"Portrait of my Father" - Mark Vallen. Pencil on paper. 10 x 14 inches. 1979.

On February 7, 2013, my father Joe Vallen passed away at the age of 88. Multiple medical problems led to his death, but his primary difficulty was a weak heart. I was at his side at the final moment, whispering my goodbyes into his ear. He died peacefully.

On October 28, 1924, José Jesus Valenzuela was born in Guaymas, a coastal city in the state of Sonora, Mexico. When he was around 2-years-old “Jesusito” came to the United States with his mother and grandmother to settle in San Diego, California. An amazing world opened up to José when he came to Los Angeles at around sixteen years of age to work in the city’s restaurant business at the behest of his uncle, “Alex” Maytorena. At the time, Alex worked as chief bartender at Perino’s, one of L.A.’s original elite restaurants. Alex helped my father land his first restaurant job as a busboy.

My father married Patricia Schneider in 1951 at the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. José officially became a U.S. citizen and anglicized his name to “Joe Vallen” ten days before I was born on September 7, 1953. Patricia’s mother, Anita Murieta, came from Mexico to the U.S. presumably around 1918. Anita married Edward Schneider, a Maitre ‘D at Victor Hugo’s in Laguna Beach, CA. Pat knew little about her father, who died when she was a baby.

Without formal education, and from a solidly working class background, Joe and Pat strived to live the “American Dream” in a Los Angeles very different from the city we know today. They eschewed their ethnic backgrounds in favor of the upwardly mobile, Euro-centric vision that dominated 1950s McCarthyite America; it was a lifestyle they never challenged until the turmoil of the 1960s confronted them.

In the early years of his extraordinary career Joe worked hard as a waiter, sometimes working two shifts a day. He landed a job at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel. Because he could speak Spanish, he was asked to act as poolside translator for Charlie Chaplin and famed Mexican actress Dolores del Río during their first encounter at the club. Joe was later employed at the world famous Brown Derby restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. He worked his way up through the restaurant world to become a Maitre ‘D at some of the city’s most elite establishments like The Cave Des Roys private club on La Cienega Boulevard, The Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, and The Friars Club of Beverly Hills.

As Joe worked in the leading restaurants of Hollywood’s Golden Age, there was hardly a studio boss, actor, entertainer, or politician that he did not meet. Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, Sammy Davis, Jr., Mel Torme, Ronald Reagan, Conrad N. Hilton, Howard Hughes, and so many others were charmed by my father. Mention a celebrity’s name in casual conversation and Joe’s usual response was to recount having served the person, how well they tipped, whether or not the individual’s disposition was friendly or sour, and general observations regarding comportment, style, and manners. For years I urged my father to write down his remarkable experiences as a Maitre ‘D; he always promised that he would, but he never penned a single line. Now it is too late.

Despite his rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, Joe was a simple working class man. Unbelievably his waiter’s salary enabled him to buy a home and three apartment complexes in the San Fernando Valley - such was a testament, not to Joe’s wealth, but to a once vibrant economy gone to ruin. Joe also purchased land in the then undeveloped Southern California mountain community of Big Bear, where he built a beautiful “A-frame” cabin - virtually with his own hands. Some of my life’s fondest memories involve that wonderful cabin.

On May 5, 1961, my father and I watched on national television as NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to be launched into space. On November 22, 1963, we watched the live Walter Cronkite broadcast announcing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, two days later we witnessed the televised murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. My father and I watched the first televised performance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th, 1964 - marking the moment the “generation gap” opened up between us (Joe mocked the “mop tops” while I was inspired by them). This pattern was repeated over and over as my father and I watched the triumphs and tragedies of late 20th century America unfold before us.

We certainly had our differences, and we fought only as a devoted father and son could. The rebellious 1960s drove a wedge between us, and it became harder and harder to understand one another; it was a gulf that was never really closed. In the late 60s Joe loved Frank Sinatra while I was passionate about The Doors; come the late 70s Joe still revered Sinatra while I acclaimed The Clash. Funny thing is, with the ascendancy of the totally vapid corporate-created pop singers of today, Mr. Sinatra is not looking so bad to me. Perhaps father and son finally came to terms.

After 61 years of marriage Joe and Pat were inseparable. They met the vicissitudes of life with grace, perseverance, and no small degree of courage, but life takes its toll. In 2012 Joe underwent surgery for a pacemaker, and at 87-years-old it would be his third defibrillator implant. At 91-years-old Pat began having trouble taking care of herself because of dementia. My wife Jeannine and I devoted much of 2012 to taking care of my parents, until at last it became necessary to admit them both to a skilled nursing care facility. Despite the best of care, Joe lasted but a few months, and is survived by his devoted wife, who now remembers less and less of the world.

There is so much more to say, but words cannot express my sense of loss. I mourn the passing of the big-hearted man that raised me, and who eventually came to understand - as best he could - this wayward, bohemian, artist. But I also lament the passing of the world my father once knew and was a part of. I carry it within me; this true son of El Pueblo de Los Ángeles will not forget.

Starting January 19, 2013 and running until April 15, 2013, Maurice Merlin and the American Scene, 1930–1947 will be on display at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Tracking the life and times of artist Maurice Merlin, the Huntington exhibit is the very first museum presentation of the artist’s works, even though he passed away sixty-six years ago.

The Huntington Library presented Pressed in Time: American Prints 1905-1950, a first-rate showing (Oct. 6, 2007 to Jan. 7, 2008), that gave ample evidence of the influence and moral authority the school of American Social Realism once enjoyed in the United States. Maurice Merlin and the American Scene, 1930–1947 is a comparable exhibit, though on a smaller scale.

That Merlin’s work remains unknown gives evidence to the ahistorical nature of the contemporary art scene; The Huntington show is the perfect antidote. The exhibit includes some 30 works by the artist covering a wide range of mediums - oils, watercolors, screen prints, drawings, woodcuts, and lithographs. The show also includes nine works by other artists who were part of Merlin’s circle in Detroit. He was not just another “American scene” painter; The Huntington aptly described Merlin as a “Depression-era artist with a political edge.”

Maurice Merlin moved to Detroit Michigan in 1936 when the U.S. was in the throes of the Great Depression, and he found the Motor City beleaguered by social chaos and poverty, but Detroit also had much to offer an artist with a critical vision. Visiting the city four years ahead of Merlin, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera painted his Detroit Industry murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts between the years 1932 and 1933. There is little doubt Merlin kept a sharp eye on Detroit’s intricate political landscape and social dynamics, or that he was inspired by Rivera’s murals.

In Merlin’s Detroit, workers were unemployed in the hundreds of thousands, the city’s African American population suffered the twin scourges of privation and racist oppression, and auto workers were launching massive strikes for better working conditions and the right to organize unions. Impoverished and unable to find work, Merlin found employment with the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Like many artists of his generation, he began to document the social realities engulfing the nation and the world; his Black Legion Widow linoleum cut print displayed at The Huntington exhibit was one such work.

"Black Legion Widow" - Maurice Merlin. Linocut. 8 x 6 in. 1936. In this linoleum cut, Merlin depicted the widow Rebecca Poole, whose husband Charles Poole, had been assassinated in Detroit, Michigan on May 13, 1936 by the Black Legion terror group.

Though not especially indicative of Merlin’s oeuvre, Black Legion Widow is the one print from the exhibit that I wish to focus on in this review. While the narrative realism of the artist’s oil paintings and lithographs may provide a greater appreciation of Merlin’s artistic skills and accomplishments, Black Legion Widow is a consummate example of American social realism in that it captured real world events the artist was closely involved with.

While The Huntington is to be applauded for showing Maurice Merlin’s Black Legion Widow, the museum did not have much to say about the print or the history behind it, hence my compulsion to write this article.

It is my guess that the vast majority of Americans today have no idea what the Black Legion was, but in the 1930s the group grew to be worrisome national headline news familiar to tens of millions. Merlin’s print helps to reveal that part of American history no one can afford to forget. Lamentably, what the print says about America’s not so distant past continues to resonate in our all too uncertain present.

The Black Legion were a shadowy right-wing terror group that operated in Michigan and neighboring states in the 1930s. The Legion boasted six million members, but whatever their numbers, the organization considered it a holy mission to wage war against communists, socialists, anarchists, union organizers, Catholics, immigrants, and every other group the Legion considered undesirable. In their own words, the Black Legion opposed “all aliens, Negros, Jews, and cults and creeds believing in racial equality or owning allegiance to any foreign potentate.” [1]

New Legionnaires made an oath when submitting to the group’s initiation rites. Under cover of darkness an applicant got down on his knees while surrounded by black-robed Legionnaires. As the aspiring member knelt a pistol was aimed at his heart as he recited the official vows; “I will exert every possible means in my power for the extermination of the anarchists, Communists, the Roman hierarchy and their abettors. I further pledge my heart, my brain, my body and my limbs never to betray a comrade and that I will submit to all the tortures that mankind can inflict and suffer the most horrible death rather than reveal a single word of this, my oath.” [2]

In this 1936 image from the photo agency, Acme News Photos (ACME), Detroit police officers pose with weapons and regalia seized from Black Legion terrorists. The officers, dressed in the black robes and pirate hats of the Legionnaires, display a captured lever-action rifle, a .45 caliber 1911 pistol, and a leather whip used to flog victims. The image was an ACME "press photo" circulated to various news publications in '36. Photographer unknown.

