The Peace Tower, (also known as ''The Artists' Tower of Protest'') was a collaborative artwork spearheaded by the artists

Irving Petlin Irving Petlin (December 17, 1934 – September 1, 2018) was an American artist and painter renowned for his mastery of the pastel medium and collaborations with other artists (including Mark di Suvero and Leon Golub) and for his work in the "seri ...

and

Mark di Suvero Marco Polo di Suvero (born September 18, 1933, in Shanghai, China), better known as Mark di Suvero, is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient. Biography Early life and education Marco Polo di Suvero was bor ...

. The Peace Tower was created in the winter of 1966 in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles to protest US involvement in the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

. Forty years later, Mark di Suvero, Irving Petlin, and

Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija ( th, ฤกษ์ฤทธิ์ ตีระวนิช, pronunciation: [] or Tea-rah-vah-nitJerry Saltz (May 7, 2007)Conspicuous Consumption''New York Magazine''.) is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Be ...

collaborated in revisiting the project through a new installation entitled ''Peace Tower (2006)'' for the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

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to protest the

Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror , image ...

Los Angeles, 1966

The idea for the original

Peace Tower The Peace Tower (french: link=no, Tour de la Paix) is a focal bell and clock tower sitting on the central axis of the Centre Block of the Canadian parliament buildings in Ottawa, Ontario. The present incarnation replaced the Victoria Towe ...

was promoted by

along with the Los Angeles Artist's Protest Committee, an organization numbering over 100 supporters. Through meetings held at the Dwan Gallery through the generosity of John Weber, the artists wanted to make a visible statement against the United States involvement in Vietnam. They raised about $10,000, (according to another participant,

Max Kozloff Max Kozloff (born 1933) is an American art historian, art critic of modern art and photographer. He has been art editor at ''The Nation'', and Executive Editor of ''Artforum''. His essay "American Painting During the Cold War" is of particular im ...

) a large sum was secretly given by Robert Rauschenberg. With the funds, they rented an empty lot on Sunset Strip in Hollywood, and erected the tower. There was a moment when the local building inspectors challenged the structural integrity of the tower at which point DiSuvero took a pulley and suspended a car from the Tower giving the structure city clearance. The Tower consisted of a fifty-eight foot tall steel

tetrahedron In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all th ...

, which acted as scaffolding for works of art protesting the War. Over 418 works, each measuring 24 x 24 in. were displayed and subsequently donated to generate a legal fund by artists of the Artists' Protest Committee (APC) (by figures such as

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, Roy Lichtenstein,

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, and Leon Golub). Other artists and participants included: Elise Asher,

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, Paul Brach, James Brooks,

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, Allan D'Arcangelo,

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, Leon Golub,

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, Robert Gwathmey,

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, Roy Lichtenstein,

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, Alice Neel,

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, Robert Wiegand, and

Adja Yunkers Adja Yunkers (1900–1983) was an American abstract painter and printmaker. He was born in Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire in 1900. He studied art in Leningrad, Berlin, Paris, and London. He lived in Paris for 14 years, and then ...

. The fund was used to contest the Rand Corporation’s recommendation to the United States military to employ the use of “Agent Orange”. On February 26, 1966, the day of a large protest at the tower, Petlin received telegrams of support from

Jean Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...

, Simone de Beauvoir and others intellectuals. Despite frequent acts of vandalism at the site, and violent physical attacks on the artists working there, the Peace Tower was dedicated at a ceremony on February 26, 1966 with remarks by Susan Sontag. The Peace Tower remained for three months, functioning as a galvanizing symbol of dissent. Petlin relates that at one point he had to defend himself with a broken lightbulb and that when

heard about this he sent a check for $1000, writing, "Anybody who puts their life on the line defending a work of art of mine, I'm going to send a thousand bucks too." In the end, no painting was damaged.

References

* * * * * * *{{cite journal , last = Petlin , first = Irving , author2=Mark di Suvero , author3=Rirkrit Tiravanija , title = 1000 Words: Peace Tower , journal = Artforum , volume = XLIV , issue = 7 , date = March 2006 , pages =252–257 and front cover

External links

Online Peace TowerPeace Tower page on Whitney Biennial siteKent Fine Art: Irving Petlin Artist Page
Installation art works