Nice mural, shame about the viewers
My neighborhood happens to be blessed with a very talented muralist, a young artist who seems to single-handedly channel the wonderful mural painters of the 1930s. My first exposure to Rocky Baird's work came a couple years ago, when he painted the side of J Hamburger with a depiction of the rise and fall of the Key Line transit system (and he won a "Best of the Bay" mention from the San Francisco Guardian for it!)
This year, he's moved on to another subject: the fate of the Ohlone when the white people showed up, and brought their diseases with them. For the past several months, he's been painting the wall outside Gaylord's coffeehouse on Piedmont Avenue. As it has approached completion, it's drawn a lot of attention...
The 25-by-10-foot mural on the side of Gaylord's Caffe Espresso at 41st Street and Piedmont Avenue shows Franciscan missionaries attempting to clothe an Ohlone Indian and teach him about the tools used in ranching.On the right, a somewhat shocked modern man and woman look on. On the left — in vivid colors and immaculate detail — Baird depicts the downfall of the Ohlone people and their culture, which thrived in the California coastal area between Point Sur and the San Francisco Bay until the 1700s.
The painting shows a sickly green and twisted person whose body is ravaged by smallpox, measles and other European diseases. There is an evil-looking conquistador grabbing or wrestling with a man who turns into a ghost under protest.
"It shows that through all the oppression, the soul of a person still remains intact and escapes those binds," Baird said. "A spirit of a person can't be boxed."
The mural, "The Capture of the Solid. The Escape of the Soul," was completed in six months with the help of a $5,000 Oakland City Cultural Arts grant.
While it shows the struggles of American Indians, the acrylic painting is also about perceptions and the attachments people have to those perceptions, said the 30-year-old Baird, who last year completed "La Vida Electrica Mantiene," a mural about the Key System railway at Key Route Plaza in Piedmont.
"The Franciscans show up and their perception is (the American Indians) are people without clothing and (without) Christianity. And their perception is that if they don't have Christianity they must be lost. I don't think they had any evil intentions; they thought they were doing what was best. ... It was their perceptions."
...not all of it positive.
Diane Williams, who said she is Athabascan Indian and lives in East Oakland, spotted the mural after a shopping trip to a Piedmont Avenue market recently."He lacked cultural sensitivity big time to think he could have displayed my people without running (the art) by my people," Williams said.
Williams said some of the figures in the mural are not accurate portraits of American Indians.
"We didn't look like that," she said. "We have short legs, long torsos. That (naked) guy, I don't know who he looks like. He has legs that are too long."
Williams, 57, said she is angered that a naked Indian man is featured on the public mural.
"This is just an insult to us," she said. "It could be something to honor us, but instead we are all prancing around naked."
Williams said she polled 50 American Indian friends who were also "appalled by the mural."
"When they depict this type of thing in museums, books, in private pieces of art, or even inside a building, that's one thing. But this is on the outside of a building, and people are forced to see it," she said.
Mr. Baird, whom I've heard is a self-taught artist, did quite a bit of research before starting this project.
Baird, who is not American Indian, said he researched the Ohlone civilization for six months before he began painting."California Native-American history is something I was always fascinated by," he said.
During his research, he consulted with Andrew Galvan, the curator of Old Mission Dolores in San Francisco and an Ohlone Indian descendant.
"He constantly provided me with preliminary sketches and drawings. Rocky has been walking the journey with me and keeping me included and taking any thoughts I had into consideration," Galvan said this week.
Those early sketches can be seen at http://www.rockybaird.com and may be part of a July exhibit at the Esteban Sabar Gallery in Oakland.
Galvan called the mural a fantastic project.
"I have been quite pleased with it," he said.
Luckily, he's taking this whole thing in stride.
"I love the First Amendment," he said. "If everyone just walked past it like wallpaper, what would be the point?"It's absolutely their right (not to like his art)," he said.
"It's not a water faucet. It can't be working or not. It's art."
Native Americans are not the only ones complaining. I heard that one woman was going up and down the avenue trying to get people to sign on to her complaint about the mural, which seemed to focus on the penis of the Ohlone man in the middle of the mural. (She was apparently heard to exclaim, "My husband's penis never looked like that!")
My take? Obviously, I'm a fan of his work. More than that, I'm irritated with the complainers. Again, think of the muralists of the 1930s, or go further back than that to the paintings of the Renaissance, or the murals and sculptures of the Romans. Public art is about symbols. It's about storytelling. It's not mean to to be photorealistic representation. Do people think the ancient Egyptians really thought people could contort their bodies like that? And if you're going to complain about a naked human figure, then you'd better stay out of museums, the U.N., and many other public places... talk about literally ignoring the bigger picture.
I do wish these self-proclaimed critics would find a worthier target. Like Thomas Kinkade. There's some empty obscenity for you!
(In my opinion, anyway) one of the best American artists of the 20th century, Jack Levine was born in Boston in 1915 and began his art career during the Great Depression. Working in representational imagery rather than abstract, by his own admission, Levine's art is heavily influenced by Rembrandt and other European masters, but his subject matter is frequently quite American and satirical. "I am primarily concerned with the condition of man. The satirical direction I have chosed is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite way of saying that I have high expectations for the human race." The painting here dates from 1998 and is called "Finger of Newt" — featuring the architect of the Republican Party's "Contract With America" 
But perhaps even more than the paintings, I enjoy his etchings, which really show the Rembrandt influence, particularly in his series of historical portraits of Jewish holy men. "My father's death in 1939 started me on the path of painting these Jewish sages. It was his religion, not mine, but when he died I felt like I was scoring points for him..."