1930s: The Making of "The New Man"

Those fortunate to see the latest exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, 1930s: The Making of "The New Man", will not only have the opportunity to feast their eyes upon some of the greatest artworks of the 20th century - they will be given ample evidence of how artists once responded to calamity and social crisis. On view until September 7, 2008, the exhibit presents over 200 paintings, sculptures, and photographs from world renowned artists the likes of Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, John Heartfield, George Grosz, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Rodchenko, Walker Evans, Salvador Dalí, Philip Guston, Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, Otto Dix, Henri Matisse, and others too numerous to list here.

My general praise of the exhibit however, does not come without criticism. There is an inexcusable lack of women artists represented in what purports to be "a new look at this important historical era", and I am dubious of the museum’s premise for the exhibition; which stresses how "in the 1930s, biology became a force for change".

In the 1930s those on the left and center of the political spectrum used the metaphorical phrase, "a new man", to articulate a belief in the betterment of society and the advancement of humanity, not through eugenics, but by the application of economic policies and scientific progress. The popular expression was optimistically tied to modernist conceptualizations of communal development and a utopian future. It was the Nazis who twisted the concept of biological determinism into a nightmare of forced sterilizations and mass killings in the pursuit of racial purity. For the National Gallery of Canada to suggest that 1930s modernism on the whole was fixated on biology as "a force for change" is indeed a bizarre stretching of the facts.

My misgivings regarding curatorial approach aside, I feel the National Gallery of Canada has brought together an amazing number of profound works for their "New Man" exhibit, and I would like to comment on two of my favorites. Those with an appetite for more information on the art of the 1930s should purchase the exhibition catalog.

Aficionados of surrealism will be happy to know that L'Ange du Foyer (Fireside Angel), by German painter Max Ernst, is included in the exhibit. Like many German artists of the period, Ernst served four hellish years as a soldier on the battlefields of World War I (1914-1918). Immediately after the war he co-founded the Cologne Dada group, which introduced him to an ever widening circle of radical artists. He left Germany in 1922 to settle in Montparnasse, France, where he joined the Surrealist group founded by André Breton.

[ Fireside Angel - Max Ernst. Oil on canvas. 1937. Private collection. On view in "The New Man" exhibit. ]

While in France he created the masterwork Fireside Angel in 1937. It was not exactly a prescient work, as anyone who was following events closely could see what was becoming of the world. The reign of Hitler had begun in 1933, the Italian fascists under Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1936, while General Franco and his fascist movement were in arms against the Spanish Republic. Nevertheless, Ernst’s painting well expressed the gathering menace then engulfing the world. Fireside Angel is the depiction of an indescribable creature as it storms with rage through a desolate landscape. By referring to his impossible beast as an "angel", the artist warned that in embracing lofty and exalted ideas, we sometimes end up with the devil. It seems we never succeeded in banishing the Fireside Angel Ernst caught a glimpse of, and if we would only pay close attention - we could see the monster riding roughshod over humanity today.

[ Blinde Macht (Blind Power) - Rudolf Schlichter. Oil on canvas. 1938. On view in "The New Man" exhibit. In 1937 Schlichter was forbidden by the Nazis to create or exhibit artworks. That same year the fascist authorities displayed seventeen of the artist’s paintings in their infamous "Degenerate Art" exhibit, and Schlichter’s response to being banned was to secretively paint this canvas. It depicted a brawny warrior blinded by his own power, brandishing a sword and workmen’s tools - walking off a cliff. Demons are clasped to the doomed warrior’s chest, eating him alive. In the background all the accomplishments of civilization burn to the ground. ]

The American surrealist painter, Peter Blume (1906-1992), was once highly regarded as an American figurative painter, though today he is unfortunately almost entirely forgotten. Employing the same techniques utilized by Renaissance artists, Blume’s paintings made use of a near photographic realism, but his narrative works were permeated with surrealist vision and social realist spirit. Blume spent 1932 in Rome, Italy, on a Guggenheim grant, the same year the Italian fascist movement celebrated the tenth anniversary of its so-called "March on Rome", the coup d'état that brought dictator Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party to power. After returning to the U.S. Blume brooded over what he had witnessed before starting work in 1934 on The Eternal City, a painting that would take him three years to complete and which is now part of "The New Man" exhibit.

As he was working on the final touches of his painting in 1936, Blume wrote a proclamation against war and fascism titled "The Artist Must Choose". In his essay he exclaimed; "We, as artists, must take our place in this crisis on the side of growth and civilization against barbarism and reaction, and help to create a better social order."

[ The Eternal City - Peter Blume. Oil on board. 45 ½ in. x 59 ½ in. 1934-37. On view in "The New Man" exhibit. ]

Blume used a contemporaneous view of the Roman Forum, the political and religious center of the ancient Empire, as the setting for his picture, but the charming ruins made a farce of the city’s nickname - The Eternal City. In the painting’s distant background Fascist troops can be seen attacking a worker’s demonstration, while in the foreground a number of portentous images vie for our attention. On the left can be seen a polychromed wood statue of Christ situated in a building without a roof, sunrays illuminating the religious figurine mockingly bedecked with military epaulettes and swords. Directly below that tableau a crippled beggar can be seen sitting amongst the broken marble statues and columns of civilization laid low. At right, Mussolini as a gaudy and malevolent jack-in-the-box looms over the entire scene, and lurking in the disintegrating tunnels of the Forum beneath Il Duce’s giant green head, a grinning blackshirt thug and his capitalist paymaster can be seen.

Upon completing The Eternal City in 1937, Blume exhibited the painting at the Julien Levy Gallery in Manhattan. Even though the message of Blume’s anti-fascist work was unambiguous, especially when combined with his written proclamation, numerous critics voiced thickheaded and imperceptive remarks concerning the work. The New York Sun’s widely read art critic, Henry McBride, made this vinegary comment about Blume and his painting: "He won, it seems, a Guggenheim fellowship, and went to Italy nominally as an art student but actually as a political spy, and returns with a picture that pretends to mock Mussolini. This, of course, is an odd undertaking for an American artist." Edward Alden Jewell, art critic for the New York Times wrote: "The political aspects of this treatise are not altogether clear. We are left in doubt as to whether the propagandist considers this modern dictator a self-sprung megalomaniac or a figurehead manipulated by social forces that have taken control of the situation in Italy. Scarcely more convincing is the religious symbol employed. There is nowhere evident the great transfiguring principle itself of Christian love and Christian sacrifice."

That Edward Alden Jewell referred to Blume as a "propagandist" is revealing, especially since The Eternal City was the only explicitly political painting ever created by Blume. The open hostility that American art critics displayed towards Blume’s painting was but one indication of the growing disfavor to fall upon figurative and social realist artists in the late 1930s. In a letter to the New York Times in 1943, painters Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnett Newman called for an art that would transcend real world issues in favor of pure abstraction. Refuting realism, they declared that meaning in art can only "come out of a consummated experience between picture and onlooker", further stating that "We want to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms, because they destroy illusion and reveal truth." Abstract Expressionism soon came to dominate American art, and to the detriment of us all, the realism practiced by Peter Blume was declared hopelessly passé by "serious" critics, collectors, and museums.

Spectators of the exhibition, 1930s: The Making of "The New Man", will no doubt be left with some gnawing questions regarding the state of contemporary art. After taking in the exhibit and seeing Pablo Picasso’s composition studies for his Guernica mural, Philip Guston’s painting excoriating the air war against civilians during the Spanish Civil War, the acerbic wit displayed in the photomontage works of John Heartfield, and the compassion shown to America’s underclass in the photographs of Walker Evans; the viewer might ask, "Why are we not seeing socially conscious art today?" I would argue that such works are indeed being created, as to why we are not seeing them, or hearing of them - is another matter entirely.

