The 2012 exhibition AKA Peace was a primary example of the limitations of much of the so-called “political art” in our current period. Curated by U.K. artist Jake Chapman, the show was held at The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, England, from Sept. 25 to Sept. 30, 2012. The intent of the exhibit was to give decommissioned AK-47 rifles to 23 different artists, who would then transform the rifles into sculptural icons for peace. The melodramatic premise of the show was akin to the antiwar bumper sticker slogan, “War is not the answer”, but what were the questions posed by the exhibition?

An etching from Francisco Goya's famous antiwar print suite, "Disasters of War", mutilated by the Chapman Brothers.

Curator Jake Chapman works together with his brother Dinos under the moniker of the Chapman Brothers; the duo have become superstars in the postmodern art world through attention grabbing works mostly known for banality and shock value.

As a for instance, in 2003 the brothers purchased a pristine edition of Francisco Goya’s famous antiwar print suite, Disasters of War, and defaced the etchings by drawing clown and puppy heads on Goya’s characters. Renamed Insult to Injury, the Chapmans exhibited the mutilated etchings at the U.K.’s Tate Modern. Evidently, these days trashing a suite of the most famous antiwar prints ever created qualifies one to curate an “antiwar” art exhibition.

In the official video trailer for AKA Peace, the AK-47 was referred to as “the greatest killing machine in the world”. Presumably that suggests the rifle created by Soviet weapons designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947 (the Avtomat Kalashnikova model 1947) is deadlier than today’s modern cluster bomb munitions: the Apache Attack Helicopter, the AC-130 gunship, the B-2 Stealth bomber, and the nuclear powered Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier - not to mention the numerous atomic bomb arsenals of the world. The histrionic assertion from the organizers of AKA Peace set the stage for an exhibit that was long on sensationalism but lacking any political insight or grasp of history.

AKA Peace was sponsored and partly organized by Phillips de Pury & Company, a multi-million dollar auctioneer and art dealership specializing in postmodern art. In May of 2012 the London-based auction house sold a 1981 painting of a black Christ-like figure by Jean-Michel Basquiat for $16.3 million. On Nov. 10 2012, the auction house teamed up with Russia’s Hermitage Museum for a “gala” auction of works by postmodern art stars Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst; the Honorary Chairman of the gala’s Host Committee was none other than L.A.’s billionaire philanthropist, Eli Broad. Rather than being an exhibit motivated by actual social and political concerns, AKA Peace instead fell into Phillips de Pury’s model of peddling works from “blue chip” artists to oligarchs with little taste in art.

"Yin" - Chapman Brothers. Painted sculpture with decommissioned Kalashnikov rifle. 2012.

The two collaborative sculptures the Chapman Brothers included in AKA Peace are titled Yin and Yang. They depict life-sized immature boys, barely pubescent, wearing tennis shoes and oversized t-shirts while clutching AK-47s; each boy has a large erect penis for a nose and an extended anus for a mouth.

To say these three-dimensional eyesores impart a politically confused point of view is an understatement; the vulgar statuettes are not “antiwar” in the least, they represent nothing more than overt misandry, i.e., the hatred of men and boys. Yin and Yang convey the notion that wars occur solely because men and boys are supposedly predisposed to violence.

The sculptures were apparently titled after the ancient Chinese Taoist metaphysical concept relating to the primal duel energies of the universe, the Yin and Yang.

That philosophy denies the existence of absolute good and evil, proffering instead the idea that negative and positive energies are present in all things; light and dark, water and fire, male and female - forces that cannot exist without the other. Assumptions that Yin represents the feminine while Yang denotes the masculine are inaccurate, since each carries within it the essence of the opposite. Quite frankly the Chapman Brother’s sculptures do not fit into the Taoist outlook.

"Yes" - Sarah Lucas. Sculpture with decommissioned Kalashnikov rifle. 2012.

The Chapman’s bungled attempt at describing war as the result of metaphysical forces is a bit of a stretch… even for them. But the work of the Chapman Brothers in AKA Peace was only the starting point of a very muddleheaded exhibit. Equally confused was the work of Sarah Lucas. Her sculpture titled Yes depicts a grotesquery that is faintly and horrifically reminiscent of the human form. Sans arms, and with two apparent breasts bound together with rope serving as a head, the heap sits on a table with its feetless legs spread akimbo… an AK-47 between its legs standing in for the meat lump’s enormous erect penis. Lucas seems to be saying that testosterone is responsible for armed conflict, a theme that runs throughout AKA Peace.

Not to be outdone in the preposterous department is Laila Shawa’s, Where Souls Dwell. In an interview with ITN News in the U.K., Ms. Shawa told a hair-raising yarn regarding the creation of her AK-47 sculpture; she asserted that “while cleaning the gun in order to start working on it, I went into the barrel of the gun and I found congealed blood.”

"Where Souls Dwell" - Laila Shawa. Assemblage on decommissioned Kalashnikov rifle. 2012.

To someone unfamiliar with firearms, Shawa’s testimonial is chilling. However, the odds of congealed human blood being found in the barrel of a battle rifle, even one from a combat zone, are astronomical. If you doubt me just ask any Afghan or Iraq War veteran, there should be a number of them in your area.

Ms. Shawa no doubt found gelatinous cosmoline in the barrel of her decommissioned AK-47. Since World War II cosmoline has been used by armies to protect and preserve firearms placed in storage; the brown-colored viscous fluid could easily be mistaken for “congealed blood” to the untrained eye.

It is a certainty the AK-47’s used in the exhibit had at one time been dipped in cosmoline and placed in storage before eventually being acquired by the  organizers of the AKA Peace exhibition.

Spin AK47 for Peace One Day by Damien Hirst is modeled after his series of “spin paintings”, works that are made by pouring paint onto canvas or paper secured to a spinning platform. The process has long been utilized in kindergarten and grade school craft projects to help familiarize children with art and painting, causing art critic Robert Hughes to deplore Hirst’s spin paintings as nothing more than “enlarged versions of the pseudo-art made in funfairs”. Of course what differentiates Hirst’s spin paintings from those made by children at a carnival or kindergarten, is his ability to sell the stupid things for upwards of £1m ($1,603,810).

How a paint-splattered AK-47 conveys meaningful insights into wars and why we fight them escapes me. Hirst is the richest artist in the world with a net worth of well over $450 million, but his Spin AK47 for Peace One Day is only further proof that he produces nothing but empty vacuities.

"Spin AK47 for Peace One Day" - Damien Hirst. Painted Kalashnikov rifle. 2012.

Bran Symondson’s Commodities comes closest to making a connection between economics and war, but the work is problematic for a number of reasons. A London-based photographer, Symondson served in Afghanistan after joining the British Army.

He returned to Afghanistan to document the war as a photographer. Symondson conceptualized the AKA Peace exhibit after seeing the U.S.-trained and organized Afghan National Police decorating their AK-47 rifles with “colorful stickers, roses, or glitter tape”.

Once back in London he promoted the idea of an exhibit that would transform the AK-47 rifle, “the most devastating weapon in the world”, into a “powerful catalyst for hope and peace”. Symondson pasted U.S. dollar bills all over his AK-47, attaching a flower made from U.S. dollars to the rifle’s bayonet. Commodities seems an obvious statement, but a closer examination only brings perplexity.

Great Britain’s military involvement with Afghanistan did not begin when it joined the United States in invading and occupying the country in 2001. Britain had previously marched into Afghanistan in campaigns to become the dominant power in the region during the so-called “Anglo-Afghan wars” of 1839-1842, 1878-1880, and 1919.

Tens of thousands of Afghans died in those colonial wars of occupation, but ultimately Afghan resistance forced the British Empire to withdraw from the country that became known as the “graveyard of empires“. The AK-47 rifle was not involved in any of these military battles, because the Soviet rifle had not yet been invented.

The influx of Soviet weapons into Afghanistan began in 1978 with the overthrow of the Afghan king and the establishment of the pro-Soviet “Democratic Republic of Afghanistan”. Infighting among government factions led to purges and assassinations, while Islamist groups began an armed uprising against the new regime.

