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Raphael Montañez Ortiz (born in
Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, behi ...
January 30, 1934) is an American
artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, t ...
,
educator A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
, and founder of
El Museo del Barrio El Museo del Barrio, often known simply as El Museo (the museum), is a museum at 1230 Fifth Avenue in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is located near the northern end of Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, immediately north of the Museum of the Cit ...
, in East Harlem, New York City.


Education

Montañez Ortiz graduated from Art and Design High School of New York City, and studied at
Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was founded in 1887 ...
, where he began as a student of architecture, but later decided instead to become a visual artist, and received his BFA and MFA in 1964. He completed a doctorate in Fine Arts and Fine Arts in Higher Education at Teachers College of Columbia University in 1982.


Artistic career

Montañez Ortiz's works are in the collection of the
Pompidou Centre The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
and the
Ludwig Museum Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Licht ...
in
Cologne, Germany Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...
,
the Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...
and the
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...
, the
Everson Museum Everson may refer to: People with the surname * Ben Everson (born 1987), English footballer * Bill Everson (1906–1966), Welsh international rugby union player * Cliff Everson, a New Zealand car designer and manufacturer * Corinna Everson (born ...
in Syracuse, New York, the
Chrysler Museum of Art The Chrysler Museum of Art is an art museum on the border between downtown and the Ghent district of Norfolk, Virginia. The museum was founded in 1933 as the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. In 1971, automotive heir, Walter P. Chrysler Jr. ...
in Virginia, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. and the
Menil Collection The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of approximately 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawin ...
in Houston, Texas. Ritual, coincidence, duality, transcendence, humanism, performance, gesture, religion and history are some of the subjects that Ortiz has rendered through his works. From early in his career, his artistic practice has reflected an
avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
element. He worked on the margins of cultural production, creating art from non-art objects, such as domestic items, which he would unmake in a process of deconstruction. While he was interested in avant-garde movements such as
Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
and
Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
, readings in psychology and anthropology influenced him most and acted as the link between his early ''Archaeological Finds'' series and his interest in the perceptions of the unconscious mind. Montañez Ortiz incorporated indigenous elements to the process of deconstruction, underscoring his awareness of indigenous cultural practice and its possibilities as a model for contemporary
aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, Epistemology, knowledge, Ethics, values, Philosophy of ...
. In the creation of his earliest film works from the late 1950s, he hacks a film into pieces while chanting. Placing the pieces into a medicine bag, he then arbitrarily removed each piece and spliced them together in a completely random fashion. In his film work from the early 1980s, the artist used an
Apple computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
hooked up to a laser disc player. He scratched the laser disc, creating a stammering image, and a disconnection between time and space. Montañez Ortiz has achieved the highest professorial rank at
Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and wa ...
, where he has been on the faculty since 1972. He has been teaching at
Mason Gross School of the Arts Mason Gross School of the Arts is the arts conservatory at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is named for Mason W. Gross, the sixteenth president of Rutgers. Mason Gross offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance, Theater, Dig ...
since its inception.


El Museo del Barrio

During the late 1960s in
East Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, F ...
and
Central Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harle ...
, a group of
African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
and Puerto Rican parents, educators and community activists urged the district that they provide their children an education that addressed their diverse and cultural heritages. Due to these demands, William W. Frey, the superintendent of school district 4, appointed artist/educator Rafael Montañez Ortíz to create materials for schools in
East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
and Central
Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harl ...
that would highlight Puerto Rican art, history, folklore and culture. However, he quickly steered the program towards the creation of a community museum that he named
El Museo del Barrio El Museo del Barrio, often known simply as El Museo (the museum), is a museum at 1230 Fifth Avenue in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is located near the northern end of Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, immediately north of the Museum of the Cit ...
: "The Museo del Barrio is its title: a neighborhood museum of Puerto Rican culture. . ." The word
barrio ''Barrio'' () is a Spanish word that means " quarter" or " neighborhood". In the modern Spanish language, it is generally defined as each area of a city, usually delimited by functional (e.g. residential, commercial, industrial, etc.), social, a ...
," meaning neighborhood in Spanish, was what
Puerto Ricans Puerto Ricans ( es, Puertorriqueños; or boricuas) are the people of Puerto Rico, the inhabitants, and citizens of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and their descendants. Overview The culture held in common by most Puerto Ricans is referred ...
called
East Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, F ...
. In its founding documents, Montañez Ortiz stated that "The cultural disenfranchisement I experience as a Puerto Rican has prompted me to seek a practical alternative to the orthodox museum, which fails to meet my needs for an authentic ethnic experience. To afford me and others the opportunity to establish living connections with our own culture, I founded El Museo del Barrio." He served as director of the institution from when it was founded, June 1969, to Spring 1971.


The Destruction in Art Symposium

In
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, 1966, a group of artists like
Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...
,
Wolf Vostell Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are c ...
,
Peter Weibel Peter Weibel (; born 5 March 1944 in Odessa, USSR) is an internationally known Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet but soon jumped from the page to the screen within the se ...
and
Al Hansen Alfred Earl "Al" Hansen (5 October 1927 – 20 June 1995) was an American artist. He was a member of Fluxus, a movement that originated on an artists' collective around George Maciunas. He was the father of Andy Warhol protégé Bibbe Hanse ...
came together to participate in the first
Destruction in Art Symposium The Destruction in Art Symposium (a.k.a. DIAS) was a gathering of a diverse group of international artists, poets, and scientists to London from 9–12 September, 1966. Included in this number were representatives of Fluxus and other counter-cultu ...
(''DIAS'') led by
Gustav Metzger Gustav Metzger (10 April 1926, Nuremberg – 1 March 2017, London) was a German artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike. Together with John Sharkey, he initiated the Destruction in Ar ...
. According to the event's press release, the principal objective of DIAS was “to focus attention on the element of destruction in Happenings and other art forms, and to relate this destruction in society. Events were scheduled to occur throughout London. During the course of the symposium, Montañez Ortiz performed a series of seven public destruction events, including his piano destruction concerts, which were filmed by both
American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an Television in the United States, American Commercial broadcasting, commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the Disney General Entertainment Content#Current assets, ...
and the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
. Two years later,
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
hosted the second Destruction in Art Symposium at
Judson Church The Judson Memorial Church is located on Washington Square South between Thompson Street and Sullivan Street, near Gould Plaza, opposite Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. I ...
in
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. The artists who gathered around this art movement and its development were opposed to the senseless destruction of human life and landscapes engendered by the Vietnam war.
Kristine Stiles Kristine Stiles (born Kristine Elaine Dolan in Denver, Colorado, 1947) is the France Family Distinguished Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. She is an art historian, curator, and artist specializing in global con ...
, Professor of Art History at Duke University, described the destruction art movement as follows: "Destruction art bears witness to the tenuous conditionality of survival; it is the visual discourse of the survivor. It is the only attempt in the visual arts to grapple seriously with the technology and psycho-dynamics of actual and virtual extinction, one of the few cultural practices to redress the general absence of discussion about destruction in society." This interest in the discussion about destruction in society is crucial to understanding the anger and violence implied by some of the artist's works. Destroying functional objects such as beds, sofas, and chairs or appropriating objects that refer to the human body, such as shoes, was the way in which Montañez Ortiz expressed the fragility of human life and his frustration with its senseless destruction. He burned, cut, ripped, gouged, and generally wreaked havoc on domestic objects to bring attention to humanity's vulnerability. He continued to use destruction in his works and performances until around 1970.


Performances and Piano Deconstructions

Since his 1966 ''Burst Your Paper Bags'' audience participation concert held in London's
Conway Hall The Conway Hall Ethical Society, formerly the South Place Ethical Society, based in London at Conway Hall, is thought to be the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world and is the only remaining ethical society in the United Kin ...
, Montañez Ortiz has continued to organize performances in which audiences actively participate both physically and psychologically. In 1979, after nearly four years of study with psychics, yoga masters and naturopathic healers, Montañez Ortiz invented an inner performance process he named Physio-Psycho-Alchemy. He described these performances as “inner visioning,” inspired largely by dream imagery, symbols and processes. He noted: “The dream is a transformative process during which distortions, displacement and condensations occur. Its most essential aspect is its sense of reality.” These ''Physio-Psycho-Alchemy'' events encouraged participants to lie quietly in various positions as Montañez Ortiz gave instructions to begin the inner visioning process. For Montañez Ortiz, the body, as it was used in these performances, was the site of a meaningful connection between the mind, body and spirit. During this period, Ortiz also continued to create avant-garde video work. In his film work from the early 1980s, Montañez Ortiz used an
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...
computer hooked up to a laser disc player. He scratched the laser disc, creating a stammering image and a disconnection between time and space. While Montañez Ortiz was no longer actively creating destructive art, he was still asked to perform piano destructions throughout Europe and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s and was sometimes even asked to do private commissions. In 1988, Ortiz was honored with a retrospective exhibition at El Museo del Barrio, ''Rafael Montañez Ortiz: Years of the Warrior, Years of the Psyche, 1960-1988''. During the exhibition, he performed a dual piano destruction, ''Homage: Duet to ichardHuelsenbeck'', which called for active audience participation in the destruction of the second piano. This homage performance underscored the mutual admiration that both men had for one another's work. In 1963,
Richard Huelsenbeck Carl Wilhelm Richard Hülsenbeck (aka Charles R. Hulbeck) (23 April 189220 April 1974) was a German writer, poet, and psychoanalyst born in Frankenau, Hessen-Nassau who was associated with the formation of the Dada movement. Life and work Huelse ...
had written: “Ralph Ortiz... is fascinated by things that are not or are not yet... when Ortiz wants to show us a mattress, he does not show a mattress but an object that is torn up by indefinable forces as they worked in time. What really plays an important role is the artist’s thought of the man behind the mattress who has to fight his way through the jungle of his existence.” Montañez Ortiz's most recent projects continue to focus on participatory artworks, many evoking new ways to combat the inhumanity of the world. His ''Virtual Presence Video Interactive Installation'' instructions encourage participants to give a fellow human being a virtual hug via digital technology. Montañez Ortiz's lifelong fascination for technology and avant-garde aesthetics led to his most recent body of two-dimensional works, which he refers to as digital paintings. These works were created entirely on a computer and are printed on vinyl. He adapts industrial materials and high technology to his concept of painting, creating images that are based on pre-Hispanic designs, Renaissance imagery, historical documents, and diagrams. Influenced by texts about the radical origins of Christianity, the history of human existence and evolution, the various names for God, secret societies, and the history of the relationship among world religions, Montañez Ortiz has created a number of large-scale vinyl works that combine form, image, text and symbols. Perhaps his longest running series of performance works, the piano destruction events now total well over 80 performances in museums and galleries around the world, including New York,
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...
,
Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U ...
,
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
, and
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
. No longer merely destroyed pianos, his piano sculptures are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the
Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's or ...
. Throughout his career, Montañez Ortiz assessed the symbolic meaning of his actions as a destruction artist and his engaged political position. He noted: "There are today throughout the world a handful of artists working in a way, which is truly unique in art history. Theirs is an art which separates the makers from the unmakers, the assemblers from the disassemblers, the constructors from the destructors. These artists are destroyers, materialists, and sensualists dealing with process directly. These artists are destructivists and do not pretend to play at God’s happy game of creation; on the contrary, theirs is a response to the pervading will to kill. It is not the trauma of birth which concerns the destructivist. He understands that there is no need for magic in living. It is one’s sense of death which needs the life-giving nourishment of transcendental ritual." Montañez Ortiz wrote this in his influential ''Destructivist Manifesto'' in 1962. It was only the beginning of a series of writings in which he would illuminate and develop his ideas about creating an art that was simultaneously avant-garde and politically, historically, and socially engaged. His warning against aggressive destructive urges is particularly relevant for our times, evoking war, genocide, exploitation and other consequences of human actions. Rather than evoking hopelessness and dread, however, Montañez Ortiz directs our attention to the link between the history of art, human development, ritual and inner relationships of the mind, body and spirit. Recalling historic practices of indigenous peoples, he offers his modern rituals as events through which to experience connections with the authentic self and others.


