Reviewed by Maree Boyce


To the uninitiated, Gronk might sound like a novelty toy from a few decades past; in fact, the reality involves a prolific and versatile ‘Chicano’ art practitioner. A biography is a particularly apt way to reveal this most recognized artist, who has consistently stayed true to himself, managing the delicate balance of street origins through to transformation on the global stage without losing his cultural edge, and retaining a mercurial presence. Readers of Maz Benavidez's Gronk are invited us to see the enigma of this artist’s work and his original and constructed non-identity as inescapably related: the artist and the anti-artist, his life and his career.

This volume showcases a unique artist, but also contextualises his life and work within an artistic wave from the Chicano community. It reminds readers that Chicano was originally a derogatory term for a politicised Mexican American protesting institutionalised inequality.  Without any media outlet, and with neighbourhoods bypassed by mainstream culture, Mexican Americans used murals on blank walls as their visible protest canvas to project image and voice. Gronk started in this same art protest space.  

This biography (the first within the University of Minnesota Press series A Ver: Revisioning Art History) was written by Max Benavidez, who is well-positioned as a commentator; he is also an independent scholar, teacher and writer who consults on cultural and policy matters. Gronk takes a colourful peek at its subject, the conundrum, through his layered projects across different media and stages.  Benavidez draws a parallel for Gronk’s art practice to one of his collaborative animations  – BrainFlowers – describing both as a hybrid, ephemeral flower freed from Gronk’s skull to be ‘interpreted, admired, critiqued, or hung on a wall – or disappear under whitewash or simply cover a page in one of Gronk’s diaries.’  

The foreword by Chon A. Noriego is followed by seven chapters organised around Gronk's growth as an artist.  The first talks us through his misspent youth at the local library escaping through books, movies and incessant drawing to paint a picture of immersion in popular culture, grounded in Latino, while his single parent mother worked long hours. The second introduces us to the idea of history being painted by the post-Chicano murals of Aztlan. Another section documents an engagement with ASCO, an art cooperative from which avant-garde work emerged unexpectedly from East Los Angeles, signalled by no manifesto, literally in the form of a movie, an ‘anti-movie’. The fourth chapter examines Gronk’s involvement with Dreva and has the beguiling title Art Gangsters.

Written in an easily absorbable style, Benavidez's work is well-researched and succinct.  There is enough of the first-hand account to keep readers engaged, including tales recounting Gronk’s interactive engagement with his audience in the process of creating a mural, and other protest works, one of which became the site of a political and violent struggle. Throughout the publication, numerous plates bring this work to life, revealing a brooding Gronk in front of theatre and opera sets, documenting him at work or recording artefacts like his first coloured pencil drawing of Godzilla.  

Around 1974 a highly respected and established painter Carlos Almaraz wrote in an essay of Gronk although misspelling his name – ‘Groak is a man of costume and illusion: everything is part of his work in the same way that everything is part of his theatre…changing and alive, even very aggressive.’  Gronk did experiment with this name as part of his identity construction reclaying various conflicting fictionalised accounts of the name’s origins and connections to himself and family. This book examines the early 1980s as a transformative period for Gronk as he struggled to create an identity encompassing being gay, Latino and an artist. 

Benavidez enters the debate on whether Gronk is just an ‘interpretative’ artist, looking at his layered world from street beginnings that are incongruous with his commercial success. The author suggests that Gronk copes with this uneasy situation through continuing experimentation, which often leave audiences struggling to make connection and meaning with Gronk’s life on display.  There is also the legacy of his international success , and the question of whether it has impacted positively upon the way Chicano artists are perceived - mostly thanks to marketing support, mainly from dealer Daniel Saxon, who organised the first museum survey show in 1994 encompassing a living survey to mixed reviews. Gronk maintains his personal struggle and need for freedom in the face of chaos illustrated through the ephemeral nature of his wall works at universities and museums where he painted over installation pieces at the end of exhibitions.  

Benavidez introduces readers to Gronk's multidisciplinary mystery, which icorporates collaborative film and huge solo theatre sets; in doing so, the biographer attempts to reveal more of the artist behind, through and forefronted by the works, processes, methodologies and prolific outcomes.  Whether as a coffee table browser or as serious glasses-on reading material, Gronk is certainly memorable, insightful and entertaining in the colours and shifting shapes of its portrait of an artist, a period and the history of the larger Chicano movement.


Gronk
(2007)

by Max Benavidez
University of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 978-0-89551-101-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-89551-101-0
200pp, 95-colour photos US$24.95
(with 71 minute DVD on the Artist)