Luis Alfonso Jiménez, Eagle

0:00:06.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re in the galleries at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and we’re looking at a sculpture, this is Luis Jiménez’s, Eagle. This is a sculpture whose subject is about the patriotism of the United States, but it’s also about Mexico.

0:00:21.2 Alejo Benedetti: Right when you walk up to this work, it is unavoidable, it is a bald eagle, an icon, an emblem of the United States. And this is a ferocious looking beast, it is perched on a cactus, on a prickly pear. And if you have looked at the Mexican flag, you see an eagle that is perched on a cactus holding a snake in its mouth.

0:00:44.7 Dr. Zucker: And that symbol comes down to us from the creation myth of the Mexica, better known as the Aztecs. Their creation myth speaks of coming from a series of caves in the north and migrating south until they saw a vision, a vision of an eagle perched on a cactus with that snake, and that became their capital, which is now Mexico City.

0:01:09.2 Benedetti: As we are looking at this work in the context of this gallery, we see it from the front, but we are compelled to walk around this work, and it’s not really until you get to the back side of it that you actually see a snake that is slithering across the back of the work. And if there was any doubt that Jiménez was trying to make this connection between the United States and Mexico, this puts any doubts to rest.

0:01:36.1 Dr. Zucker: And each of the three elements, the eagle, the prickly pear, and the rattlesnake, feel dangerous. The eagle has a kind of velocity to it, it’s reaching forward, I almost don’t want to stand in front of it.

0:01:48.5 Benedetti: Its wings are outstretched, you are confronted by its beak as soon as you walk into the space.

0:01:55.5 Dr. Zucker: And then, of course, the prickly pear is covered with spines, and this is not just any snake, this is a rattlesnake.

0:02:01.5 Benedetti: The materials that Jiménez uses, its fiber glass, it’s automotive paint, it’s high sheen. This is popular culture, and that’s what he’s leaning into. The folks who are mostly using fiberglass are making cars. And even when he was a teenager, Jiménez worked on some of these classic cars. He repaired the fiber glass, and so this is a material that he was accustomed to, but in the art world, this was a completely foreign material.

0:02:28.7 Dr. Zucker: And yet it beautifully reflects our industrial culture, this is a material of this moment. And in the same way, the colors are incredibly bright. There’s nothing subtle about the red against the green or the yellows of the cactus blossoms. And if you look at the blue that highlights the white feathers of the bald eagle, I can just see the artist running over it with a spray gun. This is not hand-made in the way that we think of traditional sculpture or traditional painting. It’s evidence of popular culture, but it’s also evidence of our contemporary politics. This is a sculpture that is directly addressing not only issues that are of personal concern to the artist, but of national concern.

0:03:08.3 Benedetti: So Jiménez, his mom was from the United States, his dad was from Mexico. He was born in El Paso. He grew up in the Southwest. And his understanding of himself and his own identity as a Chicano man plays out in a work like this. When we see this reference to the United States, when we see this reference to Mexico, in that we can understand that both of these things can occupy the same space in the sculpture in the same way that both of these aspects of one’s identity could occupy the space of the artist or the space of Jiménez as a Chicano artist.

0:03:46.1 Dr. Zucker: And so in some ways, we can look at this at least metaphorically as a kind of self-portrait. This is a work that is taking very powerful symbols of national identity, but then making them deeply personal.

0:03:58.2 Benedetti: What he reminds us is that we have a lot in common, whether we are from the United States, whether we are from Mexico, regardless of where we are from, we can have these different conversations across borders, we can have these different conversations, find these elements of our identity in our national history that we share.

This work at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

More on Luis Jiménez from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

More Smarthistory images...

Contemporary Art, an introduction

Introduction to the Aztecs (Mexica)

Serpents in Mexica culture