Mark Vallen
Encyclopedia
Mark Vallen is an American
activist with Chicano
and other issues, curator, figurative
realist
painter
, and blog
ger, who runs the Art for a Change web site; he founded The Black Moon web site for Japanese culture.
. He studied art at the Otis Parsons Art Institute
and was influenced by the African American artist, Charles White
, but considers himself largely self-taught, with influences from Goya, Daumier, German Expressionists
and Mexican Mural
ists.
By the age of 17, his cartoons had been published in the Los Angeles Free Press
and the Black Panther Party
newspaper, and he had printed a (pre-Watergate
) street poster, proclaiming, "Evict Nixon!". He worked on Slash
, and produced art work based on the early punk
scene. He participated in Penelope Spheeris
' punk rock
documentary The Decline of Western Civilization
(1981). At the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Vallen was involved in the Los Angeles Punk
scene and the civil rights movement
. He advocated for the neglected Central American refugee community, and was the first person to distribute on the streets of Los Angeles political posters in support of that community. These posters used his artwork with bilingual text (the latter a practice derived from the 1960 Chicano Arts movement). In 2001 he gave the International Workers Association
the right to use his image and poster Ningun ser Humano es Illegal (No human being is illegal).
Paul Von Blum said in the Journal of American Studies of Turkey:
Vallen is a figurative
realist
painter. Much of his work documents California's labor movements, depicting their "dignity and struggle". As a response to racial profiling after the September 11 attacks
on the World Trade Center
, Vallen made a pencil drawing of a Muslim
woman, titled I Am Not the Enemy; prompted by the Iraq war, he reproduced the drawing as a poster for wide distribution, with the title at the bottom in bold upper case. He deplored the increase of racial hate crime
s following 9/11 and stated, "Moslems, Arabs, and people of Middle Eastern descent are not the enemy. Many people from the Middle East have come to the United States to escape repression, terror, and war. The fact that these innocent people would now be targeted by misguided Americans is a cause for great shame."
Vallen's art was in the traveling show at UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History
, the Oakland Museum of California
, the Merced Multicultural Arts Center, the Crocker Art Museum
, the Jersey City Museum
, and Galería de la Raza
; his art was in the opening show at the Kantor Gallery, and in the exhibition At Work: The Art of California Labor at Pico House
gallery; a solo retrospective, More Than A Witness was at the A Shenere Velt Gallery, Los Angeles. He was included in the show Fundamental (addressing religious fundamentalism
) in Manchester
in 2007.
Two of his anti-nuclear war posters, Nuclear War?! There Goes My Career! (1980) — a front cover graphic for LA Weekly
— and We're Number One (1984) were shown as part of the Yo! What Happened to Peace? traveling exhibition, whose venues included the Los Angeles Transport Gallery and the Parco Museum in Tokyo in 2005. Two of his prints, including Nuclear War?! There Goes My Career!, were included in an exhibition of political poster art at the Museum of Modern Art
.
Vallen's illustrative work includes Slash
magazine, the LA Weekly
, LA Reader, California Magazine, The Progressive
, Mother Jones
, and South End Press
,. It has frequently been used for the cover of the Santa Monica Review. His art is in the book, Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California. He contributes art to the web site Xispas, which covers Chicano culture and is edited by the writer, Luis J. Rodriguez
. Vallen designed the cover for Rodriguez's poetry book, My Nature Is Hunger, published in 2005.
He lives in North Hollywood
.
He has taken issue with Fred Ross of Art Renewal Center
, disagreeing with his Ross's unstinting admiration of the French 19th century Salon
artist, William-Adolphe Bouguereau
. Vallen admires Bouguereau's technique, but considers he was "imprisoned by his extremely conservative vision of what painting could be". Vallen also stated that Ross and his followers "are not incorrect when noting the follies of modern art, but their total rejection of it is beyond the pale and thoroughly reactionary."
and Japanese culture
.
He now publishes the web site Art for a Change, which promotes the socially transformative role of his own and other artists' work, and acts as a forum and resource facility; he is a "popular arts blogger", In 2004 he campaigned against the threatened closure of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, calling Mayor James Hahn
's budget team "vulgarian accountants and hack bureaucrats" and "gray-suited Philistines." In 2007, he criticised the $25 million BP
sponsorship of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
as a blatant PR maneuver, observing that since 2002 BP had paid $125 million in settlements for environmental violations.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
activist with Chicano
Chicano
The terms "Chicano" and "Chicana" are used in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. However, those terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the world. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexican Americans, especially in the movement's...
and other issues, curator, figurative
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
realist
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, and blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ger, who runs the Art for a Change web site; he founded The Black Moon web site for Japanese culture.
Life and work
Mark Vallen was born and raised in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. He studied art at the Otis Parsons Art Institute
Otis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design is an art and design college in Los Angeles, California.The school's programs, accredited by WASC and National Association of Schools of Art and Design, include four-year BFA degrees in illustration, fine arts, graphic design, architecture, landscape design, interior...
and was influenced by the African American artist, Charles White
Charles Wilbert White
Charles Wilbert White was an American artist born in Chicago. He was known for his WPA era murals. White was married to famed sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett briefly...
, but considers himself largely self-taught, with influences from Goya, Daumier, German Expressionists
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
and Mexican Mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
ists.
By the age of 17, his cartoons had been published in the Los Angeles Free Press
Los Angeles Free Press
The Los Angeles Free Press , also called “the Freep”, was among the most widely distributed underground newspapers of the 1960s. It is often cited as the first such newspaper...
and the Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
newspaper, and he had printed a (pre-Watergate
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
) street poster, proclaiming, "Evict Nixon!". He worked on Slash
Slash (fanzine)
Slash was a punk rock-related fanzine published in the United States from 1977 to 1980.The magazine was a large-format tabloid focused on the Los Angeles punk scene, though it did not restrict itself to local acts: its first cover featured Dave Vanian of The Damned. It regularly covered such L.A....
, and produced art work based on the early punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
scene. He participated in Penelope Spheeris
Penelope Spheeris
Penelope Spheeris is an American director, producer and screenwriter. She is best known as a documentary film director whose works include the trilogy titled The Decline of Western Civilization...
' punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
documentary The Decline of Western Civilization
The Decline of Western Civilization
The soundtrack was released in December 1980 by Slash Records on LP. In the late 1990s it was released on CD as well. It is currently out of print. Germs singer Darby Crash appears on the soundtrack album cover. He died shortly before the film was released, though the promotional images for the...
(1981). At the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Vallen was involved in the Los Angeles Punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
scene and the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
. He advocated for the neglected Central American refugee community, and was the first person to distribute on the streets of Los Angeles political posters in support of that community. These posters used his artwork with bilingual text (the latter a practice derived from the 1960 Chicano Arts movement). In 2001 he gave the International Workers Association
International Workers Association
The International Workers' Association is an international federation of anarcho-syndicalist labour unions and initiatives based primarily in Europe and Latin America....
the right to use his image and poster Ningun ser Humano es Illegal (No human being is illegal).
Paul Von Blum said in the Journal of American Studies of Turkey:
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
realist
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
painter. Much of his work documents California's labor movements, depicting their "dignity and struggle". As a response to racial profiling after the September 11 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
on the World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
, Vallen made a pencil drawing of a Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
woman, titled I Am Not the Enemy; prompted by the Iraq war, he reproduced the drawing as a poster for wide distribution, with the title at the bottom in bold upper case. He deplored the increase of racial hate crime
Hate crime
In crime and law, hate crimes occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, social status or...
s following 9/11 and stated, "Moslems, Arabs, and people of Middle Eastern descent are not the enemy. Many people from the Middle East have come to the United States to escape repression, terror, and war. The fact that these innocent people would now be targeted by misguided Americans is a cause for great shame."
Vallen's art was in the traveling show at UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History
UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History
The Fowler Museum at UCLA or more commonly, The Fowler is a museum on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles which explores art and material culture primarily from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, past and present...
, the Oakland Museum of California
Oakland Museum of California
Oakland Museum of California or Oakland Museum is a museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California located in Oakland, California....
, the Merced Multicultural Arts Center, the Crocker Art Museum
Crocker Art Museum
The Crocker Art Museum is one of the leading arts institutions in California, and the longest continuously operating art museum in the West. Located in Sacramento, California, the Crocker has been an art innovator since 1885...
, the Jersey City Museum
Jersey City Museum
Jersey City Museum is a former art museum that was most recently located in the Van Vorst Park section of Downtown Jersey City, New Jersey. Serving a diverse community, the Museum collects, exhibits, preserves, and interprets its collections of 19th- and 20th-century paintings, works on paper,...
, and Galería de la Raza
Galería de la Raza
Galería de la Raza is a non-profit art gallery and artist collective that serves the heavily-Latino population of San Francisco's Mission District. GDLR mounts exhibitions, hosts poetry readings, workshops, and celebrations, sells works of art, and sponsors youth and artist-in-residence programs...
; his art was in the opening show at the Kantor Gallery, and in the exhibition At Work: The Art of California Labor at Pico House
Pico House
The Pico House is a historic building in Los Angeles, California, dating from its days as a small town in Southern California. Located on 430 North Main Street, it sits across the old Los Angeles Plaza from Olvera Street and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument...
gallery; a solo retrospective, More Than A Witness was at the A Shenere Velt Gallery, Los Angeles. He was included in the show Fundamental (addressing religious fundamentalism
Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is strict adherence to specific theological doctrines usually understood as a reaction against Modernist theology. The term "fundamentalism" was originally coined by its supporters to describe a specific package of theological beliefs that developed into a movement within the...
