The Denver Airport Murals

I do lots of research for my own curiosity, enjoyment and also to learn more about the different kinds of people that exist in our world…especially in this information driven age. You can go online and look up a bevy of information, all at your fingertips. You can find health information, connect with people from your distant past, explore cultures and religions, read blogs about anything that interest you, find ‘love’ and marriage prospects, make new friends, and the list will just keep going and going of what is possible at your fingertips. It seems endless what you can find online, doesn’t it?

Well, in my research of some medical curiosities, I found this random link to these rather terrifying paintings that are displayed at the Denver International Airport. I was jarred at first, looking at the depictions of the death of children, Nazi imagery, flowers, dead animals, happy children, and what seemed to be this collection of life and death, hope and despair, victory and defeat. What is one supposed to think of such things when viewing such a huge piece of artwork in a place like the Denver airport? At first glance, I thought to myself “what the hell is going on here?” And then I decided to read the “interpretation” according to the conspiracy theorist who’s site I stumbled on. It was a conspiracy of hate, the devil, mass extinction and servitude the author of the blog would proclaim. I began to look more on other sites after putting “Denver airport murals” into the google image search and found that all of them had theories about prison camps located under the Denver airport, places for aliens, mason and Illuminati conspiracies, reptilian people (that one was truly funny!) and I was left with this gnawing feeling in my gut that something just didn’t seem right about all this conspiracy talk. I searched for the artist’s name and found out that this man was a celebrated artist. His name is Leo Tanguma and once I got past all the minutia about how he was paid by some “shadow government”, I decided to go his website. Mr. Tanguma has the most beautiful artwork, and what he brings out through his art is no less than the truth driven home with feeling! So often artists are misunderstood, and I guess he is no exception to that rule.

There is a saying in the bible “From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” and this is true of those who make comments on an artists work. The saying is really true in all situations though isn’t it? If your heart is true, you’ll speak the truth, if your heart is filled with lies and deceit and fear that’s what will come out of you, if you lack compassion in your heart, it will be known by how you speak and act toward others. This is an essential truth concerning the abundance of the heart.

I’d like to take another look at some of these paintings because Leo Tanguma has poured out his heart on canvas for the world to see. Are these really a dark conspiracy to kill man kind? Or is this a record of things that have already taken place? Some want to say the images are gruesome and macabre, and to that I would say yes! it is gruesome and macabre in that war and death is nothing pretty to look at. I would have to say it took courage and conviction for Mr. Tanguma to tell the truth about war and how it devastates humanity. We have no problem saying “We will never forget” when it comes to  9/11 and show images of the trade towers before and after. Why? Because we claim we will never forget. Well what about war? When others take the lives of the innocent? Should we just brush that aside? Or shall we never forget that as well? Mr. Tanguma’s portrayal of death and carnage is a way of saying “we will never forget” what has happened. Women, children and the elderly are often the most devastated by war and violence, and I feel that he captured that beautifully.

But I guess that others can view the death, carnage and mourning in his work as a clue as to what will happen to the rest of us in the future. In that, I must give them a little credit, because as the saying goes “those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” But to me that is where the interpretation ends. We will all subjectively see what we want to see. Some will see only the carnage and death, hidden images of the devil and aliens, and others, like myself, will see an artist who decided to spit in the face hatred and bigotry and show it for what it truly is. In his portrayal of death, Mr. Tanguma showed the utmost respect and beauty of each of his subjects, as can be seen in the first photo of the black woman. Check it out again, and look at the fact that he didn’t take away her humanity, her beauty, her suffering. Even more relevant is the fact that she is clothed in her cultural identity. Each of his subjects alive or dead have a cultural identity…something that seems to get brushed aside in our modern times. His portrayal of the masked nazi holding different weapons is also culturally relevant through the ages. He combines all the attributes of war and destruction in the garb of a killer. Whether it is the German Nazi, the Arabian saber, the flowing robes of a Catholic monk, the modern machine gun, simple aggression at the tip of a knife, handguns, gassing, they are all accounted for in the aggressor. There is one thing I found extremely clever about his work in painting the aggressor with all his “equipment”, Mr. Tanguma included a hair brush on the shoulder of the aggressor. LOL How clever of him to include this item, because to me the hair brush stands for the vanity of war.

