My humble holiday offering to the world… a brilliant satiric radio play from American comedian Stan Freberg. While his Green Chri$tma$ was produced in 1958, it is perhaps more pertinent today than ever before. Freberg’s scathing indictment of capitalism run amok during the Christmas season was promptly banned by commercial radio and attacked by advertisers and advertising trade magazines; an editorial in the Los Angeles Times wrote a condemnation of Freberg’s musical production. Green Chri$tma$ received virtually no radio airplay in the United States until around 1983, and the work still remains largely unknown to the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Ah, 2009, when the bold slogans of “Hope” and “Change” morphed into sighs of “Disappointment” and “Business as Usual.” Now is the time to cast away political illusions and resume the work of creating new realities! What better place to start than a “Year in Review” presentation?

On a brief personal note, I have been working on a large body of new paintings and drawings, most of which have not been shown to anyone, and if everything works out a major showing should be in the offing by mid 2010.

This past year two of my oil paintings were featured at the Bakersfield Museum of Art during the museum’s Dia de los Muertos exhibition (September-November). I also had successful showings of my works at the Chicana/Chicano Biennial at the MACLA gallery in San Jose, California (June-August); at the Brand Library Art Gallery & Art Center in Glendale, California, during the gallery’s Man’s Inhumanity to Man exhibit (April-May); and at Avenue 50 Studio’s 365 & Counting exhibit (November-December). Also of note, in June of this year my web log was re-launched in Wordpress, which has proved a boon to creativity.

I’d like to offer readers best wishes for the holiday season. I’ll resume my regular writing schedule come the new year.

(January 3) Waltz with Bashir - This was the very first post of the new year, a review of the brilliant animated film from Israel, Waltz with Bashir. “Based on Israeli director Ari Folman’s real life experiences as a soldier in the Israeli army when it invaded Lebanon in June ‘82, Waltz with Bashir is only the second animated feature film to be produced in Israeli cinematic history.” (January 10) A New WPA Arts Program? - During the first month of the Obama administration I contrasted the Depression era arts programs of the WPA to the present, posing the question; “Will the Obama administration offer even a substantially scaled-down WPA-like arts program for today, let alone provide any significant budget increases for already existing arts programs?”

(February 3) Charles White: Let The Light Enter - In praise of the great African American artist, Charles White (1918-1979). “What I always found so impressive about White was that he never abandoned his artistic vision in order to follow the dictates of what was fashionable. Despite the ascendancy and near total dominance of abstract art in the 1950s, followed by the successions of Pop, Minimalism, and all the vacuities of Postmodernism - White remained true to his style of figurative social realism.” (February 11) My Take on Things - My dialog with an art student from Western Kentucky University, and the subject of “Art as Activism.” (February 17) Spencer Jon Helfen: California Modernist Painting - My review of an important exhibition of American Modernist paintings at Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts in Beverly Hills, California. The review focuses on two giants of the 1930s California Modernist movement, Victor Arnautoff and Francis De Erdely. (February 23) Edward Biberman Revisited - Now almost forgotten save for aficionados of the California Modernist school, Biberman was the subject of a fascinating retrospective at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park.

(March 3) Zombie Banks, Art Museums, & War - Wall Street crashes, Obama bails out the banks, museums close while arts organizations layoff 10% of their work force, all the while war funding increases. (March 31) Man’s Inhumanity to Man - I exhibited a suite of four black and white drawings at the Brand Library Art Gallery & Art Center in Glendale, California, part of a group show that examined human rights violations from the 1915 Armenian genocide to the present.

(June 12) The Death of Franklin Rosemont - My eulogy for the American surrealist artist, historian, author, poet, and activist, Franklin Rosemont. (June 22) The Death of Motor City - Reflections on the demise of Detroit and the great tradition of American social realism. (June 25) Artist’s Responses to Homelessness - My review of Hobos To Street People: Artist’s Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present - a traveling group exhibit on the subject of homelessness.

(July 5) Mexican Prints at University of Notre Dame - My review of the exhibit, Para la Gente: Art, Politics, and Cultural Identity of the Taller de Gráfica, with a special focus on the Mexican artists of the 1930s Popular Graphic Arts Workshop. (July 14) Art Hate Week! - For purposes of giving UK bourgeois art institutions “a necessary kicking.”

(September 2) Guayasamín: Rage & Redemption - My in-depth examination of Latin American master, Oswaldo Guayasamín, and his retrospective at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California.

(November 25) The Mona Lisa Curse - My review of The Mona Lisa Curse, a documentary film by art critic Robert Hughes that offers a devastating critique of contemporary art and it’s over commercialization.

(December 1) LBJ, Obama & Afghanistan - In this article I announce the publication of “Hey, Hey, LBJ…“, a web exhibition I curated on the subject of posters from the 1960s that protested the Vietnam war and the policies of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. My article was published the day President Obama announced he was sending an additional 30,000 combat troops to Afghanistan.

Longtime readers of my Art For A Change web log will notice a dynamic new look and feel to this site. Having published AFC since 2004, I felt the need for a more sophisticated platform that would give me complete control over content management as well as the opportunity for creative expansion. Therefore, I have migrated AFC from the Blogger platform to that of Wordpress. The relocation and reconfiguration of this site would not have been possible without the professional assistance of Mr. Gordon Lake - Wordpress master and video producer extraordinaire. I encourage those in need of qualified service regarding the construction of Wordpress sites to contact Lake. There are still modifications forthcoming on this site, and as I obtain a better understanding of Wordpress you will no doubt see even more sweeping transformations. For now, my long hiatus from writing ceases – expect a flurry of articles.

I exhibited a suite of four black and white drawings at Man’s Inhumanity to Man: Journey out of Darkness, an exhibition that took place at the Brand Library Art Gallery & Art Center in Glendale, California, from April to May, 2009. Forty four artists participated in the group show, which examined human rights violations that have occurred around the globe - the 1915 Armenian genocide, the Jewish Holocaust, repression in Central America, current atrocities in Darfur, and more.

During the 1980s I created a number of artworks that depicted civilians caught up in the wars that swept the Central American nations of Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Hundreds of thousands of people were tortured, maimed or killed during that bloody decade, and many more escaped the carnage for safety and asylum in the United States. The very face of Los Angeles was changed by the enormous influx of war refugees. The four drawings I presented at the Brand Library Gallery represent just a small portion of my body of work from that period.

As is often the case with history, momentous events reverberate through time. Echoes of Central America’s recent past continue to have resonance today. In the aftermath of the region’s wars a number of important disclosures have come to light. For instance, in March of this year The National Security Archives located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., published newly declassified documents from the U.S. State Department. The Associated Press reported that the documents confirmed “The U.S. government knew that top Guatemalan officials it supported with arms and cash were behind the disappearance of thousands of people during a 36-year civil war.”

Also in March, Reuters reported that “Guatemala’s biggest mass grave may give up its secrets this year when bodies from a massacre during the 1960-1996 civil war are exhumed after decades of mystery. Around 1,000 bodies in a mass grave at the La Verbena cemetery are thought to be the victims of extra judicial killings by the army and police during some of the most violent years of the conflict.”

