“I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.” - Edward Snowden.

As of today, this web log will go on hiatus for an indefinite period as a silent protest against the colossal spying operation the Obama administration has unleashed upon the American people.

On June 9, 2013, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former CIA employee working for the National Security Agency (NSA), was identified by the Guardian as the whistleblower responsible for exposing the massive police state surveillance now aimed at every American.

PRISM, the surveillance program run by the National Security Agency (NSA) for the Obama White House, collects the phone records of most U.S. citizens on a daily basis; the spy operation also monitors all internet activity conducted by Americans, extracting their photographs, e-mails, audio recordings, videos, documents, chats, instant messaging, and connection logs from nine separate internet companies - AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo, and YouTube. In essence, the intelligence program snoops on the daily routines of hundreds of millions of Americans.

On June 7, President Obama defended his sweeping surveillance program, referring to media reports as “hype”. He depicted the spying as a “modest encroachment” on the rights of U.S. citizens. Just prior to Edward Snowden’s identity being made public, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, said of the whistleblower, “This is someone who for whatever reason has chosen to violate a sacred trust for this country”. I beg your pardon Mr. Clapper, but the only sacred trust that U.S. citizens have is to their Constitution. As an American artist I treasure that document - all of it -  because it not only guarantees my right to free expression, it secures all of my rights as a citizen. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized”.

I have just acquired a copy of David McCullough’s 1776, which recounts the history of the American revolution. McCullough’s fascinating book describes the struggle as seen through the eyes of those American patriots who fought for independence from the British Empire, as well as from the perspective of the King’s men, who saw the “riotous rebels” of America as little more than “rabble in arms”. The hoi polloi of course won the cause of liberty, imperfect as it was, but today our freedoms are in extreme danger.

How ironic that democracy is imperiled by someone who promised “hope”, “change”, and “transparency”, but instead delivered a surveillance state of unprecedented scope and power; it is not quite George Orwell’s 1984 writ large, but it is very close indeed. The U.S. has reached a point of no return, it shall either advance as a democratic society or it shall descend into the abyss of authoritarian rule; it is all up to America’s “riotous rebels”.

This is undeniably a time for active protest against an imperiously intrusive surveillance state, but it is also a period for contemplation and deep reflection. Once I have finished reading McCullough’s 1776, I shall return to writing and posting commentary to this web log.

"Self Portrait with Gasmask" - Barthel Gilles. Egg tempera on wood panel , 19.5 × 15.5 inches. 1930. Collection of the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen, Germany.

Barthel Gilles (1891-1977) was one of those artists overlooked by history, he was a fabulously talented painter who lived during the rise and fall of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933), not to mention the ascendancy and demise of the Nazi regime.

An undeniably idealistic and passionate artist, he was not left unscathed by the terrible days he passed through; one could say he was left broken by them. I wrote briefly about him and his 1930 painting Ruhrkampf (Ruhr Struggle) in 2001, but I feel compelled to say more about the life and work of this little known artist.

Otto Dix (1891-1969) should be familiar to readers of this web log, since he is one of the most celebrated of all German Expressionist artists.

My conviction that there is much to learn from the German Expressionist movement, mixes with my sense that we are living in times reminiscent of the Weimar period; an epoch marked by the eroding of democratic institutions and cultural life, economic collapse, endless war, corrupt monied elites and professional politicians that are completely out of touch with common people. Add the foibles of late capitalism in the early 21st century, and suddenly this article is not so much about Gilles or Dix and the moral, political, and aesthetic questions they and their compatriots faced; it becomes a matter of how artists are responding to today’s world situation.

"Self Portrait" - Otto Dix. Oil on canvas, 39 2/5 × 31 1/2 inches. 1931. Collection of Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. Photo: Hermann Buresch © ARS, NY

In 1927 Otto Dix painted Straßenkampf (Street Fight), a shocking representation of the ferocious armed clashes that took place between militant left-wing workers and right-wing militias in the years just prior to Nazism.

Barthel Gilles painted a similar work in 1930 titled Ruhrkampf (Ruhr Struggle); his masterwork was based upon the Märzrevolution (March Revolution) staged by German workers in 1920. But what were the real-world events that so captivated the imagination - and outrage - of these two artists?

The street battles that induced Gilles and Dix to record their indignation have mostly been long forgotten, even in Germany, but the political dynamics of the events continue to resonate in our present. To fully comprehend the two paintings examined in this article, one needs to understand a bit of German history.

When Otto Dix painted Straßenkampf (Street Fight) in 1927, he placed the viewer in the midst of a bloody and desperate mêlée between an armed populace and soldiers. His Goyaesque work of art depicted the ruthless class struggle then taking place in Germany; bloodletting that pitted impoverished workers, war veterans, and various left-wing groups against the very forces that would become the Nazi’s political base - militarists, xenophobes, ultra-nationalists, racists, and extreme rightwing anti-communists.

"Straßenkampf" (Street Fight) - Otto Dix. 1927. Medium unknown. In all probability this painting was destroyed by the Nazis. Photographer of the painting, unknown. Reproduction courtesy the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library Photo Archive.

The painting shows a throng of disorganized civilian rebels, most of which are not men of fighting age. Shrouded in a haze of gun smoke and armed with a hodgepodge of weapons, they are desperate to get at their enemies, a unit of heavily armed paramilitary Freikorps troops. Though offering valiant resistance, the crowd is being decimated by deadly precision volleys of rifle fire from the Freikorps soldiers, who were largely battle hardened WWI veterans.

The mob buckles under the withering barrage; blood-splattered women with horrific gunshot wounds are crushed beneath the crowd; two young blonde women raise their hands in dismay; a bearded rebel fighter attempts to fling a captured “stick grenade” at the Freikorps but is fatally shot before he can toss it. In juxtaposition to the routed multitude the disciplined Freikorps seem unyielding and invincible, though one of their own lay dead at their feet, his right arm a bloody pulp. Dix’s painting was as prescient as it was horrific. He sardonically signed his painting by placing his monogram on a grenade hanging from the belt of the soldier closest to the foreground.

What specific event Dix was showing in his painting is unclear. In the early 1900s Germany was impoverished, exhausted from war, and on the verge of revolution. Left-wing rebels regularly battled with those right-wing ultra-nationalists who eventually would form the Nazis; as the hapless “liberal” Weimar government played at being centrist (all the while seeking the support of Weimar industrialists and the rightist German military). Perhaps the painting was a depiction of the Weimar reprisals made against the Munich Soviet Republic established in Bavaria in 1919. Maybe it was a portrayal of state repression aimed at the 1919 Spartacist uprising, when communists attempted to set off a revolution in Berlin. Whatever the inspiration, Dix encapsulated the agony of the Weimar years in the gory scene. The few references one can find about the painting list it as “destroyed or lost”. Sadly, there is but one black and white photo of the painting (year and photographer unknown).

Sketch for "Street Fight" - Otto Dix. Pencil on paper. 1924. The artist created this study in a sketch book of his, three years prior to creating the painting.

It should be remembered that once the Nazis came to power in 1933, they removed Dix from his teaching position at the Dresden Art Academy, prohibited him from exhibiting in Germany, mockingly placed his paintings in the Nazi organized Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibit, and removed two hundred and sixty of his artworks from museums. In fascist parlance his work was “un-German” and responsible for helping to undermine “the will of the German people to defend themselves.” It is a fair assumption that Straßenkampf was confiscated by the Nazis and later destroyed for its portrayal of German soldiers.

Barthel Gilles and Otto Dix both painted in the difficult medium of egg tempera. Used for centuries, egg tempera was the medium of choice for European artists until the introduction of oil painting in the 15th century. Because of its handling qualities and relative ease of use, oil would eventually displace egg tempera as a preferred painting medium. However, egg tempera did not entirely disappear. Old masters used it as an “underpainting” because it dried so quickly, completing their paintings with glazes of oil paint. German master painters like Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and Hans Baldung Grien (1484-1545) excelled at mischtechnik, the “mixed technique” mentioned above.

Leading lights in the Neue Sachlichkeit (”New Objectivity”) school of German Expressionism that flourished during the ill-fated Weimar Republic, Gilles and Dix shared an infatuation with Old Master paintings. Inspired since his youth by the likes of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien, Dix created some of his most well-known artworks in mixed technique. While perhaps better known for his radically severe expressionist works, Dix could paint on par with a German Renaissance Master like Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553); ample evidence is provided in Triumph des Todes (Triumph of Death) a 1934 allegorical work Dix painted after the Nazis fired him from his professorship at the Dresden Art Academy. In fact Dix once said, “I am not a gifted pupil of Rembrandt, but rather of Cranach, Dürer, and Grünewald“.

