HOUSTON (By Rosemary Carstens, Hispanic)
May 8, 2008 — What pops into your mind when you hear the name Cheech Marin?
The sidesplitting humor of a stoner smoking the biggest doobie you ever saw?
Inspector Joe Domínguez cruising San Francisco in Nash Bridges’ über-cool,
lemon-yellow Hemi Barracuda? Or do you chuckle at memories of Cheech as the
debonair Ignacio Messina chasing Tyne Daly around the Judging Amy set?
Well, put all that on ice. Today, Cheech Marin
is a man high on art. Throughout his years as an actor, comedian, musician,
director, writer, and producer of Salsas Habañeras, he has been a
serious connoisseur of Chicano art, with more than 300 pieces in his private
collection. Now, Marin has inspired and created “Chicano Visions: American
Painters on the Verge,” a highly acclaimed art exhibition that had its run in
Houston in October through December 23.
Chicano Visions is a celebration of Chicano
heritage—it is radiant, filled with life, and emblematic of a culture rich in
history and heart. It is a Mexican American phenomenon that blends what is
quintessentially Mexican with a dash of American seasoning and a splash of Latin
attitude. The art that arises out of this heritage is as vibrant, as biting, as
fresh pico de gtallo with extra jalapeño. As Cheech Marin puts it, “Chicano art
is an experience, not a style.”
Viewed by an estimated 1.5 million people, the
exhibit featured the work of many native Texans, such as César Martínez, whose
artistic collaboration is renown far beyond the Southwest. Chicano Visions seeks
to introduce a broader cross section of the American public to this unique
school of American art, to demonstrate its dazzling interpretations of classic
techniques and its more inclusive aesthetic of the human condition.
From its birth in the hot, sweaty grape fields
of central California, where Carlos Almarez painted signs for the United Farm
Workers, to the Gronk retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Marin says, “The Chicano school of painting has always been about reinterpreting
a culture. It is at once diverse yet unified, profane and spiritual, traditional
and avant-garde.” Many of the early artists have evolved from a strictly
political agenda to work reflecting more personal concerns. Chicano art speaks
volumes about what it is to be Latino in the United States. It is laughter,
mariachi, opera, drama, food, love and sorrow. Like Cupid, it skids past
rhetoric to penetrate the heart.
