In June of 2009 I wrote The Death of Motor City, an essay on the decline of the U.S. economy and its devastating impact on Detroit, Michigan, an American city once at the very center of the nation’s industrial power but now in a state of near total collapse. My article had much to say about the Detroit Institute of…
“The Gaze” – Black & White serigraphic print. 1980 (c) Mark Vallen. Hand pulled by the artist Dimensions: 17.5″ x 23″ inches Signed and numbered by the artist Edition of 16 I created this silkscreen portrait print of a young woman in 1980. During that period I was doing quite a lot of work in serigraphy, generally making prints of…
On May 10, 2013, former Guatemalan tyrant Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity by a Guatemalan court. Specifically, he was found guilty of the murder of 1,771 indigenous Maya civilians. The 86-year-old Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison, 50 years for genocide and 30 years for crimes against humanity. When I…
Nestled in the middle of the Presidio of San Francisco, California, is a small Spanish Colonial style Chapel surrounded by a grove of Eucalyptus trees. The Chapel at the Presidio houses an impressive but little known Great Depression era mural by Victor Arnautoff (1896-1979). I visited and photographed the mural in late 2011, and will here share my observations. Sitting…
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), sponsored by the multinational oil company BP – responsible for the biggest toxic oil spill in history, had the unmitigated gall to organize “greenwashing” activities on its museum campus for Earth Day. Posting an announcement on the LACMA website for the April 21, 2013 Earth Day activities, the museum gave its day…
Admirers and detractors of this blog may of late be wondering about the dearth of newly posted visuals and essays from me. Fear not intrepid readers, I suffer no lack of enthusiasm for writing about the political follies and foibles of the art world. So why the lack of posts? Has the muse left Vallen? Is he stuck in the…
March 19, 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S. war against Iraq. To commemorate the somber occasion I am presenting fifteen separate articles pertaining to the Iraq war that I wrote for this web log from 2004 to 2009, starting with the earliest post and ending with the most recent. Each piece discusses individual or cooperative artistic responses to…
Brothers and Sisters… this errant one, whose feet have trod along Hollywood’s golden starred paths of sin, and whose lips have tasted the many bitter fruits of lasciviousness so common to my City of Lust Angeles… this willfully disobedient soul has had an epiphany! Ah yes! I was walking in the desolate wilderness of the San Fernando Valley, plodding along…
