V.2.1 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 833783
The noted Chicano art historian Jacinto Quirarte (born 1931) presents two contrasting viewpoints on Mexican American and Chicano art through this summary of interviews held in the summer of 1970 with San Antonio artists such as Mel Casas and Rudy Treviño and California-based artists Esteban Villa and José Montoya. For Treviño, branding oneself a Chicano artist is irrelevant in the realm of art since, in his view, aesthetic value must prevail. Conversely, more politically engaged artists such as Casas—whose responses foreshadow his later involvement with the San Antonio group Con Safo (C/S)—discuss their varying degrees of involvement with Mexican American culture and offer early definitions of Chicano art. This excerpt is from the document’s original publication [Jacinto Quirate “8. Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano Art: Two views,” Mexican American Artists (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1973), 132–136].
SERIOUS STUDENTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART would find it difficult to identify an artist by nationality if confronted with his works and no other information. In this respect, American artists of Mexican descent—outside the small towns of northern New Mexico, where artisans have continued to work in the old ways— are indistinguishable from other American artists. They have been affected by the same events that have revolutionized twentieth-century art. Still, antecedents have to be kept in mind. The Mexican American artist straddles several traditions, which at times seem irreconcilable. On the one hand, he is indirectly related to the Spanish colonial and Mexican republican periods of American history and directly involved with American culture of the twentieth century. On the other hand, the ties with Mexico remain strong, and in certain parts of the Southwest there appears to be a concerted effort to emphasize them more strenuously than ever before.
One of the questions asked the artists interviewed during the summer of 1970 had to do with background and the influence that this had on their development as artists. Two representative types of response to these questions are presented here—the first given by Mel Casas [MC], Emilio Aguirre [EA], and Rudy Treviño [RT], all of San Antonio, and the second by Esteban Villa [EV] from Sacramento, California. The most extensive treatment is given to Villa’s response, since he has not been discussed in the main body of this study, as have the others.
Casas defines a Mexican American as an outsider, “because once he’s not an outsider, he’s not a Mexican American anymore.” Aguirre was more concerned with the Mexican American label. “Why don’t we delete this word Mexican? Why not American of Mexican descent instead of Mexican American?”
RT: I think it all evolves out of search for identity, pride. Therefore, you are going to call attention to this.
MC: I think it goes with the times. Because I remember when I was in school in El Paso. Whenever we had to fill out forms for job applications, the teachers made us write down Mexican where it says nationality. We were not Mexicans, but this is what Texas did at that time.
EA: Well, I don’t think there is any need to say Mexican American really. You are an American first of all. This is the way you should be treated. A Mexican is someone born in Mexico. Like Treviño said, pride. I don’t think pride has anything to do with that, because you know what you are and that’s it.
RT: Socially and politically, I think it could be appropriate, but in the world of art I don’t think that it has any relevance. The minute you bring that phase of your kind of struggle into your work—propaganda—then it shouldn’t be taken as art. It should be taken as a propaganda movement. Now, politically and socially, there is a great difference. No one is going to call you an American. You’re a Mexican American. That’s an accepted thing. Once you accept it then you can take off from there and you can progress.
EA: Now, I don’t have to say that I am a Mexican. All you have to do is look at me. [Everyone laughs.]
MC: You ask whether we paint because we are Mexican Americans. Well, we would paint whether we were Chinese, Anglo, or French, or what have you. Now my work does deal with my relation to the culture, the environment. My painting is propaganda. But then all painting is propaganda…whether you paint just squares. You are pushing a formal school.
RT: The aesthetic value is more important in my view. Now, the material you deal with would have to do with artistic value. I don’t say that your paintings are not artistic [to Casas].
MC: You may. Other people have said it. [Laughter.]
RT: But it isn’t social propaganda, all the time.
MC: I can’t deal without propaganda because of the American ideal. The concept of American beauty is not only physical beauty; it’s also racial beauty. We are bombarded by this, constantly, on TV. This is what I base it on.
RT: See, what you’re doing is competing with the country or with the world and not a little social thing like the Southwest versus the North or whatever. What you’re doing is taking a larger scope. You’re not dealing with the Mexican against the Anglo. This is a wider spectrum that has a deeper psychological meaning than just a racial problem. You’re dealing more with aesthetic value.
MC: I’m dealing with the power of the cinema, the power of advertising, as in TV.
QUIRARTE [JQ]: Do the Mexican muralists mean anything to you or are you more in touch with New York-based artists?
