text:
Museo Eduardo Carrillo
Carrillo Collection
Drawings/Mixed Media
Califas Legacy Project
Comunidad de Califas
Califas Legacy at Santa Cruz Art League
Carmen León Exhibit at Google Arts & Culture
ON VIEW Gallery
Dis-Placed: Peter Liashkov, Nguyen Ly and Marianne Sadowski
Slow Build: Borderline Art Collective
A New Chapter: Art by Recent Graduates
Seen/Unseen: Film by Wallace Boss
Carlos Jackson: Reckoning With Hxstory
ARRT: Artists Respond & Resist Together
Frank Galuszka
Sara Friedlander & Jane Gregorius
DOC/UNDOC: Felicia Rice and Collaborators
The Art of Myra Eastman
Amalia Mesa-Bains
Durón Family Collection
José Lozano
Claire Thorson
Lorraine García-Nakata
Howard Kaneg
About Eduardo
Alison Carrillo Remembers
About Museo
Califas Legacy
About Califas Legacy Project
Califas: The Ancestral Journey Book
HABLAMOS JUNTOS: Together We Speak
Hablamos Juntos: A New Chapter Posters
Hablamos Juntos: The Story in the Art Posters
HABLAMOS JUNTOS: Together We Speak Book
Hablamos Juntos Posters 2016
Hablamos Juntos Banners
Hablamos Juntos Curriculum Guide
The Art of Who I Am
Educator Mailing List
Aspen Institute Artist Endowed Foundations Initiative
Voices in Contemporary Art
Moving Parts Press
Pajaro Valley Arts
Self Help Graphics
Young Writers' Program
JEM's corner
Catalogue Articles
Eduardo Carrillo – Dentro Del Contexto Cultural
April 1, 2016 Catalogue Articles, About the Work, Aboutadmin leave a response
Declaración Del Curado
by Deborah Kirklin
September 9 – October 23, 2010
Eduardo Carrillo es, ante todo, un narrador de historias. Sus pinturas nos hablan de la tierra de su abuela, en Baja California, una parte de la herencia mexicana de Carrillo. Su obra nos habla de historia, mitología y espiritualidad, y de su profunda relación que siente por la historia de la pintura europea y mexicana. Las pinturas de Carrillo son narraciones de la cooperación y resistencia humana, de trabajadores y amantes, de familia y amigos. Un artista chicano, Eduardo Carrillo, que tenía una perspectiva bicultural. Amaba la pintura europea, sin embargo, creó un mural de cerámica de cuarenta y cuatro pies de largo en Los Ángeles llamado "El Grito", que conmemora la revuelta de México contra España en 1810.
Eduardo Carrillo nació en 1937 en Santa Mónica, California, y murió en 1997 en San Ignacio, Baja California. Creció en Los Ángeles y asistió a la universidad de la comunidad (Los Angeles City College) antes de asistir a la Universidad de California en Los Ángeles. Allí estudió arte con William Brice y obtuvo la licenciatura en Artes y la maestría en Artes en 1962 y 1964, respectivamente. Después de estudiar en la UCLA, Eduardo viajó a España para estudiar y pintar de los maestros en el Museo del Prado. Carrillo hizo una copia de la pintura de Hieronymus Bosch, utilizando la técnica tradicional de esmaltes óleo sobre tabla de madera. El excéntrico pintor renacentista del Norte tuvo una influencia en la elección de Carrillo de materiales y en su imaginación. Poco después, las pinturas de Carrillo se exhibían "Ceeje Gallery" en Los Ángeles. A través de la galería, Eduardo se encontró con otros artistas que se convertirían en algunos de los artistas más conocidos en Los Ángeles, así como amigos de toda la vida. Sus pinturas de la década de 1960 muestran la influencia de los maestros españoles: Velázquez, Sánchez Cotán y Zurbarán. Perfeccionó una especie de realismo mágico en estas pinturas de naturalezas muertas, paisajes y cuartos vacíos.
En 1966, Carrillo fundó El Centro de Arte Regional en La Paz, Baja California. Se mudó con su familia a vivir a Baja California, y comenzó una escuela para enseñar pintura, tejidos y cerámica, para el restablecimiento de la artesanía tradicional de la zona. Profundizó sus vínculos con la tierra donde nació su abuela, e hizo amistad con las personas que fueron a servir como modelos para sus cuadros durante décadas. El estilo de Carrillo evolucionó y empezó a pintar la figura humana más y más. En 1972, se unió a la facultad de arte de la Universidad de California en Santa Cruz, donde fue profesor hasta su muerte en 1997.
Self PortraitLeer las historias en las pinturas de Carrillo requiere del espectador a ir y venir entre los símbolos de la cultura indígena mexicana, las referencias de la cultura europea, y la historia personal de Carrillo. Por ejemplo, "Reaching for Coatlique" representa a un hombre contemporáneo alcanzado por una mujer con una falda de serpientes retorciéndose, con los hombros cubiertos por una serpiente. En la mitología azteca, Coatlicue, cuyo nombre significa "falda de serpientes", fue la madre del sol, la luna y las estrellas, la madre tierra, la que fue la fuente de toda vida en la tierra, y el que lleva a los muertos en su cuerpo. Otra obra importante, "Cabin In The Sky", hace una fuerte declaración política sobre la historia del pueblo mexicano. Representa un paisaje maravillosamente imaginario rendido, y "la cabina en el cielo" es un templo griego que flota sobre una plataforma de tierra arrasada en un desierto. El primer plano de la pintura parece ser un espacio ceremonial, semejante a un altar. El historiador de arte Sybil Venegas, profesor de historia del arte en el "East Los Angeles College", comenta […] "la teoría del arte chicano se ha basado en el discurso de la memoria cultural, la resurrección de la historia, la identidad y la lucha. Las afirmaciones de un pasado cultural se presentan a menudo en las formas de arte sacra de los altares, milagros, nichos, cajas, iconos antiguos de Mesoamérica, las instalaciones de la narrativa y lo que realmente implica la visualización de una búsqueda espiritual de la identidad de una población colonizada".1 Uno se pregunta si "Cabin In The Sky" es una imagen de Aztlán destruida por los conquistadores.
El Movimiento de Arte Chicano tenía sus raíces en el activismo social de la década de 1960. El movimiento de derechos civiles, así como el movimiento de las mujeres retó a la sociedad estadounidense a reconocer la legitimidad de la gente que había vivido normalmente en los márgenes políticos y económicos de la sociedad. Fue un movimiento literario, teatral, artístico y político dedicado a explorar temas culturales indígenas y protesta política. La actividad de Eduardo Carrillo en La Paz, y su mural denominado El Grito, terminado en 1979 para la ciudad de Los Ángeles, es un mural de baldosas de cerámica de 44 pies, en la Placita Dolores en Los Ángeles, que representa al Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, sacerdote mexicano, comandando un ejército en la lucha por la independencia contra España en 1810. El grito de Hidalgo, fue un llamado para la abolición de la esclavitud del pueblo mexicano.2
Lo que hace que el punto de vista de Carrillo sea diferente de la postura de muchos otros pintores chicanos, artistas que aparecen en " "Chicano Visions: American Painters On The Verge",3 es que las pinturas de Carrillo tienden a referirse a la historia, la religión y la mitología en lugar de la vida de la calle. La cultura popular no hizo una aparición importante en su arte. No pintó las imágenes del barrio, de los hombres con trajes estilo "Zoot", las redadas de la policía o cultura del automóvil. Sus pinturas tampoco contienen referencias explícitas a los líderes políticos como Dolores Huerta o César Chávez. Las pinturas de Eduardo son también sobre la historia de la pintura. Tomó los temas universales: religión, muerte, amor e identidad y los hizo personales.
Sacred TwinsMientras que Carrillo continuaba estudiando la materia chicana en su obra, también hizo pinturas de paisajes íntimos y personales, naturaleza muerta y retratos. Sus acuarelas, pintadas constantemente y la observación directa de la vida cotidiana, representan una visión diaria de la luz, la vida y los tiempos de Eduardo. Ellos existen por sí mismos y nos dan una idea de cómo se conduce el artista para conectarse a la poesía de lo cotidiano. Algunos de los retratos más conmovedores figuran en este grupo de pinturas de acuarela. Las acuarelas de Carrillo y sus pinturas de paisajes muestran la influencia de Bonnard y Vuillard. Los azules y los rojos saturados en los paisajes marinos son reminiscencias de los "fauves" franceses.
La segunda esposa de Carrillo, Alison, le proporciona a Eduardo el amor y el apoyo que hizo que su trabajo, durante finales de los 80´s y 90´s, fuera tan vibrante. Ella describe su vida en común y la rutina de pintura de Carrillo en la entrevista de una exposición de catálogo. Aunque Eduardo murió demasiado pronto, a los sesenta años de edad, su tiempo era rico. Sus pinturas y murales perduran, y su influencia se sigue sintiendo en su familia, amigos, estudiantes, colegas, y la comunidad en general. Este octubre, el recientemente ampliado Museo de Arte Crocker en Sacramento está dedicando una galería a la obra de Eduardo Carrillo.
Me gustaría dar las gracias a Alison Carrillo por su generosidad en prestar el arte que hizo posible esta exposición; Juliette Carrillo por el préstamo de "Reaching For Coatlicue"; Helaine Glick del Museo de Arte de Monterrey por el préstamo de "La pareja en el jardín"; José Chowning por el préstamo de "Jacobo y tío Beto". A Betsy Andersen, del Museo Eduardo Carrillo, cuya ayuda fue fundamental para la exposición. Por las horas incansables de instalación y la iluminación de la exposición, muchas gracias a Michael McGinnis, especialistas en exhibiciones. Gracias a Stephanie Sánchez, amiga y colega de Eduardo y director de la Galería de Arte, que contactó a Alison Carrillo con nuestra idea de exhibición y ayudó en todas las fases de la exposición. Nuestro agradecimiento a la Fundación de Enriquecimiento Cultural Randolph Newman de SRJC, por la ayuda que hizo posible la impresión de materiales para la exhibición. A nuestro Decano, Tyra Benoit, un gran agradecimiento por el aliento y el apoyo que dio a esta empresa.
