Mark Vallen

Mark Vallen (born 1953) is an American activist with Chicano and other issues, curator, figurative realist painter, and blogger, 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, California. 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 Muralists.

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 participated in Penelope Spheeris' punk rock documentary The Decline of Western Civilization (1981).

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.

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.

Nuclear War?! ... There goes my career!, poster by Mark Vallen, 1980

Vallen was inspired to create Nuclear War?! There Goes My Career! after the election of Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980. Still some years before Robbie Conal gained fame for his scathing caricatures of Reagan, Vallen's piece appealed not only to the aesthetics but the pragmatics of activism in Los Angeles. Vallen modeled his figure in part on Wonder Woman, and with its obvious nod to Lichtenstein's pop art, his piece was both aesthetically familiar and initially non-threatening to the viewer. The deceptively brief text undercut the familiarity of the image with a deeply ironic commentary on the priorities of the average American citizen. It offered a grim view of American complacency in the face of the nuclear threat.

Both 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. His art is in the book, Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California. Vallen designed the cover for Rodriguez's poetry book, My Nature Is Hunger, published in 2005.

He lives in North Hollywood. 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."

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.

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

Notes and references