Ron Miyashiro

Ron Miyashiro is a jewelry maker, painter, and assemblage artist whose practice gained momentum in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, soon after he moved there from Honolulu in 1957. After taking private art lessons, in 1958 he began attending Chouinard Art Institute, where he met Joe Goode, Larry Bell, Ed Bereal, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Llyn Foulkes, and Ed Ruscha. Miyashiro was one of the four artists included in the now legendary War Babies exhibition at the Huysman Gallery in 1961, organized by the gallery's director, Henry Hopkins. In its brief history, the Huysman Gallery, which provided an alternative to the dominant Ferus Gallery, located across the street on La Cienega Boulevard, exhibited the work of a number of young artists, including Bell, Goode, and Ruscha.

The War Babies exhibition was advertised by a controversial poster that included a pho­tograph, by Jerry McMillan, of the four artists grouped around a table covered in an American flag. The men were posed to highlight stereo­types of their racial and religious backgrounds. As Hopkins wrote, "The African American [Bereal] holds the cliché symbol of his race, a watermelon, the Jew [Bell] a bagel, the Asian [Miyashiro] a bowl of rice, and the Catholic [Goode] a tin of herring. Four specific minority groups sharing a symbolic meal."^# The poster was attacked for desecrating the American flag; however, that particular aspect was not intended to be the focal point of the image. The exhibition was a political gesture advocating for "integration and internationalism"^# and chal­lenging the established norm of racial stereo­typing and identity politics in postwar America. 

Miyashiro's focus on painting and assem­blage continues to this day. His Concord series, which he worked on throughout the 1960s, consists of works made of wood, cardboard, papier-mâché, and found objects. The series had its genesis when Miyashiro recovered some wooden boxes and a set of small crucifixes from the garbage. He took the elements of these forms as he found them and built cohesive structures out of the various parts. The arma­tures are wooden, with cardboard surfaces painted in a dark lacquer. Papier-mâché and tiny crucifixes add texture and ornamentation. In each, a narrow plane sharply bisects the boxy base of the objects; in this way, they come to resemble the armored vehicles of war. Yet the title provides a compelling juxtaposition. The pieces are named after the street where Miyashiro's studio was located; the term con­cord also resonates with the process of bring­ing together discarded materials to produce a harmonious new form. The title is furthermore a social commentary on the politics of war and civil unrest roiling Los Angeles and other urban centers in the United States and abroad in the 1960s. "Concord" suggests an agreement, and although the term speaks quite literally to the unity of the composition of the work, it more resoundingly articulates a conscious­ness that promotes union within the dissensus of social life.

Miyashiro was featured in the Yes on 10 exhibition organized by Melvin Edwards in 1964. The two artists developed a friendship and would later share a studio when Miyashiro moved to New York City in 1966. Miyashiro con­tinues to work in assemblage and painting. His compositions maintain the foundation of his early works—a combination of abstract painting with wooden sculptural forms that bisect the canvases and resemble the promi­nent features of objects in flight.            

—Kalia Brooks