"Horrible! Vile!"

Last week the Los Angeles school board was in a noteworthy dither of excitement over a mural which could be seen by anyone who cared to peek under a cheesecloth curtain in the entrance hall of the Frank Wiggins Trade School. The painting is the work of Leo Katz, a Viennese artist originally brought to the U. S. by Banker Frank Arthur Vanderlip to paint the Vanderlip family. Artist Katz started the mural as a PWA project, finished it on his own time, working nights, Saturdays, Sundays. Like Rivera and Orozco, he drew his inspiration from Mexico but he avoided political subjects. His panels depict, first, the rise of the Toltec culture, based on the tools of peace; next, the Aztec culture, based on the tools of war. The culminating panel, Muralist Katz decided, should represent modern Youth walking between its twin heritages of creation and destruction.

One morning three months ago Principal Benjamin W. Johnson of the Frank

Wiggins Trade School stepped into the entrance hall, bugged his eyes. Overnight the two upper corners of the panel had been painted in. On the right, flames were licking the smooth, bare bosom of a pensive goddess. On the left, a bisexual ogre with bulbous breasts was squeezing gold coins from the eye sockets of a skull. Horrified, Principal Johnson rang for the janitor, hung 80 yards of cheesecloth over the mural before his pupils arrived. Artist Katz kept on working. Under the cheesecloth a blind, muscular youth in rowing trunks took shape. The youth's left arm stretched toward the pensive goddess, who turned out to be the Mother of Compassion. His right arm faded into a scene of cruelty and destruction: machine gunners, cannon, the ogre Greed. Most gruesome bit of all was the Demon of Hate, also bisexual, slashing a man's throat.

Month ago Mrs. Margaret Clark, member of the school board, joined the crowd which was peeking under the cheesecloth. "Horrible! Vile!" gasped Mrs. Clark. One by one her fellow members trotted into the school, peeked, generally condemned the painting for its ugliness, its nudity or both. Said Chairman Mrs. George Rounsaville: "The work is magnificent . . . but too ghastly for a school building." Last week she announced that her board would ask the artist to tone down his panel.

Promptly Artist Katz retorted: "I would sooner risk my reputation as an honest artist than change that mural. The young generation demands facts and asks the artist not to flatter but to tell of life as it is. In that mural I expressed an ideal honestly and with all the powers of my background and training, and without any frivolity or monkey business. . . .''

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