Feb. 4
TEXAS:
The Art of Capital Punishment
Premeditated: Meditations on Capital Punishment, Recent Works by Malaquias
Montoya
Dougherty Arts Center, Austin, January 5-30
Instituto Mexicano, San Antonio, February 17-28
I've always been against the death penalty," says Malaquias Montoya. "I've
just never been an activist."
Perhaps not an anti-death penalty activist, but Montoya, who teaches at
the University of California-Davis, has long been considered a leading
figure in social protest art. He is best known for public murals,
silkscreen images, and offset lithograph posters decrying a trio of global
evils: imperialism, racism, and sexism. Recently he came to Austin to
introduce his latest work, which focuses on capital punishment. As he
explains, during the 2000 presidential election he became aware of Texas
high execution rate under then-Governor Bush and was inspired to
illustrate his feelings about what he refers to as "state-sanctioned
killings."
Premeditated: Meditations on Capital Punishment, Recent Works by Malaquias
Montoya unites in a single room more than 20 images depicting the
development of capital punishment in the United States since the late 19th
century. As the catalogue text indicates, Montoya "does not produce his
art for the purpose of selling, he does not exhibit in commercial
galleries, and he is suspicious of museums." But he does want to reach
people - particularly people who will be motivated to contact their
legislators.
The violent subject matter of Premeditated demands a meditative space, one
that allows lengthy, directed contemplation of difficult questions.
Montoya begins this conversation with the viewer by asking, "Why do we
kill? And what happens to us as a humanity, as a culture?" In paintings
such as The Execution of the Innocent or The Execution of the Mentally
Retarded, the viewer is asked to consider the moral implications of state
power, a question that resonates strongly in a state that is the epicenter
of Americas modern death penalty experience.
Montoyas death penalty art derives edgy rawness from his belief that
"revenge doesnt bring anything." But revenge does make for emotionally
disturbing art, as is apparent from the observations of visitors to the
Dougherty Arts Center. "Powerful," was the word most often used to
describe their reaction to Montoyas images of traumatized, dead bodies.
"Depressing," was the one-word response of a 10-year-old girl at the
exhibit opening.
Undoubtedly, the grotesqueries of the exhibition will disturb viewers of
all ages. Montoya features most of the readily identifiable forms of
capital punishment used in America over the past century and a half - with
the notable exceptions of the firing squad and the gas chamber. At every
turn, he also provides the viewer with an eclectic, if predictable, group
of texts, seemingly chosen for their stirring condemnation of capital
punishment.
He quotes French existentialist Albert Camus and U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Thurgood Marshall, both outspoken abolitionists. These and other
texts make it seem as though the artist is trying to anchor his images in
reasoned expressions against capital punishment. He need not have
bothered. The images themselves direct the viewer to scrutinize its value,
as Montoya himself concedes. In contrast to the text, the images of death
"hit you somewhere else."
The lynching series delivers the 1st emotional punch and establishes the
historical framework. Inspired by the well-known macabre postcards
published as Without Sanctuary, Montoyas lynching series is a group of
images that depict a southern black man. The line of mucus or blood
dribbling from the dead mans nose forces us to see death at the end of a
noose as humiliation, and reminds us that such scenes were common
throughout the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed,
Montoya says that as a young child he remembers hearing about Emmett Tills
notorious 1955 lynching.
In recent years, a significant body of scholarship has emerged,
demonstrating the existence of what some researchers refer to as "the
death belt." In this group of former Confederate states - including Texas,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia - whites lynched people of
color after Reconstruction failed in 1877. And those are precisely the
states where capital punishment flourished in the mid- to -late 20th
century. Montoya obviously understands this history: His images force us
to focus on the noose and the expelled fluids - perhaps blood or vomitnear
the face. In so doing, the artist establishes the relationship between
lynching and hanging.
The images of lynching and hanging are followed by several that depict
electrocutions. In the late 19th century, an influential group of
reformers believed that modernity - in the form of the electric chair -
would make the death sentence less painful. New York state became the
pioneer. Montoya shows this development in The Execution of William
Kemmler and The Human Experiment, both of which memorialize the 1st person
executed by electrocution, in 1888.
The horror of the act has less to do with grotesque images, because - in
contrast to lynching and hanging - authorities often covered the head of
the person to be electrocuted. But with his depiction of the restrained
body, the contorted fingers, and - particularly in Ruth Snyder, 1st woman
executed - the seeming passivity of the condemned, Montoya provokes us
just the same. He makes it difficult to imagine how anyone could have
considered electrocution a less traumatic form of death. Moreover, he
informs us in the accompanying text, that an eyewitness described how
electrocution cooked Kemmlers flesh while a team of doctors looked on in
horror. In Botched Execution, Montoya reminds us that Florida continued to
use the electric chair through the 1990s.
Even before the overdue retirement of the electric chair, Texas began to
tout lethal injections as another modern and purportedly less painful form
of execution. A More Gentle Way of Killing (which appears on the cover of
this issue of the Observer) depicts this argument. But the stylized
juxtaposition of Christs head on the body of the condemned man is Montoyas
way of telling us that lethal injection and crucifixion share the same
purpose - killing. Even in The Gentle Sleep, when Montoya uses natural
representation of a persons head to depict lethal injection, he unnerves.
Although the condemned man looks peaceful, the accompanying text describes
the "death rattle," the expulsion of air forced out the windpipe as the
chemical Pavulon renders the diaphragm useless, leading to suffocation.
