tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-93112692009-04-16T15:53:14.400-07:00A working artist's weblog for art theory and commentary.Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comBlogger488125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-12589962853393071302009-03-31T13:08:00.000-07:002009-04-16T14:44:10.274-07:00

[ Meanwhile... in Guatemala - Mark Vallen. 1988. Pencil on paper 10" x 14". On view at Man's Inhumanity to Man. Military death squads were responsible for torturing and murdering tens of thousands of civilians during Guatemala’s 36-year long civil war. By the time the conflict ended in 1996, some 200,000 civilians had been killed. In 1999 the U.N. backed Guatemalan Commission for Historical

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-46565305880659674262009-03-17T09:19:00.000-07:002009-03-17T09:34:46.266-07:00

On March 16, 2009, Mauricio Funes won the presidency of El Salvador as the candidate of the former rebel guerrilla army, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The electoral victory is a momentous event for El Salvador, representing the culmination of a long and often exceedingly gruesome struggle to shape the nation into a functioning democratic society - yet, there is still a

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-14054605275182754292009-03-07T13:11:00.000-08:002009-03-07T13:51:08.602-08:00

The March 2009 edition of The Art Newspaper reported that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), is funding the building of a monumental sculpture by postmodernist artist Jeff Koons - at a cost of $25 million. Titled Train, the "sculpture" consists of an actual 70-foot long steam locomotive hung from an immense 161-foot construction crane. If the project actually proceeds, it will become,

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-20219248629937512682009-03-03T09:44:00.000-08:002009-03-04T12:49:06.177-08:00

The equation is a simple one, in good economic times people feel they can afford to support the arts, in bad economic times - much less so. I do not mean to frame the question of art purely in financial terms, since some of the greatest art we know of has been created in the most impoverished settings and some of the best artists were, and are… paupers. Moreover, no matter how dire things are,

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-31417021375104794712009-02-23T09:54:00.000-08:002009-02-23T10:38:26.652-08:00

Edward Biberman was born in Philadelphia in 1904, but left his mark as a California Modernist painter. Now almost forgotten save for aficionados of the California Modernist school, Biberman is the subject of a fascinating retrospective: Edward Biberman Revisited, at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park.While the small Biberman exhibit catalog that accompanies the show rightly

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-47025089862487137382009-02-19T11:45:00.000-08:002009-02-19T11:57:10.567-08:00

On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed his massive $787 billion economic stimulus package into law. After an acrimonious quarrel in both houses of Congress, the somewhat altered and much trimmed down bill that reached the president’s desk managed to preserve funding for the arts - which at first glance appears to be a victory for arts advocates.Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-82865916761926015872009-02-17T13:36:00.000-08:002009-02-17T15:46:12.727-08:00

Spencer Jon Helfen Fine Arts is tucked away on the second floor of a charming old building in Beverly Hills, and though most of those living in the city of Los Angeles have never heard of the gallery - it is one of L.A.’s treasures. The founder and director of the enterprise, Spencer Jon Helfen, has a passion for Modernist art of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s - and his gallery specializes in the

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-60718006170762998912009-02-11T11:18:00.000-08:002009-03-17T09:46:42.905-07:00

[ I was recently interviewed by Ms. Emily Wilcox, an art student at Western Kentucky University, as part of her undergraduate thesis research project conducted on the subject of "Art as Activism." The results of our dialogue are a reasonable glimpse into my take on things, so I am publishing the interview here with the kind permission of Ms. Wilcox. ]Q: How do you gauge whether an artwork is

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-3888604768278509932009-02-09T10:13:00.000-08:002009-02-11T14:34:19.339-08:00

"We have real people out of work right now and putting $50 million in the NEA and pretending that's going to save jobs as opposed to putting $50 million in a road project is disingenuous." Thus spoke Georgia’s Republican Senator, Jack Kingston on February 5, 2009, on the subject of President Obama’s economic recovery plan, now being debated in the U.S. Senate. Apparently there are many, both in

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-59217540612806866422009-02-03T21:48:00.000-08:002009-02-03T22:40:49.135-08:00

In April of 1967 the Heritage Gallery of Los Angeles published Images of Dignity, a monograph on the life and work of the great African American artist Charles White (1918-1979). I acquired a copy of the book just a year later when I was fifteen-years-old, the hardback volume providing one of my first insights into the works of White, American social realism, and the very idea of political

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-77826851871289390332009-01-29T21:59:00.000-08:002009-01-29T22:07:52.590-08:00

$50 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 29, 2009, as part of its passing President Obama’s $819 billion economic "stimulus bill" - the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.President Obama had met with Republicans in the House prior to the vote, making concessions to them in an attempt to get his

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-58254241297505337432009-01-21T08:58:00.000-08:002009-01-21T09:10:42.674-08:00

A petition calling on the new Obama administration to create a stimulus package for the arts was launched on January 20, 2009, by the Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) Washington D.C. think tank in alliance with the Split this Rock Poetry Festival.The editor of the D.C. think tank, John Feffer, along with Split this Rock member, Melissa Tuckey, expressed the ideas behind the initiative in a

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-9455809053836163902009-01-16T21:42:00.000-08:002009-01-16T22:16:52.724-08:00

