Cheech Marin — best known as half of the comedic Cheech and Chong stoner duo — shared his love of art with more than 100 people at Malibu City Hall last Wednesday during his presentation, “Chicano Art – Perspectives of an Art Addict.”
Marin, who spent 40 years living in Malibu, has been a co-star in notable comedies like “Up in Smoke,” a recording artist on “Santa Claus and His Old Lady,” a co-star of the TV show “Nash Bridges,” and, unbeknownst to most people, a huge art lover.
In explaining Chicano art, Marin first shared his definition of the word “Chicano.”
“A Chicano is not a tasty snack — it’s by definition a ‘Mexican- American with a defiant political attitude.’ I never identified with any of the other terms,” he said. “Growing up, I didn’t speak Spanish or come from Mexico, so why did people keep calling me Mexican?”
Cheech developed his appreciation for art at a young age while attending Catholic school in South Central LA.
“A Catholic education is great — it prepares you for anything that’s going to happen here in the 12th century,” he joked. “And I learned to appreciate the Dutch Masters from smoking the cigars.”
“You look up at the church ceiling and see angels, and clouds, and people being barbecued… I went to the school library and took out all the art books.”
As an adult, Cheech “started going to galleries in West LA and discovered Chicano artists with all these influences from classical art.” For the first time, he saw that Chicano art was not “just barbed wire and crucifixes.” LA is the center of Chicano art, followed by San Antonio, Texas, he noted. “It’s exclusively American art.”
“Anyone who’s come from a bilingual family mixes English words into the Spanish, like ‘Laundromat.’ A linguist told me it was called ‘code switching.’ That’s what these painters do,” he said. “Mexican tradition plus American pop equals Chicano art.”
He called the Chicano art movement “the emerging face of the Latino community in the U.S.”
“Chicano art has been denied access to museums because it was considered folk art … I got a lot of pushback from the museum world.” Cheech said. “There are no major public collections.”
That’s one of the reasons he decided to put part of his 700-piece private art collection on tour — “Chicanitas: Small Paintings from the Cheech Marin Collection,” which showcases 65 little paintings averaging 16 square inches. Traveling to more than 15 cities, the tour is in its third year and booked for two more years.
Marin also started the tour “to get all my friends off my back. I’m an inveterate collector, and my friends kept saying, ‘You should show some of this art.’ It’s like a vortex, it just sucks you in.” The exhibit was 10 years in the making.
Some of the artists are receiving recognition as a result of the exposure.
“Some are now getting big retrospectives. People like them. I discovered them in galleries throughout the years, and one artist will introduce you to another artist,” Cheech said.
In a process that’s bringing new awareness and appreciation of this previously little-known art form to the general public, Cheech talked about a number of artworks from his collection.
He showed how Chicano artists paint the life they know, in the colors and belief systems of their culture. The art images included a wedding in a park next to a freeway, folkloric scenes from a neighborhood, the aftermath of a drive-by shooting, Aztec and Mayan mythology and symbols, animals as people, vendors at freeway entrances, car crashes and “a guy getting killed at an ATM machine.”
Cheech said before he buys a painting, “It has to haunt me. I’ll see it in my dreams.” He also prefers “edgier stuff.”
The talk was presented as part of the City of Malibu and Malibu Public Library speaker series. The next event will be Dr. Scott McIntosh on July 23, on his studies of the Mount Everest Sherpa guides.
