Pariah

Marcos Dimas, Pariah, 1971-1972, oil on canvas, 65 x 54 in. (165.1 x 137.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2013.15, © 1971-1972, Marcos Dimas

Artwork Details

Title: Pariah
Artist: Marcos Dimas
Date: 1971-1972
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 65 x 54 in. (165.1 x 137.2 cm)
Copyright: © 1971-1972, Marcos Dimas
Credit Line: Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Figure — bust
Object Number: 2013.15
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2013.15

Artwork Description

The defiant figure in Pariah wears an indigenous amulet and has wavy black hair that suggests African ancestry. Dimas depicted his monumental figure using a range of paintings styles associated with abstract art that flourished in New York during and after the 1950s. He painted Pariah shortly after he cofounded Taller Boricua, an artists’ collective that shaped the cultural dimensions of the Puerto Rican civil rights movement in New York. These artists created works that affirmed the hybrid African and indigenous (or Taino) identity of Puerto Ricans.

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, 2013

La figura desafiante en Pariah lleva un amuleto indígena y tiene el cabello negro y ondulado sugerente de la ascendencia africana. Dimas utilizó la gama de estilos pictóricos relacionados con el arte abstracto que floreció en Nueva York desde la década de los cincuenta para representar esta figura monumental. El pintó Pariah poco después de co-fundar el Taller Boricua, el colectivo de artistas que formuló la plataforma cultural del movimiento a favor de los derechos civiles de los puertorriqueños en Nueva York. Estos artistas crearon obras que afirmaron la identidad africana e indígena (o taína) híbrida, de los puertorriqueños.

Works by this artist (7 items)

View all artworks

Anima (Alma/Soul)

Artist

Ana Mendieta

Date1976, printed 1977

chromogenic print

Sweating Blood

Artist

Ana Mendieta

Date1973

single channel, super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent; 03:18 minutes

Anima (Alma/Soul)

Artist

Ana Mendieta

Date1976, printed 1977

chromogenic print

Anima (Alma/Soul)

Artist

Ana Mendieta

Date1976, printed 1977

chromogenic print

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Our America Audio Podcast - Taina Caragol: Pariah (English)
Audio podcast, Nuestra America - Taina Caragol: Pariah (espanol)

TAÍNA CARAGOL: I am Taína Caragol, curator of Latino Art and History at the National Portrait Gallery. The painting “Pariah” by the Nuyorican artist Marcos Dimas is an expressionist portrait of a mixed-race subject with broad nose and lips and splattered, painted, curly hair. He wears a necklace that seems made out of seashells or organic materials. It is enough to view this painting in reproduction to get a sense of its monumentality. The close cropping of the face and the subject’s confident gaze into the space of the viewer restores this outcast his dignity.

“Pariah” is emblematic of the art produced by the community-based arts organization known as El Taller Boricua. Dimas, together with fellow artists Armando Soto, Adrian Garcia, Martin Rubio, Manuel Nicotero, and Carlos Osorio, founded El Taller in 1969 to fill the void of cultural organizations in East Harlem, also known as El Barrio, an important New York-Puerto Rican enclave since the 1930s. Their aim was to provide studio and exhibition space for Puerto Rican artists, who like other artists of color felt excluded from the mainstream art system at the time. They also wanted to make art a means for social change in the community.

Today, El Taller, co-directed by Marcos Dimas and Fernando Salicrup, is recognized as a landmark institution of the Nuyorican Movement. Two decades after the massive migration that brought almost half a million Puerto Ricans to the United States to fill the demand for cheap labor in post-war industries, the Nuyorican Movement emerged in the late 1960s, seeking the social and cultural empowerment of New York Puerto Ricans. It was nourished by the zeitgeist of activism and counterculture that had emerged with the civil rights movement and was amplified by the anti-Vietnam War protests and the decolonizing movements of the Third World.

A main goal of the audience of El Taller was to recover the Taino and African components of Puerto Rican culture traditionally downplayed in official narratives of the island’s history in favor of the Spanish component. The subject matter of “Pariah” and its depiction of Afro-Taino mestizaje are clear expressions of this artistic agenda. Dimas effectively subverts the Western artistic conventions of portraiture usually reserved for the wealthy, elite individuals to portray an unknown brown subject and eradicate his marginality.

Exhibitions

Media - 2011.12 - SAAM-2011.12_1 - 77591

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art

October 25, 2013–March 2, 2014

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art presents the rich and varied contributions of Latino artists in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, when the concept of a collective Latino identity began to emerge.