Accompanying his twin fresco panels of “Surveyor and Ironworker,” Wight painted three small frescoes depicting the competing economic systems of the day: capitalism, the New Deal and communism. Two images in the murals ignited the controversy. Cherny notes in “Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art,” “By late May, local and federal government officials, a few union leaders, and the press were echoing that refrain.” This red scare played a crucial role in the uproar that was about to engulf the murals. Shipping companies blamed the strike on communist agitators. With the Port of San Francisco closed, tensions mounted. On May 9, 1934, negotiations broke down and longshoremen along the West Coast went out on strike, joined by Teamsters and other workers. Throughout the spring, San Francisco’s longshoremen had been locked in a conflict with the Waterfront Employers Union. In his “Library” mural, for example, Zakheim depicted fellow muralist Ralph Stackpole reading a newspaper with the headlines “Destruction of Rivera Fresco” and “Local Artists Protest.” But the events that sparked the biggest controversy over the murals took place after most had completed their pieces. Several of the Coit Tower artists incorporated the incident into their work. When Rivera refused, Nelson Rockefeller had the mural destroyed. Nelson Rockefeller asked him to remove it. Rockefeller drinking a martini with a harlot. Rivera had been commissioned to create a fresco in Rockefeller Center in New York and had painted a large portrait of Lenin in it, along with a depiction of John D. 11 Gordon Peters / The ChronicleĪ premonition of that uproar took place just a few weeks after the Coit Tower muralists started working.
Scupltor Bernard Zakheim, one of the artists who painted some of the Coit Tower murals Photo ran May 16, 1968, P. They would be at the center of the controversy that was about to erupt. And at least four of them - Bernard Zakheim, Clifford Wight, Victor Arnautoff and John Langley Howard - shared his left-wing politics. In December 1933, the head of the de Young Museum, Walter Heil, and other officials chose 25 artists who would be paid $25 to $45 a week to create murals at the soon-to-open Coit Tower depicting “aspects of life in California.” Many of the artists admired Diego Rivera, the Mexican artist who had recently created two frescoes in San Francisco.
Its mission was to provide employment during the Great Depression to thousands of American artists, while beautifying public buildings and spaces. The murals were funded by a federal program called the Public Works of Art Project.