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Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement
Phantom Art after the Chicano Movement is the first comprehensive consideration of Chicano art in almost two decades and the largest exhibition of cutting-edge Chicano art ever presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Traditionally described as work created by Americans of Mexican descent, Chicano art first emerged during the vibrant Chicano rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This catalog and exhibition explore the experimental tendencies within today's Chicano art, which is oriented less toward painting and polemical assertion and more toward conceptual art, performance, film, photography, and media-based art, as well as "stealthy" artistic interventions in urban spaces. Three essays by Rita Gonzalez, Howard N. Fox, and Chon A. Noriega explore the topic in depth. With more than two hundred color illustrations, twenty-five individual artist portfolios, and a wryly subversive chronology of significant moments in Chicano cultural history, Phantom Art after the Chicano Movement charts new territory and provides a conceptual sampling of Chicano art today.
- GenresArt
240 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2008
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October 29, 2011
Chicano Art: A Rake's Progress
PHANTOM SIGHTINGS: Art After the Chicano Movement" both in the exhibition and in the catalogue supporting it begins with photos chronicling the art collective Asco (Spanish for nausea). Patssi Valdez, Gronk, Willie Herron III and Harry Gamboa Jr., aspiring artists, writers and filmmakers when they formed Asco in the early '70s, drew from Chicano traditions and contemporary art strategies to address hot-button issues -- from representations of gang activity in the media and the underrepresentation of Chicano artists in museums to the war in Vietnam. Chicano art as a movement arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an artistic expression of the Chicano rights movement. The curatorial direction of this exhibition was to 'explore the experimental tendencies within today's Chicano art, which is oriented less toward painting and polemical assertion and more toward conceptual art, performance, film, photography, and media-based art, as well as "stealthy" artistic interventions in urban spaces.' While today in most of the country the work of the Chicano artists is held in high esteem, until the rather graphic statements sprayed on the walls of the Los Angeles County Museum's walls there was little notice of what was considered to be quaint, tribal art. All that changed and now this exhibition explores the progress of Chicano art since that explosive moment in time.
'The king is dead. Long live the king!' read the banners! 'In this instance, Chicano art is the new monarch ascending the throne to extend the line of succession. What's passing into history is an aesthetic that matured in the 1970s, produced by Mexican American artists with an eye toward articulation of Mexican American experience. A full generation later, what has arrived on the scene is something different -- an aesthetic produced by Mexican American artists with an eye toward articulating whatever they darn well please. The exhibition's curators, Howard N. Fox and Rita Gonzalez of LACMA, and Chon A. Noriega, director of the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA, brought together 120 works by 31 artists, with the goal of following "an idea rather than representing a constituency," thus focusing on a slice of art produced by young artists with mostly Mexican roots, working from "conceptual and interventionist tendencies."
The art represent here is aerosol (read graffiti) photography, film, video, painting, drawing and sculpture, and for an exhibition as extensive as this, the accompanying catalogue manages to corral it all in and make it make sense. Three essays by Rita Gonzalez, Howard N. Fox, and Chon A. Noriega explore the topic in depth. With more than two hundred color illustrations, twenty-five individual artist portfolios, and a wryly subversive chronology of significant moments in Chicano cultural history, Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement charts new territory and provides a conceptual sampling of Chicano art today. This book is a taste of history and a dramatically impressive documentation of an important movement in art history.
Grady Harp
PHANTOM SIGHTINGS: Art After the Chicano Movement" both in the exhibition and in the catalogue supporting it begins with photos chronicling the art collective Asco (Spanish for nausea). Patssi Valdez, Gronk, Willie Herron III and Harry Gamboa Jr., aspiring artists, writers and filmmakers when they formed Asco in the early '70s, drew from Chicano traditions and contemporary art strategies to address hot-button issues -- from representations of gang activity in the media and the underrepresentation of Chicano artists in museums to the war in Vietnam. Chicano art as a movement arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an artistic expression of the Chicano rights movement. The curatorial direction of this exhibition was to 'explore the experimental tendencies within today's Chicano art, which is oriented less toward painting and polemical assertion and more toward conceptual art, performance, film, photography, and media-based art, as well as "stealthy" artistic interventions in urban spaces.' While today in most of the country the work of the Chicano artists is held in high esteem, until the rather graphic statements sprayed on the walls of the Los Angeles County Museum's walls there was little notice of what was considered to be quaint, tribal art. All that changed and now this exhibition explores the progress of Chicano art since that explosive moment in time.
'The king is dead. Long live the king!' read the banners! 'In this instance, Chicano art is the new monarch ascending the throne to extend the line of succession. What's passing into history is an aesthetic that matured in the 1970s, produced by Mexican American artists with an eye toward articulation of Mexican American experience. A full generation later, what has arrived on the scene is something different -- an aesthetic produced by Mexican American artists with an eye toward articulating whatever they darn well please. The exhibition's curators, Howard N. Fox and Rita Gonzalez of LACMA, and Chon A. Noriega, director of the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA, brought together 120 works by 31 artists, with the goal of following "an idea rather than representing a constituency," thus focusing on a slice of art produced by young artists with mostly Mexican roots, working from "conceptual and interventionist tendencies."
The art represent here is aerosol (read graffiti) photography, film, video, painting, drawing and sculpture, and for an exhibition as extensive as this, the accompanying catalogue manages to corral it all in and make it make sense. Three essays by Rita Gonzalez, Howard N. Fox, and Chon A. Noriega explore the topic in depth. With more than two hundred color illustrations, twenty-five individual artist portfolios, and a wryly subversive chronology of significant moments in Chicano cultural history, Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement charts new territory and provides a conceptual sampling of Chicano art today. This book is a taste of history and a dramatically impressive documentation of an important movement in art history.
Grady Harp
Displaying 1 of 1 review