Recalling the days running up to the 2008 presidential elections, many in the U.S. arts community were giddy with expectation that an Obama Whitehouse would bring about expanded funding and enlightened policies regarding art and culture in the U.S. The fact that the Obama campaign even had an arts policy (.pdf) caused many arts professionals to swoon. Once candidate Obama became President Obama, it was greatly anticipated that he would create a White House Office of the Arts and substantially increase funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). But now that President Obama has sailed past four months in office, what has he actually accomplished vis-à-vis the arts?

On May 7, 2009, President Obama’s proposed budget for 2010 was made public, and it contains only slight increases in monies allocated for the nation’s arts and humanities. Appropriations for the NEA have been enlarged by only 3.9 percent, taking the institution’s annual budget from its current $155 million to Obama’s $161.3 million - which is around $15 million less than the NEA’s peak budget of $176 million in 1992 under the Republican presidency of George H.W. Bush. Moreover, Obama’s $6 million increase in NEA funding is still far below the NEA budget hikes of $10.5 million and $20 million made by Republican President George W. Bush during his tenure. The Obama administration has also increased annual funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), from its current budget of $155 million to around $171 million. These are completely inadequate budgets for institutions meant to serve the artistic and cultural needs of an entire nation the size of the United States.

Perhaps the following can place Obama’s proposed funding for the NEA and NEH in context. Obama’s 2010 budget for the federally funded National Science Foundation (NSF) comes to around $7 billion. I have the highest regard for the scientific community, and feel such a budget is completely warranted and advantageous. I wholeheartedly believe the arts and sciences are associated in their pursuit of truth, and it has always been said that the arts and sciences represent the pinnacle of any civilization. Why is it then not conceivable that the National Endowment for the Arts have a budget comparable to that of the National Science Foundation?

President Obama has allocated monies to support the arts across America, but his allotment is simply not enough to even maintain regular operations for a small handful of U.S. art museums. The American arts community is in dire need of work and financial assistance, from legions of artists who live a hand to mouth existence, to long established but currently cash-starved institutions. It goes without saying that due to an imploding economy, a growing number of art galleries, museums, theaters, and concert halls have been forced to curtail programs, slash budgets, fire staff, or close altogether, placing untold numbers of arts professionals in financial jeopardy.

For instance, the 2010 budget for the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California has been reduced by 22.5 percent, or $64 million. The museum is laying off 205 employees, imposing a hiring freeze, eliminating salary increases for staff, and applying a 6 percent pay cut for senior leadership - and the Getty is America’s most prosperous arts institution! The cut backs and slashing of jobs at the Getty is not an aberration, but a course of action now occurring at cultural venues and institutions all across the country – debilitating and imperiling the cultural life of the nation.

After passing his first 100 days in office, President Obama finally appointed a chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts. On May 13, 2009, the White House tapped celebrated Broadway theatrical producer and businessman Rocco Landesman as head of the NEA. In 1987 Landesman became the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five theaters on Broadway, and in 2005 he purchased the company outright. As a successful entrepreneur, the well-regarded Landesman has brought a number of big hits to Broadway, including Jersey Boys and Angels in America, but he is not without his controversies.

In 2001 Landesman initiated a hike in theater admission prices, charging $480 per ticket for Broadway performances of The Producers, which he was behind at the time. Even one of the musical’s stars, Nathan Lane, during an appearance on MSNBC’s Today show, referred to the outrageous ticket prices as a “new kind of greediness.” Landesman justified the exorbitant price increase as an attempt at hindering scalpers, but no doubt the move did much to prohibit all but the wealthiest patrons from attending theatrical performances. We will have to wait and see whether or not Landesman will display the same type of elitism as head of the NEA.

President Obama has given powerful executive positions in his administration to a number of Republicans, and so it should come as no surprise that he would select a former Republican congressman to head The National Endowment for the Humanities. On June 3, 2009, the White House announced that former Republican congressman from Iowa, Jim Leach, would be the next chairman of the NEH. In the words of the president, “I am confident that with Jim as its head, the National Endowment for the Humanities will continue on its vital mission of supporting the humanities and giving the American public access to the rich resources of our culture.”

Mr. Leach, a so-called “moderate” Republican, also belongs to the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an elite bipartisan institution founded in 1921 that in its own words, maintains a commitment “to be the first-stop, nonpartisan resource on U.S. foreign policy and America’s role in the world.” The history of the CFR has shown it to be more than just a “resource,” it has been instrumental in actually shaping U.S. foreign policy. Some of its notable members have included Zbigniew Brzezinski, George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Warren Christopher, Dianne Feinstein, Alan Greenspan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, John McCain, and a host of other big wheels. Corporate members of the CFR include ABC News, Boeing, BP, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Halliburton, IBM, MasterCard, Shell Oil, Verizon, and many other corporate giants.

