Anna Indych-López

Behind the fascinating public artist’s practice of collaboration Judith F. Baca is best known for the Great Wall of Los Angeles (1976–83), a vibrant 2,740-foot mural in Los Angeles that presents an alternative history of California-one that focuses on the contributions of marginalized and underrepresented communities. The mural is emblematic of Baca’s pioneering approach to creating public art, a process in which members of the community are essential contributors to the conception and realization of the work. Anna Indych-LÓpez explores Baca’s oeuvre, from early murals painted with local gang members in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles to more recently commissioned works. She looks in depth at the Great Wall and considers the artist’s ongoing work with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, a nonprofit group founded by Baca in 1976. Throughout, Indych-LÓpez assesses what she calls Baca’s “public art of contestation” and discusses how ideas of collaboration and authorship and issues of race, class, and gender have influenced and sustained Baca’s art practice.

Behind the fascinating public artist’s practice of collaboration Judith F. Baca is best known for the Great Wall of Los Angeles (1976–83), a vibrant 2,740-foot mural in Los Angeles that presents an alternative history of California-one that focuses on the contributions of marginalized and underrepresented communities. The mural is emblematic of Baca’s pioneering approach to creating public art, a process in which members of the community are essential contributors to the conception and realization of the work. Anna Indych-LÓpez explores Baca’s oeuvre, from early murals painted with local gang members in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles to more recently commissioned works. She looks in depth at the Great Wall and considers the artist’s ongoing work with the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California, a nonprofit group founded by Baca in 1976. Throughout, Indych-LÓpez assesses what she calls Baca’s “public art of contestation” and discusses how ideas of collaboration and authorship and issues of race, class, and gender have influenced and sustained Baca’s art practice.

In 1931, Diego Rivera was the subject of The Museum of Modern Art's second monographic exhibition, which set attendance records in its five-week run. The Museum brought Rivera to New York six weeks before the opening and provided him a studio space in the building. There he produced five portable murals large blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime and wood that feature bold images drawn from Mexican subject matter and address themes of revolution and class inequity. After the opening, to great publicity, Rivera added three more murals, taking on New York subjects through monumental images of the urban working class. Published in conjunction with an exhibition that brings together key works from Rivera's 1931 show and related material, this vividly illustrated catalogue casts the artist as a highly cosmopolitan figure who moved between Russia, Mexico and the United States and examines the intersection of art-making and radical politics in the 1930s.