Art for Politics Sake

Art of Engagement is the third book I have read by Peter Selz, and he has a rare ability to convey ideas without the jargon that can make art criticism impenetrable to the non-expert. Selz’s joy in writing this particular book is evident, as the author notes that he has always been drawn to works that betrayed the perspective that “art is for art’s sake.”

What is it about California that has made it such a hotbed for political art? Susan Landauer, Chief Curator of the San Jose Museum of Art, explores this question in her preface to Selz’s book. She finds the answer in Californian’s reliance on “individual experience, rather than theory or tradition,” as Californians are less limited by rules and formalisms than their East Coast counterparts.

California artists have felt free to “do their own thing,” and to a far more common degree than has been recognized, this has meant using diverse artistic methods to drive home socially conscious messages.

Most of the works discussed by Selz, other than the historical photographs, are intriguing works of art that would deserve critical acclaim even without their social themes. We’re talking about tremendously talented artists who have chosen to use their talents to expose social injustice through creative imagery, thereby evoking an emotional connection to a cause that may not emerge when social critiques are made in newspaper or magazine articles.

For example, Selz includes several paintings where Mickey Mouse appears as a symbol of corporate America (for ex, Llyn Foulkes’ The Corporate Kiss, 2001). Another common theme is for artists (in this case Ben Sakoguchi) to take a famous scene---the young Kim Phuc Thi running after napalm burned her clothing off---and incorporate it into a painting that also includes corporate advertising (Napalm Brand, 1979).

Selz shows how socially engaged artists transposed famous historical events as parodies of official history. Strong examples include both Robert Colescott’s George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook, 1975 and Malaquias Montoya’s The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848, 1998, which includes the text from the agreement vowing “peace and friendship” between the two nations.

One of the strongest sections of the book is Selz’s discussion of California’s many Chicano artists engaged in socially conscious art. Much of this art remains largely unknown to the general public, due to a combination of censorship and the lack of interest among the wealthy patrons of the art world to support such works.

Selz notes how the censorship of socially engaged Chicano art resulted in the city of Los Angeles whitewashing a mural that it had hired the famous artist David Alfaro Siqueiros to paint on Olvera Street in 1932. The mural, Tropical America, showed a Mexican Indian strapped to a wooden cross with an American bald eagle above his head. Siqueiros dedicated the mural to the Mexican working class, and authorities felt it so threatening that, not content to simply cover-up the mural, they also had the artist deported.

I grew up in Los Angeles and school kids there regularly were taken on field trips to Olvera Street, which was maintained to show the Mexican origins of the city. But never was I informed about the Siqueiros mural, and while the destruction of the Diego Rivera mural at Rockefeller Center is now well known, the far more outrageous act of official city censorship of Siqueiros’ work was also erased from most history books (amazingly, the whitewash used by the city is decomposing, and the Getty Conservation Institute is working to restore the mural).

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