[Previous entry: "ARTCHICAGO"] [Next entry: "DEAN MITCHELL: Easy in his own skin"]
05/10/2007: "DeGrazia and the Indians" by Ron Butler
No artist in modern time has been more closely associated with the American Indian, particularly the Indians of the American Southwest, than Tucson's Ted DeGrazia.Before his death in 1982 at the age of 73, DeGrazia not only painted Indians, he lived among them, worked with them, brought them to his home and his table, shared their rituals, championed their causes, loaned them money, bailed them out of jail, donated art for tribal fund-raisers, shared their beliefs and studied their history, all the while gaining an insight into the Native American way of life that helped make his work known and admired throughout the world.
A maverick in every sense of the word, DeGrazia's feet-on-the-ground persona -- beard, sunglasses, Western hat, dusty jeans, boots, and enough silver and turquoise jewelry to outfit a small trading post -- was as well known as his art. He was outspoken:
"The government should abolish reservations."
"With the coming of the white man, the Indian lost his land. But worst of all he lost his freedom."
"Treaties were made and broken. The Indians should have been made equal citizens from the beginning. Instead, they were moved aside, pushed back and forgotten."
"Washington has been trying to do something for the Indians for over a hundred years, but all it's done is add more white people to the government payroll to take care of them."
"When you create a reservation you create a separate nation. The Indian thinks he is in a foreign country. If you've ever felt unwanted, you can understand how the Indian feels."
Today, with the image of the American Indian at a particularly low ebb thanks to reservation gambling, the forfeiture of mineral rights, copycat arts and crafts, cultural dissipation, unemployment, alcohol, drug and child abuse -- and the governments Indian Affairs bureaucracy more muddled than ever -- DeGrazia's vision remains indelible. In his paintings the Noble Savage is forever noble.Along with the Mission San Xavier del Bac, Degrazia's Gallery in the Sun on North Swan Road in Tucson is a place that Tucsonans can't wait to show visiting out-of-towners as an example of what Tucson's all about.
From the metal mine-shaft doors at the entrance to the polished cholla tiles in the floor (dried cacti stamped with earth), the gallery-museum celebrates DeGrazia's life and work. Walk through the door and you'll sense his presence everywhere - from the paintings on the walls, whimsical, haunting, moving, instantly recognizable, to the adobe design of the building itself and in the larger-than-life photos on the wall of the larger-than-life artist with a beard.
The sprawling, single-story museum utilizes only natural material from the surrounding desert. Its soothing colors are swept by muted light that spills like confetti from stained glass panels and marbles in the ceiling. Adobe and turquoise,, armadas and railroad ties, cattle skulls, Indian masks, saguaro ribs, shards of pottery, chunks of copper ore, a handmade silver carousel with horses poised and reedy to spring into action.Adjacent to the museum is the Mission in the Sun, a had-built adobe chapel completed in 1952 and dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe - patron saint of the Yaqui Indians and of Mexico and to the memory of Father Eusebio Kino, the Jesuit missionary who built churches throughout the Southwest in the 17th century.
Nearby is the artist's grave. The man who could afford a mausoleum worthy of J. P. Morgan is buried as he wished in a plain pin coffin covered by a mound of rocks so that his remains would be safe from marauding coyotes and other desert scavengers. DeGrazia liked things like that. He talked that way. If museums wouldn't show his work, then he's bulked his own museum. Like the ball park, he built it and the people came.
But with the death of his widow Marion two years ago, at 97, the Gallery in the Sun was without a DeGrazia at the helm for the first time since its inception 50 years earlier.
Before his death in 1982, DeGrazia called his lawyers together and set up the DeGrazia Arts and Cultural Foundation to maintain the property and its holdings. A board of directors was established. DeGrazia's motives, he admitted somewhat tongue-in-cheek, was to make sure that Marion didn't run off with a truck driver who could conceivably inherit the whole thing.But Marion, who was named the foundation's Chairman of the Board for Life, didn't run off with a truck driver. She devoted the remainder of her years, perpetuating DeGrazia's name and legacy. It was a large order. Arizona's Foundation Center for Statistical Services ranks the DeGrazia Foundation 13th among the state's top 50 foundations, listing assets at more than $37 million.
