LOS ANGELES - Far out, man! Nearly 50 pieces from the collection of Cheech Marin are on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and there's not a bong, water pipe or roach clip in sight.
Although best known as the shorter half of that enduring pothead comedy team Cheech and Chong, there is another, less public side of Marin - that of serious collector and arts patron.
Now, after years of on-again-off-again negotiations, he has succeeded in achieving a dream he carried for more than a decade: to bring the works of such pioneering artists as David Botello, Diane Gamboa and John Valadez back home to a major museum in the city where the Chicano arts movement was born some 40 years ago.
"That's been my struggle, to have these Chicanos be recognized as fine artists," says Marin as he sits in a quiet LACMA gallery on Wilshire Boulevard's "Museum Mile," admiring Margaret Garcia's stunningly colourful impressionist work, "Janine at 39, Mother of Twins."
Dressed casually in a pullover shirt, jeans and tennis shoes, he smiles graciously and offers a soft-spoken but heartfelt thank you when a museum-goer approaches to compliment the exhibition. He had to fight hard to get the show into a first-class museum, he says.
"The museum world kind of wanted to write them off as agi-prop folk artists," Marin says, gesturing toward a gallery filled with works by Carlos Almaraz and Chaz Bojorquez, two of the founders of the Chicano arts movement. "I'd go, 'No, no.' These are fine artists. These are really great painters who have developed past that stage."
The exhibition "Los Angelenos, Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections From the Cheech Marin Collection" consists of works mostly drawn from Marin's personal collection of nearly 400 pieces. It runs until Nov. 2.
The oils, pastels, acrylics and mixed media span pretty much the entire Chicano arts period, from its nascent beginnings when Almaraz began drawing posters for Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers movement to the present day.
"When Chicano art first began emerging, it was very much part of a civil rights struggle during the late 1960s and early 1970s," says Howard Fox, LACMA's curator of contemporary art. "All of these first-generation Chicano artists were about establishing in the mind of the audience and their colleagues, as well as the art world at large and American mainstream society, that they even existed."
As the movement has continued to develop, struggles and issues of self-identity remain a key focus, as reflected in the work of the youngest artist represented at the exhibition, 30-year-old Vincent Valdez.
Among his works are "Kill the Pachuco Bastard," a chilling piece of impressionism that documents one of Los Angeles' darkest periods, the zoot suit riots of the early 1940s, when gangs of roving white sailors beat Hispanic and black youths while police officers stood by and watched. Hanging next to it is Valdez's "Nothin' to See Here, Keep on Movin'," inspired by last year's May Day protests at which Los Angeles police attacked immigration rights activists and reporters.
"It was intended to be a link to the next generation, to look back and say this isn't something brand new in the United States," Valdez said.
Not all Chicano art is impressionistic, however. Another of the most heralded pieces is the abstract "Ano Loco XIV92/Por Dios y Oro ("Crazy Year 1492 for God and Gold") by Chaz Bojorquez, a former graffiti tagger whose work was considered so out there when he arrived on the scene that it was initially shunned by the Chicano arts movement.
"I had to show it in Hollywood the first few years with the Robert Williams crowd," he says of the so-called "Lowbrow" art movement Williams popularized in the 1970s.
Bojorquez credits Marin with doing more than anyone to legitimize not only his work but that of every other Chicano artist who came before or after him.
For his part, the 61-year-old actor-comedian, who has been featured in movies and TV series such as "Nash Bridges" since splitting with comedy partner Tommy Chong in the 1980s, says he came upon his role as arts patron accidentally.
Fascinated by paintings since childhood, Marin recalled going to the library to study art books at age 10 or 11. Later, he haunted museums.
"I'd get close to the paintings and have the guards yell at me. You know, "'Hey kid! Don't touch the paintings!"' he recalls with a laugh.
"But I touched them anyway," he adds conspiratorially. "I was fascinated with them."
He was collecting art nouveau and art deco in the 1980s when he discovered Chicano art.
"What immediately resonated was not just the images, which is, 'Oh, hey, this is about me and this is about my culture, about everybody I know,"' says the Mexican-American son of a Los Angeles police officer. "What resonated was I recognized them as great painters."
Great painters, he discovered, whose work was going largely unnoticed. It was mostly being displayed at places like Mexican restaurants while popular neo-expressionists of the time, such as Julian Schnabel and Keith Haring, were getting all the gallery space.
Marin saw an inequity.
But it was no easy task to change that inequality. Numerous museums, including LACMA, initially turned down his proposals for exhibitions.
"Even in the Chicano academic world, the attitude was, 'What ... is this doper going to tell us?"' Marin says of a typical reaction. "What's he going to have? A picture of a big joint?"'
But he persevered, launching "Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge" in 2001 with the help of several corporate sponsors. It travelled to more than a dozen cities around the United States, including St. Louis, Minneapolis and Indianapolis.
In bringing it back home, Marin decided to narrow its focus slightly, spotlighting only artists from Los Angeles.
After the show closes here, he hopes to put on another that will travel to Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.
"It would have been very easy for this whole generation of artists to pass by unnoticed and be rediscovered 80 years from now," he says, explaining his efforts. "But I couldn't stand around and see that being done. These guys are just too good."
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