"Fundamental" in Brussels, Belgium

Brussels is not only the capital of Belgium and the administrative center of the European Union, it is also the city where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is based. In addition, Brussels becomes the latest stop for Fundamental, the group exhibition I’m participating in - exploring today’s religious fundamentalist movements. My painting, A People Under Command: USA Today, is included in the exhibit, which has been touring European cities since September, 2007. You can read more about the show, and the meaning behind my painting in my original Aug. 2007 article, The Fundamental Art Exhibit.

[ A People Under Command: USA Today - Mark Vallen. 1985. Acrylic on unstretched canvas. 6 ft x 8 ft. On view starting July 19th, 2008, at the Gallery Gabrichidze in Brussels, Belgium. Click here for a larger image. ]

Organized by that other NATO - the Northern Arts Tactical Offensive of Manchester, England, and funded by the European Cultural Foundation and The Arts Council of England, the exhibit opens July 19th, 2008, for a one month run at the Gallery Gabrichidze. Located at Rue Pletinckx 56, 1000 in the very heart of Brussels, the gallery offers two stories of exhibition and workshop space, defining itself as an "art gallery concerned with current political issues found on the European and international agenda."

Also included in Fundamental are works by artists Debbie Hill (a photojournalist living in Israel), Frans Smeets (Dutch artist and sculptor), Parastou Forouhar (an Iranian-born artist residing in Germany), Khosrow Hassan (an Iranian artist based in Tehran), Dalila Hamdoun (a French-Algerian artist based in London), Garth Eager (an English multi-media artist based in Manchester), Andrew Stern (a photojournalist based in New York), Andreas Böhmig (German photojournalist), Joel Pelletier (US painter based in Los Angeles), and Johan Oldekop (a UK based photojournalist). Visit the Gallery Gabrichidze at www.gallery-gabrichidze.com.

ARTISTS CALL: R U Evolved?

The A Shenere Velt Gallery of Los Angeles, California has issued a Call for Artists to participate in a juried exhibition entitled, R U Evolved? Artists Reflect on Darwin at 200. Scheduled for January 11 through February 27, 2009, the show will mark Charles Darwin’s 200th Birthday. I've been asked to juror the exhibit, along with my distinguished collegues, Paul Von Blum (author and Senior Lecturer, African American Studies, UCLA), and Sheila Pinkel (artist and Associate Professor of Art, Pomona College). The following is an excerpt from the gallery's Call for Artists:

"February 12, 2009 will mark Charles Darwin’s 200th Birthday. The year 2009 also marks the 150th Anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species (1859). Repercussions of Darwin’s life project have yet to subside, as headlines of extremist fundamentalist ideologies fill newspapers every day. Even leading candidates for the United States Presidency have recently claimed not to believe in evolution! Anticipating an outpouring of worldwide Darwin observances, we ask artists to consider the meaning of his life and work, and reveal to us any suitable historical or contemporary insights.

Artists are asked to submit slides or digital images of up to three wall-hung works in any media (except jewelry and ceramics) that speak to the theme of R U Evolved? Artists Reflect on Darwin at 200. The deadline for submission of materials is October 24, 2008. Pieces selected for this exhibition will augment the social space for understanding and dialogue. Jurors are: Paul Von Blum, Sheila Pinkel, and Mark Vallen."

The complete Call for Artists, including prospectus and details for submitting artworks, can be viewed at: www.circlesocal.org/evolvedsubmit.html

The Orientalists: Then and Now

The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting, is an important exhibition running in London at the Tate Britain from June 4th, 2008 through August 31st, 2008. The exhibit provides a somewhat critical look at Orientalism, the genre commonly associated with nineteenth-century Western artists who depicted the peoples and cultures of an imagined Near and Middle East. The Tate is displaying over 120 paintings, prints and drawings created by British artists from 1780 to 1930, and given the current occupation of Iraq - the timely exhibit inadvertently calls into question the West’s modern-day accepted wisdom regarding the Islamic world.

[ James Silk Buckingham and his Wife Elizabeth in Arab Costume, Baghdad, 1825. - Henry William Pickersgill. Oil on canvas. On view at the Tate, from the collection of the Royal Geographical Society. The English born Buckingham (1786-1855) was an author and adventurer who traveled extensively in the Middle East. His lectures and travel books about the Arab world sharpened European interest in the region. ]

Until the late 1960s, Orientalist painting was purely evaluated on aesthetic terms, with little or no attention paid to the socio-political aspects of the works. Aware of the failing to take into account the legacy of colonialism, the Tate exhibit offers a reassessment of Orientalist painting. As part of that reexamination, the museum presented a June 12th symposium titled Orientalism Revisited: Art and the Politics of Representation - a day long panel discussion by distinguished professionals and intellectuals on the subject of "art, politics, and representation of the nineteenth century to today." The entire exhibition was curated with the views of scholar and writer, Edward Said (pronounced sah-EED) in mind. In the Tate’s words:

"In the 1970s the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said published his treatise on Orientalism, initiating a global debate over Western representations of the Middle East. For many, such representations now appeared to be a sequence of fictions serving the West’s desire for superiority and control over the East. The argument for and against Said’s Orientalism has continued for thirty years. Its resonance for an exhibition such as this one, however, is as strong as ever given that, by the 1920s (the end of the period covered by the exhibition), Britain was in direct control of much of the newly-abolished Ottoman Empire, including Egypt, Palestine and Iraq. As Said’s followers argued, these images cannot be viewed in isolation from their wider political and cultural context."

Representations of the "exotic Orient" have appeared in Western art from antiquity, but after General Napoleon Bonapart and his invading French army conquered Egypt in 1798, European penetration and colonization of the Near and Middle East began in earnest. There was a concomitant explosion of Orientalist painting that fed European flights of fancy regarding the entire region. Some Western artists actually traveled through the area, painting, sketching, and making field studies for works that would be created or finished in the studio - while many others never left their European homes, instead finding inspiration for their canvases from written accounts of life in the "Orient". In either case, the artists approached their subjects with presumed Western superiority.

[ T.E. Lawrence - Augustus John. Oil on canvas 1919. Collection of the Tate Gallery. Due to his knowledge of Arab culture and language, Thomas Edward Lawrence became an intelligence officer in the British army after the outbreak of World War 1. He assisted Arab forces in waging a successful guerrilla war against the Ottoman Turkish Empire - assuring the British Empire postwar control of the Middle East. ]

A long train of events brought ever more European artists and writers into the region after the French subjugated Egypt. France took possession of Algiers in 1830, and along with Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire - fought Russia for control of the Holy Land in the Crimean War of 1854-1856. The French built and opened the Egyptian Suez Canal in 1869, increasing European incursion into the region. The Ottoman Turkish Empire was itself finally dismembered at the close of World War I, with its territories of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen becoming European possessions. While a good deal of Orientalist art is magnificent, that does not mean it should or can be disassociated from the European imperialist expansion it was a part of. As Said declared in Orientalism;

"One would find this kind of procedure less objectionable as political propaganda - which is what it is, of course - were it not accompanied by sermons on the objectivity, the fairness, the impartiality of a real historian, the implication always being that Muslims and Arabs cannot be objective but that Orientalists. . .writing about Muslims are, by definition, by training, by the mere fact of their Westernness. This is the culmination of Orientalism as a dogma that not only degrades its subject matter but also blinds its practitioners."

While some Orientalist art depicted the Islamic world populated by a despotic and brutish race in need of being rescued by enlightened Europeans, not all of it was so odious. With a keen eye for observation, Orientalists created paintings and prints of nearly everything, from landscapes and cityscapes to portraits of the high ranking and the humble. If these works set Islamic peoples apart as exotic others, they also clearly expressed awe and wonderment over Near and Middle Eastern societies.

