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Domestic Scenes: The Art of Ramiro Gomez
Award-winning author Lawrence Weschler’s book on the young Mexican American artist Ramiro Gomez explores questions of social equity and the chasms between cultures and classes in America.
Gomez, born in 1986 in San Bernardino, California, to undocumented Mexican immigrant parents, bridges the divide between the affluent wealthy and their usually invisible domestic help—the nannies, gardeners, housecleaners, and others who make their lifestyles possible—by inserting images of these workers into sly pastiches of iconic David Hockney paintings, subtly doctoring glossy magazine ads, and subversively slotting life-size painted cardboard cutouts into real-life situations.
Domestic Scenes engages with Gomez and his work, offering an inspiring vision of the purposes and possibilities of art.
Gomez, born in 1986 in San Bernardino, California, to undocumented Mexican immigrant parents, bridges the divide between the affluent wealthy and their usually invisible domestic help—the nannies, gardeners, housecleaners, and others who make their lifestyles possible—by inserting images of these workers into sly pastiches of iconic David Hockney paintings, subtly doctoring glossy magazine ads, and subversively slotting life-size painted cardboard cutouts into real-life situations.
Domestic Scenes engages with Gomez and his work, offering an inspiring vision of the purposes and possibilities of art.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published April 19, 2016
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32 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Weschler
82 books123 followersLawrence Weschler, a graduate of Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz (1974), was for over twenty years (1981-2002) a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award (for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992) and was also a recipient of Lannan Literary Award (1998).
His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).
His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998) Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006). Mr. Wilson was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Everything that Rises received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; Liza Lou (a monograph out of Rizzoli); Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and Deborah Butterfield, the catalog for a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery. His latest addition to “Passions and Wonders,” the collection Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, came out from Counterpoint in October 2011.
Weschler has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU, where he is now distinguished writer in residence at the Carter Journalism Institute.
He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001-2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with Bill T. Jones and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s, the Threepeeny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review; curator at large of the DVD quarterly Wholphin; (recently retired) chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer. He recently launched “Pillow of Air,” a monthly “Amble through the worlds of the visual” column in The Believer.
(from www.lawrenceweschler.com)
His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).
His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998) Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006). Mr. Wilson was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Everything that Rises received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; Liza Lou (a monograph out of Rizzoli); Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and Deborah Butterfield, the catalog for a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery. His latest addition to “Passions and Wonders,” the collection Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, came out from Counterpoint in October 2011.
Weschler has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU, where he is now distinguished writer in residence at the Carter Journalism Institute.
He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001-2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with Bill T. Jones and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s, the Threepeeny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review; curator at large of the DVD quarterly Wholphin; (recently retired) chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer. He recently launched “Pillow of Air,” a monthly “Amble through the worlds of the visual” column in The Believer.
(from www.lawrenceweschler.com)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 22, 2016
Ramiro Gomez with his cardboard cutouts/credit: Damon Casarez for The New York Times
Intrigued by Ramiro Gomez' artwork, author and passionate David Hockney fan, Lawrence Weschler spent some time with the young artist, delving deeper into his psyche and what it is that drives him to create. Starting out with this interview in the NY Times, it turned into a full-fledged art book.
Ramiro Gomez appropriates art from masters like David Hockney, Jeff Koons and Diego Velázquez, and adds his own twist by replacing or adding the (mostly) latino household workers of the affluent rich. Born in a household of Mexican immigrant parents and drawing from his own experiences, Gomez knows all too well the differences between the elite and the workforce that serves them. With his works he brings to light the contrasts between these two worlds.
top: Hockney's "American Collectors, Fred and Marcia Weisman", 1968
bottom: Gomez's "American Gardeners", 2014
For other works, cardboard is the medium, out of which he creates human-sized cutouts, and which are then given a space of their own in the real world.
What I particularly liked are his magazine creations. Tearing out regular ads in magazines or newspapers, in these too, he offsets again the lives of the workers against their luxurious working environments.
"Maria's paycheck", 9 x 11 in. Acrylic and ink on magazine, 2014
"Isadora's reflection" 9" x 11". Acrylic on magazine, 2014
Weschler manages to perfectly capture the artist. Gomez comes over as a very humble guy. He is curious and driven. He is not one to demand attention to his artistry. But he doesn't need to. With the talent he has, it will automatically come to him.
Extra:
Ramiro Gomez on Facebook.
Gomez' website.
image credits: Ramiro Gomez (from his Facebook page)
Review copy supplied by publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a rating and/or review.
February 12, 2019
Fascinating art as social commentary, responding to Hockney--
December 20, 2020
Lovely art book with the artist largely exploring the often invisibility of domestic workers from the dominant culture, with a more-than-usually-included (for an artist book) intro, written in a journalistic style.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews