1604737948

Black Velvet Art
Elison.BlkV.1_FCID.indd 1 10/20/10 1:55 PM

Black
Velvet Art Eric A. Eliason
Photographs by Scott Squire
University Press of Mississippi Jackson

Publication is made possible in part by a grant from
the College of Humanities, Brigham Young University
The following paintings are reproduced with permission

from the artists: pp. xx, xxxiii, 41 (top right), 45 (top right), by
Romero; pp. xx, 12 (top right), 39, 40 (bottom left), 45 (top
left), 83, by Aurelio; pp. 40 (right), 41 (bottom right), by Felix;
pp. 12 (top left), 13, by Jesus “Chuy” Gutierrez. The artists of all
other paintings in this book are unknown.
Edgar Leeteg paintings on page xiv reproduced with per-

mission of BYU-Hawaii art department
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Asso-

ciation of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2011 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved
Manufactured in China
First printing 2011

∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eliason, Eric A. (Eric Alden), 1967–

Black velvet art / Eric A. Eliason ; photographs by Scott
Squire.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60473-794-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-
60473-795-0 (ebook) 1. Velvet painting. I. Squire, Scott. II.
Title.
ND1572.E45 2010
759.06—dc22 2010031483
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication available
iv
BlackVelvet.1.indd 4 10/29/10 1:59 PM

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
The History and Significance of Black Velvet Painting ix
Black Velvet People
Romero, Felix, and Chuy, the Artists xxxii
William Travis Robison, Impresario of Velvet xxxviii
Rick Smith, the Collector xli
Black Velvet Paintings
Matadors and Mexicana 3
Landscapes 17
Personalities and Portraits 31
Elvii 46
Niños y Niñas 57
Creatures 67
Religious 81
Ladies 87
Horrors 99
Notes 107
Index 111

vi

Preface and Acknowledgments
This book seeks to present samples of the psychedelic throes of presurgery pain medi-
many themes that have delighted black velvet cation and who then collected hundreds of
aficionados over the years. A book like this is velvets to tweak his friends’ sensibilities. More
only possible after much scouring of out-of-the- detailed portraits of these and other velvet
way places and much help from many others people appear in this book.
who love velvet. As the result of several years Special thanks is due collectors Rick Smith
of urban archeology, we have amassed one of and Danny Eskanazi; importer Bill Robison;
the largest collections of black velvet paintings gallery owners Miguel Moises Mariscal, Manu-
in North America. We have done so with the el Ortiz Salas, Gallery Esteban Y Karina, Fran-
generous cooperation of a network of artists, cisco Javier Mina, and Ruben of Ruben’s Place;
collectors, importers, and gallery owners in painters Enrique Felix, Jesus “Chuy” Gutierrez,
Tijuana, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Calgary. With “Aurelio,” “Argo,” and “Romero”; and curator
their help, we have assembled a digital photo of Brigham Young University–Hawaii’s velvet
archive of over a thousand black velvet paint- collection Mata’uma Alisa and his assistant Ian
ings from which we have selected representa- Nitta. The above-mentioned Portland couple
tive works for reproduction in this book. was an unexpected inspiration along the way
The contemporary world of black velvet even though they declined to participate in
is well stocked with colorful characters Edgar this project. Many people, some of whom we
Leeteg, the modern tradition’s founder, would have surely forgotten to mention, graciously
have been proud to call friends. A few examples endured endless questions and intrusions on
include: a Tijuana painter who wears a gold- their time and workspace to make this book
plated, diamond-studded AK-47 pendant yet possible.
paints softly loving portraits of his wife; a Los Some paintings are treasures that display
Angeles importer who made a mockumentary great skill, and many Chicano artists working
about selling black velvet paintings of Ronald today in the fine art tradition, such as Carlos
Reagan and Pat Buchanan to eager attendees at Fresquez, Anthony Ortega, Francisco Zamora,
the 1996 Republican National Convention and and Carlos Santistevan, got their start in vel-
who proudly shows off his shotgun-mangled vet.1 On the other hand, some works really are
arm from a Venice Beach carjacking gone bad; spectacular stinkers. We hope to share a selec-
a cautious Portland, Oregon, couple whose tion of both in this book and leave it (mostly)
lives center on the careful positioning of their to you to decide which is which.
home-style velvet art museum as the main in-
stitution of importance for any potential velvet Eric Eliason and Scott Squire
resurgence; and a gregarious Calgary cowboy Springville, Utah, and Seattle, Washington,
and heritage park director who endured swirl- 2010
ing visions of velvet Elvii while reeling in the
vii
< An enigmatic painting from the collection of Danny Eskanazi.

Velvet for sale in a Tijuana gallery.

The History and Significance
of Black Velvet Painting
Black Velvet as Iconic Nadir
In the movie Entrapment, Sean Connery and

Catherine Zeta-Jones play art thieves compet-
ing to see who can pull off the most audacious
burglary. Ms. Zeta-Jones scores big when she
sneaks into a well-guarded castle, swipes a
priceless masterpiece, and leaves in its place a
. . . black velvet painting of Elvis.1
In his acclaimed bestseller How the Mind
Works, Harvard evolutionary psychologist
Steven Pinker argues that explanations for the
origin of art should not just focus on highbrow
material but should also take into account
humanity’s shared creative impulse. To under-
stand art, we cannot only go to the symphony
or modern art gallery; we must also consider
Jesus “Chuy” Gutierrez and a just-finished bandido.
. . . “black velvet paintings of Elvis.”2
Antiques Road Show is a popular American
public television program in which viewers In all three examples above, no explana-
bring in heirlooms to be appraised, hoping to tion is needed for what such a painting repre-
learn that they own something priceless. A few sents. Everyone knows Elvis on velvet is the
years ago, the show ran a humorous television iconic type of bad art—the worst of the worst
advertisement featuring an eager but clue- and the lowest of the low. Black velvet as me-
less young man rummaging through his attic dium and Elvis as subject matter represent all
looking for something to take on the show. that is tacky, tasteless, earnest, sentimental,
He considers, but tosses aside, an original van worthless, simplistic, poorly crafted, un-
Gogh. Then, exclaiming, “Now this is a classic!,” original, frivolous, redundant, and common.
he holds up for the camera a . . . black velvet Everything that real art is not, black velvet is.
painting of Elvis. Everything real art is, black velvet is not. Black
ix

velvet resonates loudly with the eclectic, glob-
ally conscious pulse of our times. Understand-
ing velvet opens up understanding of our
world.
This book seeks to provide for readers a
short introduction to the world of black velvet,
covering its history, cultural context, motifs,
controversies, and contemporary significance.
It also looks at the nature of kitsch, camp, and
fine arts and how black velvet functions in,
and helps define and threaten, these worlds.
While this book explores the 1970s heyday of
Mexican velvet in America, it also recognizes
the ongoing tradition of velvet as it still exists
today. The hope is that the book will provide
some modest insights, but it does not propose
any grandiose all-encompassing theory about
why velvet emerged or how to interpret or
Detail from a 1970s Mexican black velvet Elvis combining brush and silkscreen.
aesthetically evaluate the paintings—such an
enterprise seems to the authors out of keep-
velvet is the antiart, and true fine art only ing with the spirit of the tradition. Rather this
exists as defined against the likes of black vel- book is meant as a guided tour that presents
vet. Status-conscious middle Americans have some context and analysis to allow readers
learned to shun and ridicule it like, well . . . a to fashion their own views about “what it all
black velvet Elvis. might mean.”
Yet, scornful relegation to the trash heap
of Western culture has not always been black
velvet’s misfortune. The form has a surpris- Making and Appreciating
ingly rich history, and its multifaceted tropes Black Velvet Painting
of nudes, Jesus, matadors, carnivores, bandits,
Indians, movie stars, rock stars, landscapes, From a purely technical standpoint, velvet’s
and waifs go far beyond Elvis. Black velvet is critics might at least acknowledge the crafts-
a valuable indicator of worldwide economic manship displayed in a top-notch piece. Vel-
and cultural developments. Provocative issues vet’s physical qualities make it a difficult and
of class, taste, art as consumer phenomenon, unforgiving medium. The fabric comes from a
democratic spirit vs. elitism, local culture vs. special loom that weaves a single piece of cloth
outsider expectations, reproduction vs. origi- that a precision blade carefully slices into two
nality, and religiosity vs. sexuality all come identical mirror-image bolts. As the two bolts
together in illuminating ways on velvet. Black are wound on separate take-up rolls, the char-
x

