Where Is the Work of Art Luis Jimenez the End of Trail

Amy Baker Sandback: Your images are very much office of this country of immigrants and working people.

Luis Jimenez: If I was an outsider looking at America or the West—what would I see? What would I be looking at? It would be the strong and vibrant images that stand up out, like the cowboy, not those coming out of the fine-art situation. It would be the motorcycle, the motorcar; this is the important visible iconography of America, simply information technology's not art in itself. The use of these popular images is part of the game: to have my piece of work equally shut to the edge equally I tin, because then the claiming is greater, and so is the payoff.

I meet myself as an image maker. Any image that y'all put out there is a statement, witting, unconscious or cocky-conscious. Not making a argument is a statement.

ABS: Your Vaquero sculpture in Houston [1980] functions on different levels that are frequently referred to as separate: artistic and social.

LJ: Information technology was my first public committee. When I started doing research into public art I realized that one of the most mutual forms of sculpture, certainly inside the Western tradition, is the equestrian. Then the challenge became: how can I make people expect at it again and how can I do something with my fabric—fiberglass—that statuary can't do; that stone can't; that hasn't been done before? A lot of people don't even see the Vaquero every bit an equestrian. But it is, and the scale is much the same every bit if it were in Washington, D.C.

The Vaquero piece is a tribute to the Mexican origins of the American cowboy, a statement almost Texas, and also about the Mexican customs within Texas. If you call back of words connected with cowboys, like rodeo, corral, remuda, lariat, those words are all Spanish. The cowboy was a Mexican invention. It was the Spaniards that brought the cows and the horses and it was Mexicans who became the cowboys. It wasn't John Wayne who was the original cowboy. That's the myth. This contribution that the Mexican community made to Texas and the image of the Us has been totally disregarded.

In the by when people would say, "You lot're a cowboy," I'd answer, "No, I'1000 not a redneck." To put this Vaquero in a Mexican community in Houston is a social statement.

ABS: He's angry. He'south got a gun pointed upwardly in the sky. Practise you lot similar unsettling people?

LJ: I'm redefining an epitome and a myth. I'thou also coming out of the new spirit of the Mexican community of Texas. Not the quondam, "yes sir, no sir." That's not what won elections in places like San Antonio. It's an aggressive mood. The sculpture is aggressive. For me he represents this difference. Social changes haven't come almost because people are willing to proceed with the old situation. I also have the obligation to take a stand.

I grew up as a Chicano earlier it was a militant term. I'thousand comfortable with it. You needed a word because "Mexican" implied that y'all still had Mexican nationality. Mexicans don't really have Chicanos, they see us as traitors, and Anglo-Americans don't quite have Chicanos either. I come out of a minority within a minority, Mexican Protestants, which is a very pocket-size group with a strong sense of community, and of family unit. In New York I heard blacks talk about their sense of obligation to a larger community in whatsoever they did. I think that is in that location for me too. My dad and grandmother came from United mexican states City, my mom's parents came from United mexican states too, and they came poor. It was a situation of existence able to stand outside of both cultures. I now recollect it'southward an advantage because that's the part that the artist has always been in.

The Mexican people have been very poor but there'southward always been respect for the arts. You can see that in the crafts. The important thing is involvement. When I was young I felt my, skill was inherent in existence Chicano, inherent in being Mexican, and that every Mexican not but had ability but too appreciated art. Information technology was a kind of fantasy, simply certainly within the context a positive matter.

ABS: This type of reliance on personal context and sources, this sense of involvement with a particular place or society, has at times been labeled "regional art." You must take feelings most this phrase.

LJ: I've always found artists who responded to a regional situation fascinating, whether it'due south Arthur Miller or James Baldwin or William Faulkner; these writers have been important to me in developing concepts about what I want to exercise. Every one of them focused on a very particular isolated state of affairs that they knew well, and in then doing spoke as well to broader issues. I feel more than of an affinity with contemporary artists like Ed Kienholz than, say, the obvious connectedness with Frederic Remington or Charles Russell.

