“The Gaze” - Black & White serigraphic print. 1980
(c) Mark Vallen. Hand pulled by the artist
Dimensions: 17.5″ x 23″ inches
Signed and numbered by the artist
Edition of 16
Signed and number copies of this print can be purchased here

I created this silkscreen portrait print of a young woman in 1980. During that period I was doing quite a lot of work in serigraphy, generally making prints of a political nature. As evidenced in the above, I was also interested in creating works of a more personal disposition. Though trained in modern methods of silkscreen printing, I never liked transferring photographic images onto a screen using chemicals and emulsions or even by means of laboriously cutting paper or film stencils. I have always enjoyed a “hands on” approach to serigraphy; drawing directly on the screen so that the gesture of drawing becomes part of the print.

Because of that preference, I developed a method of drawing directly onto the screen using oil-based lithographer’s pencils and crayons, complemented by painting lithographer’s touche onto the screen with a brush as if I were painting a canvas. Once dried I then flooding the screen with water-based glue. The “stencils” produced bore results akin to lithographic techniques, allowing for great spontaneity, subtle gradations in tone, remarkable textures, and best of all - since one could never fully control the medium - finished prints that were full of surprise and “the artist’s hand”.

While I did create prints in color, I had, and still have, a preference for prints in black and white, which on the whole I feel are more enigmatic and melancholy - which suits me fine. Some of my favorite silkscreen works from that period of experimentation were created by using the method I explained in the above. Of those prints I especially like The Gaze. Similar black and white serigraphic prints I created during those days will be available on this web log in months to come.

"Meanwhile... in Guatemala" - Mark Vallen. 1988. © Pencil on paper 10" x 14". The U.S.-backed Guatemalan military tortured and murdered tens of thousands of civilians during that Central American nation's 36-year long civil war. When the fighting ended in 1996, over 200,000 civilians - 83% of them Maya Indian farmers - had been slain.

On May 10, 2013, former Guatemalan tyrant Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity by a Guatemalan court. Specifically, he was found guilty of the murder of 1,771 indigenous Maya civilians. The 86-year-old Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison, 50 years for genocide and 30 years for crimes against humanity. When I received word of Montt’s conviction I cried aloud, “Oh my God!”, hardly believing that justice had at last prevailed… at least, in part.

In the 1980’s I met a number of Guatemalan refugees that had fled the terror in their country for the relative safety of Los Angeles, and I was profoundly disturbed by the harrowing tales they told me of their homeland - stories regarding the torture, mutilation, and murder of friends, family, and associates back home. As a result, I spent a good portion of the 80s creating posters, flyers, and drawings that were opposed to the bloodbath then occurring in Guatemala and the rest of Central America; my artworks were circulated all across L.A. and beyond. The drawing pictured above, “Meanwhile… in Guatemala“, was one such artwork (view a larger version).

"ENOUGH!" - Mark Vallen. 1988. © Offset flyer. 11"x14" inches. One of many street flyers designed and published by the artist that announced antiwar protests in Los Angeles during the 1980s.

While hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens joined me in protesting the wars in Central America, it was not a popular thing to do. The Cold War hysteria of Ronald Reagan’s America designated such activists “un-American” and “un-patriotic”. In short, making art in solidarity with the Guatemalans was not a path to career success. Now that Ríos Montt has been found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, I feel vindicated and joyful.

Montt was not the first nor last military despot to brutalize the people of Guatemala; he was from a long line of murderous thugs and assassins that throttled civil society and butchered Ixil Maya communities with impunity.

One could say it all began in 1954 when the U.S. government and the C.I.A. engineered a coup d’etat that overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected government of President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán (1950-54), but that is another story.

In announcing the Guatemalan court’s decision, Judge Yasmin Barrios stated that “The defendant is responsible for masterminding the crime of genocide”, and that “We are convinced that the acts the Ixil suffered constitute the crime of genocide… Rios Montt knew everything that was going on, and he didn’t stop it, even though he had the power to do so.” Barrios added, “We the judges are totally convinced that the goal was the physical destruction of the Ixil area.”

In March of 1982 Montt staged a coup d’etat that toppled the brutal dictatorship of President Lucas García, and Montt ruled until the next totalitarian goon - General Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores - overthrew him in a 1983 military coup. It was simply a falling out among thieves. Being a faithful servant to Guatemala’s oligarchs and Uncle Sam (he was a graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas), Montt came to no harm after being overthrown, in fact he was “elected” to the nation’s congress in 2007.

All the same, Montt’s 14 month military rule became infamous for the most vile abuses, including widespread torture and rape conducted by state forces. Montt launched a scorched earth military campaign meant to destroy the rural support base of the country’s left-wing guerilla movement. Making no distinction between the Maya civilian population and combatants, Montt’s campaign obliterated over 600 Maya villages and took the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent peasant farmers.

Montt’s counter-insurgency policies did have its supporters. On December 4, 1982, President Reagan met with Gen. Montt at San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Reagan gave his assessment of the fascist dictator to the gathered international press:

“I know that President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. His country is confronting a brutal challenge from guerrillas armed and supported by others outside Guatemala. I have assured the President that the United States is committed to support his efforts to restore democracy and to address the root causes of this violent insurgency. I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice. My administration will do all it can to support his progressive efforts.”

Only two days after Reagan made his statement, U.S. armed and trained Guatemalan special forces, the Kaibiles, raided the Mayan hamlet of Dos Esses, where they massacred nearly 300 villagers… mostly women and children. It was not an isolated incident; the slaughter of innocents had become government policy for Guatemala’s generals, and yet the U.S. government continued to pour millions of dollars worth of lethal military aid into their hands.

While the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other corporate newspapers have all mentioned the Ríos Montt conviction, few if any made mention of Montt’s crimes being facilitated by the extensive military, economic, and political backing of the U.S. government. In his 2003 book, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, William Blum noted that the Reagan administration supplied Montt with “$3.1 million of jeeps and trucks, $4 million of helicopter spare parts, $6.3 million of other military supplies.”

What doubt is there that U.S. military aid was used by Montt and his death squads to slaughter Maya peasants by the tens of thousands? Blum also noted in his book how covert U.S. military aid was provided to the Montt dictatorship; “the United States was using Cuban exiles to train security forces in Guatemala”. In a October 21, 1982 Washington Post article, journalist Jack Anderson reported that “Green Berets had been instructing Guatemalan Army officers for over two years in the finer points of warfare”.

The question remains, if the former Guatemalan tyrant Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt is guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, what can be said of those in Washington D.C. who willfully supplied the dictator with the means to carry out his butchery?

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UPDATE: Guatemala’s highest court overturned the guilty conviction against Rios Montt on May 20, 2013, only ten days after the former military dictator was sentenced to 80 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity. Guatemala’s “Constitutional Court” cited procedural errors for canceling the verdict. Montt is to be “retried”. It is uncertain when that might occur. Have the good people of Guatemala not suffered enough torment? Where is justice?

"MAY 1, UNITE" - Mark Vallen. 1980. © Silkscreen 11.5 x 17 inches. Printed in Day-Glo inks. Bourgeois - You Have Learned Nothing!

Limited edition, hand-signed prints of MAY 1, UNITE are available here.

I created my print as a celebration of International Workers Day, or May Day, which is observed annually around the world on May 1st. The origin of May Day has its roots in the American labor movement.

On May 1, 1886, workers in the U.S. mounted a general strike across the country in order to win the eight hour day. On May 4, 1886, at a striking workers demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, an unidentified assailant tossed a bomb at police who were attempting to clear the square; in response police fired directly into the crowd. When the smoke cleared, four workers were dead and some seventy were wounded, while seven police officers had been killed. Many in the worker’s movement suspected that agent provocateurs were behind the bombing.

