Renowned Texas Chicano Artist Jesús Moroles Dies in Vehicle Crash

By Steve Bennett for MySA

Renowned Texas sculptor Jesús Moroles died in a vehicle crash late Monday night. He was 64.

Jesús Moroles

 Jesús Moroles and Professor Ann Marie Leimer

 Jesús Moroles and Professor Ann Marie Leimer

 Jesús Moroles

Click photos to enlarge

Photos taken March 26, 2015 in Houston, TX (studio visit)

by Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. All rights reserved.

Moroles, who was born in Corpus Christi in 1950 and lived and worked in Rockport, was driving on Interstate 35 when he was involved in a crash north of Georgetown, according to the Rockport Pilot, which spoke to the artist’s sister Susanna Moroles. Other details were unavailable.

A representative of Moroles’ gallery, Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, confirmed the report. “He was going to be our featured artist in August,” said gallery director Bradley Sabin. “Now it’s totally up in the air.”

Moroles created both monumental and smaller scale works in granite. He received the 2008 National Medal of Arts and was the 2011 Texas State Artist for three-dimensional work.

“I knew Jesús for many years,” said San Antonio sculptor Bill Fitzgibbons. “I always found him very generous of spirit and supportive of other sculptors. He was one of a kind, and I will greatly miss his friendship.

“In terms of granite, I don’t know anybody who could sculpt and create pieces out of that material the way that Jesús could,” Fitzgibbons added. “I would say that he was not only one of the best sculptors in Texas, but in the United States.”

Moroles has a public piece at the Southwest School of Art, as well as “River Stelae,” a sculpture consisting of three monumental slabs of granite near the San Antonio Museum of Art.

“Working with Jesus on the sculptural fountain of Texas pink granite that graces our historic campus was a remarkable experience for me because of his personal warmth, wit and passion,” said Paula Owen, president of the Southwest School of Art. “And it was incredible to visit his studio and workshop in Rockport where he created major pieces for locations around the world. Texas has lost a significant artist, and I mourn his passing.”

Moroles once said of his sculpture: “My work is a discussion of how man exists in nature and touches nature and uses nature. Each of my pieces has about 50 percent of its surfaces untouched and raw — those are parts of the stone that were torn. The rest of the work is smoothed and polished. The effect, which I want people to not only look at but touch, is a harmonious coexistence of the two.”

According to the Rockport Pilot, the artist was at home last week finalizing transport of a sculpture to Dallas. He and his crew made the delivery Thursday and assembled the sculpture for the downtown Dallas area.

Susanna Moroles told the paper that her brother returned to Rockport from Dallas on Sunday because he had a jury duty notice for Monday. Then he then left town Monday evening, heading north to Oklahoma, to begin work on his next commissioned piece.

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The State of Latin American Art

Dr Mari Carmen Ramirez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, discusses Latin American Art at the Aspen Ideas Festival

What follows are my notes based on a talk given by Dr. Mari Carmen Ramirez at the Aspen Ideas Festival, July 10, 2010:

The ICAA:
The International Center for Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston is a unique resource center for the study of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art. Established in 2001, its mission is to transform perceptions of Latin American and Latino Art and open new avenues of intercultural dialogue and exchange. The ICAA's signature initiative is the Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art: A Digital Archive and Publications Project whose web-based digital archive - which is scheduled to launch in the Fall of 2011 - will provide free universal access to key writings by artists, artistic movements, critics, and curators from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States.

The Problem:
Much of Latin American and Latino Art of the 20th century is poorly documented. The market, particularly the international market, for much of the work was not developed until relatively recently. For example, Sotheby's only created a category for Latin American Art in 1979 and there is no category or mainstream market for Latino art. An accessible resource that taps into the intellectual foundations of this art is needed.

The ICAA at Houston is now ten years old.

Our principal goals are to:
Recover and digitally publish primary and critical documents relevant to Latin American and Latino art of the 20th Century.

Provide open access to these documents for all those interested in 20th century Latin American and Latino Art.

Publish selections of these documents in the form of thematic anthologies that will complement the digital archive.

Establish a dynamic digital archive and research program devoted to providing a sound basis of scholarship for this work.

