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Chagoya's vivid imagery tackles politics, religion, art

By Jennifer Modenessi
Article Launched: 02/23/2008 07:00:47 AM PST

Issues of immigration, cultural colonialism, the military and the more
controversial actions of recent American presidents provide the raw
material for Enrique Chagoya's scathing art.

Just don't call it political.

"I would say I'm more of a satirist," says the artist and Stanford
professor on the phone from his home in San Francisco. It's the morning
after the opening reception for "Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia," a 25-year
overview of the artist's work organized by the Des Moines Art Center and
currently on display at the UC Berkeley Art Museum.

"A lot of artists have political ideas and make political art," Chagoya
explains. "They are not necessarily satirical or funny or have humor in
their work."

That humor is an integral part of the Mexican-born artist's oeuvre. It
seeps out from the most acidic of Chagoya's drawings, which are populated
with politicians such as Ronald Reagan, past and present California
governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and George W. Bush. Henry
Kissinger isn't spared the skewering, nor are former members of the current
administration.

In the large charcoal drawing "Untitled (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs),"
everyone from Colin Powell to John Ashcroft are dwarfs, while an outsized
Bush looms large as a hybrid of Alfred E. Neuman and Dopey. Condoleeza Rice
as Snow White glowers in the middle of the drawing. In the back, Bin
Laden/the Wicked Witch reveals a Mona Lisa smile.

As you walk through the two floors of "Borderlandia," taking in the more
than 70 monotypes, intaglio prints, limited edition artist's books,
codexes, paintings and drawings, you can't help but chuckle at an image
like "Crossing I." Clad in a Pilgrim's tall buckled hat, Superman opens his
shirt to expose his emblem-covered chest. Facing him is Tlaloc, the Aztec
god of rain. Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent whom the Aztecs likely
believed had arrived on their shores in the form of Spanish conquistador
Hernan Cortes, hovers overhead in a flying saucer straight out of the
Jetsons, bringing new meaning to the word "alien."

But where does this melting pot of comic book and Disney characters, Aztec
and Mayan deities, Pilgrims and natives, politicians and conquistadores,
religious icons and artwork appropriated from European painters like Goya,
Monet and American artist George Caleb Bingham come from? And what does it
actually mean?

"It's an expression of my own personal frustrations or a way to exercise my
anxieties about the world today," Chagoya says. He's been expressing that
his whole life, and not necessarily through artwork. Chagoya worked as an
economist before becoming a professional artist.

"To me, most political issues have an economic base somewhere," he says.
"War, big major conflicts always have an economic skeleton furnished with
either religious or political conflicts or something else. There's always
something being disputed and that's usually something economic like oil,
territories, land. I still see the world that way. The only difference is
that I switched from writing essays about economics to making artwork."

The collision of comic books like Superman and Little Lulu, American
television shows such as "The Twilight Zone" and "I Love Lucy" and
Chagoya's exposure to Catholicism and pre-Columbian ruins as a youth in
Mexico all contribute to the fantastic blend of imagery in his artwork.
Those influences can be found in Chagoya's non-narrative codexes, created
in homage to the thousands of Aztec and Mayan books burned in the conquest.
And his use and subversion of pre-existing European artwork in the series
"Poor George" (Bush replaces Richard Nixon in Philip Guston's series "Poor
Richard"), "Homage to Goya II: Disasters of War," and "Return to Goya's
Caprichos" stem not only from Chagoya's interest in forgeries, but his
desire to create a new visual language.

"It's something I call 'reverse anthropology,' or 'reverse Modernism,'" he
explains. "It's based on the opposite idea of what Modernist artists were
doing. People like Picasso, who really liked African sculpture and masks,
used that in developing his Cubist style. Henry Moore's seated figures are
very much based on Aztec sculpture from Chac Mol. Basically, the strategy
is to use art from former colonies and make it modern."

He pauses. "I wonder what would have happened if the other way around had
taken place ... if a native American artist from ancient Mexico or even
today if an artist of Africa or Asia or a former colony decided to
appropriate Western art, and from their perspective give the train of
events?"

What if?

Reach Jennifer Modenessi at 925-977-8483 or
jmodenessi@....

DON't MISS:

"When Paradise Arrived": The first image that greets you as you walk into
the galleries, "Paradise" is a large red, white and black charcoal drawing
featuring a giant Mickey Mouse hand about to flick a young girl off into
space. Chagoya created his first series of large drawings in the late
1980s. He's currently revisiting the format.

"Le Cannibale Moderniste (The Modernist Cannibal)": Chagoya depicts French
painter Claude Monet's famous water garden at Giverny, France, as the scene
of cultures and art crashing together. Look for the floating head of Monet
"speaking" Mondrian-ese and a poke at the stereotype of an "innocent
savage" feasting on the arm of painter Pablo Picasso.

"Homage to Goya II: Disasters of War": This series of 10 prints revisits
Spanish painter Francisco de Goya's famous visions of the horrors of war
and was inspired partly by Chagoya's love of forgeries.

"El Regreso del Canibal Macrobiotico (The Return of the Macrobiotic
Cannibal)": The images Chagoya creates in his artist's books often provide
inspiration for larger drawings and paintings. A panel from this book
inspired "Crossing II," an oil-and-acrylic-on-paper depiction of natives
witnessing the arrival of UN ships.