Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present

The cognitive dissonance that arises when one encounters homeless people on the street  is something that occurs so regularly (on a daily basis, for most) that one finds it easier to deal with the situation by allowing the moment to pass: staring at a fixed point in space, shaking your head in a silent "no,"  or preoccupying oneself with a newspaper (or iPod or Blackberry, or what have you), or justifying the fact that one did indeed have spare change in his/her coat pocket by projecting stereotypes of the homeless (that they are drug abusers, alcoholics, lazy, con-artists) on to the individual in question.  Through these acts, we render the growing population of homeless people in San Francisco invisible--because to invest oneself emotionally and financially into each and every homeless person encountered on the street would just be too much to ask....right? (pictured above:  Robert L. Terrell  & Jean McIntosh, Everyone Has a Right...2006).

Given the uneasy social tensions arised by the growing numbers of displaced and homeless  citizens in San Francisco, the California Historical Society's current exhibition, Hobos to Street People: Artists' Response to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present sounds a prescient (the exhibition was actually organized prior to the economic meltdown last fall) cry of outrage and a call for immediate action.  Art Hazelwood's The Beast of Hatred (pictured above) vivdly expresses the sense of indignation and chaos attached to blight of the homeless in  a captialist society : here we see symbols of government institutions, whitecollar workers, and the trappings of bureaucracy coming together to form a monstrous chimera that spouts demeaning rhetoric and threatens the dwarfed city in the background. Anprovocative, affecting, and timely exhibition, Hobos to Street People confronts viewers with the harsh realities of street life and the struggle of disenfranchised individuals  whose margin for error are devastatingly slim.

One of the strengths of this exhibition is its broad scope of work represented by artists of the WPA through the present--providing viewers with a comprehensive look at the call for social reform throughout the decades.  It is clear after viewing this exhibition, that homelessness and the disenfranchisement of marginalized communities  and people who  fall through the cracks (the elderly on a fixed income, exploited immigrants, war veterans) is an issue that has persisted long after the depression era. 

(Image above:  Dorothea Lange, Mother and two children on the road 1939/1975).

The impressive array of long established and contemporary artists featured in this exhibition include Dorothea Lange, Giacomo Patri, Rockwell Kent, Sandow Birk, Christine Hanlon, Rachael Romero, and Kiki Smith, among many others.  Sandow Birk's The Homecoming ( Image via Catharine Clark Gallery Blog) provides an unflinchingly desolate take on Norman Rockwell's narrative painting, The Homecoming.  Where optimism and sentimentality are abound in Rockwell's painting, Birk's provocative painting is rife with jaundice and discouragement--our injured protagonist formidably encounters a dead end. 

The images in this exhibit are understandably powerful, shocking, and at times, controversial: these works were intended to stir emotion and incite action.  A statement from the curator, Art Hazelwood:

“Some of the artists in this exhibition personally experienced homelessness and poverty, and some worked directly with organizations to combat poverty, but all of them felt that art could be used to focus attention on homelessness.  The idea that art can have a function in society by engaging in a struggle for a better world, and that everyone should take an interest in the well-being of less fortunate people are the twin beliefs of the artists in this show.”

Pictured above: Rachael Romero, The Fight for the International Hotel, San Francisco Poster Brigage 1997. 

Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present will be on view through August 15 at the California Historical Society (678 Mission Street).  Free Admission.