"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.