week 3 - yolanda m. lopez

Runner: Third College Parking Lot

from ¿A Donde Vas, Chicana? Getting Through College by Yolanda M. Lopez

The image above is part of a series of larger-than-life paintings that depict the artist, Yolanda M. Lopez, running across the University of California, San Diego, where Lopez attended graduate school during the 1970s. At first glance, Third College Parking Lot presents a rather mundane image—a woman dressed in shorts and a white tank top runs through a bland, colorless parking lot. However, upon further inspection, Lopez’s autobiographical work reveals a layered and dynamic critique of modernist art, patriarchal representations of women, and the automobile industry.

The school building in the background functions as a symbol of modernism, representing “the imagined transcendent qualities of shape, form, color, gesture, and texture” (Davalos 75) which Lopez seeks to challenge. In embracing a more narrative approach to her work, Lopez explicitly rejects modernist art styles that typically avoid representation and storytelling. The depiction of a woman running also seeks to challenge historically sexist images of women at leisure. Lopez’s runner is vibrant and strong. She runs by worn and lifeless cars with ease. She doesn’t rely on them either, she can get herself from A to B with her own two feet. The automobile industry, like capitalism, offers a false sense of freedom—it’s a “form of escape that offers nothing but traffic jams, distance, and wasted time” (Davalos 77).