On December 1, 2009, in an address to the nation delivered from the United States Military Academy at West Point, President Obama announced the sending of an additional 30,000 U.S. combat troops to Afghanistan in order to wage what he calls a “war of necessity.”

"Vietnam: An Eastern Theatre Production" – David Nordahl. 1968. Offset poster. One of fifteen posters included in the "Hey, Hey, LBJ..." essay. Poster supplied by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG).

To mark the occasion I have written, “Hey, Hey, LBJ…”, an illustrated essay on the subject of U.S. protest posters from the 1960s that lambasted that other liberal Democratic President who supposedly possessed a progressive domestic social agenda - Lyndon Baines Johnson, or L.B.J. (1963-1969).

L.B.J.’s assumed intentions of wanting to implement wide-ranging social reforms in the U.S. were thwarted by his ever increasing military escalation of an unpopular war in Vietnam. President Obama has similarly opened a Pandora’s box with his sharp military escalation in Afghanistan; and while the “Hey, Hey, LBJ…” presentation examines 15 historic posters from our collective past, it also offers the reader glimpses of what the future could possibly hold for us all.

The 15 posters I have written about in my essay disparaged L.B.J.’s foreign and domestic policies with wry humor, sardonic wit, and pointed outrage. What’s more, the prints were exceptional from a design standpoint, and they continue to stand as important political and cultural documents in American history. Despite their historic value and obvious political and aesthetic significance, few of the posters I present in my essay are to be found in online collections, even though they were widely distributed and known in the 1960s. Most of the posters featured in my essay have not been seen since they were first published.

With his December 1 troop deployment announcement, President Obama has fully completed his metamorphosis into L.B.J. Less than one year after his inauguration, Mr. Obama’s promises of delivering “Hope” and “Change” have ended up being battlefield fatalities on the arid plains of Afghanistan. Rather than delivering his diktat of escalating war from the Oval Office of the White House, Mr. Obama revealed his war plans at the same service academy used in 2002 by George W. Bush when the former president explained his Orwellian “Preventative War” doctrine. West Point afforded Mr. Obama the opportunity of presenting his military strategy for Afghanistan against a backdrop of soldiers and Academy cadets – a setting conveying resolute leadership from the nation’s Commander in Chief. How ironic that Obama will next travel to Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10.

Obama administration officials have calculated that the Afghan war will cost $1 trillion over the next 10 years – a figure most likely underestimated. The Pentagon says that annually it spends $1 billion for every 1,000 soldiers in Afghanistan; and that by the time it delivers a single gallon of fuel to the landlocked country for use by U.S. soldiers, the cost has skyrocketed to $400 per gallon. As the U.S. economy teeters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate reached 10.2 percent in November ‘09 – that’s 15.7 million Americans without work; the New York Times noted, “If the unemployed lived in one state, it would be the country’s fifth largest.” Just prior to his West Point troop deployment announcement, President Obama boasted that he would “finish the job” in Afghanistan; if the “job” in question is to drive the U.S. further into economic collapse, then Mr. Obama may well achieve his goal.

To help finance the unpopular war in Vietnam, L.B.J. imposed a 10-percent surtax on the American people. Not to be outdone, a number of powerful Congressional Democrats are today hoping to pass the “Share the Sacrifice Act”, a surtax to be forced upon all U.S. citizens in order to help pay for Obama’s war in Afghanistan. The bill would place a 1-percent surtax on all those who earn less than $150,000, with up to 5-percent imposed on those with higher incomes.

The particulars of Obama’s odious decisions should not hinder our optimism and authentic struggle for the democratization and transformation of society. Such a project should never be reliant upon a single politician or individual – the people in motion are the true engine of history.  The publication of “Hey, Hey, LBJ…” is but a small contribution towards wiping away debilitating historical amnesia and political illusions, allowing us to thoughtfully plot a course of action for building a society where words like “Hope” and “Change” are not slogans from some clever marketing and branding campaign – but expressions of a mass democratic impulse fully implemented by a free people.

The complete “Hey, Hey, LBJ…” illustrated essay can be viewed at:
www.art-for-a-change.com/LBJ/LBJ.htm

[ The Docs Populi archive and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) were kind enough to give me access to their archives, allowing me to select original posters from their incomparable collections as illustrations for my essay. The opinions expressed in the essay are my own and should not be attributed to either Docs Populi or CSPG. ]

Robert Hughes: "The entanglement of big money with art has become a curse on how art is made, controlled, and above all - in the way that it’s experienced."

In these “postmodern” days it has been said that there is no more passé a vocation than that of the professional art critic. Perceived as the gate keeper for opinions regarding art and culture, the art critic has supposedly been rendered obsolete by an ever expanding pluralism in the art world, where all practices and disciplines are purported to be equal and valid.

Robert Hughes, however, is one art critic who has delivered a message that must not be ignored.

On September 18, 2008, British television’s Channel 4 broadcast The Mona Lisa Curse, a documentary film by Mr. Hughes that offers a devastating critique of contemporary art and its over commercialization.

While a DVD release of The Mona Lisa Curse has not yet been made, a complete version of the film has been published on YouTube, though it is an uncertainty how long the movie will remain posted. The streaming video is presented in twelve parts that are each approximately 6 minutes in duration. In this article I summarize each part and provide a link to it. I encourage one and all to view Hughes’ documentary in its entirety.

In The Mona Lisa Curse, Hughes has described with remarkable clarity the forces seeking to tame art, putting it in the service of plutocrats. The market driven and controlled cultural landscape outlined by Hughes reminds me of what the Italian political theorist and revolutionary Antonio Gramsci once said of society in decline; “The old is dying. The new cannot be born. In the interregnum, a variety of morbid symptoms appear.” The candor and forthrightness of Hughes in identifying the trap art is currently ensnared in should be responded to as a call to arms – especially by artists.

The Curse: Part 1
Hughes opens his film by comparing Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, with Damien Hirst’s, For the Love of God. Hughes tells us that; “What ties the Mona Lisa to this glittery bobble is their role in a giant shift in the art world, that shift is all about money. It’s a story that I’ve watch unfold during the last 50 years. I’ve seen with growing disgust; the fetishization of art, the vast inflation of prices, and the effect of this on artists and museums. The entanglement of big money with art has become a curse on how art is made, controlled, and above all - in the way that it’s experienced. And this curse has affected the entire art world.”

“Apart from drugs, art is the biggest unregulated market in the world, with contemporary art sales estimated at around $18 billion a year. (….) Boosted by regiments of nouveau riche collectors, and serviced by a growing army of advisors, dealers and auctioneers. As Andy Warhol once observed, ‘Good business is the best art.’”

The Curse: Part 2
In 1962 the Mona Lisa was temporarily loaned to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art by the Louvre in Paris for the painting’s first exhibit in the United States. Over one million Americans filed past Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece – including President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. As Hughes noted about the display of the Mona Lisa; “People came not to look at it, but to say that they’d seen it. (….) The painting made the leap from artwork to icon of mass consumption.” The postmodernist period of art as commodity and mass spectacle had begun.

Screen capture of Andy Warhol from The Mona Lisa Curse. Said Hughes: "He was one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met in my life."

“(….) If anyone had told Leonardo that 500 years after his death, his portrait would be the most famous painting in the word, he’d have thought the notion mad. In 1963 in New York, the Mona Lisa was now treated like it was a photo in a magazine. To be quickly scanned and then discarded.

When Andy Warhol heard the painting was coming to New York, he quipped: ‘Why don’t they have someone copy it and send the copy, no one would know the difference.’”

The Curse: Part 3
Hughes recalls his early days in the vibrant late 1960s art scene of New York, where he met and befriended the likes of Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and James Rosenquist (1933-).

Rent was cheap, art was affordable, and anyone interested in purchasing original artworks could do so for a song - as art was not yet considered a profit making investment. Hughes adds; “In just a few years this would change, art as commodity would begin to take over from art as art.”

The Curse: Part 4
I found this segment particularly interesting, since I wrote about the history it covered in a 2008 web log post titled, The Unveiling of Robert Scull. In this clip Hughes uses historic footage to tell the tale; “On the 18th of October, 1973, the Sculls auctioned off 50 works from their collection through Sotheby Park-Bernet, Inc. This was the first time a collector from that small contemporary art world treated their collection as an investment.”

The Curse: Part 5
This segment is a continuation of the Scull auction saga from part 4. According to Hughes, “American contemporary art as a serious ‘commodity’ was about to be born.” (….) The Scull auction shifted the art world’s emphasis from aesthetics to money. From now on, not just art lovers, but everyone would want a piece of the action. Contemporary art and big money would be ever more closely entwined.”

The Curse: Part 6
Hughes argues that contemporary art is expensive, not because of any intrinsic spiritual or historic worth, but because it makes for good investments that yield high profits. “The consequences of such prices, was that art became admired, not through any critical perspective, but for its price tag. Auction houses were the new arbiters of taste.” (….) The prices, they have a cultural function - their cultural function is to strike you blind, so that you can’t make your own judgments.”

A particularly funny scene in the documentary is when Hughes visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to view a Damien Hirst ’sculpture’ – a dead shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde titled; The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Barely concealing his amusement Hughes calls the pickled shark; “The world’s most overrated marine organism” - adding that Hirst’s work is “a comedy, but a kind of tacky comedy too, that bears a lot upon the way that we think about art and how it is made.”

The Curse: Part 7
In this segment Hughes tells us that; “At the age of 70, I belong to the last generation that could spend time in a museum without ever once thinking about what the art might cost.” Hughes delves into the changing role and function of art museums, interviewing Philippe de Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1978 to 2008.

Circa 1960s photo of Robert Hughes and Robert Rauschenberg. Still from The Mona Lisa Curse.

Also interviewed is the affable Thomas Hoving, who served as the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1967 to 1977. Hoving ushered in profound changes in museum culture, using public relations and advertising for the very first time in history to promote museum exhibits. Hoving was the first to allow corporations to underwrite or sponsor museum exhibitions – paving the way to today’s increased corporate control of art institutions.

On the role of museums, Hughes says; “The way that art is experienced in these spaces has changed beyond recognition. The museum has adopted the strategy of mass media; an emphasis on spectacle, the cult of the celebrity masterpiece, art clocked through the blink of an eye or through the lens of a camera. But what it’s gained through an increase in these numbers, it’s lost in terms of freedom of access and availability to the eye and the mind.”

The Curse: Part 8
This portion of the video deals with the recent transformation of art museums into business franchises. The former director of the Guggenheim Museum, Thomas Krens, states in an interview; “The Tate is a brand, the Louvre is a brand - is the Guggenheim a brand, I guess it is.” Hughes comments that “Krens is renowned for putting on shows of Giorgio Armani, in return for massive underwriting from - guess who? - and for franchising the Guggenheim around the world. He pioneered the museum’s global brand, building Guggenheims in Bilbao, Berlin, and Venice, with varying degrees of success and failure.”

In his interview, Krens also said; “If you look at this in global terms, it’s probably in some sense related to the power and importance of brands that represent quality. Quality automobiles, quality wristwatches, or quality cultural objects.” That Mr. Krens can equate the world’s cultural heritage to “quality wristwatches” is telling. Hughes observed that; “Krens’ agenda to popularize the museum is a euphemistic and more palatable way of saying how the art market transforms the museum into a commercial model.”

The Curse: Part 9
Hughes speaks of the commodification of art, saying that in order “To give everyone their Mona Lisa, you must escalate the production process.” The artist’s studio literally becomes an industrial unit churning out “product”, as with Warhol’s “factory.” On the subject of Warhol, Hughes said the following; “I admired some of his work in the 60s and early 70’s, but he turned into a dull celebrity business man branded to the hairline. It was as good as printing dollar bills. The dominance of the art market has produced multiple Andys - global brands like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.”

Hughes examines the role of “art advisors” who peddle misleading information to clueless wealthy clients regarding art as investment; “CEO’s and art speculators have created a feeding frenzy, and they’re serviced by a swarm of art advisors buzzing and crawling around the jam jar.”

The Curse: Part 10
Hughes converses with New York art dealer Richard Feigen, who says; “A menu of certain favored artists has gotten expensive because they have been promoted - this is my opinion - and it has very little to do with how important they are (….) If you have an artist that has a huge supply, it permits promotion of the artist. You can have exhibitions everywhere; it’s worth people’s while to promote it. But some of the stuff that’s consequential doesn’t get shown because it isn’t trendy. Why isn’t it trendy - I’ve just explained, basically it’s not worth anyone’s while to make it trendy.”

A single Warhol print on sale at Sotheby’s for a mere $6 million. Screen capture from The Mona Lisa Curse.

Hughes also focuses on mega-collector and art dealer, Alberto Mugrabi. The men of the Mugrabi family – father Jose and his two sons, Alberto and David, have some 800 works by Warhol in their collection of more than 3,000 works; a private collection thought to be the largest and most expensive in the world.

Mugrabi is shown at Sotheby’s Auction House bidding with his father on a painting by “appropriation” artist Richard Prince – a painting that sold for $7.4 million. Mugrabi professed; “We support these artists by promoting them, by buying them at auction, by buying them privately - you could say it’s a way of controlling it.”

