HUM FINAL

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Chicana Expression—Later 20th Century

Public Art and the Public Interest1 [Since the 1960s, a number of artists have engaged in

debates] over the nature of public space and the art that is to be placed within this space. In the

past in the United States, public art works often functioned as representations of civic virtues

meant to instill valuable moral lessons. They were also intended to mark the common values of a

diverse community and nation: heroic military efforts in defense of one’s country or one’s

freedoms, respect for the laws of the land. The 1960s changed all that. As people began to march

for civil rights and against the involvement of the United States in the war in Vietnam, many

began to look at public art and ask: “Whose values are being represented? Whose traditions and

beliefs? To whom are these works supposed to speak?” Certainly artists in the 1930s had created

images of working-class Americans in government buildings throughout the country, but those

murals omitted much—the racism directed at African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and

Asian Americans, the struggles to unionize, the labor of women outside the home. Calls were

issued for a new kind of public art, one that was truly, in the words of the art historian Arlene

Raven, “in the public interest.”

Walls of Pride: Chicano/a Murals These calls were met most effectively by a new generation

of muralists, who began covering walls throughout the country with images of local history or of

the less celebratory side of national history. These artists argued that a public art could only be

truly public if those who shared space with it were consulted about its ultimate form and use. In

California in particular, a new and dynamic movement evolved that took inspiration from both the

murals of Mexico and the struggles of farm workers in the United States, led by Cesar Chavez

and Luisa Moreno, to unionize under the United Farm Workers of America (UFW).

The growing political activism of individuals of Mexican descent around this unionization drive, which

ultimately grew into a full-blown civil rights movement, led to the adoption by many of the name Chicano,

derived from Mexicano. While it had circulated as an informal term for several decades within

communities whose members described themselves as Mexican Americans, it was now used publicly

as a form of positive self-identification, indicative of a new political consciousness and a commitment

to social change. One of the first Chicano murals was produced in 1968 by Antonio Bernal on the side of

the UFW Center in Del Ray, California. The piece celebrates modern revolutionary leaders, including

Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata (key figures in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20), Cesar Chavez, ,

Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. A companion piece depicted Pre-Columbian leaders.

Chicana Muralist Judith Baca and The Great Wall of Los Angeles

[A] cross-fertilization of traditions . . . . infuses the art of Latino and Hispanic culture in the United

States.2 From the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Hispanization of Indian culture and the

Indianization of Hispanic culture in Latin and South America created a unique cultural pluralism. By

the last half of the twentieth century, Latino culture became increasingly Americanized, and an influx

of Hispanic immigrants helped Latinize American culture.

1 excerpted from: Pohl, Frances K. A Social History of American Art. (Thames & Hudson), 2002. 491-492. 2 the section below is excerpted from: Sayre, Henry M. The Humanities: Culture, Continuity, and Change. Volume 6, 2nd ed. (Pearson, 2012). 1334.

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While some Chicano and Chicana artists joined forces with the UFW in creating murals and posters,

others turned to local neighborhoods or barrios to create images they hoped would empower their

communities, creating civic pride and activism through both celebration and critique. Judith Baca (b.

1946) was born and raised in Los Angeles in a community whose roots ran deep into the Mexican past,

yet throughout high school and university she was not exposed to the works of Mexican muralists or of

other politically committed artists or artist of color, or the history of Mexico in general. This convinced

her that it was crucial for ethnic cultures to be represented within the country’s educational system. After

completing her undergraduate degree, Baca returned to her high school, where she organized her first

mural project in an attempt to bring together students from different neighborhoods. The following

summer, while working for the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department, she organized a team

of twenty youths from four different neighborhoods. In the process of teaching them how to make art,

she also taught them how to uncover the histories of the ethnic communities of Los Angeles and how to

make connections between the present and the past. In 1974 she submitted a successful proposal to the

City Council for a citywide mural program. During its ten-year existence, 250 paintings were created that

involved the participation of more than 1,000 crew members, many of whom were young people with an

interest in art as a career. The artists worked with members of the communities where their murals were

to be located, establishing a dialogue about local histories and the images to be included. Baca became

director of a second citywide mural program in 1988.