The French neo-classical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867/pronunciation) was certainly not the only artist to misrepresent and mythologize harem life, but his Orientalist themed La Grande Odalisque (1814) and The Turkish Bath (1862) helped to permanently imprint upon the Western mind the archetypical vision of lascivious Arabs. Remarkably, Ingres never traveled to the Near or Middle East - his paintings were pure conjecture and created in his Paris studio. Moreover, since the harem was a women’s quarters whose entry was forbidden to all men, save for Eunuch guards - Western depictions of harem life were largely based on sheer fantasy, hearsay, and rumor.

[ Leila - Frank Dicksee. Oil on canvas. 1892. On view at the Tate. The Orientalist fantasy of the hyper sexualized harem girl is a stereotype that is still with us today. ]

From his studio in Paris the French Academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) painted pictures of harem life based on sketches of buildings he made while traveling through Egypt and Turkey. Into these backdrops he painted gorgeous Parisian models who posed as harem girls. In point of fact, of all the Orientalists who painted harem scenes, only the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798-1853) actually managed to step inside of one.

Appointed to an official French delegation to Morocco in 1832, Delacroix made a four month trip to Morocco and the conquered nation of Algiers. He was infatuated by the Arab people, but no less inclined to have a distorted view of them than did his rival, Ingres. Delacroix wanted to visit a harem, but this proved impossible in Morocco because of stringent religious rules. Occupied Algiers however proved a different matter. A French harbor engineer "persuaded" a powerful Algerian to allow Delacroix a visit to his harem under a vow of secrecy. The artist spent hours sketching the women there, and said of them, "This is woman as I understand her, not thrown into the life of the world, but withdrawn at its heart as its most secret, delicious and moving fulfillment."

Back home Delacroix would paint Women of Algiers in their apartment (1834) from the sketches made in Algiers. It would be a tour de force, possibly the most influential of all harem paintings. Renoir swore he could smell incense when close to the painting and Cézanne was effusive over the color of the slippers belonging to one of the odalisques, a red that "goes into one’s eyes like a glass of wine down one’s throat."

Orientalism in art was by no means restricted to the 19th century - think of Matisse’s Odalisque in Red Trousers. Picasso ended up painting fifteen variations of Delacroix’s Women of Algiers. Orientalism in Western art, academia, and politics by no means melted away with the passage of time - it still informs our opinions and actions even today. Certainly those experts who assured us that "Liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk" were suffering from the latest virulent strain of Orientalism. As Dr. Said noted in the 2003 revised edition of Orientalism; "Without a well-organized sense that the people over there were not like 'us' and didn't appreciate 'our' values - the very core of traditional orientalist dogma - there would have been no war." Writing on the mess in the Middle East for The Independent from his home in Beirut, Lebanon, British reporter Robert Fisk said the following:

"I despair. The Tate has just sent me its magnificent book of orientalist paintings to coincide with its latest exhibition (The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting) and I am struck by the awesome beauty of this work. In the 19th century, our great painters wondered at the glories of the Orient. No more painters today. Instead, we send our photographers and they return with pictures of car bombs and body parts and blood and destroyed homes and Palestinians pleading for food and fuel and hooded gunmen on the streets of Beirut, yes, and dead Israelis too. The orientalists looked at the majesty of this place and today we look at the wasteland which we have helped to create."

Fisk’s assessment is unquestionably a bleak one, but I find it difficult to disagree with. Putting aside all criticisms of Orientalist art, the fact that the West once found inspiration and bedazzling beauty in the Near and Middle East should jar our collective memory. If Western perceptions of "the Orient" focused on the mysterious, exotic, and sensual, there was always a subtext of evil, cruelty, and depravity. However, today we are being shown only the latter, and we have largely accepted this worldview. How we arrived at this historic juncture is not hard to determine, but a thorough reading of history regarding empire and imperialist depredations in the region is required for a full understanding of present circumstances. The Tate’s exhibition can be seen as one small step in acquiring such knowledge, especially now that the United Kingdom once again militarily occupies Iraq and Afghanistan, albeit as a junior partner in U.S. plans for the region.

I am left to wonder, not about the enormous influence Orientalist art had in times past, but how contemporary artists will act in response to the crisis in the Near and Middle East. Although a small layer of artists have dealt with the ongoing catastrophe, indifference or resignation still seems to be the art world’s general attitude. Artists can not permit impassiveness and lack of concern for the incalculable misery being experienced by humanity in the Near and Middle East to become the hallmarks of 21st art. The artistic community must refute the barbarity seen all around us - without prejudice, false hopes, or creating new strains of Orientalism.

ARTISTS CALL: Left, Right and Center

Thematically centered around the state of the American political scene, The Art of Democracy is a national coalition of art exhibitions scheduled for the Fall of 2008. Twenty-eight galleries from San Francisco to New York are participating in the project, which leads up to the November 2008 national elections. Other galleries, arts organizations, and artists are encouraged to organize their own events under the umbrella of the Art of Democracy coalition; which is currently circulating eleven different Open Calls for Exhibitions where artists may submit artworks.

[ The Art of Democracy - Ian Pulia. Screenprint. 2008. One of a number of prints designed by students of Michael Goro at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Illinois. Pulia's silkscreen brilliantly depicts the costs of apathy when it comes to global warming. ]

One such Artists Call comes from my associate Patrick Merrill, who is organizing Left, Right and Center, an exhibition of political prints to be displayed at the Tustin Old Town Gallery in Tustin, California. In the past I had the great pleasure of exhibiting with Merrill, a talented Master Printer and the Director of Kellogg University Art Gallery at Cal Poly Pomona, so I would like to draw special attention to his efforts by publishing a few details from his open call for prints:

"Left, Right and Center will be an exhibition of prints from the So Cal arts community. From our standpoint what constitutes a print is still (and hopefully always will be) open to interpretation. Prints may be traditional in execution and innovative in presentation; for the wall or the floor or ceiling; sculptural or as books. We are looking for diverse voices not just the 'left' speaking to the choir. Democracy is about dialogue. Even if the current scene seems to be one set of serial monologues haranguing the other, democracy is our goal. Let’s put the pundits and talking heads aside. Let us hear from our artists. This is not a competition in the standard sense, but a means to present a collective visual voice from the Southern California region. The intention is to curate an exhibition, not jury one.

As an additional incentive we can offer you the possibility of having your work accepted into the most important political graphics collection in the nation. Carol Wells, Director of the Center for Political Graphics here in Los Angeles has agreed to come to the exhibit and select work for permanent inclusion in the Center’s collection. There are two mandatory conditions: the work must be a multiple and it must be overtly political. There is no entry fee for Left, Right and Center. Entry due date by August 15, 2008."

The Art of Democracy national coalition continues to expand, offering all types of artists the opportunity to create and exhibit works of art that speak of the current world crisis. Undoubtedly I will be writing about the coalition’s efforts in the near future, but at present I wish to urge artists across the United States to become active participants in this most exciting project.

The Shallow Jake and Dinos Chapman

There is seemingly no end to the superficiality of today’s postmodern art and the cravenness of those fame seekers who create it. In 2003 BritArt movement superstars Jake and Dinos Chapman purchased a suite of Goya’s celebrated antiwar etchings, Disasters of War, and in a gesture supposedly meant to lay bare the inadequacy of art as protest, defaced the set of 80 prints by drawing cartoon faces of clowns and puppies on them. At the time art critic Robert Hughes said the works of Goya "will obviously survive these twerps, whose names will be forgotten a few years from now." That was five years ago and sorry to say, we are still hearing about the Chapmans and their ilk. I’m loathe to mention them at all, save for the fact that they unfortunately represent a large portion of today’s art world - which needs to be emphatically criticized at every opportunity.

[ Landscape painting by Adolf Hitler - altered by Jake and Dinos Chapman. ]

The Chapmans have once again placed themselves in the spotlight with their latest publicity stunt, the despoilment of thirteen actual watercolor paintings by Adolf Hitler, upon which they painted smiley faces, rainbows, psychedelic flowers and stars. Calling the suite of defaced artworks, If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be, Jake Chapman was quoted in The Guardian as having said, "If hell exists and Hitler is there, I think he is turning in his grave." An infantile razz aimed at a long dead and despised mass-murderer hardly makes for insightful and profound art, let alone a passable joke.

