Created in 1934, the Coit Tower murals were sponsored by the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first of the New Deal art programs. Twenty-five master artists and their assistants worked there, most of them in buon fresco, Nearly all of them drew upon the palette and style of Diego Rivera. The project boosted the careers of Victor Arnautoff, Lucien Labaudt, Bernard Zakheim, and others, but Communist symbols in a few murals sparked the first of many national controversies over New Deal art. Sixty full-color photographs illustrate Robert Cherny’s history of the murals from their conception and completion through their evolution into a beloved San Francisco landmark. Cherny traces and critiques the treatment of the murals by art critics and historians. He also probes the legacies of Coit Tower and the PWAP before surveying San Francisco’s recent controversies over New Deal murals. An engaging account of an artistic landmark, The Coit Tower Murals tells the full story behind a public art masterpiece.
From the back cover of the book, quoted in part:"The America Karal Ann Marling (the author) refers to is small-town America during the depression era; in particular those communities that were portrayed in the 1000-odd murals that appeared in post offices around the country under the auspices of the Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts. She goes far beyond an investigation of the murals as art, and 'Wall to Wall America' becomes an intelligent, often irreverent, discussion of popular taste and culture during the depression decade. "
As part of the Cities of the Imagination Series, this book presents an in-depth cultural, historical, and literary guide to San Francisco, a beautiful city renowned for its artists, eccentrics, visionaries, and activism.
San Francisco, 1942. Four months after Pearl Harbor. No one knows if the Japanese will invade California and occupy San Francisco. Harlan Winthrop, a high society banker who heads the city's war bonds campaign is stabbed to death. The pro-Axis greeting "RoBerTo" is painted on the wall next to the body in Coit Tower. Is this killing part of a plot to weaken morale by creating even more anxiety among San Franciscans? Police Chief Gerald O'Reilly keeps the murder from the press and the public. He's afraid the dramatic circumstances of the crime could aggravate the deep divisions in the city. Residents are tense and split into factions. Many feel torn between their American patriotism and their Irish, Italian, German, and Japanese ancestral ties. Former Police Commissioner Tony Bosco is pressed into service. Bosco works behind the scenes to find the killer aided by detective Dennis Sullivan and Ruthie Fuller, Chief O'Reilly's special assistant. They work to identify and arrest the killer in a city changing before their eyes. Tens of thousands of war workers, sailors, and soldiers flood into San Francisco; the Army removes the city's Japanese Americans from their homes and businesses; white racism and sexism are challenged by racial justice activists and feminists; the powerful Catholic Church is challenged by the radical Communist Party; the war tests old friendships and political alliances as never before.Bill Issel is an award winning historian and author of many books and articles on US Social History, US Political History, US Labor History, and San Francisco history. This is his first novel.
This book is a collection of essays that examine the integrated relationship that the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo has with the history and culture of California and the San Francisco Bay area.
See San Francisco like never before: Step up to 39 of its best stairway walks! Hundreds of public stairways traverse San Francisco’s boundless hills, revealing scenic vistas and connecting colorful, diverse neighborhoods. Since 1984, Stairway Walks in San Francisco has been helping urban explorers discover the best of the City by the Bay via riser and handrail. Now in its 10th edition, this beloved guidebook by Mary Burk with Adah Bakalinsky includes four new walks, updates of classic favorites, and many new photographs. The amazing walks invite you to explore well-known and clandestine corridors, from Marshall Beach and Noe Valley to Lands End and Telegraph Hill. Whether you want to learn about the city’s history and architecture, elevate your exercise routine, or just let your feet lead the way to new adventures, Stairway Walks in San Francisco has something for everyone. It has been the essential city walking guide for more than 40 years! Get this updated edition, and start walking. Book Features Comprehensive list of the city’s 700-plus stairways 39 walks incorporating San Francisco’s magnificent stairway network Lively route descriptions, at-a-glance Quick-Step summaries, and easy-to-read maps Parking and public-transportation information for each walk
Not only an accessible hands-on guide to writing criticism across the literary arts, the dramatic arts, and the narrative screen arts, but also a book that makes a case for how and why criticism matters today Doing Criticism: Across Literary and Screen Arts is a practical guide to engaging actively and productively with a critical object, whether a film, a novel, or a play. Going beyond the study of lyric poetry and literature to include motion picture and dramatic arts, this unique text provides specific advice on how to best write criticism while offering concrete illustrations of what it looks like on the page. Divided into two parts, the book first presents an up-to-date account of the state of criticism in both Anglo-American and Continental contexts—describing both the longstanding mission and the changing functions of criticism over the centuries and discussing critical issues that bridge the literary and screen arts in the contemporary world. The second part of the book features a variety of case studies of criticism across media, including works by canonical authors such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and W. B. Yeats; films such as Coppola's The Conversation and Hitchcock's Vertigo; screen adaptations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day; and a concluding chapter on several of Spike Lee's film "joints" that brings several of the book's central concepts to bear on work of a single film auteur. Helping students of literature and cinema write well about what they find in their reading and viewing, Doing Criticism: Across Literary and Screen Arts: Discusses how the bridging of the literary arts and screen arts can help criticism flourish in the present day Illustrates how the doing of criticism is in practice a particular kind of writing Considers how to generalize the consequences of criticism beyond personal growth and gratification Addresses the ways the practice of criticism matters to the practice of the critical object Suggests that doing without criticism is not only unwise, but also perhaps impossible Features case studies organized under the rubrics of conversation, adaptation, genre, authorship and seriality Doing Criticism: Across Literary and Screen Arts is an ideal text for students in introductory courses in criticism, literary studies, and film studies, as well as general readers with interest in the subject.
Victor Arnautoff reigned as San Francisco's leading mural painter during the New Deal era. Yet that was only part of an astonishing life journey from Tsarist officer to leftist painter. Robert W. Cherny's masterful biography of Arnautoff braids the artist's work with his increasingly leftist politics and the tenor of his times. Delving into sources on Russian émigrés and San Francisco's arts communities, Cherny traces Arnautoff's life from refugee art student and assistant to Diego Rivera to prominence in the New Deal's art projects and a faculty position at Stanford University. As Arnautoff's politics moved left, he often incorporated working people and people of color into his treatment of the American past and present. In the 1950s, however, his participation in leftist organizations and a highly critical cartoon of Richard Nixon landed him before the House Un-American Activities Committee and led to calls for his dismissal from Stanford. Arnautoff eventually departed America, a refugee of another kind, now fleeing personal loss and the disintegration of the left-labor culture that had nurtured him, before resuming his artistic career in the Soviet Union that he had fought in his youth to destroy.