City Life

Victor Arnautoff; assisted by Edward Hansen and Farwell M. Taylor 

Originally titled Metropolitan Scenes, this is both an immense cityscape of 1934 San Francisco as well as one of the murals that sparked controversy both because of what it included, and what was missing. 

Its focal point, the intersection of Montgomery and Washington Sts., was in fact the location of the old Montgomery Block office building, which by 1934 had become the center of Bohemian San Francisco and provided working space for artists, sculptors and writers. Most of the artists working in Coit Tower would have been based there, or spent considerable time there with their colleagues and in the bars and cheap restaurants nearby. Today, that is the location of the Transamerica Pyramid, visible through the window opposite the mural. 

Arnautoff deals with his architectural "accident" by making the gift shop door into the center of a newsstand. That element also created some of the mural's "inclusion/exclusion" controversy. Just to the right of the newsstand is a wealthy man reading the Wall Street news intently, while his foot treads carelessly on a newspaper photo of the victim of street violence. Next to him, Arnautoff appears in self-portrait, in gray fedora and yellow pea coat. And next to that, in the rack of publications, are the Daily Worker and the New Masses, two of the most widely known Communist publications of the time. On the left is another rack, displaying a selection of San Francisco daily papers of the day from which the San Francisco Chronicle (a consistent critic of the artists and their politics) is conspicuously absent. 

The right side of the mural depicts the old wholesale fruit and vegetable market near the Embarcadero (which ties directly to Maxine Albro's flower farms around the corner) and has a sign that points to the Oakland ferries - the Bay Bridge was not then built. There is also a sign advertising Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights," a film about the trials and tribulations of city life, released in 1931. On the left, we see a street accident near the Stock Exchange (with Stackpole's huge sculptures in front), and Knickerbocker No. 5 coming to the rescue even as news photographers swarm to the carnage. An armed mugging takes place in the foreground below, and to the far left, we see a red flag near the workers in the street. Familiar San Francisco buildings are depicted throughout, including many designed by Arthur Brown Jr.