Art Bytes: Cheech Marin

Comedian, actor, and avid art collector Cheech Marin talks about his career with Tommy Chong and his passion for collecting Chicano art.

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(gentle music)- If you were around in the '70s and '80s, you're likely familiar with the comedy of Richard Anthony Marin. That name doesn't ring a bell? Maybe I'll use his nickname then. Cheech Marin, one half of the comedy duo, Cheech and Chong. Cheech is a comedian, actor, musician, and an avid art collector. He grew up in South Los Angeles and graduated from California State University Northridge as an English major. Not long after that, he auditioned to sing for Frank Zappa's Band, The Mothers of Invention. But he didn't get the gig. The very next day he moved to Vancouver to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War, and it was there in Canada, that he met Tommy Chong, who would become his comedy partner. Cheech and Chong enjoyed huge success producing comedy albums and feature films. In 1985, the duo dissolved, but Cheech went on to star in many films and television shows, as well as doing voiceover work. Yes, he was the hyena in "The Lion King" film, and he's also released two bestselling children's albums. But one passion has stayed with him throughout his remarkable career, and he is now sharing that passion with the world. Welcome to "Art Bytes," a podcast from the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, where we take you beyond just the art on the walls and into the stories of the artist and the ideas behind them. I'm your host, Kathleen Layton. Cheech Marin, thank you so much for joining us.- My pleasure.- Let's talk about your name first. How did Richard Anthony morph into Cheech?- Well, when I came home from the hospital, I was brought home from the hospital and laid in the crib, and my Uncle Bono looked into the crib and in Spanish he said,(foreign language). Looked like a just a little chicharron. And chicharrones, are deep fried pigs skins, you know, they're curled up like a little baby would be.- Like a yes, yes.- It looks like a little chicharron, so that became my name in the family. I was, 'cause everybody in my family had at least two, three nicknames and that was my name in the family. Chicharron got shortened to Cheech, but that was always the name in the family.- And so then all through school and everything, people were calling you Cheech?- No, just in the family.- Ah.- My real name is Richard. Well, my first name anyways, but everybody outside knew me as Richard. But in the family, that's how you could tell they were the family. They used Cheech. And so when we were putting together the comedy team, me and Tommy, we tried out different various names,'cause we came from a group, the City Works, it was an improv group. And when it dissolved, we were together and he said, "Well, let's Marin Chong, eh, doesn't sound so great. Richard and Tommy, no."- That just doesn't have a ring to it.- Doesn't have. He says, "Do you have a nickname or something?" And I said, "Well, Cheech." And then, and Tommy said, "Cheech, Cheech and Chong, Cheech and Chong." And 'cause he's a musician like me, it scanned. You know, like, that sounded better. So it was always Cheech and Chong, not Chong and Cheech, never was that. But because Cheech and Chong sound better.- That's amazing. And all these years later. Well, you have been a dedicated art collector for decades. Do you recall the first time you realized that art was something that you gravitated toward?- I was very small. I was like maybe seven, seven or eight. And raised Catholic and the church that I went to, St. Stevens in South LA, it was, you know, it was all a mystery to me. As a young kid, you go to mass, and there's this ritual going on, and there's incense and candles, and you'd look up at the ceiling and there was these guys in sheets walking around in the clouds. And over in the corner, some guy getting barbecued, you know? So right away I was intrigued, you know.- It's theater, isn't it?- Yeah, it's theater. How do they combine these elements? And so, oh, that's art. Oh, okay, art, cool. And then in school, we were all as a group taken to the LA County Museum. You know, those, you know, museum kids where you see 'em walking around with all the same color T-shirt holding, that was me. And so when I got into a big museum, I go, "Wow, how long has this been going on? This is really cool." And there's armor and there's paintings and there's horses and yeah, I can spend a lot of time here. So that's what I did, I went to the museum.- So do your parents though, they didn't go to museums much?- Not much that I could tell. My father was a LAPD, or Los Angeles Police Department and my mother was a housewife. And they were interested in music more than anything else. They grew up with music, so the visual arts. But when I was very young, I think I was maybe 10, I had a group of four cousins, and we were all bright kids, went to Catholic school, liberal arts educated, and the head cousin, Louis, he decided he was gonna assign us all topics to learn about and bring back to the group, kind of like AP classes.- [Kathleen] Right.- And I got assigned art. And so I go, okay, well how do we do this? I don't know anything about art except for the guy being barbecued. That was art to me.- But just by chance you got the topic art?- Yeah, just like, I could have had Middle Ages, you know, but I was sitting in the art seat, I guess, when it came around. But it was a bright group of kids, four of us. And Regine, the next cousin became the first recipient of a doctorate in Chicano Studies at Harvard University. Lolly, the only girl in the group, became the head of her order as a nun for 30 years. And then there was Louis, who was far and away the brightest. And then me, I was the little, the smallest one, the youngest one, you know, struggling to catch up. And so I got assigned art, you know, and it was an eye opener, you know,'cause I would bring back these, I would go to the library every Saturday and I told the librarian,"Well, I'm here to learn about art." Said, "What do you want?" Okay."So, can you start me someplace?" And she said, "Well, we have this book of world art." Put it out, it was a big book. And they wouldn't let me touch it, you know, because I was a little kid. I was gonna rip their pages out, I guess. And okay, and then I learned the names. Okay, that's Renoir, okay, that's and so visually, I got to know Western art in the next couple years. And so, that was my education. So, when it, and then what they instilled in me at that point was go to museums, actually see paintings in person, because you have to see paintings in person.- Not on the book, on the pages of the book.- Not, yeah. And that led to like a wonderful path down my life that I've been on to this day, you know.- Well, you had a huge career with Tommy, but were you collecting all during that time?- I was collecting something. I was always a collector of something. When I was a kid, marbles or matchbook covers, or I don't know, anything that you, baseball cards, you know, all this kind. I wanted to get the whole set, you know, and you learn strategies for how to get the whole set, you know, and you learn from other collectors. And so, I always collected something. So, when I got some money to be able to buy art, I started collecting art nouveau and art deco, and it was just breaking, the resurgence for it was just breaking in the United States. And the opportunity I had was because I traveled and we're in every state of the union all the time. We're always on the road. And so, I would pull into a town and whip out the Yellow Pages, go through 'em, look down, then say, okay, I call 'em up."Do you have this? And I'll be right over." And then I would go and sometimes I would buy a piece, you know, if it was, and not a lot of people get an opportunity to do that on a daily basis. You know, sometimes I'd buy a big galley lamp and I'd carry it with me for the next three stops, you know, on the plane. But that's how I put together that big collection. And then when that, all of a sudden the field exploded and got really expensive. So, I gotta find something else. That's when I discovered the Chicano painters.- And do you remember the very first piece you bought?- Yes, I do. It was three pieces actually at the same time. It was a piece by Yepes, George Yepes, Carlos Almaraz, and Frank Romero from a gallery in LA, Robert Berman Gallery. And he was one of the only ones that was showing them at that time. And I really, you know, I related to it right away, right? Oh, this, I see what it's built on. Because all these artists were either university and/or art school trained. They were not like, you know, hobbyist artists or, you know, backyard artists. They knew art history, and then they meld that with their Mexican background. And then you start to see this Chicano imagery starting to form right at that point.- That's, so, you were not starting with Chicano art?- [Cheech] No.- But you were introduced to it later. Now what, lots of cultural influences here.- [Cheech] Yeah.- And that didn't really enter into your comedy that much, but after your comedy career.- [Cheech] Yeah.- You became entranced by this Chicano art.- Yeah, well, because there was, they were undiscovered, relatively undiscovered. They had shows before, but no giant national momentum, you know, going. So, but I realized how good the painters are, you know, because you had seen great painting all my life. I have seen great painting all my life, so I knew what to look for, you know, the techniques they were using, the subjects they were using, and the way they put them all together, and the way they forged a new way of interpreting classical influences, you know. It's like a nice little apartment with a 27 room addition on it, you know? And so, that was Chicano, okay. But you saw the structure. You saw the structure and but nobody else gave them the credit for having the knowledge of that structure, you know? So, it was a big eye-opener for the world,'cause they couldn't get galleries and/or forget being included in museums. They were just, oh, you do abject prop folk art, you know, go away. And so, but I knew it wasn't, you know, I knew it wasn't. So, I just started there. My collector, Gene, shipped, chucked there who started, that's another word for it. I started and, and I started collecting in volume then.