MC: Much of what I am interested in depended upon my schooling. We seldom went into Mexican art, and when we did it was very superficial. There were names like Orozco, Rivera, Tamayo, Siqueiros, three muralists and an easel painter: the foremost artists of Mexico. That was it. In a sense, their iconography was very different. We were constantly bombarded with West European concepts. It was difficult to relate to Mexican art. But somehow you were expected to relate to it more. That’s like expecting a Chinese to know more about watercolors than you because he’s Chinese. It’s ridiculous. We did have more contact with Mexican art simply because we were next door to [Ciudad] Juárez, Mexico. But the choice was that. It was more the American type of imagery. I knew how to read and write in Spanish before I learned English. So when I went to school in Mexico [as an adult] it was like a rediscovery of all this. I remember distinctly one time asking questions about Mexican art when I was a student. I was put down immediately. Mexican art was propaganda, especially Rivera’s work. It was Communist propaganda, too socially conscious. This was in 1954. Now you find America doing the reverse. American art is very conscious of the environment and Mexican art is very international.
JQ: Is there a movement or a group of Chicano artists in San Antonio?
MC: Efforts have been made in the past to start such movements. When I had a studio downtown I would invariably get involved with people who wanted to talk in those terms. But what bothered me is that we were not talking about art, we were talking about its racial aspects. In other words, we happen to be Mexican Americans, let’s form a group that way. But no one questioned the validity of such a position. It meant nothing and it sort of bothered me. Because I am of Mexican descent and I readily admit it. But that doesn’t make me an artist. I am not a professional Mexican.
(Casas then related a story that demonstrated his attitude toward this problem as well as clarified local conditions in San Antonio. Each year an artist is selected as “Artist of the Year” by the Art League. Several years ago he was chosen for this honored position, but only for three days because they had made a mistake. The selection was withdrawn because of ideological and aesthetic conflicts. The following year a less controversial artist was chosen.)
MC: To give you an idea of what both mentalities are [ I will tell you a story]: During the exhibition of the artist’s works at the Witte Museum, one of the ladies from the Art League said, “Isn’t it nice to have a Mexican American artist of the year when we’re having so much trouble in the [Rio Grande] Valley?” Now, what does that have to do with it? What I’m trying to get at is this: we are truly outsiders. To me being an outsider is the next thing to being an artist. I think we are lucky to be born outsiders: the other thing. You think because you eat tortillas or you think in Spanish or in the Mexican tradition that this identifies you. I don’t think it’s quite true. You find us using certain materials in our work, Liquitex, canvas, stretcher boards, no usamos bastidores [frames] or manta [burlap]. So we are a mixture, so there is no sense in trying to say that we are a pure this or that. We are entirely different. We’re neither Mexicans nor Anglos. We are in-between.
Esteban Villa and José Montoya have been very active in the Chicano art movement in California for a number of years. Their interest goes back to their student days at the Oakland School of Art and Crafts. Their major manifesto came under the heading of MALAF, the Mexican American Liberation Art Front. This is a group founded in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay area in early 1970. The founders were Villa, René Yáñez, Manuel Hernández, and Malaquías Montoya.
EV: The main purpose of this group is to use Chicano artists to create new symbols and images for la nueva raza [the new race] [Reading from a paper, Villa says]. “It is an effort to present in visual form an artistic account of the Chicano movement. The group also wishes to establish traveling art exhibits to tour the country, to be able to set up training workshops in Oakland or wherever, to publish posters and magazines of Chicano art and artists, and to take exhibits into the working people’s areas.”
That was the beginning and I would like to take pride in the fact that it was kind of a conscious effort to get the thing going, to establish it as Chicano art. Now there was a lot of negation of the group, of the movement itself, of Chicano art. People would come up and say, “Is there such a thing as Chicano art and if there is where is it?” And also, “Where is the evidence of it? We want to see it.” So that was some of the questioning that came out right away. Then, in applying for jobs in colleges, Chicano artists would come up to the art department and say that they do Chicano art. This immediately offended the people who were interviewing the artist. They would say, “We don’t want any militant artists.” This is really an ironic thing because to me art has always been equated to ideas and change. So we had a kickback there, a hurdle to overcome. Then the critics that review art shows—exhibitions in the community—also came down on the MALAF group because they felt that we were separatists. “[We’re] trying to separate art and break it down into ethnic presentation.” They think art is universal so “why try to break it down?” MALAF, in effect, is a kind of a radical change in the history of art. It’s a new concept. It’s a new direction and it hasn’t been accepted yet.