That being said, my reservations concerning the new heads of the NEA and the NEH are sidebar issues when compared to the core of my complaint: the inadequate budgets Obama has saddled these agencies with. Contrast President Obama’s proposed NEA budget of $161.3 million to his request for “emergency” war-funding for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan through this coming September, an amount now set at $105.9 billion. The U.S. House and Senate will no doubt approve the war-funding in an upcoming vote this week. President Obama’s emergency war-funding is separate from his proposed 2010 Pentagon budget of $534 billion; the largest military budget in history, exceeding George W. Bush’s highest military budget proposal by tens of billions of dollars.  Even if President Obama managed to somehow boost the NEA budget to $600 million, or even $1 billion – this would still pale in comparison to the monies he is allocating to escalate the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

I would add that the Obama administration has asked Congress for $736 million to build a new “super-embassy” in Islamabad, Pakistan. The building project will outdo the U.S. embassy compound in Iraq’s so-called green zone built under President Bush – which up to this point has been the largest U.S. embassy in the world. President Obama is also seeking additional monies for the expansion of U.S. diplomatic facilities in the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Peshawar, as well as in Kabul, Afghanistan. All together, the building and renovation of these compounds will total $1 billion, far exceeding the cost of the massive embassy built in Baghdad by Bush. Taken in this context, Obama’s arts budget is minuscule indeed.

A visit to the official White House website might give an indication of the importance the arts really have for the Obama administration. Listed on the homepage under “Agenda”, the website presents a roll call of 24 issues of the essence to the President. While important concerns from civil rights to veterans’ affairs appear in the directory, there is no listing for arts policy at all, to find that one must click on the topic of “Additional Issues.” Most agenda items on the White House website are backed by lengthy position papers; the statement on “Homeland Security” comes to 2047 words and the treatise on “Defense” comes to 1244 words. The brief tract on “Arts” however is comprised only of the following 56 words:

“Our nation’s creativity has filled the world’s libraries, museums, recital halls, movie houses, and marketplaces with works of genius. The arts embody the American spirit of self-definition. As the author of two best-selling books — Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope — President Obama uniquely appreciates the role and value of creative expression.”

This seems a rather trifling statement, certainly not one to be construed as a specific White House plan of action regarding national arts policy. It calls to mind a marketing campaign for a book signing tour more than it does the setting down of principles and objectives for a serious governmental approach to arts and culture. It is fine that President Obama and the First Lady have taken to hosting a series of stylish concerts and poetry readings in the East Room of the White House, or that, as The Wall Street Journal reports, “they put the call out to museums, galleries and private collectors that they’d like to borrow modern art by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists for the White House.” These pace-setting events are not insignificant, and while they could be seen as first steps, they should by no means be understood as alternatives to well-funded government arts policy.

Noting the East Room performances and the intention to bring modern art into the White House, the Wall Street Journal wrote that these “choices also, inevitably, have political implications, and could serve as a savvy tool to drive the ongoing message of a more inclusive administration.” It is a rare thing indeed for the corporate press to admit that art has “political implications”, the admission pointing to the timeless method of using art and culture as statecraft. But while the First Family gives a face-lift to the White House art collection and stages trendy concerts in the East Room – I am still waiting for a substantive nationwide arts policy to be implemented.

The equation is a simple one, in good economic times people feel they can afford to support the arts, in bad economic times - much less so. I do not mean to frame the question of art purely in financial terms, since some of the greatest art we know of has been created in the most impoverished settings and some of the best artists were, and are… paupers. Moreover, no matter how dire things are, art always has the capacity to bring relief and inspiration to those in low spirits. What I mean to express is simply that artists need to pay their rent like every other worker, and at present some one million American workers are losing their jobs each month.

Yesterday Wall Street stocks tumbled to new record lows as financial leviathans demanded billions more in bailout funds. A new term is making the rounds, “Zombie Banks”, an expression that describes insolvent banks kept operating through infusions of government bailout money. An older expression is also making the rounds - Depression.

Americans for the Arts (AFTA) has estimated that this year national arts organizations will layoff some 10% of their work force, or roughly 260,000 people. AFTA has also voiced the expectation that of the nation’s 100,000 arts organizations - some 10% will permanently close down. Clearly, the arts are being deeply affected by the economic collapse and the situation will undoubtedly get worse. The following list of U.S. museums that are closing or enacting deep cutbacks is but a partial account from just this past February. It illustrates the absurdity of thinking President Obama’s inclusion of $50 million for national arts funding in his stimulus package will have any substantial impact upon America’s deteriorating cultural landscape.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, will cut salaries and eliminate 7 percent of its workforce. Director Michael Shapiro said, “As with many non-profit institutions both in Atlanta and across the country, the High Museum of Art has been affected by the economic downturn, experiencing shortfalls in income we receive through donations and membership as well as losses to our endowment.” Shapiro will take a 7 percent cut in pay and other director-level employees will receive a 6 percent cut. All other workers at the museum will receive a 5 percent cut in pay.

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, has laid-off seven of its 150 employees, imposed a salary and hiring freeze, and cancelled a major exhibition of works by French painter Jean-Leon Gerome - an exhibit that would have been a collaborative project with the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and the Getty in Los Angeles. The museum’s budget has been reduced from $14.5 million to $12.5 million. The Walters also faces a 36 percent reduction in state funding, which means a loss of $420,000 for the museum next year.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is also facing state funding cuts, which could mean a loss of some $700,000 for the beleaguered orchestra. The Baltimore Opera Company is now seeking bankruptcy protection and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra has suspended performances for the rest of the season, with the Baltimore Theatre Project announcing it may have to do the same. The Maryland Historical Society, suffering a 31 percent reduction of endowments and a drop in state funding, has laid-off six staff members.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has laid-off 16 members of its staff. The museum is not only reducing staff, it is postponing exhibits, decreasing programs, and cutting salaries. Senior staff are receiving salary cuts from between five and 10 percent. The museum has suffered a loss of $90 million in endowments, and the donations continue to shrink. Museum chair H.F. Lenfest bluntly stated, “If endowment keeps being reduced in value there are going to be further steps taken. We would anticipate further reductions in personnel and operating.” The museum is also being hit hard by reductions in state funding, which this year dropped from $3 million to $2.4 million - with further cuts expected for next year. The museum wants to increase admission fees, an act that must first be approved by the city.