Recovery:
As part of our efforts we have initiated a systematic effort to recover original documents relevant to Latin American and Latino Art of the 20th century. This effort is encompassed by the ICAA's Documents Project. These include key documents from the artist's own papers and collections as well as contemporaneous press and art criticism. Our work is made difficult by a precarious infrastructure in many of the countries, poor distribution and lack of policies aimed at preserving books, archival material, and key documents.

Curate:
To address these and other issues we have created a "think tank" comprised of scholars and experts on the art produced along this cultural axis who generously contribute their expertise and are helping the ICAA further our goal to preserve and make accessible documents that will change perceptions of Latin American and Latino art. To date, the Center has published 11 books and catalogs and held 4 major international symposia.

Access:
We have established regional centers for the study of Latin American Art in 10 cities that include: Buenos Aires (Argentina), Santiago/Valparaiso (Chile), São Paulo (Brazil), Lima (Peru), Caracas (Venezuela), Bogotá (Colombia), Mexico City, Los Angeles, South Bend (Indiana), and Houston. The project also has research affiliates in San Juan (Puerto Rico), Miami, and New York. In each location we recover documents, scan and digitize them, catalogue and annotate them. Beginning in Fall 2011, we will make them all publicly available, free of charge, in the project's specially designed Website. Through this monumental undertaking, we are creating a "multinational super information highway."

This data is intended to provide a sound intellectual foundation for the long-term growth and development of the field of Latin American and Latino art. Our hope is that this archive will help fill gaps in the worldwide knowledge and appreciation of this art as well provide the necessary research tools for scholars, students, collectors, museum and arts professional, and anyone else interested in this art.

Scholarship:
At present we have over 100 researchers distributed amongst the ten project sites. Our headquarters are in Houston. The project's team members include senior and junior art historians, researchers, librarians, IT specialists, editors, translators, and administrators. We are governed by a 17-member Editorial Board and a 10-member steering committee. By the time we launch the project's website in Fall 2011 we will have a collection of over 10,000 critical document and more than 55,000 related images. We are committed to continue to expand this archive which, in theory at least, is limitless.

By art world standards, in which the perceived glamor resides in promoting artists and organizing exhibitions, the often tedious work of archiving and documenting is hardly enticing. The ICAA's work, in particular, is mostly behind the scenes and has an assembly line character. However, it fulfills the indispensable role of adding the crucial information and context to exhibitions and publications that enable a deeper appreciation of the art presented.

Several illustrations of the type of documents collected were shown in photos. These include photos artists at work, artists' notes, contemporary newspaper reviews, and gallery handouts.

Examples:
The profusely illustrated documents by Caracas' radical collective El Techo de la Ballena
-Luis Felipe Noé's art criticism of the 1950s (Argentina)
- Brazil's "Ruptura Manifesto"
-Documentation of a series of debates between Antonio Berni and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Argentina during 1933
- The precursory responses to a survey published in Havana's Revista de avance from 1927 to 1929 that debated the existence and definition of the concept of Latin American art
-The critical work of the Guatemala-born, Mexico City-based artist, Carlos Mérida that illuminates the work of other artists at a time when there was little established art criticism of their work.
-The recipes for colors and tonalities developed by Hélio Oiticica, the Brazilian avant-garde artist, for his Grand Nucleus installation (1960-68)

In 2011 we will launch the ICAA digital archive. The archive will be a free online resource for all. Simultaneous to the launching of the site, the ICAA will publish the first volume in the parallel Critical Documents of Latin American and Latino Art book series, 13 thematic anthologies that will provide English translations for documents from the online resource. Our hope is that the web-based archive and the book series will provide a visible space of Latin American Art in the United States and elsewhere and will transmit a rich legacy of knowledge to future generations.

Questions from the audience.

Q: Have we transcended the need for Latin American Specialists?
MCR: Absolutely not. Latin American Art is now mainstream yet there are still huge gaps in our understanding of the thousands of artists and movements at work in the more than twenty countries that make up the region throughout the 20th century. There is a lot of information out there about the contemporary manifestations of this art but very little serious historical scholarship. The field has grown horizontally yet lacks depth. This is what the ICAA's Documents Project is trying to address. We need a high degree of scholarship to support the understanding and appreciation of Latin American and Latino art in both its historical and contemporary manifestations.

