Y Gallery is pleased to present "The Execution of Maximilian: Border Paintings" by G.T. Pellizzi and Ray Smith, two Mexican-American artists of different heritages, but common cultural backgrounds. The exhibition refers to the violence represented by the border itself, replicated in the... Read more
Y Gallery is pleased to present “The Execution of Maximilian: Border Paintings” by G.T. Pellizzi and Ray Smith, two Mexican-American artists of different heritages, but common cultural backgrounds. The exhibition refers to the violence represented by the border itself, replicated in the way illegal immigrants are treated—“backyard” policies creating a ripple effect of economic and social strife, as far off as in cities such as Ciudad Juarez. The daily violence that is produced at the borders is somehow reflected through these paintings, which were executed by shooting at cans of paint with shotguns, on the Texan border of Mexico near Brownsville, between the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. The making of the paintings took place outdoors in what is, and has been for over a century, the dump for the Yturria Ranch. This arena of action and the displacement of painterly production from the artist’s studio directly into nature and the outdoors echoes the Impressionist movement-taking place around the same time as Manet’s Maximilian paintings. Here, though, the natural landscape is taken to reference the Mexican–American border.
From 1867 to 1869 Edouard Manet made a series of paintings titled The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, depicting the death of the then Habsburg-Lorraine Emperor of Mexico, who had been placed in power by Napoleon III, Emperor of France. Benito Juarez’s army that was fighting to reestablish a republican government, spearheaded by a nationalist drive to free the country from European control, executed Maximilian. The execution of Maximilian shocked the people of France because it brought to light the very contradictions that existed within the French State, between the post-revolutionary republican tradition and the authoritarian Napoleonic one.