A year before painting Ruhrkampf, Barthel Gilles had become a member the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), as well as joining the Assoziation Revolutionärer Bildender Künstler Deutschlands (ASSO - “Association of revolutionary visual artists of Germany”) a group of artists associated with the KPD. Notables in the group included the likes of George Grosz, Curt Querner, Otto Nagel, Paul Fuhrmann, and Hans Grundig).

"Ruhrkampf" (Ruhr Struggle) - Barthel Gilles. Egg tempera and oil on wood panel. 1930. The artist portrayed armed revolutionary workers in battle against government soldiers. The work was based upon the real world event known as the "Ruhr Struggle" or "March uprising".

Gilles’ 1930 Ruhrkampf (Ruhr Struggle) was based upon the March Revolution of 1920. That uprising was the response of workers to the Kapp Putsch, an attempted military coup against the young centrist Weimar Republic that was organized by an extremist nationalist named Wolfgang Kapp and joined by large segments of the armed forces. The Weimar government ordered the army to suppress the coup, but the command was refused. As rightist pro-coup troops marched on Berlin, the government fled to Stuttgart. The Kapp Putsch collapsed in four days because a massive nationwide strike against it paralyzed the country. However, the failed coup set off a series of events that would forever alter German society.

"Ruhrkampf" (Detail) - Barthel Gilles.1930.

After the Kapp Putsch affair, large numbers of Germans who had defended the Weimar Republic came to view the Social Democratic government as an obstacle to the completion of the 1918 November Revolution that overthrew the monarchy of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Insurrection became the order of the day as revolutionary workers and former soldiers took over various cities; eventually some 80,000 leftwing workers would organize themselves as the Red Ruhr Army to control the entire Ruhr industrial area of North Rhine-Westphalia. In a fateful decision, the Social Democrats of the Weimar government sent in the army - the very same army that refused to defend the Weimar regime - and the Ruhr uprising was crushed with brutal force. Thousands of rebels were killed. From that point on, German leftists found it impossible to work in partnership with the Social Democrats, a fact that splintered opposition to the rise of Hitler. That is the background narrative of Gilles’ painting.

"Ruhrkampf" (Detail) - Barthel Gilles.1930. "(....) bullet holes can be seen in the legs of the chair, and splintering the top of the wicker basket".

Ruhrkampf is a technically brilliant painting, and Gilles deftly employed the Old Master method of painting oil glazes over an egg tempera underpainting.

Compositionally, the work focuses on three insurrectionists from the March Revolution cramped together with their rifles behind a makeshift barricade.

The three form a curve that ends with the agitated looking fellow in the foreground. He works the bolt action on his Steyr-Mannlicher M1895 rifle, the standard service rifle for soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WWI that would later be used by Weimar era soldiers and to a lesser extent by the Nazis. The worker in the center of the painting is also armed with an M1895, which is easily identified by its unique shaped trigger guard assembly and magazine. That Gilles included these technical details shows what a stickler he was for accuracy.

Gilles’ exactitude is found in other details of Ruhrkampf; the Neues Bauen (New Building) modern architecture barely discernable at the skyline; the working class attire of the men (precise right down to the embroidery on their caps); even the items making up the barricade add to the narrative. One can see wicker basketry, box springs from a bed, an upside-down wooden chair, and a bound stack of newspapers.

"Ruhrkampf" (Detail) - Barthel Gilles.1930. As sensitive a depiction of human hands ever portrayed in German art, these are the rough hands of a man who suffered much but remained unbowed.

The papers in the painting indicate two things; that the workers were literate and well informed (at the time German newspapers ran the entire political gambit from hard left to extreme right and everything in between); and that experience taught the workers that tightly bound bundles of newspaper made effective bullet stops.

The three rebels are under fire from German soldiers mobilized against them by the Weimar government; if one looks closely bullet holes can be seen in the legs of the chair, and splintering the top of the wicker basket.

Even the cap of the worker in the top right corner has a bullet hole in it.

Given the fact that Germany was experiencing mass insurrectionary violence between the left and those on the extreme right, the Weimar government was terrified of an armed populace. The Social Democrats of the Weimar regime used rightwing Freikorps troops and the German army to brutally crush the left and communist movements in Germany - killing thousands. The Weimar gun control laws of 1928 were not so much used out of a concern to “stop the bloodshed”, as they were a desperate attempt to increase the political control the regime had over a population increasingly in revolt.

