san francisco museum of modern art
Author Archive | Richard
mr. robert arneson, california artist
"california artist" robert arneson
If you are not hip to Robert Arneson and his fifteen minutes of uber fame, here is a tale for you. It’s one for the ages. On November 27, 1978 Dan White, an angry, disgruntled former San Francisco city Supervisor (a Supervisor is akin to a city council person), entered San Francisco City Hall through a window. White intentionally avoided the main entrance and the metal detectors because he was carrying a gun. He made his way to the office of Mayor George Moscone, who had recently refused to reinstate White to his seat as a city Supervisor. He asked to be reinstated. The Mayor refused for political reasons. They argued. (White had resigned his seat under personal financial pressure and had immediately changed his mind.)
White shot and killed the mayor in cold blood. White then went directly to the office of Supervisor Harvey Milk, the nation’s first openly gay elected official. Milk had often clashed with White when they were both on the Board of Supervisors. Dan White then shot and killed Harvey Milk, again, in cold blood.
Subsequently, White confessed he had intended to kill four people that day, Milk, Moscone, Willie Brown and Carol Ruth Silver. In the hours after the tragedy, the president of the Board of Supervisors, Dianne Feinstein, became mayor of San Francisco.
Dan White was a former police officer and he was sentenced to only seven years and served five — under a defense strategy that became widely known as the “Twinkie Defense.” In the hours after the verdict, the city erupted in violence. Those nights are known as the White Night riots. Police cars were overturned and torched, and city hall was attacked. Less than two years after his release from prison, Dan White committed suicide.
It was during this period of time that sculptor and ceramacist, Robert Arneson was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission to create a bust of George Moscone, for the opening of the new civic center, named for Moscone. The piece that Arneson delivered to the Moscone Center was highly controversial, given his penchant for irony, subversion, humor and wisecracking. Before the big moment, the pedestal was draped in red, so much was hidden from view. And then it wasn’t. See the piece below.
"portrait of george, 1981" robert arneson
What you can’t see on the pedestal, is the imprint of a gun — among other types of marks and statements and the words BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, that reflected on the mayor’s life and tragic end. Many were outraged by Arneson’s piece, but they really should have known better. Arneson was a supreme ironist. He couldn’t have possibly have executed a “heroic” sculpture which is almost certainly what many were expecting from him. In the ensuing shitstorm, Robert Arneson became hugely famous overnight.
In the period that followed, at the height of his fame, Arneson traveled to the University of New Mexico, where I was going to school. During his talk he spoke eloquently about his overnight fame and that he now felt a responsibility as an artist to use that fame to tell a different kind of story. An anti-war story. See some of the images below to get a sense of what he wanted to talk about.
robert arneson
Robert Arneson, "General Nuke"
The first piece is meant to depict a human head that’s been incinerated by a nuclear blast. On the second piece, it’s a little hard to tell, but the pedestal is made up of tiny bodies, again, incinerated from a nuclear blast. Our man in the helmet needs no explanation.
Bluebird
bluebird
bluebird by charles bukowski
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
Hometown Girl says, Happy Holidays Children!
HOMETOWN GIRL ~ HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Quite a few years ago, I found this angel in a little store on a little street in a quirky/funky/trashy/arty, now it’s up, now it’s down, Baltimore neighborhood called Hampden. Hometown Girl it was called and it was very Baltimore. You could easily imagine John Waters walking into Hometown Girl because that little store had captured a piece of Baltimore’s soul in somewhat the same way John Waters has captured a piece of Baltimore’s soul and you know, moneyfied matters. There’s more than a little joie de vivre in my Hometown Girl — with her wings and her pink dress and her striped stockings and that “I’ve always dreamed of performing in Cirque du Soleil” expression on her face. She is unbounded Hampden joy. Pure Charm City magic. Floating, floating, floating above the campy and sad streets.
Hometown Girl handled the big trip from Baltimore to Portland in style. Never complained even once. I can only guess that she’s happy without the crackheads and the stickup boys and the boarded up rowhouses that made her hometown look like Dresden in 1945. That’s just a guess, maybe I’m projecting. Now, she lives year round in our dining room. She hangs from a defunct lamp over a dining room table that we bought in an antique shop in Baltimore. When Hometown Girl looks out the window, she sees that absolutely nothing is going on. Which is so not like before. No shootings. No burning cars. No screaming matches in the park. She doesn’t talk about Baltimore at all anymore. It’s true that we sometimes forget that she is there. But she does not forget us.
So yesterday, December 10, 2011, we took her for a walk to find a suitable background for her yearly Christmas photo. We lay her in some evergreen boughs, we parked her upside down in the crook of a tree, we hung her from a branch alongside a walking path. But it wasn’t until we arranged her in a bush, among these tiny red berries that she came alive and flew. For just a couple of seconds, she was aloft.
Of all the places we have been. Of all the things that we carry.
Hometown Girl. For us and for you.