Notas Finales
1. Los Cielos 2000: The Work of Linda Vallejo, critical essay by Sybil Venegas, Sept. 2000 ↑
2. Peter Selz, Art of Engagement – Visual Politics in California and Beyond, University of California Press, San Jose Museum of Art, 2006 ↑
3. Cheech Marin, Chicano Visions American Painters On the Verge, Bullfinch Press, 2002 ↑
Eduardo Carrillo—Within A Cultural Context
Curator's Statement
Eduardo Carrillo is first and foremost a storyteller. His paintings tell us about the land of his grandmother, in Baja California, a piece of Carrillo's Mexican American heritage. They tell us of history, mythology and spirituality, and of his keenly felt relationship to the history of European and Mexican painting. Carrillo's paintings are narratives of human cooperation and resistance, of workers and lovers, of family and friends. A Chicano artist, Eduardo Carrillo had a bicultural perspective. He loved European painting, yet he created a forty-four foot long ceramic mural in Los Angeles called "El Grito" that commemorated the Mexican revolt against Spain in 1810.
Eduardo Carrillo was born in 1937 in Santa Monica, California, and he died in 1997 in San Ignacio, Baja, California. He grew up in Los Angeles and attended community college (Los Angeles City College) before attending the University of California at Los Angeles. There he studied art with William Brice and earned his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in 1962 and 1964 respectively. Following his years at U.C.L.A., Eduardo traveled to Spain to study and paint from the masters in the Prado Museum. Carrillo copied a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, using the traditional technique of oil glazes on wood panel. The eccentric Northern Renaissance painter had an influence on Carrillo's choice of materials and on his imagination. Soon afterward, Carrillo's paintings were being shown Ceeje Gallery in Los Angeles. Through the gallery, Eduardo encountered other artists who would become some of the most well known artists in L.A as well as life-long friends. His paintings from the early 1960s show the influence of the Spanish masters: Velazquez, Sanchez de Cotan, and Zurburan. He honed a kind of magic realism in these paintings of still lives, landscapes and empty rooms.
In 1966, Carrillo founded El Centro de Arte Regional in La Paz, Baja California. He moved his family to Baja to live, and started a school to teach painting, weaving, and ceramics, thus restoring the traditional crafts of the area. He deepened his ties to the land where his grandmother was born, and made friends with the people who were to serve as models for his paintings for decades. Carrillo's style evolved and he began to paint the human figure more and more. In 1972, he joined the art faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he was a professor until he died in 1997.
Self PortraitReading the stories in Carrillo's paintings requires the viewer to move back and forth between symbols of Mexican indigenous culture, references to European culture, and Carrillo's personal history. For example, "Reaching for Coatlique" represents a contemporary man reaching for a woman laying across a skirt of writhing snakes, her shoulders covered by a serpent. In Aztec mythology, Coatlicue, whose name means "Serpent Skirt", was the mother of the sun, moon and stars, the earth mother, the one who was the source of all life on earth, and the one who took back the dead into her body. Another important work," Cabin In The Sky", makes a strong political statement about the history of the Mexican people. It depicts a beautifully rendered imaginary landscape, and the "cabin in the sky" is a Greek temple floating over a razed platform of earth in a desert. The foreground of the painting appears to be a ceremonial space, similar to an altar. Art historian Sybil Venegas, professor of art history at East Los Angeles College states, […]"Chicano art theory has been grounded in the discourse of cultural memory, the resurrection of history, identity and struggle. Affirmations of a cultural past are often presented in the sacred art forms of altars, milagros, nichos, cajas, ancient Mesoamerican icons, narrative installations and what really amounts to the visualization of a spiritual quest for identity from a colonized population."1 One wonders whether "Cabin In The Sky" is an image of Aztlan destroyed by the conquistators.
The Chicano Art Movement had its roots in the social activism of the 1960s. The civil rights movement as well as the women's movement challenged American society to recognize the legitimacy of people who had typically lived at the political and economic margins of society. It was a literary, theatrical, artistic, and political movement dedicated to exploring indigenous cultural themes and political protest. Eduardo Carrillo's activities in La Paz, and his mural commission El Grito, completed in 1979 for the city of Los Angeles, is a 44' long ceramic tile mural at the Placita de Dolores depicting Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo, a Mexican Priest, leading an army in the fight for independence against Spain in 1810. Hidalgo's cry, or grito, was a call for the end of slavery of the Mexican People.2
What makes Carrillo's point of view different from the stance of many other Chicano painters, artists featured in "Chicano Visions: American Painters On The Verge",3 was that Carrillo's paintings tend to refer to history, religion and mythology rather than the life of the street. Popular culture did not make a major appearance in his art. He did not paint images of the barrio, of men in zoot suits, police raids or car culture. Nor did the paintings contain explicit references to political leaders such as Dolores Huerta or Cesar Chavez. Eduardo's paintings were also about the history of painting. He took up the universal themes: religion, death, love, and identity, and he made them personal.
Sacred TwinsWhile Carrillo continued to explore Chicano subject matter in his work, he also made intimate, personal paintings of landscape, still life and portraiture. His watercolors, painted constantly and from direct observation of daily life, represent a visual diary of the light, life and times of Eduardo. They exist for themselves and give us an insight into the artist's drive to connect to the poetry of the everyday. Some of his most moving portraits are contained in this group of watercolor paintings. Carrillo's watercolors and landscape paintings show the influence of Bonnard and Vuillard. The saturated blues and reds in the seascapes are reminiscent of the French fauves.
Carrillo's second wife, Alison, provided Eduardo with the love and support that made his work during the late 1980s and 1990s so vibrant. She describes their life together and Carrillo's painting routine in an interview in the exhibit catalogue. Although Eduardo died too soon, at age sixty, his time was rich. His paintings and murals endure, and his influence on his family, friends, students, and colleagues, and the wider community is still felt. This October the newly expanded Crocker Museum of Art in Sacramento is dedicating a gallery to the paintings of Eduardo Carrillo.
I would like to thank Alison Carrillo for her generosity in lending the art that made this exhibition possible, Juliette Carrillo for her loan of "Reaching For Coatlicue", Helaine Glick at the Monterey Museum of Art for the loan of "Couple In The Garden", and Joseph Chowning for the loan of "Jacopo and Tio Beto". To Betsy Andersen of the Museo Eduardo Carrillo, whose assistance was crucial to the exhibition. For tireless hours installing and lighting the exhibition, many thanks go to Michael McGinnis, Exhibit Specialist. Thank you to Stephanie Sanchez, Eduardo's friend and colleague and Art Gallery Director, who contacted Alison Carrillo with our idea for the exhibition and assisted in all phases of the exhibition. Our thanks go to the SRJC Foundation for the Randolph Newman Cultural Enrichment Fund for the grant that made possible the printing of materials for the exhibit. To our Dean, Tyra Benoit, a huge thank you for the encouragement and support you gave to this endeavor.
X is for MaX Hendler
April 1, 2016 Catalogue Articles, About the Work, Aboutadmin 1 response
John FitzGibbon
from California A-Z and Return
The Butler Institute of American Art
Youngstown, Ohio. 1990
For my money, no make that half my money, this is an especially fine painting in the exhibition. Reproduction doesn't do much for it. Hendler has painted this one the way he did the whole show of these legends which I saw in Los Angeles the other year. That is. he painted it right down to the weave. You should stick your nose into this painting and into all paintings by Hendler. The nose has no olfactory function here. Reason you put your nose in the paintings is to see them. Infallible detector of quality, the nose.
When Hendler works on a rough grade canvas you can actually see the paint climb up the nubs and slide down the other side. Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain, hill made low. The possession of them! You start to feel wild. Your nose twitches, you're in this guy's grip. He's crazy! and he's taking you with him.
There is an old Testamentary zeal to Hendler's work of whatever sort. Here he's lavished what must have been the ultimate pains on a completely absurdity, achieving ultimately, absolute quality. For a painting like this will melt down anything else in its neighborhood. It's mad.
The obsession here ties Hendler to artists in the exhibition like Richard Jackson and Phil Makenna who deliberately place themselves outside the conventions of the art world. They have all in their own ways understood that being an artist requires an almost insane commitment to staying completely yourself. This involves them with obsessive behavior but it's the only way, not so much to establish
their identity (which they are firm about already) as to protect it. So they do this by going to great lengths, by going where no one can follow, or at least where no one in his or her right mind will bother to follow. Now they are free. Let the sheep huddle in art world safety.
Our painting is not a completely free object: it must be hung on the horizontal, and not upside down, either. It has a shape that can't be ignored. It has a couple of colors. The 3 parts, Word, Sign and Number, are in regular face. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They mean something, in fact a number of things. When I broached the matter of the show to Max he wanted to be (X) the known quantity. The fundamental problems and ambiguities that enter whenever naming begins and prediction is implied are, well, ambiguities and fundamental problems. Max wants in on this. The painting as question.
50% OFF begins to look intricate and rich. Mainly, though it is an asseveration of freedom- the artist's. We are permitted (but not encouraged) to go and do likewise.
The legend of Max Hendler was known to me long before I eventually met him. That's the nature of legend. It walks before. Max was said to have worked 7 years on a single small still-life before his wife finally came in and kicked over the setup. Probably 7 here is a biblical number, as in, 7 years of plenty. He is in any case a great eye-ball realist. I remember his little watercolor still-lifes of beach detritus. Perfect. Built up additively, with an infinite care. Perfect.
People were always telling me, Max Hendler is crazy. This was interesting. One year, when I visited a painter in
los Angeles without a name. He lived in an apartment building near an elevated freeway. "Max Hendler, he's crazy, you know." Rock and roll was coming in loud, through a wall in the next cubicle, drowning out the freeway.
Yes? I didn't realize! Where is he, Napa? I will visit him.
"No,no he lives in a tipi on the beach." Dead cigarettes were overflowing the ashtrays, there was a beer smell. Here in L.A.? Whereabouts? I should meet him. "No, no. Up along the Mendocino coast, someplace up there. But you don't want to see him, he's totally crazy." I stared out the window. It was 11 in the morning. I couldn't see the freeway.
Even Max Hendler's friend say he's crazy. I talked about Max with Ed Carrillo down at Santa Cruz where he is Chairman of the University's art dept. We were in his studio there. "Max?" Ed was painting the beautiful Denise, longtime companion of some lucky man. "Uhhh M-a-x," Ed was away on on the area of the knees. "Max, he's ..uhh…crazy!"
