Siqueiros' mural in LA

Since now I am not sure people can actually access the link, though I can, but I've saved it to my archive, I'll post the text -


quoting -
August 2, 2006


Pulling back the cover on a provocative mural
The city and the Getty Trust reach an agreement to restore Siqueiros' 1932 work on Olvera Street.

By Christopher Reynolds, Times Staff Writer

After decades of fits and starts in the bid to preserve a politically provocative Siqueiros mural on an Olvera Street building, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and leaders at the J. Paul Getty Trust say they've made a $7.8-million deal to split the cost of making the 1932 work accessible to the public at last.

The money will build a protective shelter and viewing platform for the 18-by-80-foot "America Tropical," by Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, and renovate the adjacent Sepulveda House as an interpretive center. Villaraigosa and City Councilman José Huizar will join Getty officials in a news conference at the site to announce the project this morning.


"This is a hidden gem that's been covered up since 1932, and it's been a struggle for the city to finally unveil it," said Rushmore D. Cervantes, general manager of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, which includes the mural.

The work is expected to take 18 months. The project is happening now, Cervantes said, because "the Getty was getting fed up and they gave us a deadline."

Siqueiros painted the work on an outdoor wall on the second floor of Olvera Street's Italian Hall building. It was immediately controversial ?- the central image is a crucified Indian peasant under an American eagle ?- and was first partially whitewashed, then entirely covered within six years of completion.

Yet by the reckoning of some, it was the state's first outdoor mural. Through the 1960s and 1970s, as appreciation grew for Siqueiros and other artists of the Mexican muralist movement, advocates including art historians and Latino groups called for conservation and display of the long-hidden work.

The Getty Conservation Institute and city officials began efforts to revive it in 1988, 14 years after the artist's death. Fifteen years later, the job was still incomplete and city officials were balking at the costs.

That year, the Getty threatened to withdraw its support if the city didn't give the project more money and attention, and then-City Councilman Villaraigosa called the lack of progress "a travesty."

Now the Getty is aboard again ?- its conditional grant for $3.95 million was approved in May ?- and Villaraigosa and the City Council have earmarked $3.87 million for the mural and the opening of the interpretive center to put the mural in historical and artistic context.

In addition to construction of the shelter, viewing platform, visitor bridge and interpretive center, the new spending will pay for annual reviews of the mural by Getty Conservation staff for 10 years.

Of the city's share, $2.4 million is to come from bond financing through the Municipal Improvement Corp. of Los Angeles; $1.35 million from the city's Arts and Cultural Facilities and Services Trust Fund; and $120,280 from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Cervantes said the City Council, which previously approved $1 million toward the project, approved the new spending July 14.

The Getty has reserved the right to walk away if the city doesn't commit at least $3.42 million, if construction doesn't begin by Feb. 1, or if it's not done by Jan. 31, 2009.

In the May 16 letter offering the grant, interim Getty Trust President Deborah Marrow and Getty Foundation interim Director Joan Weinstein described themselves as "delighted" to be underwriting the shelter and platform construction ?- then listed their requirements, noting that "the city must keep the Getty informed on a bimonthly basis about the progress on the Interpretive Center and its construction. Failure to advance the Interpretive Center on the same timeline [as the shelter and platform construction] will result in the Getty's halting payments."

For now, the mural is protected from the elements by a metal cover and a tarp that has been imprinted with the image of the artwork it's protecting. Cervantes said he expected work to begin Feb. 1.

end quote




This has long been an interesting mural for Siquieiros appreciators, of which I am one.

interesting stuff Osso - I enjoy seeing the artists you show as I wouldn't come across them otherwise

Oh, Vivien, Siqueiros (and I never spell his name right) was a key painter, very powerful.

I have a bias in that my first real boyfriend signed a petition for him to get out of jail and naturally I did too, at some booth in front of our student union. That was in (cringe) 1963.

That boyfriend, who I treasure in memory still, was, in retrospect very sharp and having looked him up online, still is very sharp, explored and wrote about the Sierras...

He took me to the local museum, where we saw the Keinholz (sp?) car, and much else. In a way it might have been my enchantment with him that clued me in at all to art, opened my very channelled eyes.

I loved Siqueiros then, more than Rivera and Orozco and Tamayo.
Who knows what I think now, it's been a while. I do know JL is keen on Tamayo..

I think we all have a greater knowledge of the art of our own continent - I'm much more familiar with European art than American, except for a few major names. I really enjoy seeing more and different work - will research him when life gets a bit less hectic.

I don't know why, but I havn't been getting updates, such as for this forum.
Among the great Mexican muralists, I've always preferred RufinoTamayo (as Osso notes). This was in part because he was the closest to the Abstract Expressionism that I had studied before going to Mexico City to study painting in the fine arts Academy of San Carlos. There, everyone was practicing social realism and pretty much dismissed my fondness for abstract art (popular in the U.S. at the time--1955). The great exception was the more abstract-ish art of Tamayo.

Makes me want to look up some Tamayo photos. I've done that before but it's nice to see some work again.

It's good to see you on the computer with the storm that Albuturkey is supposed to be undergoing. I don't see evidence of Dys, Ash or BBB on the puter. What's it really like there now?

No storm right here right now... storms often go just to the north of us...

Here's a Tamayo I don't remember seeing before, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston -

Dogs (Perros)

I'm not familiar with this "dog" picture either. One of his most famous paintings is of vicious dogs called "Animales" (1941 at MOMA).
I love Tamayo's use of color, just brilliant in both senses of the word.

You may think this odd, but I like his density...

I'd have given a link to the main Tamayo museum in Mexico, but somehow my computer has trouble with it. Artcyclopedia has a lot of places listed where his work is shown, and that may be where I got this one. Well, not may be, was, in fact.

Oh, the facing page of that which has Animales contains Dos Perros, also 1941 and also at MOMA.
Frankly, I never noticed it because it does not compare in brilliance with Los Animales.
What do you mean by "density"? Can it be put in words?
If you mean the "weight" of the figures, I agree.

Off the top of my head, rich color, rich juxtapositon - however far away; sense of thick layers even if the surface seems simple.

Am I just grasping, I dunno. I like that last dog thing better than the watermelon paintings. Or do I? Just had a run through on various museum sites and need to look harder. Many of the paintings have an icon figure which also acts as an abstract structural element. That is all beyond my purview. I mostly react to color, form, movement, as a start.

I love the color in his watercolor paintings, but that image has become cliche.

"Or do I?"
I love the honesty of your ambivalence.

I am a walking talking vascillating person. If someone challenges me at any point in time, I'll say something. Or, more likely, answer a thread question. Woe to him or her who listens...

Back to that particular dog painting.. I still like it, as it's not yet a cliche to me (wait, already).