DIRECTION
Volume 1, Number 4: April 1938
John Hyde Preston, Thomas Cochran, Harriet Bissell,
M. Tjader Harris [Editors]
John Hyde Preston, Thomas Cochran, Harriet Bissell, M. Tjader Harris: DIRECTION. Darien, CT: Volume 1, Number 4, April 1938. Original Edition. Slim Quarto. Stapled thick printed wrappers. 32 pp. Cover design by Wallace Putnam. Wrappers lightly worn and toned at edges, but a very good copy.
8.25 x 10.75 saddle-stitched magazine with 32 pages of fiction, social commentary and art. Early issue of the legendary Progressive journal that chronicled the troubles of its times through the prisms of fiction, photography, music, art, drama and humor.
- Full-page advertisement by Rockwell Kent for the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy
- Should The Nation Support Its Art?: Philip Evergood
- Proletarian Surrealism and The EVening of the Ball: paintings by James Guy
- Grim Humor On The Art Project: 2 paintings by Louis Guglielmi
- Hard-Boiled; Sherwood Anderson
- Highlander Children (A Still): Frontier Films
- Literature As An Equipment For Living: Kenneth Burke
- Walnut Veneer: Fred Rothermell
- Black Art: Paintings by Negroes Vertis Harris, Henry Holmes, Palmer Hayden
- Night Comes To The Valley: Josephine Herbst
- War In Spain (5 Drawings): Luis Quintanilla
- A. G. M. A. (American Guild Of Musical Artsits): Ruth Breton
- Shan-Kar, a poem by Wallace Putnam
- Painting On The Wall: Gilbert Brown Wilson. Murals for the High School in Terre Haute, Indiana. See below.
- Lenin In October (Stills): Amkino
- Cultural Front
- Stage: John W. Gassner
- Boycott: A Page Of Information About Japanese Goods
Gilbert Brown Wilson (1907–1991) was an American painter known for his large-scale murals, including his 1935 murals in Woodrow Wilson Junior High School in Terre Haute, Indiana. Wilson attended Indiana State Normal (now Indiana State University) and studied under professor of art William T. Turman. In 1928 he began instruction at the Chicago Art Institute, where he exhibited at the Hoosier Salon and won two awards, in 1929 and 1930. In Chicago, Wilson met mural painter Eugene Savage, from whom he learned the craft of murals at Yale School of Fine Arts. Wilson became enamored with the work of prominent muralists Diego Rivera and José Orozco and travelled to Mexico to study under Rivera; there he would also study with sculptor Urbici Soler.
Inspired by Rivera, Orozco and Savage, as well as Terre Haute-area thinkers like social activist Eugene Debs and writers Theodore Dreiser and Max Ehrmann, much of Wilson's work concerns the plight of the common man. Common themes in his murals are war, capitalism, industrialization and ecological issues.
Wilson later recalled how seeing Orozco's work for the first time had been a revelation, saying, "From that moment on I knew it was what I wanted Art to be — a real, vital, meaningful expression, full of purpose and intention, having influence and relation to people's daily lives — a part of life. Here was the first modern art I had ever seen."
Wilson did not always find support from his community during his time in Terre Haute, particularly finding conflict with the town's affluent, who found his motifs of oppression and social change unappealing. He dealt with frustration and depression through much of his career, even destroying part of his own mural in Indiana State University's Laboratory School.
Wilson's first job upon returning to his hometown in 1933 was a set of four murals at Woodrow Wilson Middle School. Called "Liberation", these large-scale chalk murals can be found directly inside the main entrance of the building and took Wilson three years to complete, ending in 1935.
The murals, which span three walls, depict images of industrialization, capitalism, greed, agriculture, warfare and a needy populace. A portion of the mural shows four Boy Scouts of different ethnic backgrounds clasping hands with a quote showing Wilson's "respect and admiration" for scouting.
Upon completion of the murals, the school board refused to pay or reimburse Wilson for his work. His only payment was a collection of coins by the school's students that totalled $28.
Partially due to the presence of Wilson's murals, the school is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Edited by William Gropper, et al, including contributing editors Richard Wright, Kenneth Burke and Edwin Seaver. A dynamic, frequently visually striking, consistently left of center journal of literature and the arts, drawing on the foundations left by the WPA for much of its brilliance. A substantial roster of contributors appeared through its tenure, including Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Le Corbusier, Erskine Caldwell, Kenneth Rexroth, Richard Wright, Kees, Larsson, Abel, Kemp, Anderson, Herbst, Scott, Brown, Art Young, Halper, Komroff, Macleod, Margaret Bourke White, Burke, di Donato, Woody Guthrie, Seldes, Lorentz, Hughes, Maltz, Chaplin, Sandburg, R. Lowry, Ellison, Morris, et al. A major 20th century American periodical which is increasingly difficult to acquire in decent condition.
Marguerite Tjader (1901 – 1986) was born in New York City, the daughter of Richard Tjader, a big game hunter, explorer, and evangelist, and Margaret (Thorne) Tjader, daughter of the financier Samuel Thorne. She attended Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University, where she received the A.B. degree in 1925. Her marriage to Overton Harris ended in divorce in 1933. Their son, Hilary (1929-1999), became a documentary filmmaker, receiving an Oscar in 1962 for his direction of 'Seaward the great ships'. From 1937 until 1945 Mrs. Harris edited 'Direction', the left-wing journal of the arts she founded with the support of Theodore Dreiser. She had met Dreiser at a dinner party in 1928 and their intimate relationship continued off and on until 1944 when he finally married Helen Patges Richardson, his companion of almost 30 years. In 1944 Mrs. Harris and her son moved to Los Angeles where she became one in a long succession of Dreiser editorial assistants. In addition to typing and editing drafts of his work she acted as a sort of 'spiritual advisor' to Dreiser while he completed his penultimate novel 'The bulwark', published posthumously in 1946. Marguerite Tjader Harris is probably the model for the title character of 'Lucia', one of the fictional sketches in Dreiser's 'A gallery of women', published in 1929. During the 1930's, presumably after the dissolution of her marriage, Mrs. Harris, who had been raised a Baptist, converted to Roman Catholicism. In the 1950's she helped Mother Elisabeth Hesselblad establish the U.S. foundation of of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of Saint Bridget (Bridgettines) by donating Vikingsborg, her family's summer home in Darien, Conn., to the order. She died on April 7, 1986 in East Windsor, Conn.