Revolution and Rebellion: Political Activism in 20th-Century Art Transcript

 

Intro: Sound collage taken from the interviews below. 

 

NARRATOR: Welcome to our audio tour about modern art made after 1950. This tour is about revolution and rebellion. We’ll look at how artists have defied convention and embraced political change and their own role in advancing it. There is no neat narrative here, but there are some incredible stories.

The tour starts halfway through the suite of modern art galleries. From the lobby of the third floor of the Broad building, pass through the first several rooms. Find a gallery around the midway point on this floor with a wall of large covered windows and several video monitors. Pause until you get there.  Ready to continue? From the long gallery with the video monitors, just ahead, you’ll see a large painting of a woman with a basket of flowers on her back. We’ll start there. It’s a monumental painting by Diego Rivera. 

[Navigate to Diego Rivera, Flower Day]

NARRATOR: The central figure is bifurcated by a wide strap holding the basket with flowers, forming the shape of a cross. Her hands are folded as if in prayer, and the flawless white calla lilies surround her head. She and the two indigenous women kneeling in front of her have long braids and wear traditional clothes. Rivera borrows the pose and composition from European religious paintings, but this is a secular narrative. It honors the indigenous people of Mexico, whose ancestors built the great ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica. In fact, the style of the figures resembles that of ancient Mesoamerican sculpture. Rivera’s work from the 1920s celebrated working people. In images like this one, he captured and communicated the socialist ideals of the Mexican Revolution. 

Rivera studied and painted in Brussels, Spain, and Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso in 1914. He returned to Mexico in 1921, right after the Mexican Revolution. The country’s Ministry of Education commissioned numerous public art projects; Rivera was one of the most famous artists charged with portraying aspects of Mexican history and culture, and exalting its people. 

This painting has belonged to Los Angeles since 1925, the year it was painted. After winning first prize at an exhibition of paintings from the US and Latin America, the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (which was LACMA’s precursor) purchased the painting. It was the first Rivera painting to enter a US museum collection.      

On either side of the Rivera, you’ll find two small paintings. The one on the right is Rivera’s portrait of artist Frida Kahlo, whom he married--twice.

[Navigate to Diego Rivera, Portrait of Frida Kahlo]

NARRATOR: Kahlo stares back at Rivera, with a pensive and severe expression. Her eyes are enormous, almond-shaped, crowned by her signature brows that nearly meet in the middle, balanced by long, heavy gold earrings. 

Kahlo married the much older Rivera when she was just 22. They had a turbulent marriage, marked by numerous infidelities on both sides, but remained deeply connected to one another over the years. This painting was probably created while Kahlo and Rivera were divorced for a brief period in 1939; they remarried within a year. The couple was united by their shared political views and their passion for promoting Mexico’s culture and its people, especially the working class. 

Now, move to the left, to the small painting on the other side of the large Rivera painting. This is a painting by  Kahlo, titled Weeping Coconuts. 

[Navigate to Frida Kahlo, Weeping Coconuts]

NARRATOR: Even in painting inanimate objects, Frida Kahlo captures suffering so clearly. The coconuts appear to weep with sorrow. A small flag translates, “Painted with great affection.” The painting was made as a gift to a friend. The Spanish title Lágrimas de coco is a pun on the phrase lágrimas de cocodrilo, meaning crocodile tears – an insincere display of grief. Was it a pointed message directed at her friend? The precise intention of the artist remains elusive.

Polio left Kahlo with a lifelong injury to one of her legs. Later, as a teenager, she endured shattering injuries in a tram accident where she was impaled by a handrail. That resulted in multiple surgeries and, later, multiple miscarriages that plagued her for decades. By the time she painted this still life, she was in her late 40s, struggling with ongoing complications from the accident. 

