First Supper (After a Major Riot)

An essay by Julia Campbell

Left to right: Harry Gamboa Jr., Gronk, Patssi Valdez, Willie Herron III
Asco 1980, Harry Gamboa Jr., 1980, black and white photograph. From the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, via Google Arts and Culture.

Asco

On Christmas Eve, 1974, a group of young, ghoulishly-costumed Angelenos staged a dinner banquet in the midst of evening traffic on the busy Arizona Avenue. As both an ephemeral performance piece and a moment immortalized in photography, First Supper (After a Major Riot) demonstrates the avant-garde nature of the artist collective Asco. The four primary artists involved – Patssi Valdez, Harry Gamboa Jr., Willie Herrón III, and Gronk – formed the group after meeting in high school and discovering their shared interests in extravagance, performance, identity, and political activism. Receiving criticism from viewers that claimed the group’s art elicited asco (the Spanish word for "disgust" or "nausea"), the group embraced the term as their name. [1] Their many performance-based, photographic, and conceptual artworks disregard the restraining expectations placed on the group by American society, their East Los Angeles community, and Chicano* civil rights activists.

*Chicano/a/x is a term for someone residing in the United States who is of Mexican descent. While Chicanx has recently developed as a gender-neutral alternative, Mexican American groups in the 1970s, like Asco, self-identified as Chicano.

East Los Angeles in the 1970s

Asco's art often reflected the tense historical context of their environment. The performance First Supper (After a Major Riot) was executed in 1974 on a narrow traffic island on Arizona Avenue, just before the street intersects with Whittier Boulevard. This location holds rich historical significance: it was the site of a Chicano anti-Vietnam War protest known as the Chicano Moratorium, which rapidly escalated to a riot due to violent police interference. [2] Held in 1970 by Chicano activists, the protestors organized in Laguna Park to demonstrate their opposition to the disproportionate amount of Chicano youth being drafted and killed in the Vietnam War: around twenty percent of American casualties were Chicano, though Chicanos only made up five to ten percent of the United States population. [3] During the demonstration, the Los Angeles Police Department fired tear gas into the crowds and brutally assaulted protestors, leading to three deaths and over two hundred arrests. [4] This event, attended by Harry Gamboa Jr., would greatly impact the work of Asco. Namely, the group would reclaim Whittier Boulevard through multiple performances that reacted to the Chicano Moratorium, including First Supper (After a Major Riot).

First Supper (After a Major Riot)

Asco, First Supper (After a Major Riot), 1974, photograph. From the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, via Google Arts and Culture.

Asco responded to the Chicano Moratorium riots through the visual language of First Supper (After a Major Riot). In the performance, the group, joined by friend Humberto Sandoval, gathered in an intimate dining scene, staged on a traffic median under a towering, green road sign reading “Whittier Bl.”. All performers were seated around a hastily arranged table, supported by diverse objects: on the left, Valdez sat on a cardboard box, while on the right, Gronk rested on a low chair. In front of the table layed a doll of a child, while behind the group, Gronk’s haunting black and white painting The Truth About the Terror of Chile (1973) hung. [5] Other figural objects, like the large papier mâché head in the left back or the anatomical dummy on the right, congested the space occupied by the performance. These still, bodily objects conversed with the ghoulishly dressed members of Asco. Transformed by bright white face makeup and corpse-like masks, the performers dined with their mannequin guests as if a lively assembly of the dead.

In this way, the performance refers to the Mexican celebration of Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. [6] This traditional holiday frequently uses the imagery of the calavera, or "skeleton", in its festivities as a representation of the dead. Accordingly, the calavera motif is often associated with Mexico. By engaging with the iconography of Día de los Muertos, the group pays tribute to the lost members of their community and their cultural heritage.

Performance vs. Photograph

Significantly, this artwork exists as both a lived performance and a photograph conveying a moment of the scene. As performance is transient and site-specific, Gamboa would capture many of Asco’s happenings in photography to be more widely disseminated. [7] The formal distinctions between these two versions of First Supper (After a Major Riot) are imperative to understanding Asco’s artistic practice. While the performance emphasizes the dissident action of the performers in their urban environment, the photograph allows for a controlled image and the greater circulation of the artwork.

During the performance, the qualities of movement, time, and experience took effect. The dynamic environment created by the city life around them, as well as the transitioning daylight as time passed to evening, were integral to their performative work. Additionally, the performance acquired the colors of its environment: passing cars and pedestrians against the overcast sky, asphalt roads, and fluorescent storefronts. Despite the extravagant set up, the meal was rushed in an effort to avoid the confrontational police who frequently monitored the area. [8] Altogether, the uncontrollable aspects of the urban environment, evening traffic, and threatening law enforcement affected the execution of the performance.

Alvaro Parra, The Asco Interviews, 2014. Posted by Nottingham Contemporary.

