{"id":33134,"date":"2019-04-11T22:31:09","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T06:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sparselysageandtimely.com\/blog\/?p=33134"},"modified":"2019-04-12T17:53:10","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T01:53:10","slug":"more-time-in-my-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/?p=33134","title":{"rendered":"More ‘Time in My Coffee’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caveat lectorem:<\/b>\u00c2\u00a0When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.<\/em><\/p>\n

Talk about being timely<\/strong> (that’s our name after all), I had no sooner written about several topics in Time in My Coffee<\/em>, Inverness artist\/architect Igor Sazevich’s newly published autobiography, than another topic in the book was suddenly all over Bay Area news.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Igor captioned this collage, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153From top: Father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s portrait of Victor Arnautoff; Detail from Victor Arnautoff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mural at Washington High School; Father in his studio; Me on [a high school friend] Don’s shoulders; Father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sketch of me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/i><\/p>\n

Time in My Coffee<\/i> took on new significance<\/b> this past week after a public controversy arose over Arnautoff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mural at Washington High in San Francisco. As the book relates, Victor’s father Zygmund had helped produce the mural.<\/p>\n

The muralist had met Igor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father “at the California School of Fine Arts, become friends, and worked together on a few projects. At Washington Victor had been commissioned to paint large frescos on each side of the grand stairway leading to foyer, and father had helped with mixing the plaster undercoats\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153While the majority of the panels portrayed the struggling working class, one wall depicted Washington pointing the way forward to his troops, a slain Indian warrior at his feet. While I was at the school, this mural was a rendezvous spot: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMeet you under the dead Indian.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In response to 75 years of such comments, school board members are now talking about getting rid of the mural, possibly by painting it over or moving it somewhere.<\/p>\n

Better to teach the history.<\/strong> As\u00c2\u00a0The San Francisco Chronicle<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0editorialized on Wednesday: San Francisco school leaders have \u00e2\u20ac\u0153taken up an unwinnable argument in deciding what to do about murals at George Washington High School \u00e2\u20ac\u201d depicting the first president\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life and times \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that some find hurtful and racist.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The paintings should stay for several important reasons. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hardly a one-sided glorification of the past. Instead they underline the harsh treatment of Indians and slaves. To miss this shot at the Founding Fathers era is to miss the subversive message by muralist Victor Arnautoff, a noted Depression-era leftist\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Contemporary views and sensitivities shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be ignored. An explanation of the artist, his times, and the suggestive power of the mural should be provided for viewers. The sight of a dead Indian or hunched-over slaves cannot be ignored without comment or thought.”<\/p>\n

I would add that Arnautoff’s work also deserves to stay because he was a major artist in San Francisco history. Arnautoff was, for example, also responsible for several significant murals in Coit Tower, which were themselves once controversial, as Igor notes. One mural that upset some people during the Red Scares of the McCarthy era included a newsstand selling the Communist Daily Worker <\/em>but not mainstream newspapers.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTime in My Coffee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is available at Point Reyes Books,\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>Gallery Route One, & Book Passages in Corte Madera<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caveat lectorem:\u00c2\u00a0When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1201,1210,1209],"class_list":["post-33134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-igor-sazevich","tag-time-in-my-coffee","tag-washington-high-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33134"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33154,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33134\/revisions\/33154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}