\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tRuth Leonela Buentello, Under the Mexican Colchas<\/em>, 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto BETH DEVILLIER\/Collection of the artist<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tYbarra-Frausto credits Mi Tierra Cafe y Panaderia, a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio\u2019s Historic Market Square that he has visited regularly since he was a kid, as being crucial to his critical eye, describing it as a \u201chotbed of rasquachismo.\u201d The walls and ceiling of the restaurant are covered with photographs, pi\u00f1atas, string lights, and papel picado, with ofrendas placed in multiple parts of the spacious cafe. \u201cEverything is covered with stuff there,\u201d he said. \u201cAll the space is filled up. There was sort of a horror vacui, a fear of an empty space.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIt wasn\u2019t until years later, when he began writing \u201cRasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility,\u201dthat he thought back to the aesthetics of a place like Mi Tierra. \u201cIn thinking of the relationship between Mexican art and European art, especially the Baroque, I began thinking that rasquachismo is a barrio Baroque. Mi Tierra is a perfect example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cTom\u00e1s is no accident. He comes from a long line of San Antonio intellectuals,\u201d said San Antonio\u2013based artist Cruz Ortiz<\/a>, who painted a portrait of Ybarra-Frausto<\/a> now owned by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and currently on view in its \u201c20th Century Americans: 2000 to Present\u201d galleries. \u201cThe most important thing about Tom\u00e1s is that he helped start the Chicano intellectual lexicon. You can\u2019t have a revolution without a lexicon. You can\u2019t have a movement without it. He made a map for us.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYbarra-Frausto said he found it fulfilling that the McNay mounted its recent rasquachismo tribute, since the museum helped foster his love for art from an early age. Yet the exhibition also had resonance for the community, in a city that is more than 60 percent Latinx, because it signified an important change in the McNay\u2019s curatorial direction. In 2023, the museum hired Lopez as its first-ever curator of Latinx art, making it one of the few museums in the US to have such a role.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tSalvador Jim\u00e9nez-Flores, La resistencia de los nopales h\u00edbridos \/ The Resistance of Hybrid Cacti<\/em>, 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy the artist<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tLopez, who first came across Ybarra-Frausto\u2019s essay in the early 2000s, knew she wanted to highlight the influence of the essay, and to show \u201chow the concept of rasquachismo continued to permeate within, not just institutions, but artists\u2019 studios.\u201d By way of example, she pointed to Salvador Jim\u00e9nez-Flores, who identifies as a \u201crasquache futurist\u201d and who was represented by five sculptures in the exhibition. The largest of these was La resistencia de los nopales h\u00edbridos \/ The Resistance of Hybrid Cacti <\/em>(2016), in which faces, a tongue, and an eye emerge from a towering green nopal, a metaphor for how Chicanos have needed to become hybrids to persist and resist in the US.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the exhibition was meant to speak to those already familiar with rasquachismo, Lopez also wanted to introduce the concept to a wider audience, highlighting how it \u201cresonates with so many other cultural forms, whether it\u2019s Arte Povera, punk and DIY culture, assemblage, a little bit of visionary art,\u201d she said, adding \u201cChicanos call it rasquachismo, but they may call it something else in other cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRunning through the exhibition were the three pillars of where someone might encounter rasquachismo that Ybarra-Frausto defined as \u201cla casa, la calle, y la comunidad\u201d (the home, the street, and the community). In these encounters, \u201cyou learn about the culture sometimes in unexpected ways, whether it\u2019s through a calendar or an advertisement. You begin to ask, \u2018Where did that symbol come from? Where did that icon originate?\u2019 You start to realize that these symbols have long histories.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor the display, Lopez opted for a salon-style hang, seeing it as \u201can intimate way of displaying work.\u201d She also collaborated on a \u201chybrid of an ofrenda and a Wunderkammer\u201d with Ybarra-Frausto, drawing various objects from each of their personal collections, like photographs, posters, candles, tchotchkes.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tInstallation view of \u201cRasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility,\u201d 2024\u201325, at McNay Art Museum, San Antonio. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Jacklyn Velez\/Courtesy the McNay Art Museum<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tIn his essay, Ybarra-Frausto looked at a wide range of works to define rasquachismo, including Daniel Villegas\u2019s 1928 novel Las aventuras de Don Chipote, or cuando los pericos mamen<\/em>, about \u201cthe trials and tribulations of a Mexican laborer as he maladapts to life in the United States,<\/em>\u201d or the early works of Luis Valdez\u2019s Teatro Campesino, which he described as \u201c[a]rticulating and validating the rasquache<\/em> sensibility in dramatic form.\u201d Other examples include the sculptures of Ruben Trejo, the performance pieces of Guillermo Gomez Pe\u00f1a, and the prints and murals by the Royal Chicano Air Force.