Kahlo is legendary as an icon of resilience, self-determination, Mexican identity, and feminism. Her medical problems ended her life prematurely, at the age of 47. She was politically active to the very end, advocating for socialist revolution, nuclear disarmament, and the rights of workers. Days before her death, she was photographed, in her wheelchair, at a huge protest in Mexico City decrying the CIA’s interference in Guatemala. She was photographed there, her fist in the air, holding a sign she painted herself with a picture of a dove and the words Por La Paz. 

Now, turn to the right. Look for a large painting of jagged shapes against a dark background back toward the doorway. 

[Navigate to Wifredo Lam, Tropic]

NARRATOR: This is a mysterious dream-like scene. Some of the figures have elongated heads, tails, and hooves. They look a bit like horses, an important animal in the Afro-Cuban religion Santería. Other shapes look like birds, or have tiny heads and wide-open eyes (likely a reference to the orishas or saints of Santería).  If you saw our earlier gallery of paintings by Picasso, the similarity in modern aesthetics is unmistakable. In fact, the artist, Wifredo Lam, was a close friend of Picasso. Lam, who was Cuban, studied in Spain, even fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.  Lam’s father was a Chinese immigrant to Cuba.  His grandmother was a Congolese former slave, and his grandfather was of dual African and European descent. Lam stayed in Europe until he was driven out by the Second World War, along with so many other artists. Upon arriving home, Lam set out to develop a unique visual vocabulary, which drew on European modernism yet foregrounded his own cultural roots. He said “I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country but by thoroughly expressing the Negro spirit, the beauty of the art of the blacks.” He said that in his work, he had resolved to, quote, “spew forth hallucinatory images with the power to surprise, to disturb the dreams of the exploiters.” His intention was to introduce Afro Cuban culture to a European dominated art world. Paintings like this one reflect the legacy of European cubism, but also the Afro Cuban religion of Santería and its rituals handed down by enslaved people. Lam’s paintings exemplify the hybrid identity of so many 20th century artists.

Now let’s talk about revolution of another sort. Turn around. Directly across the room, you’ll see a painting of a cow skull against a vivid blue background. This is by Georgia O’Keeffe.  Let’s take a closer look.

[Navigate to Georgia O’Keeffe Pink Skull]

NARRATOR: Rebellion can be personal and revolutions can be quiet. When Georgia O’Keeffe turned her back on the New York art world and found a spiritual home in the southwestern desert, she defied conventions of all sorts. Initially, she headed west because her husband was having an affair, and she couldn’t stand the idea of spending the summer as usual at the family compound. O’Keeffe began painting the stark desert, the bones and rock formations she found on long walks in New Mexico, and she never stopped. Her paintings were not abstract, but they were abstracted from reality, simplified in a flat graphic format and in vivid color. 

O’Keeffe lived largely alone in New Mexico, as she preferred it. During the construction of her home there, she often slept on the roof, to avoid rattlesnakes. Agapita Judy Lopez started working for the artist as a teenager and she once said in an interview about O’Keeffe, “People didn’t know what to make of her. She was so odd. She was a single woman. She was independent. She always dressed in black. And she loved to do all of these strange things, like walk and paint trees.” 

Now, head into the next room. As you do, you’ll see a tall bronze sculpture of biomorphic forms. It’s by Isamu Noguchi. 

[Navigate to Isamu Noguchi, Cronos]

NARRATOR: The positive forms contrast with the negative space created by the curves and enclosures of the sculpture: something versus nothing. The organic shapes defy any ready identification—they are familiar and strange at the same time. 

Noguchi was American by birth, raised in Japan, by a white American single mother. When he was a teenager, they returned to the states, where he attended high school in the Midwest. The Second World War and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought his dual identities into increasing conflict. When Japanese Americans were interned in forced relocation camps, Noguchi volunteered to enter a camp of his own volition. He hoped to help Japanese Americans endure their experience there, and to document the camps. However, he found that he was unable to leave without months of prolonged appeals to the government. The following is taken from an extensive interview with Noguchi:

ISAMU NOGUCHI: When Pearl Harbor came…my immediate reaction was: Oh my God, I’m, Japanese, or I’m Nisei at least; I’d better …see what’s going to happen. 

Suddenly, you become a member of a minority group. The tendency of people with mixed blood, I think, is to be either you pass or you don’t pass. You pass if you find it convenient and if your associations are such that, if you don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to think about it…I would have despised myself for passing. 

…When you enter the art world you are not in a world which is discriminatory, that’s the last thing they think about. Therefore, I say it’s only in the art world that you can be free. 

...I felt at home being an artist. We were all pariahs to start with. And I, being a pariah, was among pariahs and was not longer a pariah. 

For one with a background like myself the question of identity is very uncertain. And I think it’s only in art that it was ever possible for me to find any identity at all. 

NARRATOR: Noguchi supported leftist causes throughout his life. He was a close friend of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and produced sculpture for public spaces in Mexico. He also contributed work to support the NAACP’s efforts to combat violence against African Americans and advocated for workers rights. His cosmopolitan identity as a citizen of the world is part of the story of 20th century art, as artists began to move more freely across borders and align their work with political causes.
On the wall next to the doorway, you’ll see a cluster of smaller paintings. Find the one by André Masson. It is a swirl of color and shape, nothing immediately recognizable, yet suggestive of animal bodies and faces. 

[Navigate to André Masson, The Night]

NARRATOR: Rebellion and the quest for liberation have a psychological as well as a political element. If this painting looks spontaneous and unplanned, it is. Masson rebelled against the idea of beauty or making a painting look realistic. He put it this way:  “The hand must be fast enough so that conscious thought cannot intervene and control the movement.” Masson and the surrealists tried to create art from a place of pure subconscious instinct. In doing so, they hoped to unleash the creative power of the libido, and to reveal aspects of our humanity that we often hide from ourselves. In a way, the surrealist effort represents a rebellion against the self, and internalized inhibitions.

The title of the painting, The Night, suggests a connection to a trauma that Masson suffered. He volunteered to serve in the First World War and was shot in the chest on a battlefield in France. Medics couldn’t reach him, and he lay bleeding for an entire night, watching the battle go on overhead. Knowing that, it’s hard not to see the terror and wonder of that long and tortured night in this painting. 

We’re going to move quickly through this gallery and on to the next, but you may wish to circle back later. 

For now, enter the next large gallery. As you enter, turn to the right. Look for an enormous mural size painting. It looks like fragments of machinery flying apart in a fiery explosion. Find a place to stand where you can take it in.

[Navigate to Matta's Burn, Baby, Burn (L'escalade)]

NARRATOR: War. Segregation. Violence, Discrimination. The artist who went simply by Matta came into a new political awareness during the Vietnam War. The colliding abstract forms in this painting evoke war machines, charred ruins, rockets, and the napalm gas that the American military had just deployed in Southeast Asia. Matta was born in Chile, worked in Europe, and spent about a decade in New York. Like artists we saw earlier, he lived an itinerant life as a citizen of the world and the community of artists. 

The title of this painting, Burn, Baby, Burn, was a slogan during the Watts rebellion of 1965. It started with Los Angeles DJ Magnificent Montague. Here is Magnificent Montague himself:

MAGNIFICENT MONTAGUE: 1:13 Burn, Baby Burn, is a catch phrase. I would be playing the record and talking. If it was hot and I was backing the record up, I used the term to put more emphasis on the record…or on the message. I would have the listeners call in, give their name…Burn, Baby Burn! Play that record again. It was a good term, of pleasure, of upping the rhythm.

NARRATOR: In August of 1965, the Black community of south Los Angeles, pushed to the breaking point by police violence and abuse, exploded in rage and frustration. Matta wasn’t in Los Angeles, but  television reports of the uprising reached him in Paris where he was living.  Magnificent Montague recalls the moment.

