A Section of the Rincon Center Post OfficePlenty more where that came from: 27 monster panels as a matter of fact, all preserved at the Rincon Center Post Office in San Francisco. The artist is Anton Refrigier, my drawing teacher at Bard College. Besides our studio class, one night a week, Ref made us attend his lecture on the government support of art. He had just completed a thin little pamphlet on the subject, which he'd read at the podium. His Russian accent plus his grim Marxist prose used to hypnotise all of us into snoring boredom. He was a WPA artist during The Great Depression, and still thought of that period as one of the happiest in his life. He was a social realist, Ben Shahn-style, and a political radical. I privately classified him as an unrepentant commie, old school, and was a little wary.
He bragged that he'd completed more post office murals during the 30's than any other artist, and I believed him. And while I wasn't sympathetic towards the government stomping into studios on its big flat feet, I grew to like Ref a lot. He was a an old-time boho sweetie who said things like, "You young kids want everything to be so cool. You should wish to be hot with desire!" Yeah, a romantic.
Ref working on a mural during the '30's
By the 1960's, American demand for politically radical muralists was at an all-time low, so Ref would pop down to Mexico during the summers to design monster weavings, using a big workshop of Mexican women. He asked me to go with him as his model and was quite insistent. By that time he'd been married to Ilsa for over 30 years, so I don't think there was any guile intended. Probably, because I was very thin, pale, and nearly 2-dimensional, I looked exactly like the pancake people he painted: a slam-dunk subject. Still, it's one of those life events I sometimes wonder about. What if I'd gone to Mexico with Ref?
As it turns out, Ref established some valuable precedents with his murals that are nearly forgotten today. In 1953, at the height of the red scare, he found himself before the House Committee of Public Works, accused of undermining American values, promoting communism, and just painting ugly stuff. The Rincon murals aren't an exercise in cheer, since they portray a lynching, police brutality, men begging for jobs, and the oppression of Native Americans and the Chinese. But Ref wasn't the only artist around who used social injustice as a subject matter. Diego Riviera comes to mind, Ben Shahn did his share, Dorothea Lange did too, and there were more. Times were hard and, unsurprisingly, artists used art to bitch about it.
At the end of the hearings, Ref was completely exonerated. I'm glad Congress hung in there and refused to trash our first amendment rights. Still, I've got a hard time with art of the 30's. It's preachy, and I like to think art, like life, is bigger than that. More ambiguous, and accommodating lots of different interpretations.
I admire those artists, though. We may need that kind of brave passion again.
Not to mention the government funding.
He bragged that he'd completed more post office murals during the 30's than any other artist, and I believed him. And while I wasn't sympathetic towards the government stomping into studios on its big flat feet, I grew to like Ref a lot. He was a an old-time boho sweetie who said things like, "You young kids want everything to be so cool. You should wish to be hot with desire!" Yeah, a romantic.
Ref working on a mural during the '30'sBy the 1960's, American demand for politically radical muralists was at an all-time low, so Ref would pop down to Mexico during the summers to design monster weavings, using a big workshop of Mexican women. He asked me to go with him as his model and was quite insistent. By that time he'd been married to Ilsa for over 30 years, so I don't think there was any guile intended. Probably, because I was very thin, pale, and nearly 2-dimensional, I looked exactly like the pancake people he painted: a slam-dunk subject. Still, it's one of those life events I sometimes wonder about. What if I'd gone to Mexico with Ref?
As it turns out, Ref established some valuable precedents with his murals that are nearly forgotten today. In 1953, at the height of the red scare, he found himself before the House Committee of Public Works, accused of undermining American values, promoting communism, and just painting ugly stuff. The Rincon murals aren't an exercise in cheer, since they portray a lynching, police brutality, men begging for jobs, and the oppression of Native Americans and the Chinese. But Ref wasn't the only artist around who used social injustice as a subject matter. Diego Riviera comes to mind, Ben Shahn did his share, Dorothea Lange did too, and there were more. Times were hard and, unsurprisingly, artists used art to bitch about it.
At the end of the hearings, Ref was completely exonerated. I'm glad Congress hung in there and refused to trash our first amendment rights. Still, I've got a hard time with art of the 30's. It's preachy, and I like to think art, like life, is bigger than that. More ambiguous, and accommodating lots of different interpretations.
I admire those artists, though. We may need that kind of brave passion again.
Not to mention the government funding.
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