Obdurately believing that the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt was “Marxist” and bent on destroying America, the Black Legion prepared for armed insurrection against the U.S. government. The group enlisted white Southerners who were streaming into Detroit, looking for work in the steel and auto industries.

Operating mostly at night, Legionnaires wore black robes and pirate hats emblazoned with skull-and-crossbones insignia - they implemented their political agenda through beatings, floggings, arson attacks, bombings, and outright murder.

For those reared on Disney’s frothy Pirates of the Caribbean adventure franchise, the Black Legion’s pirate regalia may seem nothing more than buffoonery, but in the 1930s the general public’s view of the iconic pirate was a darker vision shaped by Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel Treasure Island. Up until 1929 Stevenson’s book inspired no less than twenty-two Hollywood films about ruthless pirates. Surely Black Legionnaires saw themselves as the same type of menacing outlaw buccaneers defying all authority.

Prior to Diego Rivera’s visitation to Detroit, Earl Little, a Baptist minister and supporter of the Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, died of mysterious circumstances. Little had been the target of Ku Klux Klan harassment before, but when the minister moved his family to Lansing, Michigan, they came under Black Legion persecution. When the family home was burned down in 1929, Little blamed the Legionnaires. In 1931 Detroit police reported that Earl Little had been run over and killed by a street car, but witnesses say he was pushed into harm’s way. Little’s son Malcolm, who years later became Malcolm X, insisted his father had been murdered by Black Legionnaires. [3]

Diego Rivera’s murals were based on the Ford Motor Company’s huge River Rouge factory located in Dearborn, Michigan. On March 7, 1932, just six weeks before Rivera arrived in Detroit, thousands of unemployed workers demanding jobs and union representation held what they called the “Ford Hunger March” on the River Rouge factory. Dearborn police and Ford “private security” fired on the unarmed demonstrators, killing five and wounding up to 50; no one was ever charged with the killings. Union organizers suspected that Ford’s private security force included Legionnaire members, moreover, it was feared the Black Legion had infiltrated the union movement itself.

In Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out Of Desperate Times, author Susan Quinn wrote that, “with the aid of industry leaders opposed to union activity, the legion controlled hiring in certain pockets of the steel and auto industry as well as certain New Deal welfare jobs. Leaders boasted that they ran the entire Federal Emergency Relief Administration in Allen County, Indiana. Indeed, at a time when many were still without work, Black Legion members, even when they came from out of state - all seemed to have jobs.” [4]

On December 22, 1933 the treasurer of the Auto Worker’s Union, George Marchuk, was found murdered in a ditch in a Dearborn suburb. Not long after in March of 1934, the body of John Bielak, a member of the local American Federation of Labor United Automobile Workers, was found dumped at roadside near Monroe, Michigan. Bielak’s killers placed a stack of completed union membership applications beneath the slain organizer’s head, the message being perfectly clear. [5] Union activists believed the Black Legion were behind, not just the murders of Marchuk and Bielak, but the bombing of union halls and homes of labor activists.

After years of terroristic activity, the group’s downfall came about when it murdered an organizer for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). On May 13, 1936, a Black Legion death squad kidnapped thirty-two-year-old Charles Poole from his home and took him on a “one way ride”. Poole, an unemployed auto worker and an organizer for the WPA, was driven to the outskirts of town and shot eight times by a Black Legion triggerman, [6] his crumpled body left at roadside. Police investigating Poole’s murder found a “collection of curious robes and deadly weapons” in the homes of Poole’s neighbors. [7] Dayton Dean, the Black Legion gunman in the slaying, was arrested and made a confession that unraveled the entire Black Legion underground.

Dayton Dean’s admission of guilt revealed that the Black Legion had indeed been recruiting Southern white workers in the auto factories of Detroit to fight in the Legion’s war against unions and communism. Dean testified that the same Black Legion squad that had conspired to murder Charles Poole in May, had also killed Silas Coleman that same month. Black Legionnaires took Coleman, a 42-year-old African American war veteran, into the countryside and made him run for his life before gunning him down. According to Dean, Harvey Davis, the head of the murder squad and chief of the Black Legion organization wanted to “see how it felt to shoot a Negro”.

