Oral history interview with César Martínez, 1997, Aug. 21-28

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with César Martínez, 1997, Aug. 21-28, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

 

 

 

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH C?SAR MART?NEZ
IN THE ARTIST'S STUDIO AT ARTPACE IN SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
AUGUST 21, 1997
INTERVIEWER: JACINTO QUIRARTE

CM: C?SAR AUGUSTO MART?NEZ
JQ: JACINTO QUIRARTE

JQ: This is for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, an interview with C?sar Mart?nez on 21 August at his studio at ArtPace on North Main in downtown San Antonio. The interviewer is Jacinto Quirarte. Well, C?sar, this is really a wonderful opportunity to get down on tape many of the things that we've talked about over the many, many years that we've known each other. I remember you were sitting in with Felipe Reyes when I interviewed him and many others at Trinity University. I think you were there, back in 1970, '71?

CM: Yeah, I was. [Interruption in taping]

JQ: You said that it was probably 1971 when that interview took place?

CM: I'm pretty sure, yeah, because I remember that you were doing a lot of work on your book, Mexican American Artists, and I remember sitting in. I didn't say much, because I didn't know much at the time. [laughs]

JQ: Now, the thing that I think will be very, very important for anyone who wants to consult these tapes is to learn as much about your background as possible, and all the things that were determinants in how you became to be the kind of painter that you are, the artist that you are.

CM: Okay.

JQ: So tell me a little bit about where you were born and when, and about your growing up.

CM: Well, I grew up in Laredo, Texas, which is where I was born. I was born on June 4, 1944, and I spent all of my childhood there, and so, as you know, Laredo is on the border with Mexico, and so I had a lot of visits from my family in Mexico, and Spanish was my first language. I also spent a lot of time at the family ranch in northern Mexico in my formative years, and so all of that influenced me a lot, and I would say that in recent times a lot of the imagery is coming from those early childhood experiences, getting more biographical.

JQ: Now did you have anyone in your family who inspired you to become an artist? Or how did you begin to make images?

CM: I'm not sure. The only person that I can identify in my family as having some kind of artistic talent as far as visual arts are concerned [is-Ed.] my cousin Armando from Mexico, from northern Mexico-he's the Mexican side of the family. Nationality-wise we're all Mexican. [chuckles]

JQ: Right. On both sides of the border, yeah.

CM: Yeah, I remember that he used to do a lot of very nice drawings. But I remember also that a family friend also-he was an artist, actually-and so I would rifle through their drawers and stuff, and then look at drawings they had there and stuff, whenever we visited in Monterey. And so I think that all those little things stirred something in me. There was something about drawing and painting that was very interesting to me. And my family always. . . . Being an only child, I think I was indulged, and if I showed any interest in anything, my mother and my aunt would buy me colors and stuff like that, so I think that that's pretty much how it developed in the early years.

JQ: What about images in your house when you were growing up? What are the first pictures you remember?

CM: Yeah, no, I don't really remember too many . . . or anything. I'm pretty sure there were. Probably commercial prints that came with a frame, something like that. I do remember a little bit about the old calendars and stuff like that, and I think those have been _____ _____.

JQ: What about religious images? Did your family include home altars or anything like that?

CM: Yeah, there was a. . . . My grandmother. . . . I mean, I was raised. . . . My father died when I was less than a year old, and so I never even knew him. And so I was raised in a house full of women, and my uncle also lived there, but then he got married and left, so for the most part I was raised in a household of women: my two aunts, my mother, and my grandmother. And my grandmother had a little altar, and it was there very noticeable. I don't think I ever really showed any . . . took any real interest in it, other than that I took it for granted. It was always there. My grandmother was very religious. And I never really took to religion, but I did have to put up, of course, with all of the rituals and comuniones and all of those things. [chuckles]

JQ: Oh, yeah, of course. One of the things I remember going to my grandmother's house, since she had come to this country in 1910 and I never once heard her speak English, but she had a photograph of Porfiro Diaz. I had no idea that that's who that was. It was an old man with the mustaches, and she had a print of El Santo Nino de atocha (Holy Child of Atocha).

CM: Yeah.

JQ: And that made a real impression on me. I didn't know what that was, and. . . .

CM: Those were the visuals.

JQ: Yeah

CM: Well, you know, speaking of pictures, I remember that. . . . I always. . . . One of my aunts-my aunt Lidia-was a very avid picture-taker-you know, just snapshots-and she had this old box camera-you know, Brownies and stuff like that . . .

JQ: Oh, sure.

CM: . . . and very early on she bought me one, and so I would take a lot of pictures, and I also took a lot of interest in the family album that was always there, just bulging with family photographs, and there's some very old stuff in there, and I was always fascinated by that. I still am, and I intend to go back to that one of these days and maybe do something with it, with those images. But so anyway, all of the richness of the images always caught my eye, because I guess I had an eye for it to start with. But like I said earlier, I'm the only one in the family who ever developed it, and the only one other known person who actually. . . .

JQ: Oh, really? I'm going to pause. [Interruption in taping]

JQ: This is after the pause, just to check the level of the recording. We continue now with the interview with Cesar Martinez. I had asked you about the images that you saw as a child. What interests me is what kind of images you saw when you first started to school. Were you in school in Laredo or Nuevo Laredo?

CM: Yeah, Nuevo Laredo. Yeah, I went to American schools. I don't really remember.

JQ: They didn't have any kindergarten finger painting?

CM: Well. . . . No, no, not that organized. It was mostly the. . . .

JQ: That's from the thirties, when I was growing up. We did the finger painting.

CM: [chuckles] The [well]. . . . No, I don't recall of ever having any activities involving the visual arts. I'm pretty sure we did, but apparently they were not important enough, because I don't remember those.

JQ: I see.

CM: I think it was not until like the fifth, sixth grade that I remember some things. I remember that. . . . Well, apparently I had shown some kind of talent in school, because I was one of those kids who was always getting pulled out of class to work on a set for a play or stuff like that, so I guess we did something and somebody saw it, because it was identified in me. But personally I don't think it made that much of an impression, because I can't remember the specific images. [laughter] I remember that I liked wildlife, and I remember one time I did some drawings for some drawing contest, and I did some animals-copied them actually. It was a copy of another drawing. [laughs] I don't think I really had any idea, but I think that the mechanics of it fascinated me: being able to draw. At that time I think that was pretty much my interest: being able to draw something, make it look like art.

JQ: Oh, sure. Now, did Laredo have an art museum when you were growing up?

CM: No, it did not, and it still doesn't really have one.

JQ: No?

CM: No, I don't think it has one.

JQ: So did the art teachers in high school show you any. . . . I guess they showed you reproductions.

CM: Yeah, well, books. I think that the first actual art class that I took was when I was in junior high school. It must have been the ninth grade. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was the ninth grade. And it was Mrs. Quiroz, and she was very good.

JQ: How do you spell her name?

CM: Quiroz? Q-u-i-r-o-z.

JQ: O?

CM: o-z.

JQ: o-z. Oh, Quiroz.

CM: Quiroz.

JQ: Okay.

CM: And she was pretty good-a pretty good teacher-and she was very talented herself. She was always working on something. And I remember the big achievement of the year for us that-again-I got pulled out of class to work on a parade float for the annual parade in Laredo, very big thing over there, and as it turns out we won, I think in all categories, first place. Well, no, I don't want to overstate this. But I think it was something like that.

JQ: Oh, really?

CM: First place for something or other, but maybe for something else also. And so it was a pretty good original float. I remember we had a bullfighter on it. One of my friends was dressed as a bullfighter. And I think that that's where that . . . another thing that piqued my interest in those years. [laughing]

JQ: So the nearest big town was San Antonio . . .

CM: San Antonio, yeah

JQ: . . . because Laredo is . . .

CM: Yeah, it's pretty much a small town.

JQ: . . . surrounded by even smaller communities.

CM: Oh, yeah, definitely. So anyway, I think it was junior high when, well, like I said, I did take my first actual art class, and then I did very well, and then I enjoyed it. But that was the last. Through high school, I didn't take any art classes because I got very realistic, and I was thinking, well, you can't make a living as an artist, and I took business courses.

JQ: Oh, really?

CM: These were electives, you know, things that you could . . . you had a choice.

JQ: Sure.

CM: And I did not take any art classes when I was in high school, and, let's see, it wasn't until my third year in college; I spent two years in Laredo Junior College, going to business administration [classes-Ed.], which I hated.

JQ: Oh, my goodness.

CM: But I was very na?ve. I thought, "You study this and then you're qualified."

JQ: Sure,

CM: I thought that everything comes automatically, like you don't even have to look for a job. [laughs]

JQ: When you get your diploma, yeah.

CM: You get a diploma and that's it-you start working, automatically. I was very na?ve. And from Laredo Junior College I went to Texas A & I University in Kingsville. It is now Texas A & M, but it used to be Texas College of Arts and Industries.

JQ: Right.

CM: Texas A & I. And I think that the first semester went so badly in business administration that that's when I decided that it's not going to work. I just had no interest-zero interest and terrible grades-and so anyway I went into what they called the all-level art program there, and that was the only way that you would take a lot of art courses. And also I wasn't a very good student, had no interest in school really, and in those days it was affordable and my family was paying for it.

JQ: So this was, what, the early sixties?

CM: Yeah. I arrived at A & I in 1964-September of 1964. And so anyway I wasn't really college material, but I went. It was being paid for. [laughter] It was affordable then. And so I went into the all-level art program, because that was the easiest also, but it was a teaching program. I mean, it was like you were going to be an art teacher. But that was the only program where you take the most art courses, so it was perfect for me, and I avoided all those other harder courses for a B.A. program, and. . . . It was a B.S., [whatever], B.S. in Art Education. Bachelor of Science, not a bullshit. [laughs] And so anyway as soon as I went into the art program then I started doing all right. My college career stabilized and I got a degree, in that all-level art. . . .

JQ: What kind of teachers did you have? Were there any that inspired you, or you were just getting through the program? Is there anyone in particular?

CM: It was a very interesting time, and the teachers there are. . . . They are now like family. We're very good friends and, to tell you the truth, at the time I didn't appreciate them as much as I do now. But these were times when things were changing politically, and I was very na?ve politically-in every way, really. And so at A & I there were two people who became very important to the Chicano movement in Texas, and that was Jos? Angel Gutierrez and Carlos Guerra.

JQ: Oh, of course.

CM: And Jos? Angel was already on his way out when I got there-he's older than me-but Carlos was a year younger than me-or in school, anyway.

JQ: So that was Jos? Angel Gutierrez and. . . .

CM: And Carlos Guerra . . .

JQ: Carlos Guerra.

CM: . . . who is now a columnist here in San Antonio.

JQ: What is he here?

CM: A columnist. He's writing a column for the paper.

JQ: Oh, that. Oh, it's that Carlos. Oh, okay.

CM: Yeah, that Carlos. And so anyway those two people were very important. Well, actually Carlos Guerra was, because we became very good friends, and we're . . . the closest I had to a brother. He says the same thing about me. But, anyway, it was basically through Carlos that I became very conscious of the political things that were happening. And the art professors were very liberal-all of them, even Mr. Bailey who was a very old man, an old military man, and he was the head of the art department.

JQ: Bakey?