References


Further reading

* 1. Kristine Stiles, Ph.D. “Rafael Montañez Ortiz,” Rafael Montañez Ortiz: Years of the Warrior, Years of the Psyche, 1960-1988, New York: El Museo del Barrio, 1988: 30. * 2. “Destruction in Art Symposium,” Art & The 60s: This was Tomorrow, Tate Britain, 1/2/07; www.tate.org * 3. Kristine Stiles, Ph.D., “Selected Comments on Destruction Art,” Book for Unstable Media (V2_Publishing, Hertogenbosch, Netherlands: V2-Organization, 1992) * 4. Kristine Stiles, p. 14. * 5. Richard Huelsenbeck, unpublished text, signed and dated 1963. Archives of Raphael Montañez Ortiz. * 6. “Destructivism: A Manifesto by Rafael Montañez Ortiz,” 1962, unpublished, reprinted in Rafael Montañez Ortiz: Years of the Warrior, Years of the Psyche, 1960-1988, New York: El Museo del Barrio, 1988: 52.


Bibliography

* Dossier focused on Raphael Montañez Ortiz by Chon Noriega, César Ustarroz and Jesse Lerner (César Ustarroz, ed.), in ''Found Footage Magazine'', issue#6, 2020. ISSN 2462-2885. * Kristine Stiles, ''Rafael Montañez Ortiz: Years of the Warrior, Years of the Psyche, 1960-1988.'' New York: El Museo del Barrio, 1988. * Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Chon Noriega, and Yasmin Ramirez, ''Unmaking: The Work of Raphael Montañez Ortiz'' (Jersey City: Jersey City Museum), 2006. http://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/sites/default/files/Interview%20with%20Ortiz.pdf * Thomas Dreher, "Raphael Montanez Ortiz: Destruktionskunst in selbstinstituierender Gesellschaft", ''neue bildende kunst'' (Februar-März 1998): 56-63 (in German). URL: http://dreher.netzliteratur.net/2_Performance_Ortiz_Text.html . * Scott MacDonald, "Media Destructionism: The Digital/Laser/Videos of Raphael Montañez Oritz" in Chon Noriega and Ana Lopez, eds., ''The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts'' (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996): 183-207. * Scott MacDonald, "Raphael Montañez Ortiz," ''A Critica Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). * Raphael Montañez Ortiz, ''Towards and Authenticating Art,'' Doctoral Thesis, Columbia University, 1982. * Raphael Montañez Ortiz, "Culture and the People," ''Art in America'' (May–June 1971): 27. * ''Rafael Montañez Ortiz, Years of the Warrior, Years of the Psyche, 1960-1988'' (New York: El Museo del Barrio, 1988). * Robert C. Morgan, "The Destructivism of Raphael Montañez Ortiz," ''Review Art'' (January 15, 1997): 31-32. * Chon Noriega and Matthew Yokobosky, Raphael Montañez Ortiz: Early Destruction, 1957-1967 xhibition brochure(New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996). * Chon Noriega, "Sacred Contingencies: The Digital Reconstructions of Raphael Montañez Ortiz, video artist" ''Art Journal'' (December 1995); listed on Find Articles website at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_n4_v54/ai_17838389. * Jacinto Quirarte, ''Mexican American Artists'' (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973: 99-101. * Gunnar Schmidt: ''Klavierzerstörungen in Kunst und Popkultur.'' Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2012. .


External links


El Museo
Official Site {{DEFAULTSORT:Montanez Ortiz, Raphael American performance artists Living people 1934 births Museum founders Musicians from Brooklyn Artists from New York City Pratt Institute alumni Teachers College, Columbia University alumni Hispanic and Latino American artists