In an AP story that ran in the June 11, 1936 edition of The New York Sun, it was reported that “The Bullet Club”, a unit of the Black Legion in Pontiac, Michigan, “included on its roles a large number of public officials” and that “the trail of Black Legion terrorism led into three large Detroit automotive plants” where Legionnaire intelligence squads gathered information on union activists who were undoubtedly targeted for assassination. [8]

In the end Dayton Dean’s testimony eventually led to convictions against dozens of Black Legion members. In the Poole and Coleman slaying cases, twelve Legionnaires were found guilty of first degree murder and given life sentences, including Dean himself. Thirty-seven other Legion members were sentenced to prison on charges of conspiracy, attempted murder, and other crimes. As it turned out, Wayne county prosecutor Duncan C. McCrea, the leader of the prosecution in the Charles Poole case, was discovered to be a member of the Black Legion! When this was revealed McCrea stated he had “accidentally” signed a membership card for the group, but Legion defendants in the Poole case swore prosecutor McCrea willingly participated in the fascist group’s chilling initiation rites. [9]

That the state prosecutor in the Black Legion murder trial turned out to be a Legionnaire fanned the flames of suspicion that government trials against the terror group were not so much a series of legal proceedings as much as they were cover-ups. A number of known Black Legion leaders and cadre were never arrested or rooted out of their positions in the private sector, government, and the police. It appeared the fanatical Black Legion, with its long track record of murder and mayhem, had influential friends in high places.

Still from the 1937 Warner Bros. film, "Black Legion", starring Humphrey Bogart. In this photo Bogart's "Frank Taylor" character takes the terror group's oath.

The 1936 Black Legion trials captured national headlines in the U.S. The topic of a homegrown fascist terror organization so gripped the public (the Nazis had come to power three years earlier in 1933) that Hollywood produced two films on the subject. First came the 1936 effort from Columbia Pictures titled Legion of Terror with actor Bruce Cabot (who starred in the original King Kong). A better-known film titled Black Legion was released by Warner Brothers in 1937. The film’s cast included Humphrey Bogart in his first leading role. Bogart played the part of fictional character, Frank Taylor, who was no doubt modeled after the Black Legion trigger-man, Dayton Dean. The film closely mirrored the events that led up to and included the killing of Charles Poole, and ended with the Black Legion killers being convicted in court and sent to prison.

Still from "Black Legion". In this photo Bogart, as a hooded Black Legion terrorist, shoots and kills one of the group's opponents.

A major flaw in the Warner Brothers film was that it gave the impression the Legion had set their sights exclusively on Polish and Irish immigrants. The reality of the group terrorizing union organizers, communists, and African Americans was not addressed.

Even so, the movie  contained powerful scenes, one being Bogart’s character going through the group’s initiation ritual and taking its blood-curdling oath. The film’s most daring scene depicted three industrialists discussing their financial backing of the Legion in order to expand their profits and defeat the union movement.

The Warner Brothers/Bogart film has long been forgotten, but it remains an electrifying indictment of false patriotism, intolerance, and political extremism (the film is available on Netflix).

Maurice Merlin’s Black Legion Widow print was created at a time of increased public awareness regarding fascism. He was a signatory to the original “Artist’s Call” issued by the American Artists’ Congress (AAC), an artist’s organization founded in 1935 for the express purpose of opposing censorship, fascism, and war. Signatories also included the likes of Ivan Albright, Ben Shahn, Edward Biberman, George Biddle, Margaret Bourke-White, Paul Cadmus, Pablo O’Higgins, Alexander Calder, Anton Refregier, Phyllis (Pele) de Lappe, and many others too numerous to mention.

The call was an appeal for all artists to attend the American Artists’ Congress in New York City on February 14, 1936. In part, the call read: “A picture of what fascism has done to living standards, to civil liberties, to workers’ organizations, to science and art, the threat against the peace and security of the world, as shown in Italy and Germany, should arouse every sincere artist to action. We artists must act. Individually we are powerless. Through collective action we can defend our interests. We must ally ourselves with all groups engaged in the common struggle against war and fascism.”

Hundreds of artists from across the U.S., Latin America, and Europe attended the 1936 American Artists’ Congress, including a Mexican delegation that included David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, and Luis Arenal. The AAC mass meeting also featured an exhibition aptly titled America Today. Over 100 works of art where shown, one of which was Maurice Merlin’s Black Legion Widow.

####

[1] Page 295. “The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America“. James Noble Gregory © 2005.
[2] “The Black Legion Rides” By George Morris. Published by Workers Library - Aug. 1936. Reference found in Chapter II, “The Hood Is Lifted”.
[3] “The Dark Days of the Black Legion” by Richard Bak. Published in Hour Detroit, March 2009. Pg. 1, paragraph 12.
[4] “Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out Of Desperate Times“. Susan Quinn © 2009. Chapter nine, “It Can’t Happen Here”.
[5] Page 66. “Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence” by B.J. Widick © 1972.
[6] Front page story, The Montreal Gazette. June 4, 1936. “Black Legion Member Confesses Slaying Poole, Names Instigator“.
[7] “Black Legion Rule Broken“, The Bend Bulletin - June 8, 1937.
[8] “Another Plot To Kill Is Laid To Terrorists: Black Legion Executioner Also Supplies Link to Bomb Blast“. AP Wire story, published in The New York Sun, June 11, 1936.
[9] “The Dark Days of the Black Legion” by Richard Bak. Published in Hour Detroit, March 2009. Pg. 2, paragraph 10.

