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Just before Christmas 2023, I bought an 8mm reprint of the 1948 Looney Tunes short ‘Bugs Bunny Rides Again.’ I chose this particular cartoon for a few reasons.

1. It was one of the only Looney Tunes cartoons available to buy in Super 8 format on eBay.

2. It was the only one of these few which also featured background paintings by Paul Julian.

3. This particular cartoon, luckily/helpfully/coincidentally, contains an interior saloon scene in which a man is shot at by Yosemite Sam whilst he walks in front of a clearly pictured mural – a painting within a painting.

After leaving Chouinard and dabbling in fine art shows, Paul Julian was one of the many early-career artists commissioned to create large-scale public artworks as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ governmental policy reform in the 1930s, which was itself a response to the rising levels of unemployment and general cultural stagnation during the Great Depression.

There were three main bodies responsible for the commissioning of the works which have collectively come to be known as ‘New Deal Art.’ From December 1933 to May 1934, the Public Works of Art (PWAP) project funded “3,750 artists who produced 15,600 artworks, at a cost of $1,312,000.” The success of the project in bolstering employment rates, amassing a new cultural output and enlivening the general artistic scene in America led to the creation of subsequent agencies which built on the PWAP model, including the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, commonly referred to as the Section, which was established in 1934. What distinguished the Section from the PWAP, however, was its selective commissioning process. In a letter describing the Section’s aims and functions, chairman Edward Bruce, who had also been in charge of the PWAP, wrote the following:
Whilst the Works Progress Administration (WAP) were constructing federal buildings for public use, Bruce arranged for high-quality artworks to be embedded into their architectural make-up, writing that he wished to “sell to the American people the idea that art is and should be an integral part of our civilization.” Through the Section, artists were encouraged (both implicitly and explicitly) to portray idealised visions of American society; unlike the politically engaged and often subversive Mexican mural tradition from which the west-coast New Deal mural boom sprang, the Section’s output was ultimately overtly propagandistic in nature. After running for the better part of a decade, the Section eventually ceased operations in 1942.

Alongside the Section, the Federal Arts Project (FAP) ran from 1935 to 1943. The biggest of the three New Deal arts projects, it differed from the Section in that it was a self-described relief project, aimed primarily at employing working artists regardless of talent or status and without restriction on content of the works produced. The pieces were also not for explicit inclusion in federal buildings, and instead the body of work produced included easel paintings, prints, stage designs, posters, sculptures, and all manner of graphic arts. Murals were part of the FAP output, but it seems that the FAP’s commissions were significantly less architecturally focused than the Section projects.

Two of Paul Julian’s murals are still in place today, both in California. Commissioned by the FAP around 1939 and installed in 1942, one is an exterior series at Upland Elementary School often referred to as ‘History of Upland’. The other, ‘Orange Pickers’, is an interior piece at Fullerton Post Office, awarded as a commission by the Section in 1941 and installed in 1942, the same year as the organisation’s termination. Whilst Orange Pickers was a more traditional painting, planned and executed to fit around the exact shape of the postmaster’s doorframe, History of Upland’s four individual panels instead utilised the petrachrome process, an innovative but ultimately short-lived mural production method developed at around the same time by artist and Southern California FAP leader Stanton MacDonald-Wright. Described in a blog post by Charles Epting, author of Orange County Pioneers: Oral Histories from the Works Progress Administration, this involved tinting cement with pigments, “corresponding to the different sections of the mural.”

"Next, crushed rock, glass, or tile was added to the mixture, which was then applied to the mural surface. Typically, the different color sections were delineated by strips of brass. The colored cement was allowed to harden and then polished, creating a bold, striking appearance. Instead of a mural being painted onto a surface, the petrachrome process was designed so that the mural was the surface."

Paul Julian (right) and assistants during the production of ‘History of Upland’. Source: FDR Library Collection