nose job 1987 80 x 80 inches ch a rcoal and pastel on pap

1ENRIQUE CHAGOYA WHEN PARADISE ARRIVED

A LT E R N AT I V E M U S E U M M a r c h 1 1 — A p r i l 2 9 1 9 8 9

N O S E J O B 1 9 8 7 8 0 x 8 0 i n c h e s c h a r c o a l a n d p a s t e l o n p a p e r

ENRIQUE CHAGOYAWHEN PARADISE ARRIVED

Mar 11-Apr 29, 1989C u r a t o r, Geno Ro d r i g u ezL i b r a ry of C o n gress C a t a l og Card Number: 898 3 8 7 4©The Altern a t i ve Museum, 198917 White StreetN ew York, N.Y 10013Tel. (212) 9664 4 4 4ISBN 932075- 2 58

This exhibition was supported in part by public funds from the Visual Art sP r ogram of the New York State Council on the Art s. The Altern a t i ve Museumr e c e i ves support for its programs from the New York State Council on the Art s, theNational Endowment for the Arts and the Dep a rtment of Cultural Aff a i rs, the Cityo f N ew York. Further support comes from American Express Foundation, AT & TFoundation, Edith C. Blum Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Tru s t ,Citibank, Consolidated Edison Company, The Jerome Foundation, Philip Morr i sCompanies Inc., The Ro c kefeller Foundation, the Weatherhead Foundation and thefriends of the Altern a t i ve Museum.

The Altern a t i ve Museum is a non profit museum dedicated to a pluralist approachto the arts and cultural activities of N ew York on a national and international leve l .Our primary concern is to present professional exhibitions and performances withsocio political content while maintaining the highest standards of a e s t h e t i c s.Pa rticular emphasis is placed on exhibiting the works of mid career art i s t s. TheMuseum welcomes participa¬tion in its events from other art i s t s, curators and thec o m mu n i t y. It is the goal of the Museum to build a true artists museum that iss e n s i t i ve to both the needs of a rtists and the public alike.

B o a rd :Jayne H. BaumConstant G. ConstantinHouston ConwillRoger DensonH a rriett GreenRita Mye rsS h i ge NumanoLeandros Pa p a t h a n a s i o uGeno Ro d r i g u ezJanice Ro o n eyAl SocolovB e rnadette SpeechD eborah Wi l l i s

A dv i s o ry Board :Visual Arts CommitteeMichael S. BellMel Edwa rd sJane Ke s s l e rJohn T Pa o l e t t iA n d r ev Ve l j kov i c

Design & Production, Janice Ro o n eyP h o t ogr a p hy, Wolfgang DieterP r i n t i n g, Athens Printing Company, New York City

2

S t a ff :D avid Donihue, Assistant Director,Associate CuratorRobin Lesser, Administrative AssistantG a ry Nickard, Exhibitions Coord i n a t o rGeno Ro d r i g u ez, Exe c u t i ve Director andC h i e f C u r a t o rJanice Ro o n ey, Design and PromotionJe ff r ey Schanze r, Music Coord i n a t o rMarie Spiller, Development Off i c e r

Music Committee:Muhal Richard AbramsWilliam Hellerm a n nJason Hwa n gL e r oy Je n k i n sPhil Nibl o c k

I n t e rn s :E ffi ChangLaura GrittShari Ta r a n ov i c h

On a wall of his brightly lit studio kitchen,Enrique Chagoya has placed a print of his1984 “Conversation with Coatlicue.” In it,he shows himself in profile—small, seated,bespectacled, bearded, scholarly and atten-tive—looking up comfortably at the power-ful and exuberant figure of Coatlicue wholooms above. Skulls and animals—a ser-pent spitting out a devil, a dog leapingafter a frightened bird—spring fro mher head, mouth and fingertips. Chagoya

describes the conversation between him-s e l f, a Mex i c a n -b o rn, Oak-land- b a s e d ,36-year old artist, and Coatlicue, the pre-

Columbian goddess, whose domainsinclude war, death and filth-eating: “Wewere drinking beer and having a nice chatabout how the world was five hundredyears ago”. Here, and in other works,Chagoya juxtaposes his two worlds. In1988, in When Paradise Arrived, one ofhis most poignant cartoons, he placed achild beneath the Mickey Mouse-like hand(holding a small sign that reads “EnglishOnly”), which is about to flick her careless-ly and literally “out of the picture. ”Describing the intense stare of this bare-footed Indian child, he says: “I wanted tomake her eyes like some of the pre -Columbian sculptures where the eyes lookoff into the distance. They express a deepconcentration, a different state of mind.”

Amalia Mesa-Bains recently spoke e-vocatively of a “Theater of Memory” indescribing certain early cultural experi-ences and values from which she drew thesubstance and fo rm of her art. InC h a g oya ’s “Th e ater of M e m o ry,” thepresences arid voices of Coatlicue andMexican Indian culture collide with thoseof Franz Kafka, the Czech novelist, andE u ropean modernism, and the ruinedspaces of Teotihucan blend with those ofancient Egyptian cities. Narratives drawnfrom Aztec myths are interwoven withMarx’s political treatises.

Born in Mexico in 1953, Chagoyagrew up in the modern, cosmopolitan

3AN UNFINISHED PORTRAIT MOIRA ROT H

Photo : Mar v in Co l l ins

wo rld of M exico City together with anaw a reness of ancient Indian belief s y s t e m s,i m a g i n ation and history. He credits hisNahuan nu rse for his early empat hy withthe Indian side of M exican culture. Hesees the late 1960s’ ex p l o s i ve politics andtensions of M exico City—t h at trigg e re do ff radical activities among so many yo u n ghigh school and college students, andwo rk e rs —as the springboard of his lat e rc o m munity invo l vement, first in Mex i c oand now in San Fr a n c i s c o. At the samet i m e, Chagoya was attracted to the writingso f Ka fka and Marx, to the art and theo-ries of Kandinsky and the Ru s s i a nC o n s t r u c t i v i s t s, and to the Zurich of L e n i nand Tzara, that rare and magical Wo rl dWar I conjunction of art and politics.

Now based in the Bay Area (by choice,he has lived in the United States since1979), Chagoya draws from his Mexican“Theater of Memory” and from his reac-tions to contemporary American life andpolitics to create the images and narrativeso f his huge black and red cartoon draw -ings, delicate assemblage boxes and ele-gantly grotesque Homage to Goya prints.He makes art devotedly and intricatelyusing the time leftover from his work as theArtistic Director of the Galeria de la Razain San Francisco’s Latino Mission District.

I visited Chagoya one afternoon thisFebruary in his Oakland studio, a space litby large skylights. On the wall next to anarrow stairway, which traverses the threefloors, is most of his Homage to Goyaprints mounted in old, ch e a p, half-p a i n t e d ,

scratched and corroded frames. The book-s h e l ves are crowded with writings byLenin, Castro, Marx and Jung, togetherwith books on Francis Bacon, AndyWarhol, Diego Rivera, Philip Guston, andthe Codex Mendoza. Mexican folk artcovers the living space walls and floors:masks, sugar skulls, sculptures and papercut-outs.

Large cartoons, some still unfinished,are pinned on the walls of the groundfloor, intermixed with various newspapercuttings: photographs of Bush andRe a gan, and fashion adve r t i s e m e n t s.Chagoya, wearing a mask to protect himfrom the spray fumes, is working quickly,alternatively rubbing, sketching, and eras-ing, on a large charcoal drawing of aCalaveras, the fashionably dressed femaleskeleton originally cre ated by Po s a d a .Restlessly he changes her brooch back andforth from a tiny “smile” image, to a rose,wh i ch he finally colors re d- wo rking fro ma Macy’s fashion plate that contained sucha “rose brooch.” Beside the Calaveras,Chagoya places a small figure as he holdsup a book on Posada to help him outlinethe figure’s skullmask.

Nearby is another seven-by-seven footcartoon, which shows a huge contortedhand grasping a fragile crown of thorns;below is a small bound figure that sits on astool staring ahead. From a distance, thefigure appears to be waiting indifferently,almost politely, for his photograph to betaken. A closer reading reveals hisstunned, vacant look. Near the threaten-


ing hand above are markings, as if madeby victims on a prison wall who are tryingto escape. Whose prison? What crime? Isthe tiny crown of thorns a final act of tor-ture, or is it symbolic of some strangebond between the prisoner and his oppres-sor, a ghastly wedding band?

What are the messages of Chagoya’s“political art?” Is it “political art” in thegenre of Sue Coe and Leon Golub? Is itmore akin to Rivera and Posada? Are hiscartoons collectively beginning to formsome strange inverse play on the CodexMendoza (the accounts of contemporaryAztec life and customs which the newSpanish rulers commissioned shortly afterthe Conquest of Mexico)? When placednext to one another, these large drawingsact, as Chagoya has phrased it, as “a huge

comic strip that narrates a kind of story.”But what story?

For me, one of the most interestingaspects of Chagoya’s art is that it works ona twofold level, one almost subliminal andone clearly, albeit sometimes elusively, top-ical. His choice of forms and images—hisM i c k ey Mouses and Calave r a s —c o n j u reup the recurring subject of colonialismand oppression of cultures as well as peo-ple. The current one-person exhibition atthe Alternative Museum also reminds theviewer, metaphorically but pungently, ofthe immediate world outside the museumwalls, the America of 1989 in the first fewmonths of the new Bush administrationwith its continuation of the attitudes andpolicies of Reagan years.■ Moira Roth


Ja nu a r y 22, 1989, Oakland, Ca l i fo rn i a

MOIRA ROTH: Can we begin talking abouttwo works from 1984—your collage “Van Gogh’sE a r” and the print “Conve rsation withCoatlicue”—in terms of how you work and your sources?