ABS: At that place'due south a relation between an icon and a cliché that's actually the clue here. Both you and Kienholz use "real" images that could be understood both ways.

LJ: I employ textile that's familiar to me, but the problems involved in the work go beyond personal or localized references. I am from the West and I'thou an American, so that's going to be in the work whether I want it or not. Kienholz is too a Western product just he isn't making cliché "Western" art. I think he'due south e'er been a kind of outsider and like a writer he gets involved in personal subject matter that addresses broader problems.

What I'm doing is near ideas, and plain everybody comes away with something different. Somebody can become involved at one level, or they can use that as an entry level to get more than involved. It's not only what I'g stating about a particular community, it'south also what I'm stating most myself. It's coming out of the border perspective. I find myself totally fascinated with what happened when the Moors went into Espana, or what happens today in New York City. The cultures disharmonism and you get a hybrid vigor. Yous get flashy signs, you lot get brilliant colour, free energy. I might practise the end of the trail as an electric sunset as a kind of tribute to the image of the cease of the trail; nevertheless, the piece is besides near my own feelings most what's happened with the American Indian.

ABS: You say that you have been influenced more past writers than by other artists.

LJ: Yes. The writers that attract me are those that are basically writing their autobiographies. They're writing almost themselves and giving us a very personal idea of what information technology'south similar to be alive hither and at present. In the process they are making a statement well-nigh the general civilisation.

ABS: Is what you're doing besides personal narrative?

LJ: I never thought of information technology that style, merely I approximate and so. I hadn't defined it that manner.

ABS: What about all the symbols in your pieces, or things that could exist taken as symbols, like the snakes?

LJ: In New York a girl squatted down and hiked up her apparel in front of one of the snakes. She laughed and ran out of the gallery giggling. I'1000 particularly fascinated with sexual symbols. I believed in the universality of certain images before I fifty-fifty knew who Carl Jung was yet it was a stupor in 1980 to go to Italy six years afterwards having fabricated the Progress I sculpture to see the same theme in the sacrificial sculptures of the human being cutting the bull'southward pharynx, with some of the same details, including the snake and the canis familiaris, that appeared in my piece. Certain things I grew up with that I had assumed were Mexican or American I saw were indeed universal.

ABS: Past consciously making the conclusion to do public work, you've chosen a special relationship to the public—and to fine art'southward success in working with a community.

LJ: I want my art to be public, office of everyday life. I think most museums are essentially mausoleums, and that art seen there has been removed from any social context or interaction. Certainly but a small per centum of Chicanos go. They're non made welcome. A project in Fargo, North Dakota, is an example of both my failure and my success in working with a community. I usually tin't come up with quick solutions. Due north Dakota is far from annihilation I had ever known. I met with the local community, visited the expanse, and read history books most the region. I put up two shows at the local museum. It took time. For me, it's role of a subconscious process to digest the material.

There were also physical considerations. The primary street of the town had been converted into a pedestrian mall with some vehicular traffic. There are overhead canopies for snow—in fact, the site was under twenty feet of snow when I showtime saw it. I realized that Due north Dakota is an environment that gets to 50 degrees beneath in the winter. The but reason people survive, the native Americans or the Scandinavians that followed, is their potent sense of community. With the settlers this was reflected in events similar barn buildings which gathered the community together. My offset idea was to come up in with a befouled dance. I accept my ain agenda for what I desire to do, and for years I nave been wanting to do a trip the light fantastic piece. The "Honky Tonk" cutting-outs [1982] were a way of pacifying myself. The idea of relating dissever pieces to each other without them being physically connected fascinates me. It'due south a wonderful spatial problem. It would be a fun piece yet accept serious implications. I explained all the formal reasons to the customs and they were very polite. They canonical it with simply one dissenting vote. But I knew there was something incorrect. Finally they said, you have to sympathize that we're Scandinavian Lutherans—no drinking, smoking, or dancing—and while all this went on, information technology'south not the way we similar to see ourselves. Although I had worked out a proficient slice, there would always be an ingrained resentment, and then I went back to the drawing lath. I did some sketches of the farmer, of the sodbuster. I had worked him out earlier with a tractor, only with oxen he became someone I could actually feel. And of course, he was a logical progression later on the Vaquero slice. I sent out a model. The piece [The Sodbuster: San Isidro] was approved unanimously this time.

