View of Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

I visited San Francisco, California in late 2011, for the most part to photograph the impressive murals in the Bay Area that were painted in the 1930s and 1940s. A few of the murals are still well known, especially to those living in San Francisco, but by and large the great majority of these public works have long been forgotten - even by arts professionals. Furthermore, nearly all of the artists that painted the murals have largely fallen into obscurity, and very few people today can recall their names.

In months to come I will publish on this web log my photographs of a number of the murals, along with biographical information on those artists responsible for their creation. I have long been perplexed by the small number of high-quality, close-up photos of the murals to be found online, something I hope to correct to some small degree with this series of posts. More importantly, my upcoming illustrated essays will offer insights into how the murals were actually produced, providing a unique artist’s viewpoint of the historic paintings.

The plaque affixed to Coit Tower. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

Constructed in 1933, Coit Tower is unquestionably the most well known locale for some of the best 1930s era murals; currently around 200,000 people, mainly tourists, visit the historic landmark each year. In all likelihood the majority of tourists visit because the tower affords the most remarkable view of San Francisco and the entire Bay Area. On any given day one can see hundreds of vacationers disembarking from sightseeing buses to view the famous building that sits atop Telegraph Hill. But all is not well for one of the city’s best known tourist attractions.

Since their creation in 1934, the Coit Tower murals have undergone several restorations. Photos from 1960 show the murals so disfigured by graffiti that the city sealed the paintings off from public view in order to conduct an extensive restoration that lasted from 1987 to 1990. Today the murals are again in poor shape, mostly from water and salt damage due to San Francisco’s well-known fog. During my visit to the tower I was shocked at the level of disrepair; chips and scratches have certainly taken their toll, and water damage is apparent everywhere; the walls and ceiling are peeling, and salt build-up has caused streaks on a number of paintings.

Detail from the Coit Tower mural, "Animal Force", by artist Ray Boynton. The artist painted the celestial eyes over an elevator doorway on the building's first floor. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

An October 2011 article titled Depression-era Coit Tower murals need touch-up published by the San Francisco Chronicle details some of the problems. A January 2012 PBS NewsHour ran a special segment about the Coit Tower murals that detailed the state of disrepair of the historic wall paintings as well as efforts to preserve the murals.

It was Diego Rivera’s 1930-31 visit to San Francisco that truly began the explosion of mural painting in the Bay Area, which I noted in the first essay of this series, Diego Rivera: The Making of a Fresco. At the time many Bay Area artists were involved in the school of American social realism, and more than a few of them traveled to Mexico in order to encounter first hand the masters of the Mexican Muralist School. Bernard Baruch Zakheim comes to mind; having made the trek to Mexico City to meet and work with Diego Rivera in 1930, Zakheim and fellow artist Ralph Stackpole successfully lobbied the U.S. government for a commission allowing artists to paint murals on interior walls of San Francisco’s newly constructed Coit Tower.

Upcoming posts will include close-up views of the Coit Tower murals by Zakheim and Stackpole, but also extreme close-up shots of mural paintings by John Langley Howard, William Hesthal, Clifford Wight, Maxine Albro, Suzanne Scheuer, George Harris, Frede Vidar, Ray Boynton, Victor Arnautoff, Otis Oldfield, Jose Moya del Pino, Rinaldo Cuneo, and other notable masters of American social realism.

The Teaching American History Project of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), a project funded by the U.S. Department of Education in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley, and the Oakland Museum, provides an overview of the Coit Tower Murals titled “A Social Narrative Depicting ‘Aspects of California Life’ in 1934” (click here for the .pdf document). The online teaching guide quotes extensively from this writer regarding some of the finer details and controversies around the Coit Tower mural project. The document also presents some reasonably sized, clear photos of the Coit murals.

"Homeless Woman at Coit Tower". Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

When I visited the historic landmark that is Coit Tower, I found a destitute woman sleeping near the building entrance; her worldly possessions were held in a small pushcart adorned by the American flag.