State authorities reacted by attempting to break the back of the labor movement, raiding its meeting halls and arresting dozens of its leaders. Eventually eight anarchist activists were charged with the bombing and a kangaroo court found all of them guilty as charged. On November 11, 1887, four of the defendants were taken to the gallows and put to death. One of them, August Spies, yelled out just prior to his hanging, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!”

Sitting atop a hill and surrounded by a grove of Eucalyptus trees, the Chapel at the Presidio affords a fine view of the San Francisco Bay area. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

Nestled in the middle of the Presidio of San Francisco, California, is a small Spanish Colonial style Chapel surrounded by a grove of Eucalyptus trees.

The Chapel at the Presidio houses an impressive but little known Great Depression era mural by Victor Arnautoff (1896-1979). I visited and photographed the mural in late 2011, and will here share my observations.

Sitting atop a hill, the Chapel affords a fine view of the San Francisco Bay area. Within the grounds of the Presidio and not far from the Chapel you will find the San Francisco National Cemetery, where 30,000 American war dead from the late 1800s to the present are interned.

A Robin visits some of the 30,000 American war dead interned at the National Cemetery located on the grounds of the Presidio. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

In 1931 the U.S. Congress gave the U.S. Army $40,000 to build the Chapel; it was constructed in Spanish Colonial Revival style architecture, and with its heavily stuccoed walls, stained glass windows and bell tower, it was - and still is - quite a sight to behold.

In Feb. of 2009 I wrote a review in praise of Arnautoff, whose works were on display at an exhibit of California Modernist Paintings at the Spencer Jon Helfen gallery in Beverly Hills, California. The article examined the life story of the artist in some detail. Despite my high opinion of Arnautoff, it was the most I had ever written about the artist - until now.

The Russian born Victor Arnautoff looms large in my pantheon of great artists, though most other Americans long ago forgot his name. As a young man he was a Cavalry Officer in the Tsarist Imperial Army, and so fled Russia sometime after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. He traveled to China and Mexico before finally coming to the U.S. and settling down in the city of San Francisco in 1925. Arnautoff eventually became allied to the communist Mexican Muralist Diego Rivera, both aesthetically and politically, and from 1929 to 1931 Arnautoff lived in Mexico as a student and assistant of Rivera.

When Rivera left Mexico City to visit San Francisco in 1930-31, he left the painting of his National Palace frescos depicting Mexico’s history in Arnautoff’s capable hands. Arnautoff joined Rivera in San Francisco in 1931 to help paint The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City at the San Francisco Art Institute. Arnautoff is best remembered for City Life, his 1934 mural in San Francisco’s Coit Tower, that, and his being the technical director of the Coit Tower mural project. Arnautoff had come full circle from his early years as a Tsarist officer to his participating in the left-wing artistic circles of the U.S.

After completing work on the stunning murals at Coit Tower in 1934, Arnautoff was given a commission in December of that year to create a fresco mural on the east wall of the Chapel at the Presidio of San Francisco, then one of the most important U.S. military installations in all of the United States. The commission was for a mural that depicted the peacetime activities of the U.S. Army, but the mural would also include the history of the land and its people upon which the Presidio was established.

Measuring 13 x 34 feet, Arnautoff’s mural was originally located on the outside east wall of the Chapel, greeting those who entered from the side entrance. With time it was decided to enclose the area where the mural stood, creating a hall between the side entry and the Chapel wall where the fresco mural is painted. This narrow vestibule protects the fresco mural and serves as an information and greeting area for those tourists who visit the Chapel. However, the limited width of the antechamber prevents one from standing back far enough to view the mural in its entirety, for the same reason it is extremely difficult to photograph the complete mural. Given these limitations, I was only able to photograph specific details of Arnautoff’s splendid painting.

The mural was sponsored by the officers of the 30th U.S. Infantry, however, it was funded by California’s State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA); a state agency financed by President Roosevelt’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Arnautoff’s Coit Tower mural had been funded by Roosevelt’s Public Works of Art Project (PWAP). These and other “New Deal” programs provided work to 40,000 artists, helping to ease the ravages of the Great Depression. Arnautoff pulled together a team of artists to paint the mural; A plaque painted into the lower left corner of the mural includes Arnautoff’s name as well as those of his assistants; Suzanne Scheuer, B. Cunningham, Edward Terada, Richard Ayer, M. Hardy, P. Hall, P. Vinson, G. Serrano, M. Cohen, P. Zoloth, T. Mead, and W. Mannex. In 1935 the crew completed the mural in 42 days.

The Spanish first erected their San Francisco Presidio in 1776, when Spain ruled over Nueva España (New Spain) - colonial holdings that contained most of what is now the Southwest of the U.S., all of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and large areas of South America. When Mexico won its war of independence against Spain in 1821, the Presidio passed into Mexican hands. Territorial expansion by the U.S. led to its 1846 invasion of Mexico. After the U.S. Army seized Mexico City, the Mexican government had no choice but to sign the “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo”, which ended the war but ceded to the U.S. lands that included California, Nevada, Utah, much of Arizona, half of New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

As a political radical Arnautoff was certainly aware of the Presidio’s long history as delineated in the above. He had come under enormous criticism from the U.S. right-wing for his directorship of  the 1934 Coit Tower mural project; San Francisco’s right excoriated the murals as “communist propaganda”, and the press demanded the murals be altered or obliterated. Consequently Arnautoff seemingly avoided a confrontational examination of the Presidio, this was after all a mural commissioned by the U.S. military to be housed on a major U.S. military installation. Still, Arnautoff did manage to include certain understated narratives in his fresco that were quite bold given the political circumstances in the U.S. at the time.

Detail of Arnautoff's portrait of Maria de la Concepción Marcela Argüello, her father Don José Darío Argüello (pictured dressed in a red uniform), and the Russian chamberlain to Czar Alexander I, Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov (in a blue uniform). Photo courtesy of the National Parks Service ©.

Arnautoff painted an interesting trio in the upper left portion of his mural; Maria de la Concepción Marcela Argüello, her father Don José Darío Argüello (pictured dressed in a red uniform and standing behind his daughter in the mural), and the Russian chamberlain to Tsar Alexander I, Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov - all historic figures from late 1700s San Francisco,  California.

When the story of Concepción Argüello and Nikolai Rezanov is remembered at all, it us usually framed as “California’s oldest and saddest romance“. Beneath the supposed ardent love affair was the machinery of imperialism and colonial conquest, and though I have no proof, I am convinced that was the actual narrative Arnautoff meant to subtly provide viewers of his mural.

On Sept. 4, 1781, Don José Darío Argüello founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles (the Town of Our Lady Queen of the Angels), in the Las Californias sector of New Spain; The Pueblo de los Ángeles would of course become Los Angeles, the megalopolis we know today and coincidentally the city of my birth. In 1787 Argüello was appointed Comandante of the Presidio of San Francisco, and his daughter, Concepción Argüello, was born in the Presidio in 1791. Rezanov was a high-level official in the Tsarist regime and a supporter of Russian imperialism; he strove to transform Russia into a dominant power in the Pacific by establishing commercial and military outposts from Alaska to California.

Detail of Arnautoff's 1935 fresco mural at the Chapel at the Presidio of San Francisco. A panoramic history of the land where the Presidio was established. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

As part of his imperial mission the 42-year-old Rezanov sailed to San Francisco in 1806, where he was feted by Don Argüello at the Presidio. It was at the Spanish military outpost that Rezanov met the 15-year-old Concepción Argüello, and according to the myth, the two supposedly fell in love and became engaged that same year. Since the laws of Spain prohibited its colonies from trading with foreign powers, maybe Rezanov’s motivation in wanting to marry Concepción had more to do with profitable colonial ambitions than actual romance.