The Detroit Institute of the Arts will be laying off 63 of its 301 employees, a 20 % reduction in staff, as it attempts to cut its budget by $6 million. The museum is reducing its number of exhibits in a further attempt to save money, and it has already cancelled three exhibitions this year for lack of funds - an exhibit on Baroque art, a showing of works by Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Jim Dine, and an exhibit of prints and drawings related to books. The museum also faces a total elimination of state funding, as Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s proposed budget for the state of Michigan puts an end to state arts funding, which would mean a devastating loss of $950,000 for the hard pressed DIA.

The Las Vegas Art Museum closed its doors on February 28, 2009. It shall retain its name in the hopes of re-opening if and when the economy improves. The museum faced a budget crisis that threatened to lay off workers and reduce salaries. Museum director Libby Lumpkin resigned over the announced cuts, and soon after the museum closed its doors.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced a hiring freeze and is restricting staff travel, as well as the use of temporary employees. In addition the museum will close 15 of its gift stores across the nation. The Met’s endowment has suffered a 30% reduction and museum attendance and membership has fallen due to declining tourism. The Met is considering other ways to reduce its budget, with museum president Emily Rafferty saying that “we cannot eliminate the possibility of a head-count reduction.”

The Indianapolis Museum of Art will cut its staff by 10%, eliminating 15 full-time positions and 6 part-time positions. Ten senior staff members will receive salary cuts in a plan that takes 3 percent of their wages as “donations” to the institution. Endowments have fallen $101 million since this fall. The museum receives less than 1 % of its budget from government funding.

The following should put everything in context. The Associated Press reported on February 26, 2009, that President Obama has proposed war spending that nears “$11 billion a month for the next year and a half despite the planned drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq.” The AP went on to report that Obama plans on spending around $75 billion in emergency war funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through next fall, on top of which his new budget asks for $130 billion to carry out the wars for fiscal year 2010. The same AP story reports that these costs are just “part of the nearly $534 billion Obama wants for regular Pentagon operations next year. Altogether, Obama is asking for $739 billion for the military through the fall of 2010.”

On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed his massive $787 billion economic stimulus package into law. After an acrimonious quarrel in both houses of Congress, the somewhat altered and much trimmed down bill that reached the president’s desk managed to preserve funding for the arts - which at first glance appears to be a victory for arts advocates.

Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $50 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), as well as $25 million for the Smithsonian Institute. A resolution introduced by Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma disallowing arts funding (an amendment that passed in the U.S. Senate by a 73 to 24 margin with the approval of many Democrats) was stripped from the final bill signed by the president. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, a Democrat from New York who also co-chairs the Congressional Arts Caucus, avowed; “If we’re trying to stimulate the economy, and get money into the Treasury, nothing does that better than art.” If that is the case, then why is such a paltry sum from the stimulus package allotted for the arts? - $50 million is only 0.0063 % of the enormous $787 billion stimulus package!

Temporary acting chair of the NEA, Patrice Walker Powell (the president has not as yet appointed a new head for the organization), said the final bill was “a great opportunity for the cultural workforce to be dignified as part of the American workforce.” Robert L. Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts, stated; “It’s a huge victory for the arts in America. It’s a signal that maybe there is after all more understanding of the value of creativity in the 21st-century economy.” These statements are mere hyperbole. The NEA’s current budget is $145 million, an amount set by the Bush administration, which raises the following questions:

Does an increase of $50 million in the NEA budget actually herald a groundbreaking new era in government support for the arts?

Is $195 million in cultural funding a sufficient amount to meet the needs of a nation as expansive and diverse as the United States of America?

From coast to coast artists and arts organizations are reeling from the effects of the economic collapse. In just one shocking example, Michigan’s Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm has entirely removed arts funding for the state’s proposed 2010 budget. This current fiscal year Michigan disseminated $7.9 million in arts and cultural grants to 290 organizations throughout the state. In an article published in the Michigan Messenger, Mike Latvis, director of public policy for ArtServe Michigan, is quoted saying that the $7.9 million “helped sustain 9,203 jobs, created 2,206 seasonal jobs and added 2,320 new jobs into Michigan’s economy.” Latvis has also noted that “Michigan spends more on prisons in 36 hours than it spends all year on the arts”, a fact rational people will consider a chilling indictment of contemporary U.S. society. Not that my home state of California is doing any better - the California Arts Council (CAC) has a budget of only $5.6 million. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), placed California last when it comes to funding state arts agencies, noting that the CAC budget comes to a feeble 15 cents per capita - while the national average is $1.35.

Let us for a moment imagine the state of Michigan’s small arts budget as a national average, and that each of the 50 states in the union had an annual arts budget of just $7.9 million. That being the case, countrywide state expenditures on the arts would total $395 million - and we are to celebrate President Obama’s setting national arts funding at $195 million as a victory?