E N R I QUE CHAG OYA: The title fo r“Van Gogh’s Ear” came out of nowhere.Originally, I had a drawing that I was nothappy with, so I glued another piece ofpaper on top, and then made cuts throughit to form dotted lines embossed from thedrawing underneath. At that time, I wasplaying with collage so I stuck on a pictureo f the “Queen from Engl a n d ” —I didn’treally know who she was—and put a Mex i -can mask on top of her with a snake com-ing out of the mask. Then the ear. I usedthe idea of the ear alone in some of myearlier drawings where I put parts of thehuman body floating around rooms. Inthis drawing, the ear came out jumping.Didn’t know what to name it so I thoughtof Van Gogh. That was the way I oftenused to work, and I really had fun. Fromt h at period of t i m e, 1981-1984, while Iwas studying at the San Francisco ArtInstitute, I developed a lot of new playfulways of approaching art.

I also did “Conve rs ation withCoatlicue” at the same time. She is a pre-Columbian goddess whom I was readingabout in some books by the Mexicana n t h ropologist Miguel Leon Po r t i l l a— i n -credible descriptions of this goddess ofeverything: the earth, war, love, the mon-

ster of the night, a flying obsidian butter-fly that shredded people at night. She’s theone who forgives your sins. When you talkto her, she eats your sins, and that’s whyshe is called the “filth eater,” “the trasheater.” There is a representation of her inour anthropology museum, and it’s one ofthe biggest sculptures in the entire muse-um. So in my print, I just developed a pic-ture of this character with a feather snakeon top of her head.

MR: Talking to you?

EC: Yes, the print includes a profile ofmyself. So we were drinking beer and hav-ing a nice chat about how the world wasfive hundred years ago. Somehow we wereon the ceiling of the room rather than onthe floor, so there are a couple of chairsand the door being opened up there.That’s why I sometimes hang the printupside down.

Here is another work from that time,my first box, “La Paz.” (1983).

MR: The boxes always have glass over them?

EC: Right, all of them. This one is madeof two ceramic pieces. On the loft handside, there’s a square with the shape of abone that I found on a beach in Mexico.This came out of a magical experiencethat I had in La Paz, Mexico in the desertin 1982 with a couple of friends of mine.We had seen a strange light in the sky lateat night. A very straight, thin line of lightamong the stars suddenly appeared andbegan to open itself as a cone shape and

6I N T E RV I E W BY MOIRA ROT H

started to move ve ry slow l y. Then itstopped and got bigger and bigger. Theb i gger it got, the more translucent itbecame until it was very hard to see. Thewhole phenomenon lasted between threeand five minutes. We didn’t know what itwas. It was like a science fiction image.

That night we went home and when Iwent to bed, I began to hallucinate. WhenI closed my eyes I began to see a little cowwalking among the cacti. She had awoman’s face and transparent horns andwhite feathers all over her body and pinkchicken feet. She was beautiful. She wassmelling the grass among the cacti and justgoing around the desert. I closed my eyesand looked at the image as if I werechanging channels on TV, and then Iopened my eyes and it was in the roomwith the same clarity as with my eyesclosed. It was an incredible experience andit stuck in my mind for months. This boxwas the first attempt to try to recall thatexperience. I put elements of the desert init d ry bones I had found in the desert,horns made of clay, and I put some silicasand in the box.

Right after that I began to do otherboxes, cigar boxes with political conno-tatations—for instance, a triptych entitled“South Africa.” It was included in a 1985show, “Art Against Apartheid,” that I hadhelped organize at the San Francisco ArtInstitute and the Mission Cultural Center.At that time there were a lot of riots inSouth Africa, which we heard about. Forthe first time in years the news spread out

even through the regular media. I was veryupset at those happenings and I related itto the racism in this country as well. I did-n’t see them as separate issues.

MR: So the imagery here refers to South Africa. Inone of the boxes, you have put a miniature tennisra cket and a Coca-Cola bottle, and then on theback of the box is what looks like rubbings of threefigures.

EC: Right. Actually, it’s a photograph inthe background. The circles are surround-ing the signs. On one side it say s, “Non-whites Only” and on the other side“Whites Only.” There are two black peo-ple going downstairs and one white personon the other side of the same building. Iused the words from the top of the cigarbox “White Owl” and altered the tiny let-ters so it read, “Whites Only.”

MR: Concealed on the back of the box is a photo -graph with the caption, “White students and blackworkers demonstration, Johannesburg, 17th June,1976”, and real barbed wire above. You often putimagery on the back of these boxes. Why?

EC: It is hidden away from the viewerwhen attached to the wall, but if you couldput it on a pedestal, you’d be able to see it.The idea of hiding things in my boxescomes from pre-Hispanic sculpture wherethings were hidden behind the sculptureor on the base—incredible carvings, espe-cially in Aztec sculptures. I happened todiscover that one day when I was walkingamong the ruins of the main temple inM exico City wh i ch had been re c e n t l y


uncovered a few years before. From thatexperience I developed a lot of i d e a sabout how to make other boxes, like thisone. For instance, this 1987 diptych called“Monument to the Missing Gods,” whichconsists of t wo boxe s —one of p re - C o l u m -bian ruins and the other with miniatureCocaCola bottles—has some hidden partsincluding the painting on the back. In thepre-Columbian box, there is a mini-frescopainted inside the box, which I copiedfrom a reproduction in a book on Mayanart. And then I put lots of dirt inside andscratched it, put it in water and thenplaced it under the sunlight to fade. And itturned out like that. So from outside thebox, it looks actually filthy. It also has apiece of glass on the front on which Ipainted the symbol of time on the righthand corner.

MR: Can we go back to your earlier studies inMexico? You said that you preferred economics forthe most part to art?

EC: Yes. I had briefly gone to some artschools in Mexico, but they were verystructured, so I quit. Then I went on tostudy economics and I liked that a lot bet-ter. I even worked in rural developmentprograms in the countryside. I lived forabout two years in Vera Cruz. When Imoved to this country finally in 1976, Iwanted to finish my studies in politicaleconomy but I didn’t like the programshere. They seemed very much orientedtoward training for a big corporation. Thisdidn’t excite me so I looked for an art

school instead. I’d been painting all mylife. Even when I was studying economics,I shared a studio space with a friend ofm i n e. We painted non-f i g u r at i ve paintingbased on Russian Constructivist theoriesand some of Kandinsky’s. We were discov-ering all of that material.

MB: From books or actual art?

EC: Th e re we re some exhibitions inMexico City, but mainly we were readinga lot. And just reading from the booksmade us think of a lot of ideas and, inaway, perhaps it was better not to see anypictures. We were fascinated by the idea ofintegrating painting, sculpture and archi-tecture in a single structure, as they wroteabout in the Constructivist manifestos. Wealso read a lot of Tristan Tzara from thetime he was in Switzerland with Leninwho was a refugee there in World War IThere were some stories about them play-ing chess together. These times were veryromantic in a way.

MR: The magic conjunction of art and politics?

EC: Right. I was doing that reading dur-ing the time I was going to the art schoolin Mexico, and I guess that’s why I was sodisappointed with the schools in Mexico,because they were just figure oriented. InMexico there’s a strong tradition in figura-tive imagery. There’s nothing wrong withthat, but at the time it just didn’t fit withthe things I was excited about. So, when Ifinally came to the Art Institute, it waswonderful because it opened doors to do


anything and I already had a lot of proj-ects in mind.

MB: When you were looking at the ideas ofKandinsky and the Constructivists in the 1970s,were you also interested in Mexican history andmythology rather than its actual art?

EC: Both. I began to look at pre -Columbian times as being very much inte-gr ated in the same manner that theConstructivists had described ancientEgyptian cities. There they had painting,sculpture, religion, philosophy and every-thing integrated into their buildings andcities. The same with the Nahuas. But theMayans were doing that as well and theancient Olmecs, too. There was great inte-gration with the universe because theircities were oriented toward the same direc-tion as the Milky Way or the direction ofthe sun going from one side to another. Tome, all of that created an idea of integra-tion not only with the arts but also soci-e t y—the human beings with the unive rs e,and the surroundings with nature, witheverything. What the Constructivists weretalking about in a way was going in thefuture toward a similar place, and to methat has been one of the most fascinatingideas yet to be executed.

MB: What sort of background did you have as achild in terms of Mexican culture and history?

EC: Well, my parents took us all the timeto the museums, the anthropology muse-um and to visit many ruins likeTeotihuacan. We used to go once a month

to Teotihuacan and play there on the out-side of the pyramids with my cousins andeverybody. Those ruins are very close tome. They really remind me of my child-hood and my family.

Also, when I was in primary school,they made us study a lot of Mexican his-totry. We used the official books on history,the ones the government printed, but theywere very liberal and progressive at thetime and still are. They were accurateabout the pers p e c t i ve of our history—that is, the point of view of the Indiansbeing integrated into the history books. Soit is history seen through the eyes of thepeople who lost the battles more than ofthe people who won the wars.

MR. Scrupulous history?

EC: Yes. Through my childhood, I wasexposed to diff e rent things. Not justMexican culture but also Mickey Mouseand Coca-Cola bottles. I remember collecting miniature bottles from the trucks thatused to go around the grocery stores. Theyusually would trade with you.

MB: Looking again at your “Monument to theMissing Gods,” it must have reminded you of thisbecause one box contains miniature Coca- C o l abottles.

EC: They usually traded with you for thetin caps from the bottles, half a peso forone miniature bottle. Time passed and Inever saw those little bottles again. Theyjust had disappeared, but a few years ago Ifound some in a flea market in Mexico


City so I decided to make a box. I hadalready made the first box with the pre-Columbian references in “Monument tothe Missing Gods” and I felt that a box ofminiature Coke bottles would form a nicecontrast.

MR: What about the symbolism of the two colorsin this diptych, the black and the red?