Sometimes facts can be hidden or obscured for many decades, if they come to light at all. But no matter the circumstances, certain artists will always document situations ignored and left unseen by mainstream society - that in part is the power of art.

I spoke at the Brand Gallery on Saturday, April 18, as part of an artist’s public forum, the roundtable including artists Poli Marichal, Arpine Shakhbandaryan, Sophia Gasparian, Lark, and Hessam Abrishami. Man’s Inhumanity to Man ran at the Brand Library Gallery, from April 4, 2009, to May 8, 2009. The gallery is located at 1601 West Mountain Street, Glendale, California 91201-1200. (Click here for a map) Hours: Tue/Thu 12 - 8 p.m.; Wed 12 - 6 p.m.; Fri/Sat 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

View a large image of the artwork - Meanwhile in Guatemala
View a large image of the artwork - We Are Afraid
View a large image of the artwork - Enough
Related artwork - We’re Making a Killing in Central America

On March 16, 2009, Mauricio Funes won the presidency of El Salvador as the candidate of the former rebel guerrilla army, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The electoral victory is a momentous event for El Salvador, representing the culmination of a long and often exceedingly gruesome struggle to shape the nation into a functioning democratic society - yet, there is still a long way to go; the bitter wounds of a fratricidal war are just now beginning to heal.

I have not, over the decades, been a dispassionate observer of El Salvador’s people and their tortured steps towards emancipation. I feel a blood kinship with them. In the 1980s the war in El Salvador was headline news in the United States, and its savagery brought tears to the eyes of anyone who bothered to pay attention to the affairs of the tiny Central American nation and its long suffering people. My own life was altered in 1979 when I began to come into contact with those Salvadoran refugees who were fleeing their war torn homeland for the safety of Los Angeles.

The horrific war stories from El Salvador that shaped and influenced a variety of responses from the American public were overwhelming and unfortunately in great abundance, and I personally heard many harrowing tales from the mouths of refugees in Los Angeles. While it is beyond the scope of this web log to recount the intricacies of Salvadoran history and politics, there are some news stories that simply can not be ignored or brushed aside - even until this day.

El Salvador’s brutal civil war started in 1980, continued for 12 years, and took the lives of some 75,000 Salvadorans. Paramilitary right-wing death squads terrorized the nation - kidnapping, torturing, and murdering untold thousands. In February 1977, Oscar Arnulfo Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, and during his archbishopric the Church came under direct military persecution for administering to the nation’s poor campesinos. From 1977 to 1979, six Catholic priests were assassinated by right-wing death squads. In March of 1980 Romero himself was gunned down by a death squad assassin while giving mass. The day before he had called upon government troops to stop carrying out repression and human rights violations against the Salvadoran people. Some eight months later three American nuns and a lay missionary visiting the country were kidnapped, raped, and murdered by the Salvadoran army, who suspected the nuns of being guerrilla sympathizers.

Profoundly moved by these heartrending stories I created a number of artworks in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, documenting the war and its impact upon the people of El Salvador. It is no exaggeration for me to say that the conflagration in El Salvador, indeed, the wars that raged all across Central America during that decade, were a major focus for a great number of American artists. From New York City to Los Angeles, artists organized exhibitions and auctions with proceeds going to Central American refugee organizations. Artists tirelessly produced posters and flyers calling for an end to the war, and more than a few big name artists contributed works or statements to the cause of peace and justice in the region.

Two years after El Salvador’s civil war ended in 1992, I would create my drawing, El Salvador Presente, a visual summation of my attitude towards that Central American nation’s long conflict. “Presente” (Present), can be a word called out after the name of someone deceased is mentioned, it is a way of acknowledging that the person’s spirit is still with us. My drawing carries a reference to the slain Archbishop, whose name is seen emblazoned on a cross carried by the demonstrators I depicted. In 1994 my drawing was published as a front cover for the independent political journal, CrossRoads, along with the following statement from me:

“Over the years I have learned many invaluable lessons from the Salvadoran people - lessons concerning what it means to love and sacrifice for a community, about the indispensability of culture in that struggle, lessons regarding faith and irrepressible human spirit. This work expresses the gratitude and indebtedness I feel for receiving these gifts.”

Without a doubt the war in El Salvador changed the face of America, some 2 million Salvadoreños now live in the U.S., with most of them calling L.A. home. It may appear that my drawing portrays a scene from a Salvadoran city like Chalatenango, Soyapango, or Zacatecoluca, but in actuality all of my models were Salvadoreños found on the streets of Los Angeles. The two Americas are inextricably bound together, and the ideas I expressed in my ‘94 statement seem more relevant than ever. El Salvador has entered an entire new phase in its search for social justice and equality - we have all crossed that threshold together.

[ I was recently interviewed by Ms. Emily Wilcox, an art student at Western Kentucky University, as part of her undergraduate thesis research project conducted on the subject of "Art as Activism." The results of our dialogue are a reasonable glimpse into my take on things, so I am publishing the interview here with the kind permission of Ms. Wilcox. ]

Q: How do you gauge whether an artwork is successful, in terms of social impact?

A: Making such an assessment is easier said than done. Like science, art is concerned with the truths of our existence, but it strives at discovering and making known these facts in a wholly different manner than that of scientific research and analysis. It is easy to quantify the successes and social impact of outstanding scientific work, but the achievements of art are much more difficult to evaluate. I would say that at the very least, a successful artwork reveals something profound about human experience. Determining an artwork’s social impact is altogether another matter. Art slowly performs its work upon individuals, subtlety boring its way into the psyche, quietly touching the human heart and stirring the intellect. It lays open what can’t be measured or held and makes visible the invisible. The broad social influences of an artwork are usually not immediate, but are felt over time.

If on the other hand we are discussing advertising or propaganda, which are actually quite similar to one another, then calculating the effectiveness of a winning campaign is really quite a simple thing. Did the message reach the chosen demographic and did the target audience respond by behaving in the desired manner? But as I have stated - that is not how the higher arts function.

Q: What, in your view, is the strength of figurative realism when it comes to making a social statement?

A: Figurative realism conveys intent or feeling in an immediate, straightforward manner, communicating directly with the viewer, which is always of paramount importance to artists interested in conveying meaning to a mass audience. However, figurative art does not necessarily go hand in hand with meaningful content; undemanding figuration is not enough. “Realism”, as I understand the word, is not just a specific aesthetic, but a way of examining, analyzing, and making comment upon certain objective conditions found in our world. For that reason, a non-figurative artwork can in actual fact successfully express profound social ideas - if created by an extremely thoughtful and skilled artist.

That aside, I would argue that artists have always been involved, consciously or not, in the making of social statements, simply because art throughout the ages has been on the whole a social expression.

