In 1 965, the Whitney Museum of American Art organized an exhibition entitled

"Young Americans," which included daring sculptures by Ralph Ortiz, as Raphael

Montanez Ortiz was then known. In the accompanying exhibition catalogue,
Ortiz wrote: "Art must come to terms with the anguish and anger at the core of

man's existence." Using an art-making process he called Destructivism, Ortiz

sought to release the energy "buried in each of us" as a means of producing art,

and by extension expose the anguish and anger hidden within manufactured
objects— the products of our culture. It was through this approach that Ortiz
redefined the appearance and meaning of the art object.
The Whitney Museum acquired Ortiz's Archaeological Find, ' Number 9
(1 964) in 1 965. One of a series of works created through Destructivism, it uses
techniques such as burning, gouging, ripping, and chopping— actions which
became a central aspect of Ortiz's public performances. As the word
"archaeological" connotes, each resulting object was the product of a search or

a digging.

This exhibition in the Whitney Museum's ongoing "Collection in Context"

series examines the evolution of Ortiz's art-making practice. From the recycled
cinema works of 1 957-58, in which Ortiz ritually re-edited completed films,

through 1 966, when Ortiz gained international attention through his partici-

pation in the "Destruction in Art Symposium" in London, he continually sought

to refashion the objects of our society as a means to heighten our awareness
of their compositions or interiors. Through the juxtaposition of works and
artifacts from this ten-year period, we can appreciate the development of

Ortiz's innovative techniques, sometimes called shamanistic, and the evocative

qualities of his forms.

Matthew Yokobosky
Assistant Curator, Film and Video

This exhibition is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the
Lobby Gallery Associates of the Whitney Museum.
Raphael Montanez Ortiz: Early Destruction, 1957-67'

Monument to Buchenwald. 1 961 The Menil

, Collection, Houston

Beginning in the late 1 950s, Raphael Montanez Ortiz emerged as one of the
central figures in Destructivism, a now-forgotten international movement that
attempted to redress what it saw as the social detachment of the postwar avant-
garde, especially other precursors to performance art (Action, Fluxus, Happen-
ings). For his part, Ortiz worked in all genres, producing recycled films as well
as destroyed works in painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. In

the early 1 960s. a series of "archaeological finds"— in which he peeled away

the outer layers of "man-made objects" such as mattresses, chairs, sofas,
and pianos— found their way into such major permanent collections as The
Museum of Modern Art. New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
For Ortiz, art offered a space where Dada and ritual could come together
through the destruction of its most symbol-laden objects, revealing these
objects as the problematic remnants and reproductions of the nineteenth-
century domestic sphere.
 Ortiz's various activities and manifestos coalesced in his highly visible role

in the "Destruction in Art Symposium" in London (1 966) and at the Judson

Memorial Church in New York (1 968).
2
The symposium brought together an
international group of avant-garde artists working with new art forms generally
associated with Happenings and Fluxus. For the organizers, however, these
artists marked a shift from the "idea of destruction," known since Futurism and
Dada, to destruction as an artistic "practice" that made art of more "immediate
relevance" to society. 5 Ortiz, in particular, gave theoretical coherence to the
movement, shifting the domain of destruction from society to art, from

domestic to public, where its function would become symbolic rather than real.

Art, then, remained an autonomous sphere that could displace the threat of
nuclear war or racial violence through symbolic destruction that transformed
the object, the artist, and society. For Ortiz, destruction did not become art;

rather, art constituted an arena within which destruction was itself transformed
into a "sacrificial process" that released both the man-made object and the
4
human subject from the logical form and self of Western culture.
In order for Destructivism to succeed, Ortiz required an art that was at
once autonomous and contingent. In this way, he could move back and forth

between text and context, art and society, without necessarily privileging one
over the other— as would be the case if he used binary oppositions based on
aesthetic categories.

Indeed, Ortiz himself

exemplified both extremes,
entering the commodity
art system in typical

avant-garde fashion-
by rejecting its major
premises— and becoming
a pop icon, appearing on
Johnny Carson's Tonight
Show while also serving as

the inspiration for Primal

Scream ther-apy. 6 As
Kristine Stiles notes,

"Ortiz's art and life have

always been involved
in paradox." 7 Thus,
despite his critique of
modern-cum-postmodern
formalism, and his attempts

to locate art as a fulcrum

with which to change

Raphael Montafiez Ortiz performing Henny-Penny Piano Destruction
Concert in his studio, New York, 967 1 society, Ortiz nonetheless
Artifacts from the piano destruction concert Duet for Huelsenbeck at El Museo del Barrio, 1 988 (reenactment of

