Chicano Art, Outsider Art, Martin Ramirez and Richard Rodriguez

Tex[t]-Mex features two "Seductive Hallucination Galleries" that serve as print-artkives for stereotypes, grotesqueries, anecdotes, and ephemera I have run across, and, on occasion, some down home, ad-hominem rage. One of the targets in the second gallery (p.174-80) is Richard Rodriguez, poster child for all things Chicano--at least as far as PBS is concerned--and our own Chicano curmudgeon narcissist. Here is an updated digital montage portrait of Rodriguez that appears in my University of Texas Press book:



But give credit where credit is due: Rodriguez writes like like he's made a deal with the devil and I might (I said might) have to say as much in print when the second edition of this appears.

Case in point? Turn your clicking mouse here for a thoughtful and probing meditation on Chicano outsider artist Martin Ramirez. Ramirez, a sample of his art appears below, spent much of his life inside an insane asylum, where, speechless, he produced an oeuvre of work that is just now getting its critical day in the sun. More on his work is available at The Fleisher Ollmann Gallery and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.