The earliest surviving panel paintings from ancient Greece, the Pitsa panels, were created around 540 BC by an anonymous artist who painted realistic figures in mineral pigments on stucco covered wood tablets. The paintings depicted the religious rituals that were widely practiced throughout Greece at the time. Because the artist painted a vision of a social construct, a representation of society as it was believed it should have been - it is impossible to see these paintings as anything less than social statement. Similarly, the Egyptians were creating incredibly realistic portrait paintings starting in the 1st century BC. The paintings were funerary death masks that were affixed to the mummies of those belonging to the upper class. Therefore, it is hard not to view the paintings as declarations pertaining to the legitimacy and supremacy of the Egyptian ruling class, i.e., art as social statement.

Q: Has anyone ever accused your work of being propaganda? If so, what is/was your response?

A: The English writer George Orwell once said that “All art is propaganda”, but he also clarified his statement by adding “on the other hand, not all propaganda is art.”

The accusation of being a propagandist has not been leveled at me personally, though the dominant view both inside and outside of the elite art world is that artists who deal with social topics are “political” artists, whereas artists who ignore social realities are deemed to have somehow risen above politics. That type of thinking is fallacious. I believe the term “political art” to be a pejorative, not unlike the label “propaganda.” The art of David Hockney or Damien Hirst is every bit as political as my own, but since their works essentially represent the status quo, they are thought of as apolitical artists.

An artwork commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici of Renaissance Florence demonstrated and enhanced his power and authority, making the art part of a political process. The same type of political undertaking is engaged in when the modern day equivalent to a Medici purchases a multi-million dollar artwork or finances a new wing at a museum. When I maintain that all art is political, I am not referring to the content of the art as much as I am the social relationships it is a party to. There are innumerable examples of how art is politicized by social construct, and it is essential to understand this.

Q: Your blog “Art for a Change” is unique because of its focus on socially conscious and transformative art, something that’s often not explicitly covered in news media or academia. What motivated you to start blogging about that topic?

A: I started my web log because I wanted people to think about art and politics in new ways. The catch-phrase “Art for a Change” was a response to an art world scandalously self-absorbed and detached from reality, a rejoinder that declared, “let’s have some art, for a change!” But the name also had an overt political meaning that was compatible with a web log given to examining the intersection between art and politics.

Q: You say that art “points the way to a world at last inhabitable.” At the same time, so much of politically or socially charged art – both your own work and the work of others currently and historically – involves depicting the despairs and tragedies of injustice. How can artists strike a balance between spotlighting the problems and creating a vision of the future?

A: To say that art points the way to a world at last inhabitable, is not to refer to this or that type of art, nor is it sanctioning one set of aesthetics over another. What it means is that the very act of making art, of being an artist, of participating in and appreciating art - can open the door to a very different kind of society. Plainly that is not enough, as history gives ample evidence of art being used to either liberate or dull the mind, so I am obviously referring to art that is unfettered by market demands and unleashed from the dictates of the politically powerful.

Art is intellectual work of the highest order, but it also has much to do with comprehending and moving the human soul, of plumbing those depths and finding what is real and valuable. Art can not only connect us with history, community, the world, ourselves, it gives us the power to dream and to imagine the impossible. In that sense it represents something that cannot have a price tag put upon it - that is the true subversive nature of art.

Concerning an artist’s use of “despairing” imagery in order to make a point about the state of society or of some injustice in the world. Visual representations of the horrific outrages humans have perpetrated against each other have always been part of art’s vocabulary, and I think it is a perfectly acceptable way of trying to appeal to a viewer’s better nature. When art brings attention to something intolerable about society, it could be said that people first react by recognizing their part in that society, then feel shame for their direct or indirect responsibility in the grievance, and finally - are spurred to seek a corrective to the wrongdoing. That is certainly one way of looking at the matter.

However, late capitalism in the 21st century has given rise to art where humanity is relentlessly portrayed as base, venal, empty, and ugly in every respect - an aesthetic that is very much in vogue at present. But when such art goes untempered by images that speak of the decency, kindness, and solidarity the human race is capable of; an entirely false picture is painted of humanity - one that actually mirrors the system itself.

Q: Is there any advice you’d like to give to artists who want to make socially relevant and transformative work?

A: If artists want to make socially relevant work, then they need to be socially relevant. It is necessary to forsake the studio in favor of the streets. Parenthetically, I do not mean trying to become the next graffiti or street art star. I am referring to becoming immersed in one’s own community and learning about the lives of real people - as well as the commotion and turbulence of the world at large. Profound social engagement in art is not something to be conjured up on a whim by those privileged with an art school degree, it comes as a result of life experience and a serious understanding of the social forces that make up and drive society.

It took Israeli director Ari Folman four years to create Waltz with Bashir, an unusual autobiographical animated film now in limited engagement across the U.S. that warns of the nightmares that follow in the wake of war. The movie opens with an unsettling vision, a pack of rabid dogs - twenty six to be exact, racing along wet streets under yellowy skies, frothing at the mouth and evidently looking for something to kill. Lushly animated in clashing hues of cobalt and ochre, the apparition is a dream suffered by Boaz Rein Buskila, an Israeli army veteran of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

In the follow-up scene Boaz tells his close friend Ari Folman about the ominous dream and its meaning, it was actually a memory of sorts. During the war on Lebanon, as part of an Israeli infantry unit sent under cover of darkness into Palestinian villages to snatch suspects, Boaz was required to shoot the village dogs with a silenced sniper rifle to prevent their barking and waking the town’s occupants. He remembered each dog - all twenty six of them, their size and shape, how they whimpered when shot, how they died. Now the slaughtered dogs were back, and they were pursuing Boaz in his sleep. He asked his friend Ari if he also had nightmares about his service in Lebanon, but Folman could not remember anything at all about the war, he had no dreams or recollections - he was absolutely blank. Folman’s quest for his lost memories began at that moment, and the rest of the film recounts his struggle to dredge up that life history.

Based on Folman’s real life experiences as a soldier in the Israeli army when it invaded Lebanon in June ‘82, Waltz with Bashir is only the second animated feature film to be produced in Israeli cinematic history - the first was made in 1961. Folman did not use rotoscope techniques in producing his film, rather the animation, directed by Yoni Goodman, was achieved through a combination of Flash and 3-D software with classic hand drawn animation. The feature had a budget of $1.7 million and its entire animation crew was composed of ten individuals.

By contrast, Pixar’s Finding Nemo had a budget of $150 million and a technical crew of over forty animators. Most people have good reason to regard animation as nothing more than kid stuff, but Folman has given us a profoundly serious and complicated film for thinking adults. Waltz with Bashir is not lacking in any respect, in fact it is a devastatingly effective look at the folly and hubris of war. Watching the movie’s online trailer gives evidence of just how powerful Folman’s animated feature is. At a press conference that took place at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where the film premiered, Folman said;

“The basic statement of the film and the understanding of the film is prosaic: wars are useless, completely useless, any war. There are a lot of anti-war movies, but in the eyes of a teenager, the anti-war films miss their goal completely, sometimes you just don’t get it right. Because it is animated, I hope that a sixteen year old boy watching ‘Waltz With Bashir‘ in Israel will say, ‘I don’t want to take any part in this war again.’”