It is no small irony that the depression era realities depicted in the Coit Tower murals are today seen on the streets of the U.S. during the reign of the Obama administration. One difference between the mid-30s and the present is that contemporary artists have yet to challenge the systemic failures that give rise to economic collapse, mass poverty, and war.

In February of 2009 I wrote about one of California’s great modernist painters from the post WWII period, Edward Biberman. At the time the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park was running its splendid exhibition Edward Biberman Revisited, so my timely article was not simply a review, but an in depth look at one of L.A.’s forgotten artistic geniuses. If you are not familiar with the life and work of Mr. Biberman, I encourage you to read my ‘09 article.

I recently acquired a long out of print hardback copy of Time and Circumstance: Forty Years of Painting, a book Biberman wrote in 1968 that detailed his life and works. To further the reader’s appreciation of Mr. Biberman, I am posting reproductions of five paintings from his book along with his original captions. Published by Ward Richie Press, the rare hardback presents 118 full-page illustrations accompanied by the artist’s comments and observations. Unfortunately only a handful of the illustrations were printed in color, one of which - The Headless Horseman - I present here.

Edward Biberman wrote the following paragraph, which appeared in the foreword to his book; his artwork and captions follow:

“By pure coincidence, just as I was wondering how I might mark the fortieth year of my career as a professional painter, Mr. Joseph Simon, of The Ward Ritchie Press, asked me if I would be interested in having his company publish a book of my work. I was very intrigued with the idea and suggested that the book combine selected photographs of my paintings with enough written material to establish an autobiographical continuity. The publishers agreed, and as I began to choose the paintings and write the text, all the material seemed to fall into place quite easily and naturally. Here then, with my own narrative comments and a few quotes, are the paintings which I chose from the full body of work done in forty years span, 1927 to 1967.”

"The Unseen Wind" - Edward Biberman

The Unseen Wind. “By the late 1930s all of us looked with fear and foreboding at a world which was careening toward a holocaust. Mussolini’s dive bombers were cutting down the spear-carrying soldiers of Ethiopia: Spain was wracked by civil war and the silence of most of the world; and Picasso, outraged by the destruction of a Spanish town by German Stukas, became one of an increasing number of artists who felt impelled to protest directly through their art. And Guernica became a household word. Concentration camps, a foretaste of the genocide to come, were filling, and Hitler was preparing his march across Europe.”

"Still Life With Rope" - Edward Biberman

Still Life With Rope. “In our own land, there remained an old and recurring sickness. I began to turn more frequently now, to a world in ferment for my themes. But it soon became obvious to me that the technique which had served me well for other ideas and circumstances was inadequate for these new concepts. The basically two-dimensional, highly pigmented idiom which I had been using for almost ten years, was simply not able to carry the weight of these new intentions. I needed a more solid, three-dimensional, less chromatic approach. I had no hesitancy in making these changes. For then, as now, the form of my work was basically determined by its content.”

"The Headless Horseman" - Edward Biberman

The Headless Horseman. “The specter of another world war filled our mind’s eye. But this was totally unlike the mood which had unified our country almost to a man after Pearl Harbor. This vision was of something foreboding and divisive – needless, cruel, corrosive.”

"Woman of Mexico" - Edward Biberman

Woman of Mexico. “Though this head was painted a few years later, it belongs emotionally to the work of that summer. It is a free interpretation of the Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas, who played the leading role in the motion picture, Salt of the Earth, directed by my brother in 1953. The present director of the Los Angeles Municipal Arts Commission, Mr. Kenneth Ross, was at this time art critic on a Pasadena newspaper. He had written, ‘Biberman can affect a striking balance of heart and mind.’” [Editor's comment: You can view the entire Salt of the Earth film as a streaming video presented by Google. Read about the history of the film here].

"Winged Victory of Los Angeles" - Edward Biberman

Winged Victory of Los Angeles. “Once, by chance, I happened to drive under an uncompleted section of one of these soaring ribbons of concrete. I suddenly felt the same sensation of imminent flight that I experienced when I first saw the “Winged Victory” at the head of the stairway, at the end of the long corridor in the Louvre. I could not resist this slightly facetious title for the painting. Most of these urban landscapes were shown at my one-man exhibition at the Heritage Gallery in Los Angeles in 1962, and this gallery has remained by representative since that time.”