acteristic tufted nap with its short, dense, and
even pile is revealed. The distinctive lush look
of the thousands of tiny hairs that give the
fabric its Spanish name of el tercio pelo negro
is notoriously easy to ruin.3 The nap can easily
glop up with paint, sticking the hairs together.
Skilled painters control when they want to do
this for effect but usually paint in such a way
that each individual hair remains separate
from the others. How this is done is a trade se-
cret many still keep.
A keen awareness of the possibilities of
negative space is also essential for any com-
petent velvet artist. A raw velvet sheet comes
ready-made with enchanting shadows and inky
depths built in, but not every artist knows how
to utilize them. Strategically placed paint im-
plies rather than depicts shapes. The learning
curve on grasping how color will work on such
an unusual surface can be costly in wasted ma-
terials. A fine velvet painting displays esoteric
skill its creators can be justly proud of. That so
much velvet from the last fifty years has been
schlock has no doubt damaged the reputation
Enrique Felix prepares a velvet frame for painting in his studio in Tijuana.
of the whole tradition. But for those who know
what goes into velvet’s production, the bad
examples also serve to underscore the accom- that depict dramatic and familiar themes.
plishment of the better-executed pieces. And when light catches a velvet just right, the
Another reason critics of traditional arts colors shimmer and jump out in ways arrest-
are scarce or hostile when black velvet is appre- ing to the eye but difficult to capture with a
ciated is that velvet consumers get along fine camera. Such effects combined with velvet’s
without them. Nothing is worse for the critic furry seductiveness are “capable of redeeming
or commentator than to be irrelevant. Once and even transforming imagery that would
past middlebrow society’s anxious aversions to seem banal on canvas.”4 At its best, the light-
velvet, its joys are pretty immediate and don’t absorbent painting surface allows for dramatic
need professionals to explain their subtleties. chiaroscuro and creative use of negative space,
The thick silky nap of the velvet itself evokes and the deep dark of black velvet can suck a
a lush tropical sensuality. The enveloping viewer into an otherworldly abyss of mystery.
dark backgrounds starkly offset vivid colors “It was the swirling bright colors on that deep
xi

glossy black background that got me. It was have been more interested in black velvet, we
beyond exotic—like nothing else in the world,” would certainly have a better fleshed-out story
explains collector Rick Smith.5 of the various velvet traditions’ past interrela-
However, as with any art form, not every tions.6
black velvet painter lives up to the highest What little information there is provides
aspirations of the tradition. Compromising episodic chunks with few clear connections
on materials quality often goes hand in hand and many unanswered questions. But this we
with poorly executed product. Less expensive, know: medieval crusaders brought velvet back
and less lush, velvet or velveteen helps keep to Europe with them where it led to a lower-
the price down. (With pricier canvas, paint- cost type of tapestry production.7 Marco Polo
ers must spend time and paint to build up a discovered velvet painting in Kashmir during
background.) The velvet tradition has not been his fourteenth-century explorations of Asian
afraid to plumb just how low consumers are trade routes.8 Orthodox priests in Russia’s
willing to go in terms of materials quality and “near abroad” of the Caucasus found in black
artistic talent when looking for low-priced velvet the perfect medium for haunting icons
paintings. Ironically, this move may have of the Madonna and St. Cyril.9 In the 1500s,
helped create a particular kind of contrarian the Portuguese introduced velvet painting to
consumer. Not a few velvet buyers are like rub- China where it quickly became localized. In the
ber neckers craning to see a wreck on the high- late nineteenth century, many examples began
way; the bad black velvet intrigues as much as to appear in Japan.10
the good. The worse it is the better it is, as can Despite these precedents, Englishman
be seen in the section “Horrors” in this book. Francis Town (1738–1826) claimed he invented
modern painting on velvet. He and his daugh-
ters taught the English aristocracy velvet
The Worldwide Heritage of Velvet painting in what became a fad among the up-
per crust.11 As velvet work trickled down to the
Velvet painters have faced technical challenges transatlantic middle classes it became part of
since the fabric first emerged in late antiquity colonial North Americans’ schooling. Students
as a Persian product made from Chinese silk. learned a kind of stencil or paint-by-numbers
Since then, velvet painting has flourished in called “theorem painting.”12 By the 1830s,
various times and places up to the present. adroit execution of the difficult-to-render
However, tracing influences across eras and fruits and flowers of this style had become a
cultures is maddeningly difficult. Given artists’ must-have skill for any accomplished English
tendency to experiment and try new things, or American young lady.13
the practice likely had multiple independent Theorem painting done on velvet was
origins and reinventions. The existence of often called “oriental painting,” a possible ref-
multiple national velvet traditions throughout erence to India or China.14 This flavor of the ex-
history does not necessarily imply vectors of otic became a central part of velvet’s appeal in
interaction to be discovered. But if those who the twentieth century, and most velvet today
xii have written art history over the years might is displayed far from where it was bought. In-

North America—the very places where velvet
traditions began to thrive in the mid-twentieth
century.
Some have seen a velvet tradition precur-
sor in the work of sixteenth-century Spanish
artist El Greco, whose colorful, sometimes
distorted, figures often emerge from pitch-
black shadowed backgrounds. Pete Halverson
visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest
in 1992 with a group of American tourists,
one of whom ran ahead to recon the galleries.
Returning to the main group, the scout an-
nounced, “Don’t worry about going that way.
There’s nothing in there but a bunch of velvet
Elvises.” Checking his museum guidebook, Pete
deed, India boasts a still-thriving black velvet realized the scout had discovered the El Greco
painting tradition from at least British colonial collection and immediately understood her
days—a possible inspiration for Townsend’s pronouncement.17 American singer-songwriter
“invention.” However, Indian velvet has influ- Paula Cole implicitly makes a similar connec-
enced neither twentieth-century consumer tion in the opening lines of her 2007 song “El
tastes among India’s former colonizers nor the Greco.”18
style familiar to Americans today. (However,
nonresident Indians of the “desi diaspora” in
the UK, Gulf states, and North America are Black Velvet in the Twentieth Century
major consumers of Indian velvets, as can be
seen in visits to Indian restaurants in these While the deep history of velvet painting re-
countries.) mains murky, the immediate sources of today’s
China is a different story. The earliest North American velvet are very clear—the
known reference to black velvet as tourist South Pacific and Mexico. In the 1930s, a rogu-
art comes from Steven Little—curator of ish beachcomber living in Tahiti named Edgar
Chinese art for the Asian Art Museum, Fine Leeteg earned the nickname “the American
Arts Museum of San Francisco. In the 1960s, Gauguin” for painting tropical flowers, wa-
he recalled that in 1910 while visiting coastal terfalls, children, and, most notably, native
China, he saw nudes and American eagles on maidens, with able vibrancy.19 James Michener
black velvet for export to America but saw no highlighted Leeteg in his travelogue Rascals in
evidence of a Chinese velvet painting tradition Paradise,20 which served as an inspiration for
for local consumption.15 Networks of Chinese the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South
merchants and traders connected the mother Pacific.
country to the Philippines, Southeast Asia, the The story of how Edgar Leeteg became the
South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand,16 and father of modern velvet painting begins with a xiii

Above: A Mexican reimagining of Leeteg’s “Beach Boy.”
Left: An assortment of Leeteg portraits.

visit he made to a store in Papeete in the early similar relationship emerged with former U.S.
1930s. He was looking to buy painter’s canvas. Navy submariner “Aloha” Barney Davis, who
Being fresh out, the Chinese clerk tried to push scoured the South Pacific looking for art to sell
some velveteen her boss wanted to get rid of. on the American mainland. Davis and Leeteg
Remembering Renaissance-era European vel- became fast friends, sharing a penchant to rant
vets—El Grecos perhaps?—he had admired in about the mainstream art world’s snootiness
a museum as a child in Illinois, Leeteg’s sudden in looking down on velvet.23 Soon, Davis estab-
epiphany of how striking the island’s rich col- lished a gallery in Hawaii that sold originals
ors would look against a black backdrop sealed and authorized reproductions of Leeteg’s work
the purchase.21 Among Leeteg’s earliest and for many years.
most eager customers were American sailors By the 1950s, Leeteg could not keep up
and GIs on shore leave. But he sold modestly with the demand for his paintings as must-
until Salt Lake City jeweler Wayne Decker dis- have décor for the rapidly spreading tiki bars
covered some Leetegs in a Honolulu junk shop. of American suburbs.24 In these idol-guarded
Decker was so smitten that he tracked Leeteg strip-mall oases, relaxing friends could sit in
down in Tahiti and proposed a business rela- wingback wicker chairs listening to bubbling
tionship: Leeteg would paint and Decker would artificial waterfalls amidst imported tropical
import his art to Hawaii and the mainland.22 A foliage and sipping mai tais from machete-
xv

