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Mear One

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Mear One
Mear One interpretation of The Madonna of the Rosary by Bartolomé Murillo in Dulwich Picture Gallery, produced for Dulwich Outdoor Gallery, Dulwich, South London, England, 2013[1]
Born
Kalen Ockerman

1971 (age 52–53)
Santa Cruz, California, United States
NationalityAmerican
Known forPainter, muralist, graffiti
Websitemearone.com

Mear One (born 1971 as Kalen Ockerman) is an American artist based in Los Angeles,[2] known for his often-political street graffiti art. Mear One is associated with CBS (Can't Be Stopped – City Bomb Squad) and WCA (West Coast Artist) crews. As a graphic designer, Mear One has designed apparel for Conart, Kaotic, as well as his own Reform brand. Mear One has designed album covers for musicians such as Non Phixion, Freestyle Fellowship, Alien Nation, Limp Bizkit, Busdriver and Daddy Kev.

His 2012 mural, Freedom for Humanity, a temporary street installation in London, was criticized as antisemitic for its depictions of stereotypical Jewish bankers with large noses and other Gilded Age business leaders playing Monopoly on the backs of workers. Former British Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn's apparent support on social media for preserving the work led six years later to accusations of indifference to anti-semitism against Corbyn.[3]

Early life and education

Ockerman was born in 1971 in Santa Cruz, California.

Career

In 2004, he joined artists Shepard Fairey and Robbie Conal to create a series of "anti-war, anti-Bush" posters for a street art campaign called "Be the Revolution" for the art collective Post Gen.[4]

In 2015, he was paid to appear as a judge on Oxygen Channel's "Street Art Throw Down" hosted by poster artist Justin Bua.[5]

An L.A. street artist and graffiti writer for over 20 years, his partners have included Skate One, Anger, Yem, and Cisco CBS.

In April 2014, Mear spoke with fellow graffiti-muralists Cache, EyeOne, and Alice Mizrachi at Brown University as part of the panel Bottom-Up Place Making: Graffiti-murals and Latino/a Urbanism, hosted by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and moderated by University of Arizona urban theorist, graffiti writer, and professor, Dr Stefano Bloch.[6][7]

Freedom for Humanity mural

Main article: Freedom for Humanity

One of Mear One's works, a temporary mural entitled Freedom for Humanity painted on a wall in Hanbury Street, London in September 2012, attracted controversy in the media when David Glasser from the Jewish Museum of Art likened it to antisemitic propaganda in Nazi Germany.[8][9]

Freedom for Humanity

In March 2018, the British politician Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party since 2015, was asked why, at the time of the mural's removal in 2012, he had responded to a Facebook post from Mear One, incorporating an image of the mural, stating that the mural was to be buffed and calling on freedom of expression, by asking why it was to be removed and referencing Nelson Rockefeller's destruction of Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads fresco in 1934.[9] Critics said that Corbyn's comments ignored antisemitic tropes in the mural;[10] in response, Corbyn stated, "I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on, the contents of which are deeply disturbing and anti-Semitic."[11]

Nick Wright, in an article for Morning Star, writes that while, of the six figures depicted - Lord Rothschild, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Aleister Crowley, Andrew Carnegie and Paul Warburg - only two (Rothschild and Warburg) were Jewish, the piece "clearly exaggerates the distinctive features of all six men" and that "exaggerated depictions of Jews are created, disseminated and understood in a historically defined context that includes a powerful, even dominant, discourse that draws upon the long traditions of anti-semitism embedded in the dominant ideology and expressed, over the centuries, in the dominant visual culture". Further he states "the subterranean narratives around notions of the Illuminati, Freemasonry and bourgeois conspiracies cannot, in much popular imagination, be disentangled from deeply suspect discourses in which alien, semitic and covert elites are the controlling forces in our lives", and concludes "This is bad art and worse politics".[12] In a post published on the website of conspiracy theorist David Icke,[13] who has himself been accused of antisemitism and Holocaust denial,[14] Mear One rejected anti-Semitic interpretations of the mural, stating: "to conflate my anti-capitalist message with anti-semitic rhetoric, as the UK politicians and their [mainstream media] puppets have so adeptly accomplished, is very ill-intended and manipulative... It was also their interpretation, and never mine, to point out 'hook noses,' 'crooked noses' and other vile Nazi, Third Reich anti-Semitic propaganda, even concocting cuckoo ideas like how the naked figures under the monopoly board depicted 'starving holocaust victims' when they actually represent the multi-races of humanity! As a thinking feeling human being to hear such stuff makes me sick to my stomach."[15]

References

  1. ^ "The Outdoor Street Gallery of Dulwich". Inspiringcity.com. 8 May 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2015.
  2. ^ "Kelly 'Risk' Graval & Mear One Paint The Maiden Of The Mayfair Mural In Los Angeles". Broadway World. 17 October 2019. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
  3. ^ Castle, Stephen (2018-03-29). "Anti-Semitism Accusations Taint Labour Party, Once Home to U.K.'s Jews". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-02-15.
  4. ^ "Postgen.com".
  5. ^ "Meet Guest Judge MEAR ONE". 23 January 2015.
  6. ^ https://geography.arizona.edu/people/stefano-bloch
  7. ^ "Brown.edu". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-09-27.
  8. ^ "Kalen Ockerman mural to be removed from Brick Lane". BBC News. 5 October 2012. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
  9. ^ a b Dysch, Marcus (6 November 2015). "Did Jeremy Corbyn back artist whose mural was condemned as antisemitic?". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
  10. ^ Stewart, Heather (23 March 2018). "Corbyn criticised after backing artist behind antisemitic mural". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
  11. ^ "Corbyn 'regret' over anti-Semitic mural row". BBC News. 23 March 2018. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
  12. ^ "Mear One's mural – bad art and bad politics". Morning Star. April 4, 2018.
  13. ^ Brown, David (March 28, 2018). "Artist Mear One admits he was warned over antisemitic mural". Retrieved June 7, 2020. Kalen Ockerman, known as Mear One, has declined requests for interview but yesterday wrote an article for a website run by David Icke, the former BBC sports presenter who is a renowned conspiracy theorist.
  14. ^ "Lizard conspiracist David Icke not wanted in Berlin". Deutsche Welle. 23 February 2017. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  15. ^ "Exclusive to Davidicke.com: Street artist Mear One responds to 'anti-Semitic' painting hysteria", David Icke, 27 March 2018, retrieved 19 April 2019
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