In his article, Nazism, Firearm Registration, and the Night of the Broken Glass (PDF file), Attorney at Law and conservative activist Stephen P. Halbrook wrote about Weimar gun control laws, noting that the April 12, 1928 Weimar Law on Firearms and Ammunition required that licenses issued by police departments would be necessary in order for an individual to obtain or carry a firearm. That law was amended in 1931, authorizing that all guns must “be registered with the police authorities.” The Weimar decree further authorized the police to confiscate weapons in order to foster “the maintenance of public security and order.” Those who failed to register their guns, or surrender them to the authorities when told to do so, could be jailed for “not less than three months.” [1] Halbrook also documented that Weimar law stated that “Licenses to obtain or to carry firearms shall only be issued to persons whose reliability is not in doubt, and only after proving a need for them.” [2]

Meant as a rebuttal to Halbrook’s research, liberal University of Chicago law professor Bernard E. Harcourt wrote his 2004 treatise on gun control in Nazi Germany, Hitler and Gun Registration. Harcourt conceded that “the Weimar Republic passed very strict gun control laws essentially banning all gun ownership,” and that on January 13, 1919, the Weimer government “enacted legislation requiring the surrender of all guns to the government. This law, as well as the August 7, 1920, Law on the Disarmament of the People passed in light of the Versailles Treaty, remained in effect until 1928, when the German parliament enacted the Law on Firearms and Ammunition (April 12, 1928).” [3]

Harcourt’s article correctly discounted the myth that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party disarmed the German people, pointing out that it was the Social Democrats of the Weimar Republic that disarmed them. The Weimar Government’s gun registration program was so effective that once the Nazi’s seized power, they simply used Weimar records on gun owners to put their own version of gun confiscation into practice. With the political opposition disarmed, banned, imprisoned, driven into exile or murdered, Hitler’s regime expanded the Weimar gun laws by writing their own in 1938 - which of course forbad Jews and regime opponents from owning firearms. While Halbrook and Harcourt are ideological adversaries and they reach different conclusions, their insights into Weimar era gun bans are penetrating and informative.

There is one last wrinkle in the saga of Barthel Gilles, it is a miserable, shameful, and lamentable fact. While the majority of his colleagues in Expressionist and left political circles refused to give in to the Nazis, displaying their open or clandestine resistance by various means both large and small - Gilles appears to have collaborated with the fascist regime.

With their seizure of power in 1933, in order to guarantee their absolute control over all aspects of cultural and artistic life in Germany, the Nazis established a “National Chamber of Culture” headed by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Two of the Nazi organized art exhibitions for 1933, West-front (Western Front) and Gesunde Frau, Gesundes Volk (A Healthy Woman - A Healthy People), listed Barthel Gilles as a participating artist.[4] While I have no information about the former, I can tell the reader something about the latter.

Brochure cover art for the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum exhibition "Healthy Woman - Healthy Nation" (1932). Designer unknown. The exhibit and pamphlet were created prior to the Nazi takeover of the museum. The legend at the bottom of the artwork reads, "German publisher for national welfare". Image courtesy of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden.

A Healthy Woman - A Healthy People was originally an exhibit curated by the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum of Dresden, founded in 1912 as an institution dedicated to “public understanding of sciences and humanities.” Once the museum came under the direct control of the Nazis in 1933, that mission changed. The Nazis altered the exhibit A Healthy Woman, to promote their theories on racial hygiene and eugenics. It became a traveling exhibit, its first showing was outside of Dresden in the city of Cologne. I can find no record of what Gilles exhibited in the show.

In 1938 Gilles frequently took part in exhibits organized by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labor Front or DAF), the Nazi established “trade union” that replaced all worker’s organizations and unions after such groups had been abolished by the fascists in 1933. The DAF put an emphasis on combating liberalism and communism, as well as generating support for the Nazi state among the working class.

A powerful arm of the DAF was the Gemeinschaft Kraft durch Freude (Community Strength Through Joy - KdF). Responsible for arranging leisure pastimes for workers, the Strength Through Joy branch of the Nazi labor front organized art exhibits, concerts, cruises, and other cultural activities. The KdF was also responsible for developing the Volkswagen (People’s Car). Historic records show Barthel Gilles listed as a “regular” participant in Strength Through Joy art exhibits [5], though I can find no record of what he exhibited.