These murals were joined by others created by groups such as the San Francisco-based Chicana artist

collective Las Mujeres Muralistas, and individuals under their own initiative…brought into the public

domain an astonishing variety of images to challenge the stereotypes and the absences in art galleries,

educational institutions, and the mass

media. They commemorated Chicano

community life, religious traditions,

agricultural labor, and history. These

themes are all brought together, and

combined with images of the

contributions of other minority

communities in the Los Angeles area, in

The Great Wall of Los Angeles (right),

which was commissioned from Baca in

1976 by the Army Corps of Engineers

for the Tujunga Wash drainage canal in

the San Fernando Valley, one of the

many “concrete arteries” (Baca’s phrase) constructed to control the rivers and run-off in the Los Angeles

basin.

The 2,500-foot long work was painted over five summers between 1976 and 1983, and involved several

professional artists and hundreds of young assistants. Baca wanted The Great Wall to be an alternative

history of California, one that acknowledged the presence of ethnic peoples, racism, class conflict, sexism

and homophobia, and that gave a public voice to those who had been silenced. Its images range from

depictions of the indigenous inhabitants of California and the arrival of the Spanish to the Depression and

labor organizing of the 1930s, the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, the white flight to

the suburbs in the 1950s, with the accompanying displacement of peoples of color by the construction of

freeways, and the civil rights and gay liberation movements.

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In organizing the production of the mural, Baca enlisted the help of scientists, historians, politicians, and

members of local community groups. Her young assistants were black, white, Chicano/a, Jewish, and

Asian American and brought with them their experiences of interracial struggle. Through their work,

they began to understand the roots of racial conflict and to break down some of the barriers that existed

between them. To facilitate this project, Baca, the filmmaker Donna Deitch, and the artist Christina

Schlesinger founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California. Over

the years since 1976 SPARC has served as a nonprofit multicultural arts center devoted to the production,

exhibition, distribution, and preservation of public art works.

Reading continues on the next page > > > >

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More on The Great Wall of Los Angeles—Overview of Selected Panels from the Mural3

Pre-Historic California The initial segment begins in 20,000 BC when the animals whose bones were

found in the La Brea Tar Pits still wandered among the plants and trees native to the area. In their

research, the Mural Makers discovered that many of the trees we think of as typical of California, like the

Eucalyptus and Pepper, were brought by settlers. By 10,000 BC, as Indians migrated to the Americas,

perhaps on a land bridge, the Chumash Indian peoples settled in this region.

They had a special relationship to and respect for the animals, especially porpoises. These are shown both

in their natural environment . . . . .[T]his section provides an overview of Chumash practical and spiritual

life as it might have been in 1000 BC. . . . Much of this section was painted by an American Indian boy

who shares this world view. The peaceful early history of the region ends with a White hand rising from

the sea, symbol of the destruction of Native American life by White settlers.

Spanish Arrival The arrival of the Spanish explorer Portillo, who brought the first expedition from

Mexico to L.A. in 1769, begins the

third segment. The figures in the

clouds of smoke that rise from the

Indian campfires represent the

legendary Black Amazon Queen,

Califia, whom Portillo expected to

find and for whom California is

named.

mural description continues on the next page > > >

3 The following text which tells the story of the Great Wall is excerpted from the Great Wall Walking Tour Guide www.sparcmurals.org/sparcone/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=53

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Further on, riding a mule, Father Junipero Serra arrives (see image below). Founder of missions

throughout California, he is depicted with the San Fernando mission behind him. Within a year after the

arrival of the Spaniard, a large percentage of the Native American population of 150,000 inhabitants died

of diseases to which they had no immunity that the White men brought. For this reason, the San Fernando

Mission became known to the Indians as the "House of Death." It is commonly believed that the

founders of Los Angeles were

Spanish. In fact, of the 22 adult

members of the expedition that

founded the city in 1781, only one was

Spanish. The rest were Mulatto4

Black, Mestizo5 [of mixed Spanish

and Indian parentage] or Indian, as

they are in this representation.

