Guest commentary: Reflections on the Chicano Art Movimiento — A primer

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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor

THE LATEST CHAPTER:

I wrote this article some years ago in response to the suffocating strangle hold that the Euro-centric philosophy, esthetic and elitists mindset has in its intransigent and unyielding domination of the fine art and cultural discussion in this country. And while we have made some very small and important inroads (think hip-hop, Chicana(o) Art), into the Eurocentric monolith in recent years, events like this year’s all white Oscar Award nomination list, the racist full court assault on rap music, the evil hypocritical acts by some Arizona politicians to eliminate Chicano(a) Studies Program that would in effect wipe out all of our history including our rich arts and culturally legacy and contribution to the magnificent tapestry that is all world art and culture, recently violently jerked me by the back of neck hairs to action and as a reminder that the fight for art and cultural inclusion, acceptance and parity in this country is far from over.

Additional this latest revision of my Primer on the Chicana(o) Art Movimiento is in honor of  our recently laid to rest artists and cultural warriors, Michele Serros, Ben Saiz, Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, Frank Martinez, Emigdio Vasquez, Richard Duardo, Barbara Salinas-Norman. PIR and your contributions and spirits will always live on!

 

SETTING THE STAGE

At the turn of the twentieth century, art in the Americas made a radical departure from the yoke and pervasive influences of Europe. In fact, Europe and the entire Western World were experiencing tremendous social upheaval. The old order was being challenged on all fronts; the First World War loomed over the horizon. All of the political “isms” were on the tips of tongues of the world’s intellectual political and social theorists and revolucionarios, ready to spew fire and revolution to the world. The art world was being transformed into a revolutionary maelstrom. The Dadaist and the Surrealist would create chaos in the art world. As always, the Americas lagged behind the Europeans in breaking away from the classical chains of western art homogeneity.

The global whirlwind that smashed much of the old order was especially profound in the art world. Art in the United States for the first time became original, fresh and uniquely American. With the advent of the industrial revolution and the demonstrative superiority of the American capitalist system to the rest of the Western World, all sectors of American life were buoyed with creativity, originality, legitimacy and power.

This was also true for art in the United States. The birth of Modern American Art was, however, a closed shop: racist, aloof, pretentious and elitist. American art was an Anglo-Saxon, male- dominated bastion. It would remain so for another 50 years. It was not until the early 1950’s that Chicanos, Jews, Blacks, Native Americans, and women by singular sheer artistic genius and courage, were able to penetrate this monolith know as “American art and culture”. But, of course it was not nearly enough. Success for the minorities was singular and isolated; minority groups were completely excluded from full participation in the American art scene. It was not until the 1960’s that the wall of exclusion and segregation came tumbling down around the traditional American art citadel.
MI BAUTISMO
In 1967 my older brother, the last of the silent stoic warriors for Uncle Sam, went off to war in a distant land called Vietnam. It was the year that my idol, Muhammad Ali, was stripped of his title for refusing to go to war in Viet Nam. Ali’s refusal, was, as he put it, “I have nothing against the people of Viet Nam; they have never called me nigger.” The Johnson administration, in political free fall and moral decay, escalated the Vietnamese war effort, and in the United States, internal war in the form of urban riots raged in over 100 cities throughout the nation. Leading the war protesters were many young Chicanos, Blacks, Native Americans and other minority groups that opposed the war and the discrimination that they faced at home. In 1967 I came to understand that the war to be waged was on the soil of this country.

In 1968 I registered for the draft, and was prepared to go to jail as a conscientious objector, no longer the stoic warrior for Uncle Sam. I would not fight “their” war. That was the same year that I turned my back on a dream. I knew that year that I could never be a professional baseball player: simply put, I was not talented enough to play at the pro level. I replaced my baseball gear with pencils, brushes and canvas, I wanted to document and create this fascinating period of the Sixties, and I was intoxicated by the revolutionary movimiento. I became a Chicano artist that year.
NUESTRO CUENTO
Two historic events in the Chicano Movimiento helped shape and define Chicano art and the direction that the Chicano art and cultural movement would follow.

El Plan de Santa Barbara, was conceptualized, drafted and written by students in 1968 at the University of California at Santa Barbara, was a Chicano liberation manifesto, a blue print for educational, cultural and socio-economic change for the Chicano. We proclaimed to the world that we as Chicanos were demanding and would assert and fight for our freedom to forge our own cultural and artistic identity.

