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MCLA NEWSLETTER
Volume 11, Number 3 -- Winter, 2002
IN THIS ISSUE: |
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Loss of Terry Schoonhoven Blow to Mural Community, by Christopher Knight
One of the nation's top muralists loses his lengthy battle with cancer. |
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"Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride" Exhibition Opens, by Robin Dunitz
A selection of mural images by African American artists based on the new book of the same title by Dunitz and James Prigoff is featured at CSU Dominguez Hills. |
| Regular Column: L.A.'s Newest Murals MCLA's regular column adds a look at the best new murals in the L.A. area. |
| Murals Protected by MCLA's Mural Rescue Program |
| Cultural Affairs Department's mural approval policy |
| Terry Schoonhoven, a painter and printmaker who became one of the nation's premier muralists after co-founding the Los Angeles Fine Arts Squad in 1969, died at home in Larchmont Village after a long struggle with cancer on December 21, 2001. He was 56. Schoonhoven painted more than 40 murals during his career, occasionally for private clients but more commonly as corporate commissions and public art projects under civic percent-for-art programs. Perhaps his most famous is one of his earliest. "Isle of California" (1970-72), painted on the back of a four-story West Los Angeles building for ham heir Geordie Hormel, caused a sensation. The apocalyptic image, developed and executed with Schoonhoven's Fine Arts Squad co-founder, Victor Henderson, shows a vertiginous chunk of broken freeway overpass looming precariously on a precipice over a pounding Pacific surf and beneath a placid, Tiepolo-like sky. The post-earthquake scene of unimaginable devastation followed by an almost nerve-racking sense of sunny normality plays off the vernacular joke about California falling into the ocean after "the big one" strikes. The vast scale, sharp photographic realism and dramatic composition of the 45-by-63-foot mural had definite cinematic overtones. Schoonhoven's aesthetic emerged as an unlikely variant of Pop Art. |
 The Venice Fine Arts Squad (Terry Schoon- hoven and Victor Henderson), “The Isle of California”, mural at Butler and Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, 1971.  Terry Schoonhoven, “City Above,” mural at 7th and Figueroa Streets, Metro Rail portal ceiling, acrylic, 1990. Photo © Terry Schoonhoven. |
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The apocalyptic mural found an echo in 1979 in "Downtown Los Angeles Underwater," a monumental painting now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
“It remains one of the few portable works by Schoonhoven," said Stephanie Barron, the museum's vice president and senior curator of modern and contemporary art. "It was painted on linen, and then a scrim was attached to the surface to give an aura of underwater murkiness." Barron included Schoonhoven in a 1981 exhibition of specially commissioned works, for which he painted a temporary mural beneath the Ahmanson Building arcade at LACMA. "Isle of California" and "Downtown Los Angeles Underwater" both incorporate a device that Schoonhoven would often revisit: an almost surrealist elasticity of time, in which boundaries among past, present and future get blurred or even erased. For the 1984 Olympics, he painted a mural above the 6th Street bridge over the Harbor Freeway in downtown Los Angeles that knits the Roman Colosseum and Greek sculpture into a mirror image of the city's skyline. In a 1993 tile mural--an unusual material for the artist--at a subway entrance at Union Station, a Spanish galleon lies shipwrecked in the desert before a squatting American Indian, while a 1930s movie starlet sits forlornly on her suitcase at the train station. As the viewer prepares to board the subway, time travel becomes the quirky subject. One of Schoonhoven's most graceful examples is a 1978-79 mural on the east side of a former apartment building on Windward Avenue in Venice. An exact mirror image of the tatty storefronts and walkways of the beach-side enclave, the "St. Charles Painting" froze a moment for eternity, while the world it faithfully reflected slowly changed. Schoonhoven was raised in Freeport, Ill., and earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Wisconsin. He moved to Los Angeles in 1967 and did two years of graduate work at UCLA, where he also taught lithography. In 1969, he teamed up with Henderson to start the Fine Arts Squad, and they were briefly joined by two of Schoonhoven's former UCLA students, Jim Frazen and Leonard Koren. The collaborative team was dissolved in 1974. Initially, Schoonhoven resisted the mural genre. "Murals always seemed to stand for mildewed WPA causes," he told the Times in 1979, shortly