1 966 performance)

required a distinction between art and all other social relations. But by
1 970, amid the civil rights movement and Vietnam War, Ortiz's acts of physical

violence and animal sacrifice could no longer be contained within a purely

symbolic art context, and threatened to become just another manifestation of

the violence and destruction in the streets and by the state.
In seeking to reconcile the autonomous and contingent, Ortiz was out
of step with the predominant emphasis on the social function of cultural

production, especially with respect to work by artists now constituted as racial

minorities. Thus, by the end of the 1 960s, Ortiz would be erased from the
history of art. falling into the widening gap between an avant-garde refigured as
postmodernist (and non-ethnic) and an ethnic art defined in terms of cultural
nationalism (and modernist aesthetics). If both sides started from different
premises of the relationship between signifier and signified, both spoke about
their work in political terms. For his part, Ortiz refused to conflate politics and
art; for him, politics meant putting your body, and not art, on the front lines.

And he did. In the early 1 970s, for example, Ortiz was an active member of the
Artist Worker's Coalition, taking part in street protests against The Museum of
Modern Art.

It is for this reason, among others, that Ortiz founded El Museo del Barrio

in 1 969 as the first Hispanic art museum in the United States. While many
Latino artist-activists questioned the distinction between high art and popular

culture, and placed emphasis on the development of community-based cultural

centers, alternative spaces, and vernacular aesthetics, Ortiz pointed to the

concurrent need to intervene within the institutional space of the art world
itself. Still, in his own art, Ortiz challenges that very space and its traditional

definition of art by presenting the products of performance, ritual, and

contemporary social activities as art objects. In opposition to postmodern
performance, however, he continues to insist that his work be contained within

an art context, rather than have it diffuse into reality. This is not because the
art space acts as some sort of higher ground (although Ortiz is concerned with
creating a space for the sacred), but because the imported social and spiritual

rituals acquire an element of irony within the art context without necessarily
becoming profane.
It is precisely this peculiar sense of irony, which is more situational than

stated (there is no knowing wink here), that critics often miss in Ortiz's work.

Indeed, his work troubles and falls between the very categories he engages:
modernism and postmodernism; avant-garde and mainstream; racial minority

and dominant culture. Until recently, for example, it would have been unheard
of to suggest that American avant-garde film and so-called ethnic cinemas had
anything significant to do with each other, despite concurrent histories and a
shared oppositional stance toward Hollywood. The very structure and culture
of the media arts militated against even posing such a question, let alone
8
including someone like Ortiz in either "experimental" or "ethnic" programs.

But Ortiz's recycled films, produced between 1 956 and 1 958, provide a
significant challenge to the history of avant-garde film, especially insofar as

Ortiz worked from radically different premises about "visionary" culture. At

the time, he had dropped out of Pratt Institute and was exploring the Yaqui
ancestry of his grandfather through peyote rituals. Ortiz decided to use ritual

sacrifice to "redeem the indigenous wound" perpetrated by the West. Using a

tomahawk, he hacked at 1 6mm prints of films, placed the fragments in a

medicine bag, then shook the bag while issuing a war chant. When the evil had
been released, he randomly pulled out pieces and spliced them together,
9
irrespective of their orientation. Two films that survive are Cowboys and
Indians (1 957-58), which recycles Anthony Mann's Winchester 73 (1 950), and
Newsreel (1 958), from a Castle Films newsreel featuring the pope blessing a
crowd, the Nuremberg trials, and an atomic bomb explosion in the Pacific. In

these films, the audiovisual integrity and continuity of shots is destroyed,

replaced by a random sequence of image and sound fragments that confound
genre expectations. On occasion, this produces ironic montage, as when the
pope blesses a mushroom cloud in Newsreel, but such associations are random
by-products of a more encompassing Destructivist aesthetic. Unlike Bruce
Conner, whose A Movie (also 1 958) served as a touchstone for recycled cinema,-

Ortiz sought a more thoroughgoing destruction/redemption of the original text

than was available through irony
and parody, whose critique

requires a coherent, stable

source. This is perhaps no more

evident than in their respective

use of sound: Conner juxta-

poses reedited shots with
complete soundtracks or songs
that establish stable parameters

for irony; Ortiz fractures both

sound and image.
Since the 1960s, Ortiz has
sought new terms with which to
negotiate a space for the auto-
nomous and contingent. In the
1 970s, combining elements
of psychoanalysis, physiology,

philosophy, and maternal

spiritualism, Ortiz developed
an aesthetic theory of Physio-
Psycho-Alchemy, while he also
turned away from the practice
of actual destruction in his art.