<\/p>\n \n\tYbarra-Frausto\u2019s text went heavy on male artists\u2014and went on to inspire another essay, this one by artist Amalia Mesa-Bains<\/a>, who in 1995 wrote \u201cDomesticana: The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache,\u201d which offered a feminist perspective on rasquachismo. She wrote that Chicanas have been key to the development of this aesthetic, particularly through the construction of home altars for domestic spaces, as a form of emancipation within a patriarchal society. \u201cCritical to the strategy of\u00a0domesticana<\/em>\u00a0is the quality of paradox,\u201d she wrote. \u201cPurity and debasement, beauty and resistance, devotion and emancipation are aspects of the paradoxical that activate Chicana\u00a0domesticana<\/em>\u00a0as feminist intervention.\u201d Ybarra-Frausto described Mesa-Bains\u2019s essay as the \u201ctwin\u201d to his. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBoth essays have inspired generations of artists and curators. This year, the Latinx Project at NYU established<\/a> the Tom\u00e1s Ybarra-Frausto Curatorial Fund with a $150,000 grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to support \u201cthe professionalization of curators in the field of Latinx art.\u201d A 2024 exhibition organized by Josh T. Franco at the ICA Philadelphia took up the concept of yard art<\/a>, grounding it within a rasquachismo framework. In 2022, El Museo del Barrio mounted<\/a> \u201cDOMESTICANX,\u201d which expanded these concepts to include Latinx artists who do not identify as Chicanx and added a queer lens for understanding Ybarra-Frausto\u2019s concept. Lopez similarly wanted to \u201cdisrupt a little bit of that gender siloing\u201d that has inherent in domesticana. Included in the show is Rolando Brise\u00f1o\u2019s At the Round Table at the Bellagio <\/em>(1991), a fiber piece that shows a table with hands reaching toward it.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tInstallation view of \u201cRasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility,\u201d 2024\u201325, at McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, showing, at center Rolando Brise\u00f1o\u2019s At the Round Table at the Bellagio <\/em>(1991).<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Jacklyn Velez\/Courtesy the McNay Art Museum<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe McNay exhibition featured both historical artists who predate the conception of rasquachismo and emerging artists who had never even heard of the term previously. In doing a dive into the McNay\u2019s collection, Lopez found two ballpoint pen drawings by Consuelo \u201cChelo\u201d Gonzalez that had been donated in the \u201990s but never exhibited at the museum. Gonzalez is also significant within the museum\u2019s history, as the first Chicana to ever receive a solo exhibition there in 1968. Ybarra-Frausto, who saw that show, said, \u201cShe herself was considered an outsider artist because she was a woman. She was very important to me as a progenitor of Chicano art.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOn the other end of the spectrum is an artist like Laredo-based Mickey Rodriguez, whom Lopez said was less familiar with the concept but after reading the essay was \u201coverjoyed,\u201d feeling as though there was finally language to describe something she had \u201cseen [her] whole life.\u201d Rodriguez contributed two wall-hung sculptures to the exhibition that gather a variety of materials, assembled here to form maximalist, bric-a-brac constructions. Lopez added, \u201cThat was exciting to me, too, to spread the gospel of rasquachismo.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tInstallation view of \u201cRasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility,\u201d 2024\u201325, at McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, showing an installation by Victoria Martinez. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Jacklyn Velez\/Courtesy the McNay Art Museum<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tLopez also wanted to signal that something different was happening in the museum. In the McNay\u2019s octagonal entryway, she installed a hanging fiber work by Victoria Martinez, a Chicago-based artist who has lived in the city\u2019s historic Latinx neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village. In an alcove nearby were painted bricks. Both of Martinez\u2019s installations use found objects from these neighborhoods as a way to think about how rapidly they are gentrifying.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHer ability to find beauty in the fragments of the city that she experiences becomes this mini-monument to the things that are lost or overlooked in neighborhoods as they transform,\u201d Lopez said.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tVictoria Martinez, Puzzle Pieces: Introduce Yourself to San Antonio, Texas<\/em>, 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy the artist<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThat emphasis on seemingly mundane and everyday materials is also present in the work of Dallas-based artist Antonio Lechuga, whose uses cobijas<\/em>, vibrant fleece blankets that are abundant in Chicanx and Mexican households and are often sold at border crossings or in flea markets, as his material. Fence Section #3<\/em> (2021), for example, uses scraps from different cobijas to create an abstract lattice shape; its title, however, clarifies that it is in fact a representation of the US-Mexico border.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMany of the materials and the conversations that are happening here are at the intersection not only of culture but also of class,\u201d Lopez said, noting that rasquachismo\u2019s development within working-class communities was core to the concept.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tAntonio Lechuga, Fence Section #3<\/em> (detail), 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy the artist<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tWorks like Lechuga\u2019s and Martinez\u2019s embody this ingenious approach to materials that is a foundation of the rasquache aesthetic. \u201cResilience and resourcefulness spring from making do with what\u2019s at hand (hacer rendir las cosas<\/em>),\u201d Ybarra-Frausto wrote in 1989. During our recent conversation, Ybarra-Frausto pointed to a photograph by late artist Chuck Ramirez, a lifelong San Antonio resident who died in 2010. Brooms: Pale Yellow <\/em>(2007\/11) shows the top of a very worn-out broom. To Ybarra-Frausto, Ramirez\u2019s focus on \u201chow a broom could be used until it was worn down to the nubs and then you would find a purpose from the broomstick\u201d is emblematic of rasquachismo.