LACMA

23 itself within a global context of aesthetic influences and political causes, some- times linking with the Chicano movement, and at other times focusing on specific causes—such as the other September 11, the date in 1973 when CIA-sponsored General Augusto Pinochet overthrew Chile's democratically elected Allende government. 15 In 2000, Montoya started a series of prints and paintings addressing the death penalty, from the 1928 execution of Ruth Snyder, the first woman to die in the electric chair, to more symbolic works with compositional and expressive "beauty" that draw the viewer in to the image, then juxtapose the visual with the "grotesque" particulars of the handwritten political statement. 16 If prints facilitated the circulation of images in order to constitute a public or community, then murals redefined place within the working-class barrios, often under the aegis of governmental "beautification" programs. One such project at Estrada Courts housing project in East Los Angeles resulted in the painting of eighty-two murals between 1972 and 1978. Black and White Mural (1973), by Gronk and Willie Herrón III, depicts the police riot and killing of journalist Ruben Salazar during the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War on August 29, 1970. 17 The mural, painted in black and white (like a newspaper), mimics the mass media through its use of photographic and televisual "screens" and linear narration, but it also incorporates surreal elements, art historical allusions, and self-portraiture. The scene in the lower left depicting Salazar's killing at the hands of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department includes a "reaction shot" by the mime Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) from Marcel Carné's Children of Paradise (1945), a French film shot during the German occupation. To the right of Baptiste is a doubled image of Gronk in character as Pontius Pilate (aka Popcorn), a Baptiste-inspired figure he used in performances starting in 1971 as a way to confront the police "occupation" of East Los Angeles. THE SECOND PHANTOM The second phantom is art by self-identified Chicanos who refuse the category, even if they also engage many of the same critical issues. This work speaks in an international idiom, but it also participates in the local environment. It is the phantom of the first phantom. This particular phantom finds both inspiration and a point of origin in the conceptual art group Asco (1972–87; Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Willie Herrón III, and Patssi Valdez, but also including other artists over the years). In the early 1970s, Asco members engaged in conceptual art that was notable for the way in which it recoded "subversive" acts—street protest, graffiti, leaflets—as performance, a move that allowed the group to reclaim public space, articulate a political critique, and circulate their message within public discourse. Performances between 1971 (before the group formally took the name Asco) and 1974 include Spray Paint LACMA, Walking Mural, Instant Mural, and First Supper (After a Major Riot). With the exception of Spray Paint LACMA, Asco turned from Malaquías Montoya, The Victim, 2003, silkscreen, 30 x 22 in.

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