I knew that Carrillo meant this as the highest compliment he could give. As I've said before, it takes one to know one.
Lance Richbourg told me the same. That's Ed's once upon a time brother-in-law. They married sisters long ago, who gave them children. "Ah knaw y'all lak Max, Lance said. "Max's ral crazy."
Here again, though, you have to figure in that Richbourg was wild from his salad days and kinda crazy too, now I think of it.
I talked to Lance just the other day and he told me he'd shared time with Max Hendler the past weekend, in Massachusetts and N.Y. Lance has two sons in college and so he drove over from Vermont (where he teaches) to Dartmouth to visit the one and was headed to New Haven to visit the other and look in on his niece, Juliet Carrillo, who's at the Yale Drama School. On the way he stopped at Amherst to see Hendler, who was attending his daughter's graduation. Then they all headed down to N.Y. for Tony Berlant's show. Another crazy guy. They stick together.
Is Max Hendler crazy or not? Well, he plays poker every Friday night with Garabedian. That's not really insane, but it's unwise and can prove costly. I wouldn't do it. Be crazy to the max, we say here.
So exactly how crazy is this Hendler? You want to know. OK. He's crazy as a Max.
That's an evasion? Alright, since you press me, I called him Wednesday morning early and took a reading over the phone. Max is 50%Off. Exactly.
— John FitzGibbon
? is for Lance Richbourg
by John FitzGibbon
There is no question about Lance. He's unquestionably Lance. The question was how to get your attention on the question, and the question is: How come no one seems to know about the other Los Angeles?
How come people seem to know about Bob Irwin?
And not Chas Garabedian?
How come people seem to know about Ed Moses?
And not Ed Carrillo?
Craig Kauffman?
And not Lance Richbourg?
How come people seem to know about Ed Ruscha?
And not Max Hendler?
How come people seem to know about Billy Al Bengston?
And not Anthony Berlant?
Over the past 30 years I've gotten around the country just enough to be pretty sure that nothing's changed. Everyone still looks to New York. The average sharp docent in Des Moines or Atlanta has very little awareness of California art or Texas Art or Chicago. A friend of ours, wife of a classmate, long time docent at the Carnegie gave me an informed disquisition on how she contrasted Anselm Kiefer with Robert Ryman for visitors to the Museum. She had never heard of Ruscha, or in fact any of the LOS ANGELES and it was pointless even to mention Garabedian or Richbourg or Berlant members of the OTHER LOS ANGELES even though these artists have galleries in New York that can barely keep their paintings in stock. I'm not talking about a popularity contest. It's a question of awareness. At home, in Northern California, the "How Come" painters are known almost to the exclusion of the "And Nots". In Los Angeles itself, among the art crowd, it's practically the same-though Chas and Tony do have big followings, finally. In 1988 at the trendy cafe across from the L.A. Louver gallery the first 1,000 diners to order the swordfish meuniere as their entree were carefully polled. The results: 873.36 of them had heard of Billy Al Bengston. And 2.0 had heard of Ed Carrillo, even though Ed had been showing steadily across the street. One point five of the 2.0 people was me, by the way, the other .5 was some art trader that Eduardo had turned in for cutting cutting petroglyphs off rock faces down in Baja California in the desert behind San Ignacio where Carrillo has a place.
Of course one reason more attention has come to the LOS ANGELES artists other than the OTHER LOS ANGELES is that much of their art has simply taken whatever New York was serving up and returned serve with a little glamour on the ball. This especially applies to the sculpture contingent, artists like Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, John McCracken and Dewain Valentine who polished up the dull inert platonic solids of the minimalists and gave them back all gleaming bright and sometimes transparent. Their activity became identified with LOS ANGELES at a time when Lance Richbourg's paintings were still working their way through the cowboy and pyerate movies which had dominated his imaginative growing up. Your typical Richbourg cowboy travesty proved a little harder to subsume under the notion of modernist progression. You could have read a Richbourg Mad Dog Pye-rate painting as a sure sign that Modernism was on the other slide. Thousands didn't bother to. Richbourg didn't suffer from over exposure.
The OTHER LOS ANGELES people, university educated, mostly at UCLA, had a lot of art history to work through. Whereas the LOS ANGELES contingent were many of them trained as commercial artists and went mostly to art school. Having less than zero art history to encumber them, they just sliced it thin from the top. Meanwhile Carrillo and Garabedian grappled with the Quattrocento, which interested them, and Lance Richbourg landed, eventually, on Eakin's square. Richbourg adapts Eakins' numinous chiaroscuro to his own less crepuscular ends. Eakins' means to suggest by it the moral dereliction of the Brown Decades, the oppressive climate of ignorance and censorship in which he struggled to breathe. Richbourg uses a warmer, brighter, rather more "upbeat" surround: our example is more chiaro than oscuro. Richbourg's surround is at the service of his nostalgia: it's content is memory. Rumination. Part of the nostalgia is for Eakins' and his art-which in turn is grounded in Rembrandt, an artist undeservedly obscured in the latter part of his career. So lance throws a grappling hook back to Eakins' who looks back to the Dutch painter. It's a gestalt.
Thomas Eakins' athletic pictures were produced in a context of Darwinian "survival of the fittest." Competition would reveal the best; and he was entered in the field. The trope goes to art, not to sports. In Salutat the dignity and fitness of the young boxer are contrasted
to the dark mass of spectators; his social betters, they are vulgar and ugly, come to have a good time watching two young men take punishment they themselves couldn't stand up to for 30 seconds. Eakins' was declared the winner in his heat but not his lifetime.
Lance Richbourg's sport paintings are produced in a time of depleted heroism and devalued loyalty. Today's thousand dollar an hour athletes are not his subjects. He works from old news photos of champions of an earlier age. The low resolution of these wire service photos invited Lance to indulge his natural painterliness. His approach to watercolor is forthright in its additive buildup in successive slathering washes of color over color.
A quasi-opacity, a filmy opacity, if there is such a thing, is the result: he looks to find an equivalent for the granulated light impasto of his paintings in oil. He's cropped the Dizzy Dean composition both to monumentalize the figure and to uncover the perfect interplay of horizontal and vertical balances which are going to result in the strikeout pitch. It takes a minute to realize that the painting is as exquisite as a Degas.
Lance Richbourg Sr. was a major league baseball player. Lance has a box of clippings, and frequently the father, sliding into a base or tagging an opponent out, has been the subject of the son's art. Richbourg's paintings not only deal, like Eakins', with having a skill, an art, which you perform for the entertainment of others; they have the further function of honoring the father.
Lance and I have always been drawn together as a matter of that ole personal chemistry; we got along great from the beginning, which was down in Mexico, hace muchos anos. An extra factor, though, is my Dad was also an athlete. He put himself through Med School (it took him 5 years) by playing football. My father was quarterback on the Packers during their N.F.L. ascendancy at the end of the 20's under Curley Lambeau's regime. He was a fine player. From my box of clippings I chose not an action photo, but a publicity shot which appeared in the Des Moines Register in the mid 20's during my Dad's college days. It seems the Follies were in town so the feature editor sent a cameraman and the gorgeous Follies star out to the stadium for what wasn't yet called a photo opportunity. The handsome backfield star was called over and after it came out that my Dad also did punting it was decided to let the Follies beauty do her over the head 1-2-3 kick. In the clipping, brown with age, my father is still standing there at ease arm akimbo on his jersey taking in the great legs of this great looking girl. They are two beautiful young people, with not a care in the world.
Lance has been working on this painting for a little while now but hasn't brought it around yet. It should be a good one!
G is for Charles Garabedian
Western art is one of the crimes against the Indians. It continues to be committed with impunity. Lots and lots of people like Western art despite- or rather because of- the fact that it depends on cliched illustrator techniques, often tricked out with expressionistic paint handling or other "modern" devices. There is a good market in it.
In this large work on paper, Garabedian reaches for the archetype that's been worthily expressed (though somewhat dilute) by John G. Neihardt in his Black Elk Speaks. Garabedian tries to see what was seen by a shaman as he "advanced upon the south," as he "approached the East." How do you advance upon the south anyway? What spiritual forces converged on you as you dashed to count coup? Garabedian has a pretty avenue to the transcendental illumination granted the Plains Indians- and quite alien to us who are alienated.
He is toward the top of American painters.
One spring after a trade, Garabedian owed me a small painting. I visited him in October and there were a lot of little ones lying against the baseboard of two walls of his studio. "Pick one of these," Chas said. I looked for awhile and chose a painting I didn't like. "Sorry, that belongs to my dealer." After a while I found another one I didn't much care for. "No, I can't. That one belongs to Gwennie." I delayed but as I was leaving I said, I think that it is between these three, Charles, and then I pointed at the painting I liked: This is the one. "Sorry, no, its not finished."
Early in the next year I was back in Los Angeles. One morning I went over to Garabedian's. The little paintings were still propped along the wall. I examined the work I wanted, which has an O'Keeffe like cross in the center and at one corner some manuscript leaves, a sort of archive. He hadn't touched it. Chas and I gossiped for awhile; we watched an athletic contest of some sort broadcast from the East Coast. Around 11:30 we drank a beer and at 12:15 Garabedian stood up. "C'mon, I'll take you to lunch. Oh, you can bring that painting with you. It's finished."
He locked up and we went to the car. " You should thank me Chas," I said. " I finished it for you."
E is for Eduardo Carrillo
Because I wanted to hire the best Hispanic painter I could I was down in La Paz, close to the tip of Baja California. This was more than 20 years ago. I had looked around the Southwest and Colorado for a couple of months before Tony Berlant(who else) touted me where to find the painter who would end my search. Either that, or Tony wasn't in the know.
Ed Carrillo and his young family were living cheaply down in Mexico, with Lance Richbourg in attendance. Lance claimed he was down there on a grant from the Mexican government to provide love-interest on the playa for all the American senoras and senoritas whose menfolk were doing their deep-sea fishing on 3-day manhood tests and tequila competitions way out in the ocean past Cabo San Lucas or up in the Gulf of California. Strictly wishful thinking of course because that role was being supplied by the short dark and handsome men who all along the Pacific littoral dive from tall cliffs and air-ski behind power boats with the aid of a parachute.