Arnautoff's mural depicts a Spanish soldier and priest from the earliest years of the Presidio. Does the priest's gesture welcome or bar the indigenous Ohlone warrior? Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

At any rate, the Spanish Catholic priests refused to bless Concepción’s marriage to Rezanov, who was Russian Orthodox. Six weeks after arriving at the Presidio, Rezanov began a return trip to Russia, he intended to send entreaties to the King of Spain for royal consent to marry Concepción Argüello. Perhaps he considered it even more important to appeal for a trade agreement between Spain and Tsarist Russia. Whatever the case, Rezanov died of fever in 1807 before reaching home, and the young Concepción “renounced the world” to become a nun. She died in 1857 as Sister Mary Dominica Argüello of the Dominican order in Monterey, California.

Arnautoff's vision of the Ohlone people, the indigenous tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. The artist no doubt studied the paintings, drawing, and lithographs of Louis Choris, who first depicted the Ohlone in his 1816 artworks. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

As a sidebar to the 1806 Rezanov-Argüello story, in 1816 another Russian sailing ship named the Rurik landed at the Presidio. Among its 30 man crew was Louis Choris (1795-1828), a talented 21-year-old Russian/Ukrainian artist. Choris was the expedition’s official artist and during the month the Rurik was anchored in San Francisco Bay, Choris created the earliest depictions of the region’s indigenous Ohlone tribe. He made stunning watercolor paintings portraying individuals and groups of people going about their daily routines.

In this detail Arnautoff depicted an Ohlone woman at work weaving baskets from tule reeds. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

After his Rurik journey Choris traveled to Paris in 1819 where he produced portfolios of hand-colored lithographs that illustrated his encounters with the Ohlone nation. In terms of ethnographic study, Choris’ artworks provide in-depth and accurate observations of a way of life now vanished.

The Ohlone lived in over fifty different villages and tribal groups throughout the San Francisco bay area and beyond to the shores of Monterey Bay and the Salinas Valley. They were hunters and gatherers that lived off the bounty of the land. They believed an enormous flood had once engulfed the earth, leaving only two small islands to be inhabited by only three survivors… Coyote, Eagle, and Hummingbird, who together created the human race. The Ohlone said that Hummingbird brought fire to the people.

Tule reed was used to make Ohlone homes, clothes, baskets, mats, and boats. The people fished in salt and fresh water catching all types of fish, shellfish, and crustaceans. They gathered endless varieties of nuts, seeds, bulbs, tubers, acorns, mushrooms, greens, and berries. Rabbits, deer, antelope, and elk were hunted, as well as a sizeable array of birds. Many other creatures large and small were a part of the Ohlone diet, grasshoppers, grubs, lizards, snakes, squirrels, even an occasional beached whale.

Detail of an Ohlone warrior's hands as he makes fire using a "fire drill" made of soft wood. The Ohlone believed Hummingbird spirit was the bringer of fire to humanity. In this detail one can see how a fresco mural looks up-close. Since water-based pigment is quickly painted onto wet plaster before either can dry, the effect can look somewhat like "magic marker". Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

I consider the principal focus of Arnautoff’s mural to be his depiction of the Ohlone tribe. Compositionally the mural’s central motif is a religious one that depicts a monument to St. Francis. Franciscan Friars not only founded and named the first Catholic Church in San Francisco in 1776, they named the mission church and the entire region after their patron saint, Saint Francis of Assisi. Be that as it may, the first people to inhabit “San Francisco” were not Spanish Catholics but the shamanistic Ohlone, and they settled the region some 5,000 years ago.

Detail of Ohlone hunter dressing a slain deer. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

Given the short shrift indigenous people have received in both American history and cultural representation, Arnautoff’s focus on the Ohlone was a remarkably subversive gesture for 1935. His well researched portrayal of the indigenous population was no doubt facilitated by the drawings, paintings, and lithographs of Louis Choris.

I would like to re-emphasize to the reader the impact Diego Rivera had upon Arnatauff. As with most other Mexican artists of his time, Rivera sought to create a national art that was independent from Europe. This was accomplished in large part by establishing Mexican art on the foundational bedrock of aesthetics developed by the prehispanic indigenous Olmec, Maya, and Aztec civilizations. When viewing Rivera’s portraits of everyday Mexicanos, it is not the classical beauty of Europe that one sees reflected, but the grandeur of indigenous Palenque and Tenochtitlán. I am sure Arnautoff valued the reasons behind Rivera’s glorification of the Western Hemisphere’s first inhabitants, and so included the Ohlone in his Presidio mural on the same grounds.

If the left-side of Arnautoff’s mural portrays the early history of the Presidio, then the right-side of the fresco depicts the U.S. Army carrying out projects at the Presidio during the 20th century. The two scenes I will focus on from that portion of the painting have to do with General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing, as well as the role the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers played in building the Panama Canal.

General Pershing had, let us say, an “interesting” career in the military. As a graduate of West Point in 1886 he was assigned to the 6th U.S. Cavalry, where he fought the Apache nation in the so-called “Apache Wars”; Pershing took part in military operations to force the Apache onto reservations and keep them there. In 1890 Pershing and the 6th Cavalry were sent to South Dakota to crush the Lakota Nation, then engaged in their last uprising that would culminate in the U.S. Army massacre of some 300 unarmed Lakota at Wounded Knee (Pershing was not directly involved). In 1892 Pershing became a first lieutenant assigned to the 10th Cavalry “Buffalo Soldier” regiment of African-Americans (earning the nickname, “Black Jack”). He fought in the Spanish-American War (1898) as a major with the 10th Cavalry in operations at San Juan Hill. As a Departmental Adjutant General, Pershing fought against the Moro uprising in the Philippines from 1899 to 1903.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt promoted Pershing to Brigadier General, but it was President Woodrow Wilson, a “progressive”, that sent Pershing into Mexico in 1916 on a “punitive expedition” to kill or capture the Mexican revolutionary Francisco Pancho Villa. Commanding the U.S. Army 8th Brigade and a force of 11,000 soldiers, Pershing failed to crush Villa and his guerilla army, but the mission was not without its successes. The operation employed the 1st Aero Squadron of eight Curtiss JN-3 “Jenny” biplanes for aerial observation and intelligence gathering, the very first time the U.S. Army made use of airplanes in combat; the application of airpower foreshadowed the mechanized slaughter that would come but a year later. In April 1917, the U.S. entered World War I, and President Wilson promoted Pershing to General in charge of the American Expeditionary Force to Europe.

Arnautoff had to be aware of Pershing’s war record, and as a man of the left he must have viewed Black Jack unfavorably. Arnautoff and his circle of artists, being sympathetic to radical ideas, were alarmed by the rise of fascism in Europe and the growing threat of war. They were no doubt familiar with the speeches and writings of retired Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps, who in 1935 was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. He was also a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism, and had been engaged in a nationwide tour to deliver his speech “War is a Racket“. Butler addressed how oligarchs made soaring profits from the blood and suffering of soldiers. In 1935 he published a longer version of his speech as a small book, also titled War is a Racket. To get an idea of how widely distributed and influential Butler’s work was, Reader’s Digest condensed it as a book supplement.

Detail of Arnautoff's mural depicting the August 27, 1915 fire at the Presidio that killed the wife and children of General John "Black Jack" Pershing. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

In his mural Arnautoff did not directly portray General Pershing, in fact the artist could hardly have been said to paint Pershing’s portrait at all. What Arnautoff did was to paint a high-ranking military man with his back towards the viewer while commanding volunteers in putting out a raging fire; I think the artist was alluding to a terrible tragedy that struck ol’ Black Jack. Just prior to the “punitive expedition” in Mexico, Pershing received a blow he never recovered from. On August 27, 1915, while at the “Fort Bliss” military encampment near El Paso, Texas (the base from which Mexico would be invaded), Pershing received a telegram concerning his home at the Presidio in San Francisco. A fire had burned his multi-storied, wooden Victorian mansion to the ground. Worse still, the inferno had almost consumed his entire family - his beloved wife and three of his four children. One could take this panel as a portrait of a very powerful man laid low by forces beyond his control.

