily closed due to governmental sequestration. Fortunately, digitization of many of these works and their related materials in the recent years has facilitated much greater access and the possibility for new connections and dialogue with today’s art, theory, and evolving visual culture. Hopefully,

568 Sylvan Cole, interview by Avis Berman, June-October 2000, transcript, Oral History Interview, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, DC., n.p.

198 technology will continue to expand the discourse by bringing those interested closer to this unique visual experience of the Second World War. “History’s gonna have to see.”569

569 Ibid., n.p.

199 APPENDIX A - FIGURES

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Figure 2.1 Dr. Abbott’s first advertisement, printed in The Medical World 9, no. 6 (June 1891): 231.

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Figure 2.2 Cover, The Alkaloidal Clinic 7, no. 2 (February 1900).

200

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Figure 2.3 Cover, The Alkaloidal Clinic 8, no. 2 (February 1901).

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Figure 2.4 Croup Kills Advertisement, printed in The Alkaloidal Clinic 10, no. 12 (December 1903): 76.

201

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Figure 2.5 Title Page from The American Journal of Clinical Medicine 23, no. 8 (1916): 2.

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Figure 2.6 Page 37 of The American Journal of Clinical Medicine 23, no. 8 (1916): 37.

202

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Figure 2.7 Lester Beall, Radio, 1937, silkscreen, 40 x 30”. Lester Beall Archive, Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Figure 2.8 Joseph Hirsch, Sodium Pentothal advertisement, back cover, What’s New 63 (October 1942).

203

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Figure 2.9 Lester Beall, What’s New cover, 1938. Published by Abbott Laboratories. Collection Graphic Design Archive, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.

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Figure 2.10 Lester Beall, Here it Comes, 1939, silkscreen, 40 x 30”.

204

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Figure 2.11 Lester Beall, What’s New cover, 1941. Published by Abbott Laboratories.

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Figure 2.12 Penicillin Manual Advertisement, What's New, November 1944. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois.

205

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Figure 2.13 Pollen Extract Advertisement, What's New, April 1945. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois.

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Figure 2.14 Brief Summaries and Abstracts, What's New, October 1944. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois.

206

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Figure 2.15 Brief Summaries and Abstracts (Gonorrhea), What's New, March 1945. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois.

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Figure 2.16 Postage-Paid Order Card, What's New, October 1944. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois.

207

Figure 3.1 Thomas Hart Benton, Starry Night, 1942. Oil on canvas. 30 x 24". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

208

Figure 3.2 Thomas Hart Benton, Again, 1942. Oil and tempera on canvas mounted on panel. 47 x 56". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Figure 3.3 Thomas Hart Benton, Indifference, 1942. Oil on canvas. 21.25 x 31.25". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

209

Figure 3.4 Thomas Hart Benton, Casualty, 1942. Oil on canvas. 21.25 x 31.25". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Figure 3.5 Thomas Hart Benton, Sowers, 1942. Oil on canvas. 28 x 39". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

210

Figure 3.6 Thomas Hart Benton, The Harvest, 1942. Oil on canvas. 27.5 x 39". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

211

Figure 3.7 Thomas Hart Benton, Exterminate!, 1942. Oil on canvas. 97.5 x 72". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

212

Figure 3.8 Abbott Laboratories, The Year of Peril: A Series of War Paintings by Thomas Benton, 1942. Pamphlet, 12.5 x 9.75”. Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

213

Figure 3.9 USS Shaw wrecked in floating drydock YFD-2, December 7, 1941. Official US Navy Photograph # 80-G-19939. Courtesy of The National Archives, Washington, DC.

214

Figure 3.10 Abbott Laboratories, Page 6 from The Year of Peril: A Series of War Paintings by Thomas Benton, 1942. Pamphlet, 12.5 x 9.75”. Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

215

Figure 3.11 Thomas Hart Benton, Invasion, 1942. Oil on canvas. 48 x 78". Columbia, Mo.: The State Historical Society of Missouri. Courtesy of © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

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Figure 3.12 “When your doctor delegates responsibility...” Upjohn Advertisement, printed in Life (April 24, 1944): 63.

