Nancy McNally, Coit Tower Murals, San Francisco 7.24.10

I went for a walk today in San Francisco participating in the Coit Tower Mural Walk, a part of the 17th annual Laborfest held in July.
With Gray Brechin, Historical Geographer and Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley www.graybrechin.com/

" Seventy-five years ago this month artists who were working with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) were working on the Coit Tower murals. These political artists were very much influenced by the general strike, and this is reflected in these historic murals.

A media hysteria was also whipped up against the art and the artists in an effort to censor them. Fortunately this failed and the murals remain a testament to the people of San Francisco and the labor movement."
Laborfest Magazine www.laborfest.net

I have always enjoyed reading Dr. Brechin's essays in the SF Chronicle. I was delighted to find out we grew up in the same town, Los Altos. 35 miles south of downtown San Francisco. We both cut apricots in half for drying when Los Altos was known as the Fruit Bowl of the World instead of Silicon Valley as it is today. This is a mural in Coit Tower showing apricot cutting back in the 1930's. My first day of cutting apricots in half and laying them cut half down on trays for drying, was in 1959, I was 10 years old. We earned 50 cents a box. Within a few years all the orchards were cut down and replaced with tracts of suburban homes
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The first WPA funded art project was actually an initiative of the CWA, which commissioned the murals that now adorn the interior of Coit Tower. The Tower had just been completed using funds bequeathed by Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who asked that her gift be used to beautify the city. At the time of the WPA commission, the undecorated monument was widely held to have been a waste of public funds. The WPA project was designed to justify the existence of the building by representing inspiring visions of California's history and industry.

The project was the result of a collaboration of twenty-six Bay Area artists. The commission was to present an optimistic vision of San Francisco and its environs as industrially and agriculturally productive. The WPA envisioned the mural cycle as a boost to the public's morale.

While most of the Coit Tower murals did just that, several of the panels showed a harsher reality. The Depression had radicalized many American artists, who felt a responsibility to present a less varnished view of the national economic situation. Artist John Langley Howard depicted scenes that criticized the exploitation of the poor, showing a destitute family desperately panning for gold, while a rich family watches, amused. Other scenes showed angry workers reading socialist papers, a wealthy man being robbed at gunpoint, radical newspapers and Marxist book titles, and even a hammer and sickle as part of a series of symbols designed to represent the political and religious views of San Franciscans. The murals caused a great deal of controversy and threats of censorship, but in the end, only the hammer and sickle was removed.

Taken on: July 24, 2010

Sets appears in: • Coit Tower North Beach San Francisco • Coit Tower Murals San Francisco 7.24.10

Groups appears in: • CCCOE Group • SF Etsy Street Team

Camera: Canon PowerShot SX120 IS, f/2.8, 1/30 sec, 6mm, ISO 250 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon PowerShot SX120 IS
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.033 sec (1/30)
Focal Length:	6mm
ISO:	250
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0
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