Blogging the Museum Visit

Blogging the Museum Visit
March 29, 2019
Sacramento Crocker Art Museum - Arte extraordinario

"Celebrating Hubris with Hijinx" by Juan Carlos Quintana

The artwork that I selected my research on was "Celebrating Hubris With Hijinx" by Juan Carlos Quintana. He was born in America in 1964 and he wanted to provide a humorous tone to his piece. His piece also captures a sort of culture where racist hate groups and xenophobic attitudes are emboldened. The motivation for the piece was hubris, incompetence, arrogance, folly, and violence are being witnessed to the people of that culture. Juan is also known for breaking away from Mexican muralism and for depicting strange and often malformed figures. In a Visual art source page, I was able to find information regarding Quintana's artwork and sort of the reasoning and purpose behind his pieces. The piece was seem to be made in 2017 and his pieces are known to be both "didactic and cryptic". Quintana is searching for a just world and portrays his characters as heroes and villains in a disorderly time where the heroes are actually seen as being defiant and we're also being reminded that music is "defiantly blissful in the face of adversity". I believe that this basically means that music is a way of showing one's happiness even if the world around them is in a sort of chaos. Juan's paintings also portray a "humorous and raucous open ended narrative full of inflatable dancing blow-up men, predatory housing billboards that promote wealth inequality and gentrification, and nouveau riche on their way to a trendy art fair".

Background Knowledge about the piece at
Crocker Art Muesum

  I also believe that in this specific piece it captures what it is actually like to have the "American Dream", and the reason I say that is because in the piece it has the man in underwear happily drinking beer with another lady but below him are a variety of different figures feeling the complete opposite. At the bottom of the piece it has a forearm laid down while holding what looks to be a mariachi looking cheese strip and robbers to the right of it. I think with this part, Quintana uses humor in his piece because of the forearm and the head of a police man on top of a tree stump. The forearm holding the yellow looking mariachi strip may be a representation of the culture being held back in today's society and the robbers may just be a representation of money being a massive problem in our society since it's very scarce for many people and it also determines how wealthy or poor someone is. With the left figure in yellow sunglasses and the figure to the right of it with the hat and what looks to be a gun, 

Notes I took at the Museum on the piece

I think that this portrayal is a representation of the happiness but also the fears of being in America and that although their are joys that come with being here, it is also filled with chaos like government issues or police brutality. The woman on the far left may be a representation of alcoholism and I believe this is due to the fact that her eyes are blacked out and she looks kind of empty. The skull person may just be a representation of everyone being exactly the same and by this I mean that everyone is basically human and should be treated equal. The figure with the banjo represents how music helps cope with the struggles in the world and that no matter how bad it gets, music will help. 

Picture of me with "Celebrating Hubris With Hijinx" by
Juan Carlos Quintana.

Overall my museum experience went quite well, I was able to enjoy going with three of my close friends, one being my girlfriend and since it was the morning time there wasn't that much people and the traffic was not to bad. It was overall really quiet inside most of the rooms but it was really interesting seeing a variety of different pieces and being able to interact with some of the pieces was very fun. When it was quiet I tried my best to just keep up the pace with my friends because I found myself really invested and stuck staring into a lot of the pieces and reading some of the descriptions with the pieces. I found myself sitting down a lot because I would get tired from walking around and looking at all the artwork and the workers all seemed like they were in a good mood so I think that helped with the experience.

One of the Rooms at Crocker Art Museum