Rather than a keen examination into the forces behind the rise of fascism, the Chapmans give us slapstick. Instead of investigating the links between the totalitarianism of the past and the despotism of today, the Chapmans deliver a gesture akin to the 1942 satirical recording by Spike Jones & the City Slickers, Der Fuehrer’s Face. At least the effort of Spike Jones and company had some relevancy in its day, while still being recognized for what it was - a trifling lowbrow joke. But postmodernism has obliterated the idea of high art and replaced it with the vulgarities of lowbrow. We are all cretins now. Weight, consequence, and meaning have little to do with the works of the Chapmans and their postmodernist cohorts, who think it is a clever thing to erase and otherwise rewrite history. As objets d'art Hitler’s paintings have little worth, but as historical artifacts they are a window into a dark past that we can not afford to trivialize or forget.

Artist Charles Tomson, co-founder of The Stuckist/Remodernist art movement and an implacable foe of postmodernism, offers us further elucidation regarding the Chapman/Hitler controversy in an article he wrote for CounterPunch.

The Cologne Progressives

Some years ago, while visiting the German city of Cologne, I discovered the works of the Cologne Progressive Artists Group (Gruppe Progressiver Künstler Köln), a bloc of artists that represented the radical outer fringe of the Expressionist movement of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Fortunately for enthusiasts of art from the Weimar years the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, has mounted an exhibition titled Progressive Cologne: 1920-33, Seiwert - Hoerle - Arntz. Running from March 15 to June 15, 2008, the exhibit is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalog book, Painting as a Weapon - a definitive text on the Progressives that is sure to please both historians and aficionados of German Expressionism.

[ Drei Invaliden (Three Invalids) Heinrich Hoerle. Oil on canvas. 1930. In this painting Hoerle depicted three wounded veterans of World War I, a vision that did not endear him to Germany’s militarists. ]

The exhibition focuses on three core members of the Cologne Progressives, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Heinrich Hoerle, and Gerd Arntz, with the exhibit presenting over fifty paintings and ninety prints by the artists. The Progressives were interested in the creation of a formal proletarian aesthetic, an innovative art of and for the working class. While the Cologne Progressives were in part inspired by the Soviet Constructivists, they did not adopt the severe geometric abstractions of their Soviet counterparts. Stirred by the aesthetics of "primitive" tribal art and the iconography of early Christian images, the Progressives never fully abandoned figurative realism. Instead they stripped what they perceived to be superfluous details from their paintings, prints and drawings, de-emphasizing individual features of the people in their artworks, leaving the minimalist figures to convey some instructive narrative. From 1929 to 1933, the group published a theoretical journal titled A bis Z (A to Z), where the writings and artworks of Progressive circle members and their associates were published.

[ The Painter Heinrich Hoerle - August Sander. Gelatin silver print. 1927. ]

The photographer August Sander was attracted to the Progressive circle, aligning himself with the group in the early 1920s. His photos were often published in A bis Z, and his method of photographing his subjects according to their place in society’s hierarchy - revealing social tensions and class relations - was in harmony with the Progressive’s political and aesthetic outlook. Sander ended up photographing most members of the Progressive group, as with this portrait of painter Gottfried Brockmann now in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Interestingly enough, at the time of this writing, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is presenting August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century - a selection of 130 photos taken by Sander during the Weimar years, an exhibit that runs until September 14, 2008.

[ Klassenkampf (Class warfare) - Franz W. Seiwert. Linocut. 1922. Published in the radical newspaper, Die Aktion. ]

The Progressives held two major views that set them apart from the larger Expressionist school. They rejected the notion of art in service to politics; only because they viewed the type of art they were creating as political action in and of itself - from their perspective their art was the revolution, or at least a vital component of it. Secondly, they commonly depicted people as generic symbols. By reducing and standardizing the human form, and by dressing their minimalist figures in garments worn either by oligarchs or workers, the Progressives intended to show how class divisions were imposed upon humanity. One of the Progressives who excelled in this type of didactic minimalism was Gerd Arntz, whose works would come to influence international design to this very day.

Gerd Arntz collaborated with the Marxist Viennese social scientist Otto Neurath on creating what they called the International System of Typographic Picture Education, or Isotype. The idea was to provide the working class with a universal visual language of symbols and pictograms that would assist them in understanding complex ideas concerning politics, economics, industry, and society in general. Neurath hired Arntz as a designer for the Isotype project in 1928, and over the years the artist designed some 4000 pictograms. While Isotype was based upon a radical political vision, the very concept for the pictographic road signs and other governmental pictograms we see everywhere today can be traced back directly to the collaborative work of Neurath and Arntz.

[ The Third Reich - Gerd Arntz. Linocut. 1934. In his typical minimalist style Arntz depicted German society constructed like a pyramid, with workers at the very bottom. The elites at the top enjoyed wealth, privilege, and political power. In the art of the Progressives, the rich bore the same de-individualized features as the poor. ]

The Progressive’s drive to develop a new visual language was cut short by the rise of the Nazis, who branded them as "degenerate" and prohibited them from producing or exhibiting their works. Franz W. Seiwert died in Cologne in 1933 of radiation burns he suffered as a child - just before the Nazis undoubtedly would have come for him. Gerd Arntz was forced into exile in 1934 as Nazi repression against the arts increased, fleeing to the Netherlands where he would live and work until he died in 1988. In 1936 Heinrich Hoerle died in Cologne of tuberculosis, which had previously killed his father, sister, and first wife, Angelika. August Sanders never left Germany. In 1936 the Nazis seized and destroyed the printing plates for his photo book, Face of our Time, forbidding him to exhibit or publish. When his Cologne studio was destroyed in a 1944 Allied Forces bombing raid, thousands of his negatives were obliterated. Sander died in Cologne in 1964. Today, 4,500 original prints and some 11,000 original glass negatives are housed in the August Sander Archive in Cologne, Germany, the largest collection of his work in the world.

Woodstock Nation Gets Its Museum

The Museum at Bethel Woods, an institution dedicated to the examination of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair held for three days in August of 1969, officially opened on June 2, 2008, on the exact site of the original Woodstock festival. A splendid building of wood and stone that looks much like a fancy mountain lodge resort, the museum sits on a hilltop overlooking the field, once part of Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, where a half-million people gathered for "Three Days of Peace and Music"

[ Visitors to the Museum at Bethel Woods walk through displays of historic photographs, video presentations, timelines, and interactive media. AFP photo by Emmanuel Dunand. ]

I was only fifteen when the Woodstock festival was held, and naturally I dreamt of going, as did all of my friends, but I never made the trek. The event however had enormous impact that reached far beyond those who came together on Yasgur’s farm. The philosophy that was acted out there is perhaps best expressed in a quotation by a musician who performed at the momentous happening, Richie Havens: "Woodstock was not about sex, drugs, and rock & roll. It was about spirituality, about love, about sharing, about helping each other, living in peace and harmony." The museum aptly uses that quote in its promotional materials, and in part describes its mission with the following words:

"The Museum embodies the key ideals of the era we interpret - peace, respect, cooperation and a connection to the planet we live on and all the people who inhabit it. In addition to preserving and interpreting an era, the museum is actively involved in our community - through education, economic development, and historical preservation - to encourage social responsibility among our visitors and supporters, and to advocate for issues that make Sullivan County, and the world at large, a better place. To borrow from 1960s ideology, everyone has the power to change the world."

