Renaissance & Rebellion - Flipbook - Page 70
The culturally mixed barrios of the Eastern and Northeastern sides of Los
Angeles at mid-century were home to most of the city’s Mexican American
populations, White working-class families as well as Japanese Americans, Jewish and
Italian Americans. Northeast L.A. is also where Bojórquez and Tourjé were born and
raised, an area blending the blue collar ethos of mainly those Mexican and White
cultures (Tourjé’s mother is from Mexico City). During the postwar years, Latino
youth formed gangs in response to rampant racism and police brutality, but the
game changed and the violence escalated as the street drug epidemic accelerated
in the 1970s, with those gangs’ involvement in it. Identifying themselves as
“cholos,” from the beginning the teens developed their own style of dressing,
graffiti, body art and custom-designed lowrider cars. Graffiti designated gang
boundaries and members, but also provided a means of accessible and immediate
artistic expression. Bojórquez found beauty and inspiration in the gang graffiti
of his neighborhood and in 1969 created his now iconic and first-known stencil
tag, Señor Suerte (Mr. Lucky) as a symbol of protection from death for gangsters
in Northeast Los Angeles. Concurrently, the neighborhoods further East in East
Los Angeles would become the epicenter of the Chicano art movement. Chicano
artists like Patssi Valdez, John Valadez, Judy Baca and collectives like Los Four and
Asco used their art to bring visibility to their culture and fight for the social justice
and recognition they deserved. The pioneering art group Los Four, comprised of
the renowned Chicano artists Gilbert “Magu” Luján, Robert “Beto” de la Rocha
(Zack de la Rocha’s father), Frank Romero, Carlos Almaraz, and later as the fifth
member Judithe Hernández, were the first Chicano art group to be shown in a
major museum—LACMA in 1974.
Miles away and years before in South Central Los Angeles, the jazz and blues
music scenes had thrived for decades. Known as the “Harlem of the West” from
the 1920s through the ‘50s, this area was the heart of the African American
community. This was also where Gary Wong grew up and Norton Wisdom went
to elementary school. As in East L.A., the streets of South Central were ripe
with violence, racial tension and discrimination but also innovative creativity.
African American teens formed gangs in response to the problems they faced
with the Ku Klux Klan, police and other groups. The gangs developed their own
identifiable styles of dressing, speaking, body art, tags and street writing to signify
their affiliations and mark their gang territories. Artists in this area such as Daniel
LaRue Johnson, Alice Patrick, Charles White and others, created provocative
works of protest art that documented their experiences and struggles. In the 1960s
and ‘70s, South Central would become the West Coast epicenter of the Black Arts
and Civil Rights movements, as well as for the emerging rap and hip-hop music
scenes later made famous by Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and others.
Chaz Bojórquez’s Señor Suerte at Zero One Gallery, Hollywood, 1996
CALIFORNIA 134
LOCOS
RENAISSANCE
135
REBELLION
