Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum. New Collection Highlight

A silhouette in white Carrara marble of the infamous photograph of Bobby Seal and Huey P. Newton, co-founders of the Black Panther Party, A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love refers to one of the most iconic images of the 1960s. Reminiscent of large-scale figurative sculptures from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, which stood guard before palaces and in tombs, Martinez has re-imagined Seale and Newton as public warriors and protectors of civil rights and liberties. Born in Los Angeles in 1957, Daniel Joseph Martinez engages in an interrogation of social, political, and cultural mores through works that have been described as nonlinear, asymmetrical, multidimensional propositions. Martinez’s artistic practice incorporates text, sculpture, photography, painting, installation, robotics, performance, and public interventions to address topics of race, class and sociopolitical boundaries present in American society. While the meaning of the work’s title remains open to interpretation, the power of Jimi Hendrix’s bluesy interpretation in 1966 of Hey Joe (where you goin’ with that gun in your hand) expresses the urgent tone for this revolutionary period in American black history that the Black Panthers helped shape.

Martinez has represented the U.S. in 11 biennials worldwide and has received three National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists Fellowships. The Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Art at the University of California at Irvine, Martinez teaches in the Graduate Studies Program, New Genres Area and Critical & Curatorial Studies. He lives and works in the Crenshaw District in South Los Angeles.

Commissioned by Dennis Scholl and Linda Pace, A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love has been generously donated by Dennis and Debra Scholl to enrich the collection of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum.