Subsequent Perspectives on the Coit Tower Murals

Serious attention to New Deal art was slow to revive after the end of the New Deal programs, as figurative art became passé and many artists, art schools, and art critics focused instead on abstract expressionism. Art historians’ interest in New Deal art began to develop in the 1960s. Early treatments of the Coit Tower murals in the 1970s tended to focus on the controversy, but by the 1980s scholars were giving the murals more thoughtful consideration. This chapter also critiques the conclusions of Anthony Lee in Painting on the Left (1999), and, contrary to Lee’s position, demonstrates that there was no organized effort by Communists at Coit Tower.