JQ: I wanted to ask you whether the reorientation is complete or whether the MALAF people are still ignored.
EV: They started out by ignoring us. But recently I was asked to give some accounts of what I consider Chicano art. When I say “art” I am also including poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, music, and drama. So let’s take, for example, the poetry of [José] Montoya. I remember when he first wrote his bilingual poetry; it was an innovation. He submitted his work to the Atlantic Monthly magazine and they liked it very much. They wanted to publish it but finally they sent it back. They rejected it, saying it had too many Spanish words in it. It was something that the total population of the States could not pick up on. So it was a detriment to the sales of their magazine. So then El Grito came into being. Octavio Romano in Berkeley put this journal together and he thought it was great. “Échale más. Échale más pochismos, palabras mexicanas” [C’mon, c’mon, use more Americanized slang, more Mexican words]. So that was accepted. José [Montoya] also writes short stories.
Then in drama you have the birth of the Teatro Campesino. It’s a new Chicano art form which is already being imitated by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and it’s also being viewed and reviewed as far away as France. So that’s new. Then you have poster art, which is a Chicano thing coming up now; the idea of posters is not new but Chicano posters are new. There are some other art forms that have been started in sculpture.
Chicano culture, Chicano art, seems to be like a merger of that que viene de México and contemporary American society—a kind of marriage of the two. And from this you’re going to come out with biculturalism. And this is where Chicano art is right now. It’s just beginning. There are some art forms that are starting to come out. And they are very different from what you would find even in the magazine that you have here [Villa refers to the Humble Way magazine].
JQ: Within this context, the formal aspects of Chicano art may bear a superficial resemblance to other American art, but I assume that it would be in the thematic area that it would differ.
EV: Yes, I think the context [and] the themes are important. Let me give you some examples. This is the thing that intrigues people the most: “Well, exactly what is Chicano art? Show me.” As far as themes are concerned, I like to get on an idea and then develop a series based on it. I have done a series on the “Gallo,” drawings on the gallo [cock, rooster], any art media that I can use. Stay with the theme, because the gallo is a machismo symbol. If you call a Chicano a gallo—man, that’s a compliment. You feel good. “Yo soy un gallo.” It comes out in the corridos in the música mexicana. But the Anglo, if you call him a rooster—man, that’s an insult. It’s too close to being called a chicken. “Nobody calls me a chicken.” So that’s one thing: the machismo symbol. Then I would like to do a series on “La Llorona,” [The Weeping Woman] that is, Mexican folklore. Everybody’s heard of “La Llorona,” “El Cucuy," [The Cuckoo] “La Lechuza,” [The Witch Owl] and “La Húngara.” [The Hungarian Lady] These are symbols that you find in the Mexican families, the Mexican people. But they haven’t been brought out. And this is our rebuttal to the people that say: “you’re trying to separate art, man. Let’s keep it universal.” Well, if anything, they don’t seem to realize that—when we present new symbols and imagery that deal with machismo and chismes [gossiping]—really what it does is that an Anglo can come and look at it and start asking questions about it. “Well, what’s with the rooster? What does that mean? What does the word chisme mean? What does carnalismo [brotherhood, familiarity, friendliness] mean?” And he’s getting informed. So you hope that when he gets out of there, he will have a closer understanding. So, rather than separating us, Chicano art is bringing us together.
JQ: And in the process the Chicanos themselves are accepting so many of these things that they’ve only had in the home but not outside.
EV: And it’s something you don’t find in the schools, the colleges, and art instruction. So that’s another thing that we’re trying to get Chicano artists to hit on—the ethnic approach—because, so far, the Mexican people are not recognized as an ethnic group in this country.
JQ: Mexican Americans don’t exist.
EV: Yes. And the thing that points this out is when you go into the army. You might be as black as I am, but to them I am a Caucasian. I am classified as white. OK, in school you’re told George Washington is the father of your country. Like this poet once said, “Man, if he’s the father of my country, how come he’s not Chicano.” Also in the U.S. census form it says: “Please list your race or nationality.” So they list White, Korean, Hawaiian, Oriental, and Black. The word Mexican is completely left out. They’re implying that we don’t exist, like you said. And what we’re trying to do, then—through our art—is bring it to their attention, that we DO exist, that we are here and not only do we exist but we also have a culture of our own.