UC San Diego

Charles “Chaz” Bojorquez was born in Los Angeles, California in 1949. He developed his artistic practice in ceramics and painting at Chouinard Art Institute (1968-1970), painting at California State University Los Angeles (1967-1968), and calligraphy at the Pacific Asia Art Museum through instruction by Master Yun Chung Chiang (1966-68). Beginning in 1969, Chaz created large scale ephemeral image and text-based paintings combining his calligraphy practice with spray paint and a large-scale stencil. The image known as Señor Suerte is a skeleton lavishly accessorized with a wide brimmed hat outstretching from its face and a fur wrap draping over its clavicle. The skeleton outstretches two crossed fingers up to its hallow eye sockets and grimacing smile. According to the artist, his writing style is derived from Mexican American youth from the 1940’s and represents a form of identity and solidarity. The structural design of the public writing forms consists of an overarching group name, aliases for those in the group, and individual signature. This research inquiry explores the fragmentation of the image into distinct spaces of interaction along with different reproduction techniques, meanings attributed to the image, and asserted value. The circulation processes of Chaz’s painting Señor Suerte challenges the economic value in the art market and understanding of art appropriation. At an initial level, the image has three surfaces to consider: walls of the public space, flesh, and canvas. The first social register is the public space in Chaz’s immediate neighborhood where he originally painted. These paintings followed the stylistic conventions of a vernacular Mexican American writing practice. Chaz’s artwork acquired an additional meaning when his image was used as a tattoo representing a neighborhood subculture, also known as a gang. Reproduction of the image occurs inside the prison industrial complex by unknown producers. The third form of fragmentation is as a painting on canvas that is either held in private collections or acquired and exhibited in art institutions, these paintings are also produced by the artist. The ambiguity of how the image circulates in an alternative prison market distinguished by the art market is the driving value of the image that we will unravel. My argument is that the various reproductions unveil sociohistorical and cultural traces embedded in the original while contesting viewer accessibility in decoding a vernacular Chicano language. Chaz’s artistic strategy is a singular and significant case where the production of symbolic capital (as art in museums and galleries) remains differentiated from the appropriation, value-formation, and circulation of images in the spaces of marginality and exclusion of the working-class Mexican American experience. Visual analysis, oral history interviews, and archival research provide a critical reading of Chaz’s artistic practice across class and ethnic divides that reframes the formation of Chicano art, social art history, and American Art.