In a mix of performance,

therapy, meditation, and ritual,

Ortiz now addressed the body,

inducing participants to become
both art and artist through a
process of "inner visioning" or Film frames from Newsreel. 1 958

"authenticating communion" of

body, mind, and spirit. By 1 982, having codified this aesthetic in his doctoral

dissertation amidst the problematic backdrop of New Age spiritualism,

10
Ortiz
again sought a space within which art— both autonomous and contingent— could
transform social relations. Now, however, he turned to the virtual space of the
computer, digital imaging systems, and video, taking up the deconstruction of
the Hollywood text rather than the destruction of the Western object and the

transcendence of the Western body.

Indeed, as Stiles noted earlier, "Ortiz's art and life have always been
involved in paradox." To be sure, he is not alone; all distinctions fall apart at
some point. But his lifelong attempt to produce art that is both autonomous
and contingent, sacred and profane, finds special resonance in the current
postmodern moment, especially insofar as that moment bears the paradox of
certain modernist features. As I have argued elsewhere,
 if video is the postmodern medium par excellence for the
"pure and random play of signifiers," access to both
television and the museum continues to be guarded by a
modernist gatekeeper, according to whom access is a
simple matter of "freedom of expression" within the
economic-minded parameters of "popularity" (television)

and "quality" (museum)."

This paradox suggests, then, how Ortiz's sacred contingencies may offer a

strategic anachronism in the face of modern-cum-postmodern power relations.

Chon A. Noriega

Guest Curator
Assistant Professor, Film and Television,
University of California, Los Angeles

Nailed Marshmallows, 1962

Notes

1 . This essay is adapted from a longer piece on Ortiz's video art; see Chon A Noriega."
"Sacred Contingencies: The Digital Deconstructions of Raphael Montaflez Ortiz." Art
Journal, 54 (Winter 1995). pp. 36-40.

2. Ralph Ortiz, "destruction has no place in society— it belongs to our dreams; it belongs
to art." Art and Artists. (August 966). p. 60; and Destruction
1 1 Art: Destroy to Create.
exh. cat. (New York: Finch College Museum of Art. 968). 1

3. Press release. "DIAS: Destruction in Art Symposium" (London). April 27. 1 966.

4. For more on Destruction art. see Kristine Stiles, "Survival Ethos and Destruction Art."
Discourse. 14 (Spring 1992). pp. 74-102

5. Stiles equates Ortiz's Destructivism with Jacques Derrida's Deconstruction. But whereas
she argues that the dichotomy of "creation/destruction" structures Ortiz's work and socio-
aesthetic concerns ("white/black, rich/poor, dominant/minority, mind/body, man/woman"),
it seems to me that the dichotomy of "autonomous/contingent" provides a more apt
account of the tension between text and context within Ortiz's overall project. See Stiles'

introductory essay in Raphael Montanez Ortiz: Years of the Warrior 1960/ Years of the
Psyche 1988. exh. cat. (New York: El Museo del Barrio. 1 988). p. 8.

6. Ortiz appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1 968 and 1 970; Arthur Janov. in

the introduction to his book, The Primal Scream. Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1 970), pp. 9-11. attributes the idea for Primal Scream
therapy to hearing a patient recount a performance by Ortiz (perhaps during DIAS in

London).

7. Stiles, in Raphael Montanez Ortiz, p. 32.

8.The selection of Ortiz's videos for the 39th Robert Flaherty Seminar and the Whitney
Museum's " 995 Biennial Exhibition", however, brings these issues into sharper focus,
1

provoking scholars of the avant-garde and ethnic cinemas to rethink contemporary film

and video history. For a personal account of the challenges in programming Ortiz's work
as part of a "Latino" section at the993 Robert Flaherty Seminar, see Noriega. "On
1

Curating." Wide Angle. 17(1 995), pp. 293-304. On Ortiz's video art. see Scott
MacDonald. "The Axe Man Cometh: Raphael Ortiz's Avant-Carde Alchemy Moves into the
Digital Age," The Independent. 7 (October 994). pp. 26-31 and MacDonald, "Media
1 1 .

Destructionism: The Digital/Laser/Videos of RaphaelMontanez Ortiz." in Chon A. Noriega

and Ana M. Lopez, eds.. The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. 1996). pp. 183-207.

9. Ortiz was also using the same ritual process on audiotapes.

1 0. Ortiz later wrote a dissertation outlining his aesthetic theory: "Physio-Psycho-

Alchemy: Towards an Authenticating Art" (New York: Columbia University Teachers
College. 1982).