The museum’s permanent collection is divided into three parts, the first traces the earthshaking historic events of the 60s as the chaotic decade led up to the Woodstock festival - correctly placing the concert in the context of immense social upheaval. The second and largest section of the collection focuses on the festival itself - through displays of ephemera, photos, text and audio narratives, as well as interactive media presentations that culminate in a 21-minute film about the festival that includes Jimi Hendrix playing his awe-inspiring rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. The final portion of the museum’s collection covers the legacy of Woodstock, where amongst other things, those who attended the original festival can record their experiences for the institution’s archives.

The museum’s facilities are indeed impressive, and include a main exhibition hall that holds the permanent exhibit - consisting of over 300 photographic murals and text panels, 164 artifacts, five interactive media presentations, and 20 films. The museum’s theater offers seating for 132 people and a 13 by 22 foot screen with multi-channel sound and high-definition video projection. An outdoor theater seats 1,000 for special performances and forums, and starting in 2009 a Site Interpretive Walking Tour will show visitors the noteworthy spots on museum property - such as the location of the original Woodstock stage. A Special Exhibit Gallery where traveling shows from other institutions, collectors, and exhibitors can be placed on view is also part of the museum, together with a sizeable Events Gallery for meetings and receptions. Two large classrooms outfitted with audio-visual equipment are also incorporated into the museum, and naturally there is a museum gift shop.

[ Woodstock Music & Art Fair: 3 Days of Peace & Music. Original promotional poster designed by artist Arnold Skolnick, 1969. The artist’s initial concept had the bird sitting on a flute, but the final poster design placed the bird on a guitar. While popularly regarded as a dove, Skolnick’s actual model was the catbird, which he had been sketching while visiting Shelter Island near Long Island. Skolnick’s celebrated poster has been endlessly replicated, often without permission; for instance, the organizers of the so-called "Woodstock II" festival held in 1994, plagiarized Skolick’s creation without giving him credit or monetary compensation. ]

How accurate a picture of the Woodstock festival can one get from a family-friendly museum trying its best to avoid the controversies associated with the event - which was arguably the culmination of the most radical mass social experiment to have ever occurred in the United States? Two of the hallmarks of the Flower Power generation, "free love" - i.e., sexual liberation and promiscuity, and the use of psychedelic drugs to achieve "expanded consciousness", will most likely be downplayed by the museum, at least in its public presentations; yet these were driving forces behind hippie - effecting everything from clothing, language, music and art, to personal relationships and political stances. Serious research and scholarship should not be hindered by prevailing political moods, and to thrust aside troublesome facts in order to avoid upsetting the status quo is to rewrite history. Nevertheless, the Museum at Bethel Woods holds promise as an institution devoted to American history and social studies, in particular, the examination of the multi-faceted alternative culture that was hippie. Duly placing an emphasis upon educational resources and scholarship, the museum states:

"Adult learners and scholars can soon come to the museum for seminars and symposia to share their knowledge and add to the body of scholarship in areas of popular culture, mass media, and a variety of other subjects. In the future, the museum will soon provide opportunities for individual research, as well, through an expanded website, library/archive, and access to hours of recorded oral histories and volumes of photographs of the era."

Nationwide and internationally there are many collections of 60s counterculture artifacts and ephemera held in private and institutional hands that could be brought together or linked in some manner - and the possibility that this might happen through the Museum at Bethel Woods is an exciting prospect. I hope that such relationships are developed and I encourage those with relevant collections and materials to contact the museum with ideas and proposals. The museum is also seeking relics from those who actually attended the Woodstock festival of ’69, as well as written, recorded, or oral histories from participants for possible inclusion in the museum’s permanent collection. All interested parties may contact the museum at: museum@bethelwoodslive.org. Visit the official Museum at Bethel Woods website.

Armed Guards at LACMA

Armed guards carrying clubs and loaded guns now patrol the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), the latest addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. No less than three armed guards have been seen patrolling the BCAM, with one security officer assigned to watch over Damien Hirst’s installation Away from the Flock - a dead lamb pickled in formaldehyde that Eli Broad purchased in 2006 for $3.38 million.

The armed guards do not patrol any of LACMA’s other galleries, where the museum’s invaluable collection of masterworks by artists from around the world and throughout time are housed; only the pricey postmodern collection of billionaire Eli Broad amassed under the BCAM rooftop are afforded protection by uniformed, gun-toting private security men. Is this part of the supposed "visionary leadership" provided by LACMA Director, Michael Govan?

The open presence of uniformed armed men in a major art museum is abhorrant and contradictory to the very spirit of art - there are certainly wiser and more effective ways of protecting museum collections than the filling of galleries with gun wielding sentries.

LACMA hired the armed guards from Inter-Con Security Systems, Inc., which in its own words is a "leading U.S. security company, providing a full range of physical security services to commercial and industrial customers on four continents. (…) Inter-Con has achieved a position of international leadership in the field of diplomatic security provided to the U.S. and foreign governments." Once can only imagine what this means, since Inter-Con does not provide a list of its clients. I am not the only one to be annoyed by this development. In his article, Under the gun is no way to view art, Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight writes;

"It's hard to imagine almost any scenario in which an art museum guard might shoot someone, but that bizarre thought keeps bumping around in your brain at BCAM. Needless to say, it has a less than salutary effect on the art experience. As a rule, art museums don't discuss their security precautions. For obvious reasons, they prefer them to be as unobtrusive as possible. That institutional reticence is what makes this glaring aberration so weird. Visual intimidation by gun- and baton-toting guards shouts that security is a pressing issue -- and that BCAM requires more than any museum in town."

Having set the precedent of introducing uniformed armed security personnel into the galleries of LACMA, perhaps in the near future Mr. Govan will hire Blackwater Worldwide to provide protection for the museum’s so-called "BP Grand Entrance".

Exhibit at Katalyst Gallery, Los Angeles

I will be exhibiting a few paintings in a group show presented by the newest gallery space in downtown Los Angeles, California, the Katalyst Foundation for the Arts. Starting May 31, 2008, and running until the end of June, 2008, Pulse Point will be the second exhibit offered by Katalyst in its temporary gallery near the historic Little Tokyo district of L.A. Reading from the gallery’s press release:

"The term 'Pulse Point' in Eastern Medicine alludes to the spot on the human body where the indication of life registers strongest. Katalyst Foundation for the Arts presents an exhibition of seven visual artists offering their own reflection of culture's pulse points. Iraqi artist Paul Batou's lustrous images of pre-war Baghdad neighborhoods, Sculptor Lilli Muller's figurative work, Mark Vallen's realist portraits and John Paul Thornton's large panels depicting religious rituals are on display."

Amongst the paintings I will be showing are two that I have just completed - large oil on canvas depictions of burning palm trees. Belonging to a larger series of such paintings I continue to work on, the blazing trees are part historical observation and part metaphorical expression. Naturally palm trees are omnipresent in my home city of Los Angeles, and they have become an internationally celebrated icon of Southern California, but on April 29th, 1992, I witnessed L.A.’s palm trees set ablaze during the Rodney King riots - and I have been struggling to capture that vision on canvas ever since. By the same token, my paintings also allude to the untamed natural environment of my city, where annual brushfires rage through the hills in and around the metropolitan area.

[ Burning Palm Tree - Mark Vallen 2008. Oil on canvas. 30 x 40 inches. ]

Time does not permit my writing about all of the talented artists involved in the Pulse Point show, but I would like to draw attention to the works of Mr. Batou, a native Iraqi artist in exile from his country since 1989. Batou’s paintings jump back and forth from naïve realism to severe abstraction, but his works are always permeated with a deep sense of love and longing for his native land. Many of his dreamlike canvases evoke ancient Babylon with its gods and mythic figures, and his paintings are often covered in the Kufic style of Arabic script developed in Iraq in the 8th century. It is certainly a pleasure to exhibit with him, and his artistic voice is unquestionably an indication of where "life registers strongest."