The agenda at a recent board meeting (members get $400 a pop for attending) included plans for traveling DeGrazia exhibits, applying to the U.S. Postal Service for a special commemorative DeGrazia stamp, and investigating the possibilities a copy of the bronze Yaqui Deer Dancer on the entranceway of the Arizona State Museum with its spectacular collection of Indian arts and artifacts.
From the beginning, Marion and the board of directors were at odds. She called them "Dopey and the Seven Dwarfs." The situation grew with mounting intensity and exploded 14 years ago with the installation of "Pasion por Frida," a large exhibit of paintings and folk art by various artists and craftsmen all inspired by Frida Kahlo. The exhibit originated at the Diego Rivera studio Museum in Mexico City and came to Tucson to commemorate the relationship between DeGrazia and Diego Rivera that began a half-century earlier when the young DeGrazia went to Mexico to seek out the master and work as his apprentice.
From the moment the show was mounted, Marion hated it. It was the first time paintings other than DeGrazia's were hung on the main walls of the Gallery in the Sun. (An adjacent gallery, called "the Little Gallery," offers free exhibit space to promising young artists.)
"The Kahlo Show is nothing but blood and penises," said Marion, vowing not to enter the gallery again until the show was gone. And she didn't. The fact that her home was attached to the gallery, adjacent to the back courtyard, made such a boycott restrictive, to say the least. The show ran from Jan. 22 until the end of March.
Buoyed by the "Friedamania" that was sweeping the art world at the time, the show drew the biggest crowds the gallery had ever seen. DeGrazia was in good company.
The board wanted to set up traveling exhibits. Marion was adamant that her husband's work not leave the gallery. The board wanted to hold cocktail receptions at the gallery to announce special exhibits and events. (So prodigious was DeGrazia's output that only part of his wok can be shown at any one time.) Marion thought cocktail receptions were a waste of time.There were personality clashes, to say the least.
Toward the end, the board tried to squeeze Marion out. There was talk of closing the gallery's back entrance so she couldn't get in. Employees were told that if they followed any of her instructions, they would be fired. Her phone privileges at the gallery were terminated, forcing her to install a private line in her house. Marion had a two-story tower built over her residence. She said it as so she could enjoy the sunsets against the mountains as she had done so often with her husband. The gallery staff speculated that it was so she could keep an eye on what was going on. The Chairman of the Board, now in her 90s, was clearly seen as a meddlesome interloper,
As were her wishes, Marion wanted no public service when she died. She wanted to be cremated and have her ashes scattered under a mesquite tree on the property. A small memorial service was held at the Guadalu[pe Chapel, attended by 40 or so close friends and museum employees. But Marion's ashes - she was a fighter until the end - weren't ready in time for the service. Another memorial service was scheduled for the following week, but this time no mesquite tree could be located on the property One had to be hastily planted.
You can be sure it will grow study and strong.
Recently, after three earlier appointments didn't work out, a new permanent director was named to run the Gallery in the Sun. He's Lance Laver who began working at the gallery 25 years ago as a gofer and handyman. Under his direction, harmony seems to have settled once again over the Gallery in the Sun.
Born in the Arizona mining town of Morenci on June 14, 1909, DeGrazia was the third of seven children. His parents, Domoniac and Lucia Gagliardi DeGrazia, were natives of Italy. Arizona was still a territory. The idea of being born in Arizona before it was a state always delighted him. "Though it kind of dates me pretty well," he said, "being ancient."
After his first breath of life, his first drink of water was Apache water from Eagle Creek. As he grew up, spending most of his early years in Greenlee, Cochise and Pima counties, he was always interested in Indians -- the Pimas, Papagos, Apachis and Yaquis. He always considered them his neighbors and friends. He learned to ride on Indian ponies.
DeGrazia made his first trip into the land of the Navajos in the late 1930s, and he returned there time and time again, sometimes as an artist, sometimes just to find the peace and tranquility that the Navajos and their land seemed to offer. Soon the wagon tracks he first knew became hard-surfaced highways -- sleek, slick and fast. The pickup truck replaced the covered wagon. A way of life he found simple and dignified was beginning to erode. He reconciled himself with the knowledge that it was a big land. Navajo life, as he knew it, would survive in those remote, faraway places.
"I don't know why I paint Indians," he once said. "Maybe I'm afraid that the Indians are going to vanish and I want to be around to fill my eyes. It's like waiting for death. I know it's coming, so I know that someday the Indians will be no more. Maybe it's because I feel good around them, and often wish I were one of them. Hell, I don't know."
When he built his Gallery In the Sun, a huge, earth-hugging adobe compound in Tucson's Santa Catalina foothills, it was with the help of Indian friends. When he rode into the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix in 1967 to burn dozens of paintings to protest what he felt was an unfair tax against artists -- the practice of accessing unsold paintings at full commercial value when an artist dies -- he was accompanied by Indian companeros (along with a major contingent of press and television reporters). The burning of an estimated $1.5 million worth of his paintings received worldwide coverage.
Whether signing prints at an Old Town gallery in San Diego or a department store in Phoenix, there was always an Indian or two in his entourage, a drummer, a flute player or just a friend coming along for the ride.
The Indian presence was never exploited. A frequent guest on NBC's Today Show, he was once invited to appear on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. During the preliminary interviews he learned he was expected to bring some Indians along as well. "They could dance. We could have some fun with them," he was told. End of interview.
"I never felt that I was better than an Indian. And I'm sure an Indian never felt he was better than me," DeGrazia once said. "When I paint Indians, I paint them collectively, all Indians as one. But when I speak to Indians, I always speak to them as individuals.
"Indians are not al alike. They have different features, are built differently, they even have different color pigmentation. Once when I was in New York, Doubleday asked me to illustrate something to do with the Plains Indians. I said I didn't know anything about Plains Indians. They said all I had to do was put feathers on their back.
"When you look at my paintings you can tell if it's a Rio Grande Pueblo Indian, an Apache, a Papago, a Yaqui, a Tarahumara, a Navajo, a Rio Colorado Cocopah, or a Seri from Tiburon Island."The respect and admiration he had for Indians as a child remained throughout his life. He was ever aware of subtle tribal characteristics.
"The Yaquis remind me of wild run-away horses," he said. "When I think of Yaquis, I think of their sharp, quick, energetic movements -- the wild one wishing always to be free. When I hear a Yaqui flute player I begin to have the feeling of the Yaqui. It is the spirit of the desert, the spirit of the Yaqui.
"When I see a saguaro I think of the Papagos (now called Tahono O'odham) -- the origin of both are the same. I like to paint them together. To me the Papago are the Saguaro Indians.
"When the Whites shake hands they do so as if they were pumping water out of a well. With the Navajos, it's just a soft brushing of the hands, each reluctant to show undue strength to the other."
"Indians hate beards because the Spanish Conquistadores had beards and the cruelties that Indians suffered under their hands remain buried deep in their subconscious. Often when a strange Indian sees my beard, he immediately begins to pluck a hair or two from his chin with his thumb and forefinger, without thinking. It's funny, but they do it."
This same knowledge and insight gave his work a rare authenticity. Among the hundreds of paintings of permanent display at the the Gallery In the Sun is Desert Medicine Man, a Papago healer under a mesquite ramada with his feathers and fetishes healing a sick Indian as others look on. The painting was used as the model for a large mosaic on the face of the Sherwood Medical Center in Tucson. (In serious disrepair after years of neglect and weathering, the mosaic was recently acquired by the DeGrazia Foundation, repaired and moved to the gallery grounds where it's now permanently displayed outdoors.)
Another, titled Alone, depicts a mounted Indian leading an empty horse, heading away toward the distant horizon. To where? Only the artist knew. Painted in 1964, it was DeGrazia's favorite painting. It speaks of inevitable change, both in his work and in the world he loved.
"A new generation of Indians appears on the horizon, in full regalia, with a new car and a wrist watch," he said. "The Navajos don't speak Navajo anymore, the Hopis aren't hoping, the Yaquis are indifferent and the Papagos could care less. I liked the Indians a hell of a lot better when they were still Indians, before they became Native Americans.
"You find Indians don't even ride horses anymore. I once visited a trading post and watched an old longhair ride onto the crest of a hill. He sat on that horse, straight and tall, and looked and looked at a Coca-Cola machine. It resembled a giant jukebox. He looked and he looked again -- and finally he turned his horse and rode away."
Many of DeGrazia's oils are done in swirls of color. He liked motion in his paintings --India wagon races, Apache hoop dancers, running horses, rodeos, bullfights, cock fights, roadside carousels. He strived to convey an instant freeze, a moment, to capture a thought or mood in color. "I always try to go beyond the intellect," he said. "I want the onlooker to participate -- to be part of the painting. It should be an emotional experience."
He painted with a pallet knife, a technique developed early on because he was too poor to afford brushes. Except for a sketch pad, DeGrazia rarely worked in public. Instead, he'd observe a scene or a subject over and over until it was etched clearly in his mind and then he would paint it back at his studio. Often, too, there were instant impressions. He'd walk through an Indian village, pass a doorway, glance in and see a painting.
It was nothing for him to go 600 or 700 miles to attend an Indian fiesta only to find it had been postponed. Some say that's why he charged so much for his work.
He loved children, especially Mexican and Indian children. They're all over his canvases, their beautiful black eyes looking out at the viewer in awe. "Probrecita, how I love the little ones," he'd say.
His painting "Los Ninos," a swirling band of Mexican children hand-in-hand, was used as a Christmas card by UNICEF, raising millions of dollars. It is believed to be the biggest-selling card in UNICEF history
Success has ruined many artists and DeGrazia fought its growing constraints, often complaining that his time was no longer his own. "I used to paint ninety percent of the time and spend ten percent on business. Now I spend ninety percent on business, and only ten percent on art. What the hell for?"
He continued to visit Indian country. He loved the sound of Indian drums. "Once you hear that sound you will never forget it -- in the wee hours of the morning while you are asleep and dreaming, in the early evening or late at night mixed with fire, smoke and stars."
But all over the Southwest the Indians continued to change. Call it progress, if you will, to bring the Indians a better way of life. But it saddened him to see a jukebox in a Hopi trading post, and it saddened him to learn that a mammoth Basha's was being built at Window Rock, capital of the Navajo Nation. The Apaches, the Papagos, the Pimas, the Pueblo Indians along the Rio Grande -- they were all changing.
A prolific artist, DeGrazia created dozens of books and thousands of paintings, water colors and drawings. Basically a painter, he also modeled in clay and worked with ceramics, pottery, bees' wax and bronze. Like a photographer scrambling to finish shooting in the fading light of day, he was determined to capture the last remaining vestiges of the Indians old and colorful ways.
When a persistent pain began to interrupt his work he visited a Navajo medicine man. The two went down to a creek bed beneath a huge cottonwood tree and shared a bottle of Chivas Regal. The pain went away. DeGrazia congratulated the medicine man on his amazing powers.
But the next day the pain came back. It was eventually diagnosed as terminal cancer. He died on September 17, 1982.
Indians drums played at his funeral.
# #
Ron Butler, a former New York magazine editor, is the author of several books, including The Best of the Old West (Texas Monthly Press) and Fodor's Guide to New Mexico, and the recently published Dancing Alone in Mexico (UofA Press). He lives in Tucson
The DeGrazia Gallery is located at 6300 N. Swan Road, Tucson, Ariz., 85715; tel. 520/299-9191. Admission is free. None of the original oil paintings, sculptures or water colors is for sale, except for some that are sold on consignment in a special exhibit room. The museum gift shop, however, offers a wide selection of cards, prints, lithographs, ceramics and books by and about the colorful artist.
