Anti-Think Tank: March 23, 2006
The Art of Critical Consumption

I can present my designs to you, the public, because the current technology and modes of dissemination allow people with artistic tendencies like myself to widely display and market their work. This is a good development in the sense that it allows alternate voices and artistic expressions that were previously out the mainstream to exist and prosper. One must be wary, however, of the pitfalls of over-commercialization. Today, the mechanisms of modern capitalism are sophisticated enough to appropriate alternate voices and use them for its own aims: to promote unnecessary consumption, maintain the status quo, exploit forces of labor, etc. As it relates to art, think of how easy it is to commodify an image and take away its meaning all together for the purposes of mass production.

Store Chains such Anchor Blue are perfect examples of this phenomenon. It is not uncommon to find T-shirts imprinted with the images of Ernesto Che Guevara, Cantinflas, Zapata, Villa and Frida Kalho on the store shelves. These chains are successfully selling such images in great numbers to a great number of people. This is great fro the artist who created them. They are, after all, really good examples of good design in my opinion.

The problem I see is that the recognizable faces of the personages in such shirts suddenly become more of a fashion statement rather than a point of reflection on the ideals that they embodied in their historical context. Now, rather than the complex human beings that they were, without account for their ideas and passions, without mention of their exalting qualities and their defects, without the context of their historical circumstances, they are now simple icons devoid of socio-political meaning and historical reflection

The same thing can be said for the countless T-shirts, which are sold over the internet or in cultural gatherings that use recognizable logos with minor changes to reflect some aspect of our Mexican/Chicano folklore. Most of these, I must qualify, carry a deep ironic message and to a large extent undermine the hegemonic nature of commercialism. Unfortunately, as they become more common the message behind them is lost to the wearer of the T-shirt.

I suppose I do not escape any of this criticism. First, my kind of work can be said to be perfectly fitting to that description (it certainly qualifies as pop art and its certainly commercial). Perhaps by means of apology, I write this in an attempt to have my images mean more than just empty symbols on a page or a T-shirt. It is disingenuous to criticize those who engage and help promote the more sinister aspects of capitalist consumption when where are all immersed in the same system and are thus complicit in it.  

I have nothing against an artist making money from his art to survive. I can't realistically suggest a doctrine of starvation and a complete rejection of selling art for profit. I would like to argue, however, that both artist and consumer be continually critical of what it is created and what is consumed. As creators and consumers of images, we must constantly be aware of the implicit values, underlying meaning, and cultural commonplaces of the images we sell and buy. One must look beyond the aesthetic image. This is true not only in art but in the current political climate where fabricated ideologies are passed of as reality.

Perhaps I write this because the types of images that I value (and try to create to a certain extent) are those that trigger a response to the socio-political context of my world and that question the systems of power an privilege and one’s role in relation to them. They are images that put our perception of art in a different perspective and that play with the uncertainty and ambivalence of our own culture. There is no pretension about my images. I am no artist in the conventional sense. After all, what is art but lines and forms and shapes and splashes of color that only acquire meaning through the symbolism and signification that the image evokes at a certain point in time for a certain viewer under very specific circumstances? In my opinion, it is not enough in today’s world to be simply an “artist”. One must be a critical, responsible, questioning, and active person.

One must be constantly skeptic of the commodification of our lore, the marketing of rebellion, and misuse of alternate voices. We should remember that being a rebel and making a political statement is a much more than wearing a Che shirt. In short, I hope that at least for some, my images will spark some glimmer of questioning about our reality and our role and relation to this specific moment in history fraught with all its sad current events. At worse these images will end as a mere $5 curiosity on some wall, devoid of meaning, caught up in the commodification of our cultural lore.  Maybe some day, I’ll put them on a T-shirt myself.

-- A.