Mexico governed California until

1843, the sword and the Bible

marching hand in hand. The fourth segment (below) is dominated by the figure of a Spanish land baron,

illustrating the "hacendados" who dominated early California.

Over his left shoulder, the mural

depicts the land baron’s serape [a

shawl or blanket worn as a cloak in

Latin America] as formed by the land

and labor of the Indians which he has

taken and used to build the hacienda [a

large estate or planation with a

dwelling house] toward which he looks

and where an elegant wedding is taking

place. The panel begins with soldiers

who raise the Spanish flag and ends with the battle between the Mexican army and the U.S. cavalry for

the control of California.

. . . Meanwhile, (as depicted in the panel below), in the state capital at Monterey, ex-Southerners passed

laws--WHITES ONLY--which did not allow people of Mexican, Black or Chinese descent to make

claims. Biddy Mason, an ex-slave from Georgia who fought extradition under the fugitive slave laws and

who became wealthy, was known for her charity and was a founder of the African Methodist Church in

Los Angeles. Joaquin Murieta, a legendary Mexican Robin Hood, fights for the oppressed: The landless

who "squat" on the state; the "hanging tree" victims of prejudice; and the Indians who are slaughtered

with the coming of the "Iron Horse" [the railroad].

4 Mulatto: an older term for people of mixed white and black parentage 5 Mestizo: a term for people of mixed Spanish and indigenous parentage

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The "Iron Horse" also brings a wave of Chinese immigration. The Chinese segment (below) shows the

workers on the transcontinental railroad, which was built largely by Chinese labor. The faces which

appear in the smoke of the locomotive honor those who died in the course of this mammoth undertaking.

A surge of racism that accompanied the Chinese immigration led to the so-called "Chinese Massacre "

when vigilantes hung 11 Chinese in a downtown Los Angeles street.

The signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded "Upper" California to the U.S.,

opened the West to a boom of settlement and development including the beginnings of the citrus industry.

World War I Emphasis in this section (below) is on women's role in the war experience. The

"doughboys" leave, kissing their wives and girlfriends goodbye. In the recruiting poster, woman appears

in her mythic form as the symbol of Liberty. In reality, she works in the war industry replacing men in

nontraditional jobs like welding, as well as contributing to the war effort through "women's jobs" like

nursing.

Illusion of Prosperity (1920s) (below) The temperance movement's axe looses a river of whiskey from

the barrels of booze that the gangsters, symbolized by an Al Capone figure, used to become rich and

powerful, while flappers dance in an "illusion of Prosperity." During this heyday of jazz, racial

discrimination against Blacks continued. Black musicians and their audiences were not allowed in White

hotels; only the now fabled Dunbar allowed them to stay in Los Angeles. Above the musicians, between

the hotel and a bank beginning to topple in the crash of 1929, a Black worker drinks from a fountain

marked, "Colored Only."

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Crash and Depression (1930s) In spite of the efficiency of the assembly lines, the cornucopias of

prosperity and the fantasies of romance produced by Hollywood's movie industry, the depression is

inevitable. It cannot be hidden by the Hollywood fantasies, which only serve as a facade that tries to cover

up the reality of the breadlines behind. While the unemployed sell apples and warm their hands on a trash

can fire, the marching feet of the unemployed lead directly into the strikes against low wages.

The strikers symbolize the beginnings of the militant union movement of the Thirties and show the brutal

repression. Victimized by invalid treaties, Native Americans are forced to sell two thirds of their land to

developers at 45 cents an acre. Three hundred fifty thousand Mexican-Americans are rounded up and

shipped across the border in mass deportations.

Dustbowl Refugees At the same time as the Mexicans

are deported, the "Okies," refugees from the dust bowl

whose fields were destroyed by drought, provide a new

source of cheap farm labor. The "Okies," in spite of their

misery, came voluntarily. The next migration, that of the

Japanese forcibly taken to internment camps during

World War I, was involuntary. The problem of how to

connect these two migrations puzzled the Mural Makers.