Exactly how much does $200 million purchase these days? Avi Arad, best known as the producer of the Spider-Man movies, has budgeted his upcoming Lost Planet movie at $200 million, which seems the average budget for today’s Hollywood “blockbuster.” Should arts advocates be in a state of high excitement over the fact that a movie based on an Xbox video game has a higher budget than the National Endowment for the Arts?

On the same day President Obama signed the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he announced plans to immediately send 17,000 U.S. soldiers to the open-ended war in Afghanistan. Some 34,000 U.S. troops are already there, and Obama plans to send an additional 30,000. Since its start in 2001, the war in Afghanistan has cost the U.S. taxpayer $439.8 billion. Thus far, I have no information regarding the monetary costs of Obama’s Afghanistan “surge”, but while 598,000 Americans lost their jobs last month and that rate is not slowing down in the slightest - it is not hard to imagine that an ever-increasing war in Afghanistan is going to be a very costly affair.

While arts advocates are euphoric that the NEA budget is now approaching $200 million, they should stop to consider that President Obama is at this moment moving ahead with a major expansion of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. With the war in that country now rapidly escalating, the U.S. State Department is starting to solicit contractors to build “staff apartments, compound walls, and compound access facilities on the existing U.S. Embassy Compound in Kabul” - with a price tag of $200 million.

Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts is tucked away on the second floor of a charming old building in Beverly Hills, and though most of those living in the city of Los Angeles have never heard of the gallery - it is one of L.A.’s treasures. The founder and director of the enterprise, Spencer Jon Helfen, has a passion for Modernist art of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s - and his gallery specializes in the California School of Modernism that flourished in the state prior to World War II. Helfen’s gallery is an oasis of sorts, a setting where one can contemplate the thought-provoking and beautifully crafted figurative realist paintings that were once so highly regarded by the art world. The Helfen is one of the few galleries in the U.S. to consistently mount large-scale exhibits of California modernist paintings on a regular basis.

I attended the public reception for the Helfen’s current exhibition, Gallery Selections of Important California Modernist Paintings & Sculpture, which presents the Helfen’s latest acquisitions of works from the likes of Mabel Alvarez, Victor Arnautoff, Claude Buck, Francis De Erdely, John Mottram, Koichi Nomiyama, Helen Clark Oldfield, Otis Oldfield, Edouard Vysekal, Bernard Zakheim, and many others. Students and aficionados of figurative realist painting would do well to carefully examine the lives and works of each and every artist in the show, in addition to working at cultivating a deeper understanding of the early California Modernist school. I have an especially strong interest in that movement, not because I am a native born Californian, but for the reason that the school was disposed towards social engagement in art.

In this article I will focus upon two of the forgotten giants of the California Modernist movement included in the Helfen exhibit - Victor Arnautoff and Francis De Erdely. Exemplars of figurative realism, craft, and humanist concerns in art, Arnautoff and De Erdely are ripe for rediscovery, especially by those who seek an alternative to the vortex of today’s postmodern art follies.

Arnautoff’s oil paintings at the Spencer Jon Helfen Gallery, are lavish in detail, stunningly rich in color, and filled with texture - they are jewel-like works of social realism created by a technical virtuoso who possessed complete mastery over his materials. Arnautoff had a great talent for capturing, not just the likeness of a person, but something of their essence, and for me two of his portraits in the show form a focal point of the exhibit. His Woman in Yellow Fur is a stunning close-up portrayal of a young woman who, one must assume, is well-to-do, since she is draped in fur and the date of the portrait, 1934, places her right in the middle of the Great Depression. Her fancy attire notwithstanding, there is a sympathetic air about the woman. Arnautoff’s brushstrokes are particularly forceful in this painting, which is unusual for him. He also incised the paint surface using the sharp end of his brush, brilliantly replicating the appearance of fur. His juxtaposition of the warm yellow ochres and burnt siennas of the figure against the backdrop of a cold and pale ultramarine blue, makes for one attention-grabbing portrait.

Similarly, Arnautoff’s The Green Dress, is also a stunning likeness, but in this work there is absolutely no ambiguity as to the class background of the sitter. The haughty imposing blond with a large strand of pearls around her neck is clearly bourgeois, and her confident, piercing gaze informs you that she is familiar with the wielding of power. A slightly raised eyebrow lets you know that you are being carefully evaluated, even across the barriers of space and time. Again, the light ochre background and warm flesh tones of the sitter juxtaposed against the brilliant cadmium green dress makes for a dramatic use of color. It is a marvelous painting, one that I could gaze upon endlessly. How could such a gifted artist be so easily forgotten and sidelined by the passage of time? Truth be told, Arnautoff was written out of history - for aesthetic and political reasons.

Victor Arnautoff (1896-1979) was born in Tsarist Russia and fought as a Cavalry Officer in the Tsarist Imperial Army, which I suppose would categorize him as a “White Russian”, or counter-revolutionary. Fearing persecution he fled the Soviet Union after the triumph of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, first going into exile in China where he would meet his future wife, and eventually making his way to Mexico, where he would undergo a remarkable transformation both artistically and politically. In the late 1920’s Arnautoff studied with and became an assistant to Diego Rivera in Mexico City, no doubt absorbing the master’s ideas regarding a resurgent muralist movement. Not since the Italian Renaissance had there been such a vital school of fresco mural painting as was to be found in Mexico during the 1930s. Rivera had studied the technique while traveling throughout Italy in 1920. Basically fresco involves painting on wet lime plaster with pigments mixed in water; once the moisture dries the color is fixed. Well-versed in the theory and practice of muralism, Arnautoff would make his real mark on the world when he came to settle in San Francisco, California, in the early 1930s.