CM: Mr. Bailey. Ben B. Bailey. He was an institution there in the art department. But he was a very nice person, and so, anyway, like I said, all of them were really very liberal people. And I think that they sensed that something was going on and they kind of left us alone. And they were also producing artists, and each of them had a studio there, and so I was very interested in what they were doing professionally. In the classes, well, I took an _____. I was interested, of course, and I did very well in art classes but what fascinated me more was the idea of being an artist. And it wasn't like you get a degree and then you teach art. I wasn't interested in that. My thinking was, "How are you just an artist?" you know. But there was no road map for that at that time. There is none yet, but I think you just have to go with it. [If] that's what you want, you have to figure out a way. But anyway, this was college and I was na?ve. But, like I said, the political events, you know, of the time, they were very conscious of that and very supportive also, and so they kind of left us alone because they knew that there was a cultural thing going on where their own teaching might not even be adequate. They taught all the mechanical. As far as subjects and all of that, they pretty much left that to us. And so I was able to explore a lot of things, and as far as art history's concerned, these were the years when. . . . I guess it was the tail end of the Abstract Expressionist movement, and where abstract art is concerned, we had color-field painting. And Jules Olitski and Mark Rothko and Kenneth Noland. All of those. Those were the big artists-the major artists in that sort of thing-and that's basically what I liked. Pop Art was coming onto its own, and that interested me a little bit, although not as much as just the pure act of painting. So basically I was starting to become an abstract painter. [laughs] And I was very. . . . Considering that A & I was not really an art school or famous for that. It was just basically a teaching college.

JQ: How many faculty did they have?

CM: I think that there were about five or six in the art department.

JQ: That's pretty good.

CM: So, anyway, my intention when I finished college was that I wanted to go to New York and be a New York artist. That was what I read in the art magazines, and I was buying all of it. [laughs]

JQ: Of course, of course.

CM: [I] didn't know better, you know, and I figured that the only way to be a real artist-you go to New York. And that never happened. Eventually, I got drafted. These were the Vietnam years, and eventually. . . .

JQ: What year were you drafted?

CM: I got drafted the year after I graduated from college. I graduated in 1968 with a degree-Bachelor of Science in all-level art education-and the following year. . . . And I had been fighting the draft all this time trying not to be. . . . You know, dodging, dodging. But they got me eventually in August of 1969. And fortunately, instead of Vietnam I wound up in Korea, and I was in the army for only eighteen months because Korea was considered a hardship tour, even though it was not like that in fact, but it was considered that because there is a demilitarized zone and hostilities every now and then.

JQ: Oh, sure.

CM: There used to be anyway in those times. So, anyway, the deal was that, if after serving your tour of duty in Korea you had five months or less left in your two year commitment (because I was a draftee), they would send you home. So to qualify for that I extended my time in Korea. I think I spent like fourteen months over there to qualify for that, and so I came home directly from Korea.

JQ: So you came to San Antonio or. . . .

CM: I came to San Antonio because my friends from college, Carlos Guerra and Beto Pe?a and some other people who were very close to me, were here and they were already becoming activists in the Chicano movement. They already had something going, in fact, and so I just fell in with them. And the rest is pretty much. . . .

JQ: Now when did you meet some of these Chicano artists? Or when did you begin to hear about Chicano art?

CM: I think that almost immediately I was introduced to some artists who were already organized here. I remember meeting Chista and Rudy Diamond-Rudy Garc?a, "El Diamond"-and. . . .

JQ: Was Rudy Garc?a "El Diamond?"

CM: Rudy Garc?a, "El Diamond."

JQ: [laughing] Why did they call him that?

CM: I don't know why. I have no idea. [laughter]

JQ: Chista was of course Cant?, wasn't he?

CM: Yeah Chista Cant?, Jes?s Mar?a Cant?. And somewhere along there then I met Felipe Reyes and Mel Casas and Jes?s Esquivel and Jesse Almazan and all of those, and they already had a group going. I don't remember exactly what the name was because it went through several incarnations.

JQ: I remember they said there was Tlacuilo.

CM: Yeah, the Tlacuilo group, and there was also Pintores de la Nueva Raza. It may have been something else at some other point and then it became Con Safos, which was the most visible of the groups.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: And it was basically the same people, you know.

JQ: Now did you belong to Con Safos, or you were just on the periphery?

CM: Not initially, but I was drawn in eventually. Basically, the recruiter there, the soldier there, the gung-ho guy was Felipe Reyes. Even though Mel Casas was pretty much identified as the figurehead there, it was actually Felipe who was doing most of the work itself. And it was through Felipe that I got in and I stuck to Consafo for a couple of years. I don't remember how long; it must have been a couple of years.

JQ: Well, when did that. . . . Well, better still, what prompted you and Carmen Lomas Garza and others to form that Los [Quemados]?

CM: The thing about it is that basically. . . . What I think happens here in San Antonio is that the artists here were very much into San Antonio. And their ways were their ways. They were very identified as San Antonio, and I think that there was basically kind of like a distrust there. Not a distrust, but it's like "it's us and everybody else who's not from here is them." And even though we were very good friends and we remained very good friends, I kind of felt like an outsider.

JQ: Being from outside of San Antonio?

CM: Yeah, and something that may have had something to do with it was also that I had a real political connection in that I was working with the Texas Institute for Educational Development. Carlos Guerra was the head of that, and we had a whole political thing going. And these other guys were like, even though they were perfectly in tune with the events of the time-the Chicano movement and everything-they were basically in it as artists, and I was coming on differently here. It was like I'm actually doing stuff here in the communities surrounding San Antonio-not in San Antonio _____.

JQ: So you were doing photography at that time?

CM: And also photography, yes, and I was very involved with that. But basically what we did at the Texas Institute for Educational Development is that we would work with local activists in small towns in South Texas like Cotulla and Robstown especially. We would have meetings and stuff and then discuss all kinds of things and strategies for organizing and then things like that. And since I was an artist we figured a cultural thing to it, which was my part, and I would give a little talk and show slides of what artists were doing and with what little materials I had. And so, anyway, that's what we were doing.

JQ: Where did you get the funding for that?

CM: Eventually, I got funding from the. . . . God, I forget the. . . .

JQ: Was it a foundation?

CM: Irwin. . . . I remember now. It was the Irwin Sweeney Miller Foundation.

JQ: Irwin?

CM: Sweeney . . ..

JQ: Oh, Sweeney.

CM: . . . Miller Foundation. And they gave me a grant. I applied for one and I got a grant through the fund-raising effort basically of Carlos Guerra, who was a very effective fund-raiser. And I got grants to travel throughout the Southwest and photograph the work of Chicanos who were into the movement thing. And not being much of an academic, I did my best and I think I did all right, but a lot of. . . . I never pretended that it was all-inclusive, but I did my best. And then I think I came up with a pretty good collection of slides that we eventually sold to libraries.

JQ: Yeah, I saw them. Because a lot of those murals disappeared right after that.

CM: Yeah. Oh, yeah, a lot of the stuff disappeared, and I think that all things considered it may have been the first effort to gather information and put it out.

JQ: What year was that?

CM: That must have been like '73, '74, something like that.

JQ: Because I remember going out to San Diego and Los Angeles and talking to a young man named Bright, who was a photographer, and he was photographing the murals in L.A. And I think he had photographed a few things in San Diego.

CM: Yeah.

JQ: But there wasn't anyone who was doing, say, New Mexico, California. And you did most of that.

CM: Yeah, because I met most of the. . . . Basically what I covered was Texas, New Mexico, and California. That was it. I skipped Arizona completely, didn't have any contact there.

JQ: Well, there wasn't much there, I don't think-at the beginning anyway.

CM: And probably the only other place that had something going was Colorado, but that I missed completely. I never even visited Colorado. But, anyway, I did put together a very fine collection that probably became seminal for Chicano art studies. [laughs]

JQ: What happened to that collection?

CM: I don't know. It got lost. I'm pretty sure that I passed it over to Pedro Rodriguez, because Pedro was. . . . We were involved in a project that was sort of like using Texas Institute for Educational Development-TIED from now on. . . . We knew it as TIED. Probably easier to say TIED. TIED was the umbrella group, but we started the Instituto Chicano de Artes y Artesan?as, and behind that were myself and Pedro Rodriguez and Amado Pe?a.

JQ: Give me that again.

CM: Instituto Chicano de Artes y Artesan?as.

JQ: And Pedro was involved in that?

CM: Pedro, Amado Pena, and myself. We incorporated, and we were using TIED as an umbrella group.

JQ: So that's the Chicano Institute for Arts and Crafts.

CM: Yeah, basically that's what we were saying, and then we were going to explore all those things and then we were going to create an institute. That was our idea. [laughs]. Probably the Guadalupe is what we had in mind. [laughs]

JQ: Well, then Pedro _____ has those things in his private collection or maybe part of the _____ _____.

CM: Well anyway, my contention is that, somewhere along the line after the project was long done and dead and buried, Pedro borrowed the slides from me. I had them in very nice metal cases and everything arranged. My recollection is that Pedro borrowed them and he never returned them. Then he asked me about them and I said, "Well, you have them." And he said, "No, I don't have them." And that's where we are. [laughs]

JQ: Oh, my goodness!

CM: [laughing] So it's gone and the magical collection is gone. [laughter]

JQ: Oh, that's the story of. . . .

CM: I know I don't have it and I've looked for it very hard, and I know I don't have it.

JQ: That's the story of so much of that [era], in the seventies. Because he went on to Washington, didn't he?

CM: He moved around. He was at A & I when I got out of the army. I had met Pedro a couple of years earlier, when he was teaching at . . . when he was going to college. _____ _____.

JQ: He's a little older than you isn't he?

CM: Huh?

JQ: He's older than you?

CM: Yeah.

JQ: Much older, I would say.

CM: Probably about ten years older than I am.

JQ: Is he from South Texas also?

CM: He's from San Antonio.

JQ: Oh, he's from here?

CM: Yeah, he's from here right now. But he's been all over, teaching _____ _____.

JQ: Because I first met him when I was teaching at Austin, and we had a huge national conference on Mexican-American . . . something or other, and they had asked me to do something on Chicano, because there was this guy named Felipe Reyes coming up from Texas A & I, I think. And that's when I first met him, I think, it was '70 or '71, and. . . .

CM: No. Felipe Reyes? No Felipe wasn't at A & I.

JQ: No? And of all people, this guy who used to have Mar?o's, he had either just gotten out of jail for having marijuana or pot.

CM: Yeah, Mar?o' Cant?. Yeah, he had been in prison for some drug-related offense. But he became a major activist here in San Antonio.

JQ: Yeah, because he invited me to come down after that, and I came to see him at Mar?o's for some kind of project.

CM: Yeah. Yeah, he had all kinds of stuff going.

JQ: And so I knew that Pedro was also very much involved. He said he was teaching a class on Chicano art . . .

CM: Yeah.

JQ: . . . in Kingsville.

CM: Yeah, and that's where I ran into Pedro after getting out of the army, and later on Pedro moved around. Next thing we knew he was in Las Vegas, New Mexico . . .

JQ: That's right.

CM: . . . then Pullman, Washington, and who knows where else.

JQ: And then finally came here for the Guadalupe.

CM: Finally came back here for the job at the Guadalupe. He was all over.

JQ: So, coming back to your painting, when you were involved with the Texas Institute for Educational Development and then later the Instituto Chicano de Artes y Artesan?as, you were still doing your work. You were doing prints and paintings.

