BGuthrie Photos: CA -- San Francisco -- Coit Tower -- Murals

CA -- San Francisco -- Coit Tower -- Murals:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. COITM_180715_014.JPG: Meat Industry Ray Bertrand
2. COITM_180715_022.JPG: Farmer Clifford Wight
3. COITM_180715_033.JPG: California Maxine Albro
4. COITM_180715_044.JPG: Cowboy Clifford Wight
5. COITM_180715_082.JPG: Department Store Frede Vidar
6. COITM_180715_087.JPG: Banking and Law George Harris
7. COITM_180715_134.JPG: Stockbroker Mallette Harold Dean
8. COITM_180715_146.JPG: City Life Victor Arnautoff
9. COITM_180715_156.JPG: Lone Hand Gunners' Vengeance
10. COITM_180715_160.JPG: City Lights
11. COITM_180715_166.JPG: City Life Victor Arnautoff
12. COITM_180715_171.JPG: The guy getting robbed was interesting
13. COITM_180715_192.JPG: Scientist-Inventor Mallette Harold Dean
14. COITM_180715_200.JPG: Library Bernard B. Zakheim
15. COITM_180715_206.JPG: Comic Strip by Bernard Zakheim The Weird Spirit then he found a voice of authority...
16. COITM_180715_214.JPG: Screenplay Hollywood's Rudist Movie
17. COITM_180715_225.JPG: Victor Arnautoff -- Artist Tarwell Taylor & Edward Hansen -- Assistent [sic] Painters
18. COITM_180715_236.JPG: Newsgathering Suzanne Scheuer
19. COITM_180715_239.JPG: [National Recovery Act seal in the corner] San Francisco Chronicle Army Halts All Air Mail for ... Gang Slays S.F. Man
20. COITM_180715_248.JPG: John Strachey Granville Hicks Langston Hughes Grace Lumpkin
21. COITM_180715_250.JPG: Hemingway Faulkner Williams Dos Passos Jeffers Mexico -- Stuart Chase
22. COITM_180715_252.JPG: The guy is reaching for Karl Marx, Das Capital Maxim Gorky Ostran Van Yan Bukarhin Hegel Lapidas
23. COITM_180715_255.JPG: Maxim Gorky Ostran Van Yan
24. COITM_180715_259.JPG: Thousands Slaughtered in Austria Western Workers -- Strikers Defy Police -- To Fight Fascism Local Artists Protest Destruction of Rivera Fresco by Rockefeller CWA Coit Tower Decoration Committee ... Dr. W. Heil, Harold Mack, Staf. Duncan, T.C. .. Hoover Aide Fights Airmail Fraud Charges Thug Suspect Slain in Gunfight Matrimonial Failure B. Bufano's St. Francis Just Around the Corner -- Art Commission Awakens from It's [sic] Sleep Rus Shoot Jap Planes Moratorium in North Dakota -- Gen. Wm. H. Langer
25. COITM_180715_266.JPG: Technocracy Alchemy
26. COITM_180715_271.JPG: San Francisco Chronicle Artists Finish Frescoes Coit Tower Murals
27. COITM_180715_274.JPG: Moon Mullins
28. COITM_180715_280.JPG: Surveyor Clifford Wight
29. COITM_180715_285.JPG: Industries of California Ralph Stackpole
30. COITM_180715_291.JPG: There weren't many non-white figures in the entire mural. Some of the women here are Asian or Hispanic.
31. COITM_180715_294.JPG: Ralph Stackpole Painter Tom Hayes Assistant
32. COITM_180715_296.JPG: Industries of California Ralph Stackpole
33. COITM_180715_311.JPG: California Industrial Scenes John Langley Howard
34. COITM_180715_318.JPG: Railroad and Shipping William Hesthal
35. COITM_180715_325.JPG: One of the few African-Americans in the murals
36. COITM_180715_332.JPG: Hoovervilles
37. COITM_180715_336.JPG: Rich folk walking their dog in the Hooverville
38. COITM_180715_343.JPG: National Recovery Act stamps
39. COITM_180715_351.JPG: Suzanne Scheuer Hebe Daum
40. COITM_180715_354.JPG: Ray Bertrand Meat Industry Fresco -- 10 feet by 10 feet Fred Olmsted Power Fresco -- 3 feet by 3 feet Frede Vidar Department Store Fresco -- 10 feet by 10 feet John Langley Howard California Industrial Scenes Fresco -- 10 feet by 24 feet
41. COITM_180715_360.JPG: San Francisco Bay, North by Jose Moya del Pino
42. COITM_180715_376.JPG: Ray Boynton Animal Force and Machine Force Fresco -- 10 feet by 36 feet Ralph Stackpole Industries of California Fresco -- 10 feet by 36 feet Otis Oldfield San Francisco Bay, Seabirds and Bay Area Map Oil on Canvas -- 9 feet by 54 inches Recessed Lunettes over Doorway
43. COITM_180715_415.JPG: Animal Force and Machine Force Ray Boynton
44. COITM_180715_419.JPG: Ray Boynton 1934
45. COITM_180715_424.JPG: I'm a Tough Guy F.R. Warns Congress "I Learned a Lot from Barracudas and Sharks" Roosevelt tells crowd at station Full Treaty Navy Program Seen Assured Administration Backs Plan Relief Rolls Reach New All-Time Peak France is... Arms def... Hope of Peace for ... Lost for... Europe Work Program Issued -- Few Jobs -- Small Pay Says Brannson Employment Gains Reports Sec. Perkins
46. COITM_180715_446.JPG: Demonstrate on May 1st ... Out against Hunger War Fascism
47. COITM_180715_454.JPG: California Agricultural History Gordon Langdon
48. COITM_180715_464.JPG: Meat Industry Ray Bertrand
49. COITM_180715_555.JPG: San Francisco Bay by Otis Oldfield
50. COITM_180715_564.JPG: We're back downstairs
51. COITM_180715_574.JPG: Bay Area Hills by Rinaldo Cuneo
52. COITM_180715_610.JPG: Lawyers List [Note that the list including Clarence Darrow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Abraham Lincoln]
Wikipedia Description: Coit Tower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...