The Curse: Part 11
This is my favorite portion of the documentary. It shows Hughes visiting the Lever House skyscraper in New York City for an interview with collector Alberto Mugrabi. The bottom floor of the building is where the Lever House Art Collection is located; a project conceived by real estate tycoon Aby Rosen and Alberto Mugrabi in 2003 as a way to inject corporate art into the public sphere. At the ground floor courtyard at Lever House, Hughes is confronted by The Virgin Mother, Damien Hirst’s 35ft-tall statue of a young pregnant woman that shows half of the woman’s skin and tissue removed to reveal the fetus.

Damien Hirst’s "The Virgin Mother", a 35ft-tall statue of a young pregnant woman. Screen capture from The Mona Lisa Curse.

Hughes surveys the sculpture and says; “Isn’t it a miracle what so much money and so little ability can produce? Just extraordinary. You know, when I look at a thing like this I realize that, so much of art - not all of it thank god, but a lot of it - has just become a kind of cruddy game for the self-aggrandizement of the rich and the ignorant, it is a kind of bad but useful business.”

The Hughes interview with Alberto Mugrabi is priceless; a confrontation between two philosophies, one that extols art as spiritual and necessary to the human heart, the other that sees art strictly in business terms. Hughes is sagacious, looking all the world like some great wise owl as he controls the discussion from his perch. Mugrabi attempts to hold his own but he is clearly outgunned. It is remarkable to see Mugrabi, a man who shapes, manipulates, and controls a fair share of the elite art world, reduced to babbling in the presence of an opinionated art critic who speaks his mind. A typical exchange in the conversation follows:

Hughes: “You take Richard Prince to be an artist of significance, do you?”
Mugrabi: “Absolutely”
Hughes: “What is significant about his work?”
Mugrabi: “He’s a guy that has his own ideas… he’s a person that has done a lot of different types of work…”
Hughes (interrupting): “But Richard Prince’s works seems to consist of basically two types. One is those rather weak jokes, and the other one is the transcription of photographs in paint.”
Mugrabi: “He’s such a deep person that maybe you don’t see it in his paintings – but he definitely is.”
Hughes: “If he is why does one not see it in his paintings?”
Mugrabi: (momentarily struck silent) “Cuz… I, I see it… I think, I think…”

The Curse: Part 12
Hughes wraps up his documentary with some final words;

“Some think that so much of today’s art mirrors and thus criticizes decadence, not so – it’s just decadent, full stop. It has no critical function, it is part of the problem. The art world beautifully copies our money driven, celebrity obsessed, entertainment culture; same fixation on fame, same obedience to mass media that jostles for our attention with its noise and wow and flutter.”

“For me, the cultural artifact of the last 50 years has been the domination of the art market. Far more striking than any individual painting or sculpture. It has changed art’s relationship to the world and is drowning its sense of purpose.”

“If art can’t tell us about the world we live in, then I don’t believe there’s much point in having it. And that is something we are going to have to face more and more as the years go on; that nasty question which never used to be asked because the assumption was always that it was answered long ago - ‘What good is art?, What use is art, what does it do? Is what it does actually worth doing? - and an art which is completely monetized in the way that it’s getting these days, is going to have to answer these questions or it is going to die.”

"200 One Dollar Bills" - Andy Warhol (Detail) Silkscreen ink on canvas. 1962. 80¼ x 92¼ inches. Sold at Sotheby’s auction for over $43 million.

On November 11, 2009, Sotheby’s in New York held an auction of Post-War and Contemporary art, attracting a crowd of deep-pocketed collectors who ended up spending over $134 million in acquiring 52 artworks by an assortment of celebrity artists – mostly from the Pop Art school of the 1960s. The biggest seller of the evening was Andy Warhol, whose 200 One Dollar Bills - the earliest silkscreen print made by the artist – was sold to an unidentified bidder for the ridiculous sum of $43,762,500.

The celebratory headlines regarding Sotheby’s auction bordered on the giddy in the mainstream press, “The Art Market Shows Signs of Life” (Wall Street Journal), and “Warhol painting gives brush-off to art downturn” (Financial Times), are but two examples. Reading these accounts one is left with the impression that the great economic crash of 2008 never occurred. During the same week as the Sotheby’s auction, the U.S. Labor Department reported that the actual unemployment rate in the U.S. soared to 17.1 percent. But you would not have known this from the frenzied bidding at Sotheby’s or from the laudatory accounts of the auction in the media.

Press accounts have not offered any in depth analysis of the meaning or repercussions of Sotheby’s astonishing sale. For instance, with museums across the U.S. slashing budgets, firing staff, freezing hiring and wages, canceling exhibits, reeling from plunging endowments, and in some cases permanently closing their doors to the public – all because of the economic downturn; how is the making of $134 million by Sotheby’s auction house and a handful of commercial agents any indication of a healthy arts scene? Moreover, with more and more artworks being purchased by private parties at astronomical prices, artworks to be sequestered away in private collections – how will under funded museums be able to acquire important works? What will happen to the public’s access to historic works of art if they are all held in private collections?

"Roll of Bills" - Andy Warhol. Pencil, crayon, and felt-tip pen on paper. 1962. 40 x 30" inches. Purchased at Sotheby’s auction for $4,226,500 by Manhattan art dealer, Larry Gagosian.

One should recall that in February of 2009, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, his so-called stimulus package. That plan allotted $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts, monies that were distributed in July of 2009 to 631 arts organizations across the U.S. It was a woefully inadequate sum, as over 2,400 art institutions in dire straights had applied for financial assistance. To put all of this in perspective; one unidentified individual purchased a single print by Andy Warhol for over $43 million. Again, how does such an acquisition contribute to the health and stability of the art world? It is simply an exchange of trophies between oligarchs.

Writing for the New York Times, art critic Holland Cotter seemingly joined the crowd enthralled by all that is golden, informing us that Warhol was “one of the first modern artists to realize, or rather to say out loud, that money itself is beautiful, is art, which has helped create the reality that, aesthetically speaking, it is as often as not, the price tag, not what it’s attached to, that generates value.”

I could give Cotter the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is opposed to art being monetized to the extremes we are presently witnessing; but if that were the case then he would have said so – however feebly. Instead, Cotter’s observations are equivocating and fuddled. He seems to be in agreement with the widely held supposition in elite art circles that the essence of art is not humanist concern, historic import, or spiritual core; let alone technical skill and artistic vision - but simply exceptional marketing skills and sky-scraping prices. The avariciousness exemplified by Warhol’s early 60s quip; “Good business is the best art” – has become one of the prevailing tendencies now poisoning the art world. It is indeed a shame that Cotter, and other art critics as well, are unable to proffer anything approaching a well thought out critique regarding the dominant role of money in today’s art world.