EC: The black and the red are the twop re -Columbian colors that we re used inthe books and they represent knowledge.The ancient books were written in blackand red. And there are mythological sto-ries for instance, the story of the discoveryof corn by Quetzalcoatl. One day the godsaw a black ant carrying a grain of corn sohe turned into a red ant and asked theblack ant where she got the piece of corn.The black ant told him from the Mountainof the Sacred Meal. Then Quetzalcoatlmade rain to strike that mountain until itoverflowed and exploded, and the cornscattered to all directions of the earth.That story involves those two colors, andit’s just one example of many other situa-tions in which red and black were repre-sented as symbols of knowledge. I decidedto use it in the background of my box, andnow, of course, I use red and black as thecolors of my large cartoon drawings.

MR: It must have been curious for you to comeacross black and red as such significant colors inthe Constructivist palette.

EC: Oh, that’s true. But also those werethe colors of a lot of political groups inEurope, the anarchists, for example, and

in Mexico they are the colors for the strik-ers. The Sandinistas are using them todaytoo. So that reference here could relate toCentral America in a way also. By the way,“Monument to the Missing Gods” wasfirst shown at the Day of the Dead show atGaleria de la Raza.

MR: Then there is also your Catholic back -gro u n d —fa m i ly and schooling—that seems toproduce some of the imagery of your other boxes.Were your parents ardently Catholic ?

EC: Both grandmothers were, but my par-ents less so. To me it was very boring goingto church. The only thing I liked was thefeeling of the space, the huge ceilings insome of the churches, and they were heav-ily decorated. Sometimes I imaginedthings happening. Things flying from oneplace to another in the church like some ofthe saints flying from one side to anotheras in the circus. That aspect of Catholicchurches really stimulated my imagina-tion. But Catholicism certainly works itsway into my thinking. For instance, in thispiece called “Retablo.”

MR: This is a two-part painting with a dark fig-ure to the right in a turquoise background and a redsquare on the left framed by...?

EC: It’s a tin frame found in the dumpsterthat a friend of mine gave to me. I wasdrawing one of the religious saints I haveat home (I collect such old saint statues)and this is one of my favorite ones. It’sactually the bust of the Virgin but it lookssomething between a woman and a man.In Mexico, people who are bisexual are


called” Bicicletas,” which means bicycles.So this to me is Santa Bicicleta. No offenseto bisexual people among whom are someof my best friends. The name just sound-ed very, funny to me.

MR: And that curious, white, halo-like effect ontop of her/him?

EC: Well, that came afterwards because Iwas thinking she looked too serious; so Imade the outlines of a Mickey Mouse hatglowing in the dark.

Santa Bicicleta appears again in the1988 installation of my eight-foot tall Dayof the Dead altar that I made at the SanFrancisco Art Institute. She is right therein the middle of this fire- c l ay missile in a box with a glass covering the sculpture. Ontop of the box, and scattered around onthe floor, are the traditional Day of theDead marigold flowers. And on top of thewhole thing, there is a Mickey Mouse hata gain. Unfo r t u n ately the ga l l e ry didn’th ave the time to install a black lightbecause the hat should have glowed as ifradioactive. The piece was like a nuclearmissile altar with Mickey Mouse on top.

MR: Could you now talk about the two series thatbegan around the same time as these early boxes—the “Homage to Goya” prints and your larg ech a rcoal seve n -by- s even foot cartoon draw i n g s—both o f w h i ch will be in the Altern a t i ve Museumex h ibition.

EC: In 1983 I made the first Goya print,Against the Common Good (the Spanish,Contra el bien general is the original title that

Goya gave to the print). I already vaguelyhad this idea of making Reagan one ofGoya’s demons before I took a history ofprintmaking class at the California Palaceof the Legion of Honor Museum in theAchenbach print collection with its cura-tor, Robert Johnson. In that class Johnsonshowed us masses of prints from manyages. They passed through our hands, andthat was an incredible experience. It wasthe first time I saw Goya prints. Then Imade the connection between my tryingto make Reagan as a Goya demon andactually doing a print that would look likeGoya’s print with Reagan as the centralcharacter. It was a very exciting feelingwhen I thought of that.

I did the print as my final project forthat class because the teacher had told usthat we should either write a paper ormake a print related to what we saw. So Imade this one and, by the way, I signed myname Enrique Cha Goya to make a punon Goya’s last name. I took it to the lastday of class and Johnson laughed a greatdeal. He bought two pieces, one for him-self and one for the collection.

MR: And the red stamp?

EC: The red stamp is something Idesigned and it’s a sign of an insult inMexico. It is the equivalent of “ass” inEnglish, but in Spanish we use the sign ofthe ox, for someone who is very rude orstupid or a combination of both. Whenyou’re driving in the street and you make amistake, sometimes they don’t even use


their horn; they just put up their handsand go like this [gestures] to mean you’restupid as an ox. And so I used that symbolin the center of the stamp and put a signaround it that says, “Museum of AbsurdAntiques.” I made the stamp because Ilearned that in the Prado, the Franco gov-ernment had put the government stampon Goya’s prints, and I felt that was suchan insult to Goya’s integrity because hewould have been so opposed to Frarico,who was a fascist. And I looked for a framethat was sort of tacky to put around theprint. It was the first piece that I did thatfollowed an idea so tightly in that way.

MR: You mean everything? Not only the Goyastyle and the Reagan demon but then the officialstamp and the play in your signature at the end?

EC: Th at was a final pun actually. Ithought of it as I was signing it so I justdid it.

MR: And you also studied the technical side ofthe Goyas cl o s e ly— s i ze, technique and all?

EC: Yes. I measured them at the Legion ofHonor, and took notes on how long shouldI leave them in the acid for the thickness ofthe line and things like that.

MR: How large was your edition?

EC: I did forty prints of each. I have nowrun out of this one. This first one wasdone in 1983, and then I let the projectrest for a few years, but it really stuck in mymind. It was one of my favorite pieces.Then in 1986, I decided to do a few more.In 19871 actually ended up doing eight

more of this “Homage to Goya” series—for instance, this one of the Pope on at i g h t rope entitled “Look the Rope isBreaking.”

MR: Does that come from “The Disasters ofWar” rather than Goya’s Proverbs ?

EC: Yes. It looks somewhat like an imagefrom the other series but all my Homageprints are variations on “The Disasters ofWar.”

In Look the Rope is Breaking, I showthe Pope trying to be good with everybody,with God and the Devil. In the originalGoya version of Strange Devotion, the don-key was carrying a body in a coffin insteadof here where I have a safebox. And I thentook the next one in the series, whose title,This is Not Less Curious (in Spanish, Estano lo es menos) is a continuation of the pre-vious one. It’s about another kind of d evo-t i o n —the Goya print shows people savingsaints from the destruction of war, but Ichanged that. I used Picasso’s Demoisellesd’Avignon as a new icon that they are carry-ing. I decided to put the painting upsidedown because I wanted to show that theydon’t care much about the picture but justabout its value. Then there’s Troupe ofCharlatans. In the original print of Goyathere was a priest with a parrot head andit was a charlatan addressing the crowdand he had a parrot on the top corner. Inmy print, the image is about the mediaand how things are distorted in the media.Then I did Consequences (Las Resultas)where vulture bats are attacking corpses.


In my print, there is a space shuttle andthese bats are coming out of it.

MR: And how did you show the prints and howdid you select the Goya images?

EC: I just showed them all together intacky frames and put dirt on the framesand roughed them up a little.

I tried to pick the Goya images thatwould give me room for something funny.There were some that were so raw, thathad such incredibly strong images, and Iliked those a lot, too. But I wanted to dosomething funny at the same time, andsome of those Goya prints, for instance,when they are castrating a person or whenthere are figures of people who are head-less, or the head is hanging from a tree. Ifound them a little more difficult to makeajoke about. Though I still think I coulduse them, I might use one of the heaviestpictures of those. Right now, I have anidea for that and I might develop it as soonas I have time to get into my etchingsagain. There’s a picture of trees and onthe trees there are pieces of the humanbody—arms, legs, a head. And I think I’mgoing to put a little Mickey Mouse wan-dering around the pictures, and that’s it.

And then in my “Homage to Goya”there is this invention of my own, GoyaMeets Po s a d a, a scene of G oya andPosada meeting each other for the firsttime.

MR: Isn’t there a Diego Rivera painting of him -self, Posada and Posada’s calavera creation, thefashionable skeletal lady?

EC: Yes, there is one with them altogetheron a Sunday in the Alameda Park withJose Marti in the backgro u n d —a lot of h e -roes, and Frida Kahlo is there, too. So, Ijust borrowed this and put Posada withCatrina introducing him to Goya, and thebull “rain” that comes out of a Goya print,Fools Folly.

MR: What’s that curious skating figure on theright?

EC: Oh, that ’s a self-portrait with a Nahuamask so you won’t see my face. I’m hiddenas a child on roller skates because I used toroller skate a lot. So, I felt like putting in aminiature character there that could bealmost like a midget, but he actually hasperfect pro p o r t i o n s. And the shadowbehind is a mistake I made. It was a littletoo big, and I decided to make it a littles m a l l e r. But I left the mistake—I liked it asan afterimage. I wanted to put a tiny littlebull on the floor but it looked a little toobloody, so I didn’t.

MR: Can we now talk about the large charcoalcartoons?

EC: They began with my involvement inthe 1984 San Francisco exhibitions for thenationally organized Artist’s Call againstU.S. Intervention in Central America. Ihad already wanted to do an exhibitionbefore that that would address what washappening in Central America as I, like somany people, was very upset about it.Because I used to do a lot of political car-toons in the 1970s in Mexico for union


newsletters, I decided I wanted to make acartoon. I felt that the regular cartoonscale would get lost in a gallery space so Idecided to make a giant cartoon ofReagan.

I showed Reagan as Mickey Mousepainting graffiti that read “Ruskies andCubans out of Central America.” He waspainting with red paint from a bucket, butwhen you looked closely, you discoveredthat in the paint bucket was afoot comingout, so he was really painting with blood. Iput more red paint dripping on the galleryfloor itself. And then I put a small MickeyMouse on the left lower corner. I usuallydo that: a big figure on the right hand sideand a small figure on the left. On the left isthis small Mickey Mouse of Kissinger andhe was painting, “By the way, keep art outof politics.” He has a tiny little bucket andthere’s a finger coming out of the bucket;it is also dripping. And I painted on thewalls of the gallery too.