Victor Arnautoff would help Diego Rivera paint two murals when the Mexican muralist first visited San Francisco from 1930-31; Allegory of California at the Pacific Stock Exchange, and Making of a Fresco located at the Art Institute of San Francisco. American artists in the San Francisco Bay area and beyond where electrified by Rivera’s murals and by the Mexican Muralist Movement in general, in which they perceived the possibilities of an equivalent muralist school for the United States. They would get their chance to initiate such a movement with the Coit Tower murals, which coincidentally were painted 75 years ago this month.

In 1933 Coit Tower was constructed atop Telegraph Hill as a city beautification project, immediately becoming a landmark attracting tourists. The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first government program to employ artists as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), set out to create a series of monumental fresco paintings on the tower’s interior walls in 1934. The PWAP appointed Victor Arnautoff technical director for the mural project, and twenty-six artists were selected to design various artworks on the theme of “Aspects of California Life.” Ten assistants also facilitated the work, doing everything from mixing pigments to grouting fresh plaster.

The production of the Coit Tower murals converged with two dramatic events that turned the project into a lightning rod for controversy. Diego Rivera’s mural at New York City’s Rockefeller Center, Man at the Crossroads, was destroyed by order of John D. Rockefeller on February 10, 1934, because one small part of the mural included a portrait of communist leader Vladimir Lenin. Many of the artists working on the Coit Tower murals had met Rivera, and were naturally against the destruction of his mural.

Victor Arnautoff and his fellow muralists also supported San Francisco’s longshoremen, seaman, waterfront workers, teamsters, and municipal workers - who went on strike against low wages, long hours and terrible working conditions on May 9, 1934. On July 5, 1934, in an effort to defeat the strike, employers used strike breakers with police escorts to move goods from piers to warehouses - riots ensued, with the police shooting dead two strikers on what came to be called Bloody Thursday. Up to 40,000 people held a funeral march for the slain workers, an event Arnautoff memorialized in a drawing unrelated to the Coit murals. In the aftermath of the lethal police repression, the entire city of San Francisco was shut down in a great General Strike which lasted three days - it was the biggest labor action in U.S. history.

Arnautoff and a number of the other artists working on the Coit Tower murals felt it necessary to comment on these events - and so included certain images in their murals. For instance, in his mural titled Library, artist Bernard Zakheim depicted a group of men gathered in the periodicals room of a library, reading newspapers whose headlines referred to the destruction of Rivera’s mural as well as to the San Francisco maritime strike. Zakheim included a portrait of fellow Coit Tower muralist, John Langley Howard, reaching for a shelved copy of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Zakheim also included a self-portrait in his mural, showing himself reading a copy of the Torah in Hebrew, with other sacred books in Hebrew close at hand. No doubt the rampant anti-Semitism of the period contributed as much to attacks on the mural project as did anti-communism.

The press became indignant over the small amount of left-wing imagery found in the murals, the San Francisco Chronicle branding them “red propaganda”. As right-wing outrage over the murals intensified, the PWAP almost give in to conservative pressure, slating Zakheim’s mural, and a number of others, for whitewashing. The opening of Coit Tower for public viewing of the murals was delayed for months, and fortunately the controversy subsided. When the Tower was finally opened to the public only one mural had actually been censored, Steelworker, a portrait of a tough looking laborer by Clifford Wight. The artist had incorporated the slogan “Workers of the World Unite” into the portrait’s background - PWAP had the slogan obliterated.

Victor Arnautoff’s contribution to the Coit Tower mural series is titled, City Life (Click here for a YouTube video of the mural), a vibrant depiction of street life in San Francisco during the 1930s. As with most of the other works in the tower, City Life was a fresco mural painted on wet lime plaster - and it displays all of the qualities of a fine mural painting done in that technique. As much as I venerate Arnautoff’s fresco murals - and he painted a number of them, it is his oil paintings that I am truly passionate about, and those on view at the Helfen gallery are superlative examples of the modernist master’s power.

That the very first WPA project put artists to work creating monumental murals at Coit Tower speaks volumes about where America is today as a nation. Almost no one, not even professionals in the arts community, can imagine a colossal public art project being mounted at the present time - yet in my opinion such a project is more than feasible.

I have to admit knowing next to nothing about Francis De Erdely prior to attending the opening at Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts, but what an introduction I received! I am eternally grateful to Mr. Helfen, not only for bringing the commanding works of De Erdely to my attention - but also for placing his works before the general public.

A centerpiece of the show, De Erdely’s Unjust Punishment is a modernist tour de force, a masterwork that alludes to all the world’s suffering - while still being an allegorical statement against McCarthyism, the anti-communist witch-hunts that swept the U.S. during the 1950s. The mixed media painting on illustration board depicts two crucified men, and the work has all the appearance of a stained glass window. While the painting is clearly figurative in nature, it freely incorporates aspects of cubism and abstraction, an approach De Erdely increasingly adopted in the later half of his life. That fact notwithstanding, De Erdely still ended up persona non grata in an art world that was to become wholly given to pure non-objective abstraction. I am left wondering if the broken men on their crosses in part serve as a metaphor for the realist artist abandoned for the sake of the “next big thing” in a fickle art world.