According to Robert Gates, on July 3, 1979 President Jimmy Carter signed a directive giving covert aid to the Islamists fighting the Afghan regime. [1] Ultimately the Soviet Union made the dire mistake of invading the “graveyard of empires” on Dec. 27, 1979, to protect its interests, unleashing an occupation that would last until Feb. 15, 1989. While the Soviets armed and trained their puppets in Kabul, the U.S. and Britain armed and trained the “Afghan Freedom Fighters”, i.e., Islamic extremists, with billions of dollars worth of arms, including thousands of advanced surface-to-air “Stinger” missiles. Of course, none of the artists involved in the AKA Peace exhibit mention any of the above history, they can only wring their hands over those scary looking AK-47s.

"Commodities" - Bran Symondson. Assemblage on decommissioned Kalashnikov rifle. 2012.

And why the focus on the AK-47 rifle to begin with? How can an aversion to a single weapon, the Kalashnikov rifle, be equated to a morally principled stance regarding opposition to war?

Over the decades the AK has been utilized by dictatorial states, as well as those revolutionaries seeking to overthrow them, so the question is not the Kalashnikov, but the use of violence to effect change. It all makes me think of the American Civil War; how would slavery for 3 million people in bondage have ended without the force of arms?

One could say the American Civil War was the first modern war, in that many of the arms used were the result of mass production and technological innovations. For its day, the Springfield Model 1861 could have been called “the most devastating weapon in the world”. Weighing 9 pounds and firing a massive .58 caliber round, it was certainly a devastating rifle. But was the Springfield “evil” by virtue of it being a firearm? Northern soldiers, including former slaves, shouldered the Springfield rifle in the Union Army in order to put an end to the system of slavery, were they wrong to do so?

Though I deeply respect pacifism as a philosophy, I am not committed to it myself, and I do not believe the organizers of AKA Peace truly have faith in it either. In an interview with GQ regarding the exhibit, Bran Symondson disclosed that Sir Winston Churchill is one of his biggest heroes. That is an odd choice of champions for an “antiwar” activist. Churchill once declared: “If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Given that AKA Peace was organized by British artists, it might have focused on Britain’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS), now deployed by Her Majesty’s Royal Artillery in Afghanistan. The artillery piece fires twelve 200 pound high explosive rockets guided by a global positioning system. I hear the tremendously effective rockets rarely miss their intended targets - collateral damage not withstanding. AKA Peace artists might also have enjoyed decorating a few dozen L118 “Dragon” Light Guns, the 105mm artillery piece Her Majesty’s Royal Artillery uses to pulverize whoever it might be walking around at the limits of the gun’s effective range of 10 miles.

British soldiers in Afghanistan firing a 105mm round at Taliban fighters from their "Dragon" L118 Light Gun. Photo by Sergeant Anthony Bookock for the U.K. Ministry of Defense/© Crown Copyright/MOD 2008.

I am certain the Taliban would happily trade in thousands of their old battle-worn AK-47 rifles for a few modern British GMLRS and Dragon artillery pieces - so, which is the more “devastating weapon in the world”?

Granted, the Dragon artillery piece does not provide much of a canvas in terms of areas to affix dollar bills, paste jewelry, or splattered paint, but that is the challenge of being an artist. Imagine if the Chapman Brothers could have given a Dragon artillery piece their Yin and Yang treatment. Talk about a phallic symbol!

AKA Peace was not an antiwar exhibit; it ignored history and kept clear of any critique of ultra-nationalism, militarism, or imperialism. It did not critically assess the economic and political reasons that give rise to war. It had nothing to say about fundamentalist religious extremism, nor did it even present an elemental pacifist stance regarding warfare. The exhibit essentially depoliticized war, the most political of all issues. It was not a loathing of state violence that served as the foundational view of the show so much as it was an irrational and morbid fear of firearms. AKA Peace was one of the most simplistic responses I have seen from artists reacting to real world political issues.

It was a huge and unforgivable failing that the artists and organizers of AKA Peace chose to demonize a particular rifle, the AK-47, while evading the policies and geo-political interests that have turned Afghanistan into a killing field.

There are many delicious ironies about our present world situation that AKA Peace managed to miss, and that is no small matter for a crowd of artists beholden to the irony-obsessed school of postmodernism.  If looking for irony, one could toss the entire exhibit in the rubbish bin and focus on the words of Yevgeny Y. Satanovsky, the president of the Institute of the Middle East in Moscow. Quoted in a New York Times article regarding Russian opinion of U.S. policy in the Middle East, in particular their view of the Islamic terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that took place on Sept. 11, 2012, Mr. Satanovsky said:

“You are the Soviet Union now, guys, and you pay the price. You are trying to distribute democracy the way we tried to distribute socialism. You do it the Western way. They hate both. They lynched Qaddafi - do you really think they will be thankful to you? They use stupid white people from a big rich and stupid country which they really hate.”

I invite the group of participating artists in the AKA Peace exhibit to mull over Satanovsky’s words.

####

[1] “From the Shadows”. Written by Robert M. Gates, former head of the C.I.A. under President George H.W. Bush, and also former Secretary of Defense under President Obama.

"Out of the glistening night... Trashman" - Spain Rodriquez. Original cover art for "The Collected Trashman" Vol. 1, No. 1. 1972. The tabloid was published by the Red Mountain Tribe, the same radical collective that produced and distributed the Berkeley Tribe underground paper in Berkeley, California.

When Spain Rodriguez died on November 28, 2012, it was my friend and associate Lincoln Cushing who informed me by e-mail of the untimely passing.

I am certain a torrent of similar e-mails were exchanged around the nation as people shared their collective grief over the passing of a talented artist and illustrator who helped to shape the 1960s counterculture.

In the late 60s the cartoons of Spain loomed large in the eye-popping and vividly colorful pages of “underground” psychedelic publications. Zap Comix, that groundbreaking comic book magazine of the freak counterculture, published Spain’s cartoons in 1968, along with satirical works by Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Rick Griffin and other notables from the youth culture.

Members of my generation were liberated, or seriously warped - depending on who you talk to - by the material that appeared in Zap Comix. But is was Spain’s “Trashman” comic character, the one and only American superhero I would ever be a fan of, that left the deepest impression on me.

"The Origin of Trashman" - Spain Rodriquez. 1970. Pen and ink. Page one from Subvert Comics #1.

Developed in 1968, the Trashman comic story takes place in a totalitarian American future, telling the tale of a working class fellow named Harry Barnes. When Barnes discovers state forces have murdered his wife, he goes underground to escape their clutches.

Barnes is soon recruited by a shadowy anarcho-Marxist underground organization called the Sixth International, which trains Barnes in the use of weaponry, but also instructs him to make use of the “para-sciences”. Once Barnes masters clairvoyance, shape shifting, and other super powers, he is reborn as Trashman to wreak havoc upon fascist police and military forces and their wealthy ruling class paymasters.

Panel from Trashman as published in 1968 on the pages of New York's underground newspaper, the East Village Other.

Spain Rodriguez was a superlative draftsman, his pen and ink drawings done in black and white, whether sparsely or lavishly detailed, were always evocative.

I have an eternal appreciation for artworks created in black and white, a style of work not easily mastered, but Spain made it look easy; his unmistakable drawings were always a perfect balance of black and white.

Spain’s meticulous renderings of urban landscapes could be breathtaking in detail; his portraits of various characters revealed all of the decency or darkness of the human heart with just a few strokes of the pen. Unlike the works of other underground artists in his circle who were creating zany cartoons, Spain’s art possessed a certain seriousness - even when dealing with the improbable.

Spain’s Trashman antihero story became ubiquitous in certain counterculture circles in the late 1960s. The tale was no doubt an extension of Spain’s own world view and politics, but truth be told it was also a shared fantasy. Spain’s comic was born in a period of mass protest, government repression, and imperial war. Mind you, the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert Kennedy were recent murders, and the May 4, 1970 National Guard fatal shootings of antiwar student protestors at Kent State University was on the horizon. It was easy for young readers to believe that the Trashman comic was a look into our collective future.

Berkeley Tribe cover art, Aug. 15, 1969. The underground paper's editorial stance encouraged cultural and political dissidents to practice armed self-defense. To that effect the provocative headline appropriated the U.S. Army recruitment slogan of the day, "Join The New Action Army".

