Transcribed by Kapra Fleming. Use of any part of this transcribed interview is allowed with proper attribution to the source (as follows):
Carlos Cortez at La Llorona Gallery, video interview with Jeanne Salis and Kapra Fleming, February 14, 2002 (KA-DV19975_CHGO2-10CC).
CC: Say when.
KF: Anytime.
JS: Alright.
CC: We’re right now at the gallery La Llorona on Webster Street just off of Clybourn Avenue run by Arturo Avendano, who has been exhibiting many Mexican and Latino visual artists. And, uh, he is one of the…his gallery is on the north side a bit away from the Pilsen or the other Mexican communities. And here in the late winter of 2002 I have a number of pieces here. I showed an old colleague of mine, José González.
And, uh, I’ll direct your attention to that charcoal drawing over here. I think this is the oldest work of mine that’s here. It certainly did it back in the late 1940s when I was taking classes at a gallery up in Milwaukee un-credited classes just to keep in practice. And one of the instructors what he did was tear off pieces paper here and there that you built on. And it happens to be a fragment to the top of a dog’s head. Which I made a human of. And I entitled it Man’s Best Friend Converted to his Worst Enemy Himself.
The painting next to it, an acrylic, shows a nude standing in the doorway. I call it La madrugadoración. Madruga, madrugada means the dawn, the sunrise. And a “madrugador” or a “madrugadora” is an early riser. Is an early riser. Anyways, I combined madrugador or madrugadora with “adoración” (sic) the adoration of getting up early. And she’s standing behind the screen. This is an actual screen door that I put the painting behind and she is looking out at the sunlight.
Over there on this wall …what’s the number on it?
JS: Twelve.
CC: Twelve?… is a painting I did recently. It’s a young woman who used to live here in Chicago and she was going to school in Olympia, WA had invited me out to give a reading and…and some workshops. And I asked her if she would pose for me. She’s a beautiful example of mixture of Black and American Indian. And I captured her pretty well. I also did some woodblocks of her.
Now if we could move around a little.
KF: I’ll wait until Jeanne gets back. Okay and we’re rolling.
JS: Carlos, why don’t you tell us about this painting here.
CC: OK, the painting here. On the right. Shows the couple in front of them a maguey plant. The title of the painting is El descubrimiento del pulque or The Discovery of Pulque. Pulque, as you know, is a mildly alcoholic drink made from the juice of the maguey plant. And the story, the legend is that Mayahuel discovered that the juices of maguey plant had a… had a wonderful taste to it. And she calls her husband, Xochipilli[1] out to the pulque plant and she shares it with him and they enjoy it so much they have a little love feast; and you see them making love and the pots of pulque in front of them. They go to the Council of the Gods to introduce it and they and they were so pleased they made her a Goddess Mayahuel, the goddess of the maguey plant. And Xochipilli, her husband, the God of music, poetry and flowers. And of course they have underneath their names Mayahuel won Xochipilli. Mayahuel and Xochipilli. And this I painted the other year, I guess the first exhibit I had it at was oh some years ago at the Mi Casa Su Casa restaurant[2] which at that time was operating both as a restaurant and a gallery.
JS: Carlos, why do you have the mirror image on their names up in the sky?
CC: Well, this was after early post conquest depictions. They had it in mirror image and straight. For some…the reason, I don’t know why, but that was some of the early Mexican painters they did that. They put the title in reverse or the story in reverse.
JS: And why did you choose? To paint this, this story.
CC: Ah, because it appealed to me. And it also appealed to me the, you know, depicting the couple. I think nothing wrong about sexual intercourse. I think it’s a beautiful thing. And… like I… I don’t go to porno movies or anything, but I see a good depiction of a couple that are really loving each other. I think it’s a beautiful subject.
And this small painting with the green background. Is a painting of a young lady who was apprentice to me some years back. She wanted to learn lino-block cutting and woodblock cutting. And, I asked her if she’d pose for me and she did.
Now over here I guess it’s number…was it four right? A few years ago, the proprietor of Casa Loca was putting on an exhibition of paintings about Frida Kahlo. The wife of Diego Rivera. And an artist in her own respect, although, unlike Diego she was very introspective. However up here, among the Anglo world the only Mexican woman artist they seem to know about is Frida Kahlo. And so she’s dressed in the garb of the Guadalupana. There’s an expression, you know, a singer, she’s the Guadalupana of canción or the Guadalupana of this or that. And Guadalupe is the…the main saint of Mexico. Derived from the pre-Columbian earth goddess. Anyway. You see the figure of the real Guadalupana poking around the shoulder holding a list of other Mexican female artists. Saying “hay otras Frida” there’s others Frida. This one number 5, the Cafe Jumping Bean wanted to put on a Jesus Show. Well, I’m not a churchgoing myself, but my favorite anecdote about Jesus was driving the money changers out of the temple. But here I have the Jesus in a work shirt. And, uh, it got more or less like a Mexican and in back of him is a pyramid, and the pyramids in Mexico were the basis for temples. Oftimes, the temples were just like a structure with a, with a grass roof. And he’s driving out the money changers. And of course, I’m showing you the money changer mostly as capitalists and see as Chief Executive Offers(sic)…uh, officers of corporations. Oh yeah, Christ happens to be wearing a United Farm Workers button.
KF: That should be repositioned in another…
JS: Do you want to move?
KF: …so you don’t have to turn around as much.
CC: OK. Yeah, that’s good. This time I’ll let you bring me my walker.
JS: OK, so where do you want him, Kapra.
CC: She’s the cinematographer. I’ll let her decide.
KF: Maybe in this corner.
CC: Right in the corner. (off camera Carlos is using his walker to move to the new location).
JS: Comfortable chairs.
KF: We’ll get you your water, too.
CC: Let me take a drag out of this and you can put it back. (Carlos drinks some water and hands it back to Jeanne).
All right. This I entitled Yosemite 2000 BC. I depicted Yosemite, well, from a sketch from one of my sketchbooks. I took liberties with color and all that and the nude figure…chose (an) indigenous woman taking in the scenery. Actually… I did it from some sketches that I did of my wife years ago. And of course, this is the Half Dome Rock.
KF: Okay, wait a second. I’ve got to put my headphones on to monitor the sound. I’m sure it was just fine.
CC: We hope so. And. Over here is one of my latest paintings. I did it toward the end of fall of 2001. Was a young lady near living next door who agreed to pose for me. She’s now down in, uh, Champagne, going to the university there. And I had this wicker chair, and I had her sit in it. And I consider this my masterpiece because I got her like this down… quite good. And I worked over it. Oh, I guess over a period of several weeks, she came into the house and sat for me, and this painting is all from life. Well, like the painting of the lady with the…behind the screen door.[3] However, I didn’t use her face on that, I used a different face. And that sums up what’s at the gallery here.
JS: So, Carlos, you said that you considered this piece your masterpiece.
CC: Yeah.
JS: Because it you you’ve captured her life so much. Are there any things else in that piece that makes you say that statement? What? What is it that that feels…
CC: Well, I remember my wife said, why don’t you have her smiling? And later she says no, no, no, that’s perfect that way. It shows her in a pensive mood. And. Well, I don’t know. I think a painting…smiling in nude is too much like a girly magazine. And I’d like to rise a little above that level. She is Asiatic…very petite figure and she’s posed for numerous sketches, as well as numerous photographs that I intend eventually to exhibit…when I get a portfolio of photographs that have been acquired over the years. And again, this is the gallery of La Llorona or roughly translated as the weeping lady. Proprietor Arturo Avendano…very good friend of mine.
JS: Do you want to talk a little bit? About who La Llorona is because…
CC: Oh, yeah.
JS: There’s a strong relationship in in a little bit of sense to this painting that you’ve been talking about. And it’s a perfect place to exhibit it.
CC: Okay, I’ll tell you, let’s see. La Llorona is one of the ancient legends of Mexico…pre-Colombian legend. Arturo, you can correct me on things. I guess, uh, she gave away her children or killed her children then went searching for them, crying. And it’s something like the…or what would you call the banshees of Ireland and so on. She can be heard at night. Crying for her lost children. Also, there’s a Greek…classic Greek story of the Media…or, they say, Medea, who killed her own children? Lot of folklore around the world has this theme of the…the mother who lost or killed their own children and spent the rest of eternity looking for them.
JS: We’ve talked in the past about why you paint nudes, but we’ve never talked about what, what your perception is of women. Your viewpoint of women?
CC: Well…
JS: …in the abstract.
CC: Women are essential to men. Men are essential to women. Somebody, I don’t know…somebody said, women hold up half the sky, and I think, women are very important, because the first few years of an individual…of an individual’s life is spent in the company of the mother. And it’s the mother who lays the foundation of the individual. Now in our present male, patriarchal-oriented society it’s the man who is…who is tops. Well, it’s even in the Bible and so many societies, it’s masculine-oriented. But in truth it’s the women who are the foundation. Women are the foundation.
Well…the normal division of labor the man is out hunting or making a living or tilling the fields and the woman is taking care of the house and the children; preparing them for when they reach adulthood. Now you find societies that are…. are patriarchal, or masculine-oriented. And then there are still societies that are matriarchal or matrilineal in which the line of descent passes through the mother, which is logical. That way you can have an unbroken line of descent. For that reason, patriarchal societies are more Puritan or repressive and tend to be militaristic. Whereas matriarchal societies tend to be more libertarian, more anarchistic? Well, an example today is among some of the Zapotecos and Zapotecas in Oaxaca. And they’ve had a long civilization, and while the men are still mainly… they go off macho and everything, but the shots are called by the women. And they’re the administrators. And I think it’s quite logical. The women take care of the children, a precious thing, and I think human society is a precious thing. Well, you have many examples of that? The Hood (sic) and the Shawnee or what are commonly referred to as the Iroquois, the Chiefs and all that are men but it’s the clan mothers who select the chiefs who determine, who the men are going to be, who direct things. And many indigenous western hemisphere societies were matriarchal. The women called the shots, it’s in other parts of the world, too. Where people who live close to nature, which urbanized people are prone to refer to as primitive. They have societies and they all said not only that they have a respect for the ecology. They realize that…. well, there was an Indian saying that we have to preserve the environment for its 7th generation. Well, when the 7th generation comes, very unlikely… dead… you or I are gonna be around. In other words, some would say, but how could they know such a thing? They were primitive.
KF: Can we cut for a second.
CC: Sure thing.
JS: You want some water? It’s over here.
CC: OK and let me take another shot.
KF: Keep on going.
JS: We will have for posterity that Carlos Cortez smokes.
CC: And I’m standing under, I’m… I’m standing under my own paintings anyway. (telephone rings) Briefly where I was now.
JS: All right. Well, we were talking about…
CC: Oh, yes. That so-called civilized people are prone to refer to the indigenous people as primitive. And of course, primitive people only kill each other with the bows and arrows and…and clubs. Whereas civilized people kill each other with machine guns and atom bombs and Napalm. So, I don’t like that they’re primitive. In fact, I think it’s a very much misused term, but, they say, how could they know when they had all the nature around them, endless. I said they were because they live close to nature. They knew nature had its own limitations. And I knew that you had to work not just exploit your surroundings, you had to work with him and live with him and make sure that the plants you cropped, that you grew there would be more. Enough people came around to developing cereal grain that enabled them to lead said sedentary lives and not to depend upon following seasonal vegetation or the herds for hunting.
JS: Carlos?
CC: And all civilizations owe their genesis toward the to the cultivation of a “cereal” grain. Where there’s wheat, barley, rice or maize, or what’s known as corn among white people here. The one difference is corn is a human invention. It was developed by cross-graining different grasses to make the modern plant of maize. And like other peoples, the cereal grain is looked upon as a sort of a sacrament. And like it’s used in many religious ceremonies and any wine or liquor made from that is also a sacrament. And, uh, to the western hemisphere peoples corn is a sacred plant. There’re stories about how it was given by the gods and that, but actually… it showed the inventiveness of human beings.
JS: Have you painted any paintings…around the idea of corn?
CC: I have. I have I left…when I was up in Milwaukee. And of course, my attitude on women is that women are for men… are partners in life. I know I’ve been criticized by some feminists. Why do you paint women? I said I paint women because I like women. I think they’re beautiful. I says, after all, why don’t you get back …back at us men by painting men? But I realize that men are visually stimulated whereas women are tactilely stimulated. Could be more than just “looking” for a woman to take interest in a man. But to me, there’s nothing lovelier than an unclad woman…in the right context. Of course… you show a city…because there’s one Belgian painter[4], he shows city scenes with nudes walking down the street…huh? That’s out of context.
JS: So. I want to go more to the personal. Because you were talking about men are stimulated visually, women need to have more than the visual.
CC: Yeah.
JS: More than seeing than a man. What attracted you to Mariana?
CC: Well. It was a…it was a communicative process. Somehow, she was attracted to me. And so we met many, many years ago. She was visiting her brother when he was having his child. Because both the brother and his wife were working and so she took care of the child. And she came here not speaking any English and my Greek was limited to over-the-counter Greek. But she spoke a little broken Italian. Which I also spoken… I squired her around for…for the summer. She went back and…off and on correspondence ensued. I know when she had an affair, correspondence dropped off a little and I guess after both of my parents were gone, she resumed the correspondence and she sounded very interested, I said, I should look into this. I’ve done a heck of a lot stupider things in my life so I went over visited her and we decided we were a couple. She came back with me. Yeah, it was the best thing I ever did. I had 35, good years with her and of course, cancer came along and limited it to 35 years, and I’m… well I had a great time and “ya estoy pagando la cuenta” I’m paying the price now.
JS: So, this painting of Yellowstone, did you… have you visited Yellowstone?
CC: Yeah, a couple of times? Not Yellowstone, Yosemite.
JS: Do you have any stories about your visits to Yosemite? (music begins off-camera)
CC: Many stories, many stories. Oh, we got good musical background. I was…I guess the first time I was there I was out there with my father and my cousin, and her son drove us out there. And then the second time. Oh, back in 19, I think 80, 82 or 83… (19)83 I think it was. I was out by myself but my buddy, my compadre because I’m…Mariana and I adopted his daughter as our godchild. We drove up and rented…oh, he had the keys to a cabin that was owned by a grandson of Jack London[5]. And we spent a few days out there I sketched, and we drove around and even took part in some little poetry sessions that were at the… at the park house. And I wrote a number of poems out there as well. And of course. Coming into Yosemite…it’s a…every time I come in, it’s terrific emotional appearance. Seeing these huge rocks in it. Stood for who knows how many eons. You know this was the sacred valley of the Indigenous Peoples…and there are still some there. Who…Who…Who live in the park. And they have a village, you know, composed out of the materials that they used. And two of them were closed off to outsiders: the sweat lodge and the Council house. Others you could go in and look around. And they were closed up because they’re still being used by the descendants of the indigenous people. And I’ve been to, well, I’ve been many times to California because that’s where my father came as a child, when he came up from Mexico with his, with his parents. He grew up in California and so I had cousins out there. Which I have since lost contact with if they’re still alive. I went out many times. First you know there to stay with cousins, and then I got acquainted with the artists out there. And my compadre, who died the other year. So, I love California very much. Well…well, I’ve been around pretty much of the 48. The only part of the 48 I haven’t been in is New England. But otherwise, I’ve been all over the country.
JS: It’s too cold there right now.
CC: Yeah.
JS: Carlos, I didn’t know that your… your father spent a lot of time in California.
CC: Yeah, he…he grew up in California.
JS: But you were born in Milwaukee?
CC: I was born in Milwaukee.
JS: Um, but that…that’s definitely part of your father’s heritage.
CC: Yeah, yeah.
JS: I guess what I’m… I’m wondering is.
CC: My mother’s heritage.
JS: Is the idea of Chicano part of your own identity?
CC: I identify myself as Chicano, although I say that I’m a Chicano who is half German. Because after all, my mother was German and she had a great influence on my life. And I’ve been to Germany a number of times. Which I enjoy. And I’ve been to Greece a number of times so I have three homelands.
JS: So, so to you, what does the idea of Chicano mean to you personally as la Llorona did in it?
CC: Well, Chicanos usually refer to Mexicans born north of Mexico. Or growing up north of Mexico. Chicano is derived from, uh the pre-Colombian word Mexica. Or correctly, “shecano”. Like a lot of Chicanos will spell it with an “x” Chixano or Chixana. I don’t say… I don’t identify myself as a Mexican because I did not grow up in Mexico. My first language was not Spanish. Ironically, it was German from my mother and later years I got to be more-or-less proficient with Spanish. I’m still not that proficient and I think of myself that it gives me a hemispheric identity. People ask me, don’t you consider yourself an American? I said, well, what’s an American? I said my Mexican ancestors were on this side of the ocean thousands of years before any Americans came over, or before there were even Americans. Somehow, they managed to name a whole hemisphere after an Italian cartographer, Amerigo Vespucci. Well, we did have our own, our own names. But of course, this is a part of, this is a facet of imperial… imperialism. Just like Africa, they had many indigenous names for Africa, but there was a name that the Europeans had on the continent. And oddly enough. All of the names of the different continents on the earth are all European names. Because it was the Europeans who…who were the conquerors and the explorers. Not that other people didn’t explore after all. This continent was colonized by my who knows how many waves of migrations across the Bering Isthmus or the Bering Straits? Or even coming across the Pacific Ocean. If Polynesians came as far as the Easter Islands off the coast of Chile. They obviously hit the mainland. And this was no accident. These peopling of the Polynesian islands was the result of expeditions in outrigger boats. Using their…(video cuts out then restarts after a break).
CC: And. As I said the…their expedition was corroborated by the oral histories of people they came in contact with. Marius Barbeau, who was the top ethnologist/anthropologist in Canada did a lot of work on the Indians of Canada. And he spoke of the, you know totem pole and cedar cultures. And how the objects were similar to Chinese objects had the same names? And oh yes. I was beginning to mention the lacquer work in Michoacan. Or where they put different layers of lacquer on a tray and then chipped away, exposing the different colors. And they said they learned that from the Chinese. So, Columbus wasn’t first. The Vikings were here. And it said that there was one expedition from Wales that sailed across the ocean. Were never heard again. Except for one particular nation, the men then, who are lighter skinned, and had words that coincided with Welsh. So human migration has been an ongoing thing. When the Plainsmen would enter the sweat lodge or the council lodge, they would say. “Omni taquiescen” – Here are all my relation. They’re referred to La Raza Cosmica, or the human race. Everybody is related. And if you take that into consideration, you…well you have two parents, four grandparents, 8 great-grandparents keep doubling back every generation…by the time we reach the age of the Crusades. There weren’t that many people on Earth, then or now. So, the human race is a result of a lot of miscegenation and incest. We’re really related to each other. But the Indians went even further. They were related to all life. And of course, science bears that out. All life came from single celled creatures. Evolved from there.
KF: Take a break and have a little water, because is this your water?
AA: No, I’m very comfortable here.
KF: You don’t have to give up.
AA: Carlos, we have iced tea.
JS: No, not for me. Carlos, do you want something else?
CC: No, no, I got my beer and…and a little bit of whiskey left.
JS: At home?
CC: Yeah.
KF: Waiting for you…in anticipation.
CC: Yeah.
Rest of the tape – approx. 14 minutes are silent cutaways of the paintings that Carlos mentions earlier in the interview that were on display at the La Llorona Gallery.
- Mayahuel uan Xochipilli
- Blonde nude with blue eyes to left of Mayahuel one arm up one down green background.
- Detail of the names of other Mexican female artists in the Guadalupano painting.
- Pan of Jesus in a worker’s shirt, Guadalupano,
- Wood cut with a man’s face looking up with the dog’s head. Man’s best friend converted to Man’s worst enemy, himself.
- Standing nude with a tray. Madrugadoración
- Pan from nude with hands in front, Jose Gonzalez piece, Madrugadoración, Dog best friend, unknown piece, Yosemite
- Zoom and close up of nude, frontal with hand in front.
- Details of Yosemite
- Carlos sitting in chair in front of Yosemite.
- Nude in wicker chair.
Transcribed by Kapra Fleming. Use of any part of this transcribed interview is allowed with proper attribution to the source (as follows):
Carlos Cortez at La Llorona Gallery, video interview with Jeanne Salis and Kapra Fleming, February 14, 2002 (KA-DV19975_CHGO2-10CC).
[1] Xōchipilli [ʃoːt͡ʃiˈpilːi] is the god of art, games, dance, flowers, and song in Aztec mythology. His name contains the Nahuatl words xōchitl (“flower”) and pilli (either “prince” or “child”) and hence means “flower prince”. God of love, lord of flowers, young men and fertility, patron of male prostitution. His wife is the human girl Mayahuel,
[2] Mi Casa Su Casa was a Mexican restaurant in Chicago on Southport Avenue at the corner of Lill Street, just north of Fullerton Avenue and closed around 2000 when the owner retired per an online post see photo.
[3] La Madrugadoración, mentioned previously.
[4] Paul Delvaux
[5] An American novelist and journalist