An American soldier’s war memento
purchased in Southeast Asia in 1968.
split coconuts while faux

wahines did the hula to Don
Ho recordings wafting
from the hi-fi.
Leeteg’s notoriety
spawned many enter-
prising imitators who
found a ready market
in Hawaii’s tourist
industry, which was
then booming with
promotional help
from new regular
flights to Oahu, the ex-
citement of statehood
in 1959, and, of course,
the Elvis movies Blue
Hawaii (1961) and Paradise,
Hawaiian Style (1965). When
vacationers returned home
showing off souvenirs, many of
their friends wondered how they
might get some velvet without having
to fly all the way to Hawaii.
Tijuana, Mexico, is much closer than Ha-
waii and has long welcomed gringos looking for
exotic experiences. Especially since Prohibition Mariscal claims that the first-ever black velvet
when tourists flocked there for alcohol, horser- painting of Elvis was sold from his father’s
acing, and other illicit pleasures, “TJ” has long gallery in the 1950s.25 He further explains that
been one of the first and easiest options for the Tijuana velvet scene drew upon an old
Americans wishing to go abroad. colonial Jalisco custom of painting on velvet
Tijuana gallery owners and artists don’t party dresses. According to Mariscal, American
buy that contemporary velvet painting started sailors on shore leave in Tijuana from before
in the South Pacific then migrated to Mexico to World War II took the practice to further
be “taken to a lower level” for mass consump- ports-of-call in the South Pacific where parallel
tion. Gallery owner and velvet seller Moises traditions developed. This may be so, but while
x vi
BlackVelvet.1.indd 16 11/5/10 9:11 AM

there are many Mexican renderings of South art, and jungle scenes to Filipino and American
Pacific themes, the reverse is rare. There are soldiers serving on Mindanao and Jolo Island
plenty of Mexican Leeteg knockoffs but not so for Operation Enduring Freedom.27 A similar
many Hawaiian matadors. Southeast Asian tradition of painting big-eyed
The American military figures centrally in black velvet caricature tour-of-duty mementos
both the South Pacific and Mexican versions thrived for as long as American soldiers fought
of modern velvet origins. Steven Pinker specu- Communists in Vietnam.
lates that reveling spendthrift soldiers and Since the crusades, black velvet traditions
sailors—whose judgment-impaired alcohol- flourish where troops abroad go shopping.
charged neurological circuits made them par- Throughout history, the military has gone
ticularly susceptible to the charms of splashy ahead of tourists, paving the way for black vel-
colors, romantic landscapes, and impossibly vet to make its way into new markets.
buxom lasses—played a major role in the vel-
vet market’s early development everywhere it
emerged in the twentieth century.26 The 1970s Triumph of Mexican Velvet
The American military certainly drove two
Asian side eddies of the velvet story. The Phil- Modern velvet’s Asian and Polynesian back-
ippines’ velvet tradition may date back to the story is overshadowed by the towering achieve-
1890s and the Spanish-American War. Still to- ment of Mexican black velvet painting in the
day, Filipinos sell black velvet nudes, religious 1970s. What had been a trickle from Mexico,
the South Pacific, and Asia in the 1950s and
1960s now became a Mexican flood into liv-
ing rooms and mobile-home hallways across
America. Those who lived through that time
will remember the common sight throughout
suburbia of a traveling salesman laying out a
new vanload of velvet on a street corner, at a
swap meet, or in a supermarket parking lot.
Soon, all across North America, solemn
dogs played poker above the backroom bar
at many a local Elks lodge.28 Matadors swept
red capes across the backs of charging toros in
midwestern farmers’ front rooms, thanks to
gifts brought back by vacationing college kids.
Sultry nudes gazed enticingly at the residents
of groovy bachelor pads. Mighty Afroed heroes
thrust Black Power salutes proudly into the air
in the homes of politically conscious young Af-
American sailors shop for black velvet in Tijuana in 2006.
rican American couples. Unicorns pranced on
x vii

1970s matador detail.
painted black velvet Elvis.

In a secret process only now
being revealed years later,
sometimes a few extra mirror
image “prints” could be made
by pressing a fresh wet velvet
against another blank velvet
canvas.31
Many of the painters had
little inclination for art but, in
the Mexican tradition, learned
their family trade regardless of
aptitude. While it has been de-
rided in many quarters of the
fine arts world, this kind of
community collaboration and
appreciation of reproduction
is valued in many folk art tra-
ditions.32 The presence of this
rainbows in young girls’ bedrooms. Panthers spirit in Mexico positioned the country well to
made of black light–responsive paint leapt off quickly develop the production capacity to cap-
the walls of teenage boys’ dark basements. ture an emergent low-end art market.
And, of course, Elvis in his Vegas-era glory was A displaced Georgia farm boy, Doyle
everywhere. According to L. A. Times reporter Harden, was the visionary who first created
and border chronicler Sam Quinones, velvet an enormous maquiladora border factory that
had become the “official fabric of the decade.”29 turned out velvets by the thousands. He paid
To meet demand, black velvet suppliers painters to train apprentices and promised to
in Mexico took to setting up assembly line art buy whatever they churned out.33 His innova-
factories where one worker would paint sweat tion helped Ciudad Juárez (across the border
beads on the forehead, one the coif, one the from El Paso, Texas) rival Tijuana as the Flor-
hibiscus lei, and one the sparkling rhinestones ence of velvet painting34 and helped blaze a
on the tall collar. Each painter would use only trail for many other maquiladoras that have
one color to save time washing brushes, dab employed thousands of Mexicans and provided
on a little “tigre” black leather dye to cover inexpensive goods to consumers north of the
any mistakes, and slide the painting along a border.35 Harden’s entrepreneurial success ben-
specially made long wooden shelf to the next efitted him as well. Yet, despite his self-made
painter.30 Then the factory manager would fortune, he found himself shut out of high
x viii sign his name and voila—an “original” hand- society in Columbia, South Carolina, by those

Tijuana gallery owners and their children with some of their wares. This family only agreed to allow their paintings to be
photographed after we assured them we would not take our images to China.
who looked down their noses at him. That he of a portion of their profits and make it hard
was growing wealthy making art that horri- for new painters to get started depends mainly
fied the fancier set but was adored by regular on whether the one remembering the organi-
people came to especially please him.36 zation was a painter or a corrupt politician.
But Harden was not the only player in At the peak of the craze, 1974–76, and in
velvet wholesale, nor was the United States the part to escape the painters’ union, some of the
only destination. Tijuana painters remember better artists set up shop in American tourist-
such characters as “the Mexican guys from magnet cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas
Arizona,” “Bart the Armenian” from New Zea- and became relatively wealthy. A rapid rise to
land, the “Hindu fellow” from Trinidad, and wealth was heady stuff for some painters who
the Palestinians from Canada who chartered fell into hard-partying alcoholism, raced dirt
sea planes to sell velvets to Eskimos for three bikes, and “dressed like pimps.”39 Tijuana black
hundred dollars each.37 The face of velvet was velvet artist Enrique Felix managed to keep his
the face of global enterprise. head about him and still drives the Corvette
For a time in Tijuana, government over- he bought and customized himself back in the
sight by the ruling PRI party led to the forma- 1970s—a time he remembers with great fond-
tion of the Quetzalcoatl Painters’ Union.38 ness.40 “We were superstars in those days,” he
Whether this organization was a labor union remembers.41
that protected workers’ rights and velvet qual-
ity standards or was merely a cynical way for
corrupt politicians to strong-arm painters out xix

The Tradition Lives On paintings a year—mostly reproductions of
famous works. Its fastest workers can paint
For North Americans today, black velvet in- thirty paintings a day.43
variably recalls the 1970s. Ridiculing black Has the Mexican black velvet tradition col-
velvet is part of Americans’ mixture of distain lapsed under the weight of changing fashions
and campy delight toward the fads of that era. and foreign competition? Are the velvets to
In the 1980s, American municipalities began be found today at yard sales and thrift stores
to pass anti–street corner vending ordinances merely the last relics of better bygone days?
targeted directly at velvet hawkers,42 and They are not. Black velvet lives on. Many gal-
America turned away from black velvet just as leries and artists in the traditional Tijuana
it abandoned bell-bottoms, polyester leisure heart of the black velvet world have moved on
suits, pet rocks, and lava lamps. to other media, but black velvets of all varieties
In the 1990s, China jumped on the scene are still sold throughout the tourist haunts off
as a fierce competitor in the low-end art mar- of Tijuana’s Avenida Revolución.
ket. In the twenty-first century on eBay, or Though much reduced and with the mul-
at virtually any mall or home décor store in tiemployee velvet factories long gone, a still-
America, people of modest means can buy an lively industry made up of a few American
“original” oil painting on canvas complete with importers and Tijuana, Nogales, and Ciudad
a “certificate of authenticity” printed up for Juárez artists and gallery owners remains ever
them in a Chinese art factory modeled on the adaptive to consumer demands. In the early
Mexican factories of the 1970s. One village twenty-first century, matadors, Elvii, nudes,
in southern China exports about five million and once-popular favorites such as knockoffs
Man in a Golden Helmet (1650): original on left and rendered in velvet on right. Tupac Shakur and Al Pacino as Scarface.
xx

A Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl velvet inspired by a Jesus Helguera calendar print, “The Legend of the Volcanoes.”
of Warner Sallman’s The Head of Christ44 or For example, while Jesus Helguera’s popular
Rembrandt’s conquistador-evoking Man in a midcentury calendar prints depicted both con-
Golden Helmet are hard to find.45 New icons quistadors and Aztecs, twenty-first-century
have emerged to take their place. Al Pacino’s velvet painters reproduce much more of the lat-
Scarface introducing his AR-15 “l’il frien’,” slain ter.46 One of the most popular in Tijuana today
rapper Tupac Shakur flashing a gang sign, Bob is the legend of Popocatépetl (“The Smoking
Marley sucking on a monster joint, Mormon Mountain”) and Iztaccíhuatl (“The White Wom-
founder Joseph Smith gazing prophetically, an”). These mountains that define the skyline
and zoot-suited cholos leaning against lowrid- around Mexico City were once Aztec royalty
ers are new leading icons. Rock stars, wild of long ago. The brave Popocatépetl secured
animals, landscapes, and Che Guevara remain permission to marry the beautiful Iztaccíhuatl
constant favorites then and now. Increasingly, from her father—provided the young warrior
Mexicans and Mexican Americans themselves returned victorious from battle. While her lover
have become black velvet consumers. Family was gone, a jealous rival convinced Iztaccíhuatl
portraits, Mexican movie stars, and homages that Popocatépetl had been killed in combat.
to calendar artist Jesus Helguera—the Nor- The devastated princess dressed in mourning
man Rockwell of Mexico—are favorite themes. white and died of grief from the news. Upon
In both Mexico and the U. S. since the returning triumphant from war, the very much
1970s, conceptions of Mexican identity have in- alive Popocatépetl finds his fiancée dead. In
creasingly downplayed Spanish influences and sorrow he carries her to the top of a mountain
increasingly highlighted indigenous themes. and kneels beside her, unable to move from his
xxi

misery. Snow eventually covers the motionless Black Velvet and the Border Economy
pair, and they become the two volcanoes famil-
iar to every Mexico City resident and potent In the fine arts world, defiant denial of art’s
symbols of the passionate heart of Mexico. Iz- commercial aspects is a necessary pose, and
taccíhuatl rests in accepting peace but Popoca- true art is more about what the genius artist
tépetl, in his anger, smolders and occasionally has to say and less about what anyone may
throws fireballs. This most recently popular want to see. In contemporary fine art, if regu-
velvet motif brings us full circle in Mexican his- lar people understand it, it is probably not
tory to the country’s mythic origins. sophisticated enough; if they don’t understand
After this brief history of velvet painting it, then they are not sophisticated enough. In
to the present, it is time to explore its cultural contrast, the ever-adapting, black velvet artists
significance and why it is so widely despised in Tijuana are proud to paint what people want
and held up as the icon of bad taste. To do this, and easily understand. “If it doesn’t sell, we
the values and aims of the tradition and how won’t paint it. If it does sell, we’ll paint more,”
it functions in the world need to be looked at one gallery owner explains.47 So while tourists
compared to the values and aims of various turn to black velvet paintings looking to bring
communities interested in art. The following home something exotic and unique from the
sections focus on black velvet as a popular place they visited, in the end, their art pur-
commodity and hybrid product of the border chases reveal more about their own desires and
economy and how this relates to the concerns imagination than they do about the societies
of both folklorists and the fine arts world that painted them. What velvet often reveals is
in the light of the concepts of “kitsch” and visitors’ stereotypes. “If gringo thinks Mexico
“camp.” is about matadors and lowriders, I’ll paint
xxii

A Mexican Superman in velvet.
roll heroes of various eras, and naked ladies

mix in with praying children, the Virgin Mary,
and Jesus crucified. Black velvet is a Mexican
art that is truly American. Rather than the
pure expression of the genius of one artist,
black velvet is a collaborative effort that expos-
es the souls of peoples rather than the mind of
one person.
However, despite the desire to only please
the buyer, a little unchangeable Mexico some-
times sneaks through. Like a barrio fiesta,
Christmas piñata, or Baja beach storefront,
velvet colors are never subtle, and artists tend
to paint faces that resemble Latin ones they
know even when rendering American icons.
Black velvet is an art of the borderlands.
It shows up where cultures rub against each
other and developed-world consumers meet
indigenous artistic entrepreneurs. This is what
such fruitful velvet zones as Hawaii, the Phil-
ippines, Vietnam, and Mexico have all had in
common—velvet thrived to the degree that
traveling Yankees came looking for adventure
and local artists seductively sought to relieve
them of their excess cash.
Black Velvet as Folk Art:

The “Artification of Commodity”
them for him in the spirit of free enterprise,” “Folk art” is a term with distinct but intercon-
explained another painter. nected histories in the minds of art historians
Drawing perhaps more inspiration from vs. folklorists. What art historians once called
ordinary gringo consumer tastes than Mexi- folk art, they are now more likely to call “out-
can artistic traditions, black velvet reveals an sider art” or “self-taught art.” Where they once
America both drawn to religion and fascinated focused on works that could be viewed as part
by vice. Drug-crazed demon visages, rock ’n’ of a “cultural project of American Nationalism”
xxiii

that evoked “rural life, community, simplicity, becomes a commodity—something for buy-
tradition, and authenticity,”48 they now focus ing and selling in a larger economy outside the
on the work of visionary self-taught geniuses art’s presumed traditional sphere. To many
who have attracted the attention of collectors critics, this is a bad thing that demeans the
but emerged internally motivated outside of artist and violates the purity of the art through
professional art education circles. contamination by the world-capitalist system.
While folklorists have sought to claim (Presumably such critics would rather tradition
ownership of the right to define folk art, the bearers “stay on the reservation” and not make
art world’s understandings have a different a living from what they do.)
focus, but are not entirely out of sync with, This commodification view ignores what
the definition folklorist Robert Teske gives: the folk artists themselves in cultures around
“Folk art must be defined in terms of: first, its the world have always known, even in tribal so-
acceptance of and dependence upon a com- cieties—namely, that their creations are called
munal aesthetic shared by a group of artists into existence by the possibility of exchange in
and their audience and shaped and reshaped by a competitive environment where consumers
them over time; second, its traditional nature, have other options. One can almost hear the
with its conservative emphasis upon perfect- caveman artisan fretting to himself, “If I don’t
ing old forms instead of creating entirely new make spear tips, and make them sharp, light,
ones; and third, its transmission via apparently and symmetrical, Og will take his bear skins to
informal, yet often highly structured and sys- Ug for trade and I will be cold.” Appreciation of
tematic, means.”49 these economic facts may have done more for
Black velvet might seem to be the perfect improving the quantity and quality of creative
subject for folklorists who believe that real art- endeavor throughout history than any other
istry is to be found outside the fine arts world motivation. And if more art can be exchanged
and celebrate creativity that is the product of with wealthier people outside the community
communities and not just individuals. Howev- for a bigger return, the artist sees this as a
er, black velvet poses a problem for folklorists. good thing.
Though it is not stated in Teske’s definition, In many cases, Persian carpets being a no-
folklorists often presume that the community table example, globalization and competition
that produces the folk art is also the one who has been good for the traditional art form as
consumes it in traditional face-to-face encoun- well—opening vast new buyers’ markets and
ters.50 With black velvet, one community cre- allowing artists to buy the best materials at the
ates for another, and the tradition represents lowest prices and demanding their best work
an interplay of multiple communities’ aesthet- as they compete for consumers who have more
ic values that emerge for commercial reasons. and more opportunities to buy other artifacts
Folklorists often bemoan such situations. from elsewhere.51 It is tempting to suggest that
They call this “the commodification of art,” or what happens when folk art circulates in larger
the process by which art made for individual economies is actually the “artification of com-
or community aesthetic or spiritual reasons modity” but this too artificially separates the
xxiv