Many underground papers of the day carried the art of Rodriquez, indeed, in 1972 I acquired The Collected Trashman as published by the Red Mountain Tribe, the same radical collective that was printing and distributing the Berkeley Tribe underground paper in Berkeley, California. It is funny to think that as a teenager I could find the Berkeley Tribe and other radical newspapers at a local news stand in my quiet southern California neighborhood. Today that news stand is long gone, so are the area bookstores, all replaced by yuppie cafés and boutiques in a wave of late 90s gentrification. The one bookstore in my locale, a corporate chain, carries Batman, Spiderman, Avengers, X-Men, Superman, and all the rest… but no Trashman. Big surprise, eh?

Lincoln Cushing conducted an interview with Spain Rodriguez on September 28, 2010. Wanting to document Spain’s “important contribution to movement art”, Cushing included the interview in his book, All Of Us Or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area. The book’s 300 or so 60’s posters came from the massive All Of Us Or None (AOUON) poster archive collected and maintained by the brilliant Michael Rossman (1939-2008). There are six of Spain’s posters in the archive, and I am honored to say, six of my own print creations reside there as well. In the wake of Rossman’s untimely death, Cushing administered the AOUON collection until helping to arrange its donation to the Oakland Museum of California. Cushing granted me permission to publish his AOUON interview with Spain, an edited version of which follows:

Lincoln Cushing: “Who among underground comics artists did you find a connection around politics?”

Spain Rodriguez: “I always drew, and I went to art school. Underground cartoonists tend to be either left or apolitical. Gilbert Shelton is one who had political insight, a worthy hero and a better artist than he realizes. Now he’s over in Paris. I kind of got this generally good reception. The underground comics movement has a certain sort of camaraderie that is not specifically political. Crumb also has a progressive political outlook, somewhat more so in those days than today. His recent Genesis has an enlightening aspect to it. What Crumb did with Zap was turn it into a collective. He might have had some regrets about that later on, but we – the artists – own Zap. And that’s a big step. It’s a collective form by the most uncollective guys you can imagine.

A lot of us came from New York, and we all knew each other from the East Village Other – Bill Griffith, Art Spiegelman – and Trina Robbins, too, though she regards us as ‘those obnoxious male cartoonists,’ which is good, that’s what we are.

I’ve been political from very early on. In Buffalo [N.Y.] as a kid I knew something was extremely fucked up. I remember seeing this picture of a Mexican mural, with all these bigwigs sitting at a table, and one guy had one of those scientific funnels on his head, they were all pontificating and eating their little cakes, and all around them were these Mexicans with crossed bandoliers fingering their weapons in the doorways, and it instantly hit me. Suddenly I understood things.  I drifted into the Socialist Labor Party. That was my early education. I had a philosophical inclination. When I read Marx that seemed to describe the world best.

Early on a guy named Ed Wolkenstein put out this little leaflet called ‘The Spirit and the Sword.‘ I did artwork for him, licked envelopes, did all that stuff to get it out. He took us out to the University of Buffalo, where I just assumed that people would tell us to never darken their doorway again, but we got this good reception. And of course this was the beginning of the antiwar movement. Me and Ed put up the first antiwar posters in Buffalo, 1965-1966. Maybe even 1964 – we did one on Goldwater’s election. I first came to the Bay Area in January of 1969, went back to Buffalo in March, then I came back in December.”

Lincoln Cushing: “Tell me about your view of 1950s culture”.

Spain Rodriguez: “It was certainly boredom, and the pressure to conform. I have my high school yearbook, and I’m the only one with sideburns. I went through a bunch of shit over that. I’ve always had a tendency to find the excitement, to find the cool thing. But that’s when rhythm and blues, and rock and roll started, so that certainly wasn’t boring. And in the neighborhood I lived in, there was a lot of stuff happening. There was pressure to conform, but there were also people that wouldn’t conform. With me it was always a struggle, being the nail that stuck out, getting pounded down.

There was also EC comics, which were real significant, and really hated and stabbed in the back by the whole comics code, which was one of the most repressive documents in history.

The Spaniards had this big empire, and then the Inquisition comes up. From a certain vantage point, the fact that they had the inquisition is a positive thing because they had something to ‘inquisit.’ The cultures they conquered didn’t have an inquisition, people readily accepted that if they didn’t go up and get their hearts cut out the sun would stop. No one said ‘Hey, let’s give it a try, don’t cut out my heart.’ In Spain you had this incredibly repressive thing, and you have to look at what prompted that.

EC comics had a social content. In fact my early thinking was shaped by that. The shock-suspense stories always had a social point, either the Ku Klux Klan or political corruption. They had a definitely liberal political angle. All these guys who came out of the Army and had G.I. Bill free college, a lot of them became artists, so there was this pool of great artists. Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, Severin, Elder. And the stuff sprang out for a few years, until ‘the hand’ crushed that.

Did you ever hear of the Resurgence Youth Movement? It was in the Lower East Side of NY, started by Jonathan Leek, who was in YPSL. When Kennedy was assassinated [11/22/1963] he issued a 12-page manifesto calling for all revolutionaries to go forth with pistol and dagger and put to death all public officials. Well, they booted his ass out. Then he got connected with the Wobblies, and they would put out this great stuff – ‘I dream of the days when motorcycles will roar down Park Avenue and the junkies will shoot up in your bathroom and the queens will prance on your lawn!’ – and all of that sort of came true.

You’d see him at antiwar demonstrations and there would be all the leftists on one side, and the Nazis on the other, and these guys would come in and attack the cops, and of course the cops would kick their ass. But I got to know those guys, and after smoking about nine joints they said ‘Yeah, we’ll kidnap Mayor Wagner’s son and we’ll try him according to people’s justice!’ and another guy would jump up and say ‘Yeah, then we’ll chop off his head with a guillotine!’ One guy was nuttier than the next.

All these historical things, they’re like some weird dice throw, and at some point it just comes to a boil. We’re living in interesting times. I’m not an anarchist, but I’m a libertarian – no one gets to run my personal life. I don’t believe the personal is political. I believe that the personal is nobody’s business. I’m not gay, but I support people’s right to live their own life as they see fit.”

While Trashman was unquestionably Spain’s most famous creation, it was certainly not his only one. Intensely interested in history, Spain created comic books about diverse historic figures from Marine Corps general Smedley Butler to Ernesto “Che” Guevara. He was a contributing artist to Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World, and the author of several original graphic novels. Really, his accomplishments are more than I can list.

The Burchfield Penny Art Center at Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York is currently presenting the exhibit, Spain: Rock, Roll, Rumbles, Rebels, & Revolution. Beginning Sept. 14, 2012 and running until January 20, 2013, the exhibit features original drawings and reproductions from Spain’s complete body of work. Spain’s wife, Emmy-nominated filmmaker Susan Stern, produced a short film on Spain’s life and work for the Burchfield Penny Art Center exhibit; the insightful video can be viewed on YouTube. At the closing moment of Stern’s film, Spain made the following avowal, one that summed up his optimism: “I’ve seen many cool scenes, I have hope that cool scenes will keep on coming - I have faith in the revolution.”

Many an obituary will be written about Spain, most will focus on his being a mover and shaker in the world of comics, conveniently leaving aside his left-wing libertarian politics and thoughtful humanism. Paul Buhle, author and Senior Lecturer at Brown University, has possibly written the best published death notice on Spain for Dissent quarterly. Another insightful obit, Death of an American original, can be found on Salon.

What makes the Salon obituary so interesting is its ending, which presents two previously unpublished cartoon panels from Spain finished just prior to his death. The cartoons deal with the real-life story of cotton plantation slave James Roberts and his fellow slaves being enlisted by U.S. General Andrew Jackson to fight the British in the War of 1812. Though only eight panels long, the cartoon cuts like a knife. I must admit that I did not know the history revealed in Spain’s illustrated romp into the annals of America’s past, but that is the extraordinary thing about Spain Rodriguez; he continues to teach things to myself and others, even after moving on. Perhaps that is the best obituary I can offer.

Coca-Cola versus Pepsi-Cola - Josep Renau. Photomontage. 1949.