CM: Yeah, the only work that I managed to do was some. . . . Well, I was painting, but basically. . . . When I got to San Antonio. . . . Actually, I started painting immediately after I got to San Antonio. But I was doing like hard-edge things, abstract stuff-again, exploring my interests in college, which were color-field painting basically.

JQ: So you were interested in. . . .

CM: And I was doing some pretty good work, I think, and I exhibited those things . . .

JQ: I've never seen those.

CM: . . . in those early shows, but basically I was getting a lot of carrilla from. . . .

JQ: We'll have to spell that one because. . . . Carrilla.

CM: Carilla. They were on my case, so to speak.

JQ: C-a-r-r-I-a.

CM: L-l. It's got an l-l somewhere.

JQ: So it's carrilla.

CM: Yeah. It's a term that means they were harassing me about it.

JQ: Harassing you. Giving you a bad time.

CM: Yeah, that it was very bourgeois, and all that rap.

JQ: Because you weren't doing politically charged things?

CM: No, I was not doing any of that. But anyway, basically I was ignoring it, and so the insight that I got from that is that figurative work is harder to do than abstract work. [laughs] It's not necessarily like that at the top levels. But at the level I was it was easier to do abstract stuff than actually have to draw. [laughs]

JQ: Sure.

CM: I didn't have the technique or anything. So I was struggling. But I came up with some pretty good works that got into the early shows. And basically what happened is that when I went to California with the project that I did-the slide project-I met a lot of artists, but of the artists that I met probably the ones who had the biggest impact on me were Jos? Montoya and. . . . I forgot his name. His name is Hernandez. He was in Oakland at the time. What is his name? Very important to me and I don't remember his name. His last name was Hernandez. It'll come. . . .

JQ: I have that somewhere.

CM: Well, anyway, and El Queso -Salvador Torres-El Queso-in San Diego. I thought those were. . . . They were doing some very original stuff, and they influenced me where subject matter is concerned. And where style is concerned, I would say that Hernandez was doing some wonderful woodcuts, and I had always liked the medium. And so it was pretty much. . . .

JQ: Was he at Arts and Crafts with Montoya ? Or you met them in Oakland?

CM: I met him. . . . He was living in Oakland at the time, if I'm not mistaken. And so was Jos?'s brother Malaquias . Malaquias was also very important to me there. And Rupert Garcia, for that matter. They were all [voiceover]

JQ: Rupert does a lot of very hard-edge things-even now.

CM: Yeah. At that time he was doing posters and he was very helpful to me, so these people have become very, very good friends. And so, anyway, it was basically Hernandez who influenced me on those woodcuts. I came back after that trip wanting to do woodcuts, and I did some. And those were the first works that were showed in the Chicano context.

JQ: Because they included some of those in the Ancient Roots and New Visions.

CM: Yeah, that gave them a lot of visibility, and then one of those got reproduced everywhere, just about. My first . . . one of my "greatest hits." [laughter]

JQ: One of your big hits!

CM: And so anyway. . . .

JQ: Oh, wait a minute. Oh, it's all right. I'm sorry, I thought we were done, but go ahead.

CM: Still tape in there?

JQ: Yeah.

CM: Okay, I'm kind of lost. Where were we?

JQ: Well, you mentioned the people who had an impact on you in California when you were doing the Texas Institute for Educational Development. And Rupert. . . .

CM: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I remember what the question was now. You were asking me was I painting. Yeah, and I was doing all this stuff. We went into that little tangent there. But basically, you know, I was starting to move into figurative work because I felt that. . . . The idea that all of this was generating in me needed to be expressed figuratively, and I did not have the technique that I needed for that. So I just decided it's either that or. . . . I mean, that's it.

JQ: Just go ahead.

CM: And so it took a good few years for me to get my bearings and that eventually led to the Pachuco series in the late seventies. Right before that I had done the very hard-edge Serape series, which was sort of a transitional period there.

JQ: What series was that?

CM: The Serape series.

JQ: Oh, the Serape, yeah.

CM: And that was kind of like transitional, and from then I went into the Pachuco series, and that eventually got a lot of play in exhibitions, and curators were really gravitating toward that series. Since then I have added other things, but you know the. . . .

JQ: Now you have told me on other occasions that you began to then recall some of the people you knew when you were growing up, and in some cases you used photographs and in other cases you _____ _____.

CM: Yeah. Well, let me tell you how all of that gelled. Because influences are very important, and I remember. . . . You know, I mentioned El Queso earlier, and when I visited with El Queso in California, he had some sketchbooks, and I went through them and I saw some of the most stunning images of Chicano that I had ever seen. An artist had actually done this, a subject that I'd never even. . . . I mean, who would think of painting some pachuco? And Queso was doing that. Not in a stylized way, but like Jos? Montoya. Even though Jos? Montoyas were also wonderful I felt, "Queso's got a different thing." They were like just regular excellent drawings in charcoal and pencil and stuff, but of real people, pachucos.

JQ: Not caricatures.

CM: Not necessarily just pachucos, but people in general, of [kids] around in the barrio and everything, and I thought that this was the most. . . . I mean, I felt like a tiny little being when I saw that-work like that. And I said, "I want to do stuff like that. Stuff that moves me." Stuff that would move people like that moved me. So I think that all of that was in my mind. Being into photography at the time, I was looking a lot of the work of Richard Avedon-all of those very frontal, very poker-faced portraits that he was doing.

JQ: Right.

CM: And then Fritz Scholder, the Indian artist, was doing a lot of very frontal stuff with Indian imagery, and so all of these were working on my mind, and I was forming an idea there of what I wanted to do with these portraits. And I think it was also kind of like I was sort of tipping my hat to color field painting with those, what eventually developed in those stark backgrounds in my work.

JQ: Oh, yeah.

CM: So I think I owe that to Avedon and to some extent, Fritz Scholder.

JQ: What's the name of the Indian artist?

CM: Fritz Scholder.

JQ: Chris?

CM: Fritz. F, like the German Fritz.

JQ: Oh, Fritz.

CM: Fritz Scholder, S-c-h-o-l-d-e-r.

JQ: Yeah. I guess my problem is I'm beginning to be hard of hearing. [laughs]

CM: Yo tambien. [laughter] No, I'm also . . . have to go, "Eh? What, what?" So, anyway, the thing. . . . But that's not all of it, of course. I mean, Picasso, about the turn of the century did a lot of very wonderful portraits of the [ambiento] that he was in, and Toulouse-Lautrec had done a lot of stuff with people and the times. And Degas and Gauguin and van Gogh, all of those artists, tambien [also], and many others throughout history.

JQ: Sure.

CM: So, anyway, it was through all of those influences, and many others that I can't even think, because there's so many influences that it's just impossible to trace everything.

JQ: But the Mexicans didn't affect you at all?

CM: Ideologically. Ideologically.

JQ: But not in terms of images?

CM: I never was that drawn to that. I felt that. . . .

JQ: Because you were never interested in the murals the way those guys out in California were.

CM: No, I never was interested in it in that way.

JQ: [In fact, It's like] none of the artists here were. Not really.

CM: Yeah. No. I think that the artists here generally, we all work individually, whereas in California it's a very collective thing, and I think that's one distinguishing thing from the Texas tribe and the California tribe.

JQ: That's right.

CM: But, anyway, all of these things that I mentioned were going around through my head, and I think that is basically how the Pachuco series eventually emerged. It is not really a style in which they are done. I've always said that I found the format for these characters that I wanted to put across, and that is how the idea formed. Sources? Well, one of my very first sources was the high school yearbook.

JQ: Oh, is that right?

CM: Yeah. [laughs] Eventually I put together a. . . . I would clip from magazines, pictures that struck my eye that had something to them. And I collected, in fact, that one right there. I have it right here as a reference. My sourcebook. And so that's where I get my images. But a lot of them are basically also from recollection. Probably the most effective images that I have come up with have been from recollections that I have reconstructed not exactly as I saw them, because it wouldn't work, but I would kind of like merge characters, make composites. Sort of like a writer comes up with a character that is based on real people,only this was a visual thing. And that is how it developed. Very few of the work from that series is actually real likenesses of real people, but it's the essence of real people. And I was also very consciously working with physiological types that you would recognize-that you could say, "Yeah, I know that guy!" I think we all fall into types.

JQ: The barrio type.

CM: Yeah. Well, not. . . . Well, yeah, specifically the barrio, but physiologically there are certain people that look a certain way, and certain people that look. . . . You know, some look very Moorish, some very European, some very Indian. I was working with all of those physiological types there, and trying to come up with characters that were very specific but at the same time also very universal to the Chicano experience. And I think I pretty much succeeded at that. That's basically what that series is all about.

JQ: So whenever you started a particular direction you never really abandoned other [concepts].

CM: No, I have never abandoned anything.

JQ: Because when did you start the South Texas series or whatever you call it?

CM: The South Texas series had been sort of like there in my mind for, ooh, way. . . . Forever, I would say. [laughs] But like I said earlier about the Pachuco series, I needed to find a format for that, or a way of. . . . And in this case it wasn't. . . . . In the South Texas series it wasn't exactly a format, but more of a way of painting, and I think that I went into a type of painting that was expressionistic. I mean, all of these things I do are very objective. You hear a lot of mystification about artists suffering, and, well, no, my mind was working and I was coming up with this stuff, and "How do I do it effectively?" I actually tried doing some landscapes-some early South Texas series landscapes, what I call the Rio Grande series-which were very simple-just land and the river going through it and sky. Basically what we have in the Pachuco series-you know, a horizon line and stuff like that-but it didn't work. It wasn't effective. I did some very nice stuff, but I felt, "That's not it." And I also. . . . Here's where I started. . . .

JQ: It didn't have enough possibilities?

CM: Yeah. Here's where I became conscious of the fact that what worked for a particular subject doesn't work for something else. And here's where I started forming ideas about style and all, and I came to the conclusion that style can be a very. . . . Not necessarily true in all artists, but in my case it would have been something superficial. I was just trying to do something in the style of the Batos, the Pachuco series. But it didn't work for that series, so I said, "I need something else." And eventually it became a mixed media thing, and also very expressionistic where. . . . Session 1 (Tape 1, Side B)

CM: . . . the painting end of it was concerned. And so eventually I found my format for the South Texas series. But it had been in my mind forever.

JQ: So even though you have all of these found things like wood and metal, wire and so forth. [Interruption in taping]

JQ: Repeating the question that I asked at the end of Side A related to the South Texas series that was, in turn, related to the Rio Grande series that really didn't have enough possibilities for you even though you thought it might work stylistically . . .

CM: Yeah.

JQ: . . . because it has been fine for the Pachuco series, and then you began to use mixed media.

CM: Yeah.

JQ: But my question was that even though you use wood, metal, wire, and other found materials, you treat them as you would paint.

CM: Yeah, basically these are wall pieces.

JQ: It's a two-dimensional. . . .

CM: They're sort of like painting and they actually have some painting in them most of the time-or imagery, either incised or whatever. Also a little bit of a sculptural element entered into this, in that I did some snakes out of barbed wire that were three-dimensional and stuff and they were attached to the wall pieces. But basically, yeah, the idea basically is of a painting. The way that I approach them when I do them, visually speaking, you know, I'm not shooting for a sculptural element. I just include it but it's not really thought out as sculpture.

JQ: It projects from the surface, but it's still within the range when you see it from the front.

CM: Yeah, it's just a flat surface and I haven't really given it much thought as far as a sculpture. So I wouldn't claim that it was sculpture.

JQ: But in that series you also have a lot of remembrances or reminiscences of your growing up in South Texas.

CM: Yes, because I was pretty much into the outdoors-fishing, and hunting, and coming from a ranching family I spent a lot of time on the ranch in northern Mexico, the family ranch-and so the outdoors were very important to me, and, whenever we would go hunting or be out in the woods, things would stick in my mind, and so eventually all of these become subjects, when I started thinking in terms of subjects. And I think I came up with some interesting stuff. Like, for example, probably one of the most effective pieces on the South Texas series is a mixed media piece that I called Cono's Christmas Buck.

JQ: Oh yeah, Cono.

CM: I remember that one. El Cono was a friend of mine from Laredo who passed away a long time ago, in the early seventies. But when we were in college in the sixties, he was very much into hunting, and he was very expressive in the way he would recount his hunting adventures-and very funny also. But he was a hunter. I mean, hunting was all he thought about. And I remember that after I had. . . . That year that I was floating around dodging the draft I would go back to Kingsville and stay with my friends, and they all lived in this house together, El Cono and Beto Pe?a and other friends of mine-people that I hung out with. So I would stay there, and there was a spare bed in Cono's room, so I would sleep in Cono's room. And so we would be there shooting the breeze at night, in the evening, and I'd be talking about art or something and Cono would get exasperated with me.

JQ: [laughs]

CM: He would say, "Platicame de carabinas." Talk to me about hunting. [laughter] It was very funny. And so. . . . But, anyway, when the South Texas series gelled, Cono came to my mind, and I said, "Now who would think of using Cono, except me, as a subject?" [laughs] So I worked out this piece, and basically it's graffiti but not urban graffiti. This is ranch graffiti that some hunter might inscribe on the wall of a shack where he's staying or something like that.

JQ: Now where does Cono come from? It's a cone, but. . . .

CM: I don't know why they called him El Cono. [laughs] I have no idea.

JQ: What was his actual name?

CM: I have no way. . . . His name was. . . . Ah, I can't remember his name. I'm bad about names. He comes from a family that has a history in Laredo . . . the Sanchez. . . . Rodolfo Sanchez was his name, one of the historical Sanchez family in Laredo. I can't remember exactly what they did, but they were historical. [chuckles]

JQ: But El Cono was his nickname.

CM: Yeah. I think there was a Tom?s Sanchez in Laredo, Tomas Sanchez that is historical for some reason or other. I think he was from that family. But, anyway, he was from Laredo, and I think he was a year ahead of me in high school.

JQ: So he died very young then.

CM: Died very young. It turns out that he had an aneurysm or something like that . . . .

JQ: Oooh.

CM: . . . and started going berserk. He was a teacher eventually, and people started noticing mood swings and, you know, "What's going on here?" It turns out that he [had-Ed.] something in his brain, and he died of it. But anyway, Cono was the subject of one of the most. . . .

JQ: So that was an inspiration for that whole _____.

CM: Yeah, one of the most effective pieces in the South Texas series. It was basically a story told through graffiti about . . .

JQ: About his buck.

CM: . . . about a buck that he killed for the Christmas tamales, because it's a tradition in Laredo. Something to coincide with Christmas and tamale time. Tamales time. And so tamales de venado are a big thing in Laredo.

JQ: Tamales de venado. The venison tamales. Well, what about the exhibitions that became very important in the late seventies? You were in that major international show, the Ancient Visions. . . . Or what is it, Ancient. . . .

CM: Ancient Roots/New Visions. Yeah, that was one of the very first major museum-caliber exhibitions that went around that was so. . . .

JQ: You were also in MIRA-M-I-R-A-shows, which was the whiskey, Canadian Club.

CM: Canadian Club Hispanic Art tour. Later there was kind of like a carbon copy of that, the Coors thing, which I did not participate on, because I had a political problem with Coors. A lot of artists did.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: We didn't want to be involved with Coors because it's a right-wing . . .

JQ: Exactly.

CM: . . . right-wing founder.

JQ: Racist.

CM: Yeah. So anyway. But, notwithstanding, some very good artists participated in that who were probably. . . .

JQ: Yeah, in fact they asked me to do the catalog for one of them. I forget, MIRA 2 or 3, I forget which one. In the early eighties, it must have been.

CM: Yeah. But, no, those early exhibitions-the survey exhibitions and Chicano exhibitions and stuff like [that-Ed.]-it wasn't until relatively recent times that I started being left out of major shows. [laughs]

JQ: Oh, is that right?

CM: Because, I mean, they become more special and competitive and new artists. So anyway. And I'm getting old, you know? [laughter] So _____. . . .

JQ: Yeah, but you were in CARA.

CM: Yeah, but I was in all the early ones; I was in all of the major ones.

JQ: Well, I think that what happened is that they became more and more fragmented, like Tom?s Ybarra Frausto and Amalia Mesa-Baines began to do things in San Francisco and other places, and if it didn't fit their notion of Chicano art then you were not [part].

CM: Yeah. Well, every area had their own thing going, and also the fragmentation. . . . It wasn't really fragmentation so much as these early shows were very national in scope, and then people started to organize major shows in their own locations, like there were some major shows in California. Here in Texas we had Dale Gas in Houston in 1977.

JQ: Right.

CM: And in California prior to these. . . . I think the first Chicano museum show was probably Los Four in Los Angeles.

JQ: That was in '74.

CM: Yeah, that Jane Livingston put together.

JQ: L.A. County.

CM: Yeah. That was probably the first museum show, but shortly after that we had both Dale Gas and Ancient Roots/New Visions. So, anyway, the trend was shows national in scope, and then probably everybody went into their own thing locally [and what not]. I wouldn't fit in in California. [laughs]

JQ: Well, of course, there haven't been any really major Chicano shows in the last . . . not since CARA.

CM: No, probably the last major one was probably Hispanic Art in the United States. It wasn't a Chicano show, but that was the last of the major surveys.

JQ: But it was before. That was '87, wasn't it?

CM: Yeah, I think it started in '87.

JQ: Jane Livingston and Beardsley.

CM: And John Beardsley, yeah. They did. . . .

JQ: For the Corcoran and Houston.

CM: Yeah. Well, it traveled all over.

JQ: Oh yeah, but they opened there.

CM: Yeah, it opened in Houston and. . . .

JQ: I remember going in April of '87.

CM: Yeah.

JQ: So, God, that was ten years ago.

CM: Yeah, yeah, that was it. I think that was it, when it opened in Houston for the first time.

JQ: But your Pachuco series was already very well known by then.

CM: Yeah. In fact, that was what was shown in that show, and after that I've been in many museum shows. Actually, you know, it's kind of interesting that artists would kill to be in museum shows, and I started to . . . I became conscious of, "Well, what's this thing about museum shows?" And it turns out that most of the shows that I had in my resume at the time were museum shows. I didn't have any gallery shows. [laughs]

JQ: _____ museum shows. . . .

CM: So it wasn't until recent times that I started actually showing in galleries and selling a painting or two. [laughs] But I was in major shows-major museum shows-and nothing as far as galleries.

JQ: So who handles your work? Do you have a gallery or do you just. . . .

CM: Over the years I've had some galleries handle my work. Lyn Good in Houston and John Caciola in New York, Galer?a Sin Fronteras in Austin. Here, locally, I went through several: Jansen-Perez, Milagros, and now Parchman Stremmel. I think that's it. I think those are the galleries that handled my work _____. [Interruption in taping]

JQ: This is to backtrack a little bit on something that we left out relating to Cesar's work in the mid 1970s when he was loosely affiliated. . . . I'm not sure if that's the right word. But you were not really that involved with Con Safos, although you did become involved with Los Quemados (or The Burnt Ones) . . .

CM: Yeah.

JQ: . . . as a reaction to what Con Safos was doing. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

CM: I was involved with Con Safos; I became a member. But because I had. . . . You know, as I mentioned earlier when we were talking about this, the San Antonio artists are a very tight group, and if you're not from San Antonio it's like . . . you're not from San Antonio.

JQ: Oh, that's right. You had mentioned that.

CM: Not that there's any problems, but you're not from San Antonio. But with my political ties and the things that I was doing, I knew a lot of people throughout the Southwest, and here in Texas I was very good friends with Amado Pe?a and Carmen Lomas Garza, who were some of the major artists of the time. And there were a lot of other artists who were also active doing a lot of work, artists like Jos? Trevi?o and Vicente Rodriguez and, let's see. . . . Well, there were others, but I can't. . . . Santa Barraza.

JQ: Was Carmen Lomas Garza in. . . . You mentioned her name?

CM: Carmen Lomas Garza? Yes, of course. She was one of the principle artists of that time. And these were all my friends, and so when I went into Con Safos a lot of them came with me. And after we had been in Con Safos for a while, we started noticing a pattern in the meetings. We talked about very formal things, expectations and stuff like that that weren't really applicable at the time. I remember that Con Safos wanted to . . . anybody who wanted slides of the group, they wanted to charge money for the slides and, where exhibitions were concerned, they were insisting on insurance and stuff like that. At the time that wasn't heard of. Significant places that wanted to show your work could not afford things like that. This was like for museums and stuff like that, and of course it was an excellent ambition but among ourselves, especially between myself and Carmen Lomas Garza and Amado Pe?o, we would look at each other and say [comments] like, "We keep talking about these things, and we're not showing." We were dying to show, and there were many places. . . . You know, at the time it wasn't like a gallery scene or a museum thing. At that time it was more like wherever you can, but it wasn't. . . . There was also another dimension to that wherever it's needed, and there was a need. People wanted. . . . They knew we were artists and they said, "Great. We're having a conference here or there. Why don't you show your work?" And sure, you know, we wanted to do that at the time, and. . . . But don't do that any more. [laughter] But we wanted to do that at the time because it was necessary.

JQ: Sure.

CM: And the Con Safos group was not very receptive to that. They wanted to show in museums and stuff like that, but at the time, like I said, the realistic thing about that. . . . Well, being realistic about the times rather. That was still a few years in the future. And so we decided to leave Con Safos for that reason. We felt, "We're artists. We need to show our work, and we're people-oriented, politically-active and stuff like that-political orientation-and so we need to exhibit." And so we left Con Safos, and I remember that I wrote a very diplomatic letter why we were leaving, and we left the group and we formed Los Quemados, and Los Quemados was basically. . . . I came up with the name, if I remember correctly. But Los Quemados was basically Amado Pe?a and Carmen Lomas Garza and myself.

JQ: Now, was Santa involved with this?

CM: Yes, she was, but she was a younger artist at the time. We were the more active ones then, and basically it was more or less our leadership. But then everybody from Austin. . . . This was a very Austin group that I was dealing with here, and I went back and forth so. . . . And not being from San Antonio, so I was kind of floating around. I was a free agent, so to speak. So we formed a group that was convenient to our idea. But, ironically, after that time. . . . I think we exhibited as Los Quemados once at least, certainly.

JQ: I remember that.

CM: But I'm kind of vague about any other. . . . I'm pretty sure we exhibited at least another time, but then we also kind of like dissipated, you know.