"Violins Violence Silence" – Bruce Nauman. Neon tubing with suspension frame. 1981-82. 62 x 65" inches. Purchased at Sotheby’s auction for $4 million.

At least one commentator mustered a somewhat critical assessment of the proceedings at Sotheby’s. In his article for the New York Times, arts writer Souren Melikian made a few withering comments about the auction, first laying into Warhol by writing; “The price paid this week for the Warhol signals the triumph of what some might call commercial propaganda. The essence of propaganda is relentless repetition, and few names have been tossed about with as much insistence as Warhol’s.” Melikian closed his article with a wry jab at Bruce Nauman, whose “(….) neon light tubes attached to a suspension frame, executed in 1981 or 1982, realized $4 million. The letters they form read ‘Violins Violence Silence,’ hence the title of the work. The alliteration aside, the contradictory evocations of the title do not mean a great deal. But then, meaning did not seem to be a primary concern on a day when the mechanical reproduction of 200 bank notes cost more than $43 million.”

In the early 1950s Nelson Rockefeller, whose family ran the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), referred to abstract art as “free enterprise painting”; but what would Mr. Rockefeller have said about the art sold at Sotheby’s? Certainly the works avoid serious examination of the world and our place in it, not even in a cynical or banal way. In some cases the works, like Warhol’s, are nothing more than brazen celebrations of money; empty, meaningless, and without the slightest interest in the human condition. But then, Warhol once said; “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”

In the early 1960s Robert Scull, the taxi cab company tycoon and art collector, purchased 200 One Dollar Bills directly from Warhol. I have no idea what Scull paid for the print, but seeing as how he had purchased an original painting of flowers by Warhol at around the same time for $2,500, it is hard to imagine the purchase price of 200 One Dollar Bills being any higher. In 1973 Scull sold off a portion of his Pop Art collection at a controversial auction that made over $2 million – which at the time was an extraordinary amount of money. It was the event that ushered in the overriding role of big money in art. Scull’s auction was considered so offensive and exploitative by artists that dozens of them set up a picket line outside of the auction house in protest. Warhol’s painting of flowers sold for $135,000.

In 1986 Scull sold Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills for $385,000. At the 2009 Sotheby’s action it sold for $43,762,500 - perhaps ten years from now it will sell for $1 billion. Whatever its inflated “market value” turns out to be – it will merely be a reflection of the gross narcissism of those rich enough to own it.

The forces involved in the Sotheby’s auction represent an extremely influential layer in the elite art world, people who must surely believe they are shaping and controlling the future of art; but as any student of history will tell you, the most grandiose plans of the powerful are often times thwarted by material conditions, social pressures, and the acts of the independently minded. I count myself amongst the latter category. I obviously do not believe that “Good business is the best art” or that it is “the price tag, not what it’s attached to, that generates value.” In fact, I do not believe business has anything whatsoever to do with creating art, just as it has nothing to do with one’s prayers or one’s heart when it is bursting with love. Call me a fool, but I have always believed that art serves a very noble purpose in our collective experience. It is one of the highest expressions of human achievement, so great in fact that scholars throughout the centuries have always pointed to the arts and sciences as the truest measure of civilization. If in lieu of art, all we pass on to the future is a superlative business acumen – then we shall be appropriately judged.

Here I am reminded of the words of Joseph Incandela, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Incandela is a physicist working on producing the so-called “Higgs boson,” a particle that so far has remained unobserved, but could someday help answer a number of elemental questions pertaining to matter in the universe. Needless to say Incandela is a man of lofty thoughts, and unsurprisingly he made an interesting comment about art in a recent CNN interview concerning his research. Believing that art and science are linked by shared goals, Incandela remarked; “Both of them enrich the human existence beyond just the maintaining of health, wealth and welfare. They both have an idealism also associated with them, a timelessness.”

I will be exhibiting at 365 & Counting, a group exhibit that examines the 1st year of the Obama Administration. Avenue 50 Studio in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles asked 15 artists to create artworks that provide insight into the president’s first year, and issues of race, class, war, health care, the environment and the economy, plus other global challenges - are explored in the timely exhibition.

"Bagram Prison, Afghanistan" - Mark Vallen. 2009. Oil on linen. On display at Ave. 50 Studio from Nov. 14 - Dec. 6, 2009.

Given the escalating war in Afghanistan, I painted a glimpse of the notorious military prison located in the U.S. Airbase at Bagram, Afghanistan.

The prison currently holds more than 600 detainees designated as “unlawful enemy combatants”; individuals that in some cases have been tortured and held for years without charge, legal representation, or due-process rights.

In February of 2009, the Obama administration began a $60 million expansion of the Bagram prison so that it could potentially hold as many as 1,100 suspects. As the Associated Press reported on November 1, 2009, as President Obama escalates the war in Afghanistan the U.S. Airbase at Bagram is being expanded even though it presently occupies over 5,000 acres and from a distance looks “more like a medium-size city than a military facility in a war zone.”

The 365 & Counting exhibition will be on view from November 14 to December 6, 2009. The exhibit also includes artists Alex Alferov, Yrneh Brown, Nancy Buchanan, Chukes, Carol Colin, Kathi Flood, Graham Goddard, Miguel Angel Murillo, CCH Pounder, Suzanne Siegel, Joseph Sims, Charles Swenson, Richard Turner, and Ted Waltz.

The Artist’s Reception for 365 & Counting takes place on Saturday, November 14, 2009, from 7 to 10 p.m. Avenue 50 Studio is located at; 131 N. Avenue 50, Highland Park, California, 90042 (map & directions). Phone: 323: 258-1435.

McDonald’s Corporation, the world’s largest corporate chain of fast food hamburger restaurants and unfortunately an icon of American “culture”, will celebrate its 30th anniversary in France by opening a McDonald’s restaurant and McCafé in the Louvre museum this coming November, 2009.

The U.K. Daily Telegraph confirmed the story in an October 4th article, reporting that McDonald’s “faces a groundswell of discontent among museum staff.” The article quoted an art historian who works at the Louvre, who spoke only under the condition of anonymity: “This is the last straw. This is the pinnacle of exhausting consumerism, deficient gastronomy and very unpleasant odors in the context of a museum.” No doubt there will be an outpouring of displeasure from the French people as well, since many have regarded McDonald’s as the spear point of U.S. cultural imperialism.