I love putting this image out every four years, it tickles me to no end.

The photomontage Coca-Cola versus Pepsi-Cola, appears so modern from an aesthetic standpoint, not to mention up to date in a political sense, that scores of viewers will express disbelief over the artwork having been created in 1949.

That the artist responsible for the image, Josep Renau, was a Spaniard making comment on life in the U.S. while living in exile in Mexico, will also lead to dismay for some Americans. Then again, seeing as how U.S. presidential elections always end up impacting the global community in ways other national elections do not, one may perhaps excuse a “foreigner” for offering a view of the U.S. political process.

Renau wanted to convey the idea, not that the two dominant U.S. political parties were/are identical, but that they both serve the interests of capital.

Conceivably that same point of view has today spread to many of us living in the continental United States, where it has become increasingly difficult to doubt that mega-billions now control the two parties and all of their politicians. The influence of advertising and marketing in the U.S. has left no aspect of life unaffected; that was certainly true when Renau made his observation, but it is even more so today.

At present it could be argued that marketers and monied interests hold sway over the democratic process itself; the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission comes to mind. But in 1949 Renau understood that “culture” could be a primary method of social control, and he anticipated a time when it might also be a leading commodity peddled by corporations that would comprise the “culture industry”.

Renau was no stranger to the importance of art in times of political turmoil. Born in 1907, he left his homeland in 1939 when the Spanish Republic was overthrown by a fascist uprising led by General Francisco Franco and backed by fascist dictators Mussolini and Hitler; the event actually marked the beginning of the Second World War. In the chaotic years before this, the Spanish government appointed Renau the Director of Fine Arts in 1936, entrusting him with safeguarding the nation’s artistic treasures during the country’s bloody civil war. In 1937 Renau commissioned Pablo Picasso to paint the Guernica mural at the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exposition dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life held that year in Paris, France.

With the collapse of the Spanish Republic Renau went into exile and in 1939, like many thousands of Spaniards fleeing fascism, he settled in Mexico. Immediately he befriended the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, who had just received a commission from the Mexican Electricians’ Syndicate to paint a mural in the union’s Mexico City headquarters. Siqueiros brought together his “International Team of Plastic Artists”, including Renau, to assist in painting the mural, Portrait of the Bourgeoisie.  Renau would also earn a modest living designing posters for the Mexican film industry, a facet of his artistic production that I will address in a future essay.

But even as an astute artist steeped in the production of culture himself, Renau could never have imagined the length and breadth to which politics and marketing would become synonymous in the years after his 1982 death. In October of 2008, Advertising Age named Barack Obama the “marketer of the year” for having successfully promoted the hope and change “brand”. Hundreds of advertising agency CEO’s attended the 2008 Association of National Advertisers conference, and voted for Obama’s ad campaign over the effective marketing conducted by major corporations like Coors, Apple, and Nike. Advertising Age deemed the November 4, 2008 election the “biggest day in the history of marketing”.

The conceptual “triumph” of brand Obama was accompanied by a visual style as well, which actually displaced the traditional Democratic Party iconography.  I first noticed that the Democratic Party had dumped its donkey mascot when I watched televised coverage of their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. The emblematic donkey was nowhere to be seen, instead it had everywhere been replaced by a red, white, and blue circle design that bore more than a close resemblance to President Obama’s “O” logo. The actual party logo was difficult to find in the convention hall.

For no apparent reason, in 2010 the Democratic Party abandoned its traditional symbol of the red, white, and blue donkey for a new pictogram - a light blue “D” inside a darker blue circle. The bleak emblem has all the appeal of generic blue and white product packaging, and with just as much historic significance. While the donkey emblem was initially associated with Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Jackson in 1828, it was the celebrated political cartoonist Thomas Nast that transformed the donkey into the memorable insignia of the Democrats in a cartoon Harper’s Weekly published in 1870; Nast would also be responsible for casting the elephant as the symbol for the Republican Party in a cartoon Harper’s Weekly published in 1874.

My concern here is not the integrity of the Democratic Party, but rather that the abandonment of their long-established logo is yet another sign of the ahistoric postmodern condition that afflicts society.  The Republicans have wisely held on to their traditional party symbol, while the Democrats have ditched theirs in favor of… bad typography. If they continue with this aberrant behavior, I will no longer be able to trot out the Renau graphic every four years.

"Spirit of Aztlán" - Mark Vallen. Oil on canvas 2012 ©.

I will be premiering Spirit of Aztlán at La Galeria Gitana’s exhibition, From Equinox to Solstice: Reflections on a Mayan Calendar. The exhibit opens on October 27, 2012 and runs until December 21, 2012. Click here for a larger view of my painting.

La Galeria Gitana is located in the City of San Fernando, in the northwestern region of Los Angeles, California. From Equinox to Solstice will present the works of twenty artists. Fellow Los Angeles painter Raoul de la Sota, the curator of the group exhibit, asked me to participate in the show, which explores themes surrounding two important calendar events from ancient Mesoamerica - the Aztec Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and the end of the Maya calendar.

An Artists Reception will be held on Saturday, October 27 from 6:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. The Aztec dance troupe, Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc, will gather on the street outside of La Galeria Gitana where they will dance into the gallery for a blessing ceremony. The festivities will also include a performance by the indigenous music group, Kukulcan.

The ending date of the ancient Maya calendar - December 21, 2012 - has been interpreted by some as “the end of the world”. However, the Maya divided time into 394-year periods they called “baktuns”, on December 21, 2012 we conclude their last cycle of time, 13 Baktun. In Maya cosmology, one cycle of creation ended as another started; so while some see an ending, others see the completion of Maya cyclical time as a new beginning.

With my painting, Spirit of Aztlán, I hope to communicate that universal sense of the transcendent that touches even those of us who live in the steel and plastic cage of 21st century modernity. Aztlán was the mythical ancestral homeland of the Mexika/Aztec people, and in their language (Nahuatl) the word means “Place of the White Heron”. Mexican American folklore locates Aztlán in what is now the greater Southwest of the United States, and there is some evidence this may be true. Indigenous tribal groups in the U.S. like the Hopi, Pima, Shoshone, and others share the Uto-Aztecan language of Nahuatl-speaking peoples of central Mexico.

From Equinox to Solstice: Reflections on a Mayan Calendar, runs from October 27 through December 21, 2012. La Galeria Gitana is located at 120 N. Maclay, Suite E, San Fernando CA. 91340. For additional information call: (818) 898-7708. Click here for map directions. In conjunction with Día de los Muertos, on Saturday, November 3, curator Raoul De la Sota, will present a lecture on the myths and beliefs of the ancient Maya and Aztec civilizations. Contact the gallery to reserve seats for the Nov. 3rd talk. The hour and a half program starts at 7 p.m. and costs $5.

Circle “the end of the world” on your calendar, pack your “bug-out bag“, stockpile some food and water, and then head on over to La Galeria Gitana to view the last art show before the lights go out on our so-called civilization.

"Spirit of Aztlán" - Work in progress in my studio, late September 2012. Mark Vallen ©.

Banner featuring the central motif of the América Tropical mural, posted by the City of Los Angeles on Main Street adjacent to Olvera Street. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

A specter is haunting the City of Los Angeles - the specter of social realism in art. That spirit stalks Olvera Street, the city’s oldest boulevard; the ghostly apparition is not a lost soul from one of the original inhabitants of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles (The Town of Our Lady Queen of the Angels), the name given to the small town founded in 1781 by Spanish colonists of mixed European, Native American, and African descent.

Neither is it an apparition of someone from the ancient Gabrielino-Tongva tribe, the first people to inhabit the land that eventually became L.A., though the spirit of indigenous people has much to do with this tale of a phantom returning to the world of the living. No, the phantasm I write of is América Tropical, the Olvera Street mural painted by Mexican Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1932. The wall painting’s revolutionary narrative so terrified city officials at the time that they had it whitewashed; the censored mural remained covered up for eighty years.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, América Tropical was unveiled in a public ceremony that I was thrilled to attend. To announce the mural’s unveiling and the simultaneous opening of the América Tropical Interpretive Center (ATIC), the Getty Conservation Institute and the City of Los Angeles held a press conference on Olvera Street at the Casa Avila Adobe, which was built in 1818 during the Spanish colonial period and today is the oldest standing building in L.A. October 9 was the fulfillment of a decades long effort to have the mural restored and presented to the public. As an artist deeply influenced by Siqueiros and his fellow Mexican Muralists, and as a member of the Board of Directors of Amigos de Siqueiros, the unveiling was a joyous occasion for me, as I have been writing about Siqueiros and his Olvera Street mural on this web log since 2005. But Oct. 9 was also a collective triumph for the hundreds of people who worked so diligently to make the dream come true.

