Pittsburgh Panorama

Stuyvesant Van Veen’s Pittsburgh Panorama depicts a bird’s-eye perspective of the city framed by the impressive George Westinghouse Memorial Bridge. He designed the mural as a composite image of many views that would—in the artist’s words—“represent the spirit of Pittsburgh,” rather than literally illustrate the city. The buildings, bridges, rivers, railroads and topography of the city were arranged by design and tone, instead of accurate geography.

In the foreground, Van Veen emphasizes important aspects of Pittsburgh’s industrial history, as well as its 1930s present, such as: its grand bridges, its numerous mines, mills and foundries and its mighty rivers, which served as the gateway to the West as evidenced by the profusion of steamboats and barges. In this way, Van Veen elucidates the extent to which industry permeated Pittsburgh’s urban landscape in the 1930s. On top of the Westinghouse Bridge, which unifies the overall composition and serves as the symbolic entrance to the city, Van Veen depicts pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The figures that cross the bridge symbolize the diverse population of Pittsburgh during the 1930s: the myriad nationalities and classes of people who emigrated from Europe to work in the region’s mines, mills, foundries and offices.

Pittsburgh Panorama is not the mural that Van Veen originally intended to create for the Pittsburgh Post Office and Courthouse. Initially he designed a painting, titled Death and Life, which juxtaposed his two conceptions of industrial society in America. Death was represented on one side by what he perceived as 1930s America—a classist society in which the everyday worker was suppressed and exploited by capitalist industry and the few who profited from it. By contrast, Life, which was represented on the opposite side, depicted a hopeful classless society of the future “where labor and industry are united in a brotherhood of co-operation and sharing.” In the center of the composition, separating his two perceptions of society, Van Veen depicted an allegorical figure of Justice. Instead of presenting an air of wisdom and fairness typical of such a representation, this Justice was anguished and confused, not knowing which way to turn.

Van Veen’s artistic skill was evident in this initial submission and he was subsequently awarded the commission, but the Section’s final acceptance of his work was contingent upon a drastic revision of his original concept. Viewed by the Section as left-wing social propaganda, his design was deemed unacceptable for a government art commission destined for the federal courts. Rather than modify his original mural concept, Van Veen opted to create an entirely new design that was not as blatantly critical of contemporary American society. Insulted by the rejection of his preliminary design, Van Veen nonetheless retaliated by inserting a coded symbol of the Communist revolution in his design. As he explained, “I wouldn’t normally have done it, but I was mad enough to compose it so the thrust of the steel mills across the river’s curve slightly resembled—to me—the hammer and sickle.”

To the twenty-first century viewer, Van Veen’s reference to Communism may seem extreme or odd, but in the 1930s it was common for artists, as well as the general populace, to flirt with the idea of Communism as a solution to society’s ills. Less than twenty years earlier the Bolsheviks had engineered a socialist revolution that precipitated the overthrow of the corrupt Russian Tsars. The newly established Communist government initially stimulated commerce and the economy and brought forth many social changes for the former Russian Empire. This seemed like a viable model for change to many Americans struggling during the Great Depression.