An Examination by Professor Rebecca Arnfeld

History painting, once regarded as the crown of the artistic genres, was all but abandoned by modern artists. With its emphasis elaborate staging and of history as the great unfolding of the stories of great men and nations, it seemed badly suited to the present-orientation of most modernists and their insistence that art need not tell a story. History painting’s proximity and service to power only made it that much less serviceable as a genre to postmodern artists, who enlarged their concerns to include acknowledging the structures that support inequality. But, history paintings were once valued because they showed an artist at the height of their engagement with the ideals of their society. Aside from the series of technical hurdles that the genre used to entail mastering centuries ago, it also meant that the artist had come to declare certain moral or ethical values in the work.

Richard Muñoz-Moore is self-taught as an artist, and his approach to this particular body of work is more than just one of documentation. Writing about the paintings, he says, “I had to create images that take you to that moment, I want you to be angry. I want to inspire communication. I want us to learn.” We are living through a time of heightened political division, including levels of violence that are unlike anything this country has seen in many decades. There is certainly no shortage of images of our current moment; we live in the time of a twenty-four hour news cycle, as well as the nearly ubiquitous cell phone camera. What is lacking, however, is what Muñoz-Moore’s paintings provide. Functioning in the orbit of history painting, Muñoz-Moore is observing and documenting the troubling events of this time, but he is also unafraid to re-visit painting’s previous role as moral commentary.

Similarly, El Paso, 2019, takes on the highly politicized issue of migration in the US, especially during the Trump administration. Immigrants are currently detained in more than two hundred facilities in the US, many run by private contractors. The El Paso facility came to national and international attention in 2019 because of the abysmal conditions there. This painting is a confrontation between the viewer and the fencing and razor-wire that separate us from the detainees, their faces are an anonymous blur in the dark setting. They are both displayed for us and hidden in a way that mirrors the space they take in the news cycle; reports from the site said that it was so over-crowded that it had been standing-room only for days, with 900 people occupying a space built for 125.

The Crossing and The Work You Won’t Do, both 2020, use the same style as the previous two pieces to create emblematic depictions of migration, this time a side not captured in news headlines. The rhythmic motion of the figures across the landscape of Crossing is a reminder that the patterns of migration are eons old. As the shadowed figures in Work recall, the stream of migration feeds the demands of an agricultural industry that requires labor according to the movement of the seasons, not the whims of politicians. Muñoz-Moore, a second-generation Mexican-American whose grandfather was a migrant farmworker, considers this subject to be a personal one, as well as a current political topic.

Politics are the drumbeat that unites the artwork in Dystopia. The Tiki Torch Nazis, 2020, that flow across the canvas in a gathering are a reminder of how much has changed in the last few years. Muñoz-Moore says that he “never created a political piece until Trump.” Seen from a bird’s eye-view, the men with torches seem conjured up out of the darkness. Nazis shares its nighttime atmosphere with Golden Calf, 2020, another reminder of the tribal, and quasi-religious overtones politics has taken on in the last few years. Muñoz-Moore writes that it was inspired by “watching footage of people at various political events and those distorted, screaming faces of people draped in what to me looked like team colors.”

Prior to his foray into political work, Muñoz-Moore worked mostly in portraits. And, his portraits are interesting for the way they connect to his earlier career as a commercial make-up artist. He brings to these the acute awareness of what it takes to create perfection, or the illusion of it. Where the other works discussed here have sometimes turned away from looking too closely at the subject, Kavanaugh, Moscow Mitch, The President’s Handler, Madame Speaker, and The Great Pretender, 2020, all bring the viewer uncomfortably close to the subject. Where the tragedies present in the earlier pieces discussed push Muñoz-Moore farther from their subjects, here their power and influence draw him closer. With a critical eye, he scans their faces, looking for whatever ways the illusion has fallen. These are masterfully observed, with the multitude of colors and shadows present in the subject’s face. Kavanaugh has a blotchiness that, combined with his angry expression, conveys both menace and a crippling weakness. Moscow Mitch is carefully controlled, a lip held in check, confirming the effort of a life lived behind a poker face; the artist pokes through his façade with a clever lapel pin. Madame Speaker casts a wary glance to the side, leaving us to appreciate her expertly applied makeup. The President’s Handler, in the non-descript suit of an intelligence agent, barely contains a curl to his lip that gives away a deeper sense of disdain. Finally, The Great Pretender presents a vision of Trump too big to be contained by the canvas. Bloated and looming, only the blond hairs of his eyebrows pick up the light, and his eyes remain darkened, all pupil.

The work in Dystopia shows Muñoz-Moore to be an insightful interpreter of the current moment. Scenes from the news and portraits of the powerful are brought through the lens of painting to be given the kind of engagement and scrutiny that this historical moment so desperately requires.