Even if appalled by Gilles’ collaboration with the Nazis, it is problematical to judge him. Believe it or not, the Nazi curated exhibit A Healthy Woman - A Healthy People actually toured the U.S. from 1934 to 1943. In fact, it was housed by the Museum of Science in Buffalo, New York, until 1943. [6] What does that say about abetting Nazi ideology? Apparently thousands of Americans viewed and enjoyed the exhibit, until the museum decided to permanently take the show down due to sensitivity over the then two-year long war with Nazi Germany.

As for Gilles’ exhibiting in Nazi organized exhibits, aside from exile, what other opportunities did German artists have for showing their works? Since the Nazis tightly controlled the museum and gallery system as well as all other aspects of cultural production, those who criticized the regime were hounded, banned from making art, imprisoned or worse. How many of us could withstand such persecution? Ultimately it is a question of one’s own humanity, do you keep it by resisting or lose it by consenting to the most despicable outrages. That Gilles collaborated with a genocidal regime to save himself is his shame, that many of us today accept the unacceptable is ours.

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PLAGIARISM NOTICE:

Mr. Gunther Stephan (aka ” Kraftgenie”), who administers the so-called Weimar website, has plagiarized my original writings regarding German Expressionist artists. Without authorization, he lifted my original text on Barthel Gilles (written 2001), and used it without credit or link for his 2010 Barthel Gilles post. Stephan also stole verbatim, sections of my writings on Gert Wollheim (Stephan’s plagiarized version), and Curt Querner (plagiarized version). If my most recent article about Barthel Gilles and Otto Dix shows up on Stephan’s Weimar website, at least now you will know who the genuine author is.

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[1] Stephen P. Halbrook: “Nazism, Firearm Registration, and the Night of the Broken Glass.” (PDF file). Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, No. 3. (2009)

[2] Stephen P. Halbrook: “Nazi Firearms and the Disarming of the German Jews.” (PDF file). Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, No. 3. (2000)

[3] Bernard E. Harcourt: “Hitler and Gun Registration.”

[4] Sergiusz Michalski: “Neue Sachlichkeit: Malerei, Graphik und Photographie in Deutschland 1919-1933.”

[5] Sergiusz Michalski: “Neue Sachlichkeit: Malerei, Graphik und Photographie in Deutschland 1919-1933.”

[6] Susan Currell, Christina Cogdell: “Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency And American Mass Culture in the 1930s.“

"Bagram" - Mark Vallen. Oil on masonite. 2009. © 17.5 x 24 inches.

The Joint Task Force U.S. military authorities at Guantánamo Bay have announced employment opportunities at the famed Guantánamo Bay detention and interrogation camp located inside the luxurious Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility, commonly known as Gitmo (but called the “gulag of our times” by Amnesty International), is interested in contractors that can provide seminars in Art, Literacy, Science, Horticulture, Nutrition, and “life skills” to those 166 internees currently being held indefinitely in the camp. Most of the prisoners have not been charged with a crime or have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Since my web log is dedicated to art and social change, I will focus on the art teaching position now being offered at Guantánamo. The Detainee Library and Seminar Services Contract offers the following job description for the camp art teacher:

“The contractor shall develop, implement and teach an Art seminar. At a minimum, the Art seminar shall include water color painting, charcoal sketching, Arabic calligraphy, acrylic painting and pastel painting. Additional topics may be added with the [Contracting Officer Representative] COR written approval.”

While everyone, even President Obama himself, seems to have forgotten that Senator Obama campaigned for president in 2008 with his Platform In Support Of The Arts, I have not failed to recall that not a single promise in that document has been kept. If artists are given teaching jobs at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, that might come closest to fulfilling the Promote Cultural Diplomacy plank, which reads as follows:

“American artists, performers and thinkers – representing our values and ideals – can inspire people both at home and all over the world. Through efforts like that of the United States Information Agency, America’s cultural leaders were deployed around the world during the Cold War as artistic ambassadors and helped win the war of ideas by demonstrating to the world the promise of America.

Artists can be utilized again to help us win the war of ideas against Islamic extremism. Unfortunately, our resources for cultural diplomacy are at their lowest level in a decade. Barack Obama will work to reverse this trend and improve and expand public-private partnerships to expand cultural and arts exchanges throughout the world.”

While appreciating that many qualified female art instructors will be interested in the job, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo regrets to announce that “Due to cultural and religious considerations, seminars shall be given by a male instructor.”