) in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
in 2007.
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
— and We're Number One (1984) were shown as part of the Yo! What Happened to Peace? traveling exhibition, whose venues included the Los Angeles Transport Gallery and the Parco Museum in Tokyo in 2005. Two of his prints, including Nuclear War?! There Goes My Career!, were included in an exhibition of political poster art at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
.
Vallen's illustrative work includes Slash
Slash (fanzine)
Slash was a punk rock-related fanzine published in the United States from 1977 to 1980.The magazine was a large-format tabloid focused on the Los Angeles punk scene, though it did not restrict itself to local acts: its first cover featured Dave Vanian of The Damned. It regularly covered such L.A....
magazine, the LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
, LA Reader, California Magazine, The Progressive
The Progressive
The Progressive is an American monthly magazine of politics, culture and progressivism with a pronounced liberal perspective on some issues. Known for its pacifism, it has strongly opposed military interventions, such as the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The magazine also devotes much coverage...
, Mother Jones
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
, and South End Press
South End Press
South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
,. It has frequently been used for the cover of the Santa Monica Review. His art is in the book, Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California. He contributes art to the web site Xispas, which covers Chicano culture and is edited by the writer, Luis J. Rodriguez
Luis J. Rodriguez
Luis J. Rodriguez is an American poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist. His work has won several awards, and he is recognized as a major figure of contemporary Chicano literature...
. Vallen designed the cover for Rodriguez's poetry book, My Nature Is Hunger, published in 2005.
He lives in North Hollywood
North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
North Hollywood is a district in the San Fernando Valley region of the city of Los Angeles, California, along the Tujunga Wash. It is bounded on the south by Moorpark Street and the Ventura Freeway, on the southwest by Burbank Blvd...
.
Art philosophy
He has commented on art:- What I disparage is the postmodernist emphasis on form over content, or process over result — which has led to an imbalance in modern art. As for the question of realism in painting, for years we’ve been told by art world elites that figurative painting is passé, some have even gone so far as to say "painting is dead." No one is ever taken to task for making such ludicrous remarks, but as an advocate of figurative realism I’m continually accused of being a reactionary who hates modern art and wishes to impose realism upon everyone - which is utter nonsense. My position is that figurative realism has largely been excluded and shunned by the art world in favor of conceptual, performance, video and installation art. In calling for the re-establishment of painting to its former respected position, I’m seeking equilibrium — but I’m not looking for a return to the past. To quote a phrase from the Stuckists, we cannot paint as if space travel, computers, and punk rock never happened. I think painters must also offer exceptional content, so I’m thinking in terms of superior technique coupled with interesting narratives or messages. On a personal level, I have a lot to say to my audience, and figurative realism affords me the best way to make my intentions clearly understood.
He has taken issue with Fred Ross of Art Renewal Center
Art Renewal Center
The Art Renewal Center is an organization led by New Jersey millionaire, businessman, and art collector Fred Ross dedicated to the promotion of what it terms classical realism in art, as opposed to the Modernist developments of the twentieth century...
, disagreeing with his Ross's unstinting admiration of the French 19th century Salon
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
artist, William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. William Bouguereau was a traditionalist; in his realistic genre paintings he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of Classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body.-Life and career :William-Adolphe...
. Vallen admires Bouguereau's technique, but considers he was "imprisoned by his extremely conservative vision of what painting could be". Vallen also stated that Ross and his followers "are not incorrect when noting the follies of modern art, but their total rejection of it is beyond the pale and thoroughly reactionary."
Web sites
In 1997, Vallen founded The Black Moon web site as a forum for animeAnime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
and Japanese culture
Culture of Japan
The culture of Japan has evolved greatly over the millennia, from the country's prehistoric Jōmon period to its contemporary hybrid culture, which combines influences from Asia, Europe and North America...
.
He now publishes the web site Art for a Change, which promotes the socially transformative role of his own and other artists' work, and acts as a forum and resource facility; he is a "popular arts blogger", In 2004 he campaigned against the threatened closure of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, calling Mayor James Hahn
James Hahn
James Kenneth "Jim" Hahn is an American politician. Hahn was elected the 40th Mayor of Los Angeles in 2001. He served until 2005, at which time he was defeated in his bid for re-election...
's budget team "vulgarian accountants and hack bureaucrats" and "gray-suited Philistines." In 2007, he criticised the $25 million BP
BP
BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...
sponsorship of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
as a blatant PR maneuver, observing that since 2002 BP had paid $125 million in settlements for environmental violations.
Shows
This list is incomplete- 2006: (curator) Don't Talk About Religion Or Politics: Artists explore the sacred and profane, Avenue 50 Studio, Los Angeles
- 2006: And Now, For Something Newd, Avenue 50 Studio, Los Angeles
- 2006: The New Normalcy, Carlotta's Passion Fine Art