- Did you have an advisor or anybody helping you?- My accountant.(Cheech and Kathleen laugh)- Telling you how much you could spend.- That's enough for this month, you know, like, okay, with this Chicano thing, are you gonna be doing this for a long time?'Cause I gotta plan for this. Yeah, yeah, pretty much, I guess. No, I had, my advisors was my time in the library, you know, learning about the art. I could put it together myself when I signed, once I knew what the pieces were, you know, and that I was, so, I, and then I would visit museums every, wherever I, when I came to the Nelson Atkins, you know, during that period. And oh, this is, I got a big one here and this is cool.- It's gonna take more than a day.- It's got a lot of buildings. And what's a shuttlecock? What is that? Okay, that's art too. Yeah, cool.- How many pieces did you have when you started saying, wow, this is getting, I can't keep 'em under the bed anymore?- Oh, last week. No, no. It was, it was, you know, I started amassing this collection and the people that I met in the museum world, in the art world, they said, well, you gotta show this, this, no good under the bed or in the closet or in storage.- Did you have it all over your house? Like on every wall, every available space?- No, not really, you know, but I had big pieces that I could show in a couple of the houses. You know, they, most living rooms don't have a enough room for a 24 by 12 foot painting. You know, where are you gonna, what couch is that gonna go over, you know? No, it's, but I started collecting, but right away I knew that I was collecting for a purpose. I realized that 'cause you know, I put together other collections, but this is for a purpose. And so I didn't need to decorate my home. I needed to tell the story. And so a lot of paintings just went straight into storage, you know, I knew what they were, you know, and.- And what was the story you were trying to tell?- The story of the Chicano culture and how it came about and interpreted through these paintings to these artists. It wasn't a literary narrative. It was told in pictures because Mexican art came out of that, you know, they were preaching to a largely illiterate populace, you know. And so pictures, all the muralists, the great Mexican muralists, Sicaros, Orozco, Romero, they, that was the way to communicate especially political ideas to the populace. And so the early Chicano painters took their cue from those and then went off into their own areas, you know. But it was interesting way to learn history and art at the same time, you know, because art is wondrous, you know, history is factual at some points.(Cheech laughs)- So you had all of this art. You were trying to tell a story and people said, you need to let everybody else see this story?- Yeah, so you have to show it in a museum. Well, how do you do that, you know,'cause then you, I'm a nervous, I'm a novice. A nervous novice.- A nervous novice.- A nervous novice. I was a novice so how do you do that? Well, you gotta get a museum to show, well, how do you do that, you know? You got any money? Yeah, I got some. I said, well, I'm gonna introduce you to some people. So I got introduced to people and they said a lot of interest, but nobody would, you know. And so I kept going around and I teamed up with this team that did big art, big museum shows, but of natural history and children's. And, but the structure was there for them to go forward and do other things. And so I joined up with them. And then we did our little dog and pony show in front of every corporate boardroom in America. You know, General Mills, General Motors. Anything that had a general in it, I was there. They gotta have money, they're generals, you know?- What a weird way though, for you to be entering into that world.- Yeah.- Because that was not a world you were familiar with.- Not at all, not at all. You know, and it was like, how do you do this? What story do you tell, you know? And we built a narrative and everybody was interested. Everybody was interested. And I did that for many years before we got a hookup, you know, and finally the Target stores and Hewlett Packard came together and they were gonna sponsor the first show and the production of the first show, which was most important. And then we had to get up through other barriers. Like using the word Chicano was a big, not a no-no, but it was a buzzword. And that everybody was divided on both sides. You know, you can't use Chicano because who are you, first of all, you have no unpaid student loans, you know? And so how, what do you know about this history? And I was just this comedian, you know, doper comedian on top of it. And they all loved me as a doper comedian, but eh, little dicey on if I was an art expert, you know? And so I just kept pushing through and finding the San Antonio Museum became the first museum on the big tour that we did.