LACMA

vis-à-vis Mexico. Quirarte even offers a subtle observation along these lines about Ortiz: "In spite of [his] specific references to the Aztecs, Ortiz tends to think of the Pre-Columbian cultures in very general terms." 46 Thus, Quirarte qualifies Ortiz's search as one for "emotional roots," a search that unfolded in galleries, museums, and universities across the United States and Europe. 47 Indeed, Ortiz's career is one of being sighted/sited/cited as a participant in the art world centers of New York and London in the 1960s. In New York, his films were screened alongside Andy Warhol's in the early meetings of what became the New American Cinema group, and he took part in Ray Johnson's meetings around correspondence or mail art. 48 Ortiz was also a member of the Arts Workers Coalition. In London, his performance at the "Destruction in Art" symposium not only drew considerable media attention, it also inspired Primal Therapy. 49 But by the end of the 1960s, Ortiz would be erased from the history of modern art, falling into the widening gap between the historical avant-garde and movement-based ethnic art. 50 Indeed, with the exception of Quirarte's 1973 book and a 1988 retrospective catalogue from El Museo del Barrio, Ortiz is an artist missing from art history, and yet was at the "historical beginning of things" as a part of the art practices now considered to be foundational for a post-1968 avant-garde in the United States. As Michel Foucault writes, "What is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity. History also teaches how to laugh at the solemnities of the origin." 51 In writing the first and still the only history of Chicano art, Quirarte situates the search for identity within the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of defining Chicano. If we insist on a "generalized entity" or representative type, he argues, "we end up echoing all those who categorize us, group us into the stereotypes we all know so well." 52 Instead, Quirarte concludes, "The Chicano community is extremely complex." 53 It is so complex that Mexican American Artists has as a central figure someone who is now considered, in Yasmin Ramirez's words, "the most well-recognized Puerto Rican artist in the 1960s." 54 Such inclusion is not a mistake, per se, but rather one sign of the complexity that has taken place, and been placed, under marked categories of identity, community, and difference. Indeed, Ortiz's family tree is even more complicated. His father was from Portugal and his mother from Puerto Rico, his maternal grandfather came from Vera Cruz in Mexico, a region with a significant African presence. Even so, Ortiz's "Mexican" great-grandparents were themselves outsiders to the region: Yaqui (mother) and Irish (father). 55 Thus I end by return- ing to that "usage problem" with which I started. Remember that there was no entry in the dictionary for either Mexican American or Puerto Rican; and there is as yet no book on Puerto Rican artists. What we have is the word Chicano—a sign of dissension, disparity, and laughter; a phantom sighting—and "care should be taken in using the term." 40 Raphael Montañez Ortiz, De-Struction Ritual: Henny Penny Piano Sacrifice Concert, 1967 performance

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