Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
Errol Ortiz was part of the Chicago Imagists artist group who, during the 1960s and 1970s, took their bold lines, design aesthetic, and surreal, figurative imagery from popular culture sources like comic books, tattoo art, thrift store knick knacks, and advertisements. Often humorous or sarcastic, much of the imagery found in Ortiz’s paintings critically reference the Vietnam War, politics, and consumerism. Ortiz describes himself as a “bully with color,” exemplified here with his use of the bold, aggressive red. This portrait — with its missile of a nose, industrial building as body, binocular-shaped glasses, and its patriotic, war-painted face — can be read as a stand-in for the military-industrial complex, or the complicated relationship between the government, the military, and the corporate businesses that directly support them.