LACMA

Assyrian or Egyptian, but that also conjure up the Buddhas of Bamiyan that were destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001. The phrase white elephant refers to a supposedly valuable possession whose high maintenance exceeds its usefulness, thereby making it into a liability. As a gift, then, a white elephant is intended to bring financial ruin to one's enemies. But a literal white elephant can also be some- thing sacred or a sign of good luck in certain Southwest Asian traditions—no doubt derived from its role as one of the protectors of Buddha. Thus, the image offers a metaphor for America's gift to the world, as either a protector or an abstract ideal that will end up costing much more than its usefulness. The white elephant might also represent art itself—an expensive, yet noninstrumental object—being led by a human (perhaps an art critic or curator) in front of what Marshall McLuhan called "the extensions of man." In either case, I draw attention to this image because it speaks to the conundrum of looking for the big picture— whether for the American in American art, the American in a global context, or some political or social value (democracy, freedom). But what is most interesting about this etching is that it is just two inches tall. It puts scale into perspective, so to speak. I think that such perspective is useful in looking for the big picture, in taking a global turn, and in theorizing equality by attacking someone else's ostensible problem with identity, someone who hasn't even been in the room (or museum), so to speak. Medina is one of a number of Chicano artists whose work falls outside the cura- torial and critical framework established for "Chicano art" without ever being taken up by the national or global categories. She is a phantom in the big picture. Likewise, the artists in Phantom Sightings explore the big picture of modernity, playing with scale, but also making demands on the viewer to know more than the Western art historical prerequisites for the "white cube." Their work does not illustrate the social and political, nor does it map the coordinates for cultural difference; instead, it insists on both vernacular frames of reference and "erased and invisible" social histories—even though these may not be intrinsic to the work itself. In addition to the artists discussed thus far, there are those artists who "abstract" the domestic and personal in order to render it in geometric form or within a decorative aesthetic (Danny Jauregui, Adrian Esparza, Carolyn Castaño, Scoli Acosta), who conceptually "remake" the manufactured objects associated with NAFTA and border crossing (Margarita Cabrera, Julio Cesar Morales, Jason Villegas, Gary Garay), and who "construct" an apocalyptic vision from fragments of the built environment and its social types (Nicola López, Victor Estrada). In all instances, these artists' work offers an allegory of historiography—namely, that writing history requires abstract- ing and remaking from original sources, a process exemplified by Adrian Esparza's unraveling of the traditional (serapes), out of which he then reweaves the modern (geometric designs), revealing the transformation of the one into the other as the final product itself. 39 LAUGHTER In the spirit of unraveling history, I would like to end at the beginning with an artist identified in Jacinto Quirarte's 1973 book Mexican American Artists for the contribution of a "Chicano world view" within the arts: Raphael Montañez Ortiz. 41 In particular, Quirarte quotes Ortiz in his introduc- tion as part of a critique of the "European pictorial language" of the Mexican muralists: "They used Western devices to convey the content. Rather than use Western devices I feel that it is important that we discard them." 42 For Quirarte, Chicano artists engage various, even conflicting strategies with respect to creating alternatives to "alien formal and thematic programs" within the arts. But Quirarte tries to have it both ways, arguing for the importance of attention to formal technique and professional status: "they must be aware of the various levels at which they must operate as artists." Even so, Quirarte concludes, "The search for identity is then our paramount concern." 43 Born in 1934, Ortiz emerged as a central figure in destruc- tivism, an international movement that attempted to redress what it saw as the social detachment of the postwar avant-garde, especially other precursors to performance art (actions, Fluxus, happenings). Ortiz worked in all genres, producing recycled films as well as destructivist works in painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. 44 In the early 1960s, a series called Archaeological Finds—in which he peeled away the outer layers of manmade objects such as mattresses, chairs, sofas, and pianos—entered the permanent collections at New York's Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, but also the private collections of Dominique de Menil and dada cofounder Richard Huelsenbeck—all exemplars of "official" art history. These included works titled with Náhuatl proper names, including Tlazolteotl (1963), a destroyed upholstered chair named for the Aztec earth moth- er goddess, also referred to as "the eater of filth." As Ortiz explained, "It was in a sense searching into my roots." 45 What is fascinating about Mexican American Artists is that Ortiz's art—like that of other abstract and mixed-media artists in the book (Peter Rodriguez, Ernie Palomino, and Manuel Neri, to name a few)—actually runs counter to Quirarte's overarching concern with "the search for identity"

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