The Daily Telegraph article mentioned the activist group Louvre Pour Tous (Louvre For All), an arts advocacy organization I have written about in the past. A spokesperson for the group said the following about the Louvre McDonald’s: “Henri Loyrette, president of the Louvre museum, just had to say one word to stop the whiff of French fries from wafting past the Mona Lisa’s nose. He chose otherwise.”

It should be remembered that French farmer José Bové became a national hero in France when in 1999 he used a tractor to bulldoze a McDonald’s restaurant under construction in the town of Millau. Bové acted in unison with thousands of other farmers who were angrily opposing - not just American junk food (”malbouffe” - “foul food”), but the juggernaut of corporate globalization and its crushing of national culture.

While the French people have become more accommodating towards the U.S. corporate giant since Bové’s protest, it is difficult to imagine their accepting the spectacle of Ronald McDonald in the palatial halls of France’s greatest museum. I have no doubt French citizens will view the Louvre McDonald’s as an affront to their palace of fine art and to their world renown cuisine – it is an unbearable insult that I too find wholly unacceptable.

"Blue Dogs" – Michael Dal Cerro. Wood block print. 2009.

With good reason, health care reform has become a major topic in the United States. Patricia Dahlman and a number of like minded artists have created an online exhibition, Art for Health Care Reform, which addresses just some of the issues.

"To Your Health" – Deborah Harris. Linoleum block print. 2009.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Philip Stein and his wife Gertrude in October of 2003, when the two visited their daughter Anne in Silverlake, California. Last April I received the sad news that Philip died at his home in Manhattan on April 27, 2009, at the age of 90. A public memorial celebrating his life and legacy will be held Sunday, September 13, 2009, at:

The Village Vanguard
178 7TH Avenue South.
Greenwich Village, New York City
1 to 3 p.m. RSVP: 212-346-9309

Philip Stein, aka Estaño, at a 2008 exhibit of his work in New York City. Photo by Robert M. Siqueiros.

I will never forget finding the biography SIQUEIROS - His Life and Works, in a Los Angeles bookstore in 2003. As an artist deeply influenced by the Mexican Mural Movement, I was fascinated by the book’s scholarly yet readable examination of the Mexican muralists, and of the life and works of David Alfaro Siqueiros in particular. I did not purchase the book, which was written by Stein, but I spent the next day kicking myself for not having done so. I was astonished when the very next day the publisher of the book contacted me, inquiring if I would like a review copy of the book. The publisher was kind enough to put me in contact with Stein and from that point on Philip Stein and I became fast friends.

Stein of course was an active participant in the Mexican Mural Movement, and he worked with Siqueiros as an assistant painter on eleven murals in Mexico City from 1948 to 1958. It was in those early years that Siqueiros gave Stein the nickname of Estaño, a moniker that stuck ever since. The insights Stein provided me regarding the social realist movement of the period – both in Mexico and the United States - cannot be found in any book, not even Stein’s. I conducted an interview with him in 2004 that affords some clear understanding and deep perceptions of the man and his times – but clearly much more needs to be written.

"Stop The War" – Philip Stein. 1976. Acrylic on panel. 36" x 48" In the artist’s own words regarding the subject of this painting, "There is no end to this call of the people."

I was surprised to learn of Estaño’s passion for Jazz. He spent much time in the early Jazz clubs of New York, maintained an absolutely massive collection of Jazz records, hosted Jazz radio shows in Mexico and Spain, and produced two albums on the Jazz Art label. In 1968 he painted a glorious mural on an interior wall of the legendary New York Jazz club, the Village Vanguard – which should explain why his memorial is being held at that historic venue. The New York Times wrote an obituary for Stein at the time of his death which included a rare glimpse of the Vanguard mural, New Man, New Woman.

Regrettably, I will not be able to attend the memorial at the Village Vanguard, but come the day and hour of the celebration, I will play my copy of John Coltrane, Live at the Village Vanguard, as a last salute to the people’s artist, Philip Stein.

"Dia de los Muertos" – Mark Vallen. 2003. Oil on wood panel.

I will be exhibiting two of my oil paintings at the Bakersfield Museum of Art from September 17, 2009 through November 22, 2009, as part of the museum’s Dia de Los Muertos – Day of the Dead exhibition. The exhibit presents artworks past and present that celebrate the traditional Mexican holiday, including a number of orginal prints by the renowned Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada.

"La Muerta" (The Dead Woman) – Mark Vallen. 2006. Oil on masonite panel.

In addition, the exhibit includes life-sized paper-mâché Calaveras (skeletons) by the famed Mexican artist Miguel Linares, whose family is world renown for their traditional Dia de Los Muertos sculptures, as well as paintings from Paul McMillan, Dirk Hagner, Gage Opdenbrouw, Gregg Stone, Frederick Chiriboga, and Joaquin Patino.

"La Madre y el Nino" (Mother and Child) – Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on canvas. 1941. The wretched of the earth.

Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamín was an important two-year long traveling retrospective of artworks by Latin American master, Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919-1999). The exhibit recently ended its scheduled tour last August 16, 2009 at the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in Long Beach, California. Guayasamín, hailed in his home country of Ecuador as a national hero and widely acclaimed throughout Latin America and indeed the world – is scarcely known in the United States. What accounts for this near total lack of recognition? Emphasizing the magnitude of his omission from public awareness in the U.S., I overheard someone say while viewing the show, “I’ve never heard of Guayasamín before. I don’t mean to sound sacrilegious, but I think he’s better than Picasso.”

Expertly curated by Joseph Mella, Director of the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee, Of Rage and Redemption first premiered in February of 2008 at the Vanderbilt before moving on to four other national venues, including a run at the Organization of American States’ Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C. The exhibit was laid out as a timeline, starting with the artist’s early figurative works from the 1940s, and culminating with his late period minimalist paintings from the 1980s and 1990s. Walking through the exhibit not only gave insight into Guayasamín’s artistic development over the decades, it presented an overview of history as it occurred in Latin America and throughout the world, since the artist was deeply concerned with real world events. In his own words:

“I have used a powerful weapon, the plastic, to denounce and protest the bad behavior of ‘man against man.’ I speak the truth of my time, without the picturesque or the anecdotal. I don’t look for beauty - but for truth. I use the body of humanity to show the present and historical reality, without academic euphemisms; this humanity – tortured by injustice, misery and horror, is present in The Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon.”

"La Cantera" (The Accident) – Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on canvas. 1941. The artist’s depiction of an industrial mining catastrophe. Rich in minerals and metals, Ecuador’s miners were subjected to exploitation and poor working conditions for much of the 20th century.

While Guayasamín was undoubtedly influenced by modernist aesthetics, he wanted to move away from European traditions in art. One might see the German Expressionists in his agitated brushstrokes and figurative exaggeration, but Guayasamín’s unique late style was inspired by the ancient civilizations of pre-Hispanic America; it was Inca, Maya, and Aztec aesthetics that fired his imagination and guided his vision.