In 1965, Cesar Chavez and Luis Valdez would form their historic collaboration and combine guerilla teatro with political protest. The United Farm Workers and El Teatro Campesino created a brilliant and scathing artistic backdrop to the UFW”s national grape boycott campaign. It was sheer genius: political theater on the often hostile and deadly grape fields of Califas. In short order the entire nation became aware of the farm workers struggle in the fields of Delano, California. The campesinos and students joined forces and created a historic synergy that fueled the Chicano movimiento and in the process liberated countless artist, scholars, and intellectuals in the Southwest to move forward toward a Chicano aesthetic that was new and exciting.

In 1968, in the city of Sacramento, a group of artists, poets and radical scholars formed the Royal Chicano Air Force; originally known as the Rebel Chicano Art Front. The Royal Chicano Air Force, were two California State University art professors Jose Montoya, Esteban Villa, and Ricardo Favela, an art student. Satirists and gifted social commentators, they popularized two art slogans, “la locura lo cura y aqui estamos y no nos vamos”. These gifted radical artists combined poetry, prose and visual arts in their works that were bold and revolutionary, and grassroots in its orientation. The Royal Chicanos Air Force goal was to create political conscience, promote the art and education in the barrio, and explore our history and culture as Chicanos.

In Los Angeles there were two seminal art groups that would forge a new Chicano art sensibility, the first was Los Four, which included the late Carlos Almaraz, Gilbert (Magu) Lujan, Roberto (Beto) de la Rocha and Frank Romero; later the collective would include Judithe Hernandez and John Valadez. Los Four were the intellectual vanguard of the Chicano art movement of the early 1970’s.

It is safe to say that this grouping of artists, known collectively as Los Four, “legitimized” Chicano art in the Anglo American art world and inspired the younger Chicanada to forge ahead with a school of art that would come to be known as Chicano Art. Today, Frank Romero, Carlos Almaraz, Gilbert Lujan, Judithe Hernández, and John Valadez represent a group of Chicano artists that have obtained international respect and are admired by producing original and exceptional bodies of work throughout their artistic careers. Los Four opened the commercial door to all in the Chicano art world.

The art group Asco, was composed of Gronk, Willie Herron, Patssi Valdez and Harry Gamboa, to be joined intermittently by Daniel J. Martinez and Diane Gamboa. Asco members were street punks, involved in everything from street actos, punk music performances, and various mural works that today are considered master works of the golden age of the Chicano Mural period. Asco was a young rebel art posse bent on taking over the streets for the sake of art, anarchy y asco. The group Asco also focused its sardonic eye on the Chicano Movement and punctured the romanticism of the cultural nationalist. Asco was more about anarchy and rebellion than Chicano purity and self-determination.

In 1984, Guillermo Gomez Pena and his art cuates began The Borders Art Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo a cultural artist/ activist amalgamation of radical think tank research and discourse projects, public actos and visual arts spectaculars, and political activism that bridged las fronteras of San Diego and Tijuana. Gomez-Pena always the intellectual genius of the Chicano art movement proclaimed that Taller de Art Fronterizo was, “a bi-national collective that combined critical writing, site-specific performance, media and public art with direct political action …on both sides of the border.” Chicanismo, according to Gomez-Pena, was looking at the world without borders and art was the jackhammer that would crumble the walls of xenophobia, tribalism and nationalism.

Judy Baca, the founder of the Social Public Art Resource Center, or SPARC, introduced a Chicana feminism that, frankly, was missing in the early days of the Chicano art evolution. Baca directed the Los Angeles River Mural Project, the largest continuous mural project in the world. Baca has also assisted countless young artist with their careers in the Los Angeles area with her business acumen and political know how and well placed palancas. A critical contribution made by Baca was that she brought to the male- dominated art table the discourse between Chicano art and its views of machismo, racism, sexism, violence and misogyny as viewed by the Chicana artist. To Baca and the other Chicano Feminist artists, the status quo in the art world, and in particular, Chicano Art, would not be controlled by the myopic machistas.

There were many more Chicano art warriors, intellectuals, scholars and others that helped create the school we have to recognize as Chicano art. The current success of Chicano art did not just materialize; we fought hard to create our own unique place and identity in the American and international art scene.

These were my Chicano art mentors. I wanted to contribute, participate, document and create in this fascinating period of the Sixties. Like many of my art comrades, the Chicano Movimiento intoxicated me. 1967 was cathartic and revolutionary for me. The dialogue world and I changed forever. Like so many people of that period I came to question the entire order of things, and how they operated. I would come to learn how to dissect the American systemic and institutional construct with a critical mind; I would never again be satisfied with the old order. I evolved into a Chicano artist and activist.
ACADEMIA Y ATRE CHICANO
The Chicano Movimiento open the university doors for me, as it did for thousands of Chicanos throughout the United States. It was here that my revolutionary ideas were honed, encouraged and directed. College life was glorious and intoxicating, I had found my niche: academia and Chicano art.

