Rasquache - Grade: A PDF

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A brief introduction to rasquache art...

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Domesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache By Amalia Mesa-Bains, Ph.D. Vernacular, vulgar, inferior, tasteless, and insensible are all terms associated with kitsch. The discourse on kitsch and its relationship to the postmodern avant-garde has been marked by multiple definitions. The work of Gerardo Mosquera1 in particular has placed kitsch in a recuperative setting, where the Cuban artist who stands outside the everyday embellishments of kitsch can employ the "inferior" to speak of the arbitrary definitions of the "superior." The examination is expanded to make distinctions between mass-produced objects and the intimate expressions of sincere decoration in the domestic space. As Mosquera points out, there is a need for greater classificatory information, and a more specific definition of this phenomenon. Within this process of clarification, meaning and usage become even more crucial. When is kitsch recuperated, by whom, and for what aesthetic intention? Many of these same concerns for meaning and usage can be brought to bear on the Chicano phenomenon of "rasquachismo," or the view of the downtrodden. Tomas Ybarra-Frausto elaborates: "Very generally, rasquachismo is an underdog perspective--los de abajo . . . it presupposes a world view of the have not, but it is a quality exemplified in objects and places and social comportment . . . it has evolved as a bicultural sensibility."2

In rasquachismo, the irreverent and spontaneous are employed to make the most from the least. In rasquachismo, one has a stance that is both defiant and inventive. Aesthetic expression comes from discards, fragments, even recycled everyday materials such as tires, broken plates, plastic containers, which are recombined with elaborate and bold display in yard shrines (capillas), domestic decor (altares), and even embellishment of the car. In its broadest sense, it is a combination of resistant and resilient attitudes devised to allow the Chicano to survive and persevere with a sense of dignity. The capacity to hold life together with bits of string, old coffee cans, and broken mirrors in a dazzling gesture of aesthetic bravado is at the heart of rasquachismo. The political positioning of Chicanos emerging from a working-class sensibility called for just such a defiant stance. Raised in barrios, many Chicano artists have lived through and from a rasquache consciousness. Even the term "Chicano," with all its vernacular connotations, is rasquache. Consequently, the sensibility of rasquachismo is an obvious, and internally defined tool of artist-activists. The intention was to provoke the accepted "superior" norms of the Anglo-American with the everyday reality of Chicano cultural practices. Whether through extensions and reinterpretations of the domestic settings, the car, or the personal pose, rasquachismo is a world view that provides an oppositional identity. Unlike the Cuban recuperation of kitsch, rasquachismo is for the Chicano artists a facet of internal exploration that acknowledges the meaning sedimented in popular culture and practices. Rasquachismo then becomes for Chicano artists and intellectuals a vehicle for both culture and identity. This dual function of resistance and affirmation is essential to the sensibility of rasquachismo. In the counterpoint between kitsch and rasquachismo two major differences are apparent. First, kitsch serves as a material or phenomenon of taste through mass-produced objects or style of personal expression in decoration, while rasquachismo contains both the material expression but more importantly, a stance or attitudinal position. Consequently, the meaning of each is inherently different. Secondly, its usage reflects a radically opposed

instrumentality for the artists. Kitsch as a material expression is recuperated by artists who stand outside the lived reality of its genesis. Conversely, rasquachismo for Chicano artists is instrumental from within a shared barrio sensibility. One can say that kitsch is appropriated while rasquachismo is acclaimed or affirmed. Rasquachismo is consequently an integral world view that serves as a basis for cultural identity and a s ocio-political movement. As such, rasquachismo has not been limited to the visual arts, but in fact has been used as a major sensibility in theatre, music, and poetry. The tragicomic spirit of barrio life, as YbarraFrausto details, has been a present form in the early actos of Luis Valdez's "Teatro Campesino," in the poetry of Jose Montoya, in the works of the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF, a conceptual artists' collective), in the urban street pageantry of "ASCO" of Los Angeles, and in the border spectacle of Guillermo Gomez-Pena. Rasquachismo can thus be seen as a redemptive sensibility linked to a broadbased cultural movement among Chicanos. As the first generation of their community to be educated in universities (after hard-fought battles in the Civil Rights period), these artists employed a bicultural sensibility. Operating as an internally colonized community within the borders of the United States, Chicanos forged a new cultural vocabulary composed of sustaining elements of Mexican tradition and lived encounters in a hostile environment. Fragmentation and recombination brought together disparate elements such as corridos (Mexican historical ballads), images of Walt Disney, Mexican cinema, and mass media advertising, and even Mexican calendario graphics and American Pop art. This encounter of two worlds could only be negotiated through the sensibility of rasquachismo, a survivalist irreverence that functioned as a vehicle of cultural continuity. In many respects, the rasquache defiance of Chicano art production has served as an anecdotal history for a community repudiated and denied in institutional history within the nation as a whole. In so doing, rasquachismo provides the anecdote that critical theorist Walter Benjamin refers to: "Anecdote brings things closer to us in space, allows them to enter our lives. Anecdote represents the extreme opposite of History . . . the true method of making things present is to image them in our own space."3

Within the visual arts, rasquachismo as a sensibility has been a major force. The regional discourse in Chicano rasquache has been both rural and urban. For example, the hubcap assemblage of David Avalos has fused the amulets of Catholicism with urban car art into a new icon, the "Milagro Hubcap." The rural ethos has been essential to the rasquache sculpture series of Chiles in Traction by Chicano artist Ruben Trejo.

Domesticana

To look within the rasquache production of Chicano art, and to locate the work of women requires a description of both the barrio and family experience and the examination of its representation. This examination necessitates the application of feminist theory to this representation. The day-to-day experience of working-class Chicanas is replete with the practices within the domestic space. The sphere of the domestic includes home embellishments, home altar maintenance, healing traditions, and personal feminine pose or style. The phenomenon of the home altar is perhaps the most prolific. Established through continuities of spiritual belief, pre-Hispanic in nature, the family altar functions for women as a counterpoint to male-dominated rituals within Catholicism. Often located in bedrooms,

the home altar locates family history and cultural belief systems. Arrangements of bric-abrac, memorabilia, devotional icons, and decorative elements are created by women who exercise a familial aesthetic. Certain formal and continuing elements include saints, flowers (plastic, dried, natural, and synthetic), family photos, mementos, historic objects (military medals, flags, etc.), candles, and offerings. Characterized by accumulation, display, and abundance, the altars allow a commingling of history, faith, and the personal. Formal structures often seen are nichos, or niche shelves, retablo, or box-like containers highlighting special icons, and innovative uses of Christmas lights, reflective materials, and miniaturization. As an extension of this sacred home space, the frontyard shrine or capilla (little chapel) is a larger-scale, more public presentation of the family spiritual aesthetic. Capilla elaboration can include cement structures with mosaic mirror decoration, makeshift use of tires, garden statuary, fountain lighting, and plastic flowers. In both the home altar and capilla, the transfiguration relies on an almost organic accruing of found objects and differences in scale, which imply lived history over time. For many Chicanas, the development of home shrines is the focus for the refinement of domestic skills such as embroidery, crochet, flowermaking, and handpainting. Related to the creative functioning of the domestic sacred space is the ongoing practice of healing skills. Special herbs, talismans, religious imagery, and photos of historic faithhealers are essential to this cultural tradition. Young women learn from older women practices such as limpias with burned herbs, and the application of homeopathic cures. Regional context contributes to the healing discipline, particularly in the Southwest. In the larger area of domestic decoration, the use of artesanias such as papercutting, carving, and handpainting are prevalent. Added to the use of folk objects is the widespread popularity of almenaques, or Mexican calendars and movie posters. The centrality of family life directs the sensibility of "domesticana"; Chicanas are frequently raised in hierarchical roles of male over female, old over young. The emphasis on gender stratification creates boundaries within family roles in which women gain responsibility for child rearing, healing and health, home embellishment, and personal glamorization. This traditional picture is enlarged in families within urban centers but nonetheless remains relatively consistent. Chicana rasquache (domesticana), like its male counterpart, has grown not only out of both resistance to majority culture and affirmation of cultural values, but from women's restrictions within the culture. A defiance of an imposed Anglo-American cultural identity, and the defiance of restrictive gender identity within Chicano culture has inspired a female rasquacheism. Domesticana comes as a spirit of Chicana emancipation grounded in advanced education, and to some degree, AngloAmerican expectations in a more open society. With new experiences of opportunity, Chicanas were able to challenge existing community restrictions regarding the role of women. Techniques of subversion through play with traditional imagery and cultural material are characteristic of domesticana. Within this body of work, we can begin to apply critical viewpoints of feminist theory....