With compassion and heartbreaking meticulous care, he showed women mourning the loss of their children, people displaced and herded off like cattle, and the sadness of what happens during war. When viewing these images, I don’t think only of the past, I think of all the women and children that are being harmed right now in these needless wars in Afghanistan and around the world.  This is what the vanity of war does to humanity. It strips us down, and for what? For resources? For power? All war is vanity. Yet conspiracy theorists act like there is no war right now, so it MUST be what is to come. Are we so impotent in thought and deed that we do not realize that the wars going on at present are our responsibility? So yes, if you want to make a theory that these paintings are about some nefarious shadow government, well you better include yourself in that little factoid you’ve contrived, because you are just as guilty for the war, death, bloodshed and genocide as those who order it. If you voted for the war or were too apathetic to realize what the wars are really about, then that painting is about YOU. Don’t go blaming others for something that you had your hand in. If you want to really make a difference, then END THE WAR. Isn’t this a democracy? Leo Tanguma implicitly shows human suffering that has happened and many don’t really see that? Incredible.

But Mr. Tanguma doesn’t stop at war, he continues on with another topic…environmental devastation. There are four paintings he’s done at the Denver airport.

Everyone will see what they want to in these paintings. I’m no different obviously. I have my own interpretation of a few very controversial images in the paintings, but I’ll keep those to myself, because as I have viewed his other work, I have come to understand why he uses certain imagery. If you check out some of his other work on his website, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

In closing, before I show the rest of his work, I want to say that I hope that his work and the beauty of his heart will not be cheapened by conspiracy theories. With love and respect he captured what has happened to humanity at the tip of a weapon. His hope for mankind is poured out into his art as he shows children of different waring countries unite and wrap up the weapons of war to end the bloodshed. The hope of humanity rests in the hearts of our little ones, and they must learn the ways of peace, not the vanity of war. If not, they and we are doomed to repeat the past.

Here are more images from the Denver airport:

The above painting has a description from Mr. Tanguma’s website:

Smaller mural – The Present State of the Environment

Humanity, represented by multi-racial children, is shocked and saddened at finding our natural world in a trampled and abused state. Surrounding the youthful group are endangered or extinct wildlife species. The bewildered children view the Snow Leopard, said to be the most beautiful of the large cats, laid out lifeless before them displaying its exquisite fur and colors. To the left, a young girl gazes at a Great Auk in a display case, a vanished species made extinct in 1844. On the right front, a young boy touches a display case containing the last of the Passenger Pigeons, a species existing in immense numbers throughout the Eastern U.S., and finally extinguished in 1914. Shown also are a harpooned Gray Whale, a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle enmeshed in a fishing net, and a wall mounted buffalo head. Fluttering over the central scene, is an agitated Quetzal bird, with parts of a display case ominously surrounding it, as if foretelling its extinction.

Behind these central images, a fire rages, consuming a rainforest, while in the foreground we see endangered plant life, such as the Holy Ghost Orchid, from Panama, the Flower of the Gods, South Africa and others. In the immediate foreground are three concrete coffins, each containing a young girl clutching cultural articles. These three girls symbolize our own humanity as victims of our self destruction, notably through war, slavery, genocide, exploitation and violence of all kind.

This second mural also has a description from his website:

Larger mural – A Hopeful Future in which Humanity Rehabilitates the Environment

On this mural, I depict humanity, represented by children of the world arrayed in national or folkloric costumes. They move from both ends towards the center, and are shown smiling optimistically as they strive to rehabilitate our natural environment. On the background to this jubilant procession, are depicted various temperate zones of our planet beginning, on the extreme left with the ocean, temperate forests, frigid, tropical rainforest, and desert.
These “zones” are pictorially described with relevant geographical features, as well as wildlife indigenous to those regions. For example, the Quetzal bird signifies tropical rain or cloud forests, while the Snow Leopard is representative of frigid mountainous environments. Moreover, these different zones are shown as robust and healthy, as are the various wildlife species depicted. This portrayal is confluent with the ideal of a rehabilitated natural environment resplendent in all its beauty.

The elated children, in the colorful and lively costumes of thirty-two nations, move happily to where a special and unique flowering plant is about to be placed in the soil. This flower, its radiating leaves reflecting all the colors of the rainbow, reveal within its folds the configuration of a small white dove (reminiscent of the Holy Ghost Orchid). With this image, I sought to symbolize a new appreciation of our environment as a spiritual as well as a physical entity, a precious and delicate domain entrusted to our care.