View of the Walker Landing Plaza between galleries at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas USA. Photograph by Charvex/Wikimedia Creative Commons.

During the month of May 2005 I posted an essay titled The Wal-Mart Museum of Art.

My article detailed the intentions of Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton to found and build the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the hometown headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world’s largest retailer.

Forbes ranks four of the Waltons among the top dozen wealthiest Americans, with the family members collectively worth around $93 billion dollars. Alice Walton alone has a net worth of $20.9 billion dollars, and not surprisingly she serves as the head of the museum’s Board of Directors. The $800 million it took to erect the huge museum of course came from the Walton Family Foundation. Crystal Bridges opened this past November to much fanfare from the press, though this article will make note of a few things generally left unsaid about the new “world-class” art museum and its connections to the Wal-Mart empire.

Should I ever find myself in Bentonville, Arkansas, I would most likely pay a visit to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. There is no doubt Alice Walton and family have purchased a superlative art collection. The museum houses works by the likes of Charles Wilson Peale, John Singleton Copley, Charles Bird King, Asher Brown Durand, Arshile Gorky, Thomas Hart Benton, Norman Rockwell, Georgia O’Keefe, Claes Oldenburg, and innumerable others from throughout America’s episodic history. It may be a conservative collection hung in a conventional setting, but there is no arguing its significance. It is also incontestable that the museum serves an unstated political purpose. I will set the pace for the remainder of this article by quoting from my original May 2005 post:

“Wal-Mart Inc. is hardly a credible or benevolent voice when it comes to the public interest, and delivering the nation’s art treasures into its gapping maw makes me shudder. While the corporate press and apolitical art critics fawn over the art world’s latest benefactor, they are likely to forget to mention the following… Wal-Mart Inc. has a terrible record when it comes to the mistreatment of its US employees, and a ghastly history of exploiting workers in other parts of the world. There is no better example of how politics is intertwined with art than the spectacle of an art museum being founded by a rapacious corporation well known for exporting US jobs overseas and profiting from foreign sweat shop labor.”

Writing for Bloomberg.com, Jeffrey Goldberg penned a December 2011 article titled “Wal-Mart Heiress’s Museum a Moral Blight“, in which he updates and extrapolates on the points made above. Goldberg referred to the Wal-Mart Museum as “a moral tragedy, very much like the corporation that provided Walton with the money to build a billion-dollar art museum during a terrifying recession. The museum is a compelling symbol of the chasm between the richest Americans and everyone else.” He went on to write that the museum “is certainly the handsomest building ever built with Wal-Mart money. I suspect it is also the only building associated with Wal-Mart that is devoted solely to American-made goods.”

Here I must point out that the inaugural presentation of the Crystal Bridges Museum collection was co-sponsored by General Electric, Coca-Cola, and Goldman Sacks. Honestly, the museum seems not so much a gathering of historic and noteworthy American art as it does a monumental advertisement for America’s plutocratic 1%.

Contributing editor to Art & Auction magazine, Abigail Esman, may no doubt disagree with my assessment. In her article for Forbes, “How Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Exposes The Foolishness Of Occupy Wall Street“, Ms. Esman wrote of Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridge Museum as a “love letter, as it were, to her community and to America”, saying that “there remain those so wedded to the whining of the so-called 99 percent that they remain blinded both to the philanthropy and to the significance of the project.”  Esman’s attacks against the “Occupy crowd” are simply diversionary and do not address the social role played by Wal-Mart and its cultural appendage, the Crystal Bridges Museum. She maligns the Occupy movement by saying “What matters to them is simply the fact that Ms. Walton has the money to do any of this in the first place - and this, evidently, is an emblem of pure evil.” It is not the family’s affluence that is problematic, it is the question of how they acquired their wealth and the ways in which they utilize it.

One source of Wal-Mart's vast wealth; sweatshop labor in China. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

I realize that worshipping monetary success has become a cult religion in the United States, but please, let us not delude ourselves.

