Both American and other: 'Latino Presence' at Delaware Art Museum

How should you look at a painting such as Danza de Carnaval, a 1974 work by Freddy Rodríguez?

If you consider the canvas alone, you might see it as a painting very much of its time. It clearly takes some inspiration from the colorful striped abstractions that Frank Stella had been producing and exhibiting in the few years before.

You can also see it as a New York painting, one that draws on many visits to the Museum of Modern Art and its great collection of Piet Mondrian paintings, especially Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Obviously, it is a geometric abstraction, but its grid is enlivened by stretches and distortions and a very different color palette than found in Stella or Mondrian. Even if you don't look at the title, you can probably see it dance.

This painting and two equally colorful and kinetic companion pieces are among the works in "Our America: the Latino Presence in American Art" at the Delaware Art Museum through May 29. Within this context, we are asked to see this painting by a native of the Dominican Republic as "Latino," though it is not clear whether this is a quality of the art or the artist.

The traveling exhibition, curated by E. Carmen Ramos of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is drawn entirely from that museum's collection. It will also be shown at the Allentown Art Museum from June 26 to Oct. 2.

The show title is careful to situate its contents within American-produced - which is to say United States-produced - art. In her catalog essay, Ramos says she uses the term Latino art "not as a cultural essence, but as an indicator of descent, shared experience, and art historical marginalization." The word Latino, she writes, arose during the second half of the 20th century to describe people with roots in very different places - originally Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Cuba - whose commonality was defined partly by language but primarily by their being seen as outsiders, even if they were born here.

The exhibition is at heart a showcase for the Smithsonian's efforts to identify and collect worthy work by Latinos. It is also an opportunity for the museums to which it travels to reach out to a Latino audience that often goes unserved. It features 92 works by about 70 artists and groups, which means most of the artists are represented by only a single work. Though the show is explicitly trying to increase the roster of important American artists, it doesn't show work in enough depth to make a case for any of them. Yet when these works return to Washington and are integrated into the galleries, most of them will more than hold their own among the museum's other works, which suggests its collecting initiative is quite successful.

The paradox at the heart of the show is that it asks us to view these works of art as fully American - whatever that means - and also distinctive and different. This is, of course, the same paradox that animates and roils the culture. Who are we? How much difference can we live with? Is our diversity a treasure or a problem? And when you celebrate your identity, are you forcing me to surrender some of mine?

Many of the strongest works in the show are, such as the Rodríguez paintings, formal and thematic hybrids. Man on Fire (1969) by Luis Jiménez, commemorates both the famous 1963 photograph of a Vietnamese monk who set himself on fire in protest during the war there and Cuauhtémoc, an Aztec ruler tortured with fire during the Spanish conquest. It is also a self-portrait. Still, what makes it memorable is the handling of its fiberglass surface in the style of California car customizers, which confers a pop sheen. It is both a monumental sculpture and a very large hood ornament.

Untitled, Bronx Storefront, "La Rumba Supermarket" (late 1980s) by Emilio Sánchez might simply document a neighborhood scene, a store with signs that speak easily in two languages. The pink and orange of the buildings and the blue, white, and green stripes that adorn them link this watercolor to Rodríguez's dancing abstractions. This work highlights the connection between Rodríguez's composition and everyday decoration in Latino communities, yet its own subtle and rigorous composition wasn't just picked up on the street.

Pure Plantanium (2006) by Miguel Luciano, an actual plantain covered in real platinum, is compellingly precious. The Puerto Rico-born artist grew up hearing poor and dark-skinned workers being described derisively as "stained by the plantain." In New York, he met young people who had taken the plantain as a symbol of ethnic pride and power. The real potency of the piece, though, comes from the knowledge that deep in this shiny, expensive object is something rotten.

Untitled (1980) from the Silueta series by Ana Mendieta, a Cuban who was sent to Iowa as a child soon after the revolution, is a quietly moving work. It is nothing but the outline of a female figure that recalls the "Venus" figures of Paleolithic Europe, sculpted in the earth and photographed in black and white. This is sculpture that is meant to disappear, yet it is a powerful depiction of the earth as giver of life, and also the place where we all end up.

Pariah (1971-72) by Marcos Dimas is a civil rights statement at an Old Master scale of ambition. Indeed, Dimas was probably echoing Velázquez, whose painting of his African slave had recently been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The mixed-race subject has a face of many colors; the African hair has a hint of abstract expressionism about it. Above all, there is dignity. We should be grateful if this pariah accepts us.

Placa/Rollcall (1980) by Charles "Chaz" Bojorquez is based on the so-called cholo graffiti used by gangs in East Los Angeles. The gangs made a practice of writing a roster of their members at the edge of their territory. The artist has taken an already stylized script and made it both more regular in its forms and more difficult to understand. If you stare at it, names start to emerge from the seemingly illegible writing. They are not obvious, but, as with all art, you just have to look more.

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art

Through May 29 at the Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Pkwy., Wilmington.
Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., until 8 p.m. Thursdays.
Admission: Families (maximum 2 adults, 4 children), $25; adults, $12; seniors (60 and older), $10; students and youths (ages 7-18), $6; children, free. Free admission Thursdays 4 to 8 p.m. and Sundays.
Information: 866-232-3714 or www.delart.org.