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PeoPle & Arts Monday 12 March 2018
Southwest ‘casta’ paintings spotlight race, popular culture

By ANITA SNOW verge of achieving iconic sta-
Associated Press tus, Cochran said. The artists
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — can come from Mexico or
Masked Mexican rebel lead- anywhere in the Southwest
er Subcomandante Marcos, from California to Texas and
wearing a purple three-piece up to Utah and Colorado.
suit, is paired with Britney Past southwestNet artists
Spears in a Wonder Woman have included Postcommod-
costume. Their child is a tiny ity, an arts collective that
albino Marcos, smoking a brought a four-channel video
pipe and wearing a turban with sound of the U.S.-Mexico
with his own little ski mask, border fence, titled “A Very
his body the black-suited tor- Long Line,” to the 2017 Whit-
so of James Bond. ney Biennial in New York.
Another work by border art- Dicochea was born in San Luis
ist Claudio Dicochea shows Colorado, Mexico, where the
Ronald Reagan standing on a northwestern corner of Sono-
Pan American jet in colorful ra state meets southwestern
cowboy boots. Coupled with Arizona, just south of Yuma.
Salma Hayek reprising her His family immigrated to the
role as Frida Kahlo but wear- U.S. when he was an infant,
ing the uniform of a Russian and he grew up along the
czar, their son is Heath Led- border.
ger as the Joker dressed in a In this Feb. 16, 2018, photo border artist Claudio Dicochea explains one of the paintings in his As a youth, Dicochea labored
pirate’s getup. Their daughter “Acid Baroque” exhibit on display at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale, briefly as a farmworker, irri-
is the late Mexican movie star Ariz., through May 20. gating fields in the Yuma Val-
Dolores del Rio with the body Associated Press ley. He left at age 20 to study
of superhero Vampirella and the American Southwest. 21st centuries such as Jac- like to call this a Trojan horse at the University of Arizona in
the headdress of Aztec em- The original caste paintings queline Kennedy Onassis and show, a beautiful show that Tucson, later continuing his
peror Montezuma. are still seen at some mu- Fidel Castro, as well as nu- teaches you something by the studies at the San Francisco
Spotlighted in the exhibit seums, including the one at merous Mexican TV soap op- back door.” Art Institute and Arizona State
“Acid Baroque,” on display Mexico City’s Chapultepec era stars, are the parents and For Dicochea, creating a new University in Tempe, where
at the Scottsdale Museum of Castle, and feature portraits children. riff on the old casta paintings he obtained a master’s in fine
Contemporary Art through of mixed-race families — usu- Race is fluid as the artist uses is a critique of the role visu- arts. He and his wife, Adriana,
May 20, these and other ally the parents and one or various materials on wood al arts play in shaping ideas a painter from the border city
works by the 45-year-old Di- two children. They illustrate including acrylic, charcoal, about race. of Nogales, Mexico, now live
cochea give a modern psy- how intermarriage among In- graphite and transfer to tie “At the core level, I’m show- in San Antonio, Texas.
chedelic spin to the colonial dians, blacks, Spaniards and images together into color- ing that the ideas of race and Among Dicochea’s earliest
“casta” or caste paintings mixed-race people after the ful collages. John Wayne the ethnicity are social processes mentors was the late African-
first created in 18th century conquest created hierarchal cowboy movie idol is pictured that are made up rather than American painter Robert Co-
Mexico, taking viewers to the classifications of every mix as an Indian rather than an natural phenomenon, that lescott, known for satirical
crossroad of colonialism and imaginable, with the children Indian killer. Albert Einstein they are constructed to exert paintings such as “George
contemporary popular cul- born from diverse couplings is shown as a black child in control,” he said. Washington Carver cross-
ture as he examines the idea arranged from lightest- to jeans and T-shirt on a bicycle. His work is being displayed ing the Delaware,” which
of “mestizaje,” or mixed-race darkest-skinned in a kind of “It’s a really serious medi- through the museum’s south- replaced the revolutionary
identity. The exhibit is part table of elements. tation on race by someone westNET program, which an- war hero with the black bota-
of a program at the museum In Dicochea’s reimagining of who grew up on the border,” nually spotlights one or more nist and inventor standing in
that showcases up-and-com- the genre, public figures and museum director and chief mid-career artists from the a boat filled with domestic
ing artists from Mexico and celebrities from the 20th and curator Sara Cochran said. “I region believed to be on the workers and minstrels. q
Dark side of Vegas is revealed in ‘All the Beautiful Girls’

By KIM CURTIS ates from high school and comfortably familiar. It’s Or when the older Ruby
Associated Press turns 18, she changes her not a new story. It’s one imagines a traditional, do-
After Lily’s glamorous name to Ruby Wilde (“She that’s been told and re- mestic future: She “was far
and free-spirited parents thought it worked ... the told dozens of times, but it’s too tainted ever to kiss the
and sister are killed in a elegance lent by that ex- Elizabeth J. Church’s gor- pristine garments of whole-
car crash, the 8-year-old tra e, like shoppe.”) and geous prose that elevates someness.”
moves in with her aunt and heads to Las Vegas. Within this far above the boundar- Despite its predictability,
uncle and leaves behind months, her beauty and ies of the mundane. Church keeps readers en-
her entire universe of Sa- voluptuous body, along Church’s appreciation of gaged in and flying through
lina, Kansas. And the con- with her dancing skills, language is apparent as the pages. She’s not inter-
servative Midwest of the grant access to stages at she masterfully creates pic- ested in imparting any new
1960s is not hospitable to a clubs like the Tropicana tures with words, like when wisdom here or providing
smart, curious, precocious and Stardust. She learns her the young girl reflects on untilled ground to tread.
young girl who dreams only trade and excels, amassing her loss: “Sorrow was not Instead, “All the Beautiful This cover image released
of becoming a dancer. But jewelry, furs and a small for- so easily fooled; it stuck to Girls” provides a delightful by Ballantine shows “All the
Lily endures. tune. the soles of Lily’s feet and antidote to cold and dark Beautiful Girls,” a novel by
Elizabeth J. Church.
As soon as she gradu- “All the Beautiful Girls” feels dogged her every step.” mid-winter days.q Associated Press