[ Woman in Abaya - Paul Batou. Oil on canvas. The abaya is worn by women in Iraq and throughout the Islamic world as a pull-over garment worn loosely over clothing. ]

The opening for Pulse Point took place on Saturday May 31st, 2008. A closing party for the exhibit will take place on June 28, 2008, from 7 until 11 pm. The Katalyst Foundation for the Arts is located at 201 S. Santa Fe Ave. #207, Los Angeles CA 90012. (click here for a map). To view the show by appointment, or for more information, phone: 213-604 3634.

The Harvey Milk Public Monument

On May 22, 2008, a monumental bronze bust of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician to be elected to public office anywhere in the world and a martyred hero of the gay rights movement, was unveiled and officially dedicated in the rotunda of San Francisco City Hall. Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but was shot to death by an assassin a year later at S.F. City Hall along with the Mayor of the city, George Moscone. The unveiling of the commemorative statue, officiated over by San Francisco’s current Mayor, Gavin Newsom, occurred on what would have been Milk’s 78th birthday.

[ Harvey Milk - Daub Firmin Hendrickson sculpture group. 2008. The image shows the portrait bust of Milk as an unfinished work in progress before the clay model had been cast in bronze. ]

The realistic bronze bust of Milk stands atop a solid granite base, situated upon a pedestal faced with a bas-relief bronze plaque, and taken as a whole the monument is 75 inches high and weighs over 200 pounds. The slain gay rights activist is portrayed flashing his famous winning smile, his tie fluttering in a gentle wind. The relief plaque portrays three scenes from Milk’s life and times, his service in the U.S. Navy, riding in a Gay Pride Parade, and a depiction of the massive spontaneous candlelight march held by thousands in San Francisco the night of the assassinations. A quote by Milk appears on the pedestal as an inscription - "I ask the movement to continue because my election gave young people out there hope. You gotta give 'em hope."

Some years ago the S.F. Board of Supervisors passed a resolution authorizing the statue, and a private committee raised the funds to secure and build the memorial. The San Francisco Arts Commission held a design competition, and selected a panel of jurors to judge the submissions. Out of three finalists, the commission was awarded to the Daub Firmin Hendrickson (DFH) sculpture group, a Berkeley, California based team that excels at creating figurative realist sculptures and bas-relief plaques cast in bronze.

DFH is a partnership between sculptors Eugene Daub, Rob Firmin, and Jonah Hendrickson, and their collaborative, traditional style bronze statues have appeared as public art works across the nation. In their own words, the trio specializes in "sculptures devoted to the aesthetic illumination of important histories and uplifting allegories, created in monumental scale cast in bronze." I commend the Daub Firmin Hendrickson sculpture group, not just for continuing the tradition of realistic monumental public sculpture, but also for seeking and accepting such an important commission as the Harvey Milk memorial. DFH should also be applauded for avoiding the "great man" theory of history that so often explains momentous events being the work of solitary individuals. By including panels on their memorial sculpture showing a mass movement of people, DFH gives us the view that history is made when enough people move together towards a common goal.

The assassin of Milk and Moscone was Dan White, a former police officer and a disgruntled law maker who had just resigned from the S.F. Board of Supervisors. Armed with his police revolver and extra ammunition, White secretly entered City Hall through a window in order to avoid detection and shot the two politicians at close range. The gunman surrendered himself to the police and his trial would be closely watched by the nation - it ended up being important for several reasons.

White denied the shooting was premeditated, and his legal team successfully argued that he suffered from "diminished capacity" due in part from eating too many Twinkies - the media came to call this the "Twinkie Defense". Rather than receiving a murder conviction, White was instead found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and given a seven year prison sentence. San Francisco’s gay community and its allies immediately reacted to the verdict by filling the streets with angry protest, and thousands turned violent. On the evening of the "White Night Riots", twelve S.F. police cars were set ablaze by furious rioters. White would serve slightly more than three years of his prison sentence before committing suicide, and in 1982 the California legislature would do away with "diminished capacity" as a legal defense. These events and more are covered in the Oscar-winning 1984 documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk.

Harvey Milk suspected that someone would eventually try to assassinate him, so he recorded a statement to be played in case of that eventuality. In that public statement Milk said; "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door." While some obstacles barring gays from enjoying full democratic rights have been done away with - others still remain. The memorial bronze of Harvey Milk placed in San Francisco’s City Hall should be a constant reminder of what has yet to be achieved.

Michael Rossman: All Of Us Or None

It is not likely that many people personally knew, or even heard of, Michael Rossman - yet for those even remotely interested in the alternative culture and politics that thrived in Berkeley, California in the late 1960s, Michael’s spirit looms large. I consider myself fortunate to have known him - however briefly - and to be able to say that he was a friend. He passed away at his wife's home in Berkeley on May 12, 2008, at the age of 68, after a short but heroic battle with a rare form of acute leukemia.

[ Michael Rossman - Photograph by Lincoln Cushing, 2002. A candid shot of Michael working at his All Of Us Or None (AOUON) archive. ]

I first became aware of Michael while visiting the University of California Berkeley in the summer of 1984. While on campus I discovered Know Your Enemy, a small exhibit of Anti-Vietnam War Movement posters then showing at the university’s Heller Gallery. The poster display was curated by the All Of Us Or None (AOUON) archive. Later I asked some of my acquaintances in the Berkeley area if they had heard of AOUON, and I was promptly put in contact with Michael - who had founded the archives in 1977.

Michael invited me to his home where he gave me access to his remarkable poster collection. We became fast friends, talking until the wee hours of the morning about all aspects of poster making and collecting. He was an animated, passionate, enthusiastic, poet philosopher who could seemingly discuss anything under the sun with aplomb. Unsurprisingly he talked about the social history of posters with great expertise, but I was astonished at how naturally he discussed everything from science and literature to political theory. As a matter of fact, he taught science to school children during the last thirty years of his life. I remember our first get together ending with Michael pontificating on the joys of identifying and collecting wild edible mushrooms - complete with his detailed descriptions of various species of fungi.

By the time of Michael’s death, his All Of Us Or None (AOUON) archive had expanded to some 25,000 domestically produced political posters and flyers from the post World War II period. Aside from L.A.’s Center for the Study of Political Art (CSPG), and Lincoln Cushing's Docs Populi archives, only the Hoover Institution maintains as large a holding of domestic posters from earlier eras (approximately 8,700), and of these, few are from the period Michael focused on in his collection). The core of the AOUON archive focused on the poster renaissance centered in the San Francisco Bay area from 1965 to the present. But the archive’s holdings are also national and international in scope, with one-quarter of its posters coming from outside of California and another 2,000 having been produced internationally. The breathtaking collection well represents all branches of America’s modern dissident cultural and political movements.

[ You Can’t Jail The Revolution - Anonymous Serigraphic street poster 1969. Collection of AOUON. The following caption was written by Michael Rossman: "Urging support for leaders of demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention, the poster quotes a notorious news-photo of U.S. sprinters giving the Black Power salute on the Olympic victory stand. The image then evoked the lone Black defendant, bound and gagged in court. In retrospect, it reflects the impact of the politicization of sports, and the Left's fetishism of Black militance." ]

Over the years Michael and I kept in touch through casual correspondence and occasional pop in visits. In the late 80s he came to see me at my Los Angeles studio, where I donated a number of my early prints to his archive. It was during that visit that I learned of Michael’s prominent role in Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement of 1964-1965, as he relayed that history to me in his typically dynamic and energetic manner. When he was finished recounting the tale of America’s burgeoning student movement - I felt as though I had been there.

It was only a few years after Michael’s visit that director Mark Kitchell’s documentary film Berkeley In The Sixties was released. In my opinion it is the finest movie ever made about the protest movement of the 60s, and luckily for us all, Michael appeared in it as one of 15 veteran Berkeley activists whose interviews provided the narrative backdrop to the movie’s historic footage. Michael’s insights and observations helped to make Berkeley In The Sixties the superlative filmic treatment of the period that it is. In 1999 Michael also played a central role in establishing the online Free Speech Movement archive, another invaluable source for historians and activists.