unified nature of aesthetic creation and eco- by seeking to articulate why we should appre-
nomic exchange. ciate seriously marginalized art forms, such
Ideological aversion to free and open mar- as black velvet, that real working-class people
kets for artists may explain one reason why actually appreciate.
folklorists—whose discipline would naturally At a recent folklore conference in Ten-
seem to be the one to take up the scholarly nessee I brought examples of black velvet for
treatment of black velvet—have almost totally display. Many folklorists were delighted but
ignored the tradition.52 Black velvet is perhaps quite a few seemed perplexed and even put off
too unabashedly bound up with popular and by the topic. The maids and custodians at the
economic processes to be considered “authen- hotel reacted quite differently. They gathered
tic.” Folklorists have long seen it as one of their around the display in groups, running to fetch
main missions to find and celebrate underap- friends to show the velvets, asking many ques-
preciated creative traditions from low-status tions and eager to talk about their own collec-
and marginalized groups, but only so long as tions. With reverence, a custodian said, “This
those traditions emerge organically as part of is a very fine collection, sir. My brother has an
lives “uncontaminated” by corrosive outside Elvis painting much like what you have here.”
influences. I asked if his brother’s painting was on velvet.
More recently, “hybridity,” or the blending “No, sir,” he said, “but if it was, then it would
of practices to invent new creative traditions be a real treasure.”
more than the sum of their parts, has come to
be celebrated, but only so long as the source
streams are equally vernacular or only if the Pop Art and Black Velvet:
“resistant” cultural influence rather than the Similar Opposites
“oppressive” one is valorized.53 To remedy this
politicized view of the economic aspects of At first glance, the fine art world’s traditional
traditional folk arts, anthropologist Andrew scorn of black velvet may seem more under-
Causey suggests the term “conflation,” rather standable than folklorists’. However, at least
than hybridity, be used in describing culturally since the days of Dada, for nearly a century
blended artistic phenomena so as to make ana- now, tastemakers have increasingly questioned
lytic description free from value judgments or the meaning of art by throwing “not art” in our
accusations of exploitation against some of the faces. In a 2004 poll, five hundred British art
tradition’s contributing influences.54 experts voted Marcel Duchamp’s trailblazing
The traditional folklorists’ approach has Fountain (1917)—where he signed a pseudonym
done a much better job valorizing easy-case art “R. Mutt” to a urinal and put it in an art show—
forms such as quilting and fiddle tunes that are “the most influential [not most beautiful] mod-
readily appreciated by fellow educated folklor- ern art work of all time” for its bold questioning
ists and in the nostalgic faux-folksy imagina- of what art really is. Notably, while the original
tions of bourgeois bohemians. Such scholars work was destroyed, Duchamp commissioned
have been less eager to really test their mettle many copies in the 1960s that are displayed
xx v

Jackson dandling his chimp Bubbles continued
in this tradition.57 Such efforts are not that
different thematically from velvet. But the pur-
poses to which the fine arts puts such themes
are very different.
Questioning the meaning of art itself has
become not just a part of the fine arts project
but arguably the central fine arts project. How
the artist frames the subject and what her
statement of purpose says have become more
important than subject matter or even skillful
execution in defining what art is. Finding the
right stance is key, and some form of cynicism,
irony, and detached critical sensibility toward
yourself, your work, and the rest of the world
are required ingredients. An artist today must
be savvy enough to be totally serious without
giving a hint of being earnest. This is where
pop art and the world it created differ from
black velvet, despite some surface similarities.
Pop art is detached, serious, and nihilistic.58
Black velvet is the opposite of all this. It
“Monica Lewinsky with a Pearl Necklace”: a black velvet joke painting
is irony free, always earnest, and you don’t
commissioned by Los Angeles performance artist William Travis Robison.
need any explanation beyond shared modern
cultural experience to understand it. However,
in museums around the world.55 Black velvet’s like fine art, black velvet does plenty of ap-
embrace of eclecticism, consumerism, and easy propriation of outside elements. Masterpieces
reproducibility might seemingly fit nicely in this from the fine art world have long been one of
postmodern world. Artists bending down to its favorite targets of expropriation. However,
redeem the kitsch and commonplace through velvet does not poach to define or question
ironic appropriation has become commonplace the meaning of art itself. It poaches because
itself.56 This tendency triumphed in the 1960s people like iconic themes, and themes people
with Andy Warhol compelling us to consider his like sell paintings. Black velvet engages in an
paintings of such trivialities as Campbell’s soup exuberant embrace with a consumerism that
cans and Marilyn Monroe publicity shots as art would horrify any self-respecting serious art-
of the most sophisticated sort. Roy Lichtenstein ist. Black velvet’s problem may not be that it
did the same with newspaper comics. In the is too different from fine art but is too similar.
1980s, Jeff Koons’s glossy sculptures of the Pink And it exposes the conceit that fine art is not
Panther embracing a buxom blonde and Michael commercial.
xx vi

The thing that makes velvet really differ- praising and displaying vintage black velvet be-
ent and unique from other forms of “not art” cause their friends understand they are being
is that it is put forward as art (not design or tongue-in-cheek. As a bellwether of changing
craft) but is completely and totally rejected cultural stock values, might bohemian campy
by the art world. It was never put forward as interest yet indicate better future fortunes for
anything but art. It doesn’t even have roots in black velvet? Probably not. Still, it is impos-
anything else. There are people who see it, gen- sible to understand the possibilities for black
uinely, as an art form. They are just disenfran- velvet in today’s world without taking a closer
chised. Other kitsch such as cowboy paintings look at the notions of kitsch and camp and the
and bronzes may escape if good enough. Black ways these terms are put to use. Dictionar-
velvet never does except as a joke. It defies cat- ies define kitsch with terms such as “garish,”
egorization and is rejected by the only category “pretentious,” “sentimental,” “vulgar,” and
that it would seemingly most properly fit. But “worthless.” Much of the fine art world dispar-
black velvet is its own animal, unconcerned ages kitsch for being too straightforward. Its
with fine art and independent of it. Black vel- message is not subtle and not evoked by the
vet is too strong and vast for the art world to piece itself.59 Its meaning is drawn from clear
handle, but fine art needs black velvet as a foil references to sentiments already present in the
much more than black velvet needs fine art viewer’s mind.
as a target of aspiration. Fine arts’ animosity One art critic explains, “As opposed to
toward a tradition so similar proves the adage art’s craving for the new, kitsch roams around
that a heretic is worse than a heathen. among the familiar forms in history.”60 If so,
this is perhaps why portraits of celebrity fig-
ures are so popular in black velvet. We know
Hip Kitsch, Cool Camp, who they are and what they represent. With
and Cheap Schlock kitsch, we are not invited to rethink what we
believe about the subject matter as with “high
Both fine art critics and folklorists appropriate art.” Kitsch aspires to serious status and fails;
popular commodity culture for their own pur- it thinks it knows the rules of the game but is
poses, mostly to define and justify their own hopelessly unaware that it does not. Kitsch is
purview against something else. The threat too easy. As Greg Rugoff puts it, black velvet
that black velvet presents, and the reason it is “like a gaudy whorish version of painting
needs to be so vociferously denigrated, is in on canvas; it seduces us with cheap theatrical
how clearly it demonstrates that easy distinc- magic, giving its favors away all too freely.”61
tions between popular culture and folklore and While kitsch does not intend to be frivo-
art and “not art” can break down when one lous, camp does.62 This is a key distinction.
looks at a tradition such as black velvet that Camp removes the pretentiousness and lack
sets its own rules unconstrained by what art of awareness from the definition of kitsch but
critics and folklorists say. leaves everything else in place—the loudness,
Big city hipsters might get away with the sentimentality, the flamboyant vulgari-
xx vii

ty—and then adds an exuberant “wink-wink the banal in such a way as to critically com-
nudge-nudge” celebratory aside. Camp “sees ment on banality.
everything in quotation marks” and is “the It would be wrong, however, to suggest
love of the exaggerated,” says the foundational that an awareness of all these distinctions and
explainer of camp, Susan Sontag.63 Camp is definitions is necessary to appreciate black
slumming. Camp knows the rules and chooses velvet. It still has a large audience of straight-
not to follow them. It is in on the joke and forward fans. A student from rural Texas once
revels in this and in the sensory overload that visited my university office and commented
unabashed indulgence in kitsch can provide. positively on a black velvet Elvis and Jesus
When those in the know appropriate I had out on my desk at the time. Thinking I
kitsch for fun, that’s camp. When those in the saw the knowing twinkle in his eye, I launched
know appropriate kitsch for serious reasons into a discussion of kitsch and camp, making
of social commentary, that’s art. Through this sure he knew that I too knew what was up.
means, kitsch can then ironically achieve its The twinkle I thought I saw vanished, and he
aspiration to fine art, but only as a sort of sheepishly explained that he didn’t know about
court jester or trendy exotic pet in the halls of any of that sort of thing but his extended fam-
the venerable and mighty. Warhol’s soup cans ily just thought such paintings were pretty
don’t redeem the banal as much as they exploit and had many of them. His twinkle was only
xx viii