MAGNIFICENT MONTAGUE: 2:26 It wasn’t a riot. It was more of a rebellion. I had been in Los Angeles a year. I didn’t realize then, but I later did, it was very segregated….So when this rebellion happened, when the police misused…it was a convenient term to use for them to express themselves. Burn, Baby Burn gave expression to the problems of the community…They would put three fingers up: Burn, Baby, Burn. If you were driving through the area, and you put three fingers up, no one would bother you. It was not used for the riot. It was used for convenient, come on brother, get with this, do your best, protest. It was a protest movement going on against segregation, police brutality, and burn baby burn fit just right.

NARRATOR: Turn to the left. You’ll see two LAPD uniforms on the wall.

[Navigate to Chris Burden, LAPD Uniform (1993)]

NARRATOR: Nearly thirty years after the Matta painting, Chris Burden surrounded a gallery with a ring of thirty of these police uniforms, creating a faceless, ominous presence. Here we are showing two of the original thirty. Only an officer standing about seven feet four inches tall would fit into the uniform. They are oversized to make a point. Burden was responding to the police beating of Rodney King that circulated widely on video in the spring of 1991, and the subsequent acquittal of the officers involved. In an interview, Burden explained the work this way:

CHRIS BURDEN 1:31 I was invited to do a project for an institution called The Fabric Workshop that’s based in Philadelphia. And they do things with fabric. I kept thinking what could I make out of fabric that would have meaning for me. And it was right after the events with Rodney King and somehow the idea of a Los Angeles police uniform became interesting to me. And so I spent a year maybe two years working with the Fabric Workshop to make these police uniforms that were slightly oversized. They weren’t supposed to be giant, they were just supposed to look like there was a really big cop who would fit into them. We wanted them to look like a paper doll on a coat hanger. For them to lie that way was tricky in terms of the fabric. They’re about ten percent bigger than normal. They’d become a symbol of the United States as the world’s policemen. Interestingly enough, the badge of the Los Angeles Police Department was not copyrighted. So we could actually make knockoffs and sell them at the airport. For me they’re scary. When I first saw them all set up it was scary. You feel intimidated by them.

NARRATOR: Now turn around. There’s a side gallery across the room. It contains a number of smaller works. Take a closer look.  On the left side of the long wall hang several  sculptures by Black artists from Los Angeles--John Outterbridge, Melvin Edwards, and Betye Saar. Find the piece that looks like a fringed leather bag.


[Navigate to Betye Saar
 Mojo Bag #1 Hand]

NARRATOR: We’re going to end here with LA native Betye Saar, with a work from 1970 called Mojo Bag #1 Hand. Mojo is something Saar described in an interview as a kind of charm that brings you a positive feeling, a fetish object kept next to you to bring you luck. She was looking to non-western spiritual traditions for inspiration. The bag is inspired by Native American leather pouches, with a handmade macramé fringe, that makes it funky, a bit hippie. In 1964, Saar visited the Field Museum in Chicago. In the basement, she found a display of art from Africa, Oceania, Asia. As she put it, “everything that wasn’t European.” She recalled, “All this other strange stuff was in the basement…this weird, fetish, magic stuff. They were organic materials—leather, hair, shells, bones.”  When she came back to Los Angeles, she started visiting flea markets and collecting objects that felt like they had mystical significance. 

SAAR: I was always interested in alternative beliefs. Palmestry, phrenology. Astrology and so forth. In the sixties I became more interested in what was happening about feminism and racism. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, his murder was something that was really horrific for me and shocking. I remember how I felt physically, just really angry and upset. But I was a mother with young children. I couldn’t walk in protests. But I did have a weapon and that was art.

Racism, has it gone away? Sexism, has it gone away? No. So you have to keep repeating things.

I’m a Leo. It means I’m like the lion. It’s best you not hear me roar. 

NARRATOR: The art world did hear Betye Saar roar; at the age of 94, she was honored with exhibitions at LACMA and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The long overdue inclusion of her work in the history of modern American art advances the narrative about political engagement and art as a form of critical commentary. 

Thanks for joining this conversation. If you’re interested in other ways of looking at modern art, you might like our audio tour made up entirely of interviews with artists in our collection.