Before inviting those gathered at the press conference to visit the rooftop mural located atop the América Tropical Interpretive Center, the Director of the Getty Conservation Institute, Timothy P. Whalen; the President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, James Cuno; Los Angeles City Councilman José Huizar, and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, all made poignant statements before the press about the importance of América Tropical to the people of L.A. and the world. The official 2012 unveiling of the Siqueiros mural and the opening of the interpretive center took place eighty years from the mural’s original unveiling on October 11, 1932.

The Mayor’s office and the Getty presented a commemorative plaque to Amigos de Siqueiros, for the group’s role in helping to preserve and promote América Tropical and the legacy of David Alfaro Siqueiros. The inscribed tablet was received by the Chair of Amigos de Siqueiros, Dalila Teresa Sotelo, and Carol Jacques, a commissioner for El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument and a chief liaison for Amigos de Siqueiros.

The whitewash has at last been removed from América Tropical, but it covered more than a mural painted by one of the greatest artists of the 20th century - it concealed the unvarnished truth about Los Angeles and all of the Americas. The unveiling should mark the beginning of serious dialog over the issues evident in the painting, but I hope the work also inspires a new socially engaged art for our time. That would be the real legacy of David Alfaro Siqueiros, and with the world presently in the state it is in, we should call for nothing less.

I took the following photos during the October 9, 2012, América Tropical unveiling ceremony.

From Main Street one can partially view the América Tropical mural located on the rooftop of the historic Italian Hall. The large wing-like construction is the super-structure that protects the mural from the elements. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

View of the mural as seen from the vender’s area of Olvera Street. To some extent one can catch a glimpse of the painting from street level, but what stands out the most is the super-structure that protects the mural from weather conditions. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

From left to right: the President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, James Cuno; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and L.A. City Councilman José Huizar, announcing the unveiling of  América Tropical at the Casa Avila Adobe October 9, 2012 press conference. Photo by Vallen ©.

Director of the Getty Conservation Institute, Timothy P. Whalen (shown at right) and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at the Avila Adobe press conference. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

The Olvera Street entrance to the América Tropical Interpretive Center (ATIC). The box-like structure on the center’s roof is actually the observation platform where the public can view the Siqueiros mural. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

View of one of two large exhibit rooms in the América Tropical Interpretive Center. The rooms present interactive displays, photos, informative text and other ephemera related to Siqueiros and the América Tropical mural. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

This is the view of América Tropical afforded by the observation platform atop the Interpretive Center. The mural was painted on a rooftop wall of the Italian Hall building. This photo also shows the super-structure that protects the mural. The panels on the side move to block the sun, likewise the wing-like structure above the mural can also be lowered to provide sun-shade. The domed building in the background is the Los Angeles Terminal Annex U.S. Post Office, which was built in 1939 - seven years after Siqueiros created his mural. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

This photo shows a reclining Chacmool sculptural figure Siqueiros used to represent pre-Columbian civilizations. Chacmool were common to the Toltec, Maya, and Aztec, and were utilized in religious ceremonies involving offerings and sacrifices; usually gifts to the Gods were placed on the stomach of a Chacmool figure. Pre-Columbian ruins are strewn throughout the mural, symbolizing the destruction of indigenous people by colonialism.

In the above photo, along the bottom edge of the mural, one can see how the original painting suffered deterioration over the years, which presented a major challenge to Getty restorers. The staff of the Getty Conservation Institute did a world class job of preserving América Tropical, and you can read about their conservation efforts here. This photo was shot from the viewing platform using a telephoto lens. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

This is the thematic focus of the América Tropical mural; the eagle of imperialism sitting atop a crucifix from which hangs a murdered Indian. While the mural is a faded “ghost” image, it is remarkable how bright some of the original pigment remains. There are no known color photos of the original artwork, one of the reasons why Getty conservators decided to preserve rather than recreate the painting. A telephoto lens was used to take this photo from the viewing platform. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

A close-up telephoto lens view of the armed revolutionaries Siqueiros painted in the upper right corner of his mural. Carrying bolt-action combat rifles of the day, the men ready an attack upon the imperialist eagle. In the upper right of the photo you can see how the mural was damaged in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake; the Getty Conservation Institute filled in the shattered area with plaster. I should also note that this is the area of the mural where the painting’s colors remain the brightest. This is most likely do to the fact that this portion of the mural could be seen from the street in 1932, and so city authorities had it whitewashed first before the rest of the mural was covered over. I took the photo from the viewing platform using a telephoto lens. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

A close-up telephoto lens view of the eagle in América Tropical. This war bird has a mechanized look about it, especially when considering the wings. The rapacious bird is prescient of another eagle Siqueiros would paint seven years later in his 1939 Portrait of the Bourgeoisie mural located in the stairwell of the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas in Mexico City. A full throttle attack against the forces of war and fascism, Portrait of the Bourgeoisie also depicted an eagle as a central design element. That metallic bird was fully mechanized and bristled with sharp knife-like edges. It sat atop a huge mechanical press that crushed humanity while spitting out gold coins. A year prior to creating the 1939 mural, Siqueiros went to Spain and joined the Republican Army in the fight against the fascist military of General Franco. Portrait of the Bourgeoisie foretold what was to befall the world with the outbreak of World War II. Photograph by Mark Vallen ©.

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The América Tropical Interpretive Center is now open to the public. Admission is free. The center is located on Olvera Street at: 125 Paseo de La Plaza Los Angeles, CA 90012 (click for map). The center is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. You can phone the center at (213) 485-6855.

Related events that I will write about in future blog posts:

A Civil Defense: Paintings of Estaño
Philip Stein, aka Estaño, was an assistant to David Alfaro Siqueiros and helped the master paint ten of his greatest works in Mexico City during a ten year period. The estate of Philip Stein is currently exhibiting paintings, drawings, and prints by Estaño at the Take My Picture Gallery in downtown L.A. This not to be missed exhibit runs until December 31, 2012.

¡América Tropical! Celebrating a Siqueiros Masterpiece - Saturday November 3, 2012.
Organized by the Getty Conservation Institute, LA Plaza de Culturas y Artes, and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, this festival takes place a short walking distance from the América Tropical mural and the América Tropical Interpretive Center. The festival will include Aztec Dancers, Ballet Folklorico, traditional Mariachi and authentic banda music, street theater, film, food, workshops, and even a performance by the UCLA Philharmonia Orchestra. The festival also includes observance of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). A perfect day to come see the Siqueiros mural! Free admission, the fun begins and 10:30 am and goes on all day. Details and full schedule of events available here.

"Gustav Klimt: The Magic of Line" exhibit poster at the Getty. Photo by Mark Vallen © 2012

I had the good fortune to see Gustav Klimt: The Magic of Line, at the J. Paul Getty Museum of Los Angeles, California.

It is the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the drawings of the Austrian painter and leading member of the Vienna Secession movement.

Marking the 150th anniversary of Klimt’s birth, the Albertina Museum of Vienna, Austria, loaned over 100 drawings by the artist to the Getty, where the works will be on display until September 23, 2012. A Getty staff person informed me that the exhibit has proven quite popular, with large throngs of visitors being a daily occurrence. There is little wonder as to why.

This may well be one of the more unusual “reviews” of The Magic of Line exhibit, since it brings the reader’s attention to specific histories regarding a certain number of Klimt’s important works, narratives that the Getty/Albertina inexplicably did not present to the public at large.

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 - but more on that later.

