Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

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In the 1960s television brought reports of political assassinations, the oppression of protests, and the escalation of the Vietnam War (1955–75) into the comfort of American living rooms. The works in this gallery illustrate the many ways in which the violence and oppression of the era were experienced, internalized, and expressed through art. Some artists drew on the visual and literary vocabulary of historic Surrealism, a movement that embraced and extolled revolutionary actions, to communicate the experience of racial or colonial oppression. Other artists manipulated the very material of mass media to excoriate the culture it portrayed—framing violence as a kind of rupture in the fabric of logic.

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A large tiger with an open mouth is behind women in crowns and the text “San Antonio Circus ‘69.”

Driving at night in San Antonio, Mel Casas was inspired by the distant sight of a drive-in movie theater screen. This scene led him to begin his Humanscape series, which explores different variations of this Americana iconography. Each painting includes a rectangular, screen-like image contrasted against a competing drama in the foreground, often parodying racist stereotypes of Latinx culture. Casas critiques Fiesta, San Antonio's annual festival commemorating the defeat of the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto and the establishment of the Republic of Texas in 1836. Every year, the festival crowns a white Fiesta queen by the Order of the Alamo, a group that limits membership on the basis of race and class. Casas's painting asserts that the celebrated Texan revolution was actually an entrenchment of Latinx subjugation.

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

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Mel Casas, Humanscape #56 (San Antonio Circus), 1969

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