It’s meant to provoke, and inspire

Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros is well known in Los Angeles as the creator of three massive outdoor works, painted during his sojourn here in 1932. Only one of them is on public view: “Portrait of Mexico Today,” commissioned for a home in Pacific Palisades and moved to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art a few years ago. “American Tropical,” on Olvera Street, remains shrouded in a conservation project that has dragged on for nearly two decades amid bureaucratic wrangling and funding disputes. “Street Meeting,” recently rediscovered at the defunct Chouinard Art Institute, awaits restoration under several layers of paint and tile on a wall that has been divided by a roof.

But come February, a different aspect of Siqueiros’ work will be introduced to L.A. for all to see. “An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life” -- an exhibition at the Gallery at REDCAT that’s part of a multiphase project -- will offer works by contemporary artists based on a vast archive of photographs compiled by Siqueiros.

Amassed from the 1930s until his death in 1975, the 10,000-piece collection is housed at Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros in Mexico City, a museum and contemporary art venue at the artist’s former home in the Polanco district.

Siqueiros wrote that photographic documents are the best way to grasp “the essential feeling of the modern era’s dynamic and subversive elements.” His archive offers an international view of such topics as “misery,” “workers and industry,” “archeology,” “religious architecture” and “personal photography” through the filter of an artist steeped in political and social issues. He collected pictures of artworks, animals, Mexican cinema, Russian theater, political protests and ethnic struggles, including a 1970 Associated Press photo documenting the death of Ruben Salazar, a Times columnist and television news director who was killed in Los Angeles during a Chicano Moratorium demonstration against the Vietnam War.

Siqueiros established his archive as a source of images and ideas for artists. “An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life,” which includes an online initiative as well as the exhibition, is intended to fulfill his wish. About half the images collected by Siqueiros are viewable at www.e-flux.com/projects.php. The exhibition is a work in progress, likely to travel after its L.A. debut (Feb. 3 to April 3) and change along the way before its final appearance at Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros in fall 2006.

“The exhibition is not so much about the art as it is about actualizing an artist’s intention,” said Eungie Joo, director of the Gallery at REDCAT. The project was organized by artist Anton Vidokle and Lauri Firstenberg, an independent curator who plans to launch LAXART, a nonprofit arts center, on Nov. 5 in Culver City.

Vidokle and Firstenberg have invited an international group of artists -- including Carlos Amorales, John Baldessari, Daniel Buren, Mircea Canto, Mierva Cuevas, Daniel J. Martinez, Ruben Ochoa, Martha Rosler and Anri Sala -- to work with material in the archive that has been digitized for direct access. Additional artists will be asked to make proposals for billboards to appear in conjunction with the show. To expand the exhibition’s audience, e-flux projects, an Internet exhibition and publication program, will add some of the artworks to the online database of Siqueiros’ collection.

Suzanne Muchnic