Francis De Erdely (1904-1959) was born in Hungary in 1904, and grew up during the ravages of the first World War. In the aftermath of that conflagration his country moved ever rightward, until a homegrown fascist movement developed that would eventually ally Hungary to Nazi Germany. As a young artist De Erdely was on a collision course with the Hungarian right for having depicted the atrocities of World War I in his paintings and sketches. He was also evidently supportive of the Spanish Republic and its struggle against fascism, creating sketches that revealed his sympathies but further provoked Hungary’s right-wing. Under pressure from Nazi Germany, Hungary joined the Axis powers in 1940, and De Erdely was apparently banished from his homeland during that period. Ultimately he would make his way to the United States, living for a short time in New York before finally making the city of Los Angeles his home in 1944. De Erdely became the dean of the Pasadena Art Institute School from 1944 to 1946, and he taught at the University of Southern California from 1945 until he passed away in 1959.

De Erdely’s early paintings were similar to Victor Arnautoff’s in that they were straightforward works of social observation. De Erdely was particularly fascinated with the underclass he discovered in Los Angeles, choosing them as his most consistently painted subject. He came to imbue his works with abstract sensibilities, but never abandoned his predilection for a humanist social realism. Daily Bread, his 1945 painting of a worker at rest, has an almost biblical quality about it, exemplifying the artist’s deep compassion for working people.

The works of Victor Arnautoff and Francis De Erdely make the Helfen show unusually rewarding, but then the entire exhibit is noteworthy. Arnautoff and De Erdely provide us with examples of a humanistic art at once accessible, anti-elitist, and given towards speaking clearly and directly to an audience. In all honesty, what I found so refreshing about the exhibit is that it gives insight into what figurative art was like before being contaminated by postmodernism. The paintings in the Helfen exhibit are devoid of irony, shock value, and vulgarity; they unabashedly pursue beauty and universality, and best of all - you do not need reams of mounted wall text to understand them. I am not at all saying that today’s artists should simply use the California Modernist school as a template to be replicated, but I do believe that a full understanding of and appreciation for California Modernism can serve as an important springboard for artists envisioning how art might advance into the 21st century.

Gallery Selections of Important California Modernist Paintings & Sculpture. Now running at Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts until March 28, 2009.

“We have real people out of work right now and putting $50 million in the NEA and pretending that’s going to save jobs as opposed to putting $50 million in a road project is disingenuous.” Thus spoke Georgia’s Republican Senator, Jack Kingston on February 5, 2009, on the subject of President Obama’s economic recovery plan, now being debated in the U.S. Senate. Apparently there are many, both in and out of Congress, who do not view artists as “real people.”

The numbers of “real people out of work right now” in the field of the arts is growing exponentially. In an Associated Press article titled, Economic meltdown takes toll on performing arts, AP reporter Gillian Flaccus notes: “From Baltimore to Detroit to Pasadena, venerable performing arts institutions are laying off performers, cutting programming, canceling seasons and doing without new sets and live music. Some are closing down completely. (….) Bob Lynch, president and CEO of the national nonprofit Americans for the Arts, says about 10,000 arts organizations nationwide - about 10 percent of the total - have shut down or stand on the verge of collapse. ‘It’s the worst I’ve seen it,’ Lynch says.”

Representative Jack Kingston does not stand alone, he is but the tip of a spear wielded by political reactionaries who are bent on eliminating all government funding of the arts. On February 6, 2009, as part of its deliberations over the economic recovery plan, the U.S. Senate approved an amendment by Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Coburn’s amendment reads in part; “None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project.” If Coburn’s amendment language is incorporated into the final version of the bill, then arts groups will be barred from receiving any funds from the stimulus package.

Coburn’s amendment clearly is an attack upon the arts in America, and it passed a Senate vote by a margin of 73 to 24. But in advance of your cursing Senate Republicans, dear reader, please consider this; the Coburn amendment passed because of the votes it received from prominent Democratic Senators like Dianne Feinstein of California, Chuck Schumer of New York, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and a number of other Democratic Senators.

William Ivey, as head of the arts transition team for the new administration, advised President Obama that “several hundred million dollars” would be needed to provide proper funding for the arts across the United States. I would agree with Ivey on such an amount, but only as a minimum starting figure. Nonetheless, Obama ignored Ivey’s recommendation, proposing instead that $50 million out of the $819 billion stimulus package - or .06 percent of the overall package - be allotted for arts funding, and now even that figure is subject to further reduction.

William Ivey has expressed dismay over insinuations “that an arts worker is not a real worker, and that a carpenter who pounds nails framing a set for an opera company is a less-real carpenter than one who pounds nails framing a house.” I am in full agreement with that sentiment, and challenge the arts community to become active in its own defense. I urge readers to send e-mails to Congress expressing disapproval of the Senate anti-arts Coburn amendment (Americans for the Arts have set up a web page for just this purpose), and encourage one and all to sign the 1% Campaign petition, which calls on the Obama administration to create an Arts Stimulus Plan.

[ UPDATE: The U.S. Senate passed its version of a stimulus bill on Feb. 10, 2009, it includes Sen. Tom Coburn’s anti-arts amendment - which the House version does not contain. The bill now goes to a House-Senate conference committee, which will negotiate a series of compromises. It remains to be seen if Coburn’s amendment will be stripped from the final bill.]