Mural project

The Coit Tower murals in the American Social Realism style formed the pilot project of the Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal federal employment programs for artists. Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim successfully sought the commission in 1933, and supervised the muralists, who were mainly faculty and students of the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), including Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Ray Bertrand, Rinaldo Cuneo, Mallette Harold Dean, Gordon Langdon, Clifford Wight, Edith Hamlin, George Albert Harris, Otis Oldfield, Suzanne Scheuer, Hebe Daum, Jane Berlandina, Frederick E. Olmsted Jr., Jose Moya del Pino and Frede Vidar. The most well-known artists were assigned sections that were 10 foot by 36 foot in size, while less famous artists were confined to 10 foot by 4 foot.

The artists were committed in varying degrees to racial equality and to leftist and Marxist political ideas, which are strongly expressed in the paintings. Bernard Zakheim's mural "Library" depicts fellow artist John Langley Howard crumpling a newspaper in his left hand as he reaches for a shelved copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital (here spelled as Das Capital) with his right. Workers of all races are shown as equals, often in the heroic poses of Socialist realism, while well-dressed racially white members of the capitalist classes enjoy the fruit of their labor. Victor Arnautoff's "City Life" includes the periodicals The New Masses and The Daily Worker in the scene's news stand rack; John Langley Howard's mural depicts an ethnically diverse Labor March as well as showing a destitute family panning for gold while a wealthy, heavily caricatured ensemble observes; and Stackpole's Industries of California was composed along the same lines as an early study of the destroyed Man at the Crossroads.

The youngest of the muralists, George Albert Harris, painted a mural called "Banking and Law". In the mural, the world of finance is represented by the Federal Reserve Bank and a stock market ticker (in which stocks are shown as declining) and law is illustrated by a law library. Some of the book titles that appear in the law library, such as 'Civil, Penal, and Moral Codes', are legitimate, while others list fellow muralists as authors, in a joking or derogatory manner.

After Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads mural was destroyed by its Rockefeller Center patrons for the inclusion of an image of Lenin, the Coit Tower muralists protested, picketing the tower. Sympathy for Rivera led some artists to incorporate references to the Rivera incident; in Zakheim's "Library" panel, Stackpole is painted reading a newspaper headline announcing the destruction of Rivera's mural.

John Langley Howard's Industry mural (which his architect brother Henry Howard helped design) depicts California industrial scenes, and angered conservatives for its frank depiction of out-of-work men.

Two of the murals are of San Francisco Bay scenes. Most murals are done in fresco; the exceptions are one mural done in egg tempera (upstairs, in the last decorated room) and the works done in the elevator foyer, which are oil on canvas. While most of the murals have been restored, a small segment (the spiral stairway exit to the observation platform) was not restored but durably painted over with epoxy surfacing.

Most of the murals are open for public viewing without charge during open hours, although there are ongoing[when?] negotiations by the Recreation and Parks Department of San Francisco to begin charging visitors a fee to enter the mural rotunda. The murals in the spiral stairway, normally closed to the public, are open for viewing through tours.

Since 2004 artist Ben Wood collaborated with other artists on large scale video projections onto the exterior of Coit Tower, in 2004, 2006, 2008 & 2009.
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