Carrillo on the other hand actually got grants from both stateside and from the Mexican government, journeying several times to the capital to plead his case in the labyrinthine bureaucracy. One thing he accomplished, with the aid of an older cousin who was police chief in Las Paz was to rid the area of a self-contained compound established on the Pacific shore, eighty miles north, by retired FBI and their like. This fortified enclave was a last refuge and an arsenal (including not just automatic rifles and small arms but bazookas, grenade- launchers, and various anti-tank weapons, not to mention mines, generator-powered surveillance systems, small airstrip, oodles of barbed- wire and camouflage.) Paranoia can often be touching. With the pathetic logic of super patriotism, these dry-as dust human beings had abandoned their country to play cards and swap tales in a foreign desert, while awaiting the take-over of America from within by co-religionist senators and congressmen of the pope in Moscow (abetted for certain by commie Berkeleyans like myself, the notorious James "Pink Djinn" Melchert and Carlos "Carlos" Villa,) Carrillo used the small starter grants plus whatever he could borrow and barter to set up an Arts and Crafts Workshop on an acre of vacant lot on the dirt- streets outskirts of town. La Paz, before the road went through, was a somnolent city of about 30,000 with a bank, jail, a supermercado, a drugstore, movie theatre, couple of cantinas, and three musical-tappeted taxis whose drivers automatically got lionized by the local ladies. Unemployment ran right around a third, the perennially impotent federal and state governments could offer little help; the only money coming in arrived by airplane in the pockets of the tourists and sportsfishermen; and if you weren't a guide or a bartender you tethered yourself on the drugstore corner all day, like a mule chomping tomatoes.
In this situation Carrillo made a real difference. The Center for Regional Arts that emerged from his efforts was an all too isolated instance of the triumph of a 60's spirit of communal activity. Value began to flourish in a dirt barren a chicken wouldn't bother to scrabble in. They fenced the perimeter, they put up adobe workshops and made benches and worktables. They built kilns and constructed looms, using manuals and learning as they went. A lot of the techniques they needed lay outside Eduardo's competence. Where he was lacking he brought in teachers from the mainland. The emphasis was on taking a craft item from the very beginning, from the fleece on the sheep's back, to the shearing, to the carding, spinning, weaving dyeing and finally the marketing at a store the Carrillo's set up on the airport road, a shop where visitors could bargain in English for goods with Sheila Carrillo.
The simple integrity of the humblest Mexican craft item has always been a wonder to me. The cheapest bar coaster, fired a hundred at a time, has something winning, a touch of honesty and even holiness, weird as that is to say. Ed's Centro turned out serapes, embroidered blouses, striped cotton rugs, mugs, copas, and plates, patchwork and handpainted ties, leather goods of all sorts, straw hats and baskets, cut-paper decorations, pipes and flutes, everything under the bright blue sky. These things had formerly been brought in by train and ferry from the great Guadalajara market. Carrillo managed to give people basic skills that are atavistic throughout Mexico but in La Paz, as in many locales, had withered. He took dozens of people off the street and gave them an income and a sense of worth. He himself received a nominal salary and the grace of God that descends on every unselfish act.
I omitted to say that had stored his painting at a friend's house against my visit. I never saw them until the day before my departure, and the manner in which he finally showed me them was so memorable and so influential on my subsequent efforts to do some "Event" art myself, that I will leave it for telling elsewhere.
Naturally I'd decided right off to offer Carrillo the job he wanted it. All the best Hispanic painter business just evaporated in the late night talks with Ed and Lance (who would come in from the cantinas cussing his latest strikeout with the fish widows.) It would have been the greatest surprise in the world to me if Ed's painting had turned out to be feeble. Indeed they were nothing like I'd seen. To my mind, the consistent originality, presence, and degree of intuition in Carrillo's work put him very near the top of American painters, and that assessment falls considerably short of his own ambitions which are not focused on American art nor on Mexican but on the Old Masters. Now and again I've made my preference for his art quite clear:
Literally unnoticed at this point on the national scene Carrillo is to my eye, the best Chicano painter. He is the best realist painter to come out of the city of Los Angeles, in a field which includes his friends Mx Hendler and Lance Richbourg, and when the history of 20th century art is written, he could be any kind of painter. For Ed, matters are seldom capable of simplification. The conquistadors disembarking from their galleon in a recent Carrillo painting struggling ashore carrying not only arms, cannonballs and the like but also tv sets, a torah, and other anachronisms! In Ed's travesty the Conquest is revealed to have been more insidious and pervasive than ordinary political accounts have made it out, and conquerors and conquered, in Ed's world, turn out to be deeply and convincingly compromised.
Yet because I could hardly admire Hendler's work more than I do, and because at his best Richbourg, currently hotter than ever, is the equal of any painter, I don't really want to make any invidious comparison. Unless it's to note, as I shall below, that I prefer all of what I call the OTHER LOS ANGELES artists( they include Garabedian and Berlant) to the figures one normally thinks of as LOS ANGELES-meaning Irwin, Bell Ruscha, Moses, and so on,artists who have received the major attention over the years and who are by and large quite fine performers in their own line. It should be noted further that there are crossovers between the two groups, just as you'd expect. Garabedian always shared a box at Hollywood Park with Irwin and the latter is bound to prefer, say Hendler's work greatly to, say, Bengston's. Moreover, in the early days, Ed Carrillo lived in the same quarters as Larry Bell and the two Los Angeles artists shared kitchen privileges. That Los Angeles refrigerator had the hamburger on one shelf and the chimichangas on the other.
The Coatlique of our painting is the Mother of all the Aztec gods, the god of Deception being the pertinent one here. Eduardo had been thinking of his son Ruben, fresh from high-school and in the throes of his first serious love. A nice young lady had been giving Ruben the short introductory course in grief, and let's not doubt, the nice young man would soon enough be returning the favor. The hammock here, in which they grope for each other is of course a net, in this case identified with the woman. Since the painting can (and is meant to) be read vertically just as well as horizontally, we learn that turnabout is fair play. Ruben, by the way, was the cameraman for the recent video production Ed did on the shark fishermen at San Francisquito on the Sea of Cortez- El Mar Bermejo, as it is called: the vermillion sea. Thew film records visits that Ed, in company with Garabedian and others, made to the area. It deals with vitality, fearlessness, endurance, and unlimited appetite which sharks have and many men have, and it deals with honor which some men have and which is irrelevant to sharks.
Carrillo has been through a number of considered, purposive changes in his (always) representational manner. He was milking de Chirico, early and late, at the nadir of that artist's reputation and at a time when the Italian postmodernists were milking their mothers. He can do eyes-on realism with the best of them, meaning Hendler and theibaud. In another vein his many stylizations of the world "out there" have added an honorable dimension to the history of shape- invention in our era. Ed has always been a deliberately wooden figurepainter- his people have a ligneous life, like trees. This is no harm, unless you are no respecter of painters like Georges de La Tour.
When Carrillo was painting California scenes in the early to mid 70's he pressured oil paint to take on a wet juicy shiny salivating appearance. In the last dozen years his vision has turned more and more to Mexico. In keeping with an experience in Baja when he almost died of thirst and dehydration, the surfaces of his canvases now enjoyed a dried out, absorbed quality- as dry and gritty as a Twachtman, as dry (to change metaphors) as abobe. Surfaces are matte now, as in our example: colors are light, there is an emphasis on the objectness of the canvas, on the rough fabric showing through. Instead of seeing into, through, films of paint the eyes must now stop at a surface that is as dessiccated as the desert itself. The washed-out, over exposed quality of light in our canvas literally reflects the noon day brilliance of the Baja sun which can throw off your perception of dark and light. The drier, the hungrier for moisture these canvases become, the more spirituality they take on. Of all the painters who can hear the grace notes from the noumenal world, none betters Carrillo at making them available to us. Everyone knows the old saw: Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States. Carrillo's paintings make it clear that this stands the truth on its head: Fortunate Mexico! So very, very far from the United States.
Feliz Mexico — Where the gods are everywhere.
by Rolando Castellon
from Abstraction and Figuration: 16 Mexican-American & Latin- American Painters from the San Francisco Bay Area
The Art Museum of Santa Cruz County and University of California, 1988
In the autumn of 1969 a group of Chicano and Latin-American artists residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, established the first art center in northern California dedicated exclusively to represent the graphic arts of La Raza.1 Almost twenty years later this Center, named Galeria de la Raza,2 is an institution of major significance not only regionally but also nationally and internationally. Prior to 1969 Chicano and Latin-American artists had very little participation and recognition in the fine arts field. A few names would become known sporadically within the artistic milieu, but with little or no lasting results for the artists or their cause.
The seed for this exhibition, titled Mano a Mano, was sown that autumn in 1969. At that time, this writer and seven of the artists represented in the exhibition became seriously active in the field of visual arts as part of the group who originally founded the Galeria de la Raza. Recognition for the work of these artists has been slow to come, but after two decades, they have influenced the fabric of American contemporary art and each one of them has contributed to the cultural development of the area.
Mano a Mano: An Exhibition of Abstract and Figurative Art
This exhibition's title, Mano a Mano, is a Spanish expression used to describe the confrontation of two bullfighters. It is a traditional ritual where artistry, courage and mysticism come together and the two protagonists fight a duel, not to prove their superiority over one another but to emphasize the human capacity to transcend the tragedy of life. In art, the artist enacts a similar struggle alone with destiny. The analogy
becomes a metaphor to show the confrontation of two opposite stylistic directions in contemporary art- abstraction and figuration- and to distinguish the differences and similarities of these two disparate points of visual expression.
It is not the intention of this exhibition to show exclusively the characteristics or historical tendencies, ethnic, folkloric, or political, of the Latin- American culture. In actuality, it tries to demonstrate the creativity of each individual regardless of the artist's personal inclination within the two art styles. Naturally, the artistic movement developed through Galeria de la Raza includes other areas in the plastic arts; namely printmaking, sculpture, and photography. An independent in-depth study of every one of these techniques should be undertaken. However, this exhibition will address the genre of painting exclusively.