A strangely beautiful sequence from the film gave the movie its name; an Israeli soldier is shown “waltzing” with his machine gun while under fire on a bomb blasted Beirut boulevard - that is to say, he was wildly firing at everything in sight. The scene takes place against a backdrop of street posters extolling Bashir Gemayel - the leader of the Lebanese right-wing Christian Phalangist party. But the film’s title is more than just a metaphor for the insanity and brutality of war. Gemayel was politically aligned with Israel and fanatical about expelling the Palestinians from Lebanon. When Gemayel was assassinated by unknown assailants, Phalangist militia men attacked the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians while the Israeli army looked on. As a 19-year-old soldier, Folman was stationed on the outskirts of Sabra, firing flairs to illuminate the camp at night. He became so racked with guilt over his actions that he blocked his entire wartime experience from memory.

In the finale of Waltz With Bashir, all of Folman’s wartime memories come flooding back to him, as the animation dissolves into truly shocking live-action archival footage showing the aftermath of the killing spree at Sabra and Shatila. The ending is a hammer blow of pure journalistic force. Reuters quoted the director at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, commenting on the final scene;

“I didn’t want you as the audience to go out of the theater after watching ‘Waltz With Bashir‘ and think, yes, this is a cool animation film’. These things happened … thousands of people were killed, kids were killed, women were killed, old people were killed. In order to put the whole film into proportion, those 50 seconds were essential to me.”

Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, dubbed “Operation Peace for the Galilee”, was launched by Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Ostensibly meant to destroy the PLO, the operation killed untold thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, took the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers, and left Lebanon in ruins. Ultimately the war culminated in the unspeakable massacre of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The war’s initial onslaught was followed by an 18-year-long military occupation, but Israel’s military superiority brought it no closer to peace and security; as evidenced by the current fighting in the Gaza strip - the most densely populated area on earth and arguably the largest prison camp in the world.

Waltz with Bashir is filled with disturbing imagery that is both surrealistic and hallucinogenic. One of my favorite moments in the film is of Folman remembering being on leave from the Lebanese front. That particular scene involves the young soldier back home in Israel, feeling displaced and uncomfortable that everyone was “living normally”, as if a war was not being fought. Folman listlessly shuffles on a bustling street as crowds blur by him, he becomes immobilized in front of a shop window displaying television sets - all of which are showing a speech by prime minister Begin. The channel is abruptly switched and the TV sets are suddenly broadcasting a performance by John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols band, Public Image Ltd (Pil) - the grating din being the group’s anti-melody, This Is Not A Love Song.

The unexpected appearance of Pil on that bank of televisions rang true for me (even though the Pil song was released a year after the ‘82 war), and that scene set off an avalanche of personal memories. Widely interpreted as scathing mockery aimed against the music industry’s endless production of saccharine romance tunes, This Is Not A Love Song took on a whole new meaning in Waltz with Bashir. The composition became a poison letter delivered to our modern consumer society - especially as the piece of music worked its way through the war addled mind of a young soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

In November of 1982 Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin was invited to speak at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, and in response the “Committee to Oppose the Begin Visit” called for a peaceful demonstration to protest the invasion of Lebanon. At the time a handful of friends and I were active participants in L.A.’s punk rock movement, and we decided to attend the rally to express our outrage over the mass murder at Sabra and Shatila. Thousands showed up at the demonstration, and somehow two of my punk friends and I sailed through the lines of the LAPD riot squad and cordons of Secret Service agents to actually enter the Bonaventure - which was no small feat considering we were the ugliest gang of social deviants you could ever imagine.

Sporting spiky colored hair, ripped and torn bondage clothes covered with hand painted slogans, combat boots, leather jackets, peace buttons, and Arab kaffiya scarves; we miraculously made our way to the top floor of the hotel totally unimpeded by security and stood outside of the main ballroom for a few moments to greet delegates with sneers and generally rude buffoonery. I recall delegates reacting to us as if we were lepers. We soon tired of our antics and left the premises to rejoin the antiwar rabble in the streets, astonished that we had not been arrested. Hundreds of high-powered supporters of Israel were in that ballroom, including the Governor of the State of California, Jerry Brown, and L.A.’s Mayor, Tom Bradley. As fate would have it Begin’s scheduled speech was cancelled due to the death of his wife, but Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Moshe Arens, filled in for the grieving prime minister.

The bloodbath at Sabra and Shatila shocked the international community, and my response to the cataclysm was to create a silkscreen print in 1983 that memorialized the massacres. Based upon a pencil drawing I made in the weeks immediately following the atrocities, my artwork paid homage to the innocents who lost their lives in those wretched camps. I have long felt that my artistic gesture was misconstrued by some, but after viewing Ari Folman’s astonishing film, I feel vindicated and in good company.

In the end an Israeli government commission found the Israeli Defense Forces “indirectly responsible” for the mass executions. Israel’s Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, was found to bear “personal responsibility” for “not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed.” Sharon resigned his Defense Minister position but later became the Prime Minister of Israel in 2001.

A human tragedy of momentous proportions is again unfolding, this time in the Israel-blockaded Gaza strip. It is a catastrophe that may develop into a wider war if not a regional conflagration. At the time of this writing at least 435 Palestinians have been killed and an estimated 2,000 injured in the massive Israeli bombings of Gaza. Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have been killed by rockets launched into Israel by Hamas militants. The Israeli army launched a ground invasion into Gaza late January 3, using tanks and infantry, a move that will undoubtedly cause civilian casualties to skyrocket.

Without a doubt, George W. Bush has given the Israelis a green light for military action, but supporters of President Barack Obama still expect him, as the candidate of “Hope and Change”, to break his silence and make a statement against the Israeli mauling of the Palestinians. Despite his vociferous rhetoric about “winning in Afghanistan” and enthusiastically lobbying for a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, Mr. Obama claims there “can only be one president at a time” as a justification for his remaining mute. As we enter the second week of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Obama remains silent on the matter - evidently he has decided to Waltz with Bashir.

[ As a side note: On Saturday, Jan. 10, 2009, at 1:00 pm, the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood will present a free public discussion with Ari Folman as well as the directors of the four other foreign language films nominated for this year’s Golden Globes. Running up to this, from January 7-10, the films up for nomination will screen at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. Waltz With Bashir is also currently screening at L.A.’s Laemmle Theatres. ]

The waning days of 2008 represent more than just a tumultuous year coming to an end, they bring closure to decades of extreme political reaction and backwardness, at least in the U.S. - or so it appears. Whether or not we are on the threshold of a new progressive era depends upon people in their tens of millions becoming actively engaged in visualizing and building a different type of society, and that is not simply a matter of political action. Art has an enormous role to play in such a process as it allows us to dream and imagine, as well as to reveal hidden truths and possibilities. What is more, art encourages critical thinking, it provokes, challenges, and dares one to visualize the impossible - a mindset we are sorely in need of today.

This year I have written a number of articles on art and artists both past and present, I offer a selection of these writings here as a “Year in Review” presentation:

(January 15) The Los Angeles Art Students League - Seed of Modernism at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. An important show on the roots of modernism in L.A. during the years 1906-1953.

(February 20) The Unveiling of Robert Scull - When money became “an overbearing influence on contemporary art.” (Feb. 29) Apostles of Ugliness: 100 Years Later - The centennial of America’s very first avant-garde art movement, the so-called Ashcan School.

