Cheech Marin’s on a mission

“I want Chicano art to go through the front doors of museums with banners waving and trumpets blaring,” actor Cheech Marin said the other day in an ardent discourse on the art he loves and collects. “Chicano art should be recognized as a school of American art. It’s one of the main threads of the cultural fabric of this country.”

Marin has gone a long way toward achieving his goal with “Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge,” a 15-city exhibition of his collection that was launched at the San Antonio Museum of Art in 2001 and is on view (through Sept. 4) at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago. The last stop will be the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where a new version is tentatively scheduled to open in February 2008.

But now Marin has a new project, “The Chicano Collection: Fine Art Prints by Modern Multiples,” and he hopes it will make the work of artists such as Margaret Garcia, Cesar Martinez Martinez and Leo Limon much more accessible. Produced as a limited-edition portfolio, “The Chicano Collection” consists of 26 digital prints, mostly made from works in Marin’s collection; a set of lino-cut portraits of the 26 featured artists by Artemio Rodriguez; a DVD documentary about the artists; and an essay by Chon A. Noriega, a UCLA professor who directs the university’s Chicano Studies Research Center.

Plaza de la Raza Cultural Center for the Arts and Education has launched “The Chicano Collection” with an exhibition that will run through Aug. 20 at the East L.A. facility, then travel across the country. Most of the portfolios will be donated to institutions that host the exhibition, other arts organizations and participating artists. Twenty-five portfolios will be sold at $20,000 apiece to benefit the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.

Marin said the project grew out of a discussion with master printer Richard S. Duardo when “Chicano Visions” opened in San Antonio. The digital prints are high-resolution reproductions of works created in oil, acrylic or pastel.

The printmaking process -- known as giclee, after the French word for “spray” or “spit” -- involved spraying archival pigment on rag paper with a high-speed, ink-jet printer. The artists worked with Duardo to control the accuracy of colors and images, but the prints aren’t likely to be confused with the originals. To produce a portfolio of similar-size works, most of the paintings were either reduced or enlarged.

Primarily funded by Bank of America and Farmers Insurance, the project is intended to put Chicano art in the public eye in museums and other venues -- and to keep it there.

“You can’t love or hate Chicano art unless you see it,” Marin said. “The idea is to get some shelf space.”

Suzanne Muchnic