We the People and our American Flag

A few months ago a video that Saber created was chosen as a finalist in Organizing for America's Health Care Video Challenge. You can see the original video entry over on Arrested Motion (as well as some great production shots of the new Flag print which you can buy here). Needless to say, the video had a few critics (see the full Fox News response), but I doubt any of them understood what is means when an American graffiti artist turns his talent toward such a powerful (and art historically significant) symbol.

Saber, Tarnished Flag, 2009
mixed media on canvas, 19.3 X 25 in • 49 X 63.5 cm
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

When I saw the first flag he painted last year, I was surprised. It was overtly political in a way that had been uncharacteristic of Saber's art thus far. Compelling in its raw emotion, the dingy gray of the white stripes was created by words like oil, Katrina and Blackwater. Scratched into the textured surface, those words seem to further stain the flag with the dripping of red American blood. And in the square, he wrote the names of people, a real source of American power. This Tarnished Flag spoke to me of the anger, sorrow and silent shame of things done in the name of all Americans in the first decade of the 21st century.

With the impasto technique Saber was using, I could not help thinking about Jasper Johns (born in 1930), one of most significant and influential American painters of the twentieth century. In the mid- to late 1950s, Johns became known for painting, as he put it "things the mind already knows," familiar icons like the American flag. The detail below of Flag illustrates an early technique of his, painting with thick, dripping encaustic over a collage made from found materials such as newspaper. Yet, while it is literally made up of the news of the day, John's America of 1955 still retains it's tidy rows of red and white stripes and pattern of stars.

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55

(Detail) Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

I wondered last year if the symbol of the flag would be as strong a draw on Saber as it was on Johns, now I feel certain of it. In Saber's recently released Flag 2010, the tidy order of mid-century America has been shattered. The states represented by stars in 1955 are now gone, replaced by the words: "We the people." Like much of our civil discourse, few barriers are respected and paint drips and juts aggressively over the lines. In this series of prints, the "white stripes" seem to recede back, forming a wall on which the issues of our time are being hotly debated.

Saber, Flag 2010 (in Red/White/Blue), 2010
11 color Serigraph on hand-made Nepalese Cannabina Fiber, 21″ x 30″ (54cm x 77cm)
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

If the life and movement of the color print speaks of a vibrant (if aggressive) civic debate, then the black version of the Flag 2010 shows the country drained of meaning. The layering of the words look even more tangled and muddied in this version, a stark reminder that difficult issues can imprison minds that only think in terms of black and white.

Saber, Flag 2010 (Black), 2010
11 color Serigraph on hand-made Nepalese Cannabina Fiber, 21″ x 30″ (54cm x 77cm)
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

You can see the same ambiguity of meaning in Jasper John's work on paper, Flag, from 1958. While still clearly legible as the flag, the active pencil scribbles and gray graphite wash that form the symbol appear to dissolve much of its meaning and power.

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1958
Pencil and Graphite Wash on Paper, 8 7/8 x 12 in.
Art © Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

That ambiguity vanishes in Saber's gold leafed version of Flag 2010. In this print, solid gold bars with heavy outlines form the barrier between the rich and the rest of us. This is the symbol of a "greed is good" America, a place where money buys political power and the growing income inequality of last 30 years has resulted in a second Gilded Age.

Saber, Flag 2010 (Gold Leaf), 2010
11 color Serigraph on hand-made Nepalese Cannabina Fiber, 21″ x 30″ in. (54cm x 77cm)
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

Like Jasper Johns before him, Saber seems to have grasped the endless diversity of meaning that can be found in the symbol of our nation.

Saber, Mini Flag, 2010
Linoleum print on Fabriano mediovalis card, 2" x 3" in.
art/ photo © 2010 saberone.com

Saber's Mini Flag linoleum print is only the size of a credit card. As we enter 2010, bailed-out out banks are giving out millions in bonuses while raising fees on their customers. I don't know about you, but I believe that a symbol of America that is within reach of "we the people" is better than any cheap plastic promise.

The Time Switch on 01.07.10

So word on the street is "put up or shut up," so I just took a crowbar to the door. That was the easy part, now I have to figure out how the switch works and there are lots of moving parts. First thing is first, now matter how poor the results, I will write everyday. I have my first assignment and the time is NOW.

The Time Switch in 2010

I found the Time Switch right across the street. I wonder how long I must have walked right past it without seeing it, since I am almost always looking around me.