(March 19) Artists Against the War: A Review - To mark the 5th anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the New York Society of Illustrators mounted an exhibit titled Artists Against The War. I wrote of review of the show for the Foreign Policy in Focus website.

(April 19) The Newspeak Newseum - The latest cultural institution to be added to the U.S. capital; “The Newseum provides the clearest look yet of a cultural institution in the service of big business.” (April 26) Edward Hopper: A Retrospective - “As a youngster Hopper’s paintings provided me with an entry point into the art of the Great Depression period.”

(May 1) May 68: Posters from the Paris Rebellion - “Socially conscious graphics that to this day have not been outdone in terms of political sophistication, simplicity, and effectiveness.” (May 14) Robert Rauschenberg 1925-2008 - Eulogy for the iconoclastic Pop artist. (May 24) The Harvey Milk Public Monument - “The memorial bronze of Harvey Milk placed in San Francisco’s City Hall should be a constant reminder of what has yet to be achieved.”

(June 13) The Cologne Progressives - “A bloc of artists that represented the radical outer fringe of the Expressionist movement of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933).”

(July 4) The Orientalists: Then and Now - The Lure of the East, British Orientalist Painting at the Tate Britain. Questioning the West’s accepted wisdom regarding the Islamic world.

(September 13) War & Empire/Art of Democracy in San Francisco - “A new and vibrant social engagement in American art.” (Sept. 18) An Art World Mesmerized by Bling - “As the world burns and international financial institutions fall like so many dominoes, impulsive oligarchs and imprudent investment bankers continue to put their money into the overheated contemporary art ‘market’.”

(October 17) I wrote a review of the War & Empire exhibition for the Foreign Policy in Focus website.

(November 7) The Enduring Works of Goya - The Los Caprichos etchings and the continuing influence of the Spanish Master. (Nov. 2) Art and the Global Economic Meltdown - The “unavoidable political topic is on the lips of everyone in the art world these days.” (Nov. 21) L.A.’s MOCA in Meltdown - “MOCA’s dilemma is indicative of the crisis now rippling through the world of elite art institutions, a disaster that will only intensify as late capitalism careens into worldwide depression.”

(December 2) Josep Renau: Commitment and Culture - Celebrating the 100th birthday of the Spanish painter, poster designer, and muralist. (Dec. 4) Making a Killing in Central America - My 1989 drawing depicting two of the many thousands killed by death squads in Central America during the 1980s.

On Dec 19, 2008, the official portraits of U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush were unveiled at a ceremony that took place at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., where the paintings become part of the museum’s permanent collection. Artist Robert Anderson had the dubious honor of creating the likeness of the president, and artist Aleksander Titovets the task of painting the first lady. No shoes were thrown during the ceremony before some 500 people, but Mr. Bush did attempt a joke; “I suspect there would be a good sized crowd once the word got out about my hanging.” Indeed. The paintings go on public view beginning Dec 20, 2008, and I present Mr. Bush’s portrait here in my preferred manner of hanging.

I am proud to say that in the past excruciatingly long eight years I never yielded to the temptation of creating an artwork lambasting President Bush. Why? Because I am more interested in offering a systemic critique rather than one focused on individuals. Conversely, I do not believe in the cult of the personality, and I will not join those artists who opportunistically create flattering portraits of soon-to-be president, Barack Obama. It is my belief that art must never be the handmaiden to centers of power, it must always remain free and autonomous - that spirit permeates my work and drives this web log.

As a heterosexual man who believes in human rights for all, I am pleased to be able to announce a National Call to U.S. Artists for the upcoming juried exhibition: Being Gay: A Visual Dialogue Between Straight and/or LGBTQ Artists. Organized by the 2nd City Council Art Gallery and Performance Space in Long Beach, California, the exhibit is open to all artists living in the United States. The entry deadline is Sunday, January 18, 2009. Having served as juror for the gallery’s 2007 Day of the Dead art exhibit, I can personally attest to the gallery’s professionalism and high standards, and I encourage one and all to submit works to this most crucial exhibition. A complete and detailed prospectus for the show is available here. The Press Release for Being Gay: A Visual Dialogue, reads in part:

“The exhibition explores such topics (but is not limited to) faith and homosexuality, gay history, sense of community, effect on professional life or society, gay neighborhoods, fashion, homophobia, straight people in gay places, ageism in the gay community, gay role models, ordinary lives, coming out, gay icons or heroes, discrimination, homosexuality as an evolutionary puzzle, integrating into society, political issues, is tolerance enough?, marriage, PRIDE, engaging in gay rights issues across cultural and religious borders, feelings associated with being gay, regional differences, gay as a main identifier, gay friends or family members. Jurors: David Burns, Austin Young & Matias Viegener. Exhibition: March 7 to April 1, 2009.”

Aside from the Press Release quote cited in the above, the opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, though I expect anyone submitting work to the exhibit will have already pondered the controversies delineated in the following paragraphs. Being Gay: A Visual Dialogue, could not be a more timely or pertinent exhibit. In the elections of November 4, 2008, anti gay marriage ballot initiatives passed in California, Florida, and Arizona; while Arkansas passed a measure that bans same-sex couples from adopting children. Gay marriage was legal in California - that is, until a group of reactionaries and fundamentalist “Christian” zealots moved to change the state Constitution through the injurious Proposition 8 anti gay marriage ballot initiative. Up until election day 2008 some 18,000 same-sex couples were legally wedded in California. To protest the cruelty of first allowing gays to marry, then abruptly abrogating that right, I proudly marched in several of the massive gay rights protests staged in Los Angeles after the passage of Proposition 8 - I will gladly do so again.

One of the major backers of Proposition 8 was right-wing evangelical pastor, Rick Warren. During the campaign to pass the ballot initiative he told followers; “There are about two percent of Americans who are homosexual, gay, lesbian people. We should not let two percent of the population change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years. This is not even just a Christian issue, it is a humanitarian and human issue, that God created marriage for the purpose of family, love and procreation.” But Warren is far more than just an anti-gay fundamentalist bigot who equates same-sex marriage to pedophilia and bestiality. He compares abortion to the Holocaust, advocates the assassination of foreign leaders, opposes stem-cell research, supports the Iraq war, does not believe in evolution, and awarded George W. Bush an “international medal of peace.”

President-elect Barack Obama has asked Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Obama’s January 20th inauguration ceremony, and the gay and progressive community is justifiably furious.

Kevin Naff, editor of the gay newspaper Washington Blade, put the Warren pick in context when he wrote; “We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.” Joe Solomonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay civil rights organization in the US, wrote an open letter to President-elect Obama in which he stated; “we feel a deep level of disrespect when one of the architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.”

I agree with Human Rights Campaign when it respectfully asks Obama to rescind his decision regarding Warren. Obama defended Warren by saying; “part of the magic of this country is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated”, words that Obama did not use in defense of his own pastor of 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. If there is another reason for Obama to choose Warren aside from a desire to pander to the religious right - I express regret at not being able to appreciate it. Including the backward-looking pastor in the inauguration ceremony is hardly a positive gesture from someone elected on a platform of “hope” and “change.”