The final tableau in Arnautoff’s mural had to do with the role of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in building the Panama Canal. The mural depicts the USACE construction the Gatun Lock Gate, one of three enormous lock systems that lift and lower water levels making navigation of the Panama Canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean possible. Ironically, this segment of the painting reveals both the artist’s left-wing ideology as much as it does some apparent contradictions.

Arnautoff's mural depicts the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Presidio planning to build the Panama Canal. The Gatun Lock Gate can be seen in the upper right of the painting. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

Panamanian separatists broke free of Columbia with U.S. military assistance in 1903 and immediate formal recognition of the Republic of Panama came from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt that same year. The U.S. Secretary of State John Hay signed the so-called “Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty” of 1903 with the French engineer and soldier Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, giving control of the Panama Canal to the United States - even though not a single Panamanian signed the treaty. That detail alone would have been important to an anti-imperialist like Arnautoff, but how did he represent the history of the Panama Canal vis-à-vis its relationship to the U.S.?

The artist no doubt thought the U.S. was meddling in Panama, but refrained from criticizing U.S. policy, preferring instead to focus on men having achieved one of the world’s great engineering feats. Arnautoff’s mural glorifies what workers can achieve through the miracles of science and technology; given his benefactors, he could hardly have said more. Thematically, the Gatun Lock portion of Arnautoff’s mural is similar to Diego Rivera’s Allegory of California mural painted at the San Francisco Stock Exchange Tower in 1931.

Detail of Arnautoff's tableau depicting one of the workers that actually built the Panama Canal. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

While portraying agricultural richness, scientific innovation, and technological advancement, Rivera’s Allegory of California mural was not a celebration of capitalism, rather, it was a depiction of the working class, its capabilities and its future potential. These views were entirely in keeping with the pro-socialist sympathies of many artists at the time; one should be reminded that in 1934 the Soviet Union was considered a symbol of hope and progress by many, the crimes of Stalinism had yet to occur, and that the U.S. and the Soviets would soon become allies in the war against Fascism.

On a misty San Francisco morning, the Golden Gate Bridge looms above Fort Hood. Photo by Mark Vallen ©.

It is also interesting to note that the U.S. Army staff in the lower portion of the scene are examining plans to build the Golden Gate Bridge. Construction of the now world-famous suspension bridge began on January 5, 1933, just prior to Arnautoff and his assistants working on their Presidio mural. Arnautoff portrayed American engineer Joseph Strauss, the designer of the bridge, pointing at a model bridge while conferring with army officers.

Although the army did not play a direct role in the bridge’s physical construction, the U.S. Department of War was consulted since its Civil War era Fort Point apparently stood in the way of the bridge’s construction.

Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge would be completed by April of 1937, two years after the completion of Arnautoff’s mural.

I might add that historic Fort Point remained untouched during the bridge’s building; the fortress is a must see tourist destination in its own right, being one of the best preserved all brick U.S. military fortifications in the entire U.S.

The mural located at the Chapel at the Presidio is a little known painting by the underappreciated Victor Arnautoff. While relatively obscure, the work is a gem from the WPA era of American mural painting, in actuality it is a foundational stone of contemporary muralism. Considering the state of the art world and of society in general, it is no surprise Arnautoff’s mural is left unrecognized and uncelebrated. However, its aesthetics, brilliant execution, historical and political insights, and geographical setting make it a “must see” destination for anyone traveling to San Francisco.

POSTS IN THIS CONTINUING SERIES:

Coit Tower Crisis
Diego Rivera: The Making of a Fresco

One of the thousands of seabirds killed by BP's 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Photograph by Charlie Riedel © for Associated Press.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), sponsored by the multinational oil company BP - responsible for the biggest toxic oil spill in history, had the unmitigated gall to organize “greenwashing” activities on its museum campus for Earth Day.

Posting an announcement on the LACMA website for the April 21, 2013 Earth Day activities, the museum gave its day of programs the ill-chosen title, “Because Earth without Art is Just ‘Eh’”.

While LACMA invites people to walk through its “BP Grand Entrance” to celebrate Earth Day - Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have filed lawsuits against LACMA’s oily sponsor over the incalculable damages their states suffered because of BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. LACMA’s announcement reads as follows:

Earth Day: Because Earth without Art is Just “Eh”
Sunday, April 21, 2013 | 11 am

Celebrate Earth Day with a day of programs and activities designed for all ages, including artist-led workshops, tours of the collection for families and adults, a nature-inspired poetry workshop for adults, sketching from nature, music jam with instruments made of recycled materials, and a guided walkthrough of the natural art on campus. You and your freinds (sic) can organize your own community bike ride to LACMA! If you plan to travel to LACMA by bike on Earth Day, be sure to check out LADOT’s bike maps for a safe route.

*Does not include admission to Stanley Kubrick.

BP Grand Entrance l View full schedule | General museum admission is required; free museum admission will be granted to those with a bike helmet, or those who have traveled by alternative transportation.

UPDATE: On Wednesday, 5/1/2013, LACMA sent out its May newsletter to the public with a “Corporate Member Update”. In a single perfunctory sentence, the newsletter informed readers that the museum was “pleased to announce” the renewal of corporate sponsorship from BP. No further details were offered. Meanwhile, in the reality based community, people are paying attention to the ongoing “Clean Water Act” trial BP faces in New Orleans, Louisiana. The proceedings will establish whether BP was guilty of “gross negligence” in running its Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. If found guilty, the oil giant could face a $21 billion fine. A ruling is expected sometime in September.

Mark Twain once wrote of a memorial service, “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.” The following comments regarding Margaret Thatcher having ascended to the choir invisible are written with that same attitude, a spirit no doubt shared by millions in the U.K. and around the world.

When I heard the news on April 8, 2013 that the “Iron Lady” had passed away at the age of 87, it was like receiving word of a long-time nemesis having given up the ghost. Numerous memories of Thatcher came to mind, none of them pleasant, as I waited for the deluge of corporate media sophistry that would conceal the real legacy of Maggie Thatcher.

This “anti-obituary” will be told through some of the graphics and songs opposing Thatcher that were produced in England during her reign, which is a very wide field indeed. There was The English Beat’s Stand Down Margaret; Robert Wyatt’s version of Shipbuilding (written for him by Elvis Costello); Costello’s own Tramp The Dirt Down; Morrissey’s Margaret On The Guillotine; UB40’s Madam Medusa; the Au Pairs’ Armagh (about the torture of Britain’s Irish political prisoners); The Exploited’s Let’s Start A War Said Maggie One Day; Anti-Pasti’s No Maggie Thatcher and No Government, and many other songs too numerous to mention.

"Margarine the Leaderine" - Gee Vaucher. Collage. 1979. Cover art portrait of Thatcher for Vol. 2 of International Anthem, Vaucher's self-published "nihilist newspaper for the living". The artworks Vaucher created for Crass became an indelible part of the band's legacy.

This piece of writing will primarily focus on two influential punk bands that gave Thatcher and friends a collective headache, Chumbawamba and Crass, but first a few things about Maggie you will likely not hear about in corporate news coverage of her passing.

I remember Thatcher as the Education Secretary for Edward Heath’s Conservative government (1970-1974). She imposed spending cuts on the state education system, eliminating free milk for schoolchildren, an act that earned her the everlasting title of “Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher”.

Things only got worse when she became Prime Minister on May 4, 1977.

Prime Minister Thatcher introduced austerity to the U.K., implementing savage cuts to social spending and making race-to-the-bottom neo-liberal casino capitalism the new norm.

Working class England was ravaged by her monetarist economic policies as manufacturing and industrial jobs disappeared - a legacy that continues with the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Thatcher took Britain to war over the Malvinas/Falkland Islands… a filthy imperialist escapade that earned her the contempt of Latin America. She mobilized the state to defeat striking British coal miners, and totally decimated the mining communities of northern England’s coal belt. At the House of Commons she attacked the miners by referring to them as “the enemy within”, saying; “We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty”.