According to a 2007 report from the Economic Policy Institute (ECI) titled The Wal-Mart effect, the mega-corporation imported $27 billion dollars worth of products from that shining citadel of democracy, the People’s Republic of China; those imports, according to the ECI, “eliminated nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs in this period”. The ECI report also stated that “Wal-Mart has aided China’s abuse of labor rights and its violations of internally recognized norms of fair trade behavior by providing a vast and growing conduit for the distribution of artificially cheap and subsidized Chinese exports to the United States.”

I can only add that the U.S. trade deficit with China has increased exponentially since the 2007 ECI report, and that Wal-Mart continues to eliminate even more American jobs by ramping up its imports from China. That is some “love letter” to America. One wonders how the follies of a few misguided adherents of the Occupy movement could even begin to compete.

Demonstrators at Teotihuacán protesting the construction of Wal-Mart's store, October 2004. Photo AFP/Getty

In my original May 2005 article I mentioned that Wal-Mart defiled the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacán by opening one of its super stores in the city’s archeological perimeter after months of protests by the Mexican people who saw the store’s location as an affront to Mexican culture and history.

Located just outside of Mexico City, I visited the ancient indigenous site in 1991 and climbed to the top of its magnificent pyramids dedicated to the Sun and Moon; the ruins of the old city are massive and breathtaking, and indigenous people continue to see Teotihuacán as a sacred place. When viewing the grounds it is difficult not to agree. Seeing a Wal-Mart store less than a mile from those ancient pyramids is as unacceptable an experience as seeing the big-box store on the grounds of the Vatican or near the great pyramids of Egypt - especially knowing the Wal-Mart 7 1/2 acre lot is undoubtedly covering priceless artifacts.

In a 2009 dispatch titled, “Teotihuacán Gets Mickey-Moused“, author John Ross wrote that; “Priceless artifacts uncovered during store construction were reportedly trucked off to a local dump and workers fired when they revealed the carnage to the press.” Those who imagine Wal-Mart as an advocate for the arts should think deeply about the mega-corporation paving over an archaeological zone belonging to one of the world’s most celebrated ancient cities. While Wal-Mart’s reckless cultural insensitivity regarding Mexico’s Teotihuacán is stunning enough, an even bigger story is currently playing out at the time of this writing.

On April 21, 2012, the New York Times published a report titled “Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle“. The story detailed how Wal-Mart’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico, “orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance” in Mexico, paying “more than $24 million” in bribes and kickbacks to corrupt officials both in and out of government. The story came to light in 2005 when a former Wal-Mart executive leaked information regarding the crooked business practices. When Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas was informed of the subsidiary’s criminal behavior, it launched its own supposedly impartial investigation. According to the New York Times:

“Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: ‘There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.’ The lead investigator recommended that Wal-Mart expand the investigation. Instead, an examination by The New York Times found, Wal-Mart’s leaders shut it down.”

In light of the corruption scandals Wal-Mart now finds itself embroiled in over its dirty business dealings with crooked Mexican officials, one must consider something John Ross wrote in his aforementioned article. Ross brought up Arturo Montiel, the former governor of the State of Mexico and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) politician who in 1994 granted Wal-Mart the permits allowing construction of its store on the grounds of Teotihuacán. Mr. Montiel was driven from office in 2005 due to charges of corruption, including influence peddling, using public funds for private purposes, and amassing a personal fortune through bribery and other illegal means. In its 2012 expose, the New York Times conducted extensive interviews with Sergio Cicero Zapata, a former Wal-Mart de Mexico executive that ran the company’s real estate department since 1994. The NYT wrote that:

“Mr. Cicero recounted how he had helped organize years of payoffs. He described personally dispatching two trusted outside lawyers to deliver envelopes of cash to government officials. They targeted mayors and city council members, obscure urban planners, low-level bureaucrats who issued permits — anyone with the power to thwart Wal-Mart’s growth. The bribes, he said, bought zoning approvals, reductions in environmental impact fees and the allegiance of neighborhood leaders.”

