- Title
-
Humanscape 62
- Artist
- Date
- 1970
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 73 x 97 in. (185.4 x 246.4 cm)
- Copyright
-
© 1970, the Casas Family
- Credit Line
-
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
- Mediums Description
- acrylic on canvas
- Classifications
- Highlights
- Keywords
-
- Object – foodstuff – brownie
- Indian
- Dress – uniform – scout uniform
- Object Number
-
2012.37
- Palette
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI
Humanscape 62
In the early 1970s, Chicano activists successfully lobbied the Frito-Lay Company to remove its cartoon mascot for Frito-Lay corn chips, the Frito Bandito, from public circulation. This figure is the centerpiece of Casas’s pop-styled painting Humanscape 62. A grinning Frito Bandito, who appears to have been carved from semi-precious stone, is perched atop a skeleton and surrounded by a series of “brown” references drawn from American and indigenous cultures. Such incongruent juxtapositions — which include a tempting plate of brownies, a junior Girl Scout, a Native American in profile, and quotes of masterworks such as an Aztec mosaic — critique the trivialization of Chicano culture by mainstream American advertising and allude to the rich cultures that stereotypes obscure.