Thatcher refused to negotiate with Irish Republican prisoners in Britain’s notorious Long Kesh “H-Block” prison camp; interned for committing paramilitary acts in the cause of an independent Ireland, the inmates were waging a hunger strike in 1981 in order to gain political prisoner status. One of the protesters, Bobby Sands, was elected as a member of the British Parliament during the strike. Ultimately, Thatcher let Sands and nine other Irish Republican prisoners starve to death rather than talk to them. IRA recruitment went through the roof, and upwards of 150,000 people attended the funeral of Sands in Belfast, Ireland.

"You're Already Dead" - Gee Vaucher. Cover art portrait of Thatcher for the 1983 Crass single "You're Already Dead".

Thatcher supported the apartheid regime of South Africa and in 1987 stated “The ANC is a typical terrorist organization. Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land”.

She struck a solid alliance with Ronald Reagan, agreeing with him that hundreds of U.S. nuclear missiles should be deployed across Europe in order to pressure the Soviet Union. She allowed Reagan to base 160 nuclear cruise missiles in the U.K., 96 at the Greenham Common U.S. Air Force base, and 64 at the RAF station in Molesworth.

Thatcher supported General Pinochet, who staged a fascist coup d’état on September 11, 1973 that drowned Chile in blood. Pinochet’s military dictatorship (1973-1990) murdered tens of thousands of Chileans, still more were kidnapped, tortured, and forced into exile. As late as 1999, even after his 1998 arrest on charges of torture and murder, Thatcher thanked Pinochet for “bringing democracy to Chile“. There is more of course, but it is outside the scope of this blog to list each and every one of Thatcher’s misdeeds.

Of all the music produced during the Thatcher years, the most caustic and vitriolic attacks against Maggie came from punk rock; in fact it is hard to imagine the genre at all without the Iron Lady. From the Sex Pistols to the Clash, from Discharge to Conflict, punk bands may not have mentioned her by name, but they laid waste to Thatcherism and the ruling class it served. As the perfect icon of reactionary state power, Maggie gave punk something to flail and wail against.

Outside of England, Chumbawamba and Crass were hardly known (save for small circles of miscreants like myself), a fact that remains unaltered by time; both were extremely influential in their own way, making tremendous impact on punk and dissident culture in the U.K. Crass formed in 1977 after the group’s founder, Steve Ignorant, saw a performance of the Clash. Chumbawamba formed some years later in 1982, in large part influenced by the artistic/political stance of Crass.

In those early years the two groups spearheaded the politicized subsect of punk that came to be called “peace-punk” or “anarcho-punk” for spotlighting anti-war, anti-authoritarian, and anti-capitalist themes. Crass came to my attention in 1979 when they sent a review copy of their first 45 single, Reality Asylum/Shaved Women, to L.A.’s Slash magazine, where I worked at the time. The challenging slab of vinyl was unlike anything us Angelenos had ever heard before, and so Slash published a full article about the band in its last issue… which was most likely the first major article written about the group in a U.S. publication.

Crass released a string of albums and singles from 1978 to 1984 before they disbanded. It was difficult listening on the whole, even some of my punk friends in the early 80s would not listen to them, but I always found the group more than intriguing. To me, one of their most inspired recordings was their third album, Penis Envy (1981), an indictment of male dominance, conformity, and war, all delivered with the band’s typical melodic chaos.

Another recommended recording would be their single, Nagasaki Nightmare (1981). Few works in the annals of music history have attempted to deal with truly horrifying real world events, but this particular recording succeeded like few others. It is their most remarkable effort. It should be remembered that despite all of their outrageousness, their brutal sound, and their total lack of radio airplay - Crass nevertheless consistently reached the top of the Indie Charts.

"Welcome Home" - Gee Vaucher. 1982. Artwork designed as a foldout poster for the single "How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead?"

In 1982 Crass responded to the “Falkland Islands” war with a scorching aural attack titled, How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead?

The song was a slap in the face to Thatcher and the British ruling class over their war against Argentina on the issue of Falkland/Malvinas Islands sovereignty.

The Guerra de las Malvinas, began in April of 1982 when Argentina sent its military to secure the Islands, which Argentinians call the Malvinas and have always claimed as their territory (they continue to do so).

The British government under Thatcher deployed Her Majesty’s Armed Forces to make the Argentinians surrender the islands to the British Empire, having “claimed” the islands in 1833. The Malvinas are some 300 miles from the coast of Argentina, while they are around 8,000 miles from the U.K.

The uneven war lasted 73 days, ending June 14, 1982 with Argentina surrendering the territory to the U.K. The conflict took the lives of 649 Argentine soldiers, 3 Falkland Islanders, and 255 British troops… just shy of the 1,000 alluded to in the Crass song title. How Does It Feel was recorded in London in August of 1982, the single came shrouded in a black paper sleeve printed with a thousand tiny white graveyard crosses representing the war dead. The single included a folding black and white poster artwork of a horribly wounded U.K. bomber pilot, his face mutilated from combat. Under a banner reading “Welcome Home”, the vet hugged his gleeful blonde wife on the airfield tarmac. The song itself was frenetic, filled with atonal guitar noise and anguished shouted lyrics;

“How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death? Young boys rest now, cold graves in cold earth. How does it feel to be the mother of a thousand death? Sunken eyes, lost now; empty sockets in futile death.”

Conservative MP Timothy Eggar defended Thatcher and the war, telling the press that the Crass single was “a vicious, scurrilous attack on the Prime Minister and the government”. Eggar condemned the record for being “obscene”, and Crass responded by saying the true obscenity was the war. The Tory party made an effort to prosecute Crass under the U.K.’s “Obscene Publications Act”, but the attempt failed once the Attorney-General ruled the single did not breach the law.

"Gotcha!" - Gee Vaucher. Designed as the back cover art for the 1983 single release "Sheep Farming In The Falklands".

As a follow-up, Crass released the single, Sheep Farming in the Falklands, in April of 1983. The single’s flipside was titled Gotcha! The cover art featured the otherwise black and white Crass logo, this time done up in the colors of the Union Jack.

The flipside jacket was a photograph of a World War I veteran whose face had been mutilated by bomb splinters - the word GOTHCHA! floating above his face in capital letters.

The image sans text, came from the classic anti-war book, Krieg dem Krieg (”War against War”) by the German artist Ernst Friedrich (1894-1967). Friedrich first published his book in 1924. A diatribe against those who start wars, his book combined appalling photos of war wounded soldiers with devastating text. Needless to say Friedrich ran afoul of the Nazis and fled Germany in 1933. I have prepared an essay on Friedrich, which you can expect in the near future.

The song, Sheep Farming, begins with a short snippet of an actual news broadcast recounting the attempted government prosecution of Crass over the aforementioned How Does It Feel. The song then launches into feverish pandemonium - screeched and squealed - first sneeringly condemning the imperial war (”Friggin in the riggin another imperialist farce, another page of British history to wipe the national arse!”), and then, dripping with bitter sarcasm, offering a jingoistic narrative as told through the voice of an imaginary war supporter (”Onward Thatcher’s soldiers, it’s your job to fight…”). Laced with expletives, the song ends with all musical structure falling apart, like a great battlement blasted to bits by artillery fire. The final words of the composition, aimed directly at Thatcher, likely comprise the most insulting language ever committed to vinyl.

"Birds Put the Turd in Custard" - Gee Vaucher. 1983. Artwork designed as a foldout poster and lyric sheet for the single "Sheep Farming In The Falklands/Gotcha!"

The single’s inserted mini-poster and lyric sheet bears an artwork of Thatcher, wide-eyed and smiling, holding what appears to be an enormous phallus sculpted from excrement. Circling the repulsive portrait are the words, “Birds put the turd in custard but who put the shit in no. 10?”