One may wonder about the extent of Wal-Mart’s bribery in Mexico and if its long reach got to former governor Montiel, “helping” him to issue those permits for the Teotihuacán Wal-Mart. In a follow-up article by the New York Times dated April 22, 2012, the paper noted that a leader from one protest group, Emma Ortega Moreno of the Civic Front for the Defense of the Teotihuacán Valley, charged that the 1994 permit process was rigged. Moreno asserted that “Wal-Mart started building without permits, the licenses came later. When there are banknotes, you know that they can work wonders.” In the same article the paper mentioned the U.S. government’s “1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars U.S. companies from bribing foreign government officials or companies to secure or retain business.”

As the world’s largest retailer the company certainly has no shortage of expendable cash, and it can just as easily purchase foreign government officials as it can procure a fabulous art collection and an $800 million dollar museum in Arkansas to house it. Both projects serve political expediency, but only one can be cast as benevolent. There is an old saying South of the Border, “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.” Wal-Mart’s relationship with Mexico seems to exemplify that truism.

If Wal-Mart using its considerable financial resources to buy market dominance and political influence in Mexico does not offend you, then consider the following. On April 30, 2012, the New York Times published a report concerning how the corporation:

“has adroitly used millions of dollars in campaign contributions, charity drives, lobbying campaigns, and its work for popular causes like childhood nutrition and carbon emissions to build support in Congress and the White House. It also uses these methods to increase its ‘favorable’ ratings, especially with liberals. And as Wal-Mart’s top lobbyist explained to investors in 2010, the company thinks the strategy has worked. ‘Across the board, our reputation with elected officials is improved, not only here in the U.S. but around the world,’ the lobbyist, Leslie Dach, boasted as he ticked off poll numbers that he said demonstrated the company’s improving public profile. That popularity, he said, ‘makes it easier for us to stay out of the public limelight when we don’t want to be there.’

(….) For years Wal-Mart had reliable allies in the Republican Party, while it struggled to develop support among Democrats. But in recent years it has joined with the Obama administration on a number of its initiatives, including President Obama’s health care plan, environmental safeguards and childhood obesity. At the same time, it has aggressively lobbied the administration and Congress on dozens of policies affecting its business operations, including global trade, taxes, immigration, business regulation and waste disposal standards.”

Wal-Mart certainly wants the “public limelight” when it comes to their new museum, but when it comes to exporting America’s industrial base to China, bribing shady Mexican government officials for special treatment, or buying favor with U.S. politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties… not so much. No matter how sophisticated the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art might be, nothing can conceal the pernicious crimes of Wal-Mart.

The marriage of Mark Vallen and Jeannine Thorpe, May 1st, 2012.

On May 1st, 2012, Mark Vallen and Jeannine Thorpe were wed at Jalama Beach, located on the remote shoreline of California’s Central Coast, an hour’s drive north of Santa Barbara. The marriage ceremony took place at ocean’s edge near the ancient Chumash village of Shilimaqshtush (no translation), which was once located at the mouth of Jalama Creek. The stream was named after a larger Chumash village known as Xalam, or “bundle”, which long ago stood eight miles inland from the sea. The wedding ceremony was officiated over by a Shaman trained in the medicine ways of the Chumash people, witnessed by an Opera Singer, and attended by a wedding party of several dozen seagulls and pelicans.

"Workers/Obreros" - Mark Vallen. Work in progress. Oil on masonite 2012 ©.

“No more deluded by reaction, on tyrants only we’ll make war. The soldiers too will take strike action, they’ll break ranks and fight no more.” - Excerpt from L’Internationale, written by Eugène Pottier - Paris, June 1871. [See a larger version of my painting, "Workers/Obreros."]

A few words must be said concerning the passing of Elizabeth Catlett, one of the greatest African-American artists and printmakers in the history of the United States. When I received the news that Ms. Catlett died on April 2, 2012, I felt more than a pang of sadness. I discovered her art when I was a teenager embroiled in the civil rights and antiwar movements in the late 1960s. During those years I became familiar with a number of social realist artists of Catlett’s stature, including Charles White, who was briefly married to Catlett in the early 1940s. I have long credited White “as a major influence in my life as an artist“, and it is fitting that I also credit Ms. Catlett as a personal inspiration as well.