And blood was coming out of thedrawing into a little bucket that I found inthe market. So it was a funny but reallyvery scary Mickey Mouse.

Afterwards I felt that it was very effec-tive to use the good face” of the systemlike Mickey Mouse, something that repre-sents corporate culture, the industry thatsells Mickey Mouse all over the world andthat sells it as a nice face, a nice character.For Latin America or the other non-industrialized countries, it represents cul-tural imposition in many ways. I grew upwith Mickey Mouse myself and went to

see all the Disney movies. Somehow it cre-ated an impact on me, too. So I wanted toshow characters like Reagan, not as theevil monsters as they are usually portrayedin political caricatures. I wanted to makeReagan nice looking, sort of cute, not witha lot of sharp teeth. And it worked. I feltgreat because actually reality is very muchthat way.

You usually see all these super-sharpdressed up people in the financial districtin downtown San Francisco or in NewYork City, looking like nothing could beperfect enough for them. They look likevery decent people, well educated andpolite, and yet many of them are probablyinvesting in or working for companies thatinvest in South Africa, that help the gov-ernments of South Africa or Chile, thathold up the regimes there. So many ofthese people couldn’t care less; they arejust making money, and whatever the prof-its are, they will go there no matter if it’shell. To me, that’s the “nice” face of some-thing that is actually socially destructive.I’m using that kind of imagery to repre-sent that side of all society.

After this I did a second drawing, TheSorcerer’s Apprentice Strikes Again. It’s apicture of Reagan with a missile and themissile is going out of control.

Following these two drawings I creat-ed other images including 4 -U -2- C. Th i semerged as an enlarged drawing of askeleton I had in one of my boxes andthought of as something sort of funny butscary. It was two images of power looking


at a nuclear disaster and also beingdestroyed by the accident. But I didn’t-want to use the image of a nuclear “mush-room cloud” so instead I used arrows inopposite directions as if they were indicat-ing a short circuit. At the end, the drawingis not necessarily about a nuclear disaster;it could be any kind of holocaust createdby a ‘mistake” of a powerful characterunaware of the consequences of his/herpolitics, so they also become victims oftheir actions. Although there is a cow-b oy ’s hat often associated with Re a ga n—this image is not necessarily about him.

Here is another cartoon, La-K-La-K(1986) is almost the complementary of “4-U-2-C.” The title means the female skele-ton or the “she-skeleton. It originated withthe idea of C o at l i c u e, the pre -C o l u m b i a ng o ddess, and a little bit of the Posadac a l avera ch a r a c t e r, and a pre -C o l u m b i a nmask inthe front. She’s painting with acompanion, who is Mickey Mouse orsomeone wearing a Mickey Mouse mask. Ineeded something small on the left cornerto play a contrast to her, so I did that otherfigure. So I work pretty much out of justvisualizing different things. This was thefirst piece that I did that didn’t quite havedirect political references. And as I saidearlier, I’m pretty anarchistic in terms ofwhere I’m going..

MR: Isn’t that less true of the origins of“Slippery When Wet” (1986)?

ER: Not really. Slippery When Wet showsshoes slipping on blood. So it could be

politicians who are committing apoliticalcrime. It could be an agent. It could bea ny b o dy wh o ’s invo l ved in a politicalcrime, or it could be a diplomat or con-gressperson who votes for war. It could bemany things. I don’t really want to narrowthe meaning of it but, right, I did do thisdrawing after the killing of Olaf Palmer,the Swedish Prime Minister, and I usedthe way the crime was committed.Nobody knew who killed him specifically.It was so secretive. It made me think abouthow fragile anybody’s life is, no matterwho you are. But it’s not really OlafPalmer’s shoes and it’s not Reagan’s shoes.It could be a Kafkaesque reference. I don’thave any specific meaning for that shoe. Itcould be anyone’s shoes. The actual shoeimage comes out of my collecting minia-tures. I have miniature shoes that I reallyliked, and I had always kept in my mindthat I had to make a drawing of themsometime. So I stored that in my mind formonths, until it came to this point of hear-ing about the killing of Olaf Palmer. Themore I thought about how people wererunning in the snow after killing him, itbecame more relevent. I had these scenesin my head , these scenes of somebodydead on the snow in the streets or maybe itwasn’t the real scene because I never saw apicture of the murder. It’s something thatpulled at my imaginat i o n —h ow they killedhim. I was thinking that someone was justrunning, maybe somebody had stepped onhis blood and it could be very slippery. SoI had this idea of a shoe that was sudden-


ly slipping on blood. Then I thought whatkind of shoe and then I thought, that’s myminiature shoe. Then I just enlarged, it bycopying it. Finally, I glued the actual shoeonto one side of the drawing and itworkedreally nicely as an echo. It’s a tiny littleshoe against a huge drawing.

MR: Rather like that tiny little bucket that collect -ed the blood in that first piece?

EC: Exactly. And in the other drawings,too, they all have real live objects. Forexample, in Paradise Arrived, I put aMexican lottery card that has a heartcrossed by an arrow. That was outside ofthe drawing. Every drawing has an objectthat goes outside as an afterthought or anecho of the picture. And I usually paintsomething on the gallery walls—the other half of the shoe, for example, the footprint

MR: What is the story of the 1988 “WhenParadise Arrived?” By the way, do you usuallyhave that black framing line on either side?

EC: Yes, that’s where I put the titles. Thesea re seve n -by -s even foot draw i n g s. Eve ry -thing is drawn in black charcoal and a lit-tle bit of pastel for the red.

When Paradise Arrived refers to thefact that we Mexicans originally didn’tarrive in this country; rather it was reallythe other way around—this country cameto us. And suddenly, while you are in yourhouse, it’s not yours any longer, and youfind yourself an intruder in your neigh-bor’s house. So in this drawing, there isthis huge hand of a cartoon character. Itcould be any cartoon character, but let’s

say it’s Mickey Mouse’s hand, and it isabout to flick this little girl, who is levitat-ing a heart between her hands. In very tinyletters in the finger that is about to flickher, it says “English Only.” The girl has anIndian face and she’s barefoot, and I want-ed to make her eyes like some of the pre-Columbian sculptures where the eyes lookoff into the distance. They express a deepconcentration, a different state of mind.I’ve seen eyes like that in religious paint-ings made by the Indians in Mexico. A lotof the cherubs in the churches have eyeslike that—they look as if they took peyote or something, and they are looking at thehorizon in ecstasy.

Here’s another big cartoon, Old Toy(1986). It’s a space shuttle being thrown bya hand, another powerful hand that is justplaying with a new toy. But it’s actually anold war game, and that’s why I put in thespace shuttle. This was made after think-ing about that space shuttle tragedy of theyear before, and how the government cap-italizes on such things in order to gain con-sensus and to keep the military projectsgoing in space. It was a very, very manipu-lative campaign, playing with the feelingsof the people, for example, like the teacherwho got killed. The politicians play gamesall the time, just like the 49ers. War gamesare as irrational as toy games.

MR: What object did you have outside this one?

EC: That’s a fly, a plastic fly. And here is apainted fly that is crossing the whole draw-ing in a straight red line.


MR: Like a catapult?

EC: Right. Like a bullet fly. I used it toshow that sometimes flies fly a lot betterthan space shuttles especially when spaceshuttles collapse. So I just made that as asort of funny element to contrast to themore dramatic part of the accident.

MR: Ideally these drawings would be next to oneanother so that they’d give the sense of a cartoonnarrative.

EC: Yes, like a giant comic strip. Whenthey are seen together in a gallery, all thesquares are the same size, seven-by-sevenfoot, one right next to the other. Theywork like a huge comic strip that narratesa kind of a story. I don’t want to be preten-tious about these drawings,though, so Ilook for the cheapest materials I can find,like the paper and charcoal. I didn’t wantto make an oil painting.

MR: Yet people bought these?

EC: Yes. Unfortunately!

MR: The work that you thought wouldn’t sell.When did you start selling things.

EC: Last year.

MR: So it suddenly happened. How does it feel?

EC: It’s something that I didn’t expect.Paule Anglim called me and invited me toshow in her San Francisco gallery. Paule isa special person, partly because she has aMasters in sociology and being from theFrench part of Canada also makes a dif-ference. She’s very sensitive to social issues.She showed Sue Coe, and when Coe was

out here she saw my work at the BerkeleyArt Center and I met her. We talked toeach other, and she really liked my work—we traded prints. She introduced me toPaule and Paule saw my work; then Paulecalled me a year after to put me in a showat her gallery. So I accepted, expectingthat I might not sell much, and I just did itfor showing the work mostly. Before that Ihad the attitude that I would never sell mywork. I would survive by working at theGaleria de la Raza or doing gr a p h i cdesign, but I would not produce some-thing in order to sell it. And so far I stillhaven’t done that. It happens that I’m sell-ing my work, but I hope that’s just a happycoincidence. I want to keep that integrity.And sometimes I don’t sell somethingbecause of its political connotations. Andthe portraits of Reagan or Bush are usual-ly the pieces that I don’t sell and I thinkthat is a success.

MR: Can we move away from the present backinto your childhood. What was your life like as achild in Mexico City?

EC: I grew up in downtown Mexico, andit was a very rough place. Kids were fight-ing with each other all the time. I used tofight in the streets constantly. It was violentbut, on the other hand, very communal.People helped each other all the time.There were parties that all the neighborsorganized. Football in the streets was oneof the favorite games for us. My parentshad an Indian “nanny,” Natalia, to takecare of me at the time, and she spoke


Nahua. She had moved from the country-side to live in Mexico City at my parent’shouse. I used to go out with her every timeshe had to do any shopping. She took mewith her and she usually wrapped mearound her back. She was a very strongyoung woman—she had begun to work formy parents when she was eighteen ornineteen years old. Whenever she workedin the house, she would carry me on herback and sing songs to me. I developed agreat affection for her. She was like mysecond mother.