JQ: Well, you went your own ways.

CM: [laughing] Went our own ways.

JQ: Amado Pe?a went, of course, _____.

CM: Yeah, we all got into our work and developed what we were doing, and Amado developed his [monito] thing, you know, that everybody hated eventually. And Carmen developed her thing and then _____ _____ fine.

JQ: And then she left for California.

CM: And she left for California and has been there every since. And I just kept on. . . . Like I said, I had been struggling technically with my work, and with me it was just a matter of just doing work-working, working, working at it and struggling with it until I came up with what I wanted, and I did. In other words, we were developing individually . . . kind of went our own ways. And then we all emerged in some of the major shows that started coming up like Roots and Visions and all of those. Con Safos. . . .

JQ: Now, Con Safos more or less . . . .

CM: I mean, not Con Safos. Dale Gas.

JQ: Dale Gas. But Con Safos by then was really not operating any more, was it?

CM: It became very ambivalent, I think. That was my viewpoint. There was an ambivalence there. Too concerned about form and not enough about realities and the substance of the times. I felt it required more activism, exhibition-wise, and I felt it wasn't there. And Con Safos kind of like also dissipated after that. Everybody kind of went their own ways. Like for example, from San Antonio, artists from that group, Jesse Trevino was there and he kind of like went his own way and then developed what he became. And Mel Casas. Well, Mel Casas was already a very formed, very mature artist at the time.

JQ: Mature?

CM: Older also, than all of us. So he was already made, so to speak. So he kept on being Mel Casas, and Felipe Reyes went through something there. You want to hear some gossip? [laughs] Felipe Reyes left for Ann Arbor, the college over there.

JQ: I guess that was the undoing. I don't know what they did to him up there.

CM: Well, Felipe changed. He started repudiating what he had been doing and went into some things that he felt were very important to him.

JQ: Is he from here?

CM: Yeah, he's from here. And eventually he emerged again in San Antonio and sort of came back to where he started, but for a while there he was estranged from the whole Chicano thing.

JQ: And then he taught briefly at UTSA.

CM: Yeah.

JQ: And Jesse Trevi?o got an MFA out there. But I really didn't have any contact with him.

CM: Yeah.

JQ: But he was never really politically involved, was he?

CM: Who?

JQ: Jesse Trevi?o.

CM: No, he. . . . No, not really. He was a very shrewd person, and I think all along he knew, well, had a good idea where he wanted to go with what he could do, and I think pretty much went there.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: You know, someone that we haven't mentioned at all who was very important to all of us was Santos Martinez.

JQ: Oh, yeah.

CM: He was also one of the artists who was very much involved, and he went on to become the curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, under the directorship of Jim Harithas, who was also a very important character here-to Texas art in general and. . . .

JQ: Harithas?

CM: James Harithas.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: And for Chicanos in particular, very important, because it was through his effort-and Santos'-that Dale Gas came about.

JQ: Right.

CM: And Santos had been an artist, but basically. . . . Santos Martinez is an excellent artist. Technically he's an excellent artist-I mean, very skilled draftsman and everything. But he always was drawn more to the academic end of it and curating, and so he ended up in. . . . I think he was in Ann Arbor also, and then he went to Minneapolis after that. I know that he was in Ann Arbor when Felipe was there.

JQ: Yeah, he got an MFA up there, I think.

CM: Yeah, he got a degree there, and he wound up in Minneapolis.

JQ: Well, he came back here for a while, didn't he?

CM: I don't remember.

JQ: But he's not here any more. Or is he?

CM: No, he's still over there in Minneapolis, always saying that he wants to come back, but hasn't actually done that. But he was very important to that period.

JQ: Well, he could conceptualize certain things-you know, put that exhibition together.

CM: Yeah, he could. And he was a doer-a very by-the-book kind of guy, and he was very committed.

JQ: But then the head honcho with Con Safos ended up being Rudy Trevi?o . . .

CM: Rudy Trevi?o, yeah.

JQ: . . . who went on to become the lead person for the [Tejano] Music Awards.

CM: Yeah, he's the impresario there. He has done very well with that.

JQ: But he gave up his art, didn't he?

CM: Well, you know, the interesting thing about Rudy is that he was an excellent teacher. His students were always getting awards and stuff when he was. . . . I don't remember where he was; probably. . . . I think it was [at] Edgewood or _____ . . .

JQ: [Lanier]?

CM: . . . Lanier, one of those. I don't know. One of those. But he was an excellent instructor-and an excellent artist also-but he was very business-like and I think that that led to his going into the Tejano music thing, and stopped being an artist somewhere along the line.

JQ: Now by the time you met all these people, you essentially were going in your own direction.

CM: I think I always was going in my own direction.

JQ: They didn't really have an impact on you other than. . . .

CM: No. Well, no, I would say they did. Like, for example. . . . Maybe I should talk a little bit about the artists here who I . . . the ones that really did something to me-their art did something to me. I don't think I have mentioned Roberto R?os at all . . .

JQ: Oh, right.

CM: . . . but Roberto R?os was a formidable illustrator and commercial artist. And I think most of us. . . . Well, that's something that can be said about most of the Westside artists of the time-Chista and Felipe Reyes (well, no, not Felipe Reyes)-Chista, Jesse Almaz?n, Roberto R?os, Jos? Esquivel-they were commercial artists-and they could do virtually anything. But Roberto R?os was a very effective illustrator, and his work just blew me away. I mean. . . .

JQ: Wasn't he in the Air Force or the. . . .

CM: Yeah. Like for example, he was working as an illustrator with the Air Force, I think at Kelly or one of those-Randolf, whatever-and Jesse Almaz?n was at Fort Sam, I believe, with the army-also an illustrator.

JQ: What about Esquivel?

CM: And Jos? Esquivel was with the CPS. No, no. What is it? CPS? City Public Service, yeah.

JQ: The City Public Service?

CM: Yes. He was a commercial artist there, and so these guys were very accomplished working artists-you know, professional illustrators and commercial artists. But, anyway, Roberto R?os was one hell of a paint handler, and his work just blew me away. Like El Queso had done. . . . Like what I saw in El Queso really moved me. Well, Roberto R?os' work moved me in a different way, in a technical way. Well, actually his work was also moving otherwise. But for me, I was just dazzled by the technique, the paint handling there. Another one is Jos? Esquivel. Jos? Esquivel was. . . . His work was very down home, I would say, in a very real way. He could convey ideas about the barrio. Simple stuff like a quilt hanging on a clothesline, but done in a way that is just effective. [laughs] And I thought he was also a really excellent artist. The artist whose work really moved me, I think. Felipe was more cerebral. His work was also excellent . . .

JQ: Yeah.

CM: . . . but in a different way. But I would say that the ones whose work moved more was Roberto R?os and is Jos? Esquivel-from that period

JQ: But not the people with Con Safos? Well, they were part of that, too, weren't they?

CM: No, actually, yeah. They were or went with Con Safos at some point, but there were many fallings out and people going in and out again.

JQ: I guess it was just such a huge group that. . . . Even Kathy Vargas was in that.

CM: Kathy Vargas came in after I was there, I think. I don't recall having been in Con Safos when Kathy Vargas was there, but she was there. I think maybe Rolando Brice?o may have been in the last group there that went through Con Safos.

JQ: What about-this is not directly related to what we're talking about, but in a way it is indirectly, in reference to the barrio, or what constitutes that part of San Antonio's cultural life, historical-this thing that came out this weekend or has been brewing for a couple of weeks over at that Cisneros woman's house in King William, where she's trying to establish purple as a. . . .

CM: Oh, yeah, she's doing an end run there, but she does have a valid issue because I think that. . . .

JQ: Well, first of all, let me ask: Is she from here?

CM: She's from Chicago.

JQ: Oh, okay. She's not originally from here?

CM: She's from Chicago. I met her when I was on the board of the Guadalupe and we ended up hiring her [as-Ed,] the director of the literature program.

JQ: Oh, okay.

CM: On and off she's been here since then. She's permanently here now. But, anyway, yeah, that was an interesting thing, with the purple house. She's kind of sidestepping the issue, but it is a valid issue because for the reason I think that the historical commission sends out very mixed signals. And it seems to. . . . Even though they say that their guidelines are very tight. On the other hand they also, they also say, "But just look around. There's a lot of color in the King William district." And there sure is. You know, very green houses-like that painting-with yellow trim and stuff like that.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: So, ultimately, it seems that it is a matter of the taste of the historical committee, their review committee, and it seems capricious to me. Like if they were to say "only colors from that period are permitted," then they would have a chart, and [if] you wanted to paint your house they would say, "Here it is. Choose, and do it." So the question that I have there is, If that color was unacceptable, why didn't they allow her to paint the back of her house so they could check it out and see if it was acceptable to start with? I mean, if they already knew the guidelines were so tight. . . . So to me that's very ambivalent. And when they say. . . . And to start with, this business about colors that didn't even exist at the time, to me that's a very flimsy argument. If they had existed, they would have been used.

JQ: That purple wasn't _____ did they say that. . . .

CM: They say that it wasn't in use at the time, but so what? I mean, my view is that it would have been used if had existed. You know, that's why colors were developed. There was a constant. . . .

JQ: Yeah.

CM: They were coming in. And I don't think that those houses were built to be a certain color. They were built, those houses, and they were painted with what was available. So I think it's a very flimsy argument. But, like I said, if they wanted to go by that, then what's the problem then? They should have allowed part of the house to be painted so they could check it out. They should have said, "No! That's it." [laughs] You know. So it seems capricious to me. And there is, of course, and her contention about Chicanos and all of that. . . . I mean, it comes down to taste. You know, they are ignoring the history there and so I think it's just the taste of a little group of people.

JQ: Yeah, I read the articles that appeared in last Sunday's paper, and neither one was convincing.

CM: To me, the most convincing one was the one that the man wrote. Sandra just did an end run around the whole thing.

JQ: Yeah, it didn't make any sense.

CM: To me, frankly, it was rambling and didn't make sense. The other guy, for the most part, I think, was very tight, except for that ambiguity. On the one hand he says that.. . .

JQ: He likes it, personaly.

CM: Yeah, he liked it, and so I said, "Well, what is this decision really based on?" It's like only colors from the period of the times are supposed to be used, but then, on the other hand, "If we like it. . . ." It's sort of like, "If we like it." So I don't know, it's very ambivalent.

JQ: Well, it's a little bit like the missions. When they began to be restored in the 1920s, they were restored by people who had no relation to the people who built them . . .

CM: Yeah.

JQ: . . . so their taste was totally different, so what they would. . . .

CM: Yeah, like _____ _____ the famous Rose Window. [laughing] _____ _____ _____, and it's become the focal point here.

JQ: Exactly. But they went in and whitewashed everything, and I have found comments in the historical documents before San Jos? Mission was restored that there was a Mexican lady there who had very lovingly put together some quilts of her own manufacture . . .

CM: Yeah.

JQ: . . . up on the walls in the santuario-the sanctuary, chapel-and she had placed the original images of the santos-or the sacred images. . . . That everything came down because it didn't correspond to the Anglo American's taste, which is exactly what you're dealing with here.

CM: Yeah, yeah. A different sensibility.

JQ: Exactly. Now how does that translate into the people who have bought your paintings? Like they like the Bato series or the Pachuco series, they can relate to that but they don't have to have known anything about it. They'll accept it in a painting. . . .

