I just saw some beautiful photographs by Chinese artist Liu Bolin, from a series called Hiding In the City, where he gets painted into his environment. These works were inspired by the destruction of his studio to (I believe) clear ground for the Olympic stadium in 2008. There's a brief interview with him in White Hot Magazine which I quote from here:]]>
WM: Could you describe some of the influences on this new body of work?
LB: There are two main influences. The first is the environment, the experience of living. That’s my main influence. The second influence would be the demolishment of Suojiacun Village, the art village where I lived with my friends. That was my first time to be personally affected in a major way by the government’s decisions. They destroyed my studio and made me homeless! After all that I became very concerned with the state of China. My work is really an expression of my concern.... In China the idea is that one more is not too many, one less is not too little. One person means basically nothing to the greater environment. In Hiding in the City the individual was present, but dissolving into the landscape, beginning to disappear.
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There's a thoughtful (and critical) review of the Justseeds collaborative book Firebrands on Ernesto Aguilar's blog here. 
Jules Perahim was a Romanian artist who died in 2008. Most links to him on the web refer to his surrealist works (in the Dali vein of surrealism) produced while he was in exile, in Paris, in the 1960s and 70s. But Perahim's work before this leaves just enough milestones to trace an interesting path, from a young Romanian Jew involved with the socialist movement and avante garde art circles, to exile in the Soviet Union during the Axis-allied government during WWII and then returning with the Red Army and becoming part of the new communist government. Finally moving to France and being remembered for his work in surrealism. Between these broad strokes, I think, there's a story of an age....]]>
I am interested in the missing pieces of his story because I am fascinated by how some artists in the left became ingratiated with totalitarian regimes. I wonder what choices and compromises they made, and also what lies they told themselves to justify those choices. Many artists of the revolutionary period of the Soviet Union were killed (or effectively silenced) so that there is almost no legacy or growth of their ideas after the consolidation of power by Stalin in the late 1920s. Artists who produced work after Stalin (in the USSR) and after WWII (in Eastern Europe) are not quite as intriguing to me, mostly because much of the work is ho-hum socialist realism. Also, many of them were artists of the status quo. Had they been in a western country they may as well have worked in an advertising firm or as commercial illustrators.
Perahim is interesting to me because he was an artist/activist opposed to the right wing and monarchist governments of the 30s and 40s in Romania. He was allied with communist movement before they came to power. One can't quite project a purity of intention, but I think we can assume a sincerity with him in the beliefs of socialism. 
Perahim, a Jewish communist, fled east to the Soviet Union, which was actively seeking to destabilize the many fascist puppet states next door. He joined the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party in exile and was (I believe) appointed a minister of culture and education. He returned to Romania, with the Soviet Red Army, after the fall of the Antonescu in 1944. With the communist consolidation of power, things get a little fuzzy in the written record. I believe he became an influential party artist, a professor of graphic design, and a strong proponent of socialist realism. By 1956 it looks like he lost some of his influence, and worked mostly as a set-designer and illustrator. This is perhaps due to internal Romanian Communist Party maneuvering and anti-semitic purges. The leadership of the party that swept into power after WWII, which Perahim was associated with, was known as the Moscow Faction- communists in exile during WWII with many Romanian Jews in positions of leadership. Opposing this faction was the Prison Faction, who remained in the country during WWII, and apparently were mostly imprisoned. This group I would assume had few or no Jews (due to Romanian cooperation with Germany during the holocaust, Jews were executed, exported, or imprisoned in separate camps). The Prison Faction, led by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, ousted most of the Moscow Faction by 1952. Gheorghiu-Dej ruled Romania until his death in 1965, where he was replaced by Nicolae Ceauşescu (a cell-mate of Gheorghiu-Dej during WWII).
I am mostly interested in Perahim for selfish reasons, I like his art, even his socialist realist art and I wish to see it free from the taint I associate with Stalinism, Ceaucescu etc... I like his figures, his strong lines and his usage of light and shadow. I love the mournful shape of the bodies, of mother and son, in The Partisan. I love the implied subterfuge and paranoia and the way the two saboteurs balance each other in Go On!. I can piece together his life and try to understand his choices. There was, indeed, a great hope for the future after the liberation from fascist rule. Stalin had loosened his tight grip a little during WWII, slight freedoms were allowed that had been denied, and Stalin had held back a little on the purges and arrests. I think people expected a thawing following the war. Also, at some point I imagine Perahim stopped being an actor in his own life, and started being ruled by other forces... his Jewish birth, his alignment with certain factions, and the basic need to survive year after year, decade after decade. But none of these things actually settles anything for me. Of all the Eastern Bloc countries (the 'people's democracries') Romania was definitely one of the most severe and repressive... I see justification for his collaboration. Is that wrong?
This week, we held a meeting at Espresso a Mano, a locally-owned coffee-shop a few blocks away, where the three of us may, or may not, be addicted to the the cold-brewed coffee. At the moment, we are in the midst of preparing for the sublime prints of the Resourced portfolio to grace the walls of our space. After a brief meeting, we headed to our neighborhood hardware store, where we consensed on Scotland Isle, a mid-tone green in the Asparagus family, in a record amount of time. This color will be the backdrop of our next several shows, so it had to be just right. The paint-mixer on duty was kind enough to let us know about the dangers of improper ventilation, that green promotes tranquility, and that you know you're dehydrated if your pee is too dark. It may also be noted, by the note-maker, the green is also the color of the heart chakra.
EXPOSICIÓN GRAFICA EN LA ZAM
In the decade from 1931 to 1940, B. Traven published a series of six books known as his Jungle Novels: Government (1931), The Carreta (aka The Cart) (1931), March to the Monteria (aka March To Caobaland) (1933), Trozas (1936), The Rebellion of the Hanged (1936), and A General from the Jungle (1940). The Jungle novels are a series of interconnected stories about the struggles of the Indigenous in Chiapas at the end of the 19th Century, and how their rebellion starts the Mexican Revolution. This week let's take a look at the first three novels:]]>
I've found 4 covers for the first novel, Government. Here is an early German edition, and the currently available trade paperback published by Ivan R. Dee (with its requisite Diego Rivera painting on the cover):
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