- [Kathleen] How did that feel, having to prove yourself again?- You know, I was up to it, you know, I was like, yeah, you wanna fight, let's fight. You know, you know, because I'm gonna get the first punch in. Here's the collection, you know? And that was one of the big, the big points in my life'cause they were very, very dubious about my, you know, bonafides as an art collector until the crates started arriving at the loading docket at the end of San Antonio Museum. And they start opening the crates and they start taking out the paintings. And then it changed 'cause they saw what it was. And I, and there was maybe two or three people at the dock when we were opening them. And then I saw people disappearing, you know? And they, oh, they didn't like the paintings or something? But they would come back with other people. And from the museum they were going around, you gotta see this.- [Kathleen] You have to see this. Show it to them, yeah.(Cheech coughs)- And in that moment, it changed.- So you've got the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum. And it opened in 2022. It's actually called The Cheech by most people.- I got that in as quick as I possibly could. You know, they, well, what way should we call this? I think The Cheech would be great, no? Yeah, everybody got caught up in the deal, you know? And so The Cheech.- [Kathleen] And what has that experience been like for you?- Eyeopening, because I'd never, you know, had to work with museums where I'm actually handing them over my collection. That was a big deal.- How did that, that must have been really difficult.- Yeah. I looked for a sign because I was really, I have to give them this collection. It's not like I lend it to them for a certain amount of time. I have to give it to 'em and it's theirs. And they get to say whatever happens to it.- Those are like your children.- Yeah, better than my children. They don't ask for money, you know?(Kathleen and Cheech laugh) You know, and so I was looking for a sign that was, show me a sign that, and so one day I was talking to the director, Jule Bejurki, and we were walking across the museum. And I said, how big is this building? Because it's a fairly big building. She said, well, 66,420 square feet. I said, 420. 400, that's the sign. Thank you.- 420.- 420 (Cheech laughs). So, okay, here's the collection.- So you're not too far from that stoner kid.- You know, I mean, that's what made it believable to many people.- And so how many pieces in that collection, how many pieces did you part with?- Then about 550. It was, yeah, I was, because it was the opportunity of a lifetime. You're never, you know, 'cause always the question I get is well, how did you convince the museum to do this? I said, they came to me. I didn't have to convince them of anything. They had to convince me to give them to go. So you're never going to come in an opportunity where a museum offers you the building, and the only thing that's going to be in that building is your collection, never happens, never. I have never heard of that happening.- How does that feel when you're standing outside that museum and looking at it and then walking in and seeing all of these? These pieces must be like old friends.- Yeah, you know, I had this routine when we did the Chicano Visions tour, the big, big, the first big tour we did. And that was 14 major museums starting with the Smithsonian and every other museum in between. And it was, you know, it was mind blowing, you know, because we had to get over the hurdle of using the word Chicano, which was a very big buzz word there. People were divided upon it. And because it was, is it an insult or is a badge of honor? And back and forth, and who are you to weigh in here? You know, I'm just a guy with this collection, you know? And so it finally, because all the directors, you know, they liked their job and they didn't want their head be put on a block for saying this was Chicano art. And then it wasn't. And you know, there was a lot of controversy about that. And especially from the Chicano academic community, because I was kind of creeping into their territory, you know? No, I just wanna give you this gift, you know, don't kill me, you know? And so it all changed when they put up the paintings on the wall, and then that was because seeing is believing, you know? And then from that day forward, but there was still controversy because the, where's all the political stuff is I'm standing in front of the rest of the Palatero. Is that political enough for you? So say there was a big brouhaha. And so the opening night, there was a certain segment, there was, you know, rabble rousing. And I said, okay, this is what's gonna happen. Tomorrow morning, anybody that's got anything to say

on this subject, we're gonna meet at 9: 20:28

30.