As of this writing, 103 of the 166 detainees are on a protest hunger strike, and four have been hospitalized. 41 detainees are currently being force fed. Twice a day the 41 are strapped to a chair, a tube is run through the nose and into the stomach so that liquid nutritional supplements may be administered. Those applying for the artist position need not be concerned by this minor inconvenience, the Obama administration has stated that the forced feedings are humane and do not constitute torture. There will no doubt be sufficient time after the forced feedings to conduct art classes.

Only serious, qualified applicants need apply for the artist position. As the Obama administration is now conducting surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans on a daily basis by forcing telecommunications giant Verizon - through a secret court order - to turn over client records to the National Security Agency, weeding out frivolous applicants has become a breeze. Artists interested in the position can also rest at ease knowing that, without even applying for the job, background checks are expedited through the Obama administration’s PRISM program! The Top Secret operation directly taps into the servers of Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple, enabling spying upon nearly the entire U.S. population and completely eliminating the need to fill out lengthy federal job applicant forms - the government already knows everything about you!

Of course, these are hard economic times, and applying for a new job is serious business. Artists are weary of part-time, low-paying, short-term employment, and many art teachers have lost their jobs because of arts education being severely cut or eliminated from public schools in the U.S. But while the attractive pay scale for the Guantánamo art teacher position cannot be revealed for national security reasons, the Joint Task Force authorities at Guantánamo Bay can promise applicants a secure, long-term position.

Despite President Obama having made promises to close the prison camp at Guantánamo since early 2009, the United States Southern Command headed by Obama appointee Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly, has requested of Congress $49 million to build a new prison building at Guantánamo for special detainees, bringing the overall cost of renovating the prison camp to $195.7 million (the federal government’s appropriation to the National Endowment for the Arts in 2012 was $146 million). According to the New York Times, in making the case for the refurbishment of the camp, General Kelly told a Congressional hearing that the “renovations were necessary if the prison was to remain open for the indefinite future.” So, for art teachers looking for job security, Gitmo is it!

If you wish to apply for the artist position at Guantánamo Bay, please visit the Federal Business Opportunities website, and click on the May 28, 2013 “See Solicitation” link located in the right column. Good luck!

In June of 2009 I wrote The Death of Motor City, an essay on the decline of the U.S. economy and its devastating impact on Detroit, Michigan, an American city once at the very center of the nation’s industrial power but now in a state of near total collapse. My article had much to say about the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), and Detroit Industry, the astounding 27 panel fresco mural that Diego Rivera contributed to the museum’s courtyard.

Much has happened since writing that piece in 2009. As the so-called national “economic recovery” continues to remain a pipedream, social conditions only worsen in Detroit; the city teeters at the brink of bankruptcy. Of the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government cuts made or proposed, to me the most shocking is the city’s decision to take almost half of the municipality’s street lights out of service. Roughly speaking that is nearly 40,000 street lights being turned off - permanently. Turning off the street lights in economically depressed neighborhoods endangers the public safety and is an act of criminality. Welcome to America’s “Third World” future.

"Still Life, Three Skulls" - Paul Cézanne. Oil on canvas. 1900. In the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

In March of this year Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder appointed an “emergency financial manager” to help oversee and implement an austerity budget for the state.

That unelected manager, Mr. Kevyn Orr, has been given sweeping powers to reshape the city of Detroit in order to eliminate its $15 billion debt. In mid-May, Orr’s representatives told the Detroit Institute of Arts Director Graham Beal that the museum’s collection might be deemed a “city asset”, and sold off in order to pay creditors if the city goes bankrupt.

Founded in 1885, the Detroit Institute of Arts is one of America’s leading art museums. It houses over 100 galleries and has in its collection over 65,000 works of art. In its holdings are European masterworks by: Jan van Eyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Giovanni Bellini, Claude Monet, and Edgar Degas. The DIA also has an impressive collection of American artists: George Bellows, Alexander Calder, Mary Cassatt, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Winslow Homer, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frederic Remington, John Singer Sargent, John French Sloan, Andrew Wyeth, and of course, there are the Rivera murals. Wings in the museum hold comprehensive exhibits of Greek, Roman, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Islamic, Asian, and African art. I cannot overstate the importance of the Detroit Institute of Arts and its vast collection, both to the people of Detroit and to the people of the United States.

"Detroit Industry" - Diego Rivera. Fresco mural. 1932-1933. In the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Photo, DIA © 2013.

