One of my favorite artists is Martín Ramírez. He was definitely not included in my survey of Western Art History when I was an undergraduate art student. The closest we may have gotten was a mention of Jean Dubuffet and post WWII art. Ramírez was a Mexican cowboy and farm hand caught between various bits of lawlessness who went to El Norté in 1925 for work and eventually got swept up in the Byzantine immigration detention processes in California. He spoke no English. One bad thing led to another and he was eventually diagnosed as a schizophrenic and, starting in 1931, spent the remainder of his life in state psychiatric institutions where he started making drawings and collages on which is posthumous fame now rests.
About a decade or two ago, I saw a show of his large works at a museum in New York City. And I keep a postcard reproduction of one of his train and tunnel images near my work table.
The train emerges from the tunnel on the left and will traverse an open section of tracks in the center before disappearing into the tunnel entrance on the right. It’s a mysterious, surreal, hopeful and sinister dream-like image. One of those predicaments that offers no resolution. The only comfort, if you can call it that, is that we are only observers and not participants in the predicament.
The top image on this page is my own and it is more hopeful. Parallel lines and and colors start to define a space. Is it a map? Is it a subterranean tangle of tunnels? The birds (all for one and one for all!) will investigate. Their combined good sense will save them.
Still, I am moved and heartbroken when I think about Martín Ramírez’s life and the unfair things that befell him. At least he had art to help shape his tangled life experience for himself and others. It’s aggravating that he’s been swept up again into the art collecting machinery of this world. But how else would the story have come to me, to the world ? Recommended reading: “Martín Ramírez: Framing His Life and Art” by Víctor M. Espinosa (University of Texas Press, 2015)