1936年，工程进展管理局的联邦艺术项目委托斯图亚特·戴维斯（1892-1964）为纽约市的一个住房项目——威廉斯堡房屋创作一幅壁画。尽管这幅名为《摇摆景观》的壁画从未被安装在预定的位置，但它作为一个令人印象深刻的证明留存了下来，它证明了戴维斯活力四射、色彩斑斓的抽象主义品牌和进步政治。本研究探讨了这幅画，它是二十世纪美国最伟大的作品之一，也可以说是戴维斯最雄心勃勃的作品。

本书对将戴维斯的左派活动主义与他的艺术分开的主流倾向提出了挑战，并将《摇摆景观》置于20世纪30年代纽约抽象壁画的背景中进行探讨，强调抽象画的政治。本书还首次全面探讨了威廉斯堡壁画委员会，包括威廉·德·库宁、伊利亚·博洛托夫斯基等人的作品。于是有了这本关于战间现代主义、壁画和城市发展的不可或缺的参考书。

An insightful study of the progressive politics animating a great work of modernist mural painting

In 1936 the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project commissioned Stuart Davis (1892–1964) to paint a mural for the Williamsburg Houses, a New York City housing project. Though the mural, Swing Landscape, was never installed in its intended location, it survives as an impressive testament to Davis’s energetic, colorful brand of abstraction and the progressive politics that animated it. This study explores the painting, one of the greatest of twentieth-century America and arguably Davis’s most ambitious work.

This book challenges the prevailing tendency to separate Davis’s leftist activism from his art and contextualizes Swing Landscape within 1930s abstract mural painting in New York, emphasizing the politics of abstraction. The book also offers the first comprehensive look at the Williamsburg mural commission, including works by Willem de Kooning, Ilya Bolotowsky, and others. The result is an indispensable resource on interwar modernism, mural painting, and urban development.