I am sure many will favorably view French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent announcement that all museums in France will soon be free for school teachers and for visitors under 25 - but careful scrutiny of the plan should be made before praising it. This story is especially relevant to the American arts community, which fully expects a sweeping new national arts policy from the incoming Obama

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-12933263860119264232009-01-10T11:02:00.000-08:002009-01-10T11:23:38.342-08:00

In her December 19, 2008, article for the New York Times, After a Capitalist W.P.A., What Next?, Roberta Smith opined about the impact the severe economic downturn is having on the arts community. "What will the art world be like a year from now?" she asked rhetorically, before informing us that things will essentially remain the same, only "smaller, leaner and, many assume, cleaner." That is

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-8839207683581608232009-01-03T15:37:00.000-08:002009-01-03T16:35:48.518-08:00

It took Israeli director Ari Folman four years to create Waltz with Bashir, an unusual autobiographical animated film now in limited engagement across the U.S. that warns of the nightmares that follow in the wake of war. The movie opens with an unsettling vision, a pack of rabid dogs - twenty six to be exact, racing along wet streets under yellowy skies, frothing at the mouth and evidently

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-91687556931697389992008-12-31T21:43:00.000-08:002008-12-31T12:47:58.073-08:00

A number of arts advocacy groups across the United States believe that the incoming Obama administration possesses an innovative government plan for the arts. In part this is based upon the fact that the Obama campaign publicly released its "Platform In Support Of The Arts" nearly a year before the national elections. Conversely the McCain campaign made public its arts platform - a four sentence

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-79016726747851436362008-12-22T18:42:00.000-08:002008-12-22T19:38:10.822-08:00

The waning days of 2008 represent more than just a tumultuous year coming to an end, they bring closure to decades of extreme political reaction and backwardness, at least in the U.S. - or so it appears. Whether or not we are on the threshold of a new progressive era depends upon people in their tens of millions becoming actively engaged in visualizing and building a different type of society,

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-65298089588746421962008-12-20T13:38:00.000-08:002008-12-20T14:04:29.186-08:00

On Dec 19, 2008, the official portraits of U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush were unveiled at a ceremony that took place at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., where the paintings become part of the museum’s permanent collection. Artist Robert Anderson had the dubious honor of creating the likeness of the president, and artist Aleksander Titovets the task of

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-3309196135826196942008-12-19T18:44:00.000-08:002008-12-19T19:08:12.644-08:00

As a heterosexual man who believes in human rights for all, I am pleased to be able to announce a National Call to U.S. Artists for the upcoming juried exhibition: Being Gay: A Visual Dialogue Between Straight and/or LGBTQ Artists. Organized by the 2nd City Council Art Gallery and Performance Space in Long Beach, California, the exhibit is open to all artists living in the United States. The

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-33234970376201660522008-12-04T12:36:00.000-08:002008-12-04T13:06:11.300-08:00

In 1989 I created a pencil drawing titled We're Making A Killing In Central America. The image depicts two of the many thousands of innocent civilians who were tortured and murdered in Central America during the bloody conflicts of the 1980s. To "make a killing" is an English idiom that means - to do something resulting in substantial financial success - and while hundreds of thousands of Central

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-83463972397573560392008-12-02T09:58:00.000-08:002008-12-02T10:45:52.763-08:00

The people of Spain have been celebrating the 100th birthday of the Spanish painter, poster designer, and muralist, Josep Renau, through a number of tributes, not the least of which has been a traveling exhibition; Josep Renau (1907-1982): Commitment and Culture. Organized by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the University of Valencia, Spain, the exhibit is now running at the Universidad de

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-6727046527894333842008-11-27T10:52:00.000-08:002008-11-27T11:11:57.097-08:00

On November 24, 2008, artist Frank Cieciorka (che-CHOR-ka) died from emphysema at the age of 69. Starting in the 1980s he began to be recognized for his watercolor paintings of northern California landscapes, but it would be one of his early graphic art designs that assured him a place in history.The iconic clenched fist has long been a symbol of the international left, its usage going back at

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-79404515170358453052008-11-21T14:27:00.000-08:002008-12-23T10:20:32.853-08:00

Los Angeles’ flagship museum dedicated to modern art of the last fifty years may cease to exist. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), has been incapacitated by a crushing financial crisis of its own making. On November 19, 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that "The museum has burned through $20 million in unrestricted funds and borrowed $7.5 million from other accounts. Cash from donors is

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-71219301499695485812008-11-20T14:25:00.000-08:002008-11-20T15:11:56.487-08:00

Gouge: The Modern Woodcut 1870 to Now, is a splendid exhibition of woodcut and linoleum prints now showing until Feb. 8, 2009, at the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California. On display are 100 diverse and quite extraordinary prints from the likes of Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Käthe Kollwitz, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Joseph Beuys, and many others too numerous

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9311269.post-20375509978925676012008-11-18T10:35:00.000-08:002008-11-18T10:50:11.432-08:00

Years ago I visited the breathtaking city of Venice, Italy, world-famous for its canals, gondolas, and Renaissance architecture. It is truly the most incomparably beautiful city on the face of the earth. During my visit I strolled through the remarkable Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square), taking in the splendors of the Doge’s Palace and the magnificent St Mark’s Basilica.Inspiring painters from

Mark Vallennoreply@blogger.com