It is an understatement to say the dazzling paintings by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) are well known by many, especially his “golden paintings”; it is no surprise that droves would turn out for an exhibit of his art. But The Magic of Line, is not a celebration of the artist’s opulent canvases, rather, it is an examination of Klimt’s black and white drawings, many of which were studies for paintings. Some will no doubt be disappointed that there are but two small paintings in the entire exhibit, a diminutive gouache and watercolor titled The Auditorium of the Old Burgtheater (1888-1889), and an oil study for Medicine, one of the large scale canvases comprising the artist’s Faculty Paintings that the Getty/Albertina asserted burned in a fire.

For those artists like myself who busy themselves with creating works of narrative realism, drawing as the very foundation of art is a fundamental principle, and in The Magic of Line one can see how that tenet guided Klimt’s hand in the making of his paintings. Many will be shocked to see Klimt’s academic background in the 1888-1889 sketches he drew as studies for Shakespeare’s Theater, a fresco he painted on the ceiling of the Burgtheater in Vienna. These six black chalk drawings, with highlights of white chalk, are precise, meticulous portraits; they are renditions of the human form that reveal the touch of a master artist.

Gustav Klimt. 1886/87. Black and white chalk. Study for "Shakespeare's Theater" mural, painted at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Austria.

I gazed intently at Klimt’s Shakespeare’s Theater drawings for some time, in awe of how he captured almost photographic realism with minimal effort; a three quarter view portrait or a “lost profile” captured with a few scant chalk lines - how well Klimt knew human anatomy!

That he eventually reduced his drawing style to the barest minimalism, makes his early drawings the best evidence that an artist must know the rules in order to break them.

Klimt’s eventual approach to drawing is exemplified in his five sketches of Mäda Primavesi, the nine-year-old daughter of Austrian banker, Otto Primavesi. The drawings were studies for an oil portrait executed in Klimt’s highly stylized manner; what makes the studies so remarkable is that they bear little resemblance to the finished painting.

Bereft of shading, modeling, and details normally associated with portraits, the artist’s scribbling nevertheless captured the essence of his young sitter. The lines in Klimt’s sketches are energetic, jangly, nervous, and broken. His squiggles have all the appearance of automatic writing - the strokes and dabbles unconsciously drawn at a séance by someone possessed. That such spareness showed the way to a fully realized and complex portrait is astonishing. Most of Klimt’s late drawings display this same quality.

Contemporary viewers see Klimt’s works from a modern standpoint, accepting his aesthetics and subject matter as pleasant and agreeable. His erotic sketches seem tame by today’s standards, reinforcing the notion that Klimt’s works were uncontroversial for his time, which was not at all true. What fails to come across in The Magic of Line is the outrage expressed by “polite society” towards Klimt’s art. A founding member of the Vienna Secession in 1897, Klimt and his fellow Secession artists meant to upend academic conservatism in the arts; the Secessionists wanted a “revolution” in art, but not one in any overt political sense.

I feel disquietude concerning the Getty/Albertina failing to put Klimt in the context of the reactionary Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1867-1918) under which he lived. Austria-Hungary was an imperialist world power during Klimt’s lifetime, and its aristocracy was opposed by many bourgeois political factions hoping to unseat the aristocratic class - if only to step into their shoes. Industrialization, capitalist production, and technological developments changed the face of the absurdly outdated empire, and the Secessionists were part and parcel of the forces seeking reform.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire’s internal and external tensions could not help but impact Klimt and his fellow artists, though The Magic of Line neglected to point out how. The June 28, 1914 assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, led to the eruption of World War I (1914-1918) exactly one month later. The war claimed the lives of 37 million civilians and soldiers across Europe and brought about the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman, and German empires. Klimt did not live to see the total ruin wrought by the conflict, but as his country rushed headlong into World War I, his work turned somber. None of this is mentioned in The Magic of Line.

These minor criticisms pale in comparison to the details that follow, the particulars of which drove me to write this article. The exclusions made in the exhibit are curious, begging the questions, who made them and why? For those reasons the focus of my commentary is an attempt at revealing omitted histories.

The Magic of Line exhibit and accompanying catalog contain omissions having to do with Klimt’s Faculty Paintings. Preliminary sketches for those paintings, plus an oil study for one of them - Medicine - comprise a key portion of the Getty/Albertina exhibit. Yet, when mentioning the ultimate fate of the Faculty Paintings, the exhibit’s wall text and book state that in 1945 the works were either “destroyed” or “burned in a fire”. The destiny of Klimt’s trio of paintings was far more complicated, and tragic, than that; the paintings were willfully destroyed by the Nazis at the close of World War II.

The following places Klimt’s Faculty Paintings in their proper historic context while tracing their chronicles, from being rejected by the University of Vienna, to their ultimate destruction by the collapsing Nazi regime.

Gustav Klimt. Black crayon and pencil. Circa 1900. Study for the mural, "Medicine". The mural was destroyed by the Nazis in 1945. Collection of the Albertina Museum of Vienna, Austria, on view at the Getty.

In 1894 Klimt received a commission from the University of Vienna for three massive canvases to adorn the ceiling of the Great Hall at the university, the Faculty Paintings.

Between the years 1900-1907, Klimt presented his paintings, Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence, to the University - but the works were scorned as obscene. More than eighty members of the University’s faculty expressed indignation over the “perverted” canvases.

Needless to say, the paintings were not hung in the Great Hall as originally intended.

Klimt tried to abrogate his contract with the university and pay back the commission money; even as the university refused to mount the canvases, it also declined to return the works to Klimt, asserting the paintings were the property of the state. The controversy was distressing for Klimt and he never again accepted a government commission.

Eventually one of Klimt’s devoted patrons, the industrialist August Lederer, purchased Philosophy, and Lederer would ultimately end up owning the paintings Medicine, and Jurisprudence as well.

August Lederer (1857-1936) and his wife Serena (1867-1943) befriended Klimt and became major collectors of his art; the two continuing to collect the artist’s works long after his death in 1918. The couple were part of Vienna’s dynamic Jewish community, where Klimt had found many patrons and collectors, not to mention models, portrait subjects, lovers, and intellectual counterparts. Vienna was a city where a great number of prominent and successful Jews chose to settle; but the darkest of nights would soon befall them.

On March 12, 1938, Nazi Germany invaded and “annexed” Austria in a campaign the fascists called “Anschluß” (political union). Hitler’s military occupation would last until March 28, 1945. In the immediate aftermath of the Nazi invasion, Austrian government officials and tens of thousands of Social Democrats, Communists, Socialists, and Jews were arrested. As the occupation intensified, those able to go into exile did so, but most of those targeted by the Nazis and their Austrian fascist collaborators were either killed or sent to concentration camps.

This photo taken by an anonymous photographer during the opening days of the Nazi annexation of Austria shows Nazi collaborators humiliating Jews by having them scrub sidewalks in Vienna. Photo from the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Jews in Vienna were made to scrub sidewalks, their homes and businesses were looted, their synagogues destroyed. In May of 1938 the Nazis implemented “racial laws” in occupied Austria, stripping the Jewish people of their civil and human rights and forcing them to wear yellow stars.

The Nazis “encouraged” 130,000 Jews to emigrate, commandeering their property and depriving them of Austrian citizenship in the process; the Nazis considered their stolen Jewish property to have been “Aryanized”.

In 1938 the Gestapo seized a number of important art collections from Jewish owners, amongst these the holdings of the Rothschild family, as well as those of the banker Herbert Gutmann and the industrialist Oskar Bondy. Also commandeered were the collections of August and Serena Lederer, which contained a large number of Klimt’s artworks. August had died two years before the Nazi invasion, and after the Lederer collections were confiscated, Serena fled to Budapest.

Exhibit catalog for the "Gustav Klimt Ausstellung" (Gustav Klimt Exhibition) organized by the Nazis in occupied Austria in 1943. Catalog image courtesy of The Jewish Daily Forward/Monica Strauss.

Incredibly, Hitler’s appointed “Reich Governor” of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach, staged a major exhibit of Klimt’s artworks in occupied Vienna on February 7, 1943 - around the same time that he was deporting some 65,000 of Vienna’s Jews to death camps in Poland! The Gustav Klimt Ausstellung (Gustav Klimt Exhibition) was comprised of 66 paintings and 34 drawings by Klimt, most of which came from the Nazi confiscated Lederer collection.