216

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Figure 3.13 “We’ve come a long, long way in pneumonia” Upjohn Advertisement, printed in Life (May 22, 1945): 92.

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Figure 3.14 George Strock, Photograph of dead American soldiers at Buna Beach, printed in Life (September 20, 1943): 35.

217

Figure 4.1 Paul Cadmus, The Fleet's In, 1934. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

218

Figure 4.2 Joseph Hirsch, Food for the “Yellow Peril,” 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

219

Figure 4.3 Joseph Hirsch, Back from Patrol, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 4.4 Joseph Hirsch, On the Mark, 1943. Charcoal. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

220

Figure 4.5 Georges Schreiber, Training in Homicide, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 4.6 Georges Schreiber, Classroom Flight, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

221

Figure 4.7 Robert Benney painting The Kill for Abbott Laboratories “Our Flying Navy” Collection, 1943. Photograph. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 4.8 Robert Benney, The Kill, 1943. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

222

Figure 4.9 Lawrence Beall-Smith, In the Briny, 1943. Oil on Board. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 4.10 Lawrence Beall-Smith, A Fighter Hits the Sack, 1943. Oil on Board. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

223

Figure 4.11 Lawrence Beall-Smith, The Scuttlebutt Session, 1943. Charcoal. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 4.12 Howard Baer, Busy Hands, 1943. Gouache. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

224

Figure 4.13 Howard Baer, A Woman’s Task, 1943. Oil on Canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

225

Figure 4.14 Howard Baer, Fuel for the Air Fleet, 1943. Gouache. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

226

Figure 4.15 Howard Baer, WAVE on a Wing, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 5.1 Thomas Hart Benton, Score Another for the Subs, 1943. Oil and tempera on board. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

227

Figure 5.2 Georges Schreiber, Who Are You?, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

228

Figure 5.3 U.S. Department of the Treasury, Fire Away!: Buy Extra War Bonds, 1944. Poster. Courtesy of The U.S. Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC.

229

Figure 5.4 Reginald Marsh, Yawning Bow, 1944. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 5.5 James Baare Turnbull, Ambulance Being Unloaded, 1945. Gouache. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

230

Figure 5.6 Thomas Hart Benton, All Work, 1944. Ink and wash on paper. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

231

Figure 5.7 Franklin Boggs, Jungle—Ally of the Enemy, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

232

Figure 5.8 Ernest Fiene, Life-Giving Plasma, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 5.9 Joseph Hirsch, Blasting Mosquito Infected Swamps, 1943. Watercolor. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

233

Figure 5.10 Franklin Boggs, Pill Call, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 5.11 Manuel Tolegian, Pretty Nurses, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

234

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Figure 5.12 Abbott Laboratories, Typical Design Layout for Abbott’s “Abstracts and Summaries: What’s New in Military Medicine,” What's New, March 1945. Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, Illinois.

Figure 5.13 Howard Baer, Jungle Operating Room, 1944. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

235

!Baer!–!Open!Wide!

Figure 5.14 Howard Baer, Open Wide – Dental Set-up, 1944. Ink on Paper. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

Figure 5.15 Kerr Eby, War is Hell (Shell Shock), 1944. Charcoal. Courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

236 APPENDIX B – NAVY ART COLLECTION CLEARANCE

237 APPENDIX C – VAGA IMAGE CLEARANCE

238 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Abbott Laboratories, “Penicillin Advertisement,” What’s New 86 (November 1944): 29.

Abbott Laboratories, “News of the New,” What’s New 90 (March 1945): 6-9, 27.

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247 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Brandon Burrell earned a BA in Art History as well as a BFA in Computer Animation at Jacksonville University. A recipient of both the Florida State University and the Florida Education Fund McKnight Fellowships, he has taught numerous courses within his chosen field and is currently working towards publication of several articles dealing with art and propaganda of the early twentieth century. He currently resides with his wife and daughter in Jacksonville, Florida.

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