1 1 . "Talking Heads, Body Politic: The Plural Self of Chicano Experimental Video." in

Michael Renov and Erika Suderburg, eds.. Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1 996). p. 206.
Archaeological Find, Number 9
Artist's Statement

The Archaeological Series is the result of

iH
;;v" ;
!

j
my purchase of and the donation to me
of living room "sofa" furniture:

purchased and donated to me in

perfect condition— furniture which

I then Ritually de-constructed,

"destroyed," applying my
aesthetic of "Destruction Art."

"Ritual" releasing its "Spirit" as

"Object" as "Furniture."
Sacrificing its context of
confinement as "Furniture,"
releasing it to its less

spurious materiality, that it may

become its "Spirit-lconic-Reality

as "Archaeological Find."
Technical Methods: Placing
Archaeological Find, Number 9, 1 964
the "couch-sofa" in the "Sacred-
Circle" on 3/4-inch plywood sheets, I meditated on its "Inner-Spirit" and
prepared myself to wrestle with the outer-self object image dominating it. I

then, barehanded, chanting a shamanic chant, pounced on the "sofa," kicking,

breaking, tearing, pulling, and tugging at its wood, wire, cloth, string, cotton,

and stuffing for some thirty-three separate sessions over a period of thirty-three

days, each session lasting thirty-three minutes. The outcome was then baptized
with a water-soluble resin casein glue (bond 484 tacky), poured from a plant
watering can with a shower sprinkle spout, that dried perfectly transparent and
flexible, keeping everything in place, forming the "New-Skin" for the revealed

"Inner-Spirit." The first coat of the "New-Skin" took 8 to 1 days to dry, since
much of it soaks into the layer of cotton, cloth, and fibers. The plywood sheets
were then lifted onto 3-foot high wooden horses. I, then, using a 1 -foot long

1/4-inch drill bit, drilled holes in the plywood sheet. I then bolted the furniture
to its plywood armature. Using a motorized jigsaw I carefully cut away all the

plywood, so that only the de-structed furniture is visible. Five additional coats

of perfectly transparent flexible bond 484 tacky were then applied one at a

time, each completely drying before application of the next coat. I then walked
around the "piece," spending time with each side until the (animistic,

anthropomorphic), the (spirit life) released, spoke to me of its "Top," "Bottom,"

"Left" and "Right" side, telling me if it is a wall piece, and which way to hang it.

Raphael Montahez Ortiz, December 1 8, 1 993

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

Dimensions are in inches, height precedes

width precedes depth.

Raphael Montanez Ortiz (b 1 934)

Cowboys and Indians. 1 957-58

16mm film, black-and-white, sound; 6 min.
Collection of the artist

Newsreel. 1 958
16mm film, black-and-white, silent; 2 1/2 min.
Collection of the artist

Sunburst. 1960
Paper towels, staples, oil paint, and wood
frame with cardboard backing. 60 x 40
Collection of the artist

Archaeological Find.Number 3. 1961

Burned mattress. 41 4 x 62 7/8 x 9 3/4 1 .

The Museum of Modern Art. New York;

Gift of Constance Kane

Archaeological Find. Number 21 1961 ,

Spring sofa, wood, cotton, wire, vegetable

fiber, and glue on wooden backing.
84 x 54 x 24
Collection of the artist

Monument to Buchenwald, 1 96
Assemblage: burned shoes, nails, paper, dirt,

and synthetic resin on wood,

29 7/8 x 28 x 67/8
The Menil Collection, Houston

Children of Treblmka. 1 962

Paper, earth, burned shoes, and paint on
wooden backing. 7 x 14x6 1

El Museo del Barrio. New York

Nailed Marshmallows. 1962 Front and back covers Raphael Montafiez Ortiz
Fire-toasted marshmallows and steel nails on performing Henny-Penny Piano Destruction Concert in

wood. 1 4 x 16x5 his studio. New York. 967

1

Collection of the artist

Inside front and back covers Monument to

Buchenwald. 1961 (detail)

Archaeological Find. Number 9. 1 964
Wood, steel, plastic glues, rope, and fabric.
Photograph credits
76 3/4 x 66 3/4 x 22
Archaeological Find. Number 9 by Geoffrey Clements.
Whitney Museum of American Art. New York; e 992. Monument to Buchenwald by Hickey &
1

Gift of George and Lillian Schwartz 65.33

Robertson, Houston

Performance: Humpty Dumpty Piano

Destruction Concert. 1 967 (reenacted 996) 1

Humpty Dumpty reader, piano; 45 min •1996 Whitney Museum of American Art
Videotape documentation by Edin Velez 945 Madison Avenue. New York. NY 002 1
IN EY MUSEUM