Grand Ledge: The Mural
James Calder’s Waiting for the Mail is one of many Section of Fine Arts murals to feature a small, white farm family. However, unlike the mural in Chelsea, Calder’s family is consciously modern. In the foreground, a man in denim overalls grasps a fence post beside an open gate. Next to him, his wife clad in a pale yellow apron holds the hand of a small girl who is teasing a chicken with a long blade of grass. The group is surrounded by a collie, more chickens, and baskets full of fruit (signifying agrarian abundance). In the distance, a distinct red barn and several additional buildings are arranged amid fields, trees, and cattle. On the horizon, the skyline of Grand Ledge is denoted by a water tower and smokestacks. (As documented in the National Archives, the specificity of the skyline was due to the local postmaster, see The Process.) But the primary focus of the scene, both for the viewers and for the father and collie, is the arrival of a modern automobile—a symbol of rural mail delivery. A boy clad in overalls like his father’s, who seems to have rushed through the gate at the sight of the car, stands at the vehicle’s window holding a letter.
To our twenty-first-century eyes, Calder’s oil on canvas mural may seem like the antithesis of modernity. The almost pastel color scheme dominated by soothing greens and even a muted red barn contributes to a nostalgic feeling. The rural setting and the almost anonymous, somewhat awkwardly rendered human figures further detract from the mural’s status as modern art. As we know from the other murals he completed in Michigan, Calder was more comfortable with industrial scenes that better reflect a modern style. (See The Artist) Yet, despite the mural’s dated appearance now, Calder was one of the rare artists to include a consciously modern automobile. New Deal scholar Barbara Melosh has argued that one of the reasons Section murals often appear old-fashioned is the conspicuous absence of automobiles, which were already ubiquitous across the country and a symbol of the twentieth century. This absence is all the more notable in Michigan where the automobile industry was such a dominant presence at the time. Of Section-funded murals in Michigan, only William Gropper directly depicted a factory. Meanwhile, in Fenton, Jerome Snyder depicted workers during the change of shift at an automobile plant. In River Rouge, the site of the famous factory, Marshall Fredericks created a relief of farm animals fleeing from an early automobile. In fact, the Section steered artists away from depicting the industry in sites like Dearborn and Lincoln Park, leading to controversy when the latter’s mural did not reflect the area. Melosh suspects that the pressure to avoid depicting the industry came from the tumult of the decade, which included infamous layoffs and strikes.
Certainly, Calder’s peaceful scene with a single car arriving at an idyllic farm does not begin to address the complexities of Michigan’s relationship with the automobile industry. In fact, as Melosh notes, the most common depiction of a car in Section murals was in scenes of rural mail delivery like this one. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss such a scene as standard. In clippings about Calder’s mural forwarded by Grand Ledge’s postmaster to the Section, news writers praised the subject as an integral feature of American democracy. The Grand Ledge Independent explained the importance of Rural Free Delivery on its front page in an article about the mural.
“The RFD mailman recalls the part played by this distinguished democratic service extending to the farmer the same opportunity to be as well informed and intelligent a citizen as the city dweller. Free daily delivery of mail to rural areas, now accepted as one of the inalienable privileges of citizenship, was established hardly more than forty years ago, but today serves approximately 26,000,000 persons.”
Indeed, a time before rural free delivery was established in 1902 was certainly well within living memory for many Grand Ledge residents. Beyond the RFD subject matter, the Grand Ledge author also found modernity in the agricultural scene, describing the “careful, scientific husbandry which characterizes this well-planned farm, healthy cattle and poultry, and the new ripe fruit” depicted in Calder’s mural. “Trained at modern agricultural schools and profiting by Government research and guidance,” the author writes, “the American farmer today is better fitted than ever before to contribute to the strength and prosperity of the nation.” Even the Detroit Free Press ran an article praising the mural. Ultimately, the power of Calder’s mural, which is still in place today, lies in its specificity. Calder took common Section themes (mail delivery and rural agriculture) and made them specific to the time and the location, through the skyline and specific crops.
Sources
- “Grand Ledge.” Box 50, Case Files Concerning Embellishments of Public Buildings, 1934-1943, Entry 133, Records of the Public Buildings Service, Record Group 121, National Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
- Barbara Melosh, Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 117-121.