MR: What did you learn from her?

EC: Attitudes, I think. She was humble,mild, and very kind.

MR: Which area do Nahua Indians come from?

EC: They come from Central Mexico andthey are the ancient Aztecs who mixedwith the Spaniard s. Most people inM exico are half Indians and halfSpaniards. It’s a mestizo culture, althoughthe Indian part is actually the strongest.That’s what makes the difference betweenMexico and Spain. I feel myself muchmore identified with Indian culture—thefood, the sense of humor too that laughs atdeath, has some kind of smiling face whenyou are faced with terrible circumstances.During the horrible earthquake in MexicoCity, dozens of jokes were made about thedisaster that were really funny. You willnever hear jokes about tragedies here. Sothat kind of humor comes from Indianroots.

MR: Did your parents come from a mixture ofSpanish and Indian?

EC: Yes. My father looks very Indian andmy father’s mother was also Indian look-i n g. My mother looks more Spanish,though, as she’s light skinned and has lighteyes. On my mother’s side, they’re moreSpanish-looking, even though they comefrom the countryside too, from a smallfarmer’s family in Zultepec. My mother’smother had about fourteen miscarriagesliving in the countryside. She was marriedwhen she was fourteen years old, and shewas a widow when she was about forty.Since then she always dressed in black.She was very religious; she went to churcheveryday and said the rosary at night.

MR: As an adolescent, did you have a certain peri -od when you started to read a lot of n o ve l s, poetry,political texts?

EC: Yes. That was in high school. First Ibegan to read Hermann Hesse.

MR: Steppenwoif ?

EC: Right. Actually, that was the first one,and then I read Demian . A friend of minehad a cousin who had a huge collection ofbooks in his house and we would borrowbooks from him. He was a political activistas well. He went mad later on. He had allkinds of books, and we began to readDostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

MR: Kafka?

EC: Yes, that’s when I began to readKafka. The first book I read was the


Metamorphosis, and then I read differentcollections of Kafka’s short stories andinterviews with his friends. I was very fas-cinated with him.

MR: Why?

EC: His world sounded very magical tome. That was what was so attractive aboutKafka—magical, yet very real, very closeto reality due to the fact that he describesvery ordinary authoritarian situations, yetwhere it is hard to understand the ‘whys”o f t h at situation and the bu re a u c r at i cch a r a c t e rs who serve such my s t e r i o u sgoals and mysterious businesses thatnobody sees. Everybody is just doing theirjob and they don’t know why they arekilling someone, but it’s nothing personalthey are just doing their job. So, to me thatwas very real, even though there were nott h at many logical ex p l a n ations in thebooks. In Mexico, we have an incredibleand strange Kafkaesque bureaucratic sys-tem.

At the same time, I also began to readMarx. The first book I read was theCommunist Manifesto, which I discussedwith friends.

MR: Was this all when you were in high school?

EC: Yes, between sixteen and eighteenyears old, I began to read a lot. One of thethings that made me read so much wasthat I used to love to challenge my teach-ers in the classroom. I enjoyed that somuch. I used to read a lot of differentthings. Marxian theories and even writers

like Marcuse. We read Rosa Luxemburg,though that was a little later when I was incollege. At the time I used to challenge myteachers of history about the way theywere teaching history to us. I had great funjust challenging their concept of historyshaped by individual heroes instead of his-tory being created by social explosions ofpeople or massive movements that are inconstant crisis. And, also, we used to arguewith priests and we used to love to do that.That was the time I became an atheist.

MR: What drew you to the study of economics?

EC: I had studied sociology at theAutonomous University of Mexico andthen I reached the conclusion that I shouldstudy economics as a base to understandother social processes. I studied economicsand I never regretted it. I really liked itand, besides, the school of economics inMexico was great at the time because wehad professors who were refugees fromSouth America. One of my teachers was aPanamanian who studied in the PatriceL u mumba Unive rsity in the U. S. S. R .There were also a lot of more traditionaleconomists who brought in different per-spectives than those of Marx or the LatinAmerican schools. There were always real-ly intense discussions in the auditorium allthe time between different teachers andgroups. It was very crowded and everyonewas very much into what should you do inLatin America, what use will economictheory have in the transformation of LatinAmerica. We were sent to the countryside


to work in rural development programs aspart of our training. It was great. I loved itand and I learned a lot. I studied all kindsof theories, not just Marx. So, we studieda lot, but with a focus on how to use it inreality. It was an incredible growing expe-rience, and that, combined with the politi-cal activism outside school, made me formstrong views on what was happening out-side in the world. It’s an experience andtime that I will never forget. I learned alot, especially attitudes from workers andfrom peasants. Just the way they were soclear and so humble with no pretensious-ness at all, yet being the most wonderfulpeople you could ever meet, the kindestpeople, who would give their lives to dosomething for you without even announc-ing it. So,to me, thatwas a great period oftime, and it’s a period of my life that Imissed when I came to the United States.

MR: Did your move here affect your work, yourthinking?

EC: Oh, yes, lt gave me a distance fromwhat l was doing in Mexico and reallygave me a great deal of freedom to doalmost anything I wanted. In Mexico, Ihad already developed a strong will to takerisks because you are tested in Mexico inthat way. In Mexico, you constantly riskyour life for things you are doing. It couldbe as an activist or just walking the streetand being afraid that the police might robyou because in Mexico the police are theones that rob you sometimes due to thecorruption. You might even have to risk

your life, and that’s a very scary feeling tothink that you might die for somethingthat you believe in. Those were the feel-ings I developed in Mexico through myyears of being very active in the studentmovement in the late 1960s and early1970s. I was very much a supporter of theworkers’ strikes and their demands foreducation that was oriented toward theneeds of the people, and not toward theneeds of the wealthy groups of the coun-try. A lot of the students joined them ind e m o n s t r at i o n s, and I participated ino rganizing with many other sch o o l s—I wasjust like a grain on the beach. A lot of stu-dents from many places got together andbegan to organize the first demonstrationafter the massacre of October 2, 1968,right before the Olympic Games. That’swhen they killed about five hundred peo-ple. And after that there was not a singledemonstration in Mexico for any reasonwhatsoever for the next three years. Thosewere three long years of unrest, and, at thetime, there was a guerilla movement in themountains and the government was send-ing the army everywhere.

In the sch o o l s, there we re secre tpolice, paramilitary groups who acted asstudents, very young, very strong and verywell trained, armed with guns. That situa-tion created in you a really clear image ofwho were your friends and who were notyour friends, how to be really careful aboutwhat you were doing. We almost didn’tspeak politics in school with anybody. Wedidn’t speak politics among our families.


Some of us at some time were consideringl e aving our homes. Most of us we redependent on our parents. A lot of myfriends were from the upper middle classor the middle class.

Many of us began to participate instudy circles; we began to look for politicalparties to join. Basically we created ourown party, wrote a newspaper every week,and it was extremely efficient. We hadnews before the official newspapers. It wasan incredible experience. And for the firsttime in my life, I got a great sense of com-munity among a lot of people. There werereally intense moments when all thesethings were happening. It developed in methis attitude of taking chances for whatev-er you believed in or wanted to do. So, Itranslated that into art. It made me feelthat I should do anything I wanted withany idea that came into my mind, whetheror not it would be sold, whether or not itwould be accepted in the art community, agallery, or art market place.

MR: It’s strikes me as curious that when you livedso intensely politically in Mexico, you were work -ing basically with abstraction in your painting—Iknow you did political cartoons too, though—and only when you came here did the political materialbegin coming out in the art. Am I making it toosimple?

EC: In Mex i c o, my non-n a rr at i ve wo rk swere related to an idea of integrating allaspects of society, like the idea of theConstructivists integrating art, architec-ture, painting and sculpture to the creation

of a new world. Here in this country thereare other circumstances that have affectedme, like the need to express my views andfeelings on Central America, just to giveyou an example.

MR: When did you get involved with the Galeriade la Raza in San Francisco?

EC: Th at was around 1984. I began tovisit the ga l l e ry and to ch at with the peoplet h e re. Later they invited me to somes h ow s, and I helped do installat i o n s.G e n e r a l l y, I was a vo l u n t e e r. We liked eachother a lot and, finally, they decided toi nvite me to be on the board of d i re c t o rs in1986. I was afraid of taking that re s p o n s i-bility because it would be a lot of time andcommitment, but on the other hand, Ireally liked it as a project. So I accepted. Afew months after that Rene Yanez quit. Hes u ggested that I replace him and the boarda greed so I became the interim artisticd i rector in 1987 and a little later I was con-f i rmed as the permanent artistic dire c t o r.

So far it has been very good, and Ireally like it because it’s away of beingaway from the elite, and being in the com-munity. In a way, it’s an effort to join artand life, and that’s something I believe in,keeping the art somehow related to thesociety that produces that art instead ofputting it away in mausoleums of art. TheMission neighborhood is violent at times,but I think that is why we should remain inthe neighborhood because we are, hope-fully, one of the many elements that willhelp to change it for the better. I think the


Galeria plays a role here, and gives anopportunity to artists who haven’t hadopportunities to show their wo rk —e s p e c i a l -ly minorities. That was the origin of theGaleria. It was born out of the necessity tocreate a space for Chicano artists who did-n’t have any place to show their work dueto discrimination.

With the 1988 Jeff Jones report, it hasbeen shown that not mu ch has beenchanged. The fact that the San FranciscoMuseum of Modern Art has a 100%white board of directors and 96% whitestaff, that the 4% who are people of colorare janitors or security personnel, that theyreceive 80% of the money to be given toarts organizations by the City, and morethan 50% of the population of S a nFrancisco itself is non-white—that makesa statement in itself. All those things speakabout who runs the institutions and whoare they approaching for funding. The JeffJones Report really blew my mind—just thethe fact that some of the mu l t i -c u l t u r a levents bring broader audiences than those

of the opera or the ballet makes a state-ment about the arts in the city. So, I thinkthat it is great that a space like the Galeriade la Raza exists. ■

MONA ROTH was born in England. She received herM.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California,Berkeley. From 1979 til 1986 she was Associate Professor,Visual Arts Department, University of California, SanDiego and from 1982 til 1983 Chairperson of the VisualArts Department. Since 1986 she has been TrefethenProfessor of Art History, Mills College, Oakland,California.

