Revolutions of the Wheel Part 4 - Robert Arneson and the Davis Group

Political and social commentary were important to Arneson and his students Arneson's work was weighted toward shock value, forcing viewers to examine themselves as well as their attitudes about  art. Over time, Arneson made the self portrait the subject of his work. Some considered this the ultimate in ego gratification but Arneson managed to do it in a self-deprecating manner that allowed his work to be a catalyst for commentary on the human condition.

When San Francisco Mayor Moscone was assassinated, Bob Arneson was commissioned to make a bust of the late Mayor to be installed in the Moscone Convention Center. This piece, not the bust but the pedestal it sat upon, with its graphic depiction of the Mayor's murder, so stirred controversy in the city that it was eventually removed. Arneson received death threats and a public proposal was made that it should be smashed into hundreds of pieces and dropped in the deepest part of the Bay.

Robert Brady says, "He would stick his head in my campus studio and make a remark... sort of like a Zen Master... throwing out something that was impossible to interpret or solve." Robert Arneson was one of a kind, always willing to stir things up in the name of art.