When José Montoya was told by a judge that he had to enlist
in the Marines, he went.
When Montoya was told by the Marines that he couldn’t join
because he had a cross tattooed on his hand, he changed the cross
to an anchor and joined the Navy.
When he was told by his superiors that his stay in Korea was
over, he enrolled at UC Berkeley and became an artist.
For Montoya, the situations of prejudice, hate, violence and
patriotism he faced during the Korean War profoundly affected him
and subsequently impacted his artwork, as he told an audience
Friday in a dimly lit theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art.
At a panel titled, “From Ike to Iraq: Conversations with
Latino Artists on Six Decades of Art and Politics,” Montoya
was one of nine artists who related his experiences of war and
injustice while simultaneously discussing art’s role in
society and politics.
Many of the artists in attendance talked about the impact
violence had on their way of thinking and added that for them and
their communities, war was the norm and a given.
“I remember the Eisenhower times. The happy times. The
“˜Chevy’ times. Yet there was always an incredible fear
of having to dig a hole when the bomb came,” Montoya
said.
The constant waging of war ““ including the psychological
wars of racism and prejudice ““ evoked fear, hatred and
confusion, and these emotions all poured into the artists’
work, they said.
“I thought if you really wanted to destroy something, why
do it to someone else’s stuff? Why not do it to your own
stuff?” said Raphael Montañez Ortiz, a performance
artist who also enlisted in the Korean War.
Ortiz told the audience of about 100 people of how he began his
career collecting furniture and publicly burning it because for
him, “art is therapy and we’re all reconciling
something.”
Ortiz went on to say that soon after, he began attending
anti-war rallies and proceeded to showcase his art within that
arena.
At one point in New York, Ortiz and others gagged and tied a
colleague to one of the horse and buggies commonly found in Central
Park, drove into Rockefeller Center at lunch time, and had the
colleague murmur over a speakerphone. The point was to reveal the
way they felt their First Amendment right to free speech was being
stifled.
“We felt, as artists, that to be responsible politically,
we needed to be in the public sphere,” Ortiz said.
Such forms of art shaped the Chicano art movement, which many of
the artists described as a poignant political movement extending
beyond murals painted on the sides of buildings.
At the dawn of the Chicano art movement, many artists dreamed of
getting their work into the galleries in New York and Paris.
But then, the political and social climate of the mid-1960s
created a mandate for the artists to utilize their talents to
politicize their communities instead.
Some of the first works created sprung up in the farm-worker
communities of central California. The art was meant to support the
United Farm Workers’ labor struggles of César
Chávez.
“I hated murals, but we had to tell people in our barrios
(neighborhoods) our true history! The beginning of Chicano art was
political in that sense. … We weren’t thinking about New
York or Paris anymore,” Ortiz said.
One of the main questions that arose from Friday’s panel
was whether that sense of enthusiasm was still alive today.
“Are we still committed to our community? Is that our role
anymore?” Ortiz asked.
No clear-cut answer was given, but the artists agreed one
important role of art was to instigate and motivate.
Chon Noriega, director of the UCLA Chicano Research Studies
Center and moderator at the event, also spoke of art as a form of
communication, referring to a series of posters about capital
punishment.
“Art is a form of communication that puts you on an
ethical relationship with people,” Noriega said about
MalaquÃas Montoya’s poster depicting the head of a man
being electrocuted.
For Noriega, the image was both painful and beautiful. In
addition to emotions elicited by war and political events, the
artists also spoke of the cultural disconnect they experienced when
their Latino heritage merged with American culture.
“When I was taught my forefathers came to Plymouth Rock on
the Mayflower, I believed it. … I still believe it, because when
you believe it, you own it and when you own it, you can change
it,” said Yolanda López, an artist who now lives in San
Francisco.
Whether it be the outcomes of cultures integrating or the
experiences of anti-war rallies, the panel agreed that much of
politically motivated art makes a demand of the viewer.
“It demands you take it seriously. You try to see the work
on its own terms and the political and cultural backdrop of the
work. … It is visceral, something that’s grabbing
you,” Noriega said.