one of recognizing the form, not of its com- Black Velvet, as it is appreciated today,
plex social significances outside working-class often represents something that transcends
Texas circles. Commenting on this kind of un- both camp and naive forms appreciation. For
abashed appreciation with no thought toward many it is an example of what Lee Konstan-
the accolades of the sophisticated, some critics tinou calls “neo-sincerity” or “post-irony.”66
have called kitsch “the purest art form in the This is the appreciation of something that you
world.”64 know is uncool or gauche, yet you sincerely and
But is black velvet really kitsch or is earnestly value it anyway as a way of moving
it something different? Unlike the kind of beyond negativity and cynicism to something
“priceless,” “handcrafted” figurines one finds more positive and affirmative. The authors of
hawked in the back-page ads of Sunday news- this book hope to open for the reader, the pos-
paper magazine supplements that Jeff Koons sibility of this kind of appreciation.
parodies, black velvet may not actually meet
the classic understanding of kitsch. When Velvet’s Value and Prospects
looked at closely, it may prove more difficult
to ironically appropriate. Black velvet is mass So black velvet is clearly out of sync with the
produced as is kitsch, but it does not aspire to fine art world in many ways even as its simi-
endow a sense of cultivation, sophistication, or larities threaten to expose fine arts’ conceits.
elite status in the way kitsch’s hawkers some- But could velvet be brought in to this world ei-
times do.65 Black velvet is as unpretentious as ther as a partner or as a foil as with Campbell’s
art forms get, and the driving reasons for its soup cans? Sometimes, previously despised
continued generation are personal aesthetic forms resurge. The cultural stock value of art-
ones. Yet unlike other crafts, design, or folk art ists such as Bouguereau, Monet, Messier, and
it has no other purpose than aesthetic and, like Rousseau has fluctuated between acceptable
fine art, it is self-contained. and tacky following seemingly capricious art
Nonironic black velvet consumers know it world trends.
doesn’t offer any possibility of providing pres- An example of a course black velvet might
tige or social advantage. To display a velvet in take comes from the worlds of fashion and
one’s trailer involves little risk of anyone else architecture. In the 1990s, Gianni Versace
in the park accusing you of fancy-schmancy rocked the haute couture world with flamboy-
social climbing. Making fun of the supposedly ant clothing sometimes inspired by the rags of
clueless who think their lowbrow art purchases the homeless.67 His success went hand in hand
make them classier falls a little flat when buy- with the transformation of his new hometown,
ers know good and well it does not. If any- South Beach, Florida, from blighted urban
thing, the black velvet tradition is less guilty of eyesore to cherished American heritage site.68
overreaching for respect than it is for its lack of Nothing changed really in South Beach except
interest in acclaim beyond its individual imme- gentrification and a reappraisal of neon sig-
diate consumers. So, unlike other kitsch, black nage and art deco hotel architecture from trash
velvet is unpretentious and unself-conscious to treasure.
about status. Black velvet’s tradition of reproducibility xxix

and the difficulties of authenticating original growth on high culture.”70 If an art form avail-
period pieces for collectors work against any able to unsophisticated people because of its
possible resurgence. Fine art buyers can be low cost and Third World mass manufacture
reasonably sure of purchasing a one-of-a-kind gets relegated to trash or joke status, middle-
painting on the fine arts market and that class folks of “good taste” merely need to stu-
scarcity at least has the potential to drive the diously avoid it and adopt the right attitude
value up. Velvet buyers, on the other hand, can towards it to take comfort that we are not like
be sure that if people came to like a particu- them without having to say anything directly
lar velvet trope, it has, almost by definition, unpleasant about poor people.
been many times reproduced and is in no way In the end, criticizing black velvet, like
scarce.69 purchasing black velvet, perhaps says less
In the end, the true measure of black vel- about the creator than the viewer. For its fans
vet’s worth is not in the auction value of any as well as its critics, the significance of black
one painting but the continued popularity of velvet is about boundaries. For fans it is about
the form among those with insufficient means crossing boundaries into the exotic to own
to participate in the fashionable trends of fine something that is personally pleasing. For crit-
art collecting who buy only for personal rea- ics it is about policing the boundaries of an
sons. The art people buy when not trying to art world that black velvet shows may be less
impress anyone, but only delight themselves, defined by medium, purpose, aesthetics, and
might give a clearer window into universal creativity than it is by anxieties about threats
human aesthetics than more culturally and so- to its own exclusivity and significance. If black
cially complicated art markets do. velvet were to be rehabilitated, it could only
But ending on this note evades the ques- happen by finding something else to replace it
tion of whether the tastemakers might yet in its very important role of defining the limits
rescue black velvet as they have with other of “true” art. And what could possibly fulfill
lowbrow forms? Might we see it become genu- this role as well as el tercio pelo negro?
inely fashionable and not just arch-ironically
hip? Can black velvet make the South Beach/
neon transition? The biggest obstacle to such a
shift would be that if through some miracle—
or calamity, depending on your point of view—
black velvet were suddenly boosted into cool,
something else would have to take its place as
the iconic antiart.
Yet, velvet fulfills this role perfectly. It
does so through the workings of a simple snob-
bery that reveals itself in the very relegation
of a whole artistic tradition to pariah status.
In 1953, art critic Dwight Macdonald set the
xxx tone to follow, calling black velvet a “cancerous

Black Velvet People
xxxi

Romero, artist
In his black ironed shirt, black knit hat, and ating velvet popular art for high art ironic pur-
small-frame glasses, Romero wears one of poses, he is not against pushing the popular Ti-
the allowable uniforms for a Mexico City art juana velvet scene in new directions now that
world sophisticate. Yet this early-twenties he is an accepted part of it. “My angular style is
young man is in Tijuana selling his black velvet kind of new and not all the other artists know
paintings to gallery owners at the urging of his what to do with it. But hey, it sells, and the gal-
uncle, who always supported his artistic bent lery owners like that. You know it is funny that
when he was a child and now helps manage his Americans come to Tijuana to see Mexico, but
career. Romero knows full well the complexi- this is the most American part of the country.
ties of kitsch and consumer culture that vel- The people here think like Americans. It’s al-
vet represents; yet he dove in anyway. “Black ways commerce all the time, always business.
Velvet is as much a part of the Mexican art They own shops and think about profits and
tradition as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. We work. This defines the art scene here, too. I
should not reject it or look down on it. Besides, hope to get into university and study art and
it pays the bills. And no matter what kind of move on to canvas and fine art shows, but I’ll
artist you are, you can’t scoff at that.” always be glad I did this.”
Many artists who started in velvet found
their way into the fine arts world, but Romero
has gone the other direction “as an experi-
ment, for a time,” he stresses. But he is not
slumming; he is not trying to be cute. He re-
spects the tradition and wants to be seen as
part of it. In this he has succeeded. Virtually
every shop in Tijuana displays his work, and
gallery owners say his paintings are among
their best-selling. His style is unmistakable.
He often paints with only white paint, and
while he focuses on familiar themes—iconic
portraits mostly—he does so with an organic
angularity and bold lines that define distinct
edges as well as the planes and crags of his sub-
Facing page:
jects’ faces. “Painting velvet is a way to practice
top: Romero, center, with gallery-owner family friends.
my craft, get good with the brush, and some-
bottom: Some of Romero’s portraiture: Geronimo and Jim
times try some new things.”
Morrison.
While Romero is manifestly not appropri-
xxxii

