by
Ernest Hogan
The
Frida and Diego exhibit at the Heard Museum left my mind reeling.
I also came away with some books. That got the ideas percolating . .
. Ah, the creative process!
With
Frida dominating the show, I feel the need to talk about Diego, one
of the giants of 20th century art. It can be argued that he is
responsible for the Latinoid/Chicanoid identity as we know it, and
any genre of futurism it is spawning. I also couldn’t resist his My Art, My Life,
especially with La Catrina from his mural Dream
of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park
on the cover.
In
her, Diego created her most magnificent manifestation--beautiful as
she is monstrous, and wearing Quetzalcoatl as an accessory, pointing
the way for her evolution from caricature of middle class pretension
to the goddess of La Cultura to whom artists and writers must make
sacrifices.
The
autobiography is based on interviews with Gladys March, and gives an
idea of his voice, and a taste of his mythomania--a strange word that
often comes up concerning Diego. As it was with Frida, his public
image and myth are just as important as his art. If you don’t
create your own myths, someone else will do it for you. An important
survival lesson for the age of social media.
Personally,
I prefer the term mythotech.
The
book reads like a fantastic novel--dare I say magic realism?
Someday the story of Frida and Diego, and the way it twines
through history, will probably be made into the greatest telenovela of
them all.
At
one point Diego calls Frida “a Mexican artist of European
extraction looking to the native traditions for her inspiration.”
Please allow me to throw that monkey wrench into the controversies
over cultural appropriation.
Diego
is a chingón
of 20th century art. He has gained stature as time has gone by. When
I was an art student during the Ford administration, my teachers
would not have considered him any where near as important as Picasso--yet also in the museum bookstore was a catalog from another recent
exhibition, Picasso & Rivera: Conversations Across Time,
edited by Diana Magaloni and Michael Govan.
Sometimes
I write like comic books. Sometimes I try to write like Rivera
murals, or Picasso paintings. The book is also brimming over with great art. I had to have it.
A
lot of the la gente these days don't like to recognize our Spanish heritage--as in Spain, the conquistadors, and the whole hijo de la
chingada. They tend to know more Español
than any native language. I identify with El Quijote and artists like
Picasso more than I do with all the BBC stuff that Americanoids think is so
damn civilized, and Spain is a bridge through Europe to Africa and
the Middle East in my global barrio.
Like
Rivera, Picasso had classical training. Picasso remained rooted in
Europe's Greco-Roman past,
providing a foundation of postwar Anglo/America-centric modernism.
Rivera built off of pre-Columbian civilization. And mythology. Don't
forget the mythoteching. And the mythomania.
As
modernism and the 20th century cool down in living memory,
who knows which artist will be seen as the biggest influence on the World
Wide Latinoid Continuum of the new millennium.
Ernest Hogan is the author of High Aztech.
His latest works are in Altermundos,
Latin@ Rising, and
Five to the Future.
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