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tInstallation view of \u201cRasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility,\u201d 2024\u201325, at McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, showing, at right, Chuck Ramirez\u2019s Brooms: Pale Yellow<\/em> (2007\/11). <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Jacklyn Velez\/Courtesy the McNay Art Museum<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tCruz Ortiz, the artist who painted Ybarra-Frausto\u2019s portrait, warned against seeing rasquachismo as just a \u201cclever use of material. No, this is a huge intellectual and foundational type of understanding of how the Texas Mexican mind works. What can I do with this shitty thing that was supposed to be thrown away? That\u2019s when the intellectual part happens.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn our current political moment, Ortiz sees in rasquachismo a way forward, or \u201ca model for looking at society and politics. How can I use the intellectual discourse about rasquache and apply that to how we fix a problem? How can we fix the problem of women not having access to abortion here in Texas in a rasquache way? I don\u2019t have the answer because it\u2019s not just my answer. That has to come from the community\u2014it has to be colectiva <\/em>[collective]. That\u2019s what I\u2019m interested in, using rasquache theory in practice to make change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most people probably think of San Antonio as the \u201chome of the Alamo,\u201d and while the city may be the birthplace of a certain Texan imaginary, it\u2019s also given rise to concepts that help visualize American culture in less nationalistic ways. One of those concepts is rasquachismo, an aesthetic sensibility that acts as a way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[1885,56358,90364,74658,5801,90365,90366,9865,90368,90367],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-246742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-art","tag-canon","tag-cruz-ortiz","tag-entered","tag-historical","tag-mcnay-art-museum","tag-mia-lopez","tag-officially","tag-rasquachismo","tag-tomu00e1s-ybarra-frausto"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Under-the-Mexican-Colchas.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Salvador-Jimenez-Flores_McNay.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"View](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Rasquachismo-High-Res-114.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"View](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Rasquachismo-High-Res-128.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"View](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Rasquachismo-High-Res-16.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1_victoria_martinez-1.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Fence-Section-3.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"View](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Rasquachismo-High-Res-139.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>
\n\tMost people probably think of San Antonio as the \u201chome of the Alamo,\u201d and while the city may be the birthplace of a certain Texan imaginary, it\u2019s also given rise to concepts that help visualize American culture in less nationalistic ways. One of those concepts is rasquachismo<\/em>, an aesthetic sensibility that acts as a way to understand \u201can attitude or taste\u201d prevalent within art made by Chicanos, as scholar Tom\u00e1s Ybarra-Frausto<\/a> wrote in his 1989 essay theorizing it.<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\u201cTo be rasquache<\/em>,\u201d Ybarra-Frausto wrote, \u201cis to posit a bawdy, spunky consciousness seeking to subvert and turn ruling paradigms upside down\u2014a witty, irreverent and impertinent posture that recodes and moves outside established boundaries.\u201d In the decades since, rasquachismo has been a cornerstone of Chicanx studies. But until very recently, it was less widely recognized within the American art canon.<\/p>\n \n\tTo mark the 35th anniversary of Ybarra-Frausto\u2019s essay, San Antonio\u2019s McNay Art Museum<\/a> recently mounted an exhibition, \u201cRasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility,\u201dto honor this homegrown idea. In many ways, the exhibition, which opened last December and closed in March, was a \u201ccelebration of San Antonio\u201d and a \u201crecognition that the city itself has such a distinct aesthetic character,\u201d according to the exhibition\u2019s curator, Mia Lopez<\/a>. \u201cThere was a seed that was planted in this city, a seed that was planted in this institution, and how that then grew into the framework for something like rasquachismo, to me, was really special.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt feels like it\u2019s coming back home,\u201d Ybarra-Frausto said earlier this year of the exhibition, noting that visitors had told him that walking through the show, they were able to grasp the concept because of how they had experienced it in daily life in San Antonio. \u201c\u2018I see rasquachismo everywhere\u2014I get it. I know what you\u2019re talking about.\u2019 So that\u2019s confirmation to me that what I intuited is actually not only intuition, but it\u2019s reality. It has added to the vocabulary of American culture.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLopez described rasquachismo as \u201cthe good taste of bad taste.\u201d The exhibition included work in a range of materials by major figures within Chicanx artists, including Yolanda M. L\u00f3pez, Carmen Lomas Garza, Santa Barraza, Celia \u00c1lvarez Mu\u00f1oz, Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero, Patssi Valdez, and Luis Jim\u00e9nez. Younger artists featured included Ruth Buentello, Juan de Dios Mora, and Jimmy James Canales.<\/p>\n\n
![\"Installation](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/latinxheader2_5b2f53.jpg?w=150&h=150&crop=1\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n