Photo of Leonard Bernstein courtesy of The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc. ©

Given the abysmal level of cultural literacy in the U.S. at present, it is utterly astonishing that some 50 years ago a nationally televised popular show like Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concert” series even existed on mainstream TV. By comparison, today’s television broadcasting only provides further evidence that we have slipped into the New Dark Ages.

On January 18, 1958, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) gave his very first televised Young People’s Concert at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic orchestra, of which he was the conductor. The What Does Music Mean lecture and concert was broadcast countrywide on CBS television, and the station judged the classical music concerts of such consequence that they were given the station’s prime time slot for three consecutive years. Imagine that happening on today’s commercial television networks.

During the 1958 concert Bernstein explained classical music as a creative force to a packed hall of youngsters not much older than I was at the time, and he conducted the orchestra in renditions of Rossini’s William Tell Overture and Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. I faithfully watched the Young People’s Concert series as a child and the instructive presentations fired my imagination (between 1958 and 1972, their were 53 such concerts). Bernstein addressed youngsters without talking down to them, but the thing was, his delivery was so sophisticated that even adults unfamiliar with classical music were held mesmerized by the conductor’s lectures.

Since it is rarely mentioned, it might come as a surprise to aficionados of classical music that Bernstein was a political activist that held socialist ideas, and because of this the FBI put him under surveillance beginning in the early 1940s. In his book, Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician, author Barry Seldes noted that the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, “listed Bernstein for incarceration in a detention camp in the event of a national emergency”.

You owe it to yourself to watch that very first 1958 Carnegie Hall broadcast (A YouTube video of the original telecast can be found here; parts I, II, III, and IV). In the presentation Bernstein acknowledges a correlation between classical music and visual art;

“Now one of the best pieces that paint pictures is by a Russian Composer called Mussorgsky and he wrote a piece called ‘Pictures at an Exhibition.’ What Mussorgsky did was to take a lot of pictures hanging on the wall in a museum and write music that he thought could describe them - in other words, to try and do with notes what a painter does with paint. But of course notes can’t do what paint can do; you can’t draw your nose with F sharps, you can’t draw a building or paint a sunset with notes. But you can sort of try to do it.”

It amuses me that Bernstein wished he could “sort of try to do” what an artist does with paint, but the Maestro would undoubtedly have found my clumsy attempts at musicality to be just as entertaining. My passion for classical music has always been based on an appreciation of it being the highest achievement in the musical arts. Not only do I listen to it everyday, but I give it my attention when working at the easel. It is a grievous mistake to think of the genre as an exclusive area of interest for snobs and the well-to-do, it belongs to one and all. The high arts, which include classical music, prepare one for lofty thoughts, ideals and dreams, and without these we cannot hope to create a better world.

In his 1973 Harvard lecture series, The Unanswered Question, Leonard Bernstein addressed the question of aesthetics, and in doing so lobbed a grenade into the postmodern present. One can almost hear the gate keepers of the official art establishment diving for cover:

“(….) But these days, the search for meaning through beauty and vice versa becomes even more important as each day mediocrity and art-mongering increasingly uglify our lives; and the day when this search for John Keats’ truth-beauty ideal becomes irrelevant, then we can all shut up and go back to our caves.”

Bernstein was making reference to the 1819 poem Ode on a Grecian Urn by English Romantic poet John Keats, specifically the final two lines of the poem. Bernstein imagined Keats’ words as a philosophical guideline for civilization, and I concur. “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’”

"Hollywood Blvd - Punk Rules" - Mark Vallen 1980 © Pen & ink on paper. 9 1/2" x 11"

This is but one of the drawings I made depicting the world-renowned Hollywood Boulevard in the summer of 1980. My pen & ink urban landscape described the celebrated street as I had observed it in the 80s, before it was transformed by waves of gentrification that began in the mid-1990s. My artwork portrayed an elderly resident waiting for a bus along with a young green-haired punk. Note my inclusion of the legendary Hollywood “Walk of Fame” gold stars on the sidewalk. The tourists never knew what hit them.

View a larger image of Hollywood Blvd. - Punk Rules

I am pleased to announce that a silkscreen poster I created in 1987, To Protect and Serve the Rich - Jail the Homeless, is part of the exhibition, Prison Nation: Posters On The Prison Industrial Complex. The premier of Prison Nation opens on January 19, 2013 at the UC Merced Kolligian Library on the campus of the University of California, Merced. Curated by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) of Los Angeles, California, Prison Nation is a touring exhibit of historic posters that focus on the reality of the prison-industrial-complex as practiced in The Golden State. The show travels to five other venues in California’s San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire areas over the course of the next two years.

