dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)
künstler: Anton Refregier
titel: The History of California
jahr: 1940–48
adresse: Rincon Center (former Rincon Annex Post Office), 101 Spear St, San Francisco, CA, USA
+: Treasury Section of Fine Arts funded mural cycle. $ 26'000 commission. 29 panels. Casein tempera on white gesso over plaster walls.
The mural consisted of various historical events from California's past. It included the anti-Chinese Sand Lot riots, the 1934 San Francisco Waterfront Strike, and trade unionist Tom Mooney's trial that was based on fabricated evidence. Refregier used these tragedies as inspiration. Refregier “believed that art must address itself to contemporary issues and that a mural painting in particular must not be ‘banal, decorative embellishment,’ but a ‘meaningful, significant, powerful plastic statement based on the history and lives of the people.’”
Refregier won the Works Project Administration’s largest commission to depict the history of Northern California in 1941, but WWII intervened. When Refregier began again in 1945, he was lobbied by interest groups to present their version of history, and it took three years and 92 changes to make everyone happy. The murals were deemed ‘communist’ by McCarthyists in 1953, but they’re now protected as a National Landmark.