Every U.S. artist willing to participate in Being Gay: A Visual Dialogue - creative individuals seeking to make aesthetic statements that address the political and cultural realities of today’s gay and lesbian citizenry - should do so with deep feelings of human solidarity and without illusions. Now that would be an honest expression of real hope and change.

In 1989 I created a pencil drawing titled We’re Making A Killing In Central America. The image depicts two of the many thousands of innocent civilians who were tortured and murdered in Central America during the bloody conflicts of the 1980s. To “make a killing” is an English idiom that means - to do something resulting in substantial financial success - and while hundreds of thousands of Central Americans perished during the counterinsurgency wars of the ’80s, there were those who profited handsomely from the loss of life.

The Refuge Media Project is an organization of filmmakers, health educators, and human rights activists who have been campaigning against state sponsored torture. Project Director Ben Achtenberg asked that I contribute some of my original artworks to the Refuge Media Project website in order to strengthen “the community of those who are trying to find ways, through their own disparate professions and media, to take a stand against torture”. Finding the organization in perfect accordance with my own views regarding regimes that abuse human and civil rights, I have made available to them some of my works - including We’re Making A Killing In Central America. You can view these and other artworks at the Refuge Media Project’s online Image Gallery.

There was an upsurge of extra-judicial killings in Central America during the late 1970s, when government forces and right-wing death squads in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador began annihilating opposition groups and individuals by way of kidnapping and assassination. Civilians who were abducted became known as desaparecidos, or “disappeared people”, and once someone was seized they were rarely found alive again. To intimidate populations restive for social change, death squads tortured and murdered their victims, then dumped the mutilated bodies in public places. The killers took to leaving their prey in designated areas that widely became known as “body dumps”. If a relative, friend, or associate was missing, people went to search for them in such places. Untold thousands perished in this way, including union organizers, workers, students, teachers, and peasants.

While most of the victims of this slaughter remain nameless to us, there were high profile cases that stunned North Americans. In 1980 the Archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero, was murdered by a right-wing death squad on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass at a small chapel. Unbelievably, even Romero’s funeral, attended by some 250,000 mourners, was attacked by right-wing snipers who killed dozens of people. Some eight months later, three American Roman Catholic nuns and a young missionary were kidnapped, rapped, and shot dead at close range by members of the U.S. backed Salvadoran army - their bodies left in shallow graves.

My drawing was indirectly inspired by the November 16, 1989, murder of six Jesuit priests carried out by the Salvadoran army. The priests, which included the rector and vice rector of El Salvador’s esteemed Central American University, were taken from their beds in an early morning army raid on a home in the capital of San Salvador. They were brutally tortured and then shot in the head. The priest’s housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter were also viciously murdered by the soldiers.

I was so outraged by this bloody crime that I was moved to create my drawing that same year - the work’s title alluding to U.S. government complicity in arming, training, and financing the very soldiers responsible for slaughtering the innocents. But rather than depicting a well known case, I wanted to memorialize the anonymous masses who had fallen victim to the para-military death squads. In ‘89 I self-published my black & white artwork as a flyer which bore the artwork’s title as its headline, and I distributed 5,000 copies of the leaflet across the city of Los Angeles.

My drawing portrays a slain man and women laying side by side in a body dump, the grisly evidence of previous assassinations surrounding them. The man still wears the blindfold his tormentors tied over his eyes, his body bares knife wounds, his left hand has been chopped off, as has a finger from his right hand. The barefoot woman has a single bullet wound in her back. Were the two - friends, lovers, relatives? Did they know one another at all? Were they student intellectuals or peasant laborers? Were they among the first to die in the beginnings of the ’70s bloodletting, or were they some of the last to perish in the final convulsive acts of violence that took place in the early ’90s? We may never know the names of all the victims of state sponsored torture and murder in Central America - but we can work to assure that justice will at last find their killers.

On November 24, 2008, artist Frank Cieciorka (che-CHOR-ka) died from emphysema at the age of 69. Starting in the 1980s he began to be recognized for his watercolor paintings of northern California landscapes, but it would be one of his early graphic art designs that assured him a place in history.

The iconic clenched fist has long been a symbol of the international left, its usage going back at least until 1917. But the symbol was transformed and revitalized in 1965 by Cieciorka, whose rendition of the pictogram struck a cord with a new generation of activists involved in the civil rights and antiwar struggles.

A New Yorker, Cieciorka came to California in 1957 to attend the arts program at San Jose State College. Upon graduation in 1964 he became a volunteer in Freedom Summer, the major civil rights campaign launched in ‘64 to help African Americans register to vote in Mississippi. That same year the Ku Klux Klan kidnapped, tortured, and murdered three Freedom Summer volunteers - James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. From 1964-65 Cieciorka also served as a field secretary in Mississippi and Arkansas for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC - pronounced “snick”), one of the primary civil rights organizations of the day.

Cieciorka returned to the San Francisco Bay area in 1965, and created a woodcut print inspired by his experiences as a civil rights activist in the deep South. His image, simply titled Hand, made its way onto posters and flyers, but according to the artist, “It wasn’t until we made it into a button and tossed thousands of them into crowds at rallies and demonstrations that it really became popular”. I wore one of Cieciorka’s buttons as a sixteen-year-old, and I still regard his woodcut print as one of the most striking symbols to have come out of the turbulent 60s.

For more on the life and times of Frank Cieciorka, visit Lincoln Cushing’s Docs Populi.

Years ago I visited the breathtaking city of Venice, Italy, world-famous for its canals, gondolas, and Renaissance architecture. It is truly the most incomparably beautiful city on the face of the earth. During my visit I strolled through the remarkable Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square), taking in the splendors of the Doge’s Palace and the magnificent St Mark’s Basilica.

Inspiring painters from throughout the centuries, the natural light found in Venice is ethereal, unearthly. Bellini, Titian, and Giorgione made the “City of Light” their home. In actuality, oil painting on stretched canvas began in Venice at the start of the sixteenth century, and the city’s Vendecolori, those professionals who sold prepared pigments for oil painting since the 1490’s, attracted artists from all over Italy and beyond. Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, Michelangelo and many other masters came to visit “La Serinissima” - the most serene Republic of Venice.

But this article is not about the grandeur of Venice, it is unhappily about its degradation - and by extension, the decline of us all. Until just recently one could meander through the Piazza San Marco and feel as though you were walking back in time 500 years. Today however, the immediate thing that strikes you is the enormous commercial banner advertisement that hangs over the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana - the National Library of St Mark’s that faces the Doge’s Palace. It is the first time in history that public advertising has been allowed in the city, and there are other colossal advertisements being readied to despoil the beauty of Venice.