CM: That's a very interesting question, because I don't necessarily have a handle on it, because the acceptance of those series has been so widespread. For example, several Jewish people have been really taken aback by this work and bought it, some major pieces. Jewish people who were very conscious of their Jewishness-you know, culturally speaking. You know, like I'm a Catholic, but not really. But these are Jewish and they're Jewish. [chuckling]

JQ: But they're Jewish.

CM: And they could identify with this stuff, and so. . . .

JQ: And so it's a universal thing.

CM: So I think it's crossing into very universal territory there, and I keep wondering, is it the way they're painted, or is it that they're very effective. Is their realness there? I know all of those elements are there to some degree or other in the work. It should be there-in the good ones anyway. I've done a lot of bad work. So apparently it has crossed across cultures. And things being what they are, it could be that some of the best work has been collected by non-Chicanos, non-Latinos-collectors who collect all kinds of work and then Tejanos. . . .

JQ: Who really just relate to the work?

CM: Who relate to it as art. And I think that, well, the work is, of course, very Chicano-consciously.

JQ: Sure.

CM: I mean, I've always [worked at it]. This is about culture and identifiable. But I think that our own people tend to look at work like this as a cultural artifact, as opposed to art.

JQ: I was going to ask you about that.

CM: They couldn't care less about the background. They go if the character is important as a whole.

JQ: The character.

CM: It's just the character. Oh, great, you know. And they couldn't care less. In the CARA show-it's a very good illustration of what I'm talking about-in both of the pieces that were in that show, they cut off the top horizontal band there that I. . . .

JQ: Really!

CM: They cropped these in the catalog.

JQ: Oh, my God. To focus on the. . . .

CM: Yeah, yeah, too arty. I don't know what. [laughing]

JQ: That is so strange. And of course that's a very crucial part of the painting.

CM: Yeah, because, well. . . . Yeah, certainly. Because I deliberately make my images proportionate to the canvas. They're very small in there, because I want all of this space around them. And what influenced that-we're going to another very important influence in that series-is the work of Giacometti-not the painting but the sculpture. I always felt that those little figures of his were not little, but thin _____ _____.

JQ: Sure.

CM: It's like they carried around them like an ambiente around them, an atmosphere. It was like there was an atmospheric thing around them, and they looked tiny, so in my mind that is one reason that I have all this space around my figures-most of the work; not all of it, but most of it-it's because I wanted to create this space there that is somehow related in some way. It's hard for me to explain this because it's one of those things that are intuitive and some of the hardest things in doing this series is the backgrounds. You might think that painting the figure is difficult. Well, it is, but the background is a thing in itself, and it has to work.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: It has to work, and you have no idea . . . I mean, some paintings have layers and layers of color that was put on there and they didn't work and they didn't work, and then finally. . . . [laughs] So they certainly are important. Even though I can't explain it, there's something going on here in that format that I use for the series that is also an important part of the painting, and it has to be done just right. And to those to whom these are cultural artifacts that's irrelevant. . . .

JQ: Yeah, _____ _____. Well, they recognize. . . .

CM: [They say], "He didn't put anything in there, so I guess it's not relevant." For them it's not a color field, a live color field.

JQ: Now did you ever try putting the band of color on the sides? Or it was always on top?

CM: The reason. . . .

JQ: It's like a horizon?

CM: The reason why. . . . There is a reason. Most of the work that I have done in this series is like torso, or from the chest up, and sometimes they're placed so low down there's almost only the neck, the very top of the shoulders. So it's always with that horizontal line there-that horizon reference line that I call it-low down, and everything [would be] down here, so I need to put it up there. But I have done-that I can think of-only two pieces where I have a full figure, and on those the horizon line is down here, because then the figure is the [subject].

JQ: Of course, of course.

CM: It becomes. . . . Pictorially it's a different reference. It's still the same thing, but it works down here, not up here.

JQ: So essentially, then, you were never interested in doing the full figure anyway. It was always the. . . .

CM: No, I was, but it's just that I've been drawn more to the. . . . Some are in the works. Remember when I told you that technically I had my limitations, and it's only in recent years that I have gotten to do actual drawing, and now I could do a full figure. At the time it had to do with that. I mean, it was hard enough putting together just the torso and making it work. [laughing]

JQ: It's interesting that when Picasso and Braque began to do their experiments in what later became analytical Cubism and then synthetic Cubism that they initially made the full figure when they were essentially decomposing the various parts and creating all these facets, but they evidently found that doing the full figure was too distracting, so essentially they started doing just the bust and the head . . .

CM: Yeah. They were probably looking for effectiveness, and essentially the. . . .

JQ: . . . and they found that what they wanted to do within that rectangular frame was resolved. So a lot of times, when you look at these early works, you know that part of the guitar is in a certain place, and the head is there, and then the arm maybe.

CM: Yeah.

JQ: And then [in] the background it might be altered as well. So it's interesting. But the legs and the arms-most of the arms-got in the way of what they were trying to do.

CM: Yeah. Yeah, sometimes artists. . . . People think that we do this stuff easily. I mean, I know I don't. I know some artists that are very excellent draftsmen, and I get the impression they do it very easily, but maybe that's not true. [laughs]

JQ: Or they may have no ideas.

CM: Yeah, you know. I mean, like I've seen Luis Jimenez work and he's an excellent draftsman, but he works in a way that he's constantly correcting himself. It's not like he gets it right the first time . . .

JQ: Oh, sure.

CM: . . . but it becomes part of the whole. And I think Picasso did that to a large extent. He would do all kinds of stuff, then he would erase, but he wouldn't erase completely. You could still see what he had erased, and he would leave it like that, but it became part of the thing. In a different sense Luis works that way, but his is just redoing it, but in a way that it. . . . The more assertive stuff is the corrected version, but all the other stuff is under there and you can see it end. It's a mechanical thing, and it's a wonderful thing. And especially-going back to Picasso-he did a lot of excellent pencil line drawings, like that of Igor Stravinsky or _____ _____, something like one of those. But he also did some of ballerinas.

JQ: That's right.

CM: Now you look at the feet and they're klutzy. [laughs]

JQ: That's right, yes.

CM: Bad feet. He couldn't do feet.

JQ: He didn't do feet, yeah.

CM: Excellent hands but bad feet. [laughing] They look awkward with the ballerinas-what do you call them?-sandals, whatever, slippers, and they look awkward. And the rest of them are just so fine. So anyway, I think we. . . . I know I do. I cut away the hard parts-because they're not essential.

JQ: Now did you focus on the torso-or the bust-at the very beginning? _____ _____ _____.

CM: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because, like I said, these essentially came from. . . . The idea of a very frontal and very emotion[less]-not emotionless, but almost expressionless-faces just staring at you, that came from Richard Avedon's work.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: And so it was essentially a photographic thing . . . format.

JQ: Yeah, essentially they're neutral. [I tried to]. . . . I mean, they're _____. . . .

CM: They are very neutral. _____ _____, but the trick is to do something with that. And then Richard Avedon could do that through those pictures, so I [thought] and I said, "There's a challenge there." And every now and then there's a hint of a smile and stuff like that, but basically they're very straightforward.

JQ: Now, when you do a series like this, that you're doing now, you've got five paintings [in all] that I guess you're working on simultaneously . . .

CM: Yeah. Yeah, because you need to refresh yourself. I mean, you get too much into something, it gets. . . . Like this painting here got very tight-but very tight-and I'm repainting it now. I got it to the point where it was done, and then I said, "But that's not what I wanted." So I'm going to repaint it until I get it right. But, yeah, painting can get very tight on you and you just start trying to get every brush stroke just right.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: Now it can be just right, but it should also be . . . it should look effortless. Nothing is really effortless-not for me anyway. And I think that. . . . I mean, I know how the Abstract Expressionists work, and somebody who doesn't know about art would say, "Well, he was just throwing the paint around."

JQ: Oh, yeah.

CM: My three-year-old. . . .

[INTERRUPTION IN TAPING]

JQ: This is the second day of our interview, and I would like to reiterate what I mentioned at the very end of yesterday's tape, since there were just a few words there that were indicated as a summary of what we touched upon. We did the biographical data relating to his birth and upbringing in Laredo, Texas, and we dealt in very general terms with his work, and although one might think that the inclusion of other artists and their work at this early stage might not be appropriate, we did that anyway. So we will probably concentrate primarily on his work today. And we will proceed then. This is August 22, 1997. As indicated, Cesar, I think we could talk in general terms or perhaps to summarize some of the major approaches that you use in your work and then we can talk about some very specific works that we can relate to, and always taking care to provide the person listening the necessary information relating to the works-title, date, and so forth.

CM: Maybe I should begin by saying that there has been a progression from when I first started producing work as a professional in the early seventies to the present, and I have continually added themes-general themes, ideas, series of works, which have names, and stuff like that. So I think that, as we mentioned before, the very first pieces that I ever exhibited in major exhibitions were those early woodcuts. I would have to say that those pieces were very individual pieces, even though they were united by the fact that they were woodcuts. I think that they were very individual ideas that I went to great pains to express-and to express effectively. But then later on, as my ideas began to gel and I started thinking in terms of series of works. . . . And I think that probably. . . . Well, you know, I think that just about everything has always been there in my mind gestating, I guess, and sometimes it takes years for an idea to become cohesive enough, and for me to find a format for it, a way of expressing it. It takes a while to actually do something from the beginning. There's a big gap there between when I get an idea and then when I actually start doing it. I think that South Texas took probably over ten years to actually get going.

JQ: Well, let me ask you about your approach. We didn't really delve into some of these things. Do you think in terms of images or concepts? Do you scribble things down-"I'm going to do this"? Or do you carry a sketchbook around with you?

CM: Well, usually the themes suggest themselves. You know, I'm dealing with something or other, and then I say, "Well, there's a theme that I could deal with in my work." If I feel there's a visual possibility in a theme then I start thinking about it and it's always in my mind.

JQ: Now what is the trigger? When you go down there to visit. . . . Let's say you talk about the South Texas series.

CM: I would say, well, it varies. Sometimes it's the other. . . . Sometimes like, for example. . . . Because art history is very important to me and I have a very good working knowledge of art history as it pertains to me, as I see it, of course. And sometimes I have an idea, and then at some point I'll be going through some of my art books or what have you and I'll see some work of art by some other artist and that might trigger an idea of how to approach a subject. Art history for me is like a Sears & Roebuck catalog, you know. [laughs]

JQ: Yeah, like a real sourcebook, yeah.

CM: And so things were suggested that way. Sometimes the very subject itself suggests a way. Sometimes I think that, technically, some things are best expressed through. . . . I think that in some series drawing becomes very important. In other series painting becomes more important. In other series mixed media becomes more important. In some things I've done, the printmaking medium has been very effective-like those early woodcuts that I mentioned. So it varies, but . . . and any number of things can trigger or substantiate an idea that I have, validate an idea. "Oh, see, somebody else did something similar, yeah." And I just run with it.

JQ: So when you get these ideas or a concept, you do sketches?

CM: Yes. . . . I've never been a good sketcher, or organized sketcher. Probably the best ideas originate as doodles. [laughs] But then the sketches become more formal, and then I start zeroing in, but sometimes I'll just be doodling and I might, almost accidentally, do something that, "Now wait a minute. There's something here."

