Country First
Category Archives: political art
Diversity is the one thing we all have in common.
Filling the ground floor windows of the California Hotel, these repeating posters – featuring two of the world’s great civil rights leaders, the iconic “power salute” of the 1968 Summer Olympics, and the promotion of diversity as strength – create a powerful mural running the block of San Pablo Avenue.
Meaty Wheaties
I know, I know… I’ve featured this spot before (Time’ll Tell)… and it’s not even in Oakland proper.
But I passed it the other day on my way to watch the World Cup Final and was amazed at how this little corner drive-thru (previously a Wolf Camera) has become a full-blown collaborative public art space…
The tie-dyed bison’s been up for awhile… yet another giant wheat paste by Jesse Hazelip. I really love his stuff… the sheer scale of them… the precision of his drawings… and complexity of issues that he’s tackling. Cool stuff.
A slew of other artists have chipped in and added to the public canvas…
Oil drips from this seagull and small words read “Get Up”…
These below seem to be by the same artist… the small boom box reads “Get Up” as well, and though these are true wheatpastes – large paper cut-outs transferred onto the building with temporary glue – the original pieces seem to be spray paint stenciled… some in multiple colors.
A small stencil’s been added below the wheat paste on the right. Was this the same artist, or someone different, just adding his/her flavor to the mix?
These masked “suits” remind me a little bit of the first mural I ever featured (Suits & Soldiers), also a stenciled work in which businessmen in suits are portrayed in sync with miliary soldiers. Here, suited men are disguised as guerillas with masks…
And below are details from a repeating series of black & white images that remind me of the Shepard Fairey installation I saw in Amsterdam last fall (OBEY in Amsterdam). They both feature extremely limited color palettes (Fairey’s actually includes a third color – red), and detailed graphic patterning reminiscent of wallpaper, juxtaposed with larger organic imagery… faces, hands, etc.
Words by Roads ~ part IV
This is the last one, located in my new hood at the Fruitvale Ave. exit of 580…
They say a picture can tell a thousand words, but sometimes one word can convey something that no picture can.
I think it’s interesting how powerfully these murals communicate complex ideas in such simple visual fashion. They are classic examples of conceptual art, in which the idea takes precedence over the aesthetics.
Their beauty is found in their playfulness with language… adding the (N) in this instance completely changes the meaning of an everyday word, and forces us to think about our roles and responsibilities within this society… our democracy is only as strong as citizenry is well-informed.
The others are similarly clever and thought provoking. This is the nature of much of Seyed Alavi’s artwork, which is “engaged with the poetics of language and space and their power to shape reality.”
When these pieces were first installed in 1992 they were intended to be temporary works. I, for one, am glad they remain all these years later.
Please see previous two posts for more in depth discussion of Alavi, the creation of these pieces, and others.
Oaktown Art | Oakland Art, Public Art, Murals, Graffiti, Culture, Oakland 