Promoters of the global view argue that Latin American art is now global, yet we need to bear in mind that all art is both local and global. We cannot side-step the local and what it implies in terms of the contextual factors affecting the emergence and development of a particular form of art. Latin American art is no exception.

What is really at stake behind the "global" position is a market-driven, economic process that has transformed the status of Latin American art in contemporary artistic circuits. Globalization has turned Latin American art into a strategic economic resource. Over the last 10-15 year this art has become a favorite commodity in the current market, providing additional justification for careful scholarship and documentation. Curiously, all this attention has created a movement to re-regionalize, a tendency which calls for expert knowledge such as the one that the ICAA is trying to provide.

A persistent issue in the field is that Latin American art has traditionally been considered to be derivative. Those of us working in this field over the last three decades have set out to prove that this is not the case. Since the early 20th century, Latin American artists have engaged in original research. They have made important theoretical contributions to art and aesthetics and have produced forms of art that in many cases have anticipated important developments in Europe and the United States. To understand these developments we need to get roots of this art and understand its development in depth. This can only be done through key writings and other documentation that shed light on the intellectual process that nurtured the art. This is the ultimate goal of the ICAA Documents project.

Q: What is Latin American Art and what is Latino Art? How do they differ?
MCR: Latin American Art is an operational term used to describe art actually made in the more than twenty countries that make up Latin America and that encompass Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Latino art refers to the work of artists of Latin American origin (usually by birth, family ties, or education) who work primarily in the United States.

Q: Doesn't the term Latino Art unfairly segregate artists? After all do we call Pollock a Polish-American Artist or de Kooning a Dutch-American artist? What do we call artists of Latin American origin who were born in the US?
MCR: I do not believe that the term Latin American or Latino Art is segregating as we use it. As I have said, this is another pressing reason why we need to document this work and also, I believe, to study this art in the social milieu in which it arose, either in Latin America or the United States. We do want to understand the social context of the work. We do want to examine patterns of inversion or assimilation of received artistic tenets.
We call artists of Latin American origin living in the United States "Latinos." This is a political term that signals the largest ethnic majority in the United States at present. The use of this term does not segregate these artists, instead it brings attention upon their roots and cultural heritage. As an ascendant minority, these artists need legitimization. We do have Museums of African American Art in the United States and there is a National Museum of Women's Art. However, I believe Latinos are best served by displaying their art next to the art of other groups, particularly North American, European, and even Asian artists.

Q: Does your center also include architecture as art? Are you collecting original drawings by Latin American architects as does MOMA for example?
MCR: No. At the moment our collection does not include architecture.

Q: Will you extend your collection and research to Colonial Art of Latin America?
MCR: We may extend our collection to include colonial art, but have no plans at present to expand our research and documentation work in this area. Other institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Denver Art Museum have established programs dedicated to Colonial Art. We gain by dividing the effort.

Q: And Chicano Art?
MCR: Both our research and our collection include "Chicano Art" (the art of Mexican-Americans, mostly living in California, Texas and the Southwest). To that effect, we have partnered with other research centers devoted to Chicano Art, such as UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center and the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies.

Q: And Puerto Rican Art?
MCR: It is interesting that both Chicano and Puerto Rican art in the United States form an important part of the Civil Rights legacy and dialog. The Documents Project has actively collected documentation on both island-based Puerto Rican art as well as Nuyorican art in the United States through partnerships and researchers ceded at the University of Puerto Rico's museum in San Juan and Hunter College's Center for Puerto Rican Studies in New York City, respectively.

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Photographer's Close View of Cultura

By Monica Rhor, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HOUSTON - With his Nikon D2X camera balanced on a tripod and natural light glinting through an open doorway, Chuy Benitez stood inside the waiting room of the Auto Chrome Plating Company.

He waited for nearly four hours: for the shot he had envisioned since first stumbling upon the shop tucked in an industrial pocket of southeast Houston months earlier; for the scene that would encapsulate the juncture of work and family life in this business owned by a Mexican-American family.

As the minutes passed on that Friday afternoon, Benitez waited for the instant when children would tumble into the space already brimming with workers in blue jumpsuits, wheels of polished chrome and stuffed deer heads mounted on the walls.

Suddenly, the shop owner's children spilled into the room and a dark-haired, ponytailed girl waved a doll with tresses just like her own, beguiling her grandfather who still wore his rumpled mechanic's uniform.