Until just recently I corresponded with Michael by e-mail, exchanging dispatches on the state of contemporary art and its possibilities - but the e-mails stopped coming from him a while back. I knew that because of his failing health he had restricted his immediate contacts to family and the very closest of friends. Still, he managed to find the strength to stay in touch with his extended family through the use of his personal web log, where he kept his associates across the globe abreast of his deteriorating condition. He did so with surprising gusto and dignity, managing to turn his end into a learning process for all. What struck me most about Michael’s final days was the calmness with which he faced his certain onrushing death - he confronted it like a lion. I would add that type of courage to all the remarkable traits that were a part of this dear man, his intellectual curiosity, open mindedness, compassion, gentleness, and belief in humanity.

Without crudely idolizing Michael - goodness knows how I detest hero worship - I attest to his having been an exemplar amongst the veterans of the 60s "movement". He was in fact the very embodiment of egalitarian counter-cultural ideals and values. Now that he is no longer around, and I need not worry about embarrassing him, I can say in all honesty that our greatest tribute to Michael Rossman would be to live like he did.

[ UPDATE: A public memorial will be held for Michael in Berkeley on Monday, June 23, 2008, from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, in Kensington. Everyone is welcome to attend. ]

Reclaiming the "F" Word

[ Rural Women Unite Against Violence - Anonymous silkscreen poster from Sri Lanka, produced in the early 1970s. Created for the Network of Rural Women’s Groups/Baddegama, Sri Lanka. On display at Reclaiming the "F" Word. ]

Mentioned on this web log from time to time, L.A.’s irreplaceable Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) has once again curated an exhibit of great importance to designers, artists, and activists. Reclaiming the "F" Word: Posters on International Feminisms, will premier at the California State University Northridge Art Galleries. Reading from the CSPG press release for the exhibit:

"The national and international posters in this exhibition reflect a deepening awareness that women’s struggles, women’s leadership and women’s activism throughout the world challenge oppressive conditions in diverse and creative ways. Posters from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North and South America explore class, race and gender as they show women at the forefront of struggles for human rights and social change.

Powerful graphics depict diverse feminist issues from the suffragettes to the activism of the 1970s to today. The family unit, childcare, labor, ecology, trafficking and violence are just some of the topics covered. Posters show women organizing against the Viet Nam War and against Apartheid in South Africa. They decry the ongoing murders of women in Juarez, Mexico and use of rape as a military weapon in Darfur, Sudan."

After its premier at CSUN, Reclaiming the "F" Word will travel nationally and internationally under the auspices of the CSPG. The exhibit is the result of a call for Feminist poster art issued by the CSPG in April 2007, an appeal that I eagerly published on this web log. While it is obviously too late to submit entries to Reclaiming the "F" Word, the organization excepts submissions of posters to their archives the year round. The CSPG collection of historic and contemporary graphics dealing with social change movements currently numbers at around 50,000 unique pieces.

Reclaiming the "F" Word runs at the California State University Northridge Art Galleries from June 3 to July 3, 2008. An Opening Reception for the show takes place on Saturday June 7, 2008, from 2 to 5 pm. The gallery is located at 18111 Nordhoff Street Northridge, CA 91330. There is no admission charge for the exhibit but parking is $5.00. For more details visit the CSPG website.

Robert Rauschenberg 1925-2008

Robert Rauschenberg died at his home on Captiva Island, Florida on May 12, 2008, at the age of 82. Unquestionably there will be many eulogies written about the iconoclastic artist, and there’s not much that I can add in noting his accomplishments or his passing - save for the following. Rauschenberg always impressed me as being one of the more significant artists associated with the Pop Art movement, and my reason for feeling this is encapsulated in two well known quotes from him; "It is impossible to have progress without conscience" and "The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history."

[ Signs - Robert Rauschenberg. Collage. 1970. The artist captured the apocalyptic 60s by depicting the oppression of African Americans, the war in Vietnam, the death of Blues rocker Janis Joplin, and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. ]

Rauschenberg stood apart from his Pop Art colleagues in using his skills to draw attention to social and political issues. His art activism certainly had its shortcomings, nevertheless, his many attempts at fusing art with social concerns were noteworthy. During the course of his life he created artworks that addressed the issues of war, racial equality, nuclear disarmament, apartheid, economic development, artist’s rights, and environmentalism - themes that all too few of today’s artists seem willing to tackle. While mainstream accounts of his life and art will focus upon his being a modern art innovator - reducing his achievements to mere questions of style and aesthetics - we should not forget that Rauschenberg was also a citizen artist deeply concerned with how his art could help change the world for the better.

[ Earth Day - Robert Rauschenberg. Collage. 1970. As an outgrowth of 60s activism, Earth Day was first proclaimed and celebrated in the United States on April 22, 1970, when some 25 million Americans rallied across the nation to demand a cleaner, healthier planet and an end to environmental destruction. Rauschenberg created this poster, the first of its kind, to popularize and celebrate the observance. At the time the American bald eagle, symbol of the nation, was endangered with extinction due to pesticides - so Rauschenberg made the bird the focal point of his collage. ]

Rauschenberg officially announced his Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange ( ROCI - pronounced "Rocky"), at the United Nations in 1983. It was a self-financed project that had as its mission the promotion of international peace and cultural exchange through collaborative art making. Under the auspices of ROCI, Rauschenberg visited and worked with artists in countries around the globe, using materials and skills found in each nation to create arworks that were donated to and exhibited in each host country. The culminating 1991 ROCI exhibit took place at the National Gallery of Art in Washington as part of the museum’s 50th anniversary celebration. The project would eventually visit 22 countries, including Mexico, Japan, Tibet, Venezuela, Germany, and Malaysia. It should also be noted that Rauschenberg’s ROCI project openly defied the Reagan administration’s Cold War policies by visiting the Soviet Union, Cuba, and China - but it would be in the South American nation of Chile where the artist would encounter the terror and dread behind the realpolitik of the Cold War.

In the book Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries, author Robert Saltonstall Mattison wrote extensively about Rauschenberg’s harrowing and controversial days in Chile. On September 11, 1973, the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a military coup engineered by the U.S. government - bringing the dictator General Augusto Pinochet to power. Thousands of civilians were executed or simply "disappeared" by the military, and the bloodletting was still going on in 1984 when Rauschenberg arrived in Santiago, Chile. The artist recalled, "Armed soldiers were everywhere, and I was startled by the sounds of gunfire in the streets." Rauschenberg had entered the country for a fifteen day visit just as Pinochet had declared a state of siege to crush popular protests.

According to Mattison, Rauschenberg "traveled to Chile without fully realizing the degree to which the dictator Augusto Pinochet’s repressive policies were tearing the country apart", a fact that points to the artist’s naiveté. Rauschenberg "soon encountered students and political activists. He often met them secretly in church sanctuaries, where they told him of friends and relatives who had 'disappeared.' As a result of these experiences and against the advice of his staff, Rauschenberg went on his own to the outskirts of Santiago to photograph everyday life in the slums." To his credit, Rauschenberg refused to be seen as a representative or agent of the U.S. government, and he shunned State Department help in arranging ROCI project details. It should be recalled that at the time the Reagan administration was moving to normalize its relationship with the military regime of Chile.

Many pro-democracy proponents viewed Rauschenberg’s trip to Chile as inopportune, and Donald Saff, a ROCI staff member in charge of logistics, recollected: "I never experienced as much anger about any artist’s project with which I have been involved as about ROCI Chile. The reactions from friends, fellow artists, and others was absolute outrage that Bob would stage a show with Pinochet in control." Personally I would have counted myself amongst the critics, but Rauschenberg saw his Chilean exhibit as a radical gesture that would eventually help to open the path to democracy. Perhaps it did, though I’m still inclined to think of the ROCI Chile project as a mistake and one of the artist’s political shortcomings. On the other hand, I can’t deny Rauschenberg’s obvious sympathies for the people of Chile as they struggled for a free and open society.

