In 1940 Diego Rivera painted the huge fresco mural Pan American Unity for the Golden Gate International Exposition, which was held in 1939 and 1940 on California’s Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. Tens of thousands of visitors and tourists attended the exposition, which included the special showcase, Art in Action. People visiting the showcase could watch artists, such…
In the early 1960s, American artist Ward Kimball (1914-2002) began to playfully alter reproductions of Old Master paintings; he painted directly on the mass-produced replicate masterworks, substantially altering the prints by inserting a number of incongruous images, or sometimes only slightly changing the facsimiles by inserting the tiniest of details. Kimball was a superb draftsman, caricaturist, and cartoonist employed by…
Recent circumstances dictate a reconsideration of the American Revolution of 1776. The revelations that the Obama administration is currently running a massive, all encompassing surveillance operation that spies on average Americans, is but another example of why the U.S. and its democracy are in dire straits. However, the crisis we face is much more than a “political” question, it is…
“I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.” – Edward Snowden. As of today, this web log will go on hiatus for an indefinite period as a silent protest against the colossal spying operation the Obama administration has unleashed upon the American people. On June 9, 2013,…
Barthel Gilles (1891-1977) was one of those artists overlooked by history, he was a fabulously talented painter who lived during the rise and fall of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933), not to mention the ascendancy and demise of the Nazi regime. An undeniably idealistic and passionate artist, he was not left unscathed by the terrible days he passed through; one could…
The Joint Task Force U.S. military authorities at Guantánamo Bay have announced employment opportunities at the famed Guantánamo Bay detention and interrogation camp located inside the luxurious Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility, commonly known as Gitmo (but called the “gulag of our times” by Amnesty International), is interested in contractors that can provide seminars in Art, Literacy, Science,…
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…