"This is what I've been looking for," Benitez recalls thinking.

Over the next eight minutes, the young photographer fired off the frames that would be melded together to create "Family Chrome Shop," an oversized panoramic photograph that is part of a series called "Houston Cultura."

That series, and Benitez's collection of portraits of Houston's Mexican-American community leaders, offer an intimate view of an often marginalized population through tableaux of events plucked from the daily life of Mexican-Americans. Both are currently on exhibit through April 12 at the Lawndale Art Gallery in Houston.

"It's a really great look into an important part of the Houston community," said Dennis Nance, the gallery's director of exhibitions and programming. "It's focusing on one community, but accessible to everyone. It says, 'This is who we are,' but it is not exclusive."

Like "Family Chrome Shop," in which a multitude of images, actions and story lines fill a 110-inch-by-36-inch frame, Benitez's work captures the juxtaposition of young and old, modern and mythic, ordinary and unusual, Mexican and American.

In one piece from "Houston Cultura," a group of charros, or Mexican cowboys, riding horseback and wielding lassos converge on a downtown intersection. In another, a mariachi band in finely embroidered costumes entertains shoppers inside a Fiesta supermarket.

"I went through all these transformations of finding those things in the community and I'm just trying to pass that along," says Benitez, a 24-year-old with a sharply trimmed goatee and amber eyes. "If you know nothing about it, look, I knew nothing. Let me show you what there is."
Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, Benitez grew up living in a place where the two cultures existed side-by-side, but separately.

As a child, he was taught the lessons of the Chicano civil rights movement, which emphasized the search for identity and independence. He fed his artistic hunger by studying the work of 

Chicano photographers and Mexican muralists.
It wasn't until he went to the University of Notre Dame that he realized the mix of cultures within him.

"I thought I was American. From growing up in El Paso, living on one side of border, I thought that made you American," says Benitez, who is of Mexican descent. "But I realized I'm so not purely American. I'm such a hybrid."

After he graduated from college, Benitez began to look for other examples of hybridity. He found the perfect muse in Houston, a city where Mexican and American cultures are fused on an almost molecular level.

"There's no border, so it's all just mashing up and doing whatever it wants to do. No holds barred. It's just free," he says about Houston.

Benitez began to document "Houston Cultura" three years ago, after he entered graduate school at the University of Houston and a fellowship at the UH Center for Mexican-American Studies.

For that series, Benitez chose to use a digital panoramic technique in which multiple shots of the same scene are layered together, creating a richly textured canvas that reflects the influence of Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera and Saturnino Herran.

In "Leaders of Houston Cultura," Benitez's portraits of community leaders, he used a fisheyed, wide-angle lens to create 360-degree diptychs, which serve as metaphors for the subjects' dual cultural identity. So far, Benitez has shot more than 40 portraits.

In Benitez's panoramic photographs, as in Mexican murals, the wide frame encompasses a profusion of details and activities. The main subjects - ordinary people whose lives often go unheralded - loom large in the foreground. But every crevice and corner contains an additional nugget of information about the subject's lives.

"I wanted to get physically close to everyone and everything," he notes. "If I'm getting close, if I'm getting more in-depth than anyone else is, then my photographs are going to communicate that to other people and people will hopefully get feeling of having a connection with the community. "The focus may be the Mexican-American community, but the themes, he says, are simple and universal: work, family, music, religion.

"La Virgen de la Baking Pan" shows a family on a pilgrimage to a makeshift shrine where they pay homage to an incarnation of the Virgin Mary on a piece of cookware. Protected by umbrellas, the family seems to move toward the icon with both reverence and fear.

The baking pan itself is draped with rosaries and flanked by candles bearing the likeness of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the "brown-skinned virgin" who is said to have appeared before Mexican peasant Juan Diego in 1531. In the far corner, a neighbour sits on his porch, undisturbed by the otherworldly occurrence.

In many of the works, tiny markers of Houston (often Houston Astros paraphernalia) pop up amid the chaos - a reminder that the photographs are not only portraits of people but also of a city in transformation.

"These are simply things worth sharing because I want there to be better understanding of where I come from and where Houston is going. Houston is officially a Hispanic city," Benitez says.

"It goes along with what the future is going to hold, which is a browner America."

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