xxxiii

Felix and the Corvette he customized himself circa 1975.
xxxiv

Felix, artist
“Romero’s style is impressive. I understand and
even like what he is doing. But you can’t paint
an attractive nude like that with all those harsh
angles. It just won’t be alluring or comely. A
nude should be soft, curvy, even organicly
ripe.” Felix shows us a photograph of a larger-
than-life longhaired blonde he painted for a
restaurant in the 1970s. It is everything he says
it should be.
“But people don’t buy nudes in Tijuana
anymore so we don’t paint them. It is a more
family-friendly place than it used to be, I
guess.” Felix sighs. A tiny rhinestone-studded
AK-47 rifle pendant dangles from the gold
chain around his neck. This is the only thing
about him that contrasts with his kind and
gentle manner.
Felix maintains a studio apartment sepa-
rate from his home that he actually uses as
a studio. Paints, frames, and velvet canvases
occupy every inch of one room; a palm topiary
Felix works on a Tupac portrait in his studio.
and couch for napping dominate the other.
Felix has been painting velvet since the 1960s.
When the 1974–75 velvet craze hit, he moved By the early 1980s, the velvet fad had
to the United States for a while to follow the passed, and Felix was painting more store
money. In Las Vegas, a casino hired him as an and restaurant signs than he was velvet. Felix
artist-in-residence to sell velvet to tourists. is too humble to say it, but his every action
“I made so much money back then. I worked shows he takes pride in his work. He stretches
all day every day and people would watch me some velvet swaths across wooden frames he
paint. With me they got a real piece of art, not makes himself. He is careful not to go too fast
like those factory paintings you could get back and is exacting in where he places the staples
then where people with no skill would each to hold the fabric taut and wrinkle free across
paint one color of the piece. Still today, out on the wood. When he’s done, he points to one
the street, some guys do it wrong and push the portrait of his family and another of his wife. “I
brush too hard. You need to lightly caress the will never sell these. I made those for me.”
velvet with only just enough paint.”1 xxx v

Jesus “Chuy” Gutierrez, artist
Chuy has a reputation as a gentleman and as velvet right can actually be harder to master at
one of the “old masters” of velvet. He owns the first than canvas.”
most spacious gallery in Tijuana, and hundreds Chuy takes a piece of paper and pokes
of paintings, only about 10 percent of which holes in it to outline an image he has sketched
are velvet, bedeck his wall space. “As the mar- on it. He tapes the paper to his velvet (“It is
ket changed, I migrated from velvet to canvas. actually velveteen,” he explains) and dusts
It is what the customer wants these days. I still the paper with chalk. For a few of his smaller
sell a little velvet but most of it is not mine. marks he dabs carefully with a white chalk
I really like Manny’s2 animals, like this wolf pencil. When he is done, he lifts the paper off
here. It is too bad he has disappeared. People the velvet to leave chalk fleck lines that reveal
say it has something to do with drugs, him ow- the image to be painted. “Sometimes you can
ing money, I don’t know. He might have been see the white chalk flecks still on the painting
killed. It is a shame. when you buy one. Just brush them away if
“Today, I take commissions from all over you don’t like it,” he smiles.
the place. See those paintings?” He points to As he paints, the visage of a grizzled ban-
two huge five-by-ten-foot canvases, each with dido begins to emerge. “Good material for vel-
a sleek racehorse on a muted background. “A vet is anything with colors,” he explains. “Color
high roller from Miami commissioned those, is so important to this type of painting. My
but he never came back and paid. I’m not put personal favorite is anything with faces.” When
out about it though. I take 50 percent on com- he’s done, he dusts off the chalk and presents
mission and 50 percent on completion. So I got the bandido to us. “Please, take it, a gift from
something. Besides, having them here is good me. I am just glad someone is interested in
advertising for what I can do. So they are not this. It brings back many fond memories of by-
for sale. gone times.”
“I still do velvet from time to time for
fun. It is such a quick and easy medium once
you know what you are doing, especially with
these modern paints that are easier to use
and take less time to dry. So much better than
the 1970s. On a white canvas, you have to
put down black for any kind of shadow, and
shadow is everywhere in virtually anything you
might paint. This takes time and money, which
is why velvet paintings are cheaper. But to do
xxx vi

Chuy signs his bandido.
xxx vii

William Travis Robison,
Impresario of Velvet
Bill Robison, curator of sales for Indignico exchange for monuments of deep significance
Inc.—the top Google listing from any search to their political leaders. Bill’s stunt garnered
for “black velvet painting”—has been an im- national media attention and a National Public
porter and a behind-the-scenes stage manager Radio interview with Linda Wertheimer—who
of black velvet happenings for nearly fifteen seemed to be only slightly more aware than the
years. He lays a persuasive claim to being “the oblivious convention goers that performance
first white guy” to make the highly significant art and not just black velvet art was afoot in
historical assertion—for the purposes of this the San Diego Convention Center.
book anyway—that the now iconic velvet Elvii Bill’s setup work for the convention
were first sold at the Mariscal Gallery in Tijua- involved considerable convoluted skulldug-
na in the 1950s. He was also behind the strange gery that he narrates in Steve Buscemi–like
velvet doings at the Republican National Con- machine-gun bursts. “I met with a bunch of
vention in San Diego. velvet Elvis artists under semifalse pretenses.
During that fateful week in 1996, two I was supposedly the gofer who attended the
“businessmen from Tijuana,” Ricardo and (Spanish-speaking) assistant to the big boss
Danny Molina, manned a sales booth display- who ran a Franklin Mint–sized company, and
ing top-quality portraits of Bob Dole, Pat we were just putting out a few feelers regarding
Buchanan, Jack Kemp, and Ronald Reagan on a new collectible series. Then my vendor in-
black velvet. The handsome hombres’ suave quiry to the RNC was accepted. In writing it, I
style, polite manner, and apparent respect for had rambled through considerable sales-poetry
their subject matter—as shown by their care- and managed to avoid using the words ‘black’
ful attention to their wares with little pink lint and ‘velvet.’ Despite the fact some other ven-
rollers—induced dozens of convention goers dors had been on a waiting list for four years,
to spend hundreds of dollars on paintings com- the RNC ushered me into the ‘Limited-Access
plete with “certificates of authenticity.” Vendors’ Area’—a kind of hyperdistilled GOP
But the two “entrepreneurs” were not re- headspace with my very own three-thousand-
ally the family-business velvet dealers they dollar-a-week vendor booth. I immediately quit
pretended to be. They were actors hired by my job doing sound for Hard Copy, Entertain-
Bill Robison, whose personal feelings about ment Tonight, and COPS promos and devoted
Republicans “were something I remained mum my remaining two weeks to spastic amounts of
about at the time.” However, Bill was in no prep. In the confusion, I went insane and have
way averse to making a few bucks from Re- been unable to shake free of the velvet ever
publicans’ eagerness to empty their wallets in since.
xxx viii

Bill Robison in 2006. Dick Cheney hides Bill’s shotgun blast–scarred arm—a memento, he’ll proudly explain, of a Venice
Beach carjacking gone bad.
xxxix

Ricardo and Danny Molina at the 1996 Republican
Convention (photograph courtesy of William Travis
Robison).
hero’s special insight into our nation’s politics.

Oh my, can you imagine what Felix could do
with Sarah Palin? I have got to get on that! But
this is just part of what we do. We also have
the largest selection of Tijuana favorites—
clowns, matadors, cholos, movie stars, etc., on
the Internet.”
Pressed on whether or not he is exploit-
ing the naivete of his customers who might
not understand black velvet’s position in the
art world or might not think to ask just what
exactly it is that his “certificates of authentic-
ity” actually authenticate, Bill’s eyes twinkle
and he responds with good humor, “Do you
“The plan was to have Ricardo and Danny really think they don’t know? Aren’t they in
let slip to buyers that they might have come on the joke? Don’t you think they ‘get it’ when
across the border illegally to be at the conven- they read on my Web site that each painting
tion and hint that their operation was some- they buy is one of a ‘limitless edition’? Isn’t
how linked with a Mexican Mafia family and that why they buy my paintings? Because they
see how the conservative convention goers are ‘in on it’? And what if they aren’t? What if
reacted. We were way ahead of Sacha Baron Co- they really think a black velvet painting is valu-
hen’s Borat and Brüno with this kind of thing. able? Who is to say that it is not valuable to
I was in film school at the time and planned to them? Isn’t value in the eye of the beholder—a
make a This Is Spinal Tap–style mockumentary subjective thing? Isn’t this really the whole
about our velvet project, but that never really basis of the free-market pricing Friedman- and
panned out. But people kept contacting me Hayek-reading conservatives love? It would be
about buying velvets, so the business migrated condescending, not to mention poor business
online and we are still honoring Republican practice, to tell my customers they are being
heroes with new additions all the time. Romero duped into buying worthless, overpriced crap.”
paints a fantastic ‘mission accomplished’
George W. Bush portrait with the former presi-
dent on the carrier flight deck in his fighter pi-
lot g-suit. Argo did a series on Joe the Plumber
that has a wonderful glint of light on his bald
head that might represent this working-class
xl
Elison.BlkV.1_FCID.indd 40 10/25/10 11:55 AM