The Maya murals of Bonampak, Mexico painted in 790 AD and the Inkapirqa (Inca wall), built in Ecuador by the Inca in the late 15th century before the Spanish conquest – had more to do with Guayasamín’s artistic vision than anything offered by the European avant-garde of the late 20th century. In part it was this “indigenismo”, the utilization and further development of deep-rooted indigenous aesthetics that made Guayasamín’s art so greatly admired throughout Latin America.

"Napalm" – Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on canvas. 1976

I would like to remark on a number of paintings presented in the exhibit, for example, the oil painting titled Napalm. It condemned the incendiary weapon made infamous by its massive use in Vietnam by the U.S. military. Guayasamín’s terrifying canvas looks as if it were made from scorched flesh and coagulated blood. Painted in 1976, the canvas surely alluded to Kim Phúc, the little Vietnamese girl who was severely burned in a napalm attack that took place in 1972.

Photos and motion picture film of Phúc running down a village road, her clothes burned off and her seared flesh hanging in strips, became some of the most unforgettable imagery from the Vietnam War. But Guayasamín was also undoubtedly thinking of how napalm had been used in Latin America as well. In 1965 the Peruvian army bombed guerrilla fighters at Mesa Pelada with U.S. supplied napalm, and in 1968 the Mexican government used the U.S. furnished jellied gasoline against guerrilla groups operating in the southern coastal state of Guerrero.

"Los Torturados" (The Tortured) – Oswaldo Guayasamín. Triptych. Oil on canvas. 1976-77. Painted in commemoration of Victor Jara, the slain Chilean folk singer.

The canvas Los Torturados (The Tortured) alludes to another tragic moment in history. Painted in the years 1976-77, Guayasamín’s canvas at first glance seems a commentary on the torture of civilians at the hands of military regimes, which indeed it is - but the artist had something more specific in mind. Chile’s democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown on September 11, 1973, in a brutal military coup backed by the United States. Some 3,000 civilians were killed and thousands more were detained by the military junta.

One of those arrested was Victor Jara, the famous Chilean folk singer and supporter of the deposed socialist government. He was taken by the army to Chile Stadium in Santiago, then being used as a torture and detention camp for thousands of prisoners. Once they realized the celebrated singer was in their custody, soldiers began to savagely torture Jara. Troops broke both of his wrists and crushed the bones in both of his hands with rifle butts before machine-gunning him.

"Los Torturados" (Detail) – Oswaldo Guayasamín.

Three years later Guayasamín would dedicate Los Torturados to the spirit of Victor Jara. In 2004 a new democratically elected government honored the memory of the slain singer by renaming Chile Stadium, The Victor Jara Stadium. In 2008 a Chilean government investigation and autopsy confirmed that Jara had been tortured and shot 44 times. Finally, in May 2009, a former low ranking army conscript was charged with the murder of Jara.

Another impressive oil painting in the exhibit was the monolithic, Reunión en el Pentágono I-V (Meeting at the Pentagon I-V). The five panels created in 1970 offer psychological portraits of fictitious U.S. military chiefs conspiring behind closed doors.

"Reunión en el Pentágono I-V" (Meeting at the Pentagon I-V) - Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on canvas. 1970.

While viewing the panel portraits it is difficult not to think of director Stanley Kubrick’s doomsday film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, not for any intentional connection Guayasamín made to Kubrick’s cinematic masterwork, but simply because the paintings so brilliantly depict men whose minds have become unhinged by militarism.

While Kubrick drove home his point with dark humor, there is little of a comedic nature to be found in Guayasamín’s rough semi-abstract caricatures of the militarists. His military chiefs are Machiavellian ideologues practiced at placing lives in the balance for the sake of political expediency and bellicose Cold War objectives.

"Reunión en el Pentágono I-V" (Detail) - Oswaldo Guayasamín.

One is almost tempted to chuckle at the men in the portraits for all of their pomposity and ridiculous jingoism, but quiet laughter seems inappropriate. Guayasamín and his compatriots had seen too many hearts and souls crushed by real jackbooted tin horn dictators to find anything funny about them or their shadowy benefactors.

The technique employed by Guayasamín in creating the panels added to the work’s powerful narrative. He literally troweled oil paint onto the panels, spreading and smoothing it in places, scoring and scraping it off in other areas. Repeated applications of paint applied in this manner resulted in a textured surface over which he applied glazes of color. His figures were painted on a black underpainting, and his finishing brush strokes of black were painted into wet color. The painting is a tour de force, full of lustrous transparencies, aggressive brush strokes, and remarkable textures.

"Reunión en el Pentágono I-V" (Detail) - Oswaldo Guayasamín.

Guayasamín’s masterful handling of paint bestowed upon his subjects a surprising if distorted humanity. One appears as a fleshy bureaucrat and another as a rhinoceros-skinned brute. One blue-eyed fellow hunched over at his desk with a look of consternation etched upon his face displays an unexpected vulnerability. The shred of morality he still possessed had been stirred; his eyes convey self-loathing – or is it extreme doubt – over something he has done or is about to set into motion.

The history of U.S. military intervention in Latin America is so extensive that one could devote an entire lifetime to its study. U.S. military invasions and occupations in the hemisphere pre-dated the existence and influence of the Soviet Union, often cited as the reason for the U.S. engineered coups and assassinations that took place in the 20th century.

"Tears of Blood: Homage to Salvador Allende, Victor Jara, and Pablo Neruda" - Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on canvas. 1973. Not displayed at the MoLAA exhibit.

Prior to the founding of the Soviet Union there were at least 25 major U.S. military interventions in Latin America, from the 1848 war of the United States against Mexico – one of the most shameless land grabs in world history – to several thousand U.S. Marines occupying the Dominican Republic in 1916.

Guayasamín’s Meeting at the Pentagon portraits adhere to the profile of military leaders from “El Norte” that Latin Americans have long held, and there has been little recent evidence given to make them change their minds. Despite President Obama’s assurances that there will be “no senior partner and junior partner” in U.S.-Latin American diplomatic relations, his actions speak otherwise. His near passivity regarding the June 28, 2009 coup d’état in Honduras have left many wondering if Obama tacitly approves of the military coup. Every Latin American nation has withdrawn its ambassador from Honduras in protest of the coup, and member states of the European Union have done the same – it is only the U.S. that has failed to do so. Worse yet, Obama has struck a deal with the right-wing government of Colombia, giving U.S. military forces long-term access to seven military bases across that country and allowing for an expanded U.S. military presence in Colombia. At an Aug. 28, 2009 emergency meeting of the South American Union of Nations (Unasur) held in Argentina, South American heads of state blasted the Obama plan as a threat to regional peace and stability.