after completing the 52-by-102-foot "St. Charles Painting." "I'm not interested in political or social symbolism, even though I believe some Mexican murals by [Jose Clemente] Orozco and [David Alfaro] Siqueiros are important," Schoonhoven said. "I don't want my work to stand for something other than what it is." The decision to paint public murals was partly driven by a desire to get art out of the confines of the studio, gallery or museum, as well as to separate it from contingencies of the commercial marketplace. Both urges were common in the restive American art world of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Henderson fondly recalled that his former painting partner had a gift for public presentation of their work, which helped reassure potential clients. "We were green when we started out," Henderson said, "but Terry knew how to talk like he was the press secretary for the president of the United States." Schoonhoven also wrestled with volatile and transient materials, since most of his work was executed outdoors. "Isle of California" was painted in enamel on stucco and has faded badly, now existing only as a faint shadow. "Venice in the Snow," a fantasy mural depicting a startling seaside anomaly, was covered up when a building was erected on the adjacent property. "Beverly Hills Siddhartha," an elaborate homage to the once-fashionable German writer Herman Hesse that covered the exterior of the old La Cienega Boulevard nightclub the Climax, and an interior scene at Plaza Pasadena were demolished when the buildings were razed. Schoonhoven's Olympics mural was painted with Keim mineral pigment, which was tested for 75 years' durability. The tile mural at Union Station also is secure. In 1995, he completed "The Muralists," a work on the theme of freedom of expression, for the Metrolink station at Cal State L.A., and in 1999 he executed a panoramic mural for the Harvey Morse Auditorium at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on "Jewish Contributions to Medicine." In addition to local projects, he completed murals in Minneapolis, San Antonio and St. Louis. |
“WALLS OF HERITAGE, WALLS
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| MCLA members and friends are invited to attend the opening reception on February 6th, from 6-8pm, for Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride; African American Murals, an exhibition of 52 photographs of murals and 20 works of original art, including drawings, paintings and sculpture directly related to murals at the University Art Gallery at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Curated by MCLA Vice President, Robin Dunitz, the exhibit is based on the book of the same name co-written by Dunitz and James Prigoff, published by Pomegranate Communications in October, 2000. The exhibition will run from February 6 - March 6, 2002. The exhibition will comprehensively explore 20th century African American murals. Highlights include historic as well as contemporary murals across the United States as well as a section devoted to Southern California area images. Among the featured artists are John Biggers, Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, Charles White, Elliott Pinkney, Richard Wyatt, Noni Olabisi, William Walker and Paul Goodnight. The University Art Gallery is open Monday through Thursday, 9:30 am to 4 pm. Admission is free. The campus is located at 1000 East Victoria St. in Carson, near the junction of the Harbor, Artesia and San Diego freeways. Visitor parking permits may be purchased for $2.00 at the yellow dispensing machines at the front of each campus lot. |
 Mitchell Caton and Calvin Jones, “Another Time’s Voice Remembers My Passion’s Humanity” (detail), acrylic, 22 x 48’, located in Chicago. From the announcement to “Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride” exhibition.  Charles Alston, “The Negro in California History: Exploration and Colonization,” panel 1, mural at the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co., 1999 W. Adams Blvd., o/c, 9’3” x 16’5”, 1949. |
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The exhibit and related public programs (see sidebar, this page) are co-sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission for the City of Carson, the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, the Instructionally Related Activities Committee of the Associated Students, CSU Dominguez Hills, and the Institute for Cultural Diversity and Internationalization. This project is made possible in part by a grant from the California Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on the exhibition and related events please contact MCLA at (818) 487-0416 or by e-mail at mcla@lamurals.org.
EVENTS IN CONJUNCTION WITH “WALLS OF HERITAGE” EXHIBIT Bus Tours: |
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