JQ: Now, you don't work like a mural painter where you make a sketch and then you do a grid and then you enlarge it?

CM: Well, I do work like that in the final stages, especially. . . . Well, to give you example of how that has evolved in the Pachuco series, originally my idea was to just start painting on the canvas and let the thing emerge. I would do a very rough drawing and then refine and refine it until it was done. But as the series evolved then I started paying more attention to drawing. It is one thing to draw with drawing media-pencil or charcoal or whatever. My own favorite drawing media is charcoal on newsprint, which everybody says, "No! Those things are going to deteriorate. The paper is no good." But, I'm sorry, it's my favorite paper. [laughs]

JQ: And it's the right size, too, I guess.

CM: Yeah, and it's got just the right texture for charcoal as far as I'm concerned. And so basically I work on newsprint when I do charcoal drawings. But, anyway, that particular series-the Pachuco series-gelled. You know, everything becomes more formalized as you work. Everything becomes more systematic-and I think better, although there are those that would say that the first work, the very raw stuff, is better. No, I don't think so. [laughs] I'm not shy about going back to a work that is already done and reworking it. I don't care about the. . . .

JQ: Like the Mona Lupe you did, although that's not part of the series.

CM: Well, no. Yeah, no, that one evolved over years. I mean, the first version I did was in 1975, and the last one-the biggest version-was, I think, in the early nineties, I guess. So all of that takes a while. But, anyway, to answer your question-do I work like a muralist and all that-well, I don't actually do a grid, because I think that's an antiquated way of transferring an image. It's a very manual . . . it's sort of like the manual way of doing it. What I do is I photograph. . . . I take a slide of the drawing on paper, regardless of the size. I just compose it on the film, on the camera, and then I project it onto the canvas, and then I can compose photographically. That, in its turn, goes back to when I was doing a lot of photography. I think that the enlarger is the perfect composing tool.

JQ: Yeah, you can do it right away.

CM: Yeah. Some artists would do it manually. I know I saw a documentary on Wayne Thiebaud-or maybe a book, whatever it was-where he's doing a figure and he does this wonderful drawing on the canvas, and then he decides that it's off so he draws the whole thing again, just a little bit further on, like maybe an inch further.

JQ: And who was the artist you mentioned?

CM: Wayne Thiebaud.

JQ: Oh, yeah. Thiebaud, yeah.

CM: Thiebaud, the California artist. So, anyway, to me that's too much. [laughs]

JQ: Yeah, but you may know that Siqueiros did that in his murals.

CM: Projected images?

JQ: Yes, he. . . .

CM: Yeah, he was very _____

JQ: Among the things that he thought was the thing to do, since he was in the twentieth century and the last thing that he wanted to do was to use the antiquated methods of fresco, which would take forever to prepare, and, of course, he probably didn't have the patience to do that anyway. . . .

CM: Yeah, I never would have myself. No, I don't blame him.

JQ: But he worked on cement, and he started using airbrushes and he was the first one to use plastic paints.

CM: He was very innovative.

JQ: So he projected _____.

CM: He was also the one that started developing acrylic paints. He was one of a group who started developing acrylic paints.

JQ: Exactly.

CM: Yeah, he was very innovative. And I think that some work is just tedious work, really. It might be traditional, it might be a classic way of approaching work, but, basically, times change. Technology starts becoming important. It worked for me. [chuckles] It worked for me.

JQ: Oh, well, this is very interesting for me. Even though I've known you all these years we've never really touched upon how you transferred the sketch onto the larger surface.

CM: Yeah. And I might add that sometimes I position those images on the canvas in what seems to the viewer in an awkward position-very low, or maybe awkward. But that's all intentional, because I usually have. . . . I mean, you don't err with a projector. Now if you were doing it by hand, just cold, _____, you might wind up with an image that is off. But with the projector doing it you don't err, so those were intentional. [laughs] [Interruption in taping]

JQ: We had to stop the tape to check the speed, so we are continuing with the interview of Cesar. What I had asked earlier was whether you dreamed anything that might be used as a source for images, and the intent here is to see where your inspiration comes from.

CM: Yeah. Well, like I said, no, not from dreams. I told you about that dream about the opera-that I had composed an opera and it seemed very original in the dream-but I have no musical talent whatsoever so I don't know where that came from. But, no, to answer your question, I don't recall anything ever coming from dreams.

JQ: The reason I asked that is that you occasionally hear people saying that, particularly if you have a problem when you're writing something and you go to bed worrying about it and then maybe in the morning you wake up. Of course, it's not so much that you dream about it, but that your mind is clear. And I started thinking about that because my wife has been painting a tree in the kitchen-a wall-and she's gone over across several walls and over a doorway, and yesterday she got up and said that she had dreamed that she had put a swing on her tree. [laughter] And so there's a mixing of reality with the image. Anyway, that cracked me up, so I told her the next time she needs to paint a tree over a doorway; then she can hang a swing.

CM: Yeah. I think where dreams are concerned in my work, I think that I may have had dreams where I have a show coming up and I'm not ready and I'm worried about that. [laughs]

JQ: Yeah, I think that would be the _____. So essentially what we're finding here, then, is that-as I've indicated before-is that your approach is primarily cerebral, or you get your sources or inspiration-or whatever word you might want to use-from solutions that artists have come up with that you might see. "Oh, my God, he did this. This'll work for what I'm doing. It fits with what I want to do."

CM: Yeah. The work has its origins in something that interests me, and then a theme that interests me, an idea, or whatever. And it stays in my mind until it gels, and certain things. . . . I've been very lucky in that sometimes a lot of things happen by accident. Just something. Some artist emerges that is doing something like what I like, and I say, "Hey, that's sort of like what I had in mind."

JQ: Sure.

CM: And it becomes like a jumping-off point. That might trigger it, or it might be something from art history, or I might just come up with it.

JQ: Now, do you like to go to exhibitions to look at other people's work? Or have you stayed away from that?

CM: Well, it's an interesting question. I am losing interest in exhibitions now. Contemporary art doesn't do much for me anymore. I'm more into art history. But, yes, I used to go to a lot of exhibitions. Anything that interested me, I went to great pains. In regards to what is useful to one as an artist, you'd be surprised at the things that I look at. Sometimes it's the most banal, commercial work, but I see some possibility there. I think ultimately the substance is in the ideas and not in the technique.

JQ: Also, when you talked about Roberto Rios yesterday . . .

CM: Yeah, he was an illustrator.

JQ: . . . you were really impressed with his technique.

CM: Yes. He was a fabulous paint handler, even though he was basically an illustrator. But using his abilities to illustrate, he comes up with incredible work, and very moving work. To give you an idea about the kinds of exhibits that I have gravitated to, one of the most memorable ones was a Norman Rockwell exhibit here at the MacNay. [laughs]

JQ: Oh, really?

CM: I remember that I went with Chista, and we were really. . . . Well, Chista being a commercial artist, of course, he was also very interested in Norman Rockwell's technique.

JQ: And when was that?

CM: That must have been in the early seventies. I think it happened right close to the time when I first got to San Antonio in 1971.

JQ: I remember that there was a national show of his works _____ _____ _____.

CM: Yeah, it was touring. In fact, there were long lines, so we went to great pains to see that show, and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I realized that Norman Rockwell, even though he was sort of like soft-core you might say, he was very political and was always deflating pomposity and things like that.

JQ: Yes, yes.

CM: So I thought that was wonderful. And also the technique and everything. Well, of course, I've never painted like Rockwell, but there was stuff to apply there. [laughs] Stuff to see, things to learn. So, anyway, one's sources, like I said, can come from. . . . I'm not saying that Norman Rockwell was banal. I didn't mean to. . . . I said that, but I didn't mean to apply it to Rockwell. I meant more like Leroy Niemann, whose work I like to look at. [laughs] [But, Well], I think it is banal.

JQ: This is Neerman?

CM: Niemann. No, what's his name? Leroy Niemann. Leroy Niemann, the guy who was probably the house artist for Playboy magazine.

JQ: Oh. I'm not familiar with him. [laughs]

CM: He illustrated a lot of articles, and he's a very commercial artist and yet, for some reason or other-you tell me why-he _____ _____ _____.

JQ: How do you spell his last name?

CM: Niemann. N-i-e-m-a-n, I think.

JQ: Okay.

CM: Something like that. It might have two n's; I'm not sure. But anyway what one can apply comes from the most surprising of sources sometimes. And, of course, there's of course artists whose work that I thoroughly like and respect, that also, of course. . . . Like, for example, I've seen a couple of Goya shows over the years. It was an experience [laughs] to see those things, the effectiveness of the work.

JQ: What I'd like to do is continue in that vein. We've dealt with sources, and that gives me a very good idea of where some of these things come from. We haven't talked about it in specific terms, which we will when we look at some of the works. But in line with that, I'd like to go back to what I had myself indicated and then I strayed: focusing on the formal aspects. First the composition or the structure and then we can talk about the color, line, or any other of the visual elements, and what they mean in the work of art. And then, most importantly of course, the content . . .

CM: Yeah.

JQ: . . . where you use pre-Columbian sources, you use sources from your growing up in Laredo-the usual references to the barrio or barrio-types, or however we may wish to refer to them. So why don't we talk a little bit about the structure of the works, starting first with the woodcuts and then we'll. . . . Well, actually, we could go back to the very earliest, the color-field paintings, then you did the Serape series . . .

CM: Yeah.

JQ: . . and then the first Pachuco series, and then this last . . . well, the New Spain or Spain/Mexico. . . .

CM: Yeah, the Mestizo series.

JQ: . . . the Mestizo series, and then the Southwest Texas series.

CM: Okay. Well, yeah, I think that composition-wise I have a tendency to gravitate toward the center of my canvas, and I think there's a lot of symmetry in the work that I do-conscious symmetry-and centralization of the subjects. I think I have done a few. . . . Over the years I have done a few canvasses that are unique in that they go away from being presentations of a subject and they go into more into a narrative kind of thing. But those are very rare, but there are a few of those. A very few of those, I might add, but there are some canvasses that have more complex compositions. By saying "more complex" I'm not implying that maybe there's something lacking there. I don't think complexity is necessarily better. It's just that because of the thought process that is involved in what I deal with, I pare down my ideas. My initial impulse usually is to throw everything in, and then once I start working I start throwing out a lot of things, because I realize that they do nothing for conveying the idea. I realize I just threw it in for reasons that weren't good enough to persist [with it]. I'm excessive sometimes. But then the thought process emerges, and then it gets rid of those things.

JQ: Well, in a sense, that will touch upon the relationship between the structural or formal properties and the content, because there does seem to be a pretty clear relationship there.

CM: Oh definitely, yes.

JQ: Where with the Bato series, of course, the simpler the better the symmetry, and the. . . .

CM: Yeah, the operative word has always been effectiveness. I'm interested in effectiveness, and maybe this is an exaggeration, maybe I'm being facetious, but sometimes people have made these wonderful comments about how stunning the work is, and I said, "I planned it that way." [laughter] If it dazzles you, it's because I made it dazzle. [laughter]

JQ: Very direct, very direct [statement].

CM: I'm not sure if it's true, but I like to say that. I hope it's true, that I'm that effective.

JQ: But then when you get into the. . . . I know we've skipped over the color field and Serape paintings, but I guess the same thing could apply there.