In its excellent article of May 23, DIA’s art collection could face sell-off to satisfy Detroit’s creditors, the Detroit Free Press described the enormity of the situation. “The possible forced sale of some of the DIA’s greatest treasures” the paper wrote, “is sending shock waves through the museum world”.

The paper went on to quote the president of the Washington DC based American Alliance of Museums, Ford Bell, who said that if there is a forced sale, “There would be hue and cry the likes of which you’ve never heard. The museum should be a rallying point for the rebirth of Detroit and not a source of funds.” I concur with Mr. Bell’s statement - though I think the time for loud public clamor is right now.

The Detroit Free Press asked art dealers in New York and Detroit to estimate the market value of just 38 of the masterworks in the museum’s holdings; the value was put at around $2.5 billion. Considering the number of celebrated artworks the museum could be forced to sell, that is no doubt a low estimate. Think of Rivera’s Detroit Industry fresco, regarded by the artist as his finest work, and like all of his murals, intentionally created as a public work. What is the “market value” of Rivera’s masterwork? How dare anyone even suggest that Rivera’s mural is not held in “public trust”, but instead is nothing more than an “asset” to be placed in private hands. A great number of artworks in the DIA collection were private donations meant as a gift to the public. What really is at issue here is the danger of the nation’s cultural heritage being privatized. What happens to the Detroit Institute of Arts will soon happen to other museums across the U.S.

The crisis faced by the City of Detroit and the Detroit Institute of Arts should be put in a wider social context. President Obama’s defense budget for Fiscal Year 2014 is $526.6 billion, but as Slate published in its article, Line Item Warfare “(….) this leaves out an estimated $88 billion for overseas military operations (mainly in Afghanistan), $17 billion for nuclear-weapons programs in the Department of Energy, and $7 billion for defense-related programs in other federal agencies—for an actual total of about $638 billion.” God forbid that money be allocated to bail out American cities like Detroit.

"Self Portrait" - Vincent van Gogh. Oil on board, mounted to wood panel. 1887. In the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Photo, Detroit Institute of Arts © 2013.

Then there is the April 2013 report that for more than a decade the CIA delivered tens of millions of dollars carried in “suitcases, backpacks, and plastic shopping bags” to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. Referred to as “ghost money”, the piles of cash were delivered to Karzai “every month or so”.

The total sum of money gifted to Karzai so far is a secret, but the funds were ostensibly meant to “buy influence” from one of the most corrupt leaders in the world today. Reuters and the New York Times reported that the bags of cash “fuelled corruption and empowered warlords”. No doubt vast amounts of that money fell into the hands of the Taliban, went to the heroin trade, and feathered the nests and foreign bank accounts of Karzai’s crooked relatives and venal cronies.

On May 6, 2013, CNN reported that Karzai held a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he thanked the CIA for the deliveries of cash, and stated that the CIA “promised that they will continue”. Karzai also noted that “This is the choice of the American government”. To state the obvious for those who missed it, while the surreptitious deliveries of U.S. dollars began during the Bush years, President Obama has clearly approved of and extended them. In point of fact, for over four years now Obama has been shoveling “ghost money” at Karzai. In other words, the U.S. government can see to it that tax dollars fill the pockets of a sock puppet like the loathsome Karzai, but it cannot - or will not - help prevent the Detroit Institute of Arts from having to sell off its collection of masterpieces so that the city of Detroit can pay its creditors.

Conversely, on March 11, 2013, the Secretary of the Interior and the Director of the National Park Service declared The Epic of American Civilization mural series painted by famed Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco in the Baker Library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire - to be a “national historic landmark“. Painted between 1932 and 1934, the murals depict the march of humanity in the Americas from a primitive past to an uncertain future offered by industrialization, science, and technology. Dartmouth College commissioned a film that would tell the story of Orozco’s mural. The resulting 22 minute film made by Robert Canton in 1961 reveals just some of the intensity of the masterwork.

Orozco intoned that his mural was significant because it was “an American idea developed into American forms, American feeling, and as a consequence into an American style.” That is an apt philosophical description of the artist’s fresco painting, but it also provides a fitting descriptive account of the Detroit Institute of Arts and the role it plays in U.S. society. My expressing praise over Orozco’s The Epic of American Civilization mural being given national historic landmark status, is tempered, no - frustrated, by the callous indifference shown the DIA collection under threat of seizure and privatization. What President Obama offers as a national arts policy is nothing short of a disgrace.

“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