The art represented in Mano a Mano is not necessarily Latin-American, Chicano, Hispanic, naive, folkloric, political, religious, etc.; it is the artistic expression of sixteen individuals of a certain ethnic background who found themselves within the structure of a discriminatory society. The content of these artists' work is based on their cultural roots and influenced by those different aspects, but their works present a synthesis of these influences in a mature way, reached after careful reflection, depending on how each artist has lived and understood them through his or her own personal experiences. These artists have been living beings within an alienating macrocosm in which they have been able to survive, in a large degree due to their artistic activity and their personal involvement in a sociopolitical process directed towards the development and support of their own cultural values.
Historically Latin- American art has followed a realistic human vision, reflecting the ongoing political and economic situation of the continent and expressed in figurative realism which seems to follow as a natural and logical conclusion. However, despite the prevailing tendency of this tradition, many artists have developed and expressed ideas through abstract lyricism. This tendency has been less obvious and has not been given the necessary emphasis that would illuminate its existence and importance. Most recently this omissive attitude has been demonstrated in two exhibitions of great magnitude and importance organized by large art institutions in the United States. These exhibitions, "Art of the Fantastic: Latin-American Painting, 1920-1987," Museum of Art, Indianapolis and "Hispanic Art in the United States," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, emphasize the Latin – American preoccupation with figurative work. Only two of the fifty-nine artists included in both exhibitions could be considered even marginally in terms of abstract work. A little known fact is that many Latin- American artists in the United States and Latin America produce abstract work and continue to practice this artistic tradition which is still a current and dynamic force in the international artistic forefront.
Mano a Mano attempts to rectify, at the regional level, the lack of recognition given to existing abstractional tendencies in Chicano and Latin- American art. The exhibition, composed of work with abstract imagery by eight artists and an equal number of artists who follow the figurative tradition, exposes contrasts and compares philosophical and visual criteria. The exhibition's catalogue has been designed to contraries the work to illustrate and document the point of view in question.
Figuration and Abstraction in Barrio Art
One of the first exhibitions organized by Galeria de la Raza entitled "Barrio Art" became an annual event. These exhibitions were characterized by their eclecticism because the organizers stimulated all the aesthetic tendencies and presented to the audience different forms of traditional art as well as new artistic directions. The success of these exhibitions greatly influenced the decision to maintain an ongoing and equally balanced program. Later two new institutions, the Mission Cultural Center3 and the Galeria Libertad of La Raza Graphics Center4, would join the Galeria de la Raza to continue sponsorship of a wide program of exhibitions.
Today the three cultural centers offer not only exhibitions but also a variety of cultural aspects including dance, theatre, design and workshops in literature, photography and printmaking.
Of the sixteen artists that comprise Mano a Mano, the nucleus is composed of seven original members of the Galeria de la Raza: Jerry Concha (USA), Gustavo Ramos Rivera (Mexico), Carlos Loarca (Guatemala), Manuel Villamor (British Honduras), Peter Rodriguez (USA), Rupert Garcia (USA), and Robert Gonzalez (USA, deceased, 1939-1981). These artists exhibited their work individually there during the years 1971 through 1980. Later, Carmen Lomas Garza (USA), Yolanda M. Lopez (USA), and Daniel Galvez (USA) joined the Galeria de la Raza as artists and also served in various administrative positions. The remaining artists have worked independently: Beatrice Hablig (USA), Robert Hernandez (USA), Patricio Toro (Chile), Eduardo Carrillo (USA), Armando Rascon (USA), and Ann Garcia Urriolagoitia (USA).
The sub context of this exhibition, aside from its artistic consideration, emphasizes the personal commitment of all the artists to be active in the political, educational and religious aspects of their communities. Despite their individuality, they are joined together under a common cause based on the belief of freedom through education and artistic achievement.
EDUARDO CARRILLO was born in Santa Monica, California and educated at the University of California, Los Angeles. He moved to Sacramento in 1970 and taught at California State University. Presently he resides in the Santa Cruz mountains and teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Carrillo's work may be called anecdotal, based on the oral tradition of storytelling, describing human social events. The style of his oil paintings on canvas and watercolors on paper is formally realistic; however, his realism is not to be taken literally as his overwhelming concern is a meta-
physical one. In most cases the use of color is consistently earthen. The figures, always in action, are stylized in an expressionistic manner and reflect an underlying emotion filled with life and energy. Carrillo's invented light shimmers over the entire canvas contrasting the dark browns, purples and reddish blacks of the painting. This non-natural light is found in most of his work and is attained by using a white tone, somewhere between a yellow and an ochre, which is reflected on the subjects giving a strong atmospheric quality captured in the space surrounding the figures. In exterior scenes, the sun is never felt, but its presence is palpable. The interior scenes are still lives or human dramas illuminated by the same ethereal and mysterious light.
— Rolando Castellon
Crocker Catalogue Essay
May 17 – July 20, 1986
During the past fifteen years Eduardo Carrillo's paintings have evolved from small richly-painted still lifes and landscapes to monumental and austerely painted figural compositions that draw upon Pre Columbian mythology and evoke the dry landscape of Baja California. Although his recent work in many respects represents a strong visual departure from his paintings of the early 1970's, they have many elements in common, among them a concern for evoking spiritual qualities and the depiction of light as a mystical presence.
Carrillo, who was born and raised in Southern California, studied at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was introduced to serious art making by the strong example of his teachers— who included Stanton MacDonald -Wright and William Brice— and fellow students, among them Charles Garabedian, Tony Berlant, Lance Richbourg and Ed Moses. He interrupted his studies for an extended visit to Spain, where Carrillo helped restore the church altar at San Francisco Grande in Madrid and saw paintings by Bosch, El Greco and Velazquez.
Carrillo returned to UCLA and as a graduate student exhibited surrealistic paintings at the Ceeje Gallery, which showed vigorous figurative work by Los Angeles area artists during the 1960's. After he graduated he moved to San Diego to teach at the University of California extension and then to La Paz, Baja California. In La Paz, the home of his ancestors where many of his relatives still reside, Carrillo made ceramics and directed a regional art center.
In 1969, while he was in Mexico, Carrillo was invited to join the faculty of California State University, Sacramento. At CSUS he was influenced by the work of other faculty members, including Joseph Raffael, Jack Ogden, and Irving Marcus–who he describes as painting like "Dutch masters"–and by the politically active Royal Chicano Air Force, whose members included Estaban Villa, Jose Montoya, Richard Favela, Stan Padilla, and Juan Ishi Orozco.
Carrillo began to paint again, and set about recording compact motifs, such as the interior of his H Street house, from life. Works such as Cathole, Sonoma(1971) document both the artist's intense visual analysis of his subject and how he has distilled nature and emphasized elements, such as the horizontality of the log, that reinforce the structure of the scene. Suffused by a mystical light that characterizes other works of this period, Cathole, Sonoma is painted in the "black oil" medium adopted from Northern Renaissance artists, in which multiple layers of wax and oil glazes create a sumptuous tonal effect.
With After the Party, also of 1971, Carrillo began to develop more complex figural images using models, an interest he pursued for several years. Again, the subject is taken at in part from nature, but the frontality and central placement of the female figure attest to the artist's concern with composition and with creating more monumental visual statements.
In 1972 Carrillo accepted a teaching position at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His move to a new environment may have accelerated his turn away from painting from nature in favor of the new emphasis on creating from his imagination and inventing forms. The allegorical La Luz y la Musica (1973), in which figures painted from models are placed in an imaginary landscape, is a transitional work. Its spiritual subject, conveyed through two of the central figures -one who sees the light, the other who hears the divine music- is an ongoing concern of the artist and contrasts with more violent, carnal themes in his other works, particularly the mural paintings.
Although Carrillo began painting the murals as early as 1962, mural painting took on an increased importance in his work after his move to Santa Cruz. Between 1973 and 1976 he directed three mural projects there, and in 1979 Carrillo created a major ceramic tile mural in Los Angeles in honor of Father Hildalgo. His research on Father Hidalgo, facilitated by new publications on Mexican muralists, further informed the artist on Mexican art and stimulated his interest in learning more about Pre-Columbian art and beliefs. In 1980 Carrillo undertook a two year study on ancient Mexico. About the same time he began to make regular pilgrimages to La Paz to better understand the culture of his ancestors.
The outcome of these explorations has been a series of paintings dating from 1982 in which Carrillo combines Mexican Indian mythology and the traditions of Baja California in compositions that are at once personal and universal. These works are anticipated in Los Bucaneros(1974), which alludes to the artist's reputed French pirate ancestors who were stranded on the coast of Mexico. By 1982 Carrillo was creating images such as Sor Juana, an ecstatic portrayal of a 17th century Mexican nun, who as a poetess, an intellectual, and a socially- conscious individual, has served as a source of inspiration for the artist.
These paintings culminate with such compositions as 55 Gallon Drum (1983), which depicts four figures standing around a fire in an oil drum. This is a common evening occurrence in Baja California and the incineration of the day's refuse serves as an occasion to tell stories, resulting in the transmission of culture in the manner practiced by primitive societies for centuries. The composition is tightly structured with four large figures- allusions to the four directions of Pre-Columbian myth- assuming hierarchical poses and illuminated by the intense light of the fire.
On one level Sacred Twins(1984) shows a horseman in a fantastic landscape; on another level it refers to the Aztec deities Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, who represent the duality of night and day. In contrast, more earthly activities-indulging in another glass of wine and hand of cards in an extended break between periods of intense work- are shown in paintings such as La Otra, one of many images derived from the artist's participation in the life of rural Mexico. These paintings indicate the range of Carrillo's thematic concerns. Their opaque yellow and light earth tones convey the remote, arid landscape of Mexico, and simplified forms endow the subjects with a monumental presence. They also share rhythmic forms and intense juxtapositions of light and shade, means Carrillo uses to effectively realize his ambitious aesthetic and expressive intentions.
Ceeje—the Gallery, the Artists, the Art
April 1, 2016 Catalogue Articles, About the Work, Aboutadmin 5 responses
by Fidel Danieli
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
April 10- May 13, 1984
Foreword and Acknowledgment
The sum total of Ceeje Gallery's contribution to the Los Angeles art situation is probably inestimable. Like many other enterprises in the retail sales of local art, it opened its doors for business, gave it a fair go, survived less than a decade and closed. It created a ripple of sorts by being a controversial center of non-mainstream art, but beyond that it had a different kind of spirit from the other galleries of the 1960's in every area. Located at the north end of La Cienega Boulevard's "gallery row," it was isolated blocks beyond the clustered dealers closer to Melrose. It definitely had a different kind of look- an inviting manner. No blank or intimidating facade, no rabbit warren arrangement of rooms, no indifferent secretary to screen out the hoi polloi, no secret blue chip stock in the shrouded back rooms. There were no solemn veiled mysteries of art only for the connoisseur, no slick salesperson or world weary entrepreneur speaking only with the truly anointed. The look-better yet the feel- of Ceeje was of direct, enthusiastic freshness. An open, uncovered front window decorated with an artist's major work or specially executed mural welcomed in the southwestern sun and permitted the visitor a preview glimpse. The room was a spacious long one, lined on one side by a built-in bench that encouraged contemplation and conversation. The dealers' desk was screened only by a partition dividing the space into two areas. Moreover, the owners, Cecil Hedrick and Jerry Jerome, were almost always there to share their faith in their artists.
The Ceeje gallery was opened as a crafts gallery in 1959 and was an outgrowth of Cecil Hedrick's ceramic work in the area of architectural commissions. Hedrick's background included a BA degree and postgraduate work in fine arts at the University of California, Los Angeles and several years of teaching. Jerry Jerome was involved in television and was a theater arts major at UCLA. It was a friend in public relations, Florence Mullen, who suggested the joining of their first initials for the gallery's unique name. Another associate was Eleanor Neil (Coppola), whose contacts led to support of several of the artists who became the most widely recognized.
Despite the knowledge that few local galleries concentrated on Southern California art in preference to safer, tested European and East Coast examples, and that most major collectors bought in New York, they committed themselves to a core group of artists who came to exemplify the identifiable Ceeje image. This art was figurative with a tendency toward the expressionist and the surreal; it possessed an enormous degree of visual excitement and energy, and was most certainly not in vogue or fashion. They admired artists who, as they describe themselves, "were their own people, renegades and mavericks," and who were "their own mainstreams." They concentrated on artists who were free spirits, as free as themselves. From their own experiences in art and theater they admired directed spontaneity and unplanned discipline. the improvisational, the varied and the diverse, the non-limited were their ideals.
Ceeje's dedication to their artists and their belief in Los Angeles art is exemplified by their exhibition record vis a vis New York. Few East Coast artists were shown- Philip Pearlman's first two West Coast shows being notable exceptions. On the other hand, they did expand and operated a New York branch for several years (1965-67) and drew intrigued recognition and approval of their efforts from notable New York dealers. Then the bloom of the scene faded, the market slumped, the artists became discouraged. In 1967 the dealers, feeling "we had made our mark," closed the New York branch of Ceeje Gallery. They had, however, promised and delivered exposure and promotion. They intuited what was unique about the L.A. art situation, gambled and waited. A quarter century later this exhibition validates many of their choices, both in their belief in the talent of their artists and their total commitment to expressive figurative styles.
The majority of their artists were young, and enrolled in the masters' program at UCLA. This in an era when the tacit standards of gallery representation indicated that one should at least be in his mid-thirties and have a string of juried show acceptances and a grant or award or two on his record. It is easy to forget that into the 1970s the general opinion was held that artists had to prove themselves elsewhere before even thinking they might someday be part of a local gallery's stable. The number of the university's painters who had their inaugural solo show or subsequent second or third exhibits at Ceeje is impressive and includes Les Biller, Eduardo Carrillo, Roberto Chavez, Charles Garabedian, Marvin Harden, Louis Lunetta, joan Maffei, Lance Richbourg, Ben Sakoguchi, Jim Urmston and several others. It must be noted, however, that vigor, whether youthful or more senior, was the dealers' criterion. Artists at mid-career or even older were also displayed and later on many members of the UCLA faculty were included. And though the emphasis was on painting, sculptors, assemblage artists and photographers such as Barbara Morgan and Edmund Teske also had their turn.
In contrast to the certified products and serial images of other galleries, the shows here most often included diverse media and wildly divergent sizes. Drawings, prints, painted reliefs, three-dimensional constructions, small and monumental paintings all jostled for attention in one-person and group theme shows. The formality of aesthetic distance was destroyed further by presentation. Framing was appropriately eclectic and probably determined by relative poverty. Rude and handsome trim contrasted with kitschy charity store frames. One would not be surprised to find that works were painted on found scraps or made to fit frames that were readymade or from the dime store. No limits on what was saleable seemed to have been set; no holds were barred in wrestling for the audience's attention. Even such ephemera as exhibit announcements were totally personal, as opposed to the standardized format imposed on mailers and brochures sent out by other dealers. No formality here. Announcements varied from outsized type on colored paper to the reproduction of the hand-lettered and freely brushed, with an occasional archly posed and humorous photographed setup.
No clearer example of these dealers' open approach (given their stylistic dedication to UCLA and the figurative) is evidenced by the ethnicity of their artists. Long before equal opportunity became a major issue and a legal mandate, their stable included artists whose heritages spanned the Mediterranean to Armenia, Hispanics, a Black, an Asian. Women artists , too, played a regular role in solo and group exhibitions. There was no decision to maintain a balance or ratio of minorities and women, it was, they explain, simply a matter of developing associations wherein the artists, their kin and their families (to a lesser or greater degree) became part of the Ceeje "family." For Hedrick and Jerome there was no boundaries; they did not think that way.
The lineage of New York mainstream art runs in a series of links and twists that most acknowledge. European modernism gave rise to Abstract Expressionism; then came the opening provided by Rivers, Johns, Rauschenburg and Kaprow in the mid-to late-1950's. There followed the multiplication of styles in the 1960's as Pop, Geometric, Post-Painterly. Optical, Minimal, Environmental, New Realism and Photo realism, Conceptual,etc. To these, Los Angeles proponents and propagandists asserted adding expressive ceramic,ic work, repeated series of hard edged or geometric styles in nearly identical works, and a careful attention to surfaces and detail using industrial materials and hand- polished craft. Evidently only for local consumption would be any continuation of the rendering of traditional subjects. Still lives, interiors, portraits, figurative works in any non-academic style seemed a dead end or an exhausted vein. The irony is that around 1960 a group of Southern California art students emerged and coalesced around the Ceeje Gallery, and 20 years ahead of its current acceptance by the European and New york art world, they would turn the figurative tradition back in the direction of the personally symbolic. the intimate and autobiographical, the anecdotal and narrative, the mythic. They ransacked art history, as have more recently Germans, Italians and Americans, and turned their attention to the perennial image-making power of emotional illusionism. Their all-consuming interests ran the range from direct naiveté and primitivism of sophisticated ethnic and folk art to the obstinate delineations of Rousseau and the loving care of early Flemish masters. Attractive, too, seemed to be the make believe realism of Uccello and the horrors of Bosch. Pre- Columbian and African sculpture were no strange manifestations. Their surrealism was the mysterious and compulsively hypnotic sort drawn from the synthetic worlds of medieval art, De Chirico and Magritte. Those favoring a painterly attack were inspired by the German Expressionists with both the bold dislocations and heavy outline of Beckmann a clear favorite. Those attracted to full volume drew on everyone, from cowboy artists like Remington and Russell to the mechano-men of Leger and the bombastics of the '20's Mexican muralists, Rivera and Siqueiros. They were willfully awkward or private, purposely clumsy or unabashedly direct. If Ferus Gallery was the "cutting edge" of LA modernism, Ceeje was the ragged edge and several of the artists could parody their own situation and bill themselves as the "rear guard."
Hedrick and Jerome felt they were being avant guard in espousing these young radicals and it has taken over a decade-more like two- to prove that their vision was right. Their feelings were honest and true.
Ceeje Revisited: A Warm Spot in the Cool Sixties
by Susan B. Larsen
Among the paradoxes of recent history is our perception of the 1960's as a time of political and social upheaval supporting a restrained, Apollonian art. Minimalism with its pristine form and desire for visual and conceptual clarity had a significant impact
on both coasts while the smooth, mirrored surfaces of Pop Art reflected but did not necessarily confront the heated controversies of the era. Cool art for an overheated world may have served as a visual and emotional refuge fulfilling a need for minimalism's controlled, selective sensuous experience and physical certitude. Pop Art made us even more aware of a psychological and physical media-scape which held life's most vivid experience at arm's length. As that period recedes in time and memory and becomes the province of cultural historians, it seems that two things are happening. The clichés of the period gain in authenticity even as a wealth of new information serves to contradict or at least counterbalance them.
Many experienced and remember the healthy, if short lived, renaissance that Los Angeles enjoyed during the 1960's. Recent attempts to document and reconstruct the period have centered around the efforts of a few galleries, the Ferus,the Landau, Dwan and Wilder and the advent of major museum programs such as those of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the poignant tenure of the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art with its high hopes and brief but important period of national prominence.
A number of individual artists, also part of that renaissance, did not fit into the mainstream, their origins largely unexplained, ignored or forgotten. The expressionist, figurative style they practiced has gained new interest and prominence with the revival of figurative art on the international scene, prompting a reexamination of the work of several remarkable individuals. One of the mainstays of the Los Angeles art community from 1961 to 1970 was the Ceeje Gallery at 968 La Cienega Boulevard named for its co founders Cecil Hedrick and Jerry Jerome. Ceeje and its artists were out-of-phase with much of Los Angeles art of the time but it achieved a degree of prominence and affectionate regard for its "humanity, humor and iconoclasm."1 The work shown at Ceeje was predominantly figurative, the artists cross-section of Los Angeles ethnicity, un-cool, self-expressive and unpredictable.
Exhibitions at Ceeje were carefully installed with attention to the needs of the artist and audience, yet the gallery had a festive, improvisational character and Hedrick and Jerome assumed a posture which was not authoritative but frankly experimental. Then as now, the work shown at Ceeje was vital, enjoyed by sophisticated and unsophisticated audiences but placed solidly outside the mainstream by Los Angeles critics, curators and collectors, hence misunderstood and as it turns out, undervalued.
This "working man's gallery"2 neither fashionable nor highly profitable at the time, helped to sustain such gifted artists as Eduardo Carrillo, Charles Garabedian, Roberto Chavez, Joan Maffai, Ed Newell, Lance Richbourg and others during a period of high hopes and expectations realized by only a few. For the vast majority of Los Angeles artists, including most of those at Ceeje, several more decades of struggle and development lay ahead once the Los Angeles Renaissance had abated.
At the outset Ceeje seemed to have an identifiable style and spirit which announced itself in the 1961-62 season with the exhibition "Four Painters: Garabedian/ Chavez/ Carrillo/ Lunetta." Henry Seldis, senior critic for the Los Angeles Times, noted the exhibition's "disturbing eroticism" and believed the artists were casting a nostalgic glance toward Mexico."3 Confusion reigned concerning the ethnicity of many Ceeje artists. The Mexican surnames of Chavez and Carrillo were prominent but both were born in the United States and while proud of their ethnic origins they were as typical of the population of Los Angeles as any of the artists who showed at Ferus or Landau. Lunetta, Italian-American, and Garabedian, Armenian-American, were also long-term Los Angeles residents but were grouped with all the other Ceeje artists in one colorful ethnic blur. Hedrick and Jerome often heard the remark, "Oh, you're the gallery that shows Mexican artists."4 A more precise observer would have noted the remarkable ethnic range of Ceeje which represented a variety of young contemporaries residing in Los Angeles, including many ethnic minorities and women. The freewheeling, iconoclastic nature of Ceeje was evident in that first four-man show and subsequent exhibitions brought Lance Richbourg, Joan Maffai, Ed Newell, Aron Goldberg, Ben Sakoguchi and photographer Edmund Teske into prominent positions within the gallery.
Charles Garabedian at age thirty eight was the oldest of the four artists showing at Ceeje in 1962. All were recent graduates of UCLA's lively art department and had a great deal in common, but Garabedian's maturity gave even his early work a depth and complexity of emotion which would distinguish his art. He was a remarkably awkward painter, as aware as anyone of the lapses in his drawing and the distance he had to go to close the gap between ambition and result. Garabedian appeared to accept this in good humor indeed to feed off of his awkwardness as in the inventive and self-parodying work "Self-Portrait as a Carpenter" (1964) exhibited at the Ceeje with its roughhewn, strangely constructed frame. William Wilson observed that the artist seemed to "tell us he sees himself as an awkward craftsman who dreams beyond his ambition." Wilson went on to describe the work as "strikingly ill-made."5 It must have seemed so to the artist because Garabedian repeated the image of himself as an obsessive carpenter in his own Family Portrait which shows the artist building a grand but unfinished structure to house his wife and daughter.
We see garabedian as the protagonist in another of his early paintings shown at Ceeje, the Self-Portrait With Cabinet (1964). Here the artist stands in a theatrical pose, armed like a Roman gladiator with palette and brushes, dressed in a wrapped garment, either toga, smock or bathrobe, eyes blazing with excitement. It is absurd and wonderful at the same time, full of disturbing aspects such as the empty cabinet's wide open doors, the artists hairy chest and exaggerated physiognomy, his disconnected thumb and undulating shoe.
Although their work might have been unrefined at the time, the young artists of Ceeje would never have characterized themselves by the timid word, "emerging." Instead, they burst on the scene full of confidence if not yet fully armed commanding their turf if not yet sure of it. Their work was figurative but they were not realists, preferring the world of dreams and fantasy and filling their images with thoughtful, speculative poetry. One of the most gifted was Ed Carrillo whose beautiful draftsmanship and completeness of vision allowed him to blend pictorial fragments into incongruous continuities. Cabin in the Sky (1965) with its rambling red walls, sharp-cut tunnels and abrupt shifts from fanciful, evocative architecture to pure landscape, has the compelling reality of a dream retold by an impassioned dreamer. Carrillo's work indicates an awareness of De Chirico and Bosch but his light-filled canvases and radiant, saturated color are uniquely his own. There is a mysterious but benign, almost pastoral tone to Cabin in the Sky with its giant seashells, the etheric shadow of a rabbit and full-lipped flowers creating abrupt spatial shifts against a background of architecture and landscape. It is an ambitious and successful work with a genuine spirit of self-exploration and revelation, an aura of naiveté which only serves to strengthen the impact of his vision.
Architecture plays a central role in many of Carrillo's painting including Pearly Gates, (1965) an almost symmetrical two-part compositions with layered and bisected strata of masonry, carefully poised still life objects and disjunctive passages of landscape. Two round-headed arches fix the parallel axes of his work,one opens into a verdant field with prominently silhouetted trees and a distant mountain range , the other with its red and white striped columns gives way to a canal with docks and a distant mountain view. The two landscapes are impossibly discontinuous yet provocatively similar. In the foreground even more marvelous and impossible things occur. A red spiral contoured mound like an ancient Middle Eastern site appears in miniature echoed by a blue mastaba placed far to the front. On the other side of the painting we enter a big green pool of water. Carrillo's vivid, self-contained colors suggest the conceptualized stylization and perceptual fragmentation of a primitive in whose work exactitude of parts mitigates against any smooth integration of the whole. However, the effect is to enhance has ability to evoke a works of the marvelous, the vivid and deliberately fragmented, all aspirations of early Surrealism. With Evolution (1962) his vision becomes darker and more narrative as death dances on the upturned feet of an acrobat and a birdlike creature lurks in a jungle setting full of tangled and threatened foliage.
There is nothing timid or commonplace about the lush floral imagery Joan Maffei whose paintings seem to press outward from the boundaries of their frames and project an otherworldly glow into the surrounding atmosphere. Symmetry and clarity of contour are important to her style, also vibrant evocative color asserting itself against darkened backgrounds. Moonflowers (1962)
is a fine and typical example of her work, an animated still life of invented flora pulsating with life. It is as though we are observing the silent, nocturnal erotic life of plants and thereby discovering a new and mysterious beauty. In 1961, just prior to her involvement with Ceeje, Maffei went to India on a Fulbright grant and that experience may have affected the emotional tone and color of her art. Viewing her work, one thinks also of Rousseau's clearly delineated plants and flowers, the jungle in Yadwiga's Dream with its resplendent undergrowth and compelling primitivism.
The visual compression and intensify that Maffei gives to commonplace subjects is evident in Portrait of Carlo (1966) in which a small boy with cowboy gloves riding a bicycle is transformed into a figure of awesome, almost mechanistic vigor, a startling, even frightening presence. Maffei's imagery had feminist overtones even before the term was widely used, as in
I Told You So (1966), a painting so frankly sexual and emotionally searing that it eclipses many of the polemics and semi-clouded clichés of much recent feminist art. Her tondo formats, shaped frames and radial imagery exist to support the thematic content of her art, not as a conceptual strategy, feminist autobiography or as a physical advance upon the "objectness" of painting.
Assertive, shocking creations of nature are also to be found in the paintings of Ed Newell whose sharp-edged graphic outlines suggest cartoon characters gone astray even while his painter's command of tone and wash bring them back again into the domain of art. His hybrid canine and feline icon loom large in the landscape like some 20th century counterpart of the icon-cats of ancient Egypt. In works such as Goddess (1959) they confront us, larger than life, clearly dominant and frightening. Newell's work is aesthetic but impolite, fantastic to the point of excess, compelling and deeply memorable.
If their is a single significant style practiced by the core group of artists exhibiting at Ceeje, it must be the carefully wrought, homegrown Surrealism practiced by Carrillo, Maffei and Urmston. Others such as Bilker, Chavez, Garabedian, Lunetta and Richbourg had strong surrealist overtones to their art but their handling of pigment and preferences for asymmetrical and complex compositions set them apart from the obsessive, static centrality typical of the previous three. Urmston's The Great Love Affair is an ambitious painting both thematically and technically. There is something reminiscent of Cranach's painting of the Expulsion of Adam and Eve in the way Urmston's male figure awkwardly covers himself and gestures to his mate, his hand movement a fascinating mixture of an ecclesiastical and a conversational gesture.
Numerous paintings exist within the larger composition, the framed with its Eden-like landscape and coiled serpent and the thrice-folded four-part painting placed on the table with its Biblical evocations of violent storms and strange primordial creatures. Almost everything about the painting suggests its sources in the Northern Renaissance so that the cubist construction of the figures themselves comes as something of a surprise. It has often been said that the art history program at UCLA had a genuine impact upon this generation of artists. As in Urmston's The Great Love Affair this was not by direct imitation but a wry yet respectful feeling for themes that are timeless and multifacted.
If the artists of Ceeje were not immediately taken up by Los Angeles collectors and placed in national touring shows, they made the most of their position as outsiders and iconoclasts, frankly reveling in it. Self-parody was a common element in their art and to it they added a healthy ration of humor evident in the title of their 1964 exhibition "Six Painters of the Rear Guard: Garabedian/ Richbourg/ Urmston/ Bilker/ Chavez/ Carrillo." implicit in their title and the work itself was a rejection of the kind of evolutionary abstract progressivism advocated by critics like Clement Greenberg and Michael Field. Los Angeles critic Henry seldis remarked of the exhibition, "Their work ranges from the lightly satirical to the nearly blasphemous."
Perhaps the most memorable opening of an exhibition at Ceeje took place in the late autumn of 1965 when Lance Richbourg showed a cycle of paintings entitled "The Wild, Wild West." The title was the same as that of a popular television program but Richbourg's iconography was much more violent, intense and satirical than anything in the media, including Western films, comic books and popular novels which fed the subject matter of his art. On opening night a crowd of people streamed into Ceeje Gallery, many in Western costume and some in the pugnacious spirit expressed in Richbourg's painting. At one point someone entered the gallery on horseback, causing an abrupt confrontation between art and life.
Richbourg's vigorous, solidly three dimensional figures also rode on horseback, fought, made love, drank and died in his paintings, his themes a caricature of the romantic, fictional American West. His protagonists had the heavily muscled bodies of figures by Benton and the brilliant, at times lurid, color of films or magazine
illustrations, but Richbourg was not satisfied with replicating Western clichés in subject or style. As Henry Seldis observed quite correctly, the work is "related and removed from Pop Art."7
Richbourg's heros often enacted their life and death scenes in the presence of painted dreamscapes as a cowboy's life seemed to pass before him in his final moments of agony. In One Eyed Jack (1965) a three way shoot out is so tightly and precisely staged in a moonlit barroom that it suggests art imitating art. The real irony and surface braggadocio of Richbourg's subject matter is so interesting as to almost divert attention from the excellence and vigor of his drawing, so fulsome and personal in style that it lends its own special vitality and rhythm to the work. Richbourg's desire to depict the mythic, historical and fictional West is all the more surprising if one considers that Southern California in the 1960's was more often characterized and experienced as a land of sun, surf and beaches.
Other artists at the center of Ceeje's activities were Roberto Chavez, Louis Lunetta, and Ben Sakoguchi, each creating an entirely personal structure and syntax for himself. Chavez' work had a brusque, painterly directness , as in Group Shoe (1962)
his group portrait of Garabedian, Chavez, Carrillo, and Lunetta, a moving depiction of the strong, plainspoken qualities of character they admired. Lunetta balanced the natural decorative beauty of his art against his desire for strength of form and subject. A three-year stay in Ghana and his serious study of Asian art and culture contributed to the intricacy of his frieze-like figural compositions, complex all-over patterns of imagery and his preference for nonwestern subject matter. His was an unlikely counterpart to the art of Richbourg or Chavez but one could see and understand that lunetta's work came from an earthy, almost primitivist aesthetic which found beauty amidst the ruggedness of man and nature. Ben Sakoguchi's dense, kaleidoscopic paintings gathered the potent and unforgettable images of the 1960's and also the ordinary, trivial ones top form a tapestry of sensory impressions and memory deeply evocative of that time. Sakoguchi's work chronicles the cool glamour of the period, our fascination with the cultural life of European cities, the rapid-fire assault of media images which became not only a daily but a minute-by-minute occurrence in urban areas such as Los Angeles. The fashions have changed a great deal since then and Sakoguchi's hard-edged style of rendering is also typical of the 60's, but his record of the visual and social landscape is one of lasting interest and value. So complete and accurate was Sakoguchi's grasp of his own perceptual field that he even seems to include fragments of paintings seen at Ceeje, as in the rambling brick walls so typical of Carrillo and the splendid jungle flowers of Maffei.
There were several among those exhibiting at Ceeje who did not project a realm of fantasy but preferred to find other subjects in the real world of tangible objects. Aron Goldberg's still life compositions appeared at first to be images of quietude and serenity. Upon closer examination, his table top still life images in calm grays, tan and other soft tones contained the severed parts of animals as a mealtime offering served up on familiar pieces of crockery. In a recent reminiscence of Ceeje, Goldberg stated that it was his desire and one he shared with some of his contemporaries to "see the world as new-made, full not of artifacts of culture, but objects of desire and fear."8 It was typical of them to find aesthetic and emotional value in subjects and visions commonly held to be grotesque, humorous or inconsequential.
Maxwell Hendler showed several small still life compositions at Ceeje in the early '60's. These everyday tabletop worlds of cracker and cereal boxes, plates and jars were so lovingly and painstakingly rendered that they anticipate, at least on this coast, much of the innovative style and content of photo-realists art and do so with a resonance of feeling seldom found in that style.
Ceeje even had its own counterpart of Henri Rousseau in the colorful persona of retired Italian pastry chef, Marcel Cavalla, who enjoyed the camaraderie of many of the artists in the gallery. Self-taught and eager to depict the burgeoning population and changing environment surrounding his residence in Bunker Hill, Cavalla filled his canvases with topographical detail, daily events and personal fantasies which transformed and animated everything he painted. He proved a popular addition to the gallery. In 1962, his first one-man show sold out. That very week the editors of Life magazine were doing a story on the rash of sell-out exhibitions and Cavalla ended up on the pages of Life in the company of newcomers Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns.
Any gallery, while devoted to the exhibition of works of art and to the development of the careers of its artists, is ultimately the creation of its owners-directors. In the case of Ceeje it was a collaboration between Cecil Hedrick and Jerry Jerome. In an effort to find a national audience for their artists they opened a second Ceeje Gallery in New York in 1966 at 19 W. 57th Street. It lasted two seasons. Their lively curiosity and generous spirit was evident in the program of Ceeje and, happily, they have retained that enthusiasm for their artists and for those of our own time as well. It is to recognize their role in the artistic life of Los Angeles and to enable us to look again at the marvelous, irreverent, thoughtful and important art produced by their artists that this exhibition is being held.
1. William Wilson, "Garabedian at Ceeje," Los Angeles Times, April, 1965
2. Interview with Cecil Hedrick and Jerry Jerome, Agua Dulce, California, October, 1983
3. Henry Seldis, "Four Painters at Ceeje," Los Angeles Times, July 20, 1962
4. Interview with Cecil Hedrick and Jerry Jerome.
5. William Wilson, "Garabedian at Ceeje."
6. Henry Seldis, "Six Painters of the Rear Guard," Los Angeles Times, April, 1964.
7. Henry Seldis, "Lance Richbourg at Ceeje," Los Angeles Times, October, 1965.
8. Aron Goldberg, "Reminiscence of Ceeje," unpublished manuscript, 1983.
All material on this web page is copyrighted. For permission to reproduce, contact us
Museo Eduardo Carrillo | PO Box 8085 | Santa Cruz, CA 95061 | information@museoeduardocarrillo.org

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Dark and dangerous as nighttime on the African plains. Black onyx rondelles with leopard-painted bamboo beads and shell focal, accented with copper, with a vermeil S-clasp. Necklace is 17 1/2" long not including focal.


text:
Petr Benes: Career Locations 1997-2010 2011-14
Petr Benes
Photo: FIVB
Birth Date November 27, 1974 (46 years old)
Home Town Praha
Resides Prague
International 4th (2 times) $128,125
FIVB 4th $124,875
FIVB C&S 4th $3,250
Europe 4th (3 times) � 25,838
CEV 4th (2 times) � 25,088
CEV C&S 4th � 750
Overall 4th (5 times) $163,176
Bio Bits
Olympics (one, 17th, 1-2 Pool, 0-1 Lucky Loser, 1-3 Overall):
� Qualified for London 2012 Olympics as the number 14 seed with Premysl Kubala. Went 1-2 in pool play, lost in the lucky loser round to Germany's Jonathan Erdmann/Kay Matysik, and finished 17th.
Season Assoc Played 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 7th 9th Money Points Rank 13th 17th 19th 25th 33rd 41st 57th
1997 FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0.00 5.0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
1997 FIVB 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $1,400.00 34.0 136th 0 0 0 2 0 0 2
1998 FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $250.00 6.0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
1998 FIVB 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0.00 9.0 241st 0 0 0 0 0 1 2
2005 FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 $1,000.00 18.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2006 FIVB 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0.00 3.0 339th 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
2007 FIVB C&S 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 $600.00 20.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2008 FIVB 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 $7,050.00 313.0 118th 0 1 0 2 0 3 0
2009 FIVB 8 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 $18,025.00 670.0 56th 1 3 0 2 0 0 0
2011 FIVB 11 0 0 0 1 1 1 5 $42,600.00 1,580.0 25th 0 3 0 0 0 0 0
(Rank) 61
(229th) 0 0 0 2 4 5 10 $128,125.00
(167th) 4,739.0 1 16 0 13 1 4 5
2000 CEV 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 � 675.00 18.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2004 CEV 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 � 1,625.00 30.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2004 CEV C&S 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 � 750.00 17.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2006 CEV 6 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 � 5,575.00 710.0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
(30th) 0 0 0 3 2 5 9 � 25,837.50
(45th) 3,043.0 4 7 1 0 0 0 0
(289th) 0 0 0 5 6 10 19 $163,176.34
F�d�ration Internationale de Volleyball World Tour
Partner Played 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 7th 9th Money Points 13th 17th 19th 25th 33rd 41st 57th
Premysl Kubala 40 0 0 0 1 3 4 9 $116,425 4,295.0 1 12 0 9 1 0 0
Josef Benes 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $700 31.0 0 0 0 1 0 1 5
Martin Tichy 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 $7,050 301.0 0 1 0 2 0 2 0
Jan Benes 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $700 15.0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Michal Biza 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 $0 12.0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Total 55 0 0 0 1 3 4 10 $124,875 4,654.0 1 13 0 13 1 4 5
F�d�ration Internationale de Volleyball Challenger & Satellite
Josef Benes 5 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 $2,250 67.0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0
Michal Biza 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 $1,000 18.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Total 6 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 $3,250 85.0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0
Conf�d�ration Europ�enne de Volleyball
Josef Benes 21 0 0 0 1 1 3 6 � 16,813 1,846.0 4 5 1 0 0 0 0
Premysl Kubala 8 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 � 8,275 1,180.0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0
Total 29 0 0 0 2 2 5 8 � 25,088 3,026.0 4 7 1 0 0 0 0
Conf�d�ration Europ�enne de Volleyball Challenger & Satellite
Josef Benes 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 � 750 17.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Total 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 � 750 17.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Premysl Kubala 48 0 0 0 2 4 6 11 $128,402 5,475.0 1 14 0 9 1 0 0
Josef Benes 35 0 0 0 3 1 4 7 $26,025 1,961.0 4 8 1 1 0 1 5
Total 92 0 0 0 5 6 10 19 $163,176 7,782.0 5 23 1 13 1 4 5
Copyright � 1999-2021 Beach Volleyball Database.


In April 2017, President Russell M. Nelson and Elder M. Russell Ballard encouraged us to study "The Living Christ" as way to further come to know the Savior. In General Conference October 2017, we were encouraged again to study and even memorize it. Are your ready to accept the challenge?
If you look at "The Living Christ" it can easily be divided up into about 12 sections- perfect for a little 12 Days of Christmas challenge! Memorize one section a day then recite the whole thing on Christmas. What a great way to focus on the mission of Jesus Christ and the purpose of celebrating Christmas!
The best part? I've made it easy for you to put together. I've already divided up "The Living Christ" for you on cards that you can insert into festive envelopes and string along your fireplace or wall as an advent calendar. I even included 20 tips to help you memorize the whole thing!
Not up for cutting and assembling 12 envelopes? Grab some festive envelopes instead and write the numbers on the front. You can just print out my cards and insert them. Or you can ditch the envelopes all together and turn the cards into a flipbook instead.
Heidi from A Lively Hope has free copywork packet to help with the memorization.
Prickly Pear Designs has a study journal for your to record your thoughts as you study it.
Emilie from A Year of FHE has a great themed Family Home Evening lesson.
Print out "The Living Christ" in its entirety.