Long before his famous antenna moustache, Salvador Dalí antagonized those around him by sporting a Mohawk haircut, or so I thought. My “discovery” was made in the early 1980’s when I found a photo of the young surrealist artist published in an obscure punk rock fanzine. While I don’t remember the name of the diminutive self-published zine, I never forgot…
An anti-Bush painting in a California group show is causing a firestorm of protest, but for all the wrong reasons. The California Arts Council along with California Lawyers for the Arts and State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, have sparked controversy with a show they’ve sponsored at California’s Department of Justice in the state capital of Sacramento. The exhibit, A Creative…
An important antiwar mural painted in Mexico by famed Japanese modern artist, Taro Okamoto (1911 – 1996), has been rediscovered after thirty five years. In Spanish the work is known as Mito del Mañana (Myth of Tomorrow), and in Japanese, Ashita no Shinwa – but like all great works of art, Okamoto’s painting speaks a universal language. The gigantic mural…
Does art have actual social worth and significance, or is it just another commodity to be bought and sold by the wealthy? My beliefs place me in the former camp, as I loath the very idea that something as magical, spiritual and ephemeral as art – could or should be controlled, influenced or marginalized by market forces. However, there are…
Richard Schaaf of Azul Editions, a small independent press, informed me of some exciting news. A long out of print book by famed Mexican Muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, has been translated into English and republished by Azul Editions. How to Paint a Mural is the Mexican master’s instructional essay on the fine art of creating a public wall mural. It…
I saw the Treasures of Tutankhamen when it showed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1978. At the time the entrance fee was $2 (today’s equivalent adjusted for inflation would be $6). After nearly 30 years the treasures have returned to LACMA as a razzle dazzle Hollywood road show called Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of…
In January of 2002, then Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, censored a pair of classic Art Deco statues located in the Great Hall of the Justice Department. I wrote about this ridiculous act of Taliban-like extremism at the time it happened. Ashcroft, a Christian fundamentalist, was made terribly uncomfortable by the statues. In order to protect western…
At sixteen I became aware of those artists who lived and worked throughout Germany’s dreadful years of war and fascism. German Expressionist artists like George Grosz, Conrad Felixmüller, Gert Wollheim, and Max Pechstein had enormous influence upon me – not so much for how they painted… but what they painted. They were unafraid to tell the truth about their society,…