The title of Gotcha! referred to the May 4, 1982 edition of The Sun, which originally offered the revolting headline of “Gotcha” when reporting on the sinking of the Argentine Navy cruiser, the ARA General Belgrano, by a British Royal Navy submarine, the HMS Conqueror. The Conqueror struck the Belgrano outside of the war zone with two torpedoes, killing 323 crew members. The infamous Sun account gloated that “Our lads”, “had the Argies on their knees” after “torpedoes from our super nuclear sub Conqueror” had blasted the cruiser.

Gotcha! had the same song structure as Sheep Farming, alternating between earnest denunciation and sardonic pro-war narrative. Crass took the war propaganda of The Sun and inverted it, exposing the national chauvinism, racism, and warmongering of the state and its sycophantic media with the song’s opening chorus;

“Gotcha! - you Argie bastard, Gotcha! - you fucking Spik, Gotcha! - you Latin bender, Gotcha! - you Dago prick… We gotcha, gotcha, gotcha - gotcha, gotcha, gotcha - we gotcha, gotcha, gotcha - Our boys have got it right!”

Sounding like the heat of battle from the opening to final chords, the relentlessly unpleasant song creates the impression of a soldier, indeed, an entire nation, gone mad with war lust: “This is Thatcher’s Britain built on national pride, built on national heritage, and the bodies of those who died to wave the flag on the Falklands, to protect us from the Irish hordes, to support the rich in their difficult task of protecting themselves from the poor”. Listening to the song, one can imagine the eyes of war enthusiasts bulging as their spittle flies into your face while shouting: “Yes, this is Thatcher’s Britain, so let’s increase the strength of the police. Let’s expand the military, let’s all arm for peace. Let’s suppress all opposition, let’s keep the people down. Let’s resurrect past histories for the glory of the crown.”

Chumbawamba achieved “commercial success” with their 1997 “dance hit” Tubthumping, but it is a lesser work that gives little indication of the full depth and breadth of what the band was capable of.

In 1982 I first heard Chumbawamba on a double record compilation put together by Crass and released on their Crass Records label that same year. Titled, Bullshit Detector Vol 2. (after a lyric from the Clash’s song, Garageland), the compilation consisted of 38 tracks from the same number of British punk bands. Chumbawamba’s cut Three Years Later was easily forgotten, a grating ditty with the repetitive lyrics, “You can’t do nothing if you haven’t got money”. Still, there was something to the lurching mechanical-like beat and jangly guitar noise… a portent of things to come. I still posses my copy of Bullshit Detector for its anti-Monarchist cover design and illustration, a consummate example of punk aesthetics.

"Dig This" - Clifford Harper. Linoleum cut. Cover art for the 1985 benefit album, "Dig This: A Tribute to the Great Strike".

I really took notice of Chumbawamba in 1985 when they contributed two songs, The Police Have Been Wonderful and Fitzwilliam, to Dig This: A Tribute to the Great Strike. Dedicated to the Miners Strike of 1984-1985, the album was a fund-raiser for the striking miners and all money raised from the sale of the record went to the “Miners Solidarity Fund”. The LP featured cuts by Poison Girls, Mekons, The Ex, Omega Tribe, Leningrad Sandwich, Men They Couldn’t Hang, Akimbo, and Steve Lake.

Chumbawamba’s contributions to Dig This were a far cry from their earlier hard-core punk sound. The Police Have Been Wonderful had a mild techno sound achieved in the studio through repetitive looping tape. Over the hypnotic soundtrack the group sampled news broadcasts of Thatcher lauding the police for the way they handled the strike, “Most of us who have watched the scenes on television have only the highest praise for the police” - an outrageous statement in itself since the entire country was watching TV news reports of brutal police actions taken in crushing the miner’s strike.

Fitzwilliam was a hauntingly beautiful ballad about the people of the mining town of Fitzwilliam braving violence from police and scabs, and enduring government and media lies throughout the duration of the strike. In the middle of the song (lyrics here) a poetic juxtaposition is made between the working women of the mining town and Prime Minister Thatcher: “Woman and woman in opposing extremes, between man-made heaven and popular dreams, between twisted detachment and learning to breathe - one locks the prison, one sets herself free”.

The Mineworkers strike lasted a year but was eventually defeated by repressive legislation and Thatcher’s use of raw police violence and brutality. After the strike collapsed, Thatcher closed 25 coal mines in 1985, and 97 more would be closed by 1992. In a report published in the Guardian after Thatcher’s death, one miner, a veteran of the 1984 strike, put it this way: “It was class war. The people above didn’t want us to win. The people with money didn’t want us to win. If we had won, they wouldn’t be able to get away with what they are doing now, cutting benefits for disabled people and things like that. The unions would have stopped them. But we lost.”

"Never Mind The Ballots" - Artist unknown. Graphic from the inside cover art of Chumbawamba's 1987 album, "Never Mind The Ballots Here's The Rest Of Your Life".

By the time of their debut 1986 album, Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, Chumbawamba had already moved beyond hard-core punk to embrace pop, folk, a cappella, and “world music” forms - though they were certainly capable of launching a raucous sound barrage at a moments notice (listen to the cut Invasion as proof - lyrics here). Despite the lack of stereotypical punk dissonance and cacophony, Starving Children embodied the anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist punk moral code; it was a concept album that offered a scornfully derisive view of corporate control of culture.

Other high-points in Chumbawamba’s recording career include their second album, Never Mind the Ballots… Here’s The Rest of Your Life. Recorded in 1987, this brilliant concept album exposed the con-game of elections under capitalism: “Said the Party to the adman, ‘We’ll conjure up a gimmick - the way to lead an ass is with a carrot and a stick. Dig down for minorities, promise them concessions, ride in one their backs, and then teach them all a lesson”. (It was the album young people in the U.S. should have listened to prior to the 2008 presidential elections.) Also high on the list would be the group’s third album, English Rebel Songs: 1381-1984. This extraordinary recording presented traditional protest songs from throughout England’s history; from the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, to songs of the Diggers (1649), and Chartists (1840s).

"Here's The Rest Of Your Life" - Artist unknown. Graphic from Chumbawamba's "Never Mind The Ballots" album.

After 30 years of writing, recording, performing, and agitating, Chumbawamba called it quits in July of 2012, but ever forward thinking - they had planned something special for the future.

“In anticipation of the great day” they wrote and recorded a seven track EP in 2005 titled In Memoriam: Margaret Thatcher (you can see them performing one of the songs, So Long, So Long, in this 2009 concert).

Over the years the band encouraged fans to pre-order the EP for £5 (around $7.60 U.S.), giving their word that the recording would be released on the day of Thatcher’s death. Years after they recorded the EP, Thatcher died on April 8, 2013. The band mailed out the Memoriam CD that same day. Chumbawamba posted a statement that read:

“She’s not been gone more than a few hours, and already the national media have cranked into gear and begun the blandly respectful eulogies – at their most critical they seem to be only able to say: ‘She polarized opinion … what’s certain is how much of an impact she made on Britain … etc etc.’ Twitter set off at a pace with a thousand ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ messages only to be followed by a slew of bleeding heart liberals bemoaning the fact that people were daring to celebrate someone’s death.

Pah! Let’s make it clear: This is a cause to celebrate, to party, to stamp the dirt down. Tomorrow we can carry on shouting and writing and working and singing and striking against the successive governments that have so clearly followed Thatcher’s Slash & Burn policies, none more so than the present lot. But for now, we can have a drink and a dance and propose a toast to the demise of someone who blighted so many people’s lives for so long. If we must show a little reverence and decorum at this time, then so be it. Our deepest sympathies go out to the families of all Margaret Thatcher’s victims.”