In the words of the exhibit’s organizers, “The United States has the largest prison population in the world - over 2.3 million inmates. California locks up more people than any other state in the U.S. and currently proposes to spend billions more to build more prisons and jails across the state.” Yes, we’re number one, and the tale of California’s prison population growing from 20,000 in 1980 to over 170,000 in 2007, is told in the dozens of posters on display in Prison Nation.

"To Protect and Serve the Rich - Jail the Homeless" - Mark Vallen © Silkscreen. 1987.

My own contribution to the exhibit, To Protect and Serve the Rich - Jail the Homeless, does of course have a unique anecdote behind it, as the print was inspired by real world events (view a larger version of my print). In the year 1987 I lived and worked in a ramshackle artist’s loft located in downtown Los Angeles - twelve years before gentrification sent prices in the decaying and abandoned neighborhood through the rooftop around 1999.

The old industrial area where my studio was found sat at the edge of L.A.’s historic Little Tokyo district, and the pre-earthquake-code red brick building that housed my second-story rented loft was constructed in 1911. The Skid Row area of L.A. was a stones throw from my studio, and the entire disintegrating zone was a magnet for the thousands of homeless people who slept on the street in every available doorway. At the time it was estimated that around 30,000 people were homeless in Los Angeles, and that some 10,000 of them slept on downtown streets.

The area was a distribution point for imported goods that came from the port city of San Pedro, and every day trucks brought millions of crates full of cheap merchandise to the small businesses operating in the Toy Town and Fashion districts. The discarded cardboard boxes became building material for throngs of the homeless, who carried off huge slats of the cast off cartons on their backs. In my neighborhood so many destitute people constructed makeshift huts of cardboard on the sidewalks that small shantytowns were formed, and the shelters in that wretched urban community were called “Cardboard Condos”. How fitting for the Reagan years.

Everyday from my studio window I witnessed a parade of poverty-stricken and disfavored humanity. Some were clearly insane, others alcoholics, but there were also many unemployed workers and war veterans who were reduced to living on the streets. On occasion I would see a pitiable family on a grimy avenue pushing a grocery cart filled with all their worldly possessions. Flop houses were so overcrowded, or filthy and infested with rats and roaches, that poor folks preferred living on the sidewalks. I once talked with a grizzled Vietnam war vet living on the street who told me that as long as he could wrap himself up in enough layers of newspaper at night, he could survive the cold. I suppose that was the proper usage for the city’s bourgeois “newspapers”, but others living on the street were not so resilient. Hypothermia plagued untold numbers of those I have so far described - it continues to do so.

"To Protect and Serve the Rich - Jail the Homeless" - Detail. Mark Vallen © 1987.

When I lived in my downtown seventh heaven, Tom Bradley (1917-1998) was the Mayor of Los Angeles and the pugnacious Daryl F. Gates (1926-2010) was the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Complaints from downtown business interests convinced Bradley to take action against the homeless; Bradley and Gates agreed to physically remove the down-and-out population from the city center of L.A.

On May 28, 1987, Police Chief Gates announced at a press conference that the “so-called homeless” were being given seven days to break their camps and disperse, those who did not comply would have their properties seized and be subject to arrest. Gates said he instructed his officers to post 50 notices on streets where the homeless gathered, of course, the official broadsides appeared in my scenic neighborhood.

With nowhere else to go, many of the homeless disregarded orders to abandon their rudimentary cardboard lodgings - they vowed to resist. On the morning of June 4, the day of the looming police action, Mayor Bradley belatedly offered the homeless a forlorn empty lot as a short-term “campground”, but the site would not be available until a week after the raid. There were no takers. Finally, as late afternoon came to my beloved City of the Angels, the LAPD rolled into action against the homeless.

"To Protect and Serve the Rich - Jail the Homeless" - Detail. Mark Vallen © 1987.

The sky was overcast, heightening the yellow “Police Line Do Not Cross” tape that seemed to be everywhere in the sector; red and blue rooftop lights flashed from dozens of LAPD squad cars cordoning off the streets; groups of uniformed and helmeted officers moved from one cardboard hut to the next, rousting occupants, sending them on their way or arresting them; black and white LAPD buses were filled with detainees; ubiquitous LAPD helicopters swarmed the sullen skies. The police methodically razed hundreds of homeless shelters, confiscating or trashing the meager belongings that were found within.

I am positive director John Carpenter witnessed the June 4th raids on the camps of L.A.’s homeless, since a precise sequence from his subversive 1988 science fiction classic, They Live, mirrored the ‘87 police operations - though in a tremendously exaggerated fashion (you can see this 22:17 minutes into his film). That the scene I refer to in Carpenter’s movie was shot on the streets near my downtown L.A. neighborhood, only buttresses my opinion.

The June 4th raids provided an ominous and unsettling scene, and after snapping a few photographs I began to get the vibe that the boys in blue did not appreciate my playing paparazzi. As there was no one around save for the homeless and the police, this bohemian artist made a beeline to his shoddy yet safe garret. It was then and there that I began creating my silkscreen print, To Protect and Serve the Rich - Jail the Homeless, as an immediate response.