Watch a clip from the performance First Supper (After a Major Riot) captured by Harry Gamboa Jr. (2:05 - 2:10)

Contrarily, the photograph offers a different experience of the work. Though there is a concentrated place of figural action in the center, the rest of the photograph appears empty of people. The only other identifiable person stands on the traffic island in blurred distance. Though the photograph conveys a barren urban landscape, Gamboa recalls that he was “holding a handful of people at bay from entering into the frame” while taking the photograph. [9] Gamboa’s comment demonstrates the ability for the photograph to manipulate and control the captured subject. In fact, this was an important detail to Gamboa and the members of Asco. For the group, photography was a means of communicating and defining their own identity, as opposed to the aggressive and criminal image of Chicanos that was projected in the media. [10]

Legacy

Ultimately, First Supper (After a Major Riot) demonstrates the daring, political art of Asco. Living in East Los Angeles during the Vietnam War and Chicano civil rights movement, the artist collective utilized their work to protest and critique barriers enforced on the Chicano community. Through flamboyant performance and photography, Asco challenged the popular image of Chicanos while pushing the boundaries of activism. A haunting feast of skeletons and dolls, First Supper (After a Major Riot) embodies asco: a nauseating disgust towards the injustices of the world, amplified by the powerful performance of the collective.

[1] Asco Art Collective, 1994. YouTube video, 0:45, Posted [February 2014], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSQSekn7Ihg.

[2] Harry Gamboa, “In the City of Angels, Chameleons, and Phantoms: Asco, a Case Study of Chicano Art in Urban Tones (or, Asco Was a Four-Member Word),” in Manifestos & Polemics in Latin American Modern Art, ed. Patrick Frank (University of New Mexico Press, 2017), 225.

[3] Alvaro Parra, The Asco Interviews, 2013. YouTube video, 11:27, Posted [February 2014], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyFViWGU06I.

[4] Nicolas Lampert, “No Apologies: Asco, Performance Art, and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement,” in A People’s Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements, 1 online resource vols., New Press People’s History (New York, NY: The New Press, 2013), 244, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10821134.

[5] C. Ondine Chavoya et al., Asco : Elite of the Obscure : A Retrospective, 1972-1987 (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2011), 47.

[6] Eva Wattolik, “Banquet and Heterotopia: Asco’s First Supper (After A Major Riot) (1974),” Public Art Dialogue 8, no. 1 (January 2, 2018): 36, https://doi.org/10.1080/21502552.2018.1430294.

[7] Chavoya et al., Asco, 57.

[8] Wattolik, “Banquet and Heterotopia”, 38.

[9] “Asco, Firsthand | Unframed,” accessed April 5, 2020, https://unframed.lacma.org/2011/08/29/asco-firsthand.

[10] Lampert, “No Apologies: Asco, Performance Art, and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement”, 244.

Additional Resources

1. Interview with Asco from LACMA

2. "Your Art Disgusts Me: Early Asco 1971-75" from East of Borneo

3. Watch "Chicano Moratorium: a question of Freedom"

Explore

Using Google Street View, explore the location of Asco's First Supper (After a Major Riot).

Bibliography

Asco Art Collective, 1994. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSQSekn7Ihg.

“Asco, Firsthand | Unframed.” Accessed April 5, 2020. https://unframed.lacma.org/2011/08/29/asco-firsthand.

Chavoya, C. Ondine, Rita Gonzalez, David E. James, Amelia Jones, Chon A. Noriega, Jesse Lerner, Deborah Cullen, Maris Bustamante, Colin Gunckel, and David Roman. Asco : Elite of the Obscure : A Retrospective, 1972-1987. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2011.

Congdon, Kristin. “MAKING MERRY WITH DEATH:: Iconic Humor in Mexico’s Day of the Dead.” In Of Corpse, edited by PETER NARVÁEZ, 198–220. Death and Humor in Folkore and Popular Culture. University Press of Colorado, 2003. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nsgh.11.

Gamboa, Harry. “In the City of Angels, Chameleons, and Phantoms: Asco, a Case Study of Chicano Art in Urban Tones (or, Asco Was a Four-Member Word).” In Manifestos & Polemics in Latin American Modern Art, edited by Patrick Frank, 223–30. University of New Mexico Press, 2017.

Lampert, Nicolas. “No Apologies: Asco, Performance Art, and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement.” In A People’s Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements, 242–51. New Press People’s History. New York, NY: The New Press, 2013. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10821134.

Parra, Alvaro. The Asco Interviews, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyFViWGU06I.

Wattolik, Eva. “Banquet and Heterotopia: Asco’s First Supper (After A Major Riot) (1974).” Public Art Dialogue 8, no. 1 (January 2, 2018): 32–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/21502552.2018.1430294.

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