Baca remembers asking her assistants, "What did the

Okies and the Nisei have in common?" The answer,

when it came, was obvious. Laundry. Lines of hanging

wash form a visual connection between these two

sections.

The 1940's: The 1940's section . . . begins where the Thirties section ends: With the role of the Japanese

Americans during this period.

World War II The 442nd Japanese-American infantry division comes out of the stripes of the

American flag-yet, in the shadow of these stripes, Japanese-Americans move backward toward the

internment camps depicted in the previous section, forced to discard their possessions as they go. The

mural continues to explore in turn the contradictory situation of each of the other ethnic minorities in

California. A Jewish-American family, in the shadow of Hitler's hand, listens to the news from Europe.

Hitler's other hand is a fist. From it goose steppers lead toward an anti-Fascist rally in Los Angeles and

toward World War II. Below, on the home front, is the building of the California Aqueduct which

transports water from north to south to aid developers, but creates a desert in the Owens Valley region.

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Zoot Suit Riots The contradictions in the Chicano experience are expressed by contrasting the experience

of Chicano servicemen with that of discrimination at home. David Gonzalez, a local Chicano

Congressional Medal of Honor winner, is shown standing with his mother, in a collage of photos from a

family album. In the next panel, taxis bring servicemen into Los Angeles for the Zoot Suit Riots in which

Mexican-American boys wearing Zoot Suits were stripped and beaten by marines with the consent of the

police. Trains carry "braceros," Mexican farm workers, contracted to work temporarily in the California

farm fields. The struggle to organize the farm workers and demands for more humane working conditions

are represented by the portrait of labor organizer Luiso Moreno, who is wrapped in the flag of the

Congress of Hispanic Groups.

Jewish Refugees Parallel to the train bringing migrant workers is the St. Louis, the ship filled with

Jewish European immigrants

which was refused entry to the

U.S. because the Jewish

immigration quota was already

met. The spirit of these starved and

suffering Jewish victims of the

Holocaust emerges from the ship

and reaches for American soil.

Behind are depicted the death

camps where the Germans murdered more than six million Jews.

Beyond the death camps is the mushroom cloud of the Atomic Bomb, another symbol of death, and

beyond that the founding of Israel and the greening of the desert. The end of the War brings in a spurt of

prosperity tract houses and a baby boom! In the kitchen of a typical tract house in the San Fernando

Valley (the rest of the development can be seen through the window) a baby screams. On the television

Ronald Reagan stars in a 1940's era war movie. Outside, peering through the plate glass windows at the

"American Dream," the Soldiers of Color discover that little has changed for them on their return.

The 1950's--Farewell to Rosie the Riveter During World War II, millions of American women left their

traditional roles as housewives and entered the war industries as manual laborers and managers. But in the

post-war years, "Rosie the Riveter" returned to the kitchen as the men returned home and reclaimed their

power and position in labor.

Women's access to work

positions traditionally

dominated by men was

postponed. The television set

propagates mass social images

of the housewife and depicts a

working woman being sucked

into the T.V. image. Behind

the televised images of

American womanhood, an all-American family of 2.5 kids (.5 equaling "Howdy Doody") moves into a

new suburb of endless box houses in endless rows, representing White flight from the Central City.

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Meanwhile, minorities and poor immigrants move from rural communities into the city. Rows of orange

trees have been uprooted as suburbs sprawl throughout the L.A. basin and valleys.

Chavez Ravine and the Division of the Chicano Community Freeways encircle and dislocate various

areas in L.A., effectively dividing minority communities. In this panel, a Chicano family is separated by

the serpentine thoroughfares as the pillared highway breaks through the roofs of houses. Resembling a

UFO, massive Dodger Stadium descends from the twilight sky into Chavez Ravine. A bulldozer and

policemen forcibly

uproot the Chicano

community so that

Dodger Stadium can be

built on land designated

at one time for public

housing. Many

individuals resisted this

forced eviction from

their neighborhood, but

to no avail.

