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mural paintings. The later history, beginning with the first attempts to build flying machines, can be portrayed effectively through the medium of a combination of painted and photo-murals.
"The spaces for decoration can be considered as follows:
The large foyer on the second floor provides excellent opportunities for photo-murals, showing:
•The early development of forms considered by inventors from the earliest records to the successful flight of the first plane.
•Modern developments showing the phases through which plane design has passed since the first plane was built, to the present.
•The mechanics of flying: the instruments, characteristic forms of airplane construction and flying, including related sciences such as meteorology and communication.
•The activities in the field showing all general daily routine in active life as seen about the Newark Airport."
At the time the WPA in Washington was allocating subsistence funds for thousands of artists, and Newark itself

provided the costs of preparing the mural. For 1530 square feet at 60 cents a square foot the cost to the city was under a thousand dollars. How extraordinary a windfall for Newark this was to be-10 large panels by a man who was to be the most important American avent-garde artist of his time, founder of a school later to be called "abstract expressionism."

Spirit of Flight

The murals were painted and installed over a period of 18 months. In a report submitted to the WPA Art Project Director Holger Cahill in Washington by the WPA Division of Women's and Professional Projects No. 1, New York, on June 30, 1937, Audrey McMahon stated:
"The artist has chosen symbols and subject matter from the Greeks, the Renaissance and our own era and combined them in such a manner as to convey to the spectator the spirit and achievement of human flight. On one wall Activities of the Field are the subject of two large panels. On the opposite wall Modern Aviation with autogiros and aeroplanes is depicted. To the left, Early Aviation (The Birth of Aviation) is seen, and on the right are The Mechanics of Flight. These

panels are in a setting of white architectural simplicity which unifies the paintings. Speaking of this work at a preview in the Newark Museum last fall, Mr. Phillip Youtz, director of the Brooklyn Museum, said, 'The final stage toward abstraction is shown in Arshile Gorky's color composition. These are delightfully done in bright color tones and will make a peculiarly appropriate mural decoration for an airport because of the forms which are all directly derived from concrete photos.' Plans are now being made by the City of Newark, the Newark Airport and the Federal Art Project of New York for ceremonies to mark the completion and acceptance of this important work."
The local press response was mixed, if not downright hostile. The WPA art community and the local museum professionals were more than satisfied, however, in spite of the headlines such as "Mr. Gorky's Murals the Airport They Puzzled!", in the Newark Ledger of Thursday, June 10, 1937, with an accompanying tilted photograph captioned "A Plane, and Airplane, a Plane, Is It—Gertrude Stein," showing a man climbing on the radiator trying to decipher the image. This response certainly flies in the

22 • metro-Newark! • 1978