My black and white print depicted a line of faceless LAPD officers, with the work’s title integrated into the stark design; the image was inspired by the lines of police I saw during the raids on the homeless camps. To create the poster I quickly drew my image directly on the stretched silk screen, and from there I printed my edition of posters using oil based paint. The next day I went about disseminating the contentious print in my neighborhood, which included giving away copies to the many stressed-out homeless folks in my area.

Prison Nation runs from January 19 to March 9, 2013. The UC Merced Kolligian Library is located at 5200 N. Lake Rd. Merced, CA 95343 (directions and campus map).

The American poet Ogden Nash once wrote, “Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?” This past year certainly had its share of iniquitous events, in spite of that, we can still find evidence of joyous affairs and incidents in the wreckage of the year now passing. Yes… “life is good.” As we dust ourselves off and prepare to shamble into 2013, here is my annual offering of this blog’s top posts from 2012.

Gustav Klimt: At The Getty
“I felt compelled to write this article when confronted with captions the Getty provided for Klimt’s so-called Faculty Paintings, descriptions that merely stated the works had been ‘destroyed in 1945′, while the catalog book mentioned that the paintings had been ‘burned in a fire’. Amazingly, no further details were offered.”

Robert Hughes: the last art critic
“Robert Hughes died on August 6, 2012, at the age of 74. He passed away at a hospital in New York following a long unspecified illness. There are more than a few obituaries written for Mr. Hughes… you can ignore them all. Let Hughes’ sharp-witted writings and proclamations be his obituary; his lacerating words are enough to understand why he is still an indispensable force in today’s money besotted art world.”

The Cradle Will Rock!
The Oberlin Summer Theater Festival (OSTF) of Oberlin College in Northern Ohio, requested permission to use my painting Amanecer (Dawn), in the promotional campaign for the Oberlin’s summer season production of the rarely performed musical, The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein.

For Greater Glory: In the name of Christ
“This article is a critique of For Greater Glory, the latest film by director Dean Wright that purports to tell the ‘true story’ of the Cristero War, the armed uprising of Catholics against the Mexican government that began in 1926 and lasted until the late 1930s. Touted as a ’sweeping historic epic’, the film presents only the viewpoints of the fundamentalist Cristeros (Fighters for Christ), an outlook that distorts a complicated period in Mexico’s history.”

Ray Bradbury, Flame of Metaphor & Myth: R.I.P.
“Ray Bradbury, the great writer of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery stories, died on June 5th, 2012 at the age of 91. (….) A favorite author of mine, Bradbury penned numerous short stories and novels, but it was his 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 that continues to haunt me.”

Coit Tower Crisis
“I visited San Francisco, California in late 2011, for the most part to photograph the impressive murals in the Bay Area that were painted in the 1930s and 1940s. (….) In months to come I will publish on this web log my photographs of a number of the murals, along with biographical information on those artists responsible for their creation.”

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

“Wal-Mart certainly wants the ‘public limelight’ when it comes to their new museum, but when it comes to exporting America’s industrial base to China, bribing shady Mexican government officials for special treatment, or buying favor with U.S. politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties… not so much. No matter how sophisticated the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art might be, nothing can conceal the pernicious crimes of Wal-Mart.”

Elizabeth Catlett: dead at 96
“The largest part of her oeuvre was given to tender and compassionate observation of humanity. Catlett’s works spoke of, not just oppression and injustice, but the capacity of people to create a better world. When searching for an artist with a deep-rooted commitment to social justice and equality, one need not look any further than the immortal Elizabeth Catlett.”

On the Death of Thomas Kinkade
“Here is what is so perplexing; while the elite art establishment dismisses Kinkade’s work as so much vapid kitsch (though Kinkade was unaware of his being a kitsch artist), major art museums are exhibiting and acquiring vast collections of - vapid kitsch (albeit from artists who self-identify as being kitsch). Such is the state of today’s art world.”

LACMA’s Levitated Mass at a Rock-Bottom Price!
“Instead of paying $10 million for Michael Heizer’s 340-ton granite boulder, LACMA can purchase my 100-ton, 10-foot high boulder, titled ‘Alleviated Masses‘, for the amazing low price of only $1 million - that is an incredible savings of $9 million dollars! With such a sweeping reduction in expenditure LACMA can take the amount left over to help create a critically needed first-rate arts curriculum for Los Angeles school children, put into action an expanded artist residency program, and have enough left over for the purchase of artworks from contemporary artists having a hard time due to the economic downturn.”