"Rigoberta Menchú" - Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on canvas. 1996. Portrait of the Guatemalan Maya human rights activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Price.

It was Simón Bolívar who once intoned, “Nuestra Patria se llama América” (The name of our country is América); an axiom that gave expression to a vision of hemispheric unity so deeply- instilled in Latin Americans that many still take umbrage when citizens of the United States use the name “America” to mean U.S. national exclusivity and pre-eminence. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Bolívar (1783-1830) came to be known as “The Liberator” for his leading role in the independence movement against the Spanish. Revered throughout Latin America for having smashed Spanish colonial rule in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela, it was Bolívar’s pan-American vision that inspired and inflamed Latin American patriots ever since his death. That same pan-national fervor permeates Guayasamín’s art, yet it would be a mistake to view him as an artist who was devoted only to the people of the Americas; the core of his art was a passionate universal humanism.

"Los Niños Muertos" (The Dead Children) – Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on canvas. 1941. A territorial dispute between Ecuador and Peru erupted into war in 1941. In this painting the artist depicted children who had been massacred by unidentified military forces.

Strolling through the exhibit was akin to reading the works of Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, in that Guayasamín presented the region’s anguished history in a visual language similar to the hallucinatory verse of Galeano. I first read Galeano’s The Open Veins of Latin America, an authoritative history of the Americas from 1492 to the late 20th century, in the late 1970s; I have followed his writings ever since. However, it was his magnificent 1985 trilogy, Memoria del Fuego (Memory of Fire) that remains a favorite work of mine. A non-prosaic chronicle of the continent’s history, Memory reads like an epic poem that begins with the creation myths of indigenous people before there was written history, and ends in 1984 with a peasant fiesta in Bluefields, Nicaragua, where; “however much death may come, however much blood may flow, the music will dance men and women as long as the air breathes them and the land plows and loves them.” Galeano’s trilogy is a remarkably powerful and insightful work, and Guayasamín’s art is the closest visual equivalent I can think of.

"Portrait of Leonor Estrada" - Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on panel. 1952. Not displayed at the MoLAA exhibit.

Despite its profundity, the Of Rage & Redemption exhibition had its flaws, the greatest of which was overlooking Guayasamín’s extraordinary power as a modernist portraitist. Save for a few realistic early works, the exhibition focused mostly on the artist’s mid to late period minimalist style, where he reduced the human figure to near abstraction. On the whole, the viewer was left with a rather narrow view of Guayasamín.

To fully appreciate the weight of Guayasamín’s art one must begin with his portraits, of which he created hundreds over the expanse of his career. Without sentimentalism or showiness, Guayasamín painted the likenesses of friends, relatives, associates, workers, and fellow artists. As time went on he would also paint celebrities and presidents, but of those who sat to have their portrait painted - whether campesino or luminary – all were painted as equals. There were no “natural rulers” in Guayasamín’s universe; the only sovereigns were those who struggled against cruelty and injustice. The list of those who had their portraits painted reads like a directory of Latin American notables; Atahualpa Yupanqui, Mercedes Sosa, Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez, Fidel Castro, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Francois and Danielle Mitterrand, and many others.

"Rosa Zárate, Flor Decapitada" (Rosa Zárate, Decapitated Flower) - Oswaldo Guayasamín. Oil on canvas. 1987. Latin America’s first call for independence from Spain was made in Quito, Ecuador, on August 10, 1809. Rosa Zárate and her husband Nicolás de la Peña were fighters in the independence movement, and when it was repressed in 1812 the two fled to Colombia. The Spanish eventually captured and executed them in 1813, cutting off their heads and sending them back to Quito where they were displayed to intimidate the population. Ecuador won its independence in 1822, and Zárate was remembered as a national hero. While not displayed at the MoLAA exhibit, this painting is part of the "Image of the Mother Country" mural that hangs in the Ecuadoran Congress.

Guayasamín’s style of portraiture was largely based upon exaggerated caricature, yet his portraits were never cartoonish. Portraits from the 1940s and 1950s were generally more realistic, but his later period primitivist approach in no way bordered on kitsch, and while he stripped away superfluous details he always succeeded in capturing the unique spirit of his individual sitters. In its totality the body of Guayasamín’s portraiture can be viewed as the collective face of Latin America’s people.

It is a shame that more people in the United States are not familiar with the works of Oswaldo Guayasamín, but his not being well-known in the U.S. is an issue of some complexity. The fashionable art world of today, transfixed as it is with the strictures of postmodernism, essentially does not know what to make of such an artist. Irony, cynicism, and lack of introspection, are the hallmarks of today’s trendy art – all notions antithetical to Guayasamín’s work.

One can imagine the nauseating kitsch of Jeff Koons’ Michael Jackson and Bubbles on display at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art – but it is impossible to imagine Guayasamín’s memorial to the spirit of Victor Jara hanging in the same institution. Despite my differences with the Museum of Latin American Art, it deserves credit for mounting the Guayasamín retrospective.

For more information on the work of Oswaldo Guayasamín, visit the official website of the Guayasamín Foundation. MoLAA offers a small illustrated catalog of the exhibit, which is available at the museum’s gift shop. However, a splendid and much superior collaborative book by Guayasamín and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda can be purchased through Amazon. Titled America, My Brother, My Blood, the book combines words and poetry by Neruda with paintings and drawings by Guayasamín. Image of the Mother Country, a colossal mural commissioned by the government of Ecuador, hangs in that country’s Legislative Palace (Congress) in the capital of Quito. The National Assembly of the Republic of Ecuador maintains an illustrated Spanish language .pdf file that explains the history and narrative of the mural – which was installed and officially unveiled in 1988.

"Imagen de la Patria" (Image of the Mother Country) - Oswaldo Guayasamín. Mural. 1987-1988. Mounted in the Republic of Ecuador Legislative Palace (Congress). The multi-panel acrylic mural is supported by an aluminum superstructure and offers a pictorial history of the Republic.

During his run for the presidency, Barack Obama published a document titled, A Platform In Support Of The Arts, a multi-point public statement detailing the candidate’s position regarding the arts in America that garnered a great deal of attention and praise from creative professionals. One of the items on Mr. Obama’s agenda specifically addressed the issue of health care for artists. The following is a verbatim reprint from Obama’s original document:

“Provide Health Care to Artists: Finding affordable health coverage has often been one of the most vexing obstacles for artists and those in the creative community. Since many artists work independently or have non-traditional employment relationships, employer-based coverage is unavailable and individual policies are financially out of reach. Barack Obama’s plan will provide all Americans with quality, affordable health care. His plan includes the creation of a new public program that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health care similar to that available to federal employees.

His plan also creates a National Health Insurance Exchange to reform the private insurance market and allow Americans to enroll in participating private plans, which would have to provide comprehensive benefits, issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums. For those who still cannot afford coverage, the government will provide a subsidy. His health plan will lower costs for the typical American family by up to $2,500 per year.”

While it is commendable that a politician would recognize the unique needs of the self-employed creative community when it comes to health care, I always found the words “affordable health coverage” to be problematic. Affordable to whom? What is reasonably priced to someone making more than $100,000 a year is prohibitive to someone making less than $20,000. The great majority of artists simply cannot afford a health plan, and in these tough economic times many artists are now faced with the challenge of either purchasing the supplies necessary to carry on with their work, or buying the basic necessities of life. In such a context, there is no such thing as “affordable.”

Mr. Obama told the arts community that his reform plan would allow arts professionals to either purchase health insurance from a low cost government-run “public option” insurance program, or from private insurance companies. He maintained that reasonably priced government insurance coverage would “force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest” - while inducing those companies to drop their rates. The public option concept was promoted as a cornerstone of Obama’s health care reform message, marketed not only to creative professionals, but to the wider U.S. public on a continual basis.

Obama-care has been an amorphous and ever-changing scheme; nevertheless loyal supporters of Obama and the Democratic Party attempted to rally the citizenry behind the public option banner. Then came crushing news from the Associated Press on August 16 – White House appears ready to drop public option;

“Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama’s administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.”

Of the several health care bills currently being crafted in Washington, it is the one being worked out by the bipartisan Senate Finance Committee that seems to have curried favor with President Obama. The proposal from Republican and conservative “Blue Dog” Democratic Senators contains no public option; instead putting forward “medical co-ops” as an alternative. But if co-ops could actually act as an effective counterbalance to the dominance of multi-billion dollar insurance companies, then free-market conservatives and the health industry would oppose them.

On August 6, 2009, BusinessWeek published a penetrating article titled, The Health Insurers Have Already Won, detailing how “UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit.” As the article pointed out, on June 4, 2009 the chief executive of insurance giant UnitedHealth, gave a visit to Senator Kent Conrad (Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee), and thereafter the good Senator:

“led an effort to create nonprofit medical cooperatives that would operate much like utility co-ops as a substitute for a federally run plan. With less heft than a proposed national plan, the state medical cooperatives would pose a far weaker competitive threat to private insurers. (….) The industry has already accomplished its main goal of at least curbing, and maybe blocking altogether, any new publicly administered insurance program that could grab market share from the corporations that dominate the business.”

On August 5, 2009, the New York Times ran an explosive article titled, White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost, reporting on a secret deal made by President Obama with the pharmaceutical industry.  The deal placed a ceiling on the amount of money the U.S. government can save when using its enormous purchasing power to negotiate for lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies like Merck, Pfizer, and Abbot Laboratories. The opening paragraph of the New York Times piece was damning enough:

“Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.”

The disclosure that lobbyists for multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies swayed President Obama, who had promised his administration would be impervious to the machinations of special interest lobbyists – was a political bombshell to some. According to the Associated Press, the pharmaceutical giants are sealing their agreement by providing the White House with up to $200 million in advertising to “help” President Obama push through his health care plan. The AP reported that the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), launched a public relations campaign supporting Obama’s health plan that “includes television advertising under PhRMA’s own name and commercials aired in conjunction with the liberal group, Families USA.” The AP story also noted that PhRMA has so far already spent more than $6 million in nationwide advertising in support of Obama-care.

It is interesting to note that in his remarks delivered at the August 11, 2009 New Hampshire Town Hall Meeting on health-care, President Obama mentioned the $80 billion in supposed drug cost “savings” but failed to mention the deal he made with the pharmaceutical giants to help boost their profits.

In a July 6, 2009 article titled, Familiar Players in Health Bill Lobbying, The Washington Post reported that “the nation’s largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues.” The article observed that the lobbyists “are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight.” The Washington Post went on to note that PhRMA “doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million”, and that overall “health-care companies and their representatives spent more than $126 million on lobbying in the first quarter.”

Under President Obama’s plan, with or without the so-called “public option”, tens of millions of American citizens will be legally obliged to purchase health insurance, which presents nothing less than a colossal financial boon for the private insurance industry and the pharmaceutical giants. The total compensation for insurance company CEO’s in 2008 was $67,859,239. Robert A. Williams, CEO of Aetna, made $24,300,112, H. Edward Hanway of Cigna brought in $12,236,740. What do these ridiculously extravagant salaries have to do with delivering quality healthcare to the nation’s citizenry? Real reform is impossible if private insurance companies are to play a role in the nation’s health care system.

The only logical remedy to the U.S. health care crisis is the implementation of publicly funded and privately delivered health care for everyone – Medicare for All - a “Single-Payer Health Care” system based upon need and not the ability to pay. Under such a plan every American would receive comprehensive services for all medical needs. Health care providers would be paid through a single non-profit fund that is run in the public interest, and billing, deductibles, and co-payments would be eliminated. Insurance companies would have no role in delivering health care. A proposal for such a health care system has been introduced in the U.S. Congress (H.R. 676), and it is backed by some ninety legislators. Physicians For A National Health Program (PNHP) have launched a campaign to pressure the Obama administration to adopt single-payer health reform, which Obama initially supported long ago as a Senator, but now consistently opposes.

At his August 11th Town Hall Meeting in New Hampshire, the only reason President Obama could give for not supporting single-payer health care was that, in his words: “we historically have had a employer-based system in this country, with private insurers, and for us to transition to a system like that, I believe, would be too disruptive.” In other words, President Obama can bail out Wall Street to the tune of some $23.7 trillion, or spend hundreds of billions on fighting a war in Afghanistan, but providing universal health care to the American people is “too disruptive.”

Meanwhile, here in my home city of Los Angeles, thousands of people have lined up at the L.A. Forum indoor arena to receive free healthcare from the volunteer doctors of the charity organization, Remote Area Medical (RAM). Initially created to bring free medical care to Third World countries,  RAM now provides essential health care to the working poor living in isolated rural areas of the U.S. like Appalachia. The L.A. Forum clinic was the first time RAM had operated in a major American city. Surely this is not what was meant by the slogan, “Change We Can Believe In.”

“I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is unless you have what’s called a single-payer system in which everyone’s automatically covered, you’re probably not going to reach every single individual.” - President Barack Obama, prime time news conference. July 22, 2009.