In her article Klimt’s Last Retrospective, art historian Monica Strauss said of the Nazi exhibit: “Though nominally a celebration of what would have been the artist’s 80th year, the exhibition was more accurately a display of looted art.”

Given that the Nazis declared all forms of modern art to be degenerate, Schirach’s Klimt exhibit was certainly a deviation from official Nazi policy, but then, Schirach could afford to be eccentric. He was married to the daughter of Hitler’s official photographer, and up until 1940 he had been the appointed leader of the eight million strong “Hitler-Jugend” (Hitler Youth), the official Nazi paramilitary youth organization.

At the start of 1940 Schirach enlisted as a volunteer in the German army and served as an infantry officer in Nazi occupied France; later that year he was appointed Reich Governor of Vienna.

I should note that after the war Schirach was tried before the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal and found guilty of deporting 65,000 Viennese Jews to Nazi death camps in Poland; he was sentenced to 20 years in Spandau Prison.

At the close of Schirach’s Klimt exhibit, Hitler’s “thousand year Reich” was crumbling. The Soviets had won the Battle of Stalingrad against the Nazis - marking the turning point in World War II. The Nazis began to prepare for “total war” with the Allied powers and the Soviets, which led the Nazis to secretly warehouse their looted art treasures taken from all across Europe.

Some of the Nazis’ stolen treasures where kept in tunnels at the Altaussee salt mines located in an alpine village of Austria; most of the artworks in the mines were of Austrian origin - over 7,000 looted objets d’art were stored there. The plunder at Altaussee included the likes of The Astronomer by Vermeer, The Ghent Altarpiece by brothers Hubert van Eyck and Jan van Eyck, and The Madonna of Bruges by Michelangelo. The Lederer collections, which included Klimt’s drawings and canvases for the Faculty Paintings, were transported by the Nazis from Vienna to Schloß Immendorf (Immendorf Castle), located in the Northeast of Lower Austria.

The Nazis warehoused stolen artworks for two reasons. “Degenerate” and “un-German” works were sorted out and sold on the international market for profit. Works the Nazis viewed as iconic of “Aryan superiority” were to be integrated into the Führermuseum, an immense arts complex and repository for all of the art plundered by the Nazis throughout Europe. Hitler wanted the museum constructed in the Austrian city of Linz, which he considered to be his hometown, but fortunately the institution was never built. The Nazi playwright and “Poet Laureate” Hanns Johst wrote a line of dialog in his play, Schlageter that has some relevance here: “Whenever I hear of culture I release the safety-catch of my Browning!” Those few words best embody Nazi thinking vis-à-vis the arts.

Immendorf Castle. The Austrian castle where a division of the Nazi SS destroyed the collections of August and Serena Lederer in 1945, including many works by Klimt. Black and white photo taken in 1936 by Seering H. Photograph courtesy of the ÖNB - Österreichische Nationalbibliothek ©.

On May 7, 1945, the Nazis signed a formal declaration of surrender with the Soviets and the Allied powers. Barely a week earlier Hitler had committed suicide after the Soviets broke through Nazi defenses to attack Berlin.

To prevent Immendorf Castle and its cache of stolen art from falling into Soviet hands, a division of the Nazi SS placed explosives in the castle on May 8th and then detonated the demolition charges.

The blasts destroyed much of the castle and the ensuing fire burned for days. It was not just the Lederer collection that was obliterated; everything within the castle was destroyed, including significant paintings by Egon Schiele and the collections of the Museum for Applied Arts of Vienna as well as the collections of the Austrian Gallery.

The story of the Faculty Paintings did not end with their destruction at the hands of the SS. Starting in the mid-1980s some Austrians began a serious reconsideration of their nation’s past, resulting in a flood of critical research and articles. In 1985 Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin (1956-2006) began looking into the personal history of Kurt Waldheim (1918-2007), who was then seeking election as President of Austria and had previously served as the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981. Czernin and other Austrian journalists uncovered the fact that Waldheim had been a Nazi officer in a German army unit that had carried out massacres against Serb civilians in Yugoslavia during World War II. The facts did not prevent Waldheim from being elected President of Austria in 1986, but the story crippled his presidency while opening a path to further investigations into Austria’s Nazi past.

The 1998 New York Times article, Austria Is Set to Return Artworks Confiscated From Jews by Nazis, reported that the Austrian government bowed to international pressure in ‘98 by arranging the return to Jewish collectors of some 100 artworks held by Viennese museums. As Hubertus Czernin wrote, “The art was stolen by the Nazis and stolen a second time by the Austrian Government.” The NYT also quoted Konrad Oberhuber (1935-2007), director of the Albertina Museum from 1987-2000, saying the post-war Allied Commission “came to the museum” and “declared there were no problems with the provenance of drawings and graphics in the collection”.  However Mr. Czernin, the NYT wrote, “did not believe the commission had ever been at the Albertina.” The paper also quoted the Baroness Bettina der Rothschild, who said the Albertina had “a lot of our things.”

The Museum Security Network (MSN) has over the years posted many articles on the subject of art looted by the Nazis and the attempts to return those works to their original Jewish owners. Found on the group’s website is the research paper From ‘Legacy to Shame’ to the Auction of ‘Heirless Art in Vienna’: Coming to Terms ‘Austrian Style’ with Nazi Artistic War Booty, written in 1999 by Oliver Rathkolb, Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Rathkolb’s paper is an eye-opener when it comes to describing, in the author’s words, “the rather shabby habit of restitution after 1945″ that had been conducted by Austrian authorities.

In this photo, U.S. Generals Eisenhower (right), Patton (middle), and Bradley (left), inspect some of the looted paintings hidden by the Nazis at the Merkers salt mine in Thuringia, Germany. Photo courtesy of The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

After the May 7, 1945 Nazi surrender, Allied armies poured into Austria. The section of the U.S. army that searched for looted art treasures, the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) unit, spearheaded a hunt across Europe for artworks plundered by the Nazis. The MFAA located hidden repositories of stolen artworks in Germany as well as in the salt mines of Altaussee and other locations in Austria.

In time the post-war U.S. authorities in Austria turned over the objets d’art to the new Austrian government, which did little to determine the provenance of the works, or arrange for the return of individual artworks and collections to scores of Jewish owners or their descendants. Many of these artworks - plundered from Jewish collectors - simply ended up in Austria’s museums, were some remain to this day.

Art historian Sophie Lillie has played an indispensable role in discovering and presenting the facts regarding art plundered by the Nazis having ending up in Austrian museums. Her 2003 book, Was Einmal War (What Once Was), documented the Nazi theft of Jewish art collections in Austria. Ms. Lillie provided substantial evidence that the Nazis stole 148 major collections; she also exposed the fact that artworks taken from Jewish owners by the Nazis ended up in the collections of major Austrian art institutions like the Leopold Museum, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and yes… the Albertina museum.

In February of 2009, ARTnews published The Mauerbach Scandal, an informative article about the ongoing work of Sophie Lillie and others who seek the return of cultural property once stolen from Austrian Jewry by the Nazis and now held by Austrian museums and private collectors. The ARTnews article stated that the Austrian government “made no effort to find the rightful owners of the objects until 1969″, and that government archival documents that could prove rightful ownership of art objects were opened “only in 1998, after the Federal restitution law was adopted by the Austrian parliament”. The ARTnews article concluded by saying that regarding Jewish ownership of paintings and art objects once plundered by the Nazis, Ms. Lillie “believes that the responsibility for concealing information about their ownership rests with the Austrian state”. ARTnews also noted that Austria’s Ministry of Finance, which had control over the “ownerless” artworks for years… did not return phone calls from the arts publication.

Given the track record of the Austrian state and museum system - it should come as no surprise that the Albertina Museum would fall silent on the ultimate fate of Klimt’s Faculty Paintings. To avoid even a whiff of controversy, perhaps someone “thought it best” to merely say the paintings were burned in a fire. It is after all a touchy subject that leads directly to the history of the Austrian state’s reluctance to return art treasures stolen by the Nazis from Austrian Jews.

Black & white detail from the 1932 América Tropical mural by Siqueiros. "City fathers immediately censored the artwork because of its anti-imperialist sentiments".

