‘Hispanic Art’ Sparks Ethnic Pride

Cesar Gonzales, 18, has seen the graffiti drawings of Jesus and the Aztec symbols on the walls of his neighborhood in East Los Angeles. But viewing “Hispanic Art in the United States,” on exhibit at the County Museum of Art, is a different experience for him.

“This is my heritage, my background, my people. Just to think that they (some of the artists) had no education, yet they have a brilliance in their art. They express themselves so well. It’s remarkable to think that it’s my heritage, it’s part of me.”

Gonzales is at LACMA on a field trip from Garfield High School, the “Stand and Deliver” school, as students identify it, the school to which the celebrated calculus teacher Jaime Escalante has brought a sense of academic accomplishment and ethnic pride.

“I’m proud of being a Mexican. I know a lot of other people don’t feel the same way,” says Julio Aparicio, a Garfield senior who adds that the museum visit is his first field trip since he was in elementary school.

A friend, Chris Tapia, who admires a reredos-- an ornamental screen that usually stands behind a church altar--by Luis Tapia from New Mexico, feels a spiritual link with the artist. “He’s my real father,” he says. And a classmate, Maria Rodelo, points to the show’s “colors and symbols, the traditions and beliefs . . . it tells us about our ancestors.”

The 2 1/2-month exhibit of contemporary Latino art opened on Feb. 5. It has been touring the country for nearly two years, and, said Howard Fox, curator of contemporary art, has brought a flurry of media attention, including a proposed documentary on Latino art for PBS, myriad telephone calls requesting information on the artists and Latino art and a stream of warm, appreciative viewer response cards.

The show’s scope and prestige make it the definitive Latino art exhibit of recent years, said Fox. “It’s the impression people will have of Latino art,” he said.

Since its opening in Houston, however, the exhibit has also generated controversial debate within the Latino community.

“It’s missing a sociopolitical message,” said Joe Rodriguez, executive director of the Social and Public Arts Resource Center in Venice, a nonprofit arts organization that supports Los Angeles muralists. Rodriguez echoed a major complaint--that selection of the artists should have been made by a consortium of curators from the nation’s Latino communities. “It misses that whole flavor,” he said. “The artists chosen would have been successful with or without the Hispanic movement, even though it nurtured their work.”

Art writer Margarita Nieto questioned the lumping of art into a Latino category. “I’m not sure all this noise about Hispanic roots is important. The fine art in the show is relegated to a ethnic folk art basis. I think that’s detrimental and pejorative.”

Such polemics have not affected the show’s popularity, however. LACMA’s first Latino art exhibit since “Los Four,” a smaller show of four artists’ works that brought almost 28,000 visitors in 1974, the current show attracted more than 30,000 viewers in the first four weeks. (“German Expressionism: The Second Generation” drew 26,000 in its first four weeks last fall, while the David Hockney retrospective last winter, the museum’s fifth most successful show, brought in 60,600.)

Latino adults have turned out in noticeable numbers, but it is among schoolchildren that the response has been most marked. School tours for 5,000 children were booked three weeks before the show opened and, starting this week, the museum will open early on weekdays to let in more school groups.

“They really respond to the iconography,” said Jann McCord, who organized the docent program for the exhibit.

For instance, Maria Razo shows her sixth-graders from 92nd Street Elementary how John Valadez’s portrait of a Latina looks just like a woman they see near school, and she explains how “the Day of the Dead” is celebrated in Mexico with family altars--such as the one constructed by artist Carmen Lomas Garza--festooned with fruit and photos of loved ones.

A little girl in a pink sweater decorated with sheep says shyly in Spanish that her favorite artwork is el carro --a 1950s Chevy low-rider painted with bright chili peppers by Gilbert Lujan.

Two boys from Garfield High debate Frank Romero’s “The Closing of Whittier Boulevard,” which shows the East Los Angeles neighborhood. They argue whether the painting depicts the site of the old Golden Gate Theater or another spot closer to Eastern Avenue.

When a docent asks where a tired couple is heading in Luis Jimenez’s sketch for a statue, “Border Crossing,” a student answers, “They’re going to a better life.”

The groups are more silent in front of such paintings as Ismael Frigero’s “The Lust of Conquest,” depicting Indians being burned by conquistadors.

A docent points to Luis Cruz Azceta’s “Self-Portrait as a She-Wolf”--a large colorful painting of a fantastical wolf with a man’s realistic face. The docent tells the students that the artist has shown them his inner pain enveloped in a smooth exterior.

“That’s the way the students are,” says the Garfield school counselor who accompanies the group. “They’re smooth on the outside, but there’s pain inside.”