In April of 1967 the Heritage Gallery of Los Angeles published Images of Dignity, a monograph on the life and work of the great African American artist Charles White (1918-1979). I acquired a copy of the book just a year later when I was fifteen-years-old, the hardback volume providing one of my first insights into the works of White, American social realism, and the very idea of political engagement in modern American art. I have no hesitation in crediting White as a major influence in my life as an artist.

Opening this past January 10, and running until March 7, 2009, New York’s Michael Rosenfeld Gallery presents the important retrospective - Charles White: Let The Light Enter, Major Drawings, 1942-1970. The gallery’s biography on White opens with the following quote from the artist, which makes clear why he was such an influence upon me and why I continue to hold him in such high esteem:

“I am interested in the social, even the propaganda, angle in painting; but I feel that the job of everyone in a creative field is to picture the whole scene. . . I am interested in creating a style that is much more powerful, that will take in the technical end and at the same time will say what I have to say. Paint is the only weapon I have with which to fight what I resent. If I could write, I would write about it. If I could talk, I would talk about it. Since I paint, I must paint about it.”

I will mostly dispense with listing the biographical details and accomplishments of Mr. White since the artist himself wrote eloquently of his life and times in an autobiography that now appears on the Charles White Archive website. Instead I am going to focus on two aspects of White’s career that have considerable relevance to the present: his relationship to the Works Progress Administration in the U.S. during the Depression Era, and his connection to the socially conscious Mexican Muralist Movement of the same period - which has been another source of endless inspiration for me. In light of discussions on the possibility of there being a new federal arts program under the Obama administration, White’s overwhelmingly positive experience with the WPA provides food for thought, as does his having found common cause with the Mexican school of socially engaged art.

White was a 20-year-old living in Chicago, Illinois, when in 1938 he was employed by the Works Progress Administration and its Federal Art Project (FAP) Easel Painting Division, which was no small matter since until that time the young artist barely managed to survive by doing odd jobs - when he could find them. In a 1965 oral history interview conducted for the Smithsonian Institute’s Archives of American Art, White credited the FAP program with having enabled him to survive as an artist through very hard times. He also recognized the program for having expanded his range of artistic skills and knowledge, commenting that the FAP was “almost a school.” White said the following in his autobiography concerning having worked in the FAP:

“Looking back at my three years on the project, I see it was a tremendous step for me to be able to paint full time, be paid for it, although the pay was the bare minimum of unemployment relief. The most wonderful thing for me was the feeling of cooperation with other artists, of mutual help instead of competitiveness, and of cooperation between the artists and the people. It was in line with what I had always hoped to do as an artist, namely paint things pertaining to the real everyday life of people, and for them to see and enjoy. It was also a thrill for me to see so many accomplished artists at work, and to be able to learn from them.”

White eventually switched from the FAP’s Easel Division to its Mural Department, where he learned the basic skills needed to create monumental mural works. In 1939 FAP gave White the responsibility of creating a large mural for the Chicago Public Library. He chose for his mural the theme of outstanding African American leaders, and so painted Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Marian Anderson, and Booker T. Washington. Today the 5’ x 12’ oil on canvas mural hangs in the Law Library of the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. Creating murals was a lifelong passion for White, and my home city of Los Angeles is blessed with the very last one he painted - a work produced in 1978 and located at the Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Exposition Park Branch of the L.A. Public Library.

Here it is necessary to mention White’s relationship to the Mexican school - that fusion of muralism, printmaking, and easel painting driven by social concerns. “Los Tres Grandes”, the three greats of Mexican mural painting: José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, had all visited the United States by the early 1930’s. In the wake of their U.S. visits they left behind a number of fabulous public murals, but also an enthusiastic network of American artists they had influenced through workshops, lectures, collaborations, and direct mentoring.

In 1941 White met and married Elizabeth Catlett, a remarkable artist in her own right. The two traveled to Mexico City in 1946, where they created prints with El Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP - Popular Graphic Arts Workshop, founded in 1937), the foremost print collective in the country at the time. It was at the TGP that White learned the art of lithography, which became an enduring passion for him. At the workshop he met and worked with the likes of Diego Rivera, Pablo O’Higgins, and Leopoldo Méndez. In White’s own words, “One of the honors of which I am most proud is that of having been elected an honorary member of the Taller.” Catlett also did several of her most memorable prints while working at the TGP; and some of the collective’s prints, including works by Catlett and Méndez, made their way into Gouge - the Los Angeles Hammer Museum’s stunning exhibit on printmaking in the 20th century (now showing until Feb. 8, 2009).

During their sojourn in Mexico City, White and Catlett were invited to stay at the home of David Alfaro Siqueiros, where they lodged in the top floor of the muralist’s residence. White’s time in Mexico was revelatory, providing him the confirmation that his chosen path in art was the correct one to take. He felt kinship with the radical populism of the Mexican artists, whose fiery works embodied the very idea of social realism in art. White and Catlett would divorce in 1948: she stayed in Mexico for good, while he moved to New York City. There he began to associate with like-minded artists such as Antonio Frasconi, Leonard Baskin, Philip Evergood, William Gropper, Moses and Raphael Soyer, and other giants in American social realism. Eventually Mr. White settled in the city of Los Angeles, where he became an influential drawing teacher at Otis Art Institute.

