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14-H Sunday, September 18, 1966 THE SAN ANTONIO LIGHT Classified Want Ads ---CA 6-1231 ARTS REVIEW Casas' Works Decry TV, Movie Trend to Matriarchy By ROSEMARY KINCAID [[image]] MRS. KINCAID "Our American culture at the moment is going through the pains of a growing matriarchy. Nowhere is it more evident than in the imagery of the cinema and television." It is on this premise that San Antonio painter Mel Casas bases the continuing series of 17 paintings which he has been working on for a little more than a year. Casas, 36, assistant art professor at San Antonio College for the past five years, holds a bachelor of arts degree from Texas Western University in his home town of El Paso and a master of fine arts degree from the University of the Americas in Mexico City. All paintings of the series, entitled "Humanscape," are set against a black background, representing the anonymity of the cinematic-televisionary environment, and illustrate various popular themes of the video medium that has become practically omnipresent in our society. For example: A cinematic couple kisses arduously on a mammoth screen while numerous miniature counterparts, representing the movie-going audience, do likewise. Or, a couple is seen from behind at an outdoor movie theater. The couple unconsciously parodies the actors on the screen right down to facial expressions, which are reflected via the rear view mirror on their auto. Casas says he employs the movie-television theme repeatedly "to probe into the most compulsive mysteries of its effects." A definite division of planes in all of the paintings, separating screen images from audience images, forces upon the viewer a sense of actually participating in a cinematic or televisionary experience. Hopefully the viewer will be stimulated by this very successful recreation of the video environment to examine his participation in the real thing. Casas, who obviously in painting this series has undertaken just such an examination, not only for himself but for his audience, has concluded that the prevailing sexual influence of the popular video world is its most distorted and deceiving feature. This overemphasized sexuality, he says, has become synonymous with knowledge, energy and equality and [[text cut off]] even believed to color man's creative impulses and his approach to society, religion and politics. And herein lies the struggle between patriarchy and matriarch, says Casas. Which side is winning is evident in television and movie commercials. Men are portrayed as restrictive, conservative and even ascetic in comparison to the permissiveness, progressiveness and hedonism of the female image. Another idea which Casas seeks to illustrate is that the video fantasy world leaves the viewer a wide escape route, leads him away from a quest for personal development to a less personally taxing collective reality. Through projection the audience can view an unreal situation and at the same time live that situation mentally. This contradictory environment isolates, depersonalizes and hypnotizes the audience into what Casas calls "mass coercion, mass seduction and willing menticide." The idea is an extremely frightening one, well worth serious contemplation, which incidentally is just what the artist had in mind. Casas will have a one-man show of the series in November at Mexico City's "Casa de la Paz," a Mexican national fine arts center. one point of view, but several. Never has this requirement, this perspective requirement, been satisfied by a conventional type theater architecture; but it is definitely here." Serreau has taught at the famed Charles Dullin school of acting, now part of Frances Popular National Theater. He currently is a professor at the preparatory academy of the French National Conservatory, a school for all performing arts. Jamboree Buses Are Provided The Art League has arranged for continuous round trip bus service from Wonderland Shopping Center paring lot to the Gilbert Denman home, site of the Art Jamboree from 1-6 p.m. this Sunday. Patrons may board the bus at the Sommers' entrance of the mall and ride free of charge to the entrance of the grounds. Jamboree tickets may be bought aboard the bus. The following art students from St. Mary's Hall will act as pages at the Jamboree: Misses Sally Oppenheimer, [[text cut off]] Thompson, Shannon Hill, Marsha [[text cut off]] Gloria Urrutia, Alicia Lott, Patti [[text cut off]] Susan McDermott, Laura Mea[[text cut off]] her McKinney, Kitty Kuper, [[text cut off]] tley and Sally Reagan. [[image]] This painting from San Antonio painter Mel Casas' "Humanscape" series exemplifies the artist's attempt to recreate the forces of motion pictures and television, which he says are being so much misused in contemporary American society. Painting is 5 feet by 5 feet.