An atheist from childhood, you would think that I would value time; but I doubt my understanding of it. Thus far I have been far more interested in the sweep of history and the different paths that objects and ideas take through time, than I have been in its mechanical movement forward. I rarely had the time on my person until I got my first cell phone in '03. People who could tell themselves to wake up at a certain hour and do so amazed me, as I appear to have no capacity to do that at all.

Now in my early 30s, time (unsurprisingly) seems to be moving much faster. Life is a short, sweet thing. If I want to accomplish anything in life, I see that I am going to need far more control over time. I hope to use the Time Switch to help me get it, but the box is currently locked. I know this because it is 1:25 am on December 4th, 2010 and I had been meaning to write this for the New Year.

I am not certain how to get into the Time Switch box, or what I might find inside it, but I am determined that I will. My first course of action is to gather information. I need to measure my time. This post = 1 hour 34 minuets.

Naked Transparency/ Institutional Distrust

I spoke on a panel after a screening of the film, Copyright Criminals, at the Aero Theater last night. Earlier in the panel I had touched upon the difficulty of determining and locating copyright holders, and my belief that current attribution information tied to digital material (as well as a national registry) might ease that monetizing process. During the question segment of the program a gentleman expressed his lack of faith in digital voting systems. While not necessarily germane to the conversation, it did strike me that digital information leaves many in the public, without the tools needed to judge context or veracity, very distrustful. The speed and openness of information in the digital age seems an unquestionable gift to the growth of human culture, however, given the cynicism of our social institutions, perhaps we should be more mindful of Lawrence Lessig's caution and plea for a systematic understanding and approach for change.

The Agenda - Broadcast - Lawrence Lessig | Digital Activism

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Whitewashing the L.A. River

On September 1, 2009 federal stimulus money was used by the Army Corps of Engineers to buff the Los Angeles River of graffiti. In doing so, they white washed an important part of L.A.’s artistic history. Key among the pieces that were destroyed was a work by the artist SABER; artwork recognized by many worldwide as the largest graffiti masterpiece. Created in 1997 on the slopping concrete banks off the 5 freeway, the piece measured 250’ x 55’ – nearly the size of an NFL football field – and took 97 gallons of paint. Most large-scale graffiti in the L.A. River, such as the MTA roller (also recently buffed) are straightforward two color blocks. What made Saber’s piece world famous (beyond it’s impressive scale and staying power) was that it was a complex full color piece. Few beyond the graffiti scene truly appreciate the dangerous logistics of getting the artist and his supplies to that site, much less the technical and artistic skill required to create such a large piece on an angled surface. This historic artwork has become such a landmark on the LA River that SABER has been featured in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s exhibition “L.A.: light / motion / dreams” in 2004-2005 and KCET’s Departures series about the river this past July.

We in Los Angeles are no strangers to having our art history destroyed, from the whitewashing of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s Olvera Street mural “La América Tropical” in 1932-33 to Kent Twitchell's mural “Ed Ruscha Monument,” painted over in June 2006. Of course, the big difference here is the Getty Conservation Institute is unlikely to fund a multi-million dollar restoration (as in the case of the Siqueiros mural); nor is SABER likely to win a $1.1 million dollar settlement under the Federal Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) or the California Art Preservation Act (CAPA) as Twitchell did in 2008. You might think that is because the piece by SABER was illegal, but recent history suggests otherwise.

In 2007, the graffiti gallery Crewest, along with help from the activist group Friends of the L.A. River (FoLAR) organized “Meeting of Styles: LA.” The event brought together over 100 graffiti artists to spray paint a 10,000 square foot section of the L.A. River at the Arroyo Seco Confluence in Highland Park. Despite the fact that the organizers secured all necessary permits for the mural project, and that the event was fully licensed by the county; supervisor Gloria Molina objected to the work after the fact and introduced an emergency measure to the County Board of Supervisors that forced the mural to be whitewashed from the flood walls. A spokeswoman for Molina called the legal graffiti murals a “public nuisance and a potential safety hazard,” and justified Molina's decision to introduce the mural's removal by saying the county was “trying to save lives.” That is because unlike any other form of public art, people believe that graffiti art is dangerous, that is ruins neighborhoods and turns juvenile delinquents into criminals. At no point does anyone stop to think that they are looking at a generation of artists who have grown up within a public school system stripped of arts education, and in a physical environment that seems to have no problem with the proliferation of illegal advertising billboards and super-graphics. Graffiti artists and supporters have pushed hard to create legal public spaces for people to paint, but one by one places like the Venice Walls and Belmont Yard have been destroyed, as charges for vandalism went from misdemeanors to felonies. Yet those corporate interests have no problem stealing the intellectual property of those artists in order to market to the youth.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) included $6.5 million to ensure structural integrity, remove graffiti and manage vegetation along the Los Angeles River. Graffti abatement is a popular ploy for politicians, able to point to the stark visual change it produces and claim that real improvment is being made. However, they don't seem to understand that providing a newly buffed surface is only an invitation to graffiti writers who know that the politicains will inevitably turn their backs on the river once again. While buffing the river may create a few immediate jobs, I fail to see how this money works toward the Los Angeles River Revitalization Plan's worthy goal of transforming a more than 30-mile stretch of the L.A. River into a greenbelt linking communities. I hope one day that the powers that be recognize that graffiti art, such as Saber's historic river piece, are as important to linking communities and the health of the L.A. River as the meaning of "traditionally navigable waters" is.

-- Post From PS: the Public Square.

Graffiti & the Great Recession

I was browsing through the Huffington Post's "capture the recession" photo feature, where they have asked the public to post images in it's flickr pool. While many evocative images have been submitted, I am most struck by the pervasive sense of absence in so many of them; empty wheelchairs, empty shopping cart, and row upon row of empty homes and boarded up businesses. Loss can be found everywhere, but it seems like this Great Recession has stripped the streets of people.

It's common to see graffiti used as shorthand for "economically depressed," so I wasn't surprised to find the two photos below. In fact, both ranked in the top five when I found them earlier today. What is unusual is seeing graffiti used as the visual voice of Main Street.

Taken near the intersection of Bell, Eagle and Dallas Dr. in Denton, TX.
(Flickr/Rich Anderson)

These scrawled messages seem to be coming directly from the American people. The word "recession" is meaningless for the unemployed, uninsured people of this country; it doesn't begin to describe the street level challenges they face every day.

Corner of Canal And Greenwich , NYC NY (Flickr/Mark Smith)

The stencil in the image above makes the tagger step into action for all Americans. And with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. posting record earnings today and reaching all-time highs less than a year after the firm took $10 billion in U.S. rescue funds, that tagger is asking a question we would all like to know.

-- Post From PWS, the Public Square.

Fireworks: Global Celebration

Most entertainment technologies invented over the past 800 years have failed to stand the test of time. We may be momentarily charmed by a clockwork or shadow play, but they pale quickly against rapid-fire visual stimulation we consume daily in the 21st century. Fireworks, however, remain as arresting and thrilling as they were when the Chinese invented them in 12th century. Tonight the American people will stare up into skies bursting into color in celebration of our Independence. Part of me will be thinking about a much longer tradition, one in which people around the world over the last 800 years ooohh and aaahh over the beauty and magic of fireworks.


Nightime festivities with fireworks attending the rise of the Nile
Published in Sandy's "Relation of a Journey begun An Dom. 1610..."
second edition, 1621. Copper engraved print


Celebrating with Fireworks
Hashim II (Mughal, Delhi)
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, ca. 1635
6 3/32 in. x 8 13/16 in. (15.5 cm x 22.4 cm)
San Diego Museum of Art Edwin Binney 3d Collection


Fireworks Display in London as the Nation Rejoices in 1763
Chez Mondhare, Paris: c. 1763
Hand-colored engraving, 9.25 x 15.25 inches, image


'Boating and Fireworks on the Sumida River', 1770s
Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814)
Uki-e ('floating picture' or 'perspective print'), nishiki-e (brocade print)
Signature: Utagawa Toyoharu ga, Publisher: Nishimuraya Yohachi
V&A, Museum no. E.652-1901


'Projet du feu d'artifice tiré à Versailles en présence de sa majesté Louis XV, le 15 mai 1771, à l'occasion du mariage de Monseigneur le comte de Provence et de Marie-Joséphine de Savoie' (or: Fireworks Display at the Palace of Versailles), 1771
Centre de recherche du château de Versailles


'Plan du feu d'artifice projeté à l'occasion du passage de Napoléon
Bonaparte à Marseillle en l'an 13. Trouvé en 1M528 du Cabinet du Préfet'
Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône

UPDATE:
I spent the evening of this 4th of July on a hilltop in Echo Park. While it has a perfect view of fireworks shot off from Dodger Stadium, no large coordinated display seemed to be going on there this year. Instead we were treated to a cacaphony of independence, surrounded by small bands of people shooting off contraband fireworks.They came from all directions, much larger and elaborate then I would have expected. A few red flares went up as well, beautiful in their slow descent from the sky. At some point the police helipcopters arrived using both megaphone and spotlight to say "no fireworks." But their independence of spirit would not be tamed.