ABS: They were saying that they wanted a sign. And that makes you a sign maker. You brought it correct back to the street. When nosotros begin to talk about placing public sculpture, aren't the considerations close to those necessary in placing a commercial sign so it can be seen?

LJ: The formal problems are the same. I would exist dishonest here if I didn't acknowledge that my dad influenced me. I grew up in a sign shop in El Paso, Texas. My dad got national prizes for his neon spectaculars. He sent neon signs to Las Vegas and all over. Sign men, like Barney Wise in New York, knew his work and would visit El Paso. My father wanted to be an artist. I've talked about this with Anton Van Dalen. We're both examples of the son living out the dream of the father. His became a high schoolhouse principal, and an amateur creative person. Mine found his outlet in the sign business organization. As far as I'k concerned my begetter made works of art—though they were considered popular culture, and therefore "low art." In the example of my Dad and me, in that location's a lot of mingling going on. When I was around half-dozen nosotros made a concrete bear for a dry cleaning firm. When I was 16 nosotros made a twenty-pes-high horse's head, with eyes that lit upwards, for a big bulldoze-in. So basically I'm still doing the same things that I was doing and so, and the kind of things he did in those spectaculars.

In North Dakota when they saw photos of the completed work they switched the site to their principal intersection. My feeling is that in public pieces, I don't want to have a competitive relationship with a building. At that place'due south no fashion I tin can win confronting a skyscraper. Sculpture has served for centuries every bit a way of humanizing urban spaces. It's i way of making art role of the world again instead of separating it off. People became familiar with the artwork as I worked with the customs. I call back that's an important role of the project. They put up with me fifty-fifty though I was ii years tardily. The general consensus was that the piece was different, merely they liked information technology. My assistant, Ted Kuykendall, heard ii older women: 1 said, "I hate that piece." Ted went up to her and asked why. She said, "Considering information technology reminds me of hard times."

I have as well made a stand at certain times. For example, I was approached to practise a slice for the tourist area of Albuquerque called Onetime Town. I didn't pick the site. Old Town was the original Albuquerque settlement and some people at that place identify themselves as being of Spanish versus Mexican descent. It'southward a class stardom and is used to divide the Hispanic community. They were the aristocracy, are bourgeois, and nevertheless are the political establishment. They practice non see themselves as function of the larger Mexican-American community. So only the mere fact that I was selected put me in a difficult situation.

ABS: It must take been loaded.