She has curated numerous exhibitions, has lecturedextensively in the U.S. as well as participating in manyconferences and panels on art.

She is editor of and contributor to The AmazingDecade: Women and Performance Art in America, 1970-1980, published in Los Angeles in 1983 and Connecting Conversations: Interviews with Twenty EightBay Area Artists, published in 1988.

She has had numerous articles published including TheAesthetics of Indifference, Artforum, Nov 1977; Visionsand ReVisions, Artforum, Nov 1980, and Suzanne Lacy: Social Reformer and Witch, TDR (TheDrama Review) Spring 1988.


There are probably few places in the worldwhere Mickey Mouse is not recognized.Images of the endearing rodent adorn theflannel lining of a child’s vest I recentlypurchased which was made by Chinesepeasants in remote Shaanxi Province. Andmy teenage son remarked on the familiarpresence of “Topolino” in comic books,on clothing and decorating other kitschitems when he visited Italy several yearsa g o. For Enrique Chagoya Mickey isalmost a personal logo.

Growing up in Mexico City in the1950s and early sixties Enrique Chagoyawas well acquainted not only with thisenduring American icon, but also with theentire Disney pantheon. By the time hewas an adolescent he had seen all theDisney movies and had absorbed a largedose of American culture in comics andadvertising, as well. Naturally he, alongwith his contemporaries wo rl dw i d e, wasunaware of the cultural hegemony implic-it in this material. As a child Enriqueaccepted Mickey and his cartoon associ-ates, as they were presented: cute, inno-cent creatures—humorous and appealing.At its most Machiavellian, America couldnot have selected a better cultural ambas-sador than Mickey Mouse. In the samecasual way, Enrique absorbed Mexicanh i s t o ry and culture —on family outings tos u ch places as Teotihuacan orChapultepec Park. These visits were notpresented as ‘educational opportunities,”

but as family fun, like visits to Yosemite orto Disneyland for a North American child.He was also stro n gly influenced by ayoung Indian woman, hired by his familyto care for him, who taught him songs inNahua and told him strange and wonder-ful stories.

Chagoya, as so many of his contem-poraries world-wide, was shocked into po-litical awareness by the tumultuous eventsof 1968. As in Europe and the UnitedStates, waves of student protests sweptover Mexico. The reaction of the police tothe student demonstrations was particular-ly violent and repressive in Mexico City.Enrique, fifteen at the time, and his familywitnessed acts of extreme brutality, includ-ing the killing of a child and a massacre ofstudent pro t e s t e rs by the army. Th e s eevents affected him deeply and providedthe basis for his political maturation. Hebegan to understand the role that theUnited States has played in the economicand political subordination of Mexico andmost of the world’s developing nations.Mickey was unmasked.

Among Chagoya’s primary thematicconcerns is the dialectic of appearanceand reality, the contradiction of essenceand phenomena. In fact, he believes thatthe appearance of a thing often concealsan opposite reality. In his work terror lurksbeneath the innocent looking mouse ears,death is concealed in the flaccid MickeyMouse glove (“La Kalaka,” “4-U-2-C,”

23M I C K EY MOUSE AND LA MUERTE ROBBIN LEGERE HENDERS O N

A P E R S O N A L R E A C T I O N T O T H E W O R K O F E N R I Q U E C H A G O Y A

“When Paradise Arr i ved”). Mickey Mouse,the “Happy Fa c e,” is metaphors for the cutedisguising the hideous, for pop culturewh i ch helps to conceal the evils of “the sys-tem.” Chagoya calls this “the nice disguise, ”and tries to make even his villains’ (Re a ga n ,K i s s i n g e r, Bush) “real” faces look “nice, ”because he say s, evil is not obv i o u s. IfRe a gan is a “freedom fighter,” Hitler is, per-h a p s, “a unifier.” The disguise, the MickeyMouse hat, the “Have a nice day” happyf a c e, makes the perp e t r ator of h o rro rsappear harm l e s s. This is the harmlessness of“clean nuclear powe r,” the “green revo l u-tion through ch e m i c a l s,” (witnessed cour-tesy of Union Carbide in Bhophol, India),or the Orwellian concept of “peace thro u g hstrength.” In “When Paradise Arrived”—the title of the piece is an ironic counter-point to the image the cartoon gl oved handbecomes infl ated to enormous pro p o r t i o n sand is poised menacingly over the smalle c s t atic child. The shift in scale re n d e rsM i c k ey ’s (or is it Donald Duck’s, or Goofy’sor Bugs Bunny ’s?) little, harm l e s s, fo u r- f i n g -e red hand an instrument of t e rrorism, andthe hand’s gesture, as if flicking aw ay a fl y,e m p h a s i zes the utter indiff e rence of t h atomnipotent powe r. Piling iro ny on iro ny, themiddle finger (‘digitus imputicus”) bears thephrase “English Only.” The piece com-ments directly and fo rcefully on the colo-n i z ation of America and the continu i n gp resence of s t ate terrorism, and its disguises.

The etchings share some of t h edevices of the large charcoal work, but thecontext is more circumscribed. Conceived

as an ex p l o r ation of Francisco Goya ’sideas and techniques, Chagoya started theseries by asking himself, “What wouldGoya’s Disasters of War have looked like ifhe had drawn them today?” Studying theGoya etchings, Chagoya was struck byhow few differences there are socially andpolitically between the two historic peri-ods. Goya’s disgust with the hypocrisy ofthe clergy and the government, and hisabhorrence of war makes him a political,as well as an aesthetic kinsman of theMexican who, along with a similar disgust,shares half a name with him. The majordifference between our era and the periodG oya depicts in “Los Desastres de laG u e rra” is our current capability tod e s t roy the wo rld. As Chagoya bega ndeveloping the ideas for his “Homage toGoya,” the reverse of the original proposi-tion occurred to him as more interesting:“What if some artifacts or political figuresof late twentieth century culture had exist-ed in Goya’s time?” Consequently each ofthe etchings in this series, contains amus-ing anachronisms which emphasize bothGoya’s and Chagoya’s point of view: acassette player and microphone is placedin the claws of the ch i c k e n -headed priestin, “Farádula de charlatanes,” while astealth bomber hovers over the vulturous,batwinged monsters in, “Las resultas.” Atelevision set replaces the falling chair in“Estragos de la guerra.” A safe is substi-tuted for the corpse in a glass coff i nin“Extrana devocion.” Picasso’s “Demoi-selles d’ Avignon,” in “Esta no 10 es


m e n a s,” immediately fo l l owing in theseries, is the contemporary artifact replac-ing the religious statue in Goya’s original.Reagan’s face is substituted for whomeverit was Goya was originally lampooning in“Contra el bien general,” and if one looksve ry care f u l l y, a spectator wearing aMousketeer’s hat can be seen in the crowdin “Que se rompe la cuerda.” Goya’sgeneric priest is replaced by the arch-priest, Pope John Paul II, whose benignface betrays no worry since, according toEnrique; he seems to have managed tokeep on the good side of both God andthe Devil.

Chagoya says he decided to introducethe rubber stamps as an ironic commenton Franco’s government, which assertedownership by stamping all of Goya’s etch-ings in the Prado. Goya was fastidious innumbering his drawings and etchings inchronological order. Chagoya has retainedGoya’s numerical system, thus each printis designated as referring to a specific workof the Disasters of War.

Enrique has obviously learned a gre atdeal from the master. His etchings havethe feel of G oya ’s; they are skillfullyd r awn and printed, though not slav i s hcopies of the Disasters of Wa r. Chagoya ’ss t roke is diff e rent from the Spaniard ’s, bu tthe main diff e rence is in his outlook.G oya ’s wo rk became darker and darker ashe mat u red. The monsters in theD i s a s t e rs of War are not the monsters ofclassicism; they are not based on myth orlegend, but spring directly from Goya ’s

twisted genius. While they operate as alle-g o ry, they are more clearly read as mani-f e s t ations of the artist’s psych o l o gy.Essentially tragic, this later wo rk inspire spity and horror in the viewe r. Doubtless,the bitterness Goya felt was, at least inpart, a result of the horro rs he witnessedduring the nationalist insurrection aga i n s tthe Fre n ch, but it may have been as well areaction to the turns of f ate in his pers o n-al life (his deafness, the failure of a lovea ff a i r, perhaps). Goya uses iro ny and sat i reto convey his disgust with the wo rl d .C h a g oya, a young man, also has been wit-ness to horro rs, but his is a more play f u l l yi ronic, response; his monsters are dis-guised as nice guys, or are the nosethumbing depictions of c avorting skele-tons from Mexican tradition. Th e s eh u m o rous “m u e r t o s” ridicule death; theydo not inspire fear, but laughter. Th ec a l averas are perhaps the most perfectsynthesis of the Spanish and Indian tradi-t i o n s. In them the mordant iro ny ofG oya ’s wo rldview combines with a fat a l-ism to wh i ch the only possible re s p o n s eseems to be laughter.

Two prints which are tangential to thiss e r i e s, not derived directly from the“Disasters of War,” deal with the artist’srelationship to his two spiritual and artisticmentors, Goya and Posada. Chagoya hasassigned his own numbers to these, #1 and#3. The first is a kind of portrait of theartist as Goya (he uses the coincidence oftheir similar names in the title) but Goya’shat is too big for Chagoya and he can’t fill


the master’s shoes. The second portraysan imagined meeting between Goya andPosada, spanning an ocean and two gener-ations. If Goya and Posada had been writ-ers their genre would, perhaps, have beencalled “reportage.” They created some ofthe most trenchant documentaries of theirrespective eras, but unlike Daumier orHogarth, their works lack the slightesttrace of sentimentality. Wit and irony arethe instruments they use to make theirvisions palpable. Here the two major influ-ences on Enrique’s art, both chroniclersand critics of their time, meet on a plainsurrounded by some of their creations,while little Enrique self-consciously slinksaway.

