Like a Dream
Another great set of Valentine’s Day cards from San Francisco artist El Rio.
Posts tagged Art.
L.A. Xicano Mobile Mural Lab
Mobile Mural Lab co-founder Roberto Del Hoyo describes what murals and muralism in Los Angeles means to him as an artist and an educator.
As part of its ongoing L.A. Xicano exhibitions in the Getty’s city-wide “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980” initiative, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center held its first “Undocumented Event” at the Boyle Heights Farmers Market. This free event was co-produced by the Mobile Mural Lab (MML), a mobile art space created by Los Angeles-based artists to foster dialogue and engage community around matters of public art. L.A. Xicano artist Sandra de la Loza was a co-organizer of this event.
This Undocumented Event engaged issues around the Los Angeles mural moratorium, instituted in 2002 but under review by the City Council for possible revision. The MML truck included a question-driven chalkboard piece for public commentary, outdoor video screenings, a mini-exhibit and research center, and dialogue with artists about the history of muralism in Los Angeles and its role in community development.
via UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center
Anticomercial: Morir Mejor
Turn on any radio or television in Mexico and almost every other ad is government propaganda.
This is one of many anti-ads produced in recent weeks in response to the federal government’s ‘Vivir Mejor’ campaign, the Calderón administration’s slogan.
This United States funded and led drug war has cost Mexico more than 50,000 lives.
It’s time the US gets out of Mexico. And don’t forget to take Felipe Calderón with you!
Mexico’s Artists Respond to Drug War With Poetry & Song
Javier Sicilia is a novelist and a poet. In 2009, he was awarded Mexico’s prestigious Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize. This September, he read a poem dedicated to his son, Juan Francisco, at a rally:
There is nothing else to say
The world is not worthy of the word
They drowned it, deep inside of us
As they asphyxiated you
As they ripped your lungs apart
And the pain does not leave me
All we have is a world
For the silence of the just
Only for your silence and my silence, Juanelo.
This was the last poem Sicilia wrote. His son was murdered in the central state of Morelos in March, along with six other people, by members of a drug cartel.
Javier Sicilia renounced poetry and became the leader of a national protest against the drug war. Yet he says poetry has been an integral part of the “Peace with Justice and Dignity” movement.
“Poetry has been present, the poets have been part of it,” Sicilia says. “The problem is that the mass media don’t like to cover it and don’t understand that this movement was born out of poetry, and the reason why it’s important is because it’s filled with a poetic content that has transformed the language. And behind all of this is a profound ethics, as with all poetry.”
Sicilia says the poet has a moral responsibility to tell these stories.
Other artists are also reacting to the violent realities in Mexico today. Singer Lila Downs addresses the violence in a song that deals directly with the consequences, called “La Reina del Inframundo” — Queen of the Underworld. The lyrics read:
“Six feet underground, it’s for a certain kind of weed, for which the bosses up north are making us kill each other off, and now I’m the queen of the underworld, and my crown is a tombstone …”
Video: Lila Downs ♪ La Reina del Inframundo
Read More and Listen at NPR
Lotería Huasteca
Cada grabado representa un aspecto de la diversidad cultural de la región Huasteca.
Each print represents an aspect of the cultural diversity of the Huasteco region.
Artist: Alec Dempster
(via fuckyeahmexico)
New York City Cultura: Diego Rivera at the MoMA
Diego Rivera. Agrarian Leader Zapata. 1931.
In 1931, when New York’s fledgling Museum of Modern Art was planning the second solo exhibition of its short history, Diego Rivera may not have seemed an obvious candidate. The Mexican artist was a flamboyant socialist, famous for painting what Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian poet, called “the world’s first communist murals”. Just 45 years old, he was also young for the honor.
But in many ways, the match between MoMA and the muralist made perfect sense. Here was an artist who could make headlines; exactly what a new museum needed. He was Mexican at a time when American galleries were eager to embrace a culture closer to home, instead of endlessly courting artists from Europe. And in Depression-era New York, Rivera’s socially engaged art had particular resonance.
Now a thoughtfully conceived exhibition at MoMA has brought together for the first time five of the eight portable frescoes Rivera created specifically for the 1931 show, along with enough additional material to build an absorbing picture of the artist and his era.
Leah Dickerman, the show’s curator, hopes the exhibition “tells several different stories.” The first story, undoubtedly, is that of Rivera himself, and how an artist commissioned by Mexico’s post-revolutionary government to paint nationalist murals achieved international fame. The luminous frescoes and bold preparatory drawings on display show the skill of a fine draftsman and colorist. Rivera was acquainted with the frescoes of the Renaissance, and able with the sweep of a line to create intense moments of movement and drama.
But Rivera was also a larger-than-life personality, with a talent for winning over wealthy patrons without sacrificing his socialist credentials. For the 1931 show, he delivered works on the expected Mexican theme (such as an iconographic image of Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary, and an Aztec warrior stabbing a Spanish conquistador), and added frescoes that contained stinging critiques of American capitalism.
Read more at The Economist
Interactive Exhibition: Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art
Read more about Rivera’s time in New York City at the New York Times
Diego Rivera at MoMA from November 13, 2011–May 14, 2012
(Unintentional) Narco Art: Cuerno de Chivo
Aztlan Rifa (1977)
Gilbert “Magú” Luján
Related: A Tribute to Magú
For more information, visit The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time
Justice For Rubén Salazar Now!
Today, August 29, marks 41 years from the date journalist Rubén Salazar was killed by an LA County Sheriff’s Dept. deputy while covering a Chicano rights and anti-Vietnam war protest. The official autopsy report states he was killed by a tear-gas canister that was shot from outside the bar. The LA Times’ Hector Tobar calls it an accident. Others disagree.
41 years is too long. Justice for Rubén Salazar!
Read The Ruben Salazar Files, a special section from the LA Times.
Artist: Ernesto Yerena
via peace-nopales
A Tribute to Magú
Gilbert “Magú” Luján — a painter, muralist and sculptor whose whimsical, slyly humorous art works, frequently evoking a rollicking, mythical view of Mexican American life, graced museum walls, the Hollywood and Vine subway station and other public places — died Sunday, according to a Facebook posting by his family. He was 70.
The Pomona resident had been battling cancer for several years, according to a number of friends and colleagues who confirmed that he died.
A pioneer of the Chicano art movement that took root in the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s, Magú, as he was universally known, was among the first U.S. artists of Mexican descent to establish an international career.
He also was an enthusiastic facilitator of gatherings and exhibitions of Chicano artists and art collectives, most prominently the Chicano collective known as Los Four, and a catalytic figure in bringing their work to the wider art-viewing public, as well as to art scholars and critics.
“One only has to examine the barrio to see that the elements to choose from are as infinite as any culture allows,” Magú once remarked.
In an interview Monday, Chon Noriega, director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, described Magú as a “change agent” who drew inspiration not only from his deep knowledge of art history but from the various communities where he made his home in greater Los Angeles and the Fresno area.
Read more at the LA Times
Video: Pedro Pablo Celedón
New Exposure for Chicano Art
It’s been more than 20 years since CARA: Chicano Art Resistance and Affirmation exposed a new generation to the work of Chicano artists.
More recently, Cheech Marin has helped organize exhibitions on Chicano Art throughout the United States. Check out CHICANO, an online exhibit of Marin’s Chicano Art collection.
Two new exhibits look at the influence of Chicano Art on Los Angeles. Read more on the exhibits and the collaborative projects they’re a part of below.
UCLA to Host Two Exhibitions on the History of Chicano Art in Los Angeles
In the fall of 2011, the Fowler Museum at UCLA will present two exhibitions that explore the diverse contributions of Chicano artists to Los Angeles’ artistic development in the 1970s: “Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo” (Sept. 25–Feb. 26, 2012) and “Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement” (Oct. 16–Feb. 26, 2012).
The exhibitions are part of a collaboration with UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) called “L.A. Xicano” and are also part of the Getty Foundation’s “Pacific Standard Time,” a collaboration among more than 60 cultural institutions that tells the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene.
“These two exhibitions give a palpable sense of the expansive cultural presence of the Chicano community that emerged at the end of the 1960s,” said Chon Noriega, director of the CSRC and one of the curators of the “L.A. Xicano” project. “One is struck by the aesthetic range of the artwork, informed by both a bicultural sensibility and a critical engagement with art history, and unified by the artists’ ongoing commitment to art-based community making.”
Read more at UCLA Newsroom
For more information, visit the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.
Images: Leonard Castellanos’ ‘RIFA’ (1972) / Oscar Castillo’s ‘La Mexicana Market’ (c. 1970s)
Mujer Ángel, Sonora Desert, Mexico (1979) Iturbide, Graciela
“In Mujer Ángel, Desierto de Sonora, Mexico (Angel Woman, Sonora Desert, Mexico) a Seri Indian is seen from behind, wearing traditional clothing running along a mountain ridge, the only hint of modernization is a boom box in her hand.” Read more here.
Visit Graciela Iturbide’s website.
(via tacodepalabras)