And I made it 9: 20:30

30, so that eliminated half the crowd'cause it was gonna be Saturday morning and they couldn't get manudo, you know, whatever it was. So he says, you have to come to then, and you got anything to say, say it. So everybody showed up, went back and forth between the traditionalists and the young kids who just wanted to get their painting shown and back and forth. So at the end of the day, the kind of the older guys gave up'cause they saw they were being overtaken. And there's this one older lady who looked like she had seen everything Chicano and participated in it. And one of the artists that was on the diocese, John Valadez, and there was no more OG Chicano painter than John Valadez. And so she asked, I have a question for John Valadez. Considering everything that you saw here today and heard, do you still consider yourself a Chicano painter? And John looked up at the ceiling, considered it for a minute. I says, only if it bothers you.(Kathleen laughs) That's my hero. That's the Chicano spirit. That's my hero, man. And then it was game over, you know? And then we went on with the rest of the tour and played the Smithsonian next and great accolades, sold out shows, broke attendance records, wherever we went. And what it demonstrated was how many Latinos were in these various communities heretofore unknown by those communities. You know, when we played the Walker in, is it the Walker in?- [Kathleen] Minneapolis?- Yeah, with the, with Minneapolis, they had no, where did these people come from, you know? And at every place we went kind of in that area, it was like, and there's a lot of 'em. Yeah and they got a lot of kids. Yeah and they should go to the museums like I did when I was a kid, you know? And then they'll be raised in that, you know?- Is that a surprise to you, where you've landed now from where your career started?- Oh yeah are you kidding? Of course, yeah. They, you know, it's like, but I always experienced that the Chicanos were given no credit for not intelligence, but education. You know, how would you know about all these subjects? You're just a Chicano. I can read just like everybody else, and I can go to museums just like everybody else, and I can have the desire to learn.- How fabulous that you have this museum that people can go to and see this beautiful.- It's the first Chicano museum. That's really important. And I see the wonder in people's eyes when they come into their museum, oh, this is our story. And they stay there forever, you know? It's great.- [Kathleen] Are you still collecting?- Yeah (Cheech laughs). You know, because it is not'cause I have this passion to collect. It's, there's so many young artists coming out that make great work. I just saw a couple pieces the other day that just blew me out of the water, you know, here in the museum from this area, Chicano paintings. And wow, and they're gonna keep, they're gonna keep going now that they know that there's a possibility that they could end up in a museum, their work, you know, and they can actually make a living as a painter. You know, making your living as an actor is a hard deal to do. I mean, it's really hard. Making your living as a painter is 10 times harder than that. You know, it's, but so you want to give them some kind of encouragement to continue on that path, you know?- What would you, what advice would you give someone who is interested in collecting but thinks I don't have a million dollars. I don't know that I could become a collector.- Well, you don't have to have a million dollars. You don't have, you could have a hundred dollars and be a collector. You know, what you develop, and what I developed as a young kid is seeing 10,000 images. And that's the standard for anything you want to be an expert in. You want 10,000 free throws, 10,000 miles that you have to run. But you have to build up this image, this bank of experiences in that field so that you can recognize something when you see it, something new that relates back to that, you know? And so that's, excuse me, Saturday mornings, oh, that's Cezanne, is that how you pronounce? Oh, that's good man. Now who's this Picasso guy? Yeah, that's, and you learn from that, you know. And so when you see a work of art now, all my past knowledge and learning comes into focus right at that second. You go, wow. You know, but that wow was informed by a lot of images, you know, that you learn how to recognize right away.- Wow, man.- Yeah (Cheech laughs).- So your website, riversideartmuseum.org, if anybody wants to take a look at what you offer and you're continuing to collect.- Yeah, I am. I'm continuing to collect, you know, because I can't stop it. I'm a collector. I think that's the reason, you know, I just, I like, but I'm not, I'm not a collector who has 10 zillion dollars. Hey, send over two tons of that art shit. You know, I'm a guy that has to be working, has to have a job, and I have assigned a certain portion and I'm a wheeler dealer because I've had to be, you know, in order to get what I wanted for, with a diminished amount of money in comparison to some zillionaires. But I knew the paintings that I wanted and I knew the good ones when I saw it, you know.- You could probably teach a class on bartering.- Yeah, bartering. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and there's some, a lot of people, most people will work with you, you know, because they want to, they want something from you. Either you buy the painting or you're gonna buy the painting and then put it in a museum, or put it on tour, or have a picture of it next to you. You know, they all, everybody wants something, but they wanna get their art seen. That's why they make it in the first place.- That's right.- Yeah.- Thank you so much for being with us today.- My pleasure.- You've been listening to "Art Bytes," a podcast from the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. I'm Kathleen Layton. We'll see you next time.- Bye-bye.(gentle music)