José Guadalupe Posada, the gre atMexican printmaker, had enormous influ-ence on Mexico’s great muralists, Riveraand Orozco, and graphic artists such asLeopoldo Mendez, and his associates inthe Taller de Gráfica Popular. Posada’swork continues to shape the consciousnessof younger artists, and Chagoya is noexception. Posada’s “La calavera catrina”(The skeleton of the fashionable lady) fig-ures prominently in Rivera’s mural in theHotel del Prado, “Sueño de una tarde enla Alameda Central,” and is also themodel for “La Kalaka.” Her hat is derivedd i rectly from “La calavera cat r i n a . ”Posada, a self-taught, working class, litho-grapher and engraver produced thousandsof chap’books, book covers and broad-sides from 1868 until his death in 1913.Besides the highly imaginative calaveras

produced for the Day of the Dead cele-brations for which he is most well-known,Posada documented the events of his time:the Revolution, the Zapatistas, the execu-tions under Porfirio Diaz, epidemics, acci-dents and grisly crimes. During a timewhen photographs were not yet widelyused to record current events, his liveli-hood depended on these sensationalizeddepictions of the news of the day. Hissympathies were always with the poor andabused; he depicts their lives with angrypassion, underscored by fatalistic humorcharacteristic of the Indian outlook ofM ex i c o. The similarities with Goya ’swo rld view are not merely a conceit ofC h a g oya ’s. A broadside entitled “Ve ryinteresting news of the four murders com-mitted by the unfo r t u n ate AntonioSanchez who after the horrible crime atethe remains of his own son,” is stronglyreminiscent of Goya’s “Saturn Devouringhis Children,” one of the terrifying “darkpaintings” wh i ch Goya chose to hangabove his dining table. Posada’s type metaland zinc engravings of firing squads sharethe immediacy and pathos of t h e“Disasters of War,” and Posada’s attitudetoward the hypocrisy of the clergy is clear-ly analogous to Goya ’s. Sanctimoniouspriests smile blandly as they hold their cru-cifixes above a garroting or death by firingsquad.

Enrique Chagoya’s abiding connec-tion and attachment to Mexican culture,P re -Columbian, colonial and post-c o l o -nial, resonates in his work and fills his life.


His studio is a riot of Mexican dancemasks, retabalos,toys, and pre-Columbiansculpture. He is attracted to the intensityof the ancient religions, Aztec and Maya,and their art which reflects deep passion.Even Christian art, especially as it wastransplanted in Mexico, reflects a similarpassionate intensity, an intensity that hasbeen largely lost with the commodificationof art in late capitalist society. Much of thewo rk cre ated for ch u rches in Lat i nAmerica was fashioned by Indians orMestizos and shows the vital influence ofindigenous re l i g i o n s, with the saintsbecoming Christianized versions of pre-Columbian deities. The eyes in the saints’faces, according to Chagoya, stare intospace; they have an ecstatic quality whichseems to see beyond the personal or tem-poral. This is the look, he says, of Pre-Columbian sculpture or folk art masks.The small figure in “When Pa r a d i s eA rr i ve d” we a rs this look. She is a “mini-Virgin of Guadalupe,” the metamorphosisof the old Aztec goddess Coatlicue. Nowshe displays the bleeding heart so popularin the religious art of colonial Mexico.

“In art there is no need for color;”Goya is reported to have said,” “I see onlylight and shade. Give me a crayon, and Iwill paint your portrait.” This is the proudgraphic tradition to which Chagoya hasapprenticed himself. In Goya and Posadahe has selected two of the most powerfulexponents of that tradition in Western art.Graphic, rather than painterly, Enrique’swork displays color (almost always red)

simply for its emotional and symbolicvalue. Perhaps the most effective such useis in “Slippery When Wet.” Here again wehave big and little, now the shoes of a busi-nessman or politician, seeming to spin inthe art in a comic pratfall, the soles andthe pavement under them drenched inslippery blood. So much blood can bedangerous to the bloodletters the artists u gg e s t s. Red stro n gly re i n fo rces thedialectic.

Disconnected body parts appear fre-quently in Chagoya’s iconography (e.g.“Double Agent”). The imagery immedi-ately calls to mind the little, silve rMilagros, arms, legs, hearts, etc. whichmany faithful offer as thanks or propitia-tion in the Catholic church. Enrique tellsmore disturbing stories of their possibleorigins in his work, suggesting they areassociated with dismemberment. He par-ticularly remembers two atrocious crimes,widely publicized in his youth. Their sen-sationalism renders their description gra-tuitous, but they involve tamales contain-ing whole fingers and boxes found in thestreet containing body parts. These crimesheld a certain fascination for Chagoya,and indeed his description of them yearslater is tinged with grim humor. Blood andb o dy parts symbolize at o m i z ation andcontain not a little suggestion of t h emacabre. But they also symbolize magicand power, perhaps the most dramaticexample being the handprints, wh i chappear in many of the large charcoaldrawings. These marks are not merely


symbolic; they also trace the history of thedrawing. This concretizing of the process,the history of the work, is important to theartist. It unmasks the work as it were, andfor this reason he also allows changes, or ashe refers to them, “mistakes,” to remainvisible. The device reinforces the appear-ance/reality duality. This is the artist’sactual hand print, its real size and shape,not distorted, not drawn, but another real-ity outside the pictured image. It intro-duces an element wh i ch is an iro n i creminder of the dialectic between art andreality, which his work explores.

As it was for his artistic progenitorsGoya and Posada, humor is a major toolfor Chagoya. In this work the comic forceoperates both as anodyne and humanizer.Chagoya makes his intention clear, oftenquite obviously, sometimes more ambigu-ously, through the use of irony, satire, par-adox, and puns. Among the methods heemploys are jokey titles, and the introduc-tion of additional commentary outside thepicture, both visual and verbal. Enrique’stitles, usually playful or outright puns, arevisually imbedded in the piece. Puns occurwithin the work as well, for example,“anarm and a leg” pictured and inscribed in“Double Agent” juxtapose that figure ofspeech with imagery which exposes itsmore macabre meaning. This playfulnessis also re flected in the use of r u bb e rstamps as additional commentary in theetchings (“This is not a Test”), or in thesmall items pinned to the wall near thelarge works. The Chinese “Tongue” card

hangs next to “Nose Job” creating a dia-logue with the drawn “ear” and “nose”c a rd s. This device provides us with aglimpse of the source of E n r i q u e ’si m a g e ry, the object tro u v é, the flea mark e tfind, but primarily it suggests the viewer’sand the creator’s derision. Similarly thetiny plastic fly pinned to the wall next to“Old Toy” blurs the distinction betweenthe interior reality of the picture and thereal world of its setting. Enrique created“Old Toy” in response to the Challengerdisaster. Instead of the crocodile tears towh i ch the media tre ated us, Chagoyaaddresses the amorality of the space pro-gram and its hypocrisy. The omnipotenthand of government, industry, the mili-tary, treats civilians as expendable toys inits disastrous, capricious and meaninglessgames. The fly, according to Enrique, is asuperfly, because as he explains, the redline indicates that it flies in a straight linewhich no real fly can do, while the rocketfollows an ordinary fly’s trajectory to itsdestruction. The little fly on the wall re-inforces the message that reality is oftenm o re strange than fantasy, a fre q u e n tChagoya theme.

Dramatic shifts in scale and juxtaposi-tions of big and little are additional serio-comic devices. The big skeletons in “LaKalaka” and “4-U-2-C” wear enormoussymbolic hats. The cowboy hat symbolizesU. S. notions of “good” powe r —John Way n eor Ronald Reagan strong, silent frontiergood guys. According to Chagoya, thei n w a rd pointing arrows indicate some-


thing like a short-c i rcuit while the figurewitnesses a nuclear explosion. The face,abstracted to ch ev ro n -like bars, suggest aconnection with the military. “Lakalaka,”a more ambiguous figure, wears the enor-mous middle class, Victorian era hat fromPosada, but instead of the traditional skull,she is further masked. The abbreviationproduces a truly mysterious and terrifyingfigure. Chagoya says that she developedf rom his imaginat i ve rep re s e n t ation ofCoatlicue, the Pre-Columbian goddess ofdeath and rebirth, war and fecundity—the duality of existence. As the upstartApollo opposes Dionysius in Gre e kmy t h o l o gy, Coatlicue is opposite toQuetzacoatl and a more ancient deity.The duality she personifies, is imbedded inthe Mexican worldview, and is a persistentelement in Chagoya’s work.

The big skeletons in the two worksrep resent insane powe r. The littleDoppelgangers both undercut and rein-force this image of terrible power. Theyseem to ridicule the dominant figures, as

the Mickey Mouse hats suggest, but theyare also diminutive clones whose duplica-tion threaten to overwhelm us, multiplyingand spreading the evil which emanatesfrom the larger figure.

