One of the primary effects of the Depression on American art and culture was a sharp increase in class consciousness. Many artists of the day were sympathetic to leftist, socialist and communist causes, and the spectacle of thousands of working people going hungry and losing their homes only intensified these artists' alienation from a capitalist economic system. The favored style of art among artists of this persuasion was known as Social Realism.
Social Realism is characterized by the valorization of working people in painting. Heavily influenced by Soviet propaganda, the similarly termed Socialist Realism, Social Realism portrayed strong, courageous workers in idealized settings, marching bravely toward the future triumph of worldwide socialism. The style was derided by many abstract artists, and has become a form of camp in the 21st century. At the time, however, it was a powerful tool in a class war that was greatly intensified by the Depression.
It is no surprise that the art of the period reflected the experiences of artists in difficulty. Artists such as Eli Jacob, Jack Markow and James Turnbull used their art to express their anger at what they perceived as the social injustice of the Depression, and to portray the conditions in which the jobless and disenfranchised found themselves. Albert Potter's woodcut "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" contrasts an importuning beggar with the skyscraper-studded Manhattan skyline.
As a response to the skyrocketing jobless rate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted the WPA, or Works Progress Administration, a governmental organization that put jobless people to work on public projects. The WPA Artists Project, a subsidiary of the WPA, employed many artists on public commissions, some of whom went on to become hugely successful. Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock all worked for the WPA at one time or another.
The works of such talented artists as Diego Rivera, Stuart Davis and many others were influenced by the aesthetics and politics of the era. In addition, later movements such as Abstract Expressionism, a style that bears no resemblance to what we think of as Social Realism, was nevertheless heavily affected by it in a negative way. Due to a combination of factors, including public association of Social Realist painting with the excesses of Stalinism, realism and figurative painting of all kinds fell out of favor for decades, opening the door to new forms of art that headed in radically different directions.