CM: Those early works-the hard-edge, abstract, color-field paintings-they varied. Some were very painterly color-field. Some were hard-edge. I think I basically had a Rothko idea. I think you could classify them into a Rothkoesque genre. What struck me about color-field painting, especially in the work of Jules Olitski. . . . And, again, we go back to the choices artists make or why one is attracted to certain things. I don't think Jules Olitski was the best of the color-field painters, but I always felt that there was something very dramatic in the way he would do a canvas of virtually one color-very light color to be sure-but then here on the edges there would be little dabs of another color, and I always thought there was a drama. To me, I read it as very dramatic, a very dramatic use of color. A very dramatic, a very graphic way of presenting just color. And so all those things linger, and I think that's basically what eventually I applied to the backgrounds in the Pachuco series, which are just very stark. But the color is very alive. They're not flat colors. I tried flat colors originally, and they looked flat. [laughs] I didn't like it. I said, "There's more to this." And eventually it becomes a matter of color choices and other little colors peeking out here and there. That's what makes it effective.

JQ: But the boundaries between each of the areas is very clear.

CM: Yes. It's really two things. I think it's two things. Almost like two separate little paintings.

JQ: Well, that's certainly very clear in the color-field Serape and the Pachuco series, but then-still dealing with structure-you move away from the symmetry in your South Texas series. Although I guess in the Mestizo series you still have the symmetry with. . . .

CM: Yeah. Well, yeah. There's maybe a couple of pieces in the Mestizo series that are not symmetrical. But generally I think that that tendency holds true, I think throughout, and for some reason I don't fight it. I've discussed this with other artists, saying, "Well, how come you never do other compositions?" I haven't. To me it's a matter of need also. If I need it I'll do it, and I have done it, but there's no need. . . .

JQ: But in the South Texas series where you introduce barbed wire and _____ wire and tin roofs, I guess, and _____ _____.

CM: Yeah, I think yesterday we mentioned Cono's Christmas Buck, that particular painting. That piece is made up of several components that are not symmetrical. They're very asymmetrical.

JQ: Right.

CM: There's another version of that that is pretty much the same also. There's two versions of Cono's Christmas Buck, and both of them are very asymmetrical. And then there are some other pieces that I think. . . . Yeah, there are some others.

JQ: Why do think in the South Texas series, when there's so much going on visually with the various materials, that you're more apt to deal with structural problems or compositions where you have the asymmetry?

CM: Probably because I'm dealing with. . . . There's many sub-themes going on. First of all, there's the biographical, in the sense that this is about where I grew up, and experiences that inspired this painting. And then there's also undercurrents of ecological themes, I think, about the land itself, the ecology of the land and also the problem with the ecology, how it's been disturbed. Like for example, in the South Texas series, I did some work that deals with what in other places would be called deforestation. Here it's called brush-clearing. [laughs]

JQ: It's called what?

CM: Brush-clearing.

JQ: Oh, brush-clearing. Yeah.

CM: In South Texas. In other places. . . . Because it's brush, it's almost not considered anything. But [when-Ed.] you chain-saw a forest, that is deforestation. Well, to me it's the same thing.

JQ: What little _____.

CM: So I sort of deal with that.

JQ: So they go in and clear what little stuff grows there.

CM: Yeah. But the interesting thing is that here the brush renews itself even faster and comes on stronger after you eradicate it. It doesn't last forever. [laughs] So I think that those are ironies that I like to deal with. I think it's funny how people struggle with the environment, a very harsh environment, and they control it for a while and then it gets out of control again. They have to go through the whole process. I think South Texas is a very tough land. The climate is tough, very hot, very dry, and I think it's very harsh, and I think that somewhere in there is a larger metaphor-for survival, I think, in general. How people and animals and plants adapt to a certain area and survive one way or another.

JQ: Well that brings to mind something that I had wanted to ask you that we can deal with in more detail when we focus on specific works. With one work in particular where you use the title of Time Erased Everything. Something like that. I've forgotten what the. . . .

CM: Yeah, that's an ongoing theme. I'm working on two major pieces, the ones that are there on the sawhorses. ArtPace. Those are going to be. . . . I already have a very nice landscape there and a big sun and a pyramid. Well, those are going to wiped out when I finish by a big [remolino], and it doesn't matter. Those are very metaphorical. It's about how time erodes everything-you know, the winds and everything physically erodes. . . .

JQ: But the land remains.

CM: Yeah. But also in a sense the reason I use the pyramid in there is because it's sort of contradictory. Time erases everything, but in the case of pyramids time covered it up.

JQ: Yeah.

CM: And it became a little hill. I've seen pictures of the pyramids before they've been excavated and restored. They look like little hills. You wouldn't know that. . . . You know, covered with brush and everything.

JQ: Exactly.

CM: But then there's a pyramid that has been under there. So in a way there's this also contradictory thing going on that it also preserves. And Picasso himself hated the-I read this somewhere-that Picasso hated his studios to be swept, because he felt that the dust that settled on everything preserved it.

JQ: Oh, is that right? [laughter]

CM: It may not be totally true that it actually preserves it. I know it messes up some things. But Picasso liked to say that.

JQ: Well, you know, when you focus on the various series that we've talked about, another thing comes to mind (and, before we deal with the content in the traditional sense): the space that you define, beyond the fact that you have an image and you have a background, but the background may be just as much in the frontal plane as the image.

CM: Yeah.

JQ: How do you deal with that?

CM: There was something very interesting. You know how opinions about art vary from. . . . You know, every now and then somebody steps back and makes an assessment of what has been going on and says, "Well, this is all b.s." This is just art jargon and art talk. You know, like Tom Wolfe did a wonderful book called The Painted Word . . .

JQ: Oh, yeah.

CM: . . . in which he went at length about the thing with the Abstract Expressionism, the flatness of the canvas and being true to the flatness of the canvas and then the fact that it's only a single plane and therefore the color should be on a single plane. So, to me, it was very humorous, but at the same time it was also very true, how some artists get so formal about what they do that they make this very, very fine distinction . . .

JQ: Because there's nothing else? [said with a smile in his voice-Ed.]

CM: . . . and in the end the conclusion that they draw is that the truest form of painting is abstract because it deals with the plane of the canvas in its truest sense. Well, when a figurative artist does something illusionistic, where there's a sense of depth and all of that, he's also dealing . . . and also he's being very creative because he is, in fact, putting it on a flat plane. It's not sculptural.

JQ: That's right.

CM: So he's also dealing with [it].

JQ: It's all _____ _____. . . . Yeah.

CM: . . . so this is all just double-talk, you know. But artists get like that and some wonderful work emerges from all that, anyway, on both sides. But the thing is I think there is some irony there and some humor and everything, and so in my work there is a constant push and pull. Sometimes I try for depth, but mostly the kind of depth that I try for is different planes. But they're shallow, they're not deep. Almost like a bas relief, in that it doesn't go that deep, but you get an illusion of what's in front and what's in back. But it's a very functional thing, and I leave it at that. And I think that there I'm paying my respects to that humorous controversy. [laughs] Because I think it's all true, but at the same time it can be taken to excesses, academic excesses.

JQ: Oh, yeah. I had wanted to touch on it to see if there was a way that you dealt with space in the Pachuco series, for instance, or the way you dealt with it in the South Texas series.

CM: It's been dealt differently. I think I mentioned yesterday that, among the major influences that that series has, the sculpture of Giacometti was very important to that, because I felt that those tiny little figures-what those skinny figures, rather, sometimes not so tiny-it's like they carry an atmosphere about them, so I decided that I wanted to isolate those figures within a canvas, but proportionately small to the size of the canvas, to where the figure would look small in relation to the canvas. And I felt there was also a formal problem there to be solved, and one easy solution was the horizontal line that I usually put on top, which is basically a natural horizon line. But at some point it ceased to be an easy solution and it became a thing onto itself, and now it is one of the most difficult parts of the canvas to actually paint because it has to be just right for it to work. And it requires a lot of repainting sometimes-refining the colors and all of that. And I've never really. . . . I might actually be very truthful in saying that color for me is not that important even though I use a lot of color.

JQ: You don't invest it with meaning _____ _____ _____. . . .

CM: No. I'm very casual about it. It's not until I start finishing the canvas, the painting, that color becomes critical, and usually the last part that I finish is the background. In fact, you might say that it always is the last thing I finish, but with maybe some exceptions here and there. And so that's probably what contributes to the difficulty of painting the background. It has to be just right. You have to do justice to the subject, the idea, the figure-everything that's already there. And it is essentially something else and you have to relate it. [laughs] So it's an interesting problem.

JQ: In line with that, I've always been curious about the illusion of volume. Even though you will use the usual techniques of defining the planes of the face-in the Pachuco series, for instance-even thought they're frontal we do think of them in terms of some mass, but because it's such a clear silhouette they tend to be flattened out. But they're not really flattened out.

CM: Yeah. Because those are the contradictions that I think contribute to the final effect. Something _____ _____ it almost seems like a decal, like the figure is a decal that has been placed on the canvas, like it's a little skin of paint that is put on there. But these are all the things that I deal with. These are all very conscious, things that I consider and reject. And sometimes they don't work. That's all a part of doing what I do. Sometimes they don't work, and you have to figure out another way of solving the problem.

JQ: Well, let me concentrate on the content and how you deal with that. Well, if we start with the color-field paintings and the related Serape series, I remember you telling me once that the serapes were like precursors of the stripes that some of the late sixties, early seventies artists were using.

CM: Well, not a precursor but a result of that, based specifically on the work of the painter who was known as the Stripe Painter, Gene Davis, an artist from Washington, D.C.

JQ: Right.

CM: When I saw those. . . . I first came across those when I was in college in art books and magazines of the time. And I saw them for what they were, but I also . . . my cultural mind was reading them as serapes. And I think you might even say that that's one of the first times that I started thinking culturally.

JQ: In cultural terms.

CM: Where culture influences how you see something. And I read them as serapes and they stayed in my mind: "One of these days I'm going to do something like that." And eventually I did a whole series of those in the . . . it must have been in the mid to late-seventies. I think that was kind of like a transitional series. I went from that on to the Pachuco series, _____ _____.

JQ: Now did you do woodcuts right after that or about the same time?

CM: No, that was before. The woodcuts were the very first things that I did after I got out of the army and came to San Antonio.

JQ: And those, you did use cultural references or pre-Columbian.

CM: Oh yeah, there was a lot of pre-Columbian stuff in there mostly. And I remember now the name of the artist that was very influential. Manuel Hernandez . . .

JQ: Oh, Manuel.

CM: . . . from California, a California artist. Manuel Hernandez did some wonderful work where you could see the gouge cuts on the wood and everything. He incorporated all of that. And I already had that in mind and I saw the work and, like I said, that triggered it. "See, it's wonderful [to do] that," it said to me. And I did my own version, very different from Manuel's but basically it was sort of like a little homage to his work which had so impressed me.

JQ: So from the very beginning you were already thinking in cultural terms or your own experience of what you had seen.

CM: I think that emerged very naturally in me. I don't think . . . I never had an identity crisis, a cultural identity crisis so much.

JQ: Because from Laredo you're not in the minority, huh?

CM: Yeah. Even though I was na?ve about it, not even conscious of it, I became conscious of it in a very natural way. "Well, yeah, I am