Japanese Picture Scrolls by way of El Paso, Texas … or, I <3 Raul Gonzalez

I always squirm, just a little bit, when people ask artists to explain their work or artists proffer explanations of their work.  Not to diminish those artists who are eloquent and poignant on their work, but the expectation isn’t particularly fair or logical.  Artists speak through their various media, and language is only one.  As a writer speaks through words, a musician speaks through song, a dancer through dance, a painter speaks through what happens on the canvas.  If the work is any good, it should do the talking for itself.  Artistic brilliance is an elusive and ephemeral thing.  A great work typically has layers of reference that are part of the artist rather than deliberate artifice.  That is what I think makes Raul Gonzalez’s images so compelling.

Gonzalez is a self-taught artist.  A self-taught cartoonist to be more exact.  But just as graphica has claimed its place as a literary genre, Gonzalez has moved his work from the pages of comics into the art gallery.  This sounds annoyingly pedantic, even to me, but it can’t be helped, as Gonzalez’s work looks catchy and bright on the surface, but is pedantic at it’s core and that’s what makes it great.  In part the introduction of the language of cartoon to the art gallery is just a part of the overall elevation of street art and popular art.  But I love Raul’s work for its combination phenomenal contemporary relevance and historical reference.  My favorite of all of his paintings (okay, my favorite of those I have seen) is Untitled #4 (pictured below).

Pretty awesome, no? On the surface it is sensational in all of the ways that cartoons can be. Cute, bright, colorful, bold, visually arresting, dramatic in its narrative. But it’s so much more than that.  Gonzalez stains the paper with coffee for an antiquing effect.  But to me, above all the effect is reminiscent of 13th century Japanese picture scrolls.

In many ways Gonzalez’s work reminds me of Takashi Murakami — not surprising since the paradigm is fairly similar. But I find all of the Japanese qualities particularly curious in Raul’s work because of their juxtaposition against references to the language of his personal history and upbringing (traveling between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico).

A large part of the work is the way it conveys Gonzalez’s own persona.  Given how profound his work is, he is surprisingly open and down to earth.  This past spring, as part of a community arts initiative, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston had him create a large scale piece entitled “and their Families”.  To complete the work, he enlisted the help of 125 kids from all over Boston.  The pages you see attached to the tree below in the “after” image from April 21 are 11″x17″ family portraits the children created using pen, ink and color.  Through Gonzalez’s work, he not only brings popular culture forms into museums and galleries, but reaches back to bring the next generation into contact with art, to make it accessible to them and to see themselves as creators.    He teaches kids cartooning and comic book art (if you live anywhere in the Greater Boston Area I would think about signing your kids up — I can’t imagine a more fun teacher).

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