Rick Smith, Collector
With his fine-stitched boots, polite manner,
and the sonorous voice of a radio announcer,
Rick Smith is the consummate Canadian
cowboy gentleman. For thirty-three years, he
served as the director of Heritage Park Histori-
cal Village in Calgary where reenactors dem-
onstrate pioneer living during the settlement
of western Canada in much the way Plimoth
Plantation evokes Puritan New England or Co-
lonial Williamsburg re-creates Revolution-era
Virginia.
In 2001, Rick found himself far away
from work and family at a medical center in
Edmonton. He had been given the frighten-
ing diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis and was
undergoing a six-week, inpatient, doctor’s
orders indoctrination of physical testing and
psychological preparation for a double lung
transplant. Alone, bored, scared, and mentally
altered by his drug regimen, he began haunting
antique stores and flea markets for serendipi-
tous finds and for something to do to occupy
his unquiet mind. At one store, he peeked over
a screen that seemed to be hiding something
A velvet portrait of collector Rick Smith.
special and beheld a black velvet Elvis that im-
mediately spoke to him.
The intense colors jumped out at him, But Rick was certainly not joking or trying to
making it “the most beautiful thing. It was al- be cynically hip; he’d truly found something
most like a spiritual experience,” he said. Rick that brought light into his life during a vulner-
immediately bought it to “sparkle up” his drea- able time when he very much needed a distrac-
ry hospital room. He shared his special find tion. “I’ll show them,” he said to himself. “I’ll
with some friends who laughed at this cultured buy more—not four more, not forty, but four
man’s unexpected descent into bad taste. “They hundred!”
thought I was nuts.” That very weekend, he visited a flea mar-
Nuts? Maybe. Overmedicated? Probably. ket with his wife and saw another velvet, “a
xli

typical Mexican one—a desert the event, providing the music and food and
scene with a guy on a motor- selling Corona beer and margaritas. Attendees
bike. My wife said, ‘You aren’t who paid for the privilege of viewing the col-
going to buy that, are you?’ I lection were ushered into a tent where every
said, ‘Yes, I am. I’ll double the square inch of wall was covered with paintings.
size of my collection!’ That’s Rick explains, “Viewing one velvet can be a
how it started. So, I scoured pretty impressive experience but a whole room,
all the flea markets, antique wall to wall, can be absolutely overwhelming.”
stores, and garage sales in Each year, attendees could bid in a silent auc-
Alberta and Saskatchewan. tion for the painting of Rick that heads this
(Most of the nudes came from section—not to own, but only to keep for a
garage sales. Guys were get- year until the next RAVE. One year it went
The velvet Elvis that started it all for
ting rid of them to please their for $1,500. Over the years, the RAVEs raised
Rick Smith.
wives.) Driving back and forth $128,000 for the Heritage Park Foundation and
between Calgary and Edmon- garnered much coverage in the local press.
ton, I took different back roads each time and In 2006, The Calgary Herald ran a half-page
stopped in every little town looking for velvet feature on Rick’s loan of his collection to this
that tourists had picked up in Mexico over the book’s authors, who have kept the collection in
years.” (Many were likely imported to Canada Utah as they worked on this book. As of 2009,
by the Palestinian businessmen Mr. Shawar Rick is retired from Heritage Park and has
and Mr. Nabut, who developed and dominated moved to the country; his health has much im-
the 1970s Canadian velvet market.)3 proved despite his now being blind in one eye
“Word got out about what I was doing, so from all the prescribed steroids he had to take.
prices actually started to go up, but friends and He waxes philosophical about his velvet past:
family helped me out and brought me many “It was something to do while I was ill. It kept
velvets. In no time I had fifty. Fifty turned into my mind off the awfulness of my diagnosis. I
hundreds and I began to realize I needed to had fun fixing up the frames and keeping them
put on a show. I knew I had something special. sorted. It was very therapeutic. My wife was
If you see one antique car in a parking lot you very understanding. She knew I needed some-
may not stop, but if you see a hundred you’ll thing. Sometimes people still come up to me
pull over. You may not come to see a dozen and say, ‘Hey, aren’t you the guy with all the
velvets, but four hundred in one room? That velvet paintings?’”
would be something to see.” Now that the threat of a lung transplant
Rick’s obsession turned into a boon for the has lifted, his mind has turned again to velvet
Heritage Park and for the Calgary community. and he has begun collecting again. Despite per-
From 2002 to 2004, Rick held a benefit exhibi- haps once thinking that lending his paintings
tion called the RAVE: “Rick’s Amazing Velvet would mean he’d seen the last of them, he has
Experience” every Cinco de Mayo. Calgary’s begun to consider retrieving them one day to
Mexican immigrants enthusiastically embraced hold another, even bigger, RAVE.
xlii

Black Velvet
Paintings

2

Matadors
&Mexicana
When tourists go to Mexico, they want to bring back
something Mexican. In defining what is Mexican, it is not
so much how Mexicans see themselves that determines
what tourists want, but those things that seem the most
different or those most readily associated with the way
Mexico is conceived by tourists. Mexicans’ similarities
to Americans fade and the differences stand out in bas-
relief.
Bloodsport bullfighting is illegal in the United States.
So regardless of its popularity in Mexico today, to Americans the
sport is pure exotic Mexico. Matadors and bulls captured in various
action poses were perhaps the greatest 1970s velvet icon after Elvis.
These paintings were modeled in part on the printed flyers bullrings
would paste all over town to advertize upcoming corridas. Bandidos
(or “banditos” in the Americanized spelling) who look like they might
have ridden with Pancho Villa, with a sombrero, cigarillo, moustache,

3

bandolero, and the requisite menacing squint, cut a visage different
from gringo hero types.
At the core of the Mexican image is the meeting and violent
blending of two worlds, new and old, native and Spanish.1 A small
minority of Mexico’s population claims pure Spanish ancestry, and
a slightly larger minority are more or less pure Indian. This leaves
the overwhelming majority of the country a mix that has become
more than the sum of its parts.2 In reflecting on the mythic roots of
Mexican identity, there have traditionally been two places to go:

4

the adventurous conquistadors (as seen in velvet
with helmeted soldiers and sailing galleons) or
Aztec mythology (as seen in velvet with Iztaccíhuatl
and Popocatépetl—the star-crossed lovers whose
eponymous volcanoes dominate Mexico City’s skyline).
The native has eclipsed the European in recent years,
and scenes from Aztec myth have risen to the fore.
Tijuana gallery owners say that Mexican Americans
getting in touch with their roots purchase many of their
Aztec-themed paintings. For Hispanics living in a land
of predominantly European descent, it is the native
aspect of their dual identity that stands out as most
distinctive. Mexican American airbrush, mural, and
lowrider art is dripping with Aztec imagery3 that must
swirl in the minds of Mexican Americans returning to
Mexico—so does nostalgia for the days of old school
pachuco zoot suits and 1930s lowriders that may be
more Southern California and Texas border town than
they are northern Mexico but still evoke roots and
heritage for Chicanos and Chicanas. So, even in the case of Mexican
American velvet buyers in Tijuana, when they set out to buy a piece of
authentic Mexico they often bring home a mirror.

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Landscapes
In 1993, Soviet émigré artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid
commissioned an expansive study of artistic preferences
in ten countries.4 Their plan was to find out through
scientific polling what people liked and paint it for them.
For each country, the artists cobbled together some of
the strongest expressed preferences and painted them
together in one painting. USA’s Most Wanted depicts
George Washington as well as children playing. Kenya’s
Most Wanted shows both Jesus and a hippo.
However, what is most striking about the paintings is
not their differences of detail but their broad similarities
of motif. Americans, Turks, Icelanders, Russians, Chinese, Danes,
Kenyans, Portuguese, Ukrainians, Italians, Germans, and even the
French all hated geometric abstract art and preferred landscapes
with natural colors. Most of the paintings Komar and Melamid
made—despite the sprinkling of such local touchstones as George
Washington and the hippo—look surprisingly reminiscent of the wide
verdant landscapes of Hudson River school painters Thomas Cole,
Albert Bierstadt, and Frederick Church.5

17

Few would mistake black velvet with Hudson River work. And
while velvet landscapes show occasional local flavor—Mexican cacti
and Pacific palms, for example—both traditions largely conform to
what seems to be the universal desire for not just landscape, but a
specific kind of landscape that shows little variation whether one lives
in the arctic or the desert. To be most universally attractive, landscape
scenes should depict the following features:6
• The preferred colors of natural “sky and water blues” and the
greens of plants.
• Grassy open spaces interspersed with thickets of plants, bushes,
and stands of trees—especially flowering varieties.
18

• Plenty of drinkