(soft music) - The medium of paint is the most magical medium, I think, because of the transformative nature.

it can be thin, it can be thick, it can be translucent, it can be opaque.

And it all changes depending upon who's wielding the brush 'cause it's the most primitive method of making art It is inspiration in your brain, out through the arm and up to the most primitive of tools, hair on a stick.

You go back to the cave paintings in Lascaux it's the original art form.

(upbeat music) I had this group of cousins.

We were all Catholic school kids and blue collar working class, Chicano background, but we were all bright kids and we got bound together, we challenged each other.

The head cousin, my cousin, Louie, who was brilliant.

just a brilliant guy.

and he organized us and he assigned us topics to go out and learn about and bring back to the group.

Okay.

Ray Jean, you learn about the middle ages.

Lollie, you learn about science.

Cheech, you learn about art and bring it back to the group.

Okay, So how do you do that?

So I went to the library and I took out all the art books.

Okay.

Cezanne, Picasso, Caravaggio and so I started studying that.

(upbeat music) When I was a young Chicano kid in South central it wasn't predominantly black, it was black.

(chuckling) It was like, you knew the people that weren't black in the neighborhood, you know cause you could count them on the fingers of one hand.

I was of the culture because that's what the culture was and all my friends were black and everybody in school and teachers but you're still other.

Then when I moved from South central to Granada Hills which was all white and one day everybody was black and the next day everybody was white and I was still the outsider in that culture.

I was of them, but not of them.

And when I kind of got into the Chicano culture more in college, that was when it really started to emerge in the late sixties.

It was the civil rights movement of the Chicano period.

I learned very quickly that every Mexican American was not Chicano.

Chicano was a voluntary category.

You have to proclaim yourself a Chicano in order to be a Chicano.

It was no box on the census that you can check says Chicano, none but you can get a PhD in Chicano studies from Harvard university.

So what is the message?

we exist, we don't exist.

It allows you an observational post .

You can be the observer, participant and observer at the same time simultaneously and it's a voluntary category.

So as a voluntary category, you can make up your own rules and that's what I like.

- I've got two older sons.

One's 16, the other one just turned 18.

But when he was 17, he fell in love for the first time.

Fell in love, madly in love and they, you know he was with this girl for, they were steady for a few months.

And then, then she let him go, (mumbling) let him go.

Ruined him.

- Oh no.

I mean, you know, he locked himself up in his room, you know and he was skipping class.

I mean, he just, you know and I remembered the emotion.

The first time I got my heartbroken you know, that's a mean beast.

- Heartbreak - Yeah.

It's an animal, you know?

So I started this and it's about basically it's a man in love.

- beautiful (soft music) - The early Chicano painting or art movement was the physical face, the artistic face of the civil rights movement, Chicano civil rights movement.

They were indistinguishable.

And so all Chicano art at the beginning was political art and very defiant political art.

That's kind of one of the definitions of Chicano it has a defiant political attitude.

If you didn't have a clenched fist uh barbed wire a sacred heart, and a cactus and an Eagle in your paintings that was considered.

And it was categorized as agitprop folk art.

Okay.

I'm sure it worked for that little period, but artists, as you know, they seek their own level they're like water.

You know, they find their own level and they started evolving as artists and started evolving their own artistic visions and that wasn't necessarily political.

And so there was a period of disengagement from that.

Started by the first guy that was the theorized of a Chicago school of art Carlos Almaraz He came back from New York.

He was disillusioned with the art scene that was going on there.

And he came back to LA and joined Cesar Chavez in the grape fields and Luis Valdez and the Teatro Campesino and made backdrops for them made placards.

And then as soon as he established that, he kind of left that.

And I love that progression to tell you the truth.

I, I think that's because you're not going to you're not going to get great art out of artists that you can find to a category.

Just not gonna happen (upbeat music plays) - It is indeed a pleasure to be here in the South Texas Museum Once again for our third show, sorry.

I hope I don't get the flu cause everybody's dying from that.

I wanna live No I'm in the kill zone right now, you know it's like walking through a minefield.

And so I started collecting this and now we're at the point we've played in over 50 museums throughout the nation and even in Europe unheard of for a private collection, but it's it's gained traction.

And now it's kind of accepted that Chicano art is a legitimate school of American art.

And now soon to be world art because we've been fortunate enough to be given a museum to house the collection in Riverside, California.

(clapping) So I'd like to go through some the paintings that are in this show in the next room When you walk out, you can see it.

So we're going to show you some of these paintings.

I love this one this is Jacinto Guevara this is nice at night and the neon and you know, the Chicano painters a lot of them described their neighborhoods, you know and it's just as valid and even more valid than the impressionists describing their neighborhoods of Montmartre, or anywhere they grew up in Paris.

You know what I mean?

These are wonderful insights into their community.

Ah!

Adan Hernandez from El Paso, Texas.

And he, he invented the school that he's the only adherent to and it's called a Chicano Noir.

And it always takes place at night and restlessness in his paintings.

And there, the wind is always ever present.

And there's just this sense of alienation it's how he felt growing up.

growing up and he lived on the West side of El Paso and he always had this sense of alienation and this color palette.

Joe Pena!

I just love these these paintings of these,taco trucks.

And he told me the story that when he he was going around town shooting these photographically and he saw this woman and said, can I take a picture of you?

She goes why, typical Chicano attitude.

and he said well I want to do a painting of it.

Can I be in it?

Yeah, sure.

just go along with your work make your stuff and every time you turned around and she'd be (Laughter) no, just make your elote I love this painting.

It just really looks like Fellini.

Recardo Ruiz from Corpus Christi, Texas You know, now this was flat out scary.

I don't know.

Okay.

But I'm drawn to it, you know, because of the one of the inspirations for me for early art to like how it got me into the whole field is I was raised Catholic and I'd go to mass as a little kid.

Like how long does this stuff go on man you know, I'm bored And it smells good, but... I look up at the ceiling, Oh, there's paintings up here.

And there's guys in sheets and they're walking around in the clouds and why are they barbecuing that guy?

- Why does this guy have - Arrows in him?

And so right away, I was intrigued, you know cause I like spirituality and mayhem together.

You know, it's simultaneous luchador and Hieronymus Bosch, you know, two levels simultaneously two for the price of one, it's a reversible jacket.

you can wear it out.

the flashy satin side or the velvet side whenever you want The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Culture in Industry we call it the cheech I put that name out there right away.

So everybody to get used to it I think we should call it the cheech caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment - But it's beautiful museum, 62,000... - 61,420 - Oh sixty one thousand "420" square feet (laughing) the lord has ordained this (laughing) I am just an instrument of his methods (clapping) (soft music plays) I studied art throughout my life.

The gap of my knowledge was contemporary art.

I knew kind of names but I didn't really know the scene.

I was married to a painter at the time and she started taking me to galleries in the West side of LA.

And there was some Chicano painters being shown there .

Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero, Patsy Valdez, Gronk.

But what I immediately recognized was these guys can paint.

These painters can paint.

because I knew what good painting was because I'd seen it all my life and I go, wow, these guys are good.

Why don't they get any shelf space?

Well, there was a whole attitude against them and they weren't considered art.

They weren't considered fine art.

And they were told by curators of the of the LA County museum that Chicanos don't make fine art.

They make agitprop folk art at best.

F-You!

You know You shouldn't tell a Chicano that the art establishment in New York today does not know what a Chicano is much less what their art looks like today.

You could have any gallery on Madison Avenue or fifth Avenue Chicano.

Is that like a tasty cheese chip?

You know, I like Chicanos.

They're very cool.

I like, I like barbecue flavor Chicanos.

It's like, okay.

And so I realized in that journey that I, you know because you grow up in the society.

I thought I was going to March across the country we were going to go to New York we were going to have the big auction at Sotheby's and all the galleries.

Never going to happen because they're invested in their own aesthetic because at some point art is a commodity, you know It has entered into the art world and it becomes art bellies.

You know, it's like speculating on pork belly futures.

You know, that's what it is.

Cause it's a belief system.

Art is a belief system that has no inherent value there.

These paintings cost to make under a hundred dollars or 70 bucks, you know, but they could sell for $700 million or $70 billion or whatever it is.

How is the very ephemeral transcendental spiritual art form get turned into hard cash?

(music playing) (clapping) Well, as I've been doing this for a long time to know.

So over 30 years of close to 40 now, and and at first it's been a struggle because they didn't want to accept first Chicano art as fine art.

We overcame that and then we've played a lot of museums I've played over, over now close to 60 museums with a private collections.

Unheard of because they don't want to show private collections for a number of reasons.

But my argument was always, well I have this collection because you don't, and it's trying in the nicest way to force ourselves into being accepted by the mainstream museum community because the museums are the final imprimatur of cultural acceptance, you know, it's in a museum.

So it really is and here's a standard and here's the history of it.

And this is how it influences society and makes it real and okay, it's in a museum it's real.

So I came to the point where I said what am I going to do with this collection?

Keep it under the bed or something.

And through a series of coincidences, I was offered a museum to house the collection in Riverside, California just recently And it's going to be the home for, for Chicano art.

And it's going to expand from there.

It's going to be other collections and other kinds of art.

That will be collected and disseminated throughout the world.

That that's my purpose.

Really not just to have a collection and you come to the museum and see it.

I want to disseminate this, this journey all the world.

So everybody - Can see that and relate to it as it relates to their own journey.

because it's the same journey.

How did we get here?

Where are we going?

And why are we here?

that's the question that everybody asks throughout their life, if they ask it at all, you know?

and art is part of that search we're gonna zip through.

Okay.

All right.

Hello masses Hello people from s-hole countries.

Did you see it's all over the new cycle today Trump, Trump walks in with a room full of senators.

About Africa and Haiti, this is our president.

He's running for pinata next I'm going to vote.

I'll give him 10 votes.

You didn't come in and see the show yet huh?

You remember my wife Natasha - Hi Natasha, Sarah - I really enjoy being here.

- I know I wouldn't be here if I didn't enjoy being here a great deal.

And I also have a body guard with a gun.

So I'm totally at ease right now.

This is our third show that we've, we've put on here at the South Texas museum and of all the over 50 museums that this collection has been exhibited in.

We get the warmest welcome right here in South Texas.

So thank you very much for inviting me.

This, this latest show represents Chicano painters of Texas.

And there was, it was when I discovered the Chicano painters of Texas, very early into my collecting adventure.

I realized that there, there is a school I'm talking about that these schools from Los Angeles and San Francisco and now Texas were related.

They, they were like, they were like cousins.

one's more city minded.

One was a little more rural but they were, they were related.

You could see it in their DNA.

And started putting this theory together This is a school of painting that has not been recognized and is not getting shelf space.

And so I started collecting their work.

And 30 years later, we are in our third show at the South Texas museum.

It is truly a school of American art.

And at this time in our, in our, our political landscape we need to be brought together as much as we can rather than be divided.

And I could say more, but I haven't had enough drinks yet.

So thank you very much for coming.

And I appreciate it.

- my father.

He was born in United States.

He couldn't speak English.

He was punished for speaking Spanish in school.

You get through that because, okay, there's struggles.

You get it.

But you want to get a job.

You want to feed your family.

You want to kind of be a part of society.

You want to be a policeman.

You want to be a captain in the army.

You want to be an accountant.

All the immigrant dreams that every immigrant group has gone through.

I always described the Latino population in this country as a lava flow.

You know, you can stand in front of it.

I wouldn't recommend it.

we come in peace.

We do.

We come bearing gifts and bearing an eagerness to participate.

And that's the American experience.

I mean, you know, the American experience is unique.

I mean, this is the first time a democracy has ever worked.

We're having tests of that experiment right now.

People trying to destabilize that belief system.

And the only reason it works is because we believe in it you know, just like like art, it's a belief system.

(upbeat music plays)