Los Angeles has a history of wealthy men establishing private museums to display their personal art collections. There are The Broad, the Hammer, the Marciano Art Foundation, and the latest, The Cheech out in Riverside. Because I was buying Chicano art — mostly seriagraphs from Self-Help Graphics in the ’80s and ’90s–at the same time Cheech Marin was collecting, I was eager to visit his museum expecting to see large definitive works by the same artists. I had hoped to write a clever headline for this post like “The Cheech is really smokin’.” But it was not.
Seriously disappointing
The Cheech is disappointing in two ways. First, much of the art on exhibit by Chicano artists is not their best work or, in some cases, not even characteristic of the artistic style that made their reputations. (An Almaraz pastoral?! With no cars?!)
I have a home with wall after wall filled with works-on-paper by Frank Romero, Leo Limon, Diane Gamboa, and Victor Ochoa — to name a few. This art was created when these artists were young, intense, almost explosively creative, and rejected by the mainstream art world. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to include some of the seriagraphs from when they worked with Self-Help along with the paintings that Cheech Marin bought. Many are available for sale online and by investing a few thousand dollars the breadth of Chicano art would be better displayed.
The painting at the top of this post is entitled “Mina with Palms” by Shizu Saldamando. It’s great, IMHO. Below are two works by the socially conscious Leo Limon, who is more recently known for painting heads of cats along the walls of the Los Angeles River.
Okay. The second disappointment: the museum is boring. It’s a boring white box that somehow undermines the vibrancy of Chicano art. Add some color, folks. Maybe just bright pink or magenta or lime green benches or chairs…or something that relates to the artworks. Or hire one of the artists — most of whom are still around–to do a mural for the building. Or something.
Now about “Joan Si! Si!
Admission to The Cheech includes entry to the Riverside Art Museum, next door. There, upstairs, was an exhibition of politically subversive ceramics by the artist Joan Takayama-Ogawa, who teaches at Otis. What appears at first glance to be charming teapots and porcelain baked goods, are actually JTO’s expression of dismay at what has become of America and the environment and the political atmosphere since 9/11.
It begins with these two glazed teapots that echo the shapes of the cherimoya. The gold asparagus is fun.
As the political and financial landscape of America grew more poisonous, by the time of the economic downturn in 2009, she began creating ceramic baked goods — cakes, eclairs, etc — but added creepy, slithery creatures to them. Lovely until you look closely at the green slime from the snails and slugs.
From the horror of the Uvalde, Texas school shootings, came new ceramics, no longer tied to images of food, but to the deadly AR-15.
And as racism bared its ugly head across America under the Trump administration, JTO created a dark memorial to the Internment Relocation Camps of World War II.
Takayama-Ogawa’s ceramics were certainly worth the drive out to Riverside. Afterwards we stopped in at the amazing and historic Mission Inn, just across the street, for coffee and a pastry. A tasty end to a day of art.
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