The role of medical science in the process of capital punishment has grown
over time. In the Texas death house, medical technicians insert the IVs,
then administer the lethal drugs from behind a one-way mirror. A doctor
enters only to pronounce the time of death. In The Executioner Montoya
portrays the dual role of medical science: A figure of a physician,
syringe in hand, wears the executioners black hood. Montoya also plays
with the traditional image of doctors as lifes guardians. Here, they are
also the gatekeepers of death.
Today, of course, the black hood takes on still another connotation, one
of global infamy - the hooded prisoners of Abu Ghraib.
n his latest exhibit, Montoya has created an iconography of U.S.
executions. In so doing he places our present within the framework of a
horrific past, from which we are not so far removed. The images provoke.
But are they all that surprising? In Premeditated, Montoya unwittingly
reveals that anti-death penalty politics is at something of an impasse.
The images he has chosen form part of an identifiable tradition that
decries state killing. But will art and overt condemnation sway those who
continue to believe in the appropriateness of capital punishment to avenge
the victims of violent crimes?
Montoya tries to break this deadlock with a piece called The Victim. The
victim does not refer to a crime victim, but to the collateral damage
created by an uncaring society that kills to avenge violent crimes. He
wanted the exhibit to culminate with that piece, he told me, "to somehow
show how grotesque we become when we kill." In his view, we are all
victims of capital punishment.
Premeditated may have begun with the former governor of Texas and the
so-called "death belt," but it does not end there. After a 3-year hiatus,
executions resumed in California last month when Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Michael Beardslee. Now Connecticut is
contemplating its 1st execution in 40 years. Still, Montoya is not
deterred.
"Just looking at these images of the death penalty reminds you of what
kind of world we live in," he told me. "And how much work we have to do to
change those things. In a way they energize me, through anger, through a
feeling of the injustices that we have to work against. It's a motive, and
that motive keeps me going."
Former Observer intern Patrick Timmons received his Ph.D. from the
University of Texas at Austin last May and now teaches history at a
college in Georgia. He witnessed the execution of Jessie Joe Patrick in
Huntsville on September 17, 2002.
****
EXECUTION DIARY
Contemplating the photographs in Diary of an Execution, an exhibit by
Swiss photojournalist Fabian Biasio, is a humbling and harrowing
experience. The exhibit is currently on display at Houstons ArtCar Museum,
one of James and Ann Harithas art spaces. You have to pass through some
almost giddy examples of car art to get to Biasios photographs, so
stepping into the room set aside for Diary is like leaving a rowdy street
to enter a quiet chapel.
The exhibition documents the days leading up to the 2003 execution of
James Colburn, whom the state of Texas put to death despite protests from
many quarters. Colburn was mentally ill - paranoid schizophrenic - which
the state didnt even attempt to deny. Colburn was simply judged to have
failed the right/wrong test. Schizophrenic or not, he knew that he did
wrong when he killed 55-year-old Peggy Murphy in his hometown of Conroe.
Indeed, according to the facsimile of the arrest report on display, he
raped and killed Murphy, then asked her neighbors to call the police. The
report states, "He killed the woman because he wanted to return to
prison."
The exhibition doesnt go into great detail concerning Colburns mental
health. He only appears in a few images, in fact. Instead the
heart-breaking show gives us pictures of his sister, Tina Morris, in the
days leading up to his execution and immediately after. Biasio seems to
have had complete access to Morris grief, as she breaks down again and
again in front of his camera.
The photos tell a very powerful story, some through the use of homey and
ironic detail, such as the photo of Tina buying plastic flowers for her
still-living brothers upcoming funeral. But some are simply overpowering,
even if you try to look at them from an aesthetic point of view. Theres
the quartet of photos showing Tina swigging on some kind of bottle, then
breaking down in the Polunsky Unit parking lot before going in to see her
brother.
The caption for a photo taken 24 hours before the execution tells us that
she "vomited all day." We see her calling family members to coordinate
their last trip to Polunsky. The next morning, Tinas boyfriend, just off
the night shift, picks up Tina in his pickup to drive her to Huntsville.
Biasio takes a matter-of-fact shot of the road, allowing us to see the
last stretch of highway upon which James Colburn will ever gaze.
Once at Huntsville, the family members kill time by putting together a
puzzle in the macabrely named "Christian Hospitality House." A minister
comes in to lead them in a group prayer, and Tinas cheeks puff out in pain
as she tries to pray along. At 5 p.m. she makes her last phone call, and
at 5:30 she and her relatives finally make their way to the Walls Unit.
At 6 p.m. - execution time - we see a small crowd of protestors, one
holding a "Treat the Mentally Ill" poster. At 6:21 James Colburn is dead.
"I have no one to blame but myself," he said. At 6:30 we see the removal
of his "personal items," a plastic bag full of empty soda cans.
Then comes the image of Tina stroking her dead brothers cheek. "For the
first time in 10 years," the caption reads, "Tina can touch her brother."
Three days later, James is buried in the familys Corsicana plot.
Theres not much to say about the photographers art, other than to say that
by documenting the hour-by-hour passage of time, Biasio succeeds in making
the somehow abstract notion of execution quite real, and, I would think,
shameful to us as Texans and Americans. Of course, shame is in short
supply these days.
A footnote: On January 20, Dave Atwood of the Texas Coalition to Abolish
the Death Penalty, one of the exhibitions principal organizers, was
sentenced to 5 days in prison for crossing the yellow protest line at
Huntsville during an execution last November. Diary of an Execution is on
view at Houstons ArtCar Museum through March.
(source: Texas Observer)