The wealthy and the powerful of this world mourn Thatcher’s death. Prior to her April 18, 2013 funeral, Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC Radio 4, “We are all Thatcherites now“. Offering a timid rebuke to the remark, Cameron’s Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Party co-conspirator Nick Clegg squeaked, “I certainly wouldn’t call myself a Thatcherite. I am a liberal. She wasn’t a liberal.” Ah yes… a liberal. In an official statement, President Obama said “The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the class divide, street parties celebrating Thatcher’s death took place throughout England. The largest occurred in London’s Trafalgar Square, where upwards of 3,000 people drank Champagne and sang “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead” from the classic Judy Garland The Wizard of Oz movie. The song became a sensation with anti-Thatcherites, who succeeded in making the song the number one hit on U.K. iTunes “top ten” category. Hundreds turned their backs on Thatcher’s funeral procession as it made its way to St. Paul’s Cathedral, while in the former coal mining village of Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire (its coal mine closed in 1994 due to Thatcher’s policies), residents gathered in the village square to burn Maggie in effigy.

The following is pertinent, so please bear with me. Just prior to Maggie’s death I viewed the classic American film-noir, Ruthless. Starring Zachary Scott, the 1948 flick told the story of a predatory capitalist’s rise to power, and how he mercilessly crushed all those in the way of his acquiring endless profits… going so far as to abandon the woman who loved him, Martha Burnside (played by Diana Lynn).

Scott’s character of Horace Vendig met his match in the equally venal oligarch, Buck Mansfield (played by the incomparable Sydney Greenstreet). Without giving away the end, a character who witnessed Vendig’s downfall, said of him: “He wasn’t a man… he was a way of life”. Likewise, consider this essay regarding Thatcher, not as an attack on an individual, but as a critique of “a way of life”.

Thatcherism is alive and well, but so is the resistance.

Admirers and detractors of this blog may of late be wondering about the dearth of newly posted visuals and essays from me. Fear not intrepid readers, I suffer no lack of enthusiasm for writing about the political follies and foibles of the art world. So why the lack of posts? Has the muse left Vallen? Is he stuck in the creative doldrums, or perhaps in a temporal time distortion?

In actuality I have been in the process of moving, that is, relocating my studio from an ill-managed, silverfish-infested, dilapidated hole in the wall that was abandoned to animals and lorded over by a troll-like slumlord - to a more accommodating shack in a pleasant working class district. To me, the best thing about the new address is the sunlit, airy room that shall be converted into an art studio.

Presently my wife and I have our entire lives stored in stacks of packing crates and boxes strewn throughout the abode. However, we’ll soon dig ourselves out, organize our new home, and get back to “normal”, which for me entails losing myself in the joys of art making, that, and vexing the miserablists that rule our world.

March 19, 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S. war against Iraq. To commemorate the somber occasion I am presenting fifteen separate articles pertaining to the Iraq war that I wrote for this web log from 2004 to 2009, starting with the earliest post and ending with the most recent. Each piece discusses individual or cooperative artistic responses to the imperial war… all writings express this artist’s disdain for the war and its instigators.

"War Child" - Mark Vallen 2006 ©. Oil on masonite. 8 x 10 inches. Painted to commemorate the children who have died during the recent conflicts in the Middle East.

On March 19, 2003 the U.S. government, without a declaration of war, launched an unprovoked war and invasion against Iraq under the pretense that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction”.

The battle started under the name of “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (OIL), until the campaign’s instructive name became an embarrassment and was quickly changed to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. International opposition to the war was overwhelming from the start.

Just prior to the then-looming war, upwards of thirty million people in sixty different countries staged massive coordinated demonstrations on February 15, 2003. Anti-war rallies took place in at least 225 U.S. cities and towns. In my own city of Los Angeles, some 100,000 people marched down Hollywood Boulevard in protest of the imminent war.

And what was the price paid for this imperial hubris? Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed or wounded, and various reports say the dead could number as low as 150,000 or as high as million. Certainly the nation of Iraq has been completely devastated and its people remain overwhelmed by daily bombings, assassinations, repression, sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing. As of this writing over 32,000 U.S. soldiers have been wounded in the war, and almost 5,000 have been killed. A study released on March 14, 2013 by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, placed the financial cost of the war at $2.2 trillion. The human and monetary costs of the Iraq war are incalculable, and they will no doubt haunt U.S. society for decades to come.

Where Have All The Flowers Gone? - November 27, 2004
“The TV news shows the grieving family of the fallen hero at graveside, beside themselves with sorrow. The mother is screaming and wailing in Spanish. Later the brothers and sister of the deceased soldier are shown sitting on the couch in their tiny living room… silent and brokenhearted.”

Apolitical Artists: “War? What War?” - January 4, 2005
“In Artnet Magazine’s year end report, The 2004 Revue, editor Walter Robinson unconsciously laid bare everything that’s wrong with the art world.”

Mesopotamia Endangered - February 4, 2005
“When the US Army captured Iraq’s capital of Baghdad in April of 2003, people around the world were shocked by the whirlwind of looting that followed in the wake of ‘liberation.’ Quick to seize and guard Iraq’s Oil Ministry, US forces left other government buildings unprotected and open to pillage by throngs of impoverished Iraqis. The country’s art and history museums were ransacked by looters, who stripped the institutions of their treasures and destroyed what could not be carried off.”

Fernando Botero Paints Abu Ghraib -  April 13, 2005
“(….) a suite of 50 large oil paintings depicting the horrors perpetrated by Americans at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison.”

A Nightmare Hall of Mirrors - June 14, 2005
“The artwork asked a question that no one could answer - ‘for how long does the war grind on and how many will be sacrificed?’”

An Abstract Expression of Horror - February 16, 2006
“No doubt Pollock would be appalled by the new school of ‘Action Painting’ founded at Abu Ghraib prison, and while Pollock had to suffer being called ‘Jack the Dripper’ by a hostile press - that was the only torment he was subjected to. Today’s anonymous American ‘Dripper’ working at the infamous Iraqi prison, left us a magnum opus installation piece composed of found objects, human body fluids and blood - materials not unfamiliar to some postmodern conceptual artists.”

An Iraqi artist paints Donald Rumsfeld - June 8, 2006
“The Iraqi surrealist painter, Muayad Muhsin, has painted a rather unflattering portrait of U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld. Muhsin’s surrealism is not informed by dreams and the unconsciousness mind, but by the horrors and barbarity of war.”

The General’s war a work of art - November 4, 2006
“Major General William Caldwell, a senior commander of U.S. forces in occupied Iraq, compared the war in that country to a work of art in progress. At a weekly briefing in Baghdad, Caldwell addressed the violence now spiraling out of control, which includes the rising U.S. casualties (2,828 dead at the time of this writing), by saying, ‘Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in transition. A lump of clay can become a sculpture, blobs of paint become paintings which inspire.’”

SHAMS: Rock the Casbah - February 7, 2007
“Shams (Arabic for ‘Sun’) is a popular female Kuwaiti singer who has just released a controversial song titled, Ahlan Ezayak (or ‘Hi! How are you!’) Accompanied by a slick MTV-like video that lambastes George W. Bush and his occupation of Iraq, the song has become all the rage in the Middle East.”

Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful - February 14, 2007
“Who is the enemy? Who is innocent? Who shall be absolved of guilt and responsibility in times of war?”

LA vs. War - April 6, 2008
“In the words of the organizers, the show will be ‘an unprecedented gathering of artists united to deliver a message of peace, and offering resistance and opposition to war and violence.’”

Modern Painters: Art & War - April 22, 2008
(….) devoted to ‘the politically driven art made in response to war and its critical reception.’”

War & Empire Opening in San Francisco - September 13, 2008
“A group exhibition that has as its theme the state of democracy in the U.S. - as well as the continuing military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

More Art Less War! - February 19, 2009
Ah yes, the Noble Peace Prize winning antiwar president.