In an article titled Protest over advertising in St Mark’s Square, Venice, The Art Newspaper of London reports that advertising agencies “dealing in mega-advertising locations have realized they can exploit a recent change in the law” to put public space and building facades on sale to commercial advertisers. In other words, world cultural heritage is being sold off to the highest bidder so that banal, mass produced bobbles can be marketed to the masses. As confirmed by The Art Newspaper; “Currently the villain of a 007 movie looms out of a huge Swatch ad on the Piazzetta of San Marco while two Lancia cars drive over the façade of the Doge’s Palace and even the Bridge of Sighs carries a banner.”

The marvelous renaissance buildings of Venice being draped with inane commercial advertisements is an outrage and a cause for real alarm. It represents, not only an unrelenting dumbing-down of culture and an obfuscation of history, but a foretelling of the day when all public and private space everywhere will become nothing more than a platform for advertising. If the architectural wonders of Venice can be swathed in ads, then why not the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids of Giza, or the Taj Mahal? The world’s cultural heritage belongs to all of humankind, and it should be treasured and preserved, not turned over to a cabal of marketers and advertisers who have dollar signs in their eyes. It is time to take down those advertising banners in the Piazza San Marco - in fact, it is time to take them down the world over.

In Berkeley, California, the city known as the birthplace of the 1960s Free Speech Movement, an antiwar poster exhibition organized by the Art of Democracy project has been censored by a City of Berkeley-run arts venue.

The Art of Democracy poster exhibit was scheduled to go on display from Oct. 20 through Nov. 29, 2008, at the Addison Street Windows Gallery - a project of the Civic Arts Program and the Civic Arts Commission of the city of Berkeley. However, the show was never mounted because the gallery curator Carol Brighton, and the Civic Arts Coordinator Mary Ann Merker, deemed four of the posters objectionable, citing city guidelines that allegedly proscribe the depiction of guns in works of public art. According to the San Francisco Gate, “The city of Berkeley has no formal policy on what can be shown in its galleries”. The censored posters by Tony Bergquist, Anita Dillman, Doug Minkler, and Jos Sances - utilized depictions of weapons to convey their messages.

Gallery curator Carol Brighton told Art of Democracy organizer Art Hazelwood, that the four supposedly offending posters would have to be removed from the exhibit before the show could be presented to the public. However, the 40 participating artists in the show - rejecting the arbitrary censorship - decided they would only exhibit as a group. Having effectively shut-down the exhibit, Brighton quickly booked a pottery show as a substitute.

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), an artist’s rights watchdog group, wrote a letter to Berkeley City Mayor, Tom Bates, voicing disapproval over the censorship of the Art of Democracy exhibit (read the NCAC letter here - pdf format). Copies of the letter were also sent to all members of the Berkeley City Council, as well as to the curator of the Addison Gallery, Carol Brighton, and the Civic Arts Coordinator, Mary Ann Merker. In part the NCAC letter read:

“While we sympathize with the City’s desire for a world without guns or violence, the decision to put a blanket ban on all art including guns is not only unproductive, it threatens to silence important political speech. The recent incident involving the four Art of Democracy posters, which express strong views on US foreign policy, is a clear example of the type of serious political expression that the ban can suppress. To suppress political speech, which enjoys the highest constitutional protection, a government venue has to have significant interest - in security, public safety or the like.

“It is hard to see how the City can demonstrate such an interest given the nationwide presence of guns and weaponry in war memorials, murals, and film posters, just to enumerate what one can see in the street. In fact, one of Berkeley’s iconic murals, the People’s History of Telegraph Avenue, contains guns. In this context there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate justification for banning the representation of guns from a public gallery. Indeed, according to the organizers, no other venue among the fifty to host the Art of Democracy exhibition around the country has censored the show.

We urge the City of Berkeley to review its guidelines and uphold its proud tradition of free speech. We all want to see fewer guns and less violence in the world, but suppressing a discussion of violence just because it graphically refers to violence, would not accomplish that goal.”

In its article on the squelching of the Art of Democracy exhibit, the Berkeley Daily Planet quoted censored artist Jos Sances; “I think the city wants to control what kind of images are up on the window. I think it should reflect the people of the city and honestly, most people in Berkeley would not be offended by these images. The city is afraid of censorship and wants everything to be nice and sweet. Unfortunately art doesn’t work that way. Art is often dirty and tough.” Another of the exhibit’s censored artists, Doug Minkler, has been circulating the following open letter;

“City council, friends and press,

In February of 2008 Melanie Cervantes and I drafted a number of letters alerting the city that there was a serious problem involving arbitrary unnecessary curatorial censorship of the Addison street windows. Since that time I have learned that there have been others who have not been allowed to show their work in the Berkeley’s Addison Street Windows. The curator, Carol Brighton, and the Berkeley Art Commission’s decision to back her ban on military symbols in this public space was an unconstitutional act. To limit debate on this most central issue of our times - war - through an abolition of war objects is not legal.

The embedded journalist/embedded art commissioner model does not reflect the community of Berkeley nor the bay area. Our three months of meetings and letter writing trying to correct this policy accomplished little. No one to whom we wrote or spoke to at the city wanted to take on this censorship issue.

Today the community of Berkeley has again been denied an opportunity to view important work (the Art of Democracy exhibit) due to this absurd ban on artists who show military armaments in their work. This is like telling poets they can’t use the word ‘death’ in their poems because it might be unsettling to the children that read their poems. All poets that use the word ‘death’ are banned from exhibiting in the Addison Street Windows by order of the city of Berkeley. Context is everything.

I support the current attempt being launched by the Art of Democracy artists to have these precious windows freed from the current censorship policy. The 1st Amendment guarantees our free speech, but this guarantee means nothing if we do not enforce it. Please speak up.”

While the Addison Street Windows Gallery censored the Art of Democracy poster show, they did not succeed in stopping the exhibit - an alternative venue was promptly found. Opening Nov. 8, 2008 and running until November 30, 2008, the Pueblo Nuevo Gallery in Berkeley will be showing the vibrant - and completely uncensored - political posters from the Art of Democracy project. For more information on the City of Berkeley’s flirtation with arts censorship, view the Berkeley Has A Censorship Issue! page on the Art of Democracy website, where you can see the four censored posters, see photos from the Pueblo Nuevo opening, and read the original Press Release from the censored show at the Addison Street Windows Gallery.

Los Caprichos, the world-renown etchings by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), are being displayed at the Cal State Fullerton Art Gallery in Fullerton, California, from November 1, 2008 through December 12, 2008. The exhibit is actually the tenth stop in a traveling national museum tour that began in 2005 and is slated to continue until 2010.

Privately published by Goya in 1799, the eighty celebrated prints of Los Caprichos (the Caprices), provide a dark and phantasmagorical depiction of the artist’s homeland during the Spanish Inquisition. Said by Goya to be a criticism of “human errors and vices”, the Los Caprichos etching suite reads like a fevered dream, full as it is with demonic looking creatures, prostitutes, and goblins - in addition to corrupt clergymen and oligarchs. If the foibles Los Caprichos depicted over two centuries ago seem familiar to us today, it is because Goya captured the eternal truth about how social divisions, economic crises, superstitions and erroneous beliefs can lead to mass psychosis - a condition we suffer from acutely in these postmodern times.