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. Part of his memoirs recount his lonely isolated struggle in the 50s against abstraction, of “going against the tide of what everyone was claiming to be ‘new’ and ‘the future’”, and we are all the richer for White’s perseverance.

But White’s courage went far beyond his flying in the face of what was trendy in the art world. He came to reject careerism in art, regarding celebrity as anathema to the higher ideals of art. The spirit found in the following passage of his memoirs should be held aloft as a banner by those artists and their supporters who ardently believe in art as a tool for social transformation;

“I no longer have my hopes and aspirations tied up with becoming a ’success’ in the market sense. I have had a measure of success in exhibits, some prizes and awards, although not as much as I might have gotten had there not been certain ‘difficulties’ presented by my speaking as part of the Negro people and the working class. Getting a marketplace success or recognition by art connoisseurs is no longer my major concern as an artist. My major concern is to get my work before common, ordinary people; for me to be accepted as a spokesman for my people; for my work to portray them better, and to be rich and meaningful to them. A work of art was meant to belong to people, not to be a single person’s private possession. Art should take its place as one of the necessities of life, like food, clothing and shelter.”

Charles White: Let The Light Enter, Major Drawings, 1942-1970, at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. January 10 - March 7, 2009.

$50 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 29, 2009, as part of its passing President Obama’s $819 billion economic “stimulus bill” - the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

President Obama had met with Republicans in the House prior to the vote, making concessions to them in an attempt to get his stimulus bill passed. One such compromise was the killing of $200 million in appropriations from the bill for improvements to the crumbling 1,000-acre National Mall in Washington, D.C., the home to the Washington Monument and the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. Newsweek magazine ran a July, 2008 story on the Mall’s scandalous state of disrepair that quoted the National Park Service saying a renovation of the Mall would cost “an estimated $350 to $500 million.”

Despite the concessions, the House vote was 244 to 188 - with not a single Republican casting a yes vote. The bill now moves to the Senate, where Republicans have targeted the NEA funding for termination, as well as the $150 million appropriated for funding the Smithsonian Institution - the nation’s most important cultural network of museums and research centers. ABC News reported that Obama’s response to Republican intransigence regarding his stimulus bill was the following comment; “I hope that we can continue to strengthen this plan before it gets to my desk.” The president’s remark could very well be interpreted as a willingness on his part to see NEA and Smithsonian Institution funding removed from the stimulus bill. We shall see.

In December of last year, I made the following observation of Obama on this web log; “If he were to mount an effort at massive arts spending, I can imagine the organized right blocking his every attempt at implementing the policy for multiple reasons, and with his striving for a bipartisan approach to governance, it seems unlikely he would take a combative stance.” That very scenario now seems to be playing out before us.

Former chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party, Arthur Bruzzone, summed up rightist opposition to stimulus bill funding of the NEA, calling it; “the audacity of pork.” Conservative pundit and Republican strategist Michael Reagan, wrote an article for the GOPUSA website that criticized the stimulus package, referring to the NEA as; “hardly an engine for creating employment for the unemployed. About the only jobs it might create would be for the bureaucrats who would oversee the grant or an artist or two who specialize in exhibiting jars of urine containing a crucifix as their contributions to the nation’s culture.” While the NEA is certainly not beyond being criticized, Reagan’s remark is nothing more than philistinism.

It is disheartening to see the National Mall, the NEA, and the Smithsonian Institution being treated so shabbily. These national treasures should not be considered bargaining chips in someone’s political gamesmanship, and they most certainly should not be viewed as recipients of “wasteful pork barrel spending.” When those who dare call themselves “patriots”, display such mendacious and disparaging attitudes towards the best of American culture - barbarism will be found just around the corner.

A petition calling on the new Obama administration to create a stimulus package for the arts was launched on January 20, 2009, by the Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) Washington D.C. think tank in alliance with the Split this Rock Poetry Festival.

The editor of the D.C. think tank, John Feffer, along with Split this Rock member, Melissa Tuckey, expressed the ideas behind the initiative in a collaborative article they wrote titled, From Arms to Art, which appears on the FPIF website. The commentary opens with the following statement: “The United States is the largest exporter of arms in the world. Imagine what would happen if we became the largest exporter of the arts instead.” The call by Feffer and Tuckey goes on to state that the “Congress is debating an $800 billion stimulus package that many have compared to FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA)”, and that the FPIF/Split this Rock appeal is “asking that 1% of the stimulus package be used in support of the arts.” In part the article reads:

“To stimulate the economy, we need to rely on some of the most stimulating minds in our country: the artists. With their vision, they can help us envision a different future. But in this global economy, we can’t do it alone. We must think and act across borders. By devoting 1% of the stimulus package to the arts — and incorporating a strong global dimension to the funding — we can revive the U.S. economy and the U.S. global reputation. Ham-fisted propaganda and slick advertising aren’t going to do the trick. We need authentic voices, provocative works that reflect the true diversity of this country, and powerful visions that can build bridges and tear down walls. Join our campaign by signing our petition. Let’s not just stimulate the economy. Let’s stimulate our imagination.”

I critically support the “One Percent for the Arts Campaign” petition drive as launched by Foreign Policy In Focus and Split this Rock Poetry Festival. I have already signed my name to the document and I encourage all arts professionals and their supporters to do the same. The petition is located at: www.ipetitions.com/petition/artsstimulus.