I am thrilled to announce the October 9, 2012 public unveiling of David Alfaro Siqueiros’ fully preserved 1932 mural América Tropical, at the site of the mural’s original location, a rooftop wall at the Italian Hall located on Los Angeles’ historic Olvera Street.

Concurrent with the unveiling of the mural will be the official public opening of Olvera Street’s América Tropical Interpretive Center.

October 9th will be a momentous occasion for the arts community and the people of L.A., as well as a significant event for people around the world… since it represents a victory for artistic freedom over the forces of reaction and censorship.

If any one person can be credited for bringing about the preservation of América Tropical, it would be the art historian Shifra M. Goldman (1926-2011), who almost single-handedly waged a campaign to save the Siqueiros mural starting in 1968. She even approached Siqueiros in 1972 with a proposal to recreate a modified version of the mural, a plan the artist agreed to but never completed due to his death in 1974 at the age of 78. Certainly the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and all of its dedicated staff must be applauded for their massive efforts in saving and preserving the mural. I believe the preservation of the Siqueiros mural represents one of the GCI’s finest hours, and their keen efforts will add to the deep and meaningful history of Los Angeles.

The director of the GCI, Tim Whalen, said this of the upcoming unveiling, “Providing public access to América Tropical has been central to this project. From the Getty Conservation Institute’s initial involvement in 1988, it has been a persistent advocate for the conservation of the mural, and the construction of the shelter, and a public viewing platform. We are so pleased to bring América Tropical back to the people of Los Angeles.”

There are many others too numerous to credit by name for helping to bring América Tropical back to life, but the most important factor behind the renovation of the mural is the countless numbers of people who refused to forget the mural and its destruction by a coat of whitewash ordered by city authorities in 1932. As a child my parents took me to Olvera Street on numerous occasions in the late 1950s, where my mother told me the story of the whitewashed mural. It was a tale I did not fully understand until the late 1960s, when Chicano movement activists began to rediscover the works of Siqueiros and other Mexican social realist artists, pointing to L.A.’s América Tropical as a symbol of what Chicanarte (Chicano art) could achieve… if only the will could be found. One can easily say that L.A.’s much heralded mural movement actually started when David Alfaro Siqueiros painted his contentious Olvera Street mural.

I must add that the Los Angeles based organization, Amigos de Siqueiros (Friends of Siqueiros), has played a crucial role in the mural preservation project. I was inducted into the group, and now proudly sit on its Board of Directors. Amigos de Siqueiros has as its mission, the protection, conservation, and promotion of América Tropical and the long-term stewardship of the mural, as well as to advance the legacy of Siqueiros. In my capacity as a member of the Board of Directors of Amigos de Siqueiros, I invite people everywhere to come to Olvera Street on October 9, 2012, to join in the historic unveiling and celebration. In 2002 I attended the public unveiling ceremony the Santa Barbara Museum of Art held for its Siqueiros mural, Retrato del Mexico de hoy: 1932 (Portrait of Mexico Today: 1932), thousands attended the event. The América Tropical unveiling will no doubt attract as large, if not a greater crowd of enthusiastic art lovers.

The Getty Conservation Institute has published press releases in English and Spanish, announcing the Oct. 9th unveiling, as well as a number of other public events coordinated with Amigos de Siqueiros; from movie screenings and speakers forums to symposiums and a tour of Eastside Los Angeles murals. The entire schedule of events are listed in the GCI press releases.

The village that became the modern City of Los Angeles now has a new wrinkle in its complex history. El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles (The Town of Our Lady Queen of the Angels), was the settlement founded in 1781 by Spanish colonizers; it became the largest city of Mexico’s Alta California after Mexico won its independence from Spain. The municipality was seized by Americans when they invaded Mexico during the American war on Mexico (1846-48), taking 55% of Mexico’s territory under the spurious postwar “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo“. In the late 20th century Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros painted his América Tropical on a wall in El Pueblo; city fathers immediately censored the artwork because of its anti-imperialist sentiments. In early 21st century Los Angeles the mural returns as a ghost image to remind us all of the folly and transient nature of empire.

América Tropical is not just a faded mural brought back to life, it is a distillation of experiences lived on both sides of the U.S./ Mexico border. It is a collaboration between a master Mexican artist and his “Bloc of Painters” - those 29 U.S. artists that helped paint the Olvera Street mural; the mural is a fusion of cultures and histories, and a sign-post for the way forward in art. It is a consummate example of social realism, that socially engaged school of art that flourished in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe during the years of the Great Depression. Siqueiros and his associates confronted the world crisis of their day through their art, and now artists once again face a global crisis of unparalleled dimension. Perhaps the rebirth of América Tropical will help spark a resurgent social realism for the 21st century…  that just might be the real legacy of Siqueiros.

The public unveiling of América Tropical and the opening of the América Tropical Interpretive Center will occur at noon on Tuesday, October 9, 2012. The ceremony takes place at El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, Sepulveda House, 125 Paseo de la Plaza, in downtown L.A.

"Chair" - Vincent van Gogh. Oil on canvas. 1888.

“Here they talked of revolution
Here it was they lit the flame
Here they sang about tomorrow
And tomorrow never came.”

Empty Chairs At Empty Tables - from Alain Boublil’s libretto
for the musical, Les Misérables.

“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.” - Robert Hughes.

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.

Photo of Robert Hughes by Australian photographer, Julian Kingma -www.kingmaandkingma.com

The quote that opens this remembrance of Mr. Hughes came from his 2008 documentary film for Britain’s Channel 4 television, The Mona Lisa Curse. The film explored, in the words of Hughes, how “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.”

The great majority of obituaries for Hughes rightfully mention his 1980 book and TV series, The Shock of the New, or his 1997 book and TV series American Visions, conversely, few if any mention his last major documentary, The Mona Lisa Curse. While many commentators laud Hughes for the vital contributions he made to the public’s understanding of art, they fall silent when it comes to The Mona Lisa Curse, a work that so upset the postmodern apple cart that it has been cast into oblivion.

Soon after its Sept. 18, 2008 broadcast on British TV, I found that The Mona Lisa Curse had received virtually no attention in the United States; the blackout affected the mainstream press (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, etc.), the art press, and the blogosphere. Mercifully, someone posted the entire documentary in twelve parts to YouTube in November of 2009, whereupon I immediately wrote a web log post about the documentary. My post provided a link to each of the twelve streaming video segments on YouTube, gave a summation of each part, and included pull quotes from Mr. Hughes.

Since my post was apparently the only article in existence that directly linked to The Mona Lisa Curse video on YouTube, I would like to think that thousands were exposed to Hughes’ masterwork due to my efforts.

As of this writing the U.S. press remains mute when it comes to The Mona Lisa Curse. The film is unavailable on Amazon.com and Netflix.com because it has not been released as a DVD by its producer C4/Oxford Film & Television. The company has provided no information on when the documentary might see the light of day. For all practical purposes Hughes’ most profound and deeply pertinent work continues to be unheard of; his polemics certainly did not win him any favors, but then, they were not meant to - his aim was to banish a curse.

In The Shock of the New TV series Hughes spoke of modern architecture and how its visual language serves the needs of state power; it was an analysis that foreshadowed the formidable critique to come later in The Mona Lisa Curse. Hughes’ survey included critical observations regarding the imperial architectural designs of fascist Italy and Germany from the 1930s, an aesthetic he recognized in the style of corporate architecture found in the 1980s. The concluding words of my short eulogy to Robert Hughes were uttered by the great man himself during his televised Shock of the New exposition on architecture:

“As far as today’s politics is concerned art aspires to the condition of muzak, it provides the background hum for power. If the Third Reich had lasted until today the young bloods in the party wouldn’t be interested in old fogies like Albert Speer or Arno Breker, they’d be queuing up to have their portraits done by Andy Warhol. It’s hard to think of any work of art of which one could say, ‘This made men more just to one another’, or ‘This saved the life of one Jew or one Vietnamese.’ Books perhaps, but as far as I know… no paintings or sculptures. The difference between us and the artists in the 20s, is that they thought that such a work of art could be made. Perhaps it was their naïveté that they could think so - but it’s our loss that we can’t.”