The Birth of Rock and Roll Pop 50's culture is captured in this scene at a drive-in theater. A huge Elvis

Presley wails his rock songs from the silver screen, but behind him a smaller image of Chuck Berry

acknowledges the original force of rock's creativity and inspiration in the Black community. Various

hotrods and lowriders, face the screen, as a starspeckled sky forms the background. Behind the movie

screen and Elvis, Black musicians again testify

to the spirit and contribution of the Black

community to popular culture. Jazz saxophonist

Charlie Parker and Blues vocalist-caller Big

Mama Thorton (who wrote "Ain't Nothin' But A

Hound Dog" which Elvis popularized without

crediting her) perform. Behind these Black

musicians, a Charles White portrait of a Black

woman holding up South L.A. portrays the

sustaining community activism of Black women

in volunteer and church organizations.

This scene emerges with another

depicting the interior of a local bus. Paul

Robeson, Rosa Parks, Gwendolyn

Brooks, Ralph Bunche and Martin

Luther King, Jr., are rising from their

bus seats and moving forward for new

destinations (Civil Rights).

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Origins of the Gay Rights Movement The 1950's witnessed the emergence of homosexual community

organizing, represented in this panel by the first gay/ lesbian publications and social change organizations.

As police enter the closet to repress the homosexual community through violence and entrapment, women

forming the first lesbian rights organization, the "Daughters of Bilitis," meet in a kitchen and mimeograph

copies of their newsletter, "The Ladder," copies of which float out of the closet above the heads of the

police. In a gay bar, solitary men sit in front of mirrors, cautiously glancing at one another, fearing

entrapment by vice officers. Each wears a mask at the back of his head symbolizing the false front to

society gays had to assume to avoid persecution. In the mirror, the men see themselves as they wish they

could be—warm, affectionate, caring. The masks also represent the Mattachine Society, founded in 1950

by, among others, Harry Hay, depicted here issuing his call to organize. Inspired by the masked

Mattachine male dancers of medieval France, the Mattachine Society was the first to advocate social

equality for homosexuals.

Jewish Achievements in Arts and Science Just as Jewish writers like Allen Ginsberg took risks in

developing a new creative movement, Jews in Los Angeles started out in high risk businesses which, by

the 1950's, had become among the most important in California. New York garment workers become

recyclers of rags in Los of Angeles and, eventually, the backbone of the garment industry. Also high risk

in the 20's was the fledgling film industry built by Jewish studio owners into highly successful

enterprises. Finally a

huge image of Albert

Einstein holding a

diagram of an atom

reveals his concern

that atomic power be

used for peaceful

purposes but not war.

Indian Assimilation In this scene, the forced

assimilation of Indians is depicted by a

government official stripping an Indian boy of

his traditional dress and cutting his hair. Indian

youth were sent several states away from their

homes to boarding schools where they were

taught to give up their traditional culture for

Anglo ways. Concurrent with this program was

the urban relocation off of reservations of

many other Indian adults and children.

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Asians Gain Citizenship and Property Despite harsh immigration quotas, Asian Americans made

progress in the Fifties by attaining naturalization and land ownership rights. A Korean civilian is sworn in

as the first to be granted American citizenship. Behind

the scene, a Japanese farmer stands proud in his newly

purchased field, depicting the gains of Japanese

Americans also to become citizens and to own land.

Olympic Champions 1948-1964 Breaking Barriers In this final panel, a woman runner carries the

Olympic torch, its flame and smoke swirling into scenes of athletes who overcome tremendous obstacles

to win Olympic events. Billy Mills, a Dakota Oglala marathon runner, overcame his repression in

boarding schools to become an important symbol for Native American pride. Black runner Wilma Rudolf,

overcoming her childhood infirmities (being unable to walk until her eighth birthday) throws away her leg

braces and wins three gold medals, the first American ever. Sammy Lee, a Korean American diver, and

Vicky Manalo Droves, a Filipina diver, win gold medals as well. The symbolic final runner carries the

torch of the 1950’s into the civil rights movements of the 1960’s.