It is perhaps humor which accom-plishes the synthesis in Enrique Chagoya’swork. Known among his friends as anengaging raconteur, Enrique has the abili-ty to seize upon the ironies inherent in therhetoric and actions of the powerful andto expose them with biting wit. Underlyingthe satirist is a passionately involved andcommitted individual. Far from cynical, heis nevertheless aware of the excess andhypocrisy of our leaders, and combatstheir corruption with sarcasm and subver-sive humor. ■

ROBBIN LEGERE HENDERSON is a painter, a free-

lance writer and an independent curator. She was curator

of the Berkeley Art Center and formerly director of both

the Intersection Gallery and the Southern Exposure

Gallery in San Francisco. Ms. Henderson lives in San

Francisco. ©1989 Robbin Legere Henderson


30Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 SELF PORTRAIT WITH GOYA’S SHOE 1987

1 3 x 1 5 i n c h e s E t c h i n g a q u a t i n t w i t h r u b b e r s t a m p

31Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 R AVAGES OF WAR 1987


32Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 G OYA MEETS POSADA 1987


33Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 STRANGE DEVOTION 1987


34Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 THIS IS NOT LESS CURIOUS 1987


35Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 AGAINST THE COMMON GOOD 1987


36Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 THE CONSEQUENCES 1987


37Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 T ROUPE OF CHARLATA N S


38Homage to Goya Series 1983-1987 LOOK THE ROPE IS BREAKING 1987


39T H E S O R C E R E R ’ S A P P R E N T I C E S T R I K E S A G A I N 1 9 8 4

7 x 7 fee t c h a r coa l on pap e r. Photo : Bobby McGee

40T H E F R E E D O M O F E X P R E S S I O N . . . T H E R E C OV E R Y O F T H E I R E C O N O M Y 1 9 8 4

8 0 x 8 0 i n c h e s , c h a r c o a l & p a s t e l o n p a p e r

41L A K A L A K A 1 9 8 6


42S L I P P E R Y W H E N W E T 1 9 8 7

8 0 x 8 0 i n c h e s , c h a r c o a l & p a s t e l o n p a p e r. C o l l e c t i o n o f A l l e n E v e n s

434 - U - 2 - C 1 9 8 7

8 0 x 8 0 i n c h e s , c h a r c o a l & p a s t e l o n p a p e r. C o l l e c t i o n o f M r. & M r s . K a v a n

44O L D T O Y 1 9 8 8


45W H E N P A R A D I S E A R R I V E D 1 9 8 9

8 0 x 8 0 i n c h e s , c h a r c o a l & p a s t e l o n p a p e r. C o l l e c t i o n o f D i R o s a Fo u n d a t i o n

46D O U B L E A G E N T 1 9 8 9


47T R I B U T E T O P O S A D A , 1 9 8 9


48A W A R D W I N N E R 1 9 8 9


491 4 9 2 , 1 9 8 9


NA R R ATIVE CHRO N O LOGY OF ENRIQUE CHAG OYA by Moir a Ro t h ** S t atements by the ar tist are drawn from an inter v i ew, Ja nu a ry 22, 1989

1953-1968Born in Mexico City, August 26th, 1953. Parents and grandparents hadmoved to Mexico City before he was born, but other relatives remain inthe countryside. The extended family is a closeknit one, and there are

many visits to the country during Chagoyas childhood. Has three sisters,one of whom is older than he. Father, Enrique Chagoya Galicia, studiedart but makes living first as firefighter and then works for the MexicanCentral Bank. At age 8, Chagoya is taught to draw by his father. Mother,Ofelia Flores Sanchez, runs a sewing business at home. ‘She had six orseven sewing machines so we had quite a lot of people working at homefor a period of time. That was when I was growing up. Eventually my par-ents were in better shape financially.” Chagoya is brought up partly by anurse, Natalia, a Nahua Indian, who acts as his second mother, and withwhom he becomes very close; he credits her for his empathy with theIndian side of Mexican culture. Is taken regularly on family outings tomajor museums in the City and to the famous ruins, includingTeotihuacan, 50 kilometers northeast of the city.

1968-1970Between ages 16 and 18, reads voraciously and is particularly drawn tothe ideas and writing of Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Rosa Luxemburgand Karl Marx. In art is attracted to the writings and theories of theDadaists, Kandinsky and the Russian Constructivists. This is a turbulenttime in Mexican history, with much student unrest, that comes to a headon October 2, 1968 when 500 students are killed by police at the TlatelolcoPlaza in Mexico City. Chagoya and his friends are actively engaged in pol-itics as are thousands of high school and college students throughout thecountry.

1973-1976Attends Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (NationalAutonomous University of Mexico); studies economics after havingbriefly studied art, anthropology and sociology. Classrooms full of intel-lectual ferment due to large numbers of diverse voices among instruc-tors and politically explosive situation in Mexico. Students are sent to thecountryside to work in rural development projects. Chagoya remembers

50C H RO N O LO G Y

this time as ‘an incredible growing experience, which combined with thepolitical activism outside of school, made me form strong views on whatwas happening outside in the world.” While studying economics, he alsodoes cartoons local and international subjects for various union newsletters. Is particularly involved with the powerful Mexican ElectricalWorkers Union.

1976-1977Does not finish degree, but leaves university to work on a project in thecountryside in Vera Cruz. Marries Janine Craemer, an American who isresearching immigrant labor in Mexico. “We identified with each otherand our beliefs about society.” Together they come to the United States in1977. (They divorce in 1988.)

1977Lives in McAllen, Texas for about eight months while working with farmworkers Chagoya and his wife move to Berkeley; continues to be political-ly active around Central America issues

1979Begins work as freelance illustrator and graphic designer for publicationsand organizations such as Mother Jones magazine, University ofCalifornia Press, Children’s Book Press and Wilsted and Taylor, Oakland;over the years designs several posters and books.

1981-1984Attends San Francisco Art Institute where he experiments in wide rangeof media printmaking, sculpture, drawing and ceramics. Carlos Villa is one of his instructors. “He helped me to develop the attitude that whensomething is not working, I can go in the opposite direction the freedom to flip any way you want in order to create something visually exciting.”Is also influenced by the teachings of Michi Itami, Howard Smagula andDorothy Reid (“She helped me develop a lot of freedom through the wayshe mixed media”)

1983Creates first box, La Paz; and subsequently often uses this assemblagebox construction. Takes class in printmaking history with Robert F.Johnson, curator of the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts at theCalifornia Palace of the Legion of Honor; is shown original prints fromGoya’s The Disasters of War series. In response makes Against the com-mon good, the first of nine prints in his Homage to Goya (as of 1989, the

51

series is not yet completed). Johnson buys one for the AchenbachFoundation

1984Helps organize local exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Institute and theMission Cultural Center in San Francisco as part of the national organi-zation ‘Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America.” Forthis, he creates his first big cartoon drawing which shows Reagan asMickey Mouse painting a graffiti sign that reads “Ruskies and Cubansout of Central America.” Receives B.F.A., San Francisco Art Institute.

Participates in group shows including “What’s Happening:ContemporaryArt from the west Coast, Alternative Museum, New York and “1984” ProArts, Oakland Has oneperson exhibition and participates in group exhibi-tion, Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco (founded in 1970 in SanFrancisco’s Mission District, the Galeria is a major center for Latinoartists). Begins to do volunteer work for Galeria including work on instal-lations. Begins three years work as artistinresidence and art instructor,San Francisco County Jail; in 1986 cocurates “Art from Jail,” WesternAddition Cultural Center, San Francisco.

1985Is given Distinguished Alumni Award, San Francisco Art Institute; inacceptance speech states,” There are still a lot of things [that must]develop in order to break up the distance between the world of art andthe world outside, and an artist by him or herself will have a hard time breaking up this distance. We artists need to work together [so that] wecan become more aware and involved in the real world.” Has one-person exhibition, Martin Weber Gallery, San Francisco. Participates in groupshows “Chain Reaction,” San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and“Three Rounds on Short Notice,” Galeria de la Raza. Cocurates “ArtAgainst Apartheid, “San Francisco Art Institute and the Mission CulturalCenter, San Francisco. 19851987 Attends graduate school, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley; particularly enjoys working with Boyd Allen,Christopher Brown, Joan Brown, Robert Hartman, Sylvia Lark, and MaryLovelace O’NeaI. Receives M.A. in 1986 (and the prestigious U.C. BerkeleyEisner Award), and M.F.A. in 1987.

1986Does more large cartoon drawings LaK LaK, Slippery When Wet. and 4-U-2-C. Participates in group shows including “Lo del Corazon: Heartbeat

52

of a Culture,” Mexican Museum, San Francisco; “South Africa: State ofEmergence,” Galeria de la Raza; and “VII Biennale of Latin AmericanPrintmaking, “San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1986-1987

Is invited to join board of directors, Galeria de la Raza; shortly after thisthe Artistic Director, Rene Yanez, resigns, and early in 1987, Chagoya isappointed interim then permanent Artistic Director. Curates variousshows including “La Cruz: Spiritual Source” (co-curates with Amalia MesaBains) and a Day of the Dead exhibition.

1987

Exhibits with Betty Kano in twoperson exhibition, “Social Narratives: AnExploration in Content,” Berkeley Art Center; in a review, Charles Shere

comments on Chagoya’s “good humor, the lack of bitterness in denuncia-tion of contemporary social issues Nicaragua, South Africa, Coca-Colonization” and describes the large cartoon drawings as “elegant in spite of their sinister content’( The Oak/an Tribune, March 31).

Produces (for the first time since 1983) eight more of his Homage to Goyaprints. Also makes diptych, Monument to the Missing Gods.

1988Creates more large charcoal cartoons, Old Toy and When ParadiseArrived. Participates in group shows including “The Precious Object,”San Francisco Art Institute; “Peter SeIz Selects,” Berkeley Art Center;and “Day of the Dead,” Alternative Museum, New York. Is one of threeartists selected by San Francisco art dealer Paule Anglim for her gallery’s“Introductions” exhibition. In a review Kenneth Baker singles outChagoya’s work in a review, praising the “etchings and aquatints in whichhe [Chagoya] cleverly altered scenes from Goya’s The Disasters of War sothey came up looking something like contemporary editorial cartoons.The rest were big, enigmatic, beautifully made charcoal drawings inwhich cartoonlike characters suggest themselves as personifications offaceless power” (San Francisco Chronicle , July 27). In the summer,Anglim asks Chagoya to join her gallery; gallery artists include TerryAllen, Deborah Butterfield, Christopher Brown, Sue Coe (who had origi-nally drawn Anglim’s attention to Chagoya). ■

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nose job 1987 80 x 80 inches ch a rcoal and pastel on pap

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