LJ: I was in a no-win position since they take e'er lived in terror and fear of the invaders from the south. I could accept tiptoed around their fears but I wanted to make a Chicano statement. I fabricated that determination long ago. I don't experience that artists are in the business of making merchandise. I've been trying to make an alternative state of affairs for myself, but I don't exist in a vacuum and recognize my need for dialogue. Going back out Due west in 1971 was a conscious decision to work on pieces that were public in calibration and and then had that special access. It was a question of developing a language, also a item kind of technology, and information technology seemed to make more than sense to go Due west to do information technology. It likewise was going dorsum to those visual images I know best and to a relation to that mural, and my own background. In Albuquerque I came in with the about common Mexican-American prototype, the Indian man belongings an Indian woman, which goes back to the pre-Columbian myth of the 2 volcanoes visible exterior of Mexico Urban center. The active volcano is the male and the fallow volcano is female. That prototype was carried into the The states and is however seen on jackets and cars and murals from Texas to California. A partial explanation is that it is an archetypal image, a reverse pieta. Working with a community doesn't necessarily hateful you always concord with it. Chop-chop rumors spread through the Spanish-American community that I was portraying an Indian adult female who had been raped by a Spaniard. (In the 1500s the Spaniards were in fact accused of the rape of a Tiguex woman, and the Old Town park is called Tiguex Park.) There were six months of bad local press, with pictures of barrio murals with the aforementioned subject field matter, which gave the impression that they were my drawings. That validated the use of the paradigm for me. The most wonderful criticism they gave me was that the thought was also Mexican. Prior to the meeting for approval of the piece, I was told not to make the idea public, and to come in with a different thought. I invited two people in particular to the meeting, since information technology was supposed to be public. One was Vicente Ximenes, who has been politically active with the G.I. Forum for years, as well as having served as President Johnson'south chairman of the cabinet committee on Mexican-American affairs. The other was the author Rudy Anaya, who knows the local art community. They defended the piece considering they understood where it was coming from. And the panel canonical it. Then the mayor pressured the panel into rescinding their vote,which they did. Information technology got that nasty. Next, people from other parts of the urban center came to the mayor to say that if Old Boondocks didn't want it, they did. Frank Martinez asked if I would be willing to move the piece to Martineztown, a community settled past workers. He went to the mayor with signatures from the community, and so we reached a compromise. In the next mayoral election, Martinez is running against the incumbent mayor.

ABS: Who says that art doesn't touch politics?

LJ: Information technology can. I exercise my work to make a difference. I'k doing a piece for Buffalo, New York, that's a steel worker. Ironically the steel plants are closing, and I've been asked about its relevancy. My respond is that the steel worker is still the strong image of the area and, once more, its myth survives as the reality. (Our myths can only become myths when the reality is expressionless.) It is basically a blue-collar statement that is a tribute to those men. Similar The Sodbuster.

ABS: I can't think of anybody that has influenced the way your art looks, and I don't encounter the work as being a continuation of the Ashcan Schoolhouse.

LJ: I don't either. But we accept the aforementioned sources. I don't want to seem like I sprang up out of nowhere. What I actually like is the old guys. In school I was taught that Bernini and the Bizarre were corrupt. But when I saw those Berninis, I loved the problems he ready out for himself. His Piazza Navona sculpture in Rome, with the enormously complex base of operations belongings up the simple obelisk, is a complete reversal of the usual. But I don't desire to go into the technical. I respond at a gut level, and when I see those pieces I get goose bumps. It's the same gut-level sensuality that I plainly appreciate. I love the cloth, and the experience of it. Information technology's office of what it is to be live; to enjoy eating or feeling or touching.

I gauge the only way my work can be seen every bit new is the fact that information technology's being done now and with modern materials.

ABS: Yous've called to be a craftsman also as an artist.

LJ: My father wanted to produce a super sign man. Past the time I was 16 I could practice everything in the establish. You asked me at one indicate near the cars and I dodged the question. Just I grew up with cars. The first fiberglass I ever used was on a wrecked '53 Studebaker. I repaired it using fiberglass, but I never thought I would ever apply fiberglass on fine art. When I was growing up, whether information technology was in the sign concern or playing around with cars, the bout de forcefulness of a flawless surface was desirable. When I tell somebody who does fiberglass that I'm making a 50-section mold they don't believe it, because in the car or boat business if y'all make a two- or three-slice mold it's already complicated.

I actually demand a material that is a statement in itself, 1 that can contain color and fluid class, the sensuality that I like. Somehow fiberglass seems to practise that. Those people that I adore, like Alexander Calder and Julio González, made a very important argument in their utilize of iron and steel. In New York I worked as an assistant to Seymour Lipton. I could weld, it was just that simple. I was already doing my fiberglass pieces. He was very helpful to me in defining the role of the artist, as was the fact that he worked with symbols.

ABS: Y'all said earlier that your work can be read in diverse means. Are the pieces overblown caricatures? Are they three-dimensional cartoons?

LJ: No. When I was a kid going to the rodeo with my dad, he would say that the cowboy clowns were the best and well-nigh serious professionals. That rang true to me. Their job is to keep somebody from getting hurt.