LACMA & BP’s Iraqi Oil Fields - July 2, 2009
“With BP now in charge of exploiting Iraq’s largest oil field, LACMA’s rationalizing taking money from a company committed ‘to sustainable energy’ is as threadbare as the reasons behind the continuing U.S. military occupation of Iraq.”

"Burning Palm Tree" - Mark Vallen. Oil on canvas. 30" x 40" inches. 2008 ©.

Brothers and Sisters… this errant one, whose feet have trod along Hollywood’s golden starred paths of sin, and whose lips have tasted the many bitter fruits of lasciviousness so common to my City of Lust Angeles… this willfully disobedient soul has had an epiphany!

Ah yes! I was walking in the desolate wilderness of the San Fernando Valley, plodding along one of the ugliest streets in all creation, cast down by billboards that assailed me with wicked images of corporate death cheeseburgers and loathsome CGI action movies - all the works of the Devil - when the divine truth was revealed to me.

I was standing on the forsaken neon boulevard with thorn-pierced feet, when a palm tree - thousands of rusty nails and staples fastening cheap advertising flyers to its trunk - suddenly burst into flames before me! A great stillness came upon the land; I could no longer hear the gangsta rap blaring from passing cars; I could no longer see the buses - filled with unhappy people and covered with gigantic advertisements for Desperate Housewives - barreling down the street; there was only the burning palm ablaze with a mighty spiritual fire. The tree spoke, its voice a gentle benediction, like the wind in a vast wild place; the fiery palm whispered…

“The good Rev. Billy & the Triple Goddess Gospel Singers will appear with Sister Exene Cervenka at The Echo in the downtown Echo Park district of Lost Angeles. Go forth in righteousness and spread the blessed truth to the teeming masses. Shun the path of synthetic pop stars and their killer drones; turn away from the creeping virtual meatball’s race towards bigger and better flat-screen televisions. Remember - Rev. Billy, Exene, The Echo, Sunday, 2:00 pm. March 3, 2013. Be there or be an apostate Republocrate.“

UPDATE: Review
Rev. Billy & the Triple Goddess Gospel Singers
with Sister Exene Cervenka at The Echo in Los Angeles, March 3, 2013.

"Speaking In Tongues" - Photograph by Mark Vallen 2013 ©. Photo of Rev. Billy at The Echo club in Los Angeles. The good Rev. appeared with Sister Exene Cervenka & the Triple Goddess Gospel Singers on March 3, 2013.

Cries of “Earthaluya!” shook the rafters when Reverend Billy of The Church of Stop Shopping preached from the stage at The Echo.

A small crowd of sinners had gathered to hear the good Reverend’s sermon, and they yelped in spiritual joy as Rev. Billy spoke in tongues; the messianic leader punched the air with his fists and danced in jubilation as he spoke against the sins of apathy, complacency and mindless consumerism.

Demons of materialism were exorcised from the hearts of those gathered at The Echo revival meeting.

It was a fortuitous and historic occasion, given that just around the corner the Angelus Temple could be found - the very place where evangelical sensation Aimee Semple McPherson (”Sister Aimee”), used to preach to the sinners of Lost Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s! My own mother visited the Angelus Temple as a young girl. Sister Aimee was the first mass media preacher and the first woman to receive a broadcasting license for religious programming on the radio. For all of today’s televangelical “false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are savage wolves” (Matthew 7:15), it is the Reverend Billy that truly stands with the poor and the meek against the greed and violent cruelty of the powerful - and here I do not blaspheme.

"Sister Exene Cervenka" - Photo by Mark Vallen 2013 ©. Exene at The Echo club in Los Angeles.

The faith healing event opened with an old spiritual sung by Sister Exene Cervenka and the Triple Goddess Gospel Singers. The members of the group found one other in the Devil’s playground of Lost Angeles, and they only came together as a gospel choir to support Rev. Billy’s visit to the Sodom of the West Coast. The evangelical song sparrows performed a total of three rousing gospel numbers during the revival, two of which I caught on video. My favorite song by the Goddess Gospel Singers was a cover of the late 1950s song, Mean Old World, by Marion Williams & the Stars of Faith.

When not singing with the Triple Goddess Gospel Singers, Sister Exene took to the pulpit to do a bit of evangelizing on her own, proving herself to be a formidable new voice in The Church of Stop Shopping. She sermonized that the faithful should turn their backs on Beyoncé, Lady GaGa, Nicki Minaj and others of the Jezebel spirit for serving power and the Golden Calf; called for people to smash their televisions; and preached that parents should “dress their children in corduroy pants, give them bowl haircuts, and teach them carpentry, soldering, or gardening” instead of allowing them to become consumer society trendoids.

"Exene and The End Of The World" - Photo by Mark Vallen 2013 ©. Exene with Rev. Billy's "The End Of The World" book at The Echo club in Los Angeles.

Sister Exene took on an apocalyptic tone as she reminded the flock of how the U.S. Constitution has been eroded since 9/11, with government security forces now able to watch Americans via domestic Predator drones, or even by sending hummingbird-shaped and sized surveillance drones through your open front door. Citing Sandy Hook as a pretext, she prophesized that the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens would be limited even further in days to come.

Sister Exene confessed having been seduced by promises of deliverance made by the false prophets of the Democratic Party, but as a born-again acolyte of The Church of Stop Shopping, she has seen the light - Praise Be! - and now warns the faithful against believing the words of Follyticians. It was all fire and brimstone from Sister Exene, but she was just warming up the congregation.

"Preaching" - Photo by Mark Vallen 2013 ©. Rev. Billy at The Echo club in Los Angeles.

Reverend Billy took the stage and speechified on how war is crucial to consumerism, while inveighing against those who reap the super profits:

“No wonder they are so powerful! The shopping is evolving us into a single personality! The constant monetizing… we’re suffering from thousands of advertising events every day. Increasingly were getting militarized advertisements. I just refer you to the Super Bowl. When you have that experience, you’re watching the game - the slow motion, the projectiles, the armoring - and then you go to a video game and… it’s the same thing. And then you go to a Be All That You Can Be Army ad, and… it’s the same thing. And then you’re back in the football game and… it’s the same thing.

Militarism and consumerism are utterly enmeshed at this point. That was always the plan. Professors call it a ‘totalizing’ system… they are trying to get into every nook and cranny of our lives. If there is any part of our lives that is still outside of the impact of their commodification, of their making us that one personality - anything dark, anything far-way from that apparatus - they’ll find you there!”

Photo by Mark Vallen 2013 ©. Rev. Billy at The Echo club in Los Angeles.

The day after Rev. Billy’s fiery sermon, it was reported that President Obama had nominated the head of the Wal-Mart Foundation, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, as the new director for his Office of Management and Budget (OMB); Burwell will assist the president in making budgetary decisions. That Wal-Mart now has a new big box store called the White House will no doubt weigh heavily upon the good Reverend’s mind. At one point during his sermon Rev. Billy intoned; “Is Obama the best we can do? Forget about gun control, we need some Drone control!”

"Earthaluya" - Photo by Mark Vallen 2013 ©. Rev. Billy at The Echo club in Los Angeles.

Reverend Billy is not just the messianic evangelical leader of The Church of Stop Shopping, in actuality he is a character created and performed by actor Bill Talen. But Talen’s shtick is much more than satiric performance art or quirky activism, he answers an age old calling - that of Holy Fool. Much of this is evident in his just released book, The End of the World, a minuscule paperback filled with big ideas, apocalyptic visions, and achingly beautiful humanistic thought.

Talen’s love of humanity, the earth, justice, and beauty, finds expression not in dry political discourse but in artful burlesque; he speaks a language community organizers are by and large unfamiliar with, or willfully disdainful of - the vernacular of art. The conformist machine society is equally non-aesthetic, so, the Reverend Billy Talen provides us with a revelation - art and action leads to salvation!