We were there at the beginnings of the Chicano Movimiento, a group of student artist- activists from throughout the Los Angeles County brought together at San Fernando Valley State College, later changed to California State University at Northridge. The group, that later came together to form the nucleus of El Jardin de Flor Y Canto in the early 1970’s, was developing a unique, bold and social activist art philosophy and style that connected with the community and its social and political concerns.

From every barrio throughout southern Califas we were brought together in the turbulent, exciting and fertile halls of academia. Every day at CSUN there was a Causa; dawn delivered another revolutionary day. The civil rights struggle at the university and the communidad fueled our artistic work. Arte was an indispensable arm of the moviemiento.

As we grew as artists, we felt the need to expand our artistic endeavor far beyond the university; this is where the idea of a community cultural center had it inception.

The original group of artistas that formed the El Jardin de Flor y Canto collective was

Smiley (Ismael Cazarez), Guillermo Bejerano (Billy), Joe Bravo, Frank Martinez, and Armando Vazquez. Sergio Hernandez was involved with El Jardin de Flor y Canto along with other commitments that he had with art groups in Los Angeles. By the time the Jardin was opened, Sergio was already producing his seminal cartoon strip, “Arnie and Porfi” for Con Safos magazine, still considered the best cartoon strip of the Chicano Movimiento.

 

EL JARDIN DE FLOR Y CANTO
The mission of El Jardin de Flor y Canto was simple: help fuel the movimiento with our art. We took to the street and began mural projects throughout the San Fernando Valley and the greater Los Angeles County. Some of the murals painted during that period were highly controversial; many of the murals were condemned as incendiary and highly political and were quickly white washed. I am sad to note that probably all of the murals that we painted during this period (1972-1976) are gone, covered up or destroyed.

Back at El Jardin de Flor y Canto, in the tiny quarters we called both studio and art gallery an incredible energy emanated from our art collective. We painted and experimented, shared a communal artistic experience that was all consuming, it fed us, made love to us, implored us to create and work with the gente of our communities.

El Jardin de Flor y Canto was the incubator for many political and art ideas. It served as the home for some talented artists that emerged in the ensuing years. It would be wrong to suggest that great art was produced during this period. However, it is clear that this magical period in the early 1970’s, El Jardin was a critical and formative artistic experience for many of us. Today Chicano artists like Frank Martinez, Ismael “Smiley” Cazarez, Joe Bravo, Guillermo Bejerano, Ramon “Psycho” Cisneros, and Sergio Hernandez, Felix Perez and Armando Vazquez are well known and respected in the art world. They all got their formative start at El Jardin de Flor y Canto. Just as quickly as the Jardin was born, it disappeared. The core group of us lasted about 4 years; it was enough to convert us all to disciples of the Chicano Art Movimiento.

 

ENTER THE RUDY F. ACUNA ART GALLERY AND CULTURAL CENTER
One rainy winter afternoon, my business partner Dr. Deborah De Vries and I were looking for a building in the downtown Oxnard area. We wanted a commercial building that would serve as a multi-purpose space, suitable for the arts, instruction and would hold a large number of people for meetings, seminars and community events. I wanted to revive the spirit of the EL Jardin de Flor y Canto in the ombligo of Oxnard. By sheer luck and providence we found the Cafe on A Street, located in heart of downtown Oxnard. Since we opened the door to the community, approximately fifteen years ago, we have been honored to host and participate in hundreds of cultural, political and social events at the Cafe on A, with our community. My dream has come true; I am again involved in the noble affairs of culture and the arts. In our second decade of operation we have shown the country that a community art gallery with its heart and soul embedded in the community can create, exhibit, sell and contribute to the promotion and legacy of Chicana (o) Art as some of the greatest fine art being created in the world today.

The greatest Chicano warrior of them all, Rudy Acuna always reminds us that we have to fight for self determination, to preserve our identity, minds and souls.  We must write our story, every bit of it. That is what self determination is to me our story, our magnificent foundation that must be told, and be told by us, and no one else. Because if they write, as Rudy reminds, they will invariably get it wrong!

— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., is the executive director of The KEYS Leadership Academy@ Café on A in Oxnard.