Faraway, So Close: ’80s L.A. Photos
I exhibited six never before shown photos at Faraway, So Close, a group exhibit of photographs on the theme of Los Angeles as it existed between the years 1980 and 1989. The show ran from February 4, 2012, to March 31, 2012 at the Morono Kiang Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. Also featured were the photos of Sara Jane Boyers, Edward Colver, Ann Summa, May Sun, Richard Wyatt, and Willie Middlebrook. Sadly, Middlebrook passed away soon after the exhibit, and typical of the ever shifting landscape of Lost Angeles, the gallery no longer exists.

Review: Four Los Angeles Exhibits
“I started 2012 by taking in four exhibits in the Los Angeles area; Art Along the Hyphen: The Mexican-American Generation and The Colt Revolver in the American West at the Autry National Center, as well as Places of Validation, Art & Progression and The African Diaspora and The Art of Miguel Covarrubias: Driven by color, shaped by Cultures at the California African American Museum. What unites these seemingly unrelated exhibits are the deep insights they provide into the American experience.”

When I was a 10-year-old in 1963, the very first record I purchased on my own was a recording of the Peer Gynt Suite by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907). It may come as a surprise to some but these days, more often than not, I listen to classical music while I work at my easel. Being a longtime devotee of the genre, I would like to share the following historical detail with readers. French composers Georges Bizet (1838-1875) and Ernest Guiraud (1837-1892) worked together on Bizet’s operatic masterpiece, Carmen, a favorite of mine. In an 1875 letter addressed to Guiraud, Bizet wrote about one of his emotive dreams:

“I dreamed last night that we were all at Naples, installed in a charming villa; we were living under a purely artistic government. The senate consisted of Beethoven, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Giorgione - e tutti quanti (”all of those”). The National Guard was no more. In place of it there was a huge orchestra of which Litolff (Henry Charles Litolff, a piano virtuoso, composer, and music publisher) was the conductor. All suffrage was denied to idiots, humbugs, schemers, and ignoramuses - that is to say, suffrage was cut down to the smallest proportions imaginable. Geneviève (Geneviève Halévy, Bizet’s wife) was a little too amiable for Goethe (Germany’s great literary figure), but despite this trifling circumstance the awakening was terribly bitter.”

Yes, waking reality is rarely superior to our dream world, especially in these unsettling times. In part Bizet’s dream of “a purely artistic government” is shared by this author, and it is that vision that continues to enthuse and inspire this web log.

This June 3, 2010 photo by AP photographer Charlie Riedel shows a seagull trapped in oil along the Louisiana coast after the catastrophic BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

With scarcely any coverage on televised news, multinational oil company BP pleaded guilty on November 15, 2012, to 14 criminal charges related to the death of 11 oil rig workers and the corporation having spilled over 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

BP agreed to pay $4.5 billion in criminal penalties for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster - the biggest fine in U.S. history for the largest ecological catastrophe in U.S. history.

From a strictly monetary perspective, BP’s oil spill caused tens of billions of dollars in economic and environmental damage, but really, what are the lives of 11 oil rig workers actually worth in dollars? What is the true cost of the destroyed fishing industries that once thrived in the Gulf of Mexico? What dollar amount does one attach to the 68,000 square miles of ocean that BP covered in a massive oil slick? How does one put a price on the more than 6,000 seabirds, 600 turtles, and 500 dolphins found dead as a result of the spill? For answers to those questions, ask Michael Govan, the Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

In 2007 Michael Govan accepted a $25 million “donation” from BP on behalf of LACMA, stating publicly that the oil giant was a “green company”. After naming the entry way of LACMA’s newly renovated campus “The BP Grand Entrance”, Govan told the Los Angeles Times that he had accepted BP’s money since: “What was convincing to me was their commitment to sustainable energy (….) We won’t make the transition without the help and cooperation of these major corporations.” To this day Govan has not made a single public statement about BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster.

In the Nov. 15, 2012 announcement, BP pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts and three misdemeanor counts, one of which included the obstruction of the U.S. Congress. Separate and multiple damage claims are currently being sought against BP by several Gulf Coast states and private plaintiffs. Dead or dying seabirds and sea creatures are still being found in the Gulf. A recent study mentioned in Discovery News found that the two million gallons of chemical dispersant called Corexit used by BP to “clean up” the spill, mixed instead with the oil to become a “chemical cocktail” 52 times more toxic than the oil by itself. The toxic brew led to a massive die-off of microscopic aquatic animals that form a large part of the Gulf food chain. The impact on wildlife is incalculable. There is some evidence that BP’s “capped” undersea oil well continues to leak crude into the Gulf.

When making the Nov. 15th admission of guilt, Bob Dudley, chief executive of BP, said the oil company took “responsibility for our actions”, and that “since the spill, we have worked hard to rebuild confidence in the company”. To that reprehensible task, it appears that LACMA’s Michael Govan continues to lend his complete and unconditional support.