In July of this year a university student in England writing a dissertation on Goya, contacted me by e-mail to ask if I would be willing to answer a number of questions regarding the artist, his legacy, and the enduring influence of his works. I responded favorably to the request by writing the following observations, which, since others have similarly made inquiries concerning my thoughts on Goya - I have decided to publish here in part:

Q: In what way has Goya influenced you in your artwork and your views on war?

A: Goya was, and continues to be, an influence in my life and work. I first became aware of him when I was a mere child. Flipping through an art book I discovered Goya’s painting, Saturn Devouring His Son. It was an image that simultaneously horrified and intrigued me. Not being a sophisticated reader at the time, I could only imagine what the painting was supposed to signify.

[ Saturno Devorando a su Hijo (Saturn Devouring His Son) - Francisco Goya. Oil mural transferred to canvas. Created between 1819 and 1823. One of the so-called "black" paintings the artist created directly on the walls of his home outside of Madrid. This macabre image was located in Goya’s dining room. Museo del Prado, Madrid.]

Later on I rediscovered Goya, stumbling upon his nightmarish Los Caprichos series of etchings. Of course I became infatuated with him, and by the time I entered my teens I was well aware of the master’s Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War) etchings. At fifteen I already knew that I had no choice but to be an artist, and at the same age I also became an activist against the Vietnam war. It was Goya’s remarkable works that helped convinced me to trod the path of social commentary in art - and I haven’t looked back since.

Q: Do you think that the Disasters of War etchings are impartial? Can you ever be impartial when using journalistic techniques to record disturbing images?

A: When it comes to opinions, I do not believe it is possible for anyone to be “impartial”. One must first ask the question, “where do opinions come from?”; and in today’s world of media management and manipulation, it is not difficult to conclude that popular views are manufactured. I do not know that things have ever been different, after all - the word “propaganda” is derived from Sacre Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the office of the Vatican established in 1622 to advance the faith. We currently live in a corporate media saturated environment where monopolies present “sound bite” news that informs, or rather, misinforms the general public, so I do not see how it is possible to talk about journalism as an objective or impartial force - if indeed it ever was one.

Goya’s Disasters of War series of etchings was most decidedly not “impartial”, but why would anyone think it necessary for it to have been so? In 1808 Napoleon invaded Spain with only one thing in mind - conquest. Before Goya created his etchings, should he have first stopped to consider the humanity of the French imperialists - endeavoring to present both sides of the conflict with his artwork? Perhaps the notion of impartiality or objectivity is overvalued. Would it not be beyond the limits of decency to demand that “both sides of the story” be told when reporting on the Nazi’s persecution of the Jews? One could offer an examination of Nazi atrocities, but anything other than a purely subjective denunciation would be unthinkable.

[ El Tres de Mayo de 1808 (The Third of May, 1808) - Francisco Goya. 1814. The artist’s depiction of French occupation soldiers executing Spanish civilians. The English art historian Kenneth Clark referred to this painting as "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention". Museo del Prado, Madrid. ]

Q: In my opinion, The Third of May works because Goya’s translation of the event supported the Spanish resistance movement against Napoleon’s army. Do you think that The Second of May is an inferior work of art because the civilians are armed?

A: Goya’s painting, The Third of May, is far easier for a contemporary audience to understand than is the companion piece, The Second of May. With the passing of time, only historians can decipher the particulars represented - and both paintings are heavy with historical import. However, The Third of May is an unmistakable depiction of political repression, making it an eternal image that plainly illustrates an atrocity committed by faceless soldiers against unarmed and defenseless prisoners. In that sense it is more accessible to a contemporary audience unfamiliar with the events portrayed.

[ El Dos de Mayo de 1808 (The Second of May, 1808) - Francisco Goya. 1814. The invasion of Spain by France in 1808 triggered an anti-colonial uprising amongst the Spanish citizenry. Goya painted the outbreak of the revolt in Madrid when the French army used Mamelukes (Mercenary Arab soldiers), to help repress the Spanish populace. Today the painting hangs alongside its companion piece, The Third of May, 1808, in Spain’s Museo del Prado.]

To a modern viewer ignorant of history, The Second of May appears to be nothing more than a vicious melee. However, in its day it was perhaps the more popular painting, and it certainly was well understood by viewers to be the depiction of Spanish patriots rising up against a cruel foreign invader. That the painting portrays armed Spanish patriots engaged in acts of violence does not make the work less important or effective, but one does need to know some history to fully appreciate the canvas.

Liberty Leading the People, painted by the French artist Eugene Delacroix in 1830, portrays an armed populace in the middle of a violent revolutionary upheaval. They follow Liberty, a bare-breasted women clutching a rifle and the tri-colored banner of the nation. A romantic representation of the French Revolution of 1830, the canvas has also become an iconic portrayal of the radical democratic spirit - and the portrayal of people in arms has not made it less so.

Q: Why do you think that Jake and Dinos Chapman “defaced” a set of the Disasters of War prints? They say that their version of the Disasters highlight the inadequacy of art as a protest against war.

A: The Chapmans modifying prints from the Disasters of War series was not meant to bring about renewed interest in Goya, but to themselves; their prime motivation being to disparage the very idea of art as a moral force capable of challenging unjust wars and those who wage them. A cursory examination of history will underscore the undeniable fact that art has played an enormous role, not only in successfully building consensus for wars, but in maintaining and extolling them. I doubt that even the Chapmans would contest the veracity of this statement. If it is to be admitted that art and culture can help initiate war, then why is it so difficult to realize that art and culture has also effectively hindered it?

What the Chapman’s statement indicates, is not just their inability to grasp history, but also their enormous failure to understand the social forces and institutions that give rise to wars. The Chapmans are incapable of offering perceptive systemic critiques of society, but they are very useful indeed when it comes to dishing out hopelessness, despair, and the usual reactionary tripe about humanism being a blight. But then, perhaps I underestimate the Brothers Chapman. Conceivably they are cut from the same mold as the early Italian Futurists, whose leader, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, proclaimed; “We will glorify war - the world’s only hygiene.” I am certain Marinetti would have loved the Champman Brother’s “enhancement” of Goya’s antiwar etchings.

What I found particularly odious about the Chapman’s reworking of the Disasters of War, was that the gesture came about while the combined armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom were involved in the unpopular military occupation of Iraq. In essence, the Chapman’s reworked etchings clearly proclaim that all protest is futile, so why bother.

One hundred and eighty years after his death, some have traced the modernist art movement back to the works of Francisco Goya - like art critic Robert Hughes, who called the Spanish master “the first modern artist”. Goya’s portentous works continue to reach out from his epoch to shed light on the horrors and follies of our own time. As a child in late 1950s Los Angeles, exposure to the works of Goya altered the course of my life. I am thrilled by the certainty of some young person walking into the Goya exhibit in Fullerton being similarly transformed.

Goya: Los Caprichos. November 1 - December 12, 2008, at the Cal State Fullerton Art Gallery in Fullerton, California. Opening Reception, Saturday, November 1, 5 to 8 p.m. (Gallery closed for Thanksgiving holiday). Directions to the Cal State Fullerton campus and its Main Art Gallery are available here.