While tributes to Rauschenberg recall the boldness with which he toppled art world sacred cows, let’s not forget the spirit he displayed in navigating the treacherous seas of national and international politics. If more artists today were willing to acknowledge and address social issues in their works - we’d all be in much better shape.

Kent Twitchell: The End of Muralism?

On May 1st, 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that famed L.A. muralist Kent Twitchell settled his lawsuit against the U.S. government for obliterating his six-story mural depiction of artist Ed Ruscha. Starting in 1978, it took Twitchell nine years to complete his mural on an outside wall of the L.A. headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2006 the mural was deliberately painted over by a maintenance crew working for the government.

Federal and state laws protect commissioned murals in the City of Los Angeles from desecration or destruction; specifically, the federal Visual Artists Rights Act states that an artist must be given a ninety day notice before a building owner can paint over a mural. Twitchell received no such notice before his mural was arbitrarily destroyed, so he’s been awarded a $1.1 million settlement. To date it is the largest settlement to have been paid out to an artist under state or federal laws meant to protect artist’s rights - and I won’t hesitate to say that Twitchell fully deserves the money. I first heard of his mural being destroyed the day it happened, and without delay I called the L.A. arts community to his defense, so it’s gratifying to learn of Twitchell’s court victory - which also bodes well for all other muralists and artists creating public art across the country.

I met Twitchell a short while after the destruction of his mural, when photographer Gil Ortiz and I visited his Playa Vista, California studio in August of 2006 - hence much of what follows is based upon the chat I had with Twitchell during that visit. He was affable and friendly, revealing his feelings concerning the destruction of his Ed Ruscha mural, his life as an artist, and his views regarding the state of art in America today. No doubt Twitchell was irate over the destruction of his mural, but he possessed a clear-headed understanding of the social implications of his next move - a lawsuit against the U.S. government. At the time Twitchell told me; "I don’t want to blow this thing, I could hurt other artists if I blow this thing. I’ve got to make them know that they can’t just paint out a work of art just because they feel like it - there’s a law that they have to follow… they can paint it out, they can do whatever they want to it, they just have to be polite about it, but they were not."

Known for his monumental works, I asked Twitchell if he ever created small scale artworks. "It’s a lot easier for me to work at least life-size. A lot of times when I work small I don’t pull it off, maybe two out of three times it’s ok. If I work life-size or bigger then almost everything I do I like." Then he went bounding off to the second story of his studio to rustle through his archives. He returned with a portfolio of original sketches and lithographs that were delicately wrapped in acid free paper for purposes of preservation. Some of the drawings were of individuals that appear in his massive 405 Freeway mural, L.A. Marathon, a work that celebrates the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics but is unfortunately now damaged by graffiti. The drawings were composed of tightly woven crosshatched lines, the work of a highly skilled and disciplined draftsman. Twitchell chuckled and said "Sometimes I draw this way, not because it’s better, but because I’m obsessive compulsive - that’s who I am."

[ Kent Twitchell in his studio, 2006 - Photo by Gil Ortiz. Twitchell holds his lithograph of artist Lita Albuquerque. ]

Amongst the portfolio’s drawings and prints there was an amazing portrait of artist Lita Albuquerque. The lithograph was immediately recognizable as a print version of the huge Lita Albuquerque mural Twitchell painted alongside L.A.’s Harbor Freeway in 1983. I mentioned to him that I had just recently driven past the mural, and that it was almost completely destroyed by graffiti, to which Twitchell replied "I won’t have to repaint it because she’s so protected, all of that graffiti will come right off without damaging the original painting." He then began explaining the process used to protect his street murals; "First there’s a type of wax that’s applied to the surface, followed by a coating of anti-graffiti material", but Twitchell is well aware that restoration of a damaged mural is a relatively simple matter - and that a far bigger problem lies ahead for L.A. murals. Once restored to pristine condition they will immediately be defaced by graffiti taggers who respect nothing but their own trivial notoriety. Twitchell’s Albuquerque mural is still in situ, but as of this writing it’s completely buried under layers of graffiti - only Albuquerque’s eyes peer out from behind the shroud of spray paint vandalism.

Looking at Twitchell’s vast body of work, it’s easy to see that he has a passion for realism in painting, yet I wouldn’t call him a photo-realist. In spite of the fact that he uses modern techniques and equipment in his mural making, Twitchell is very much a traditionalist whose influences range from the Old Masters to Salvador Dali - he confided in me; "I want to paint one of my heroes, Grant Wood, the great American regionalist painter, who just tweaked the New York art establishment. He used to wear bib overalls - a brilliant man, went to Paris, learned about Modernism - he could do it as well as anybody, but he went back to Iowa and continued as a regionalist painter with Hicks, Benton, and the others - and he did it on purpose. So unpretentious, and that’s what art needs - unpretentiousness."

A close up examination of Twitchell’s paintings reveals, not brush strokes, but tiny fields of pure color. He equates this to the Pointillism of French artist George Seurat, but notes that Seurat accomplished his paintings by using "pure colors, while I use values." For all intents and purposes the outlines of Twitchell’s murals look like an extremely complicated paint by numbers drawing, but by stepping back just a few feet, the crazy quilt patchwork of values becomes a sharp focused realistic portrait.

Los Angeles has a deeply rooted tradition of public murals, from 1930s works by the likes of David Alfaro Siqueiros, Hugo Ballin, Dean Cornwell, and those artists working for the Works Progress Administration - to the late 1960s mural renaissance that sprang from the Chicano and African American social movements. However, the forward thinking community based activism that served as a catalyst for the city’s mural movement utterly collapsed decades ago - only to be replaced by a nihilistic apolitical narcissism that is daily expressed in graffiti vandalism.

At present some of L.A.’s murals have been destroyed outright, most others have fallen into a state of disrepair, and all are threatened by graffiti, especially outdoor murals located at street level. Scores of graffiti scarred murals are now simply beyond restoration. The L.A. Daily News addressed the issue in a 2007 article titled L.A.’s street murals disappearing, framing the problem in the following manner; "Once the mural capital of the world, Los Angeles has quietly surrendered that distinction to Philadelphia over the past five years. While the City of Brotherly Love spends $4.5 million to paint, restore and maintain its 2,700 murals, the City of Angels has just $20,000 to look after its documented murals, which once numbered 3,000. Artists say 60 percent of them - about 1,800 - now are either gone for good or have been nearly obliterated by tagging and vandalism."

In 2006 I asked Twitchell what he thought about the state of the L.A. muralist movement and his answer was blunt, "The muralist movement is dead." That’s a bitter pill to swallow, but any impartial observer would have to agree. The L.A. Times article that reported on Twitchell’s mural settlement quoted him as saying; "What's really discouraging about most public art is the way that, in this city of ours, spray paint vandalism has kind of taken over the streets. What was once the mural capital is now the graffiti capital - although I don't call it graffiti, I call it spray paint vandalism. We cannot coexist."

I’m sure there are those who assume Twitchell is now "set for life" because of his settlement with the government, and that he can now retire to the lap of luxury. He is under no obligation to continue being a productive artist, and with his murals coming under attack from every direction, some would ask why doesn’t he just give up. That would be a complete misreading of the artistic spirit. Twitchell has devoted his life’s work to muralism, and knowing his devotion to the art, it’s a certainty he’d much rather have his mural of Ed Ruscha standing in pristine condition than to be awarded a cash settlement - no matter how large. Twitchell’s admonition that muralists "cannot coexist" with graffiti vandals is more an avowal to stand firm than it is a statement of surrender, and in the effort to re-establish the tradition of community based murals - I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with the muralists.