In today’s context it is difficult to describe the impact Catlett’s prints had upon many of us in the late 1960s. She had of course been creating her style of social criticism since 1946, when she moved to Mexico City and began producing amazing lithographs, wood and linoleum cut prints with El Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP - The Popular Graphic Arts Workshop). Activists in the 1960s discovered Catlett’s older works, and since her graphic narratives were as relevant to the 60s as they were in the 1940s, they were given life and meaning by a new generation.

However, Elizabeth Catlett was not one to rest on her laurels; she met the challenges of the late 1960s with uncommon artistic ferocity and political clarity, producing images of unparalleled beauty and compassion. I was 16 in 1969 when I first saw Ms. Catlett’s linoleum cut print Malcolm X Speaks for Us; the work was certainly a reflection of the times, but it also was a lightning rod that led many to discover Catlett’s wider body of work. Her focus was on the African-American experience, though Catlett’s voice was universal. She addressed the hopes, dreams, and problems of her adopted country of Mexico with a good deal of empathy, nonetheless, Ms. Catlett’s works exemplify a clear and profound love for all of humanity.

"Harriet" - Elizabeth Catlett, Linoleum cut print, 1975. 12 x 9 3/4 inches

The provocative nature of Catlett’s overtly political works is embodied in her masterful 1975 linoleum cut simply titled Harriet, a tribute to Harriet Tubman, the heroic African-American abolitionist. For eight years Tubman led an “Underground Railroad” network that liberated hundreds of blacks from slavery states in the South, helping them to escape to freedom in the North. The print was a reworking of an earlier linoleum cut by Catlett from 1946 titled, In Harriet Tubman I helped hundreds to freedom, which was part of the artist’s I am the Negro Woman series of prints from that period.

Catlett’s updated 1975 print was aesthetically superior to her original linoleum cut; she applied impressive skills in holding delicate lines in Harriet while giving an elegant appearance of form in Tubman’s dress. Catlett worked amazing textures into the newer print, from coarsely gouged to finer engraved-like lines. But politically, the changes made by Catlett were more important - and volatile - than the artistic ones. She portrayed the leader of the underground railroad as an armed freedom fighter carrying a rifle, a brazen act given the political atmosphere in the early 1970s.

Historic illustrations from the late 1800s usually pictured Harriet Tubman with a rifle, and though it is hard to be certain, that long gun was most likely an 1803 Harpers Ferry rifle chambered in .54 caliber. Tubman is also known to have been armed with a large revolver, in all probability the six-shot .36 caliber 1851 Colt Navy Revolver. When Tubman ran her underground network, Blacks were forbidden by law from owning or carrying firearms, it was even illegal for Whites to furnish guns or knives to Blacks that had been freed from slavery.

Elizabeth Catlett portrayed Harriet Tubman as a great hero and defender of human liberty, an indisputably accurate depiction. Tubman in fact became known as “Moses” to her people for having rescued hundreds of slaves from inhuman bondage. Even so, Tubman’s daring and courageous acts could not have been possible without the use of firearms; with rifle and pistol she defended her people against the unspeakable cruelty of slave masters, bounty hunters, and all others who profited from human bondage. Tubman worked with the Union Army to defeat the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War, and actually became the first woman in U.S. military history to prepare and help command an armed military assault, the Raid at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina; the military operation freed more than 750 slaves.

By emphasizing Tubman carrying a rifle in the cause of freedom, Catlett was directly addressing millions of African-Americans over the question of armed self-defense vs. non-violent action. Of course, most of Catlett’s art was not as confrontational as Harriet, the largest part of her oeuvre was given to tender and compassionate observation of humanity. Catlett’s works spoke of, not just oppression and injustice, but the capacity of people to create a better world. When searching for an artist with a deep-rooted commitment to social justice and equality, one need not look any further than the immortal Elizabeth Catlett.

Pat Bag - Vallen. Linoleum block print. 1979/2010. ©

The Santa Monica Review is one of the premier literary arts journals in the United States. Published twice a year since 1988 by Santa Monica College in the seaside city of Santa Monica, California, the journal prints works of fiction and nonfiction, as well as occasional morsels of poetry.

Writings published by the journal typically highlight the fine efforts of Southern California and Pacific Rim writers. An avid reader and a proponent of literacy, I have long supported the Santa Monica Review, and as a result I have over the years contributed several of my artworks to be printed as journal covers (Fall 1999, Spring 2005, and Spring 2007).

The Santa Monica Review is flourishing, and its Spring 2012 edition has just been issued.

I am delighted to announce that the cover art for the Spring edition is another of my contributions, this time a portrait I created in 1979 of one of L.A.’s most notorious punk rockers.

Spring 2012 edition of the Santa Monica Review. Artwork by Mark Vallen ©

Don’t let that scare you off though, the Spring issue is filled with human drama, tragedy, absurdity, and wit as provided by seventeen of the most talented writers this side of the Rocky Mountains.

You can purchase your copy directly from the Santa Monica Review website.

As for my cover art… it is my linoleum block portrait of Pat Bag, the sinister-looking bass player for The Bags (one of the original late 1970s punk rock bands in Los Angeles), that I wrote about on this web log back in March, 2011.

In all probability my print is the single solitary linoleum cut portrait of a punk rocker to have been created as punk was actually unfolding in the late 70s. My original hand-pulled linoleum cut prints were pulled in a limited edition of 12 hand-signed and numbered prints - you can purchase my print here.

On Good Friday, April 7, 2012, the American artist Thomas Kinkade died of natural causes at the age of 54. He was known for his overly sentimental paintings of tranquil landscapes filled with country cottages, and for schmaltzy renditions of a pastoral Americana that never existed. He marketed himself as the “Painter of Light”, and by the end of his career labeled himself as the most collected living artist in the United States - which was no doubt true.

An oil painting indicative of Thomas Kinkade's larger body of work. Date and title unknown.

Kinkade published the first reproductions of his paintings in 1984, an edition of 1,000 that sold for $35 each. By the time of his death his paintings and reproductions were bringing in some $100 million dollars a year, and it has been said that his works have found a place in 10 million American homes.

As any astute observer of cultural matters will tell you, profits and popularity have little to do with quality and profundity, and the works of Kinkade serve as a perfect example of that truism.

I did not like the works of Mr. Kinkade, in fact, I found them embarrassingly mediocre and downright reactionary. In the many art circles I pass through in the city of Los Angeles, Kinkade was always the brunt of jokes, and continually held up as the very antithesis of a serious artist, an opinion undoubtedly held in professional arts circles throughout the nation. However, I will say that I believe Kinkade was sincere in his efforts, unlike so many of the charlatans found in the contemporary art world. While many of today’s artists are contemptuous of a general public unschooled in the arts, Kinkade embraced that audience; he painted images that millions of people understood and responded to in a deeply personal way. While I considered Kinkade a nemesis… his philosophy of bringing art to everyday people is something every professional artist should be concerned with.

In a brief item I wrote about Kinkade in 2004 titled Shipping Out with Thomas Kinkade, I chided the “painter of light” for producing war propaganda. I vowed it would be “the one and only time you’ll find a painting by Kinkade posted on my web log”. With his passing I am breaking that declaration, and hope this brief article adheres to the tradition of not speaking ill of the dead.

One of the great ironies of Mr. Kinkade’s career was that despite his overwhelming popularity and tremendous financial success, he was shunned by the art establishment. His works are not found in museum collections, to my knowledge he never had a museum show, and it is highly unlikely that any museum anywhere in the world will ever present a retrospective of his paintings. But here is what is so perplexing; while the elite art establishment dismisses Kinkade’s work as so much vapid kitsch (though Kinkade was unaware of his being a kitsch artist), major art museums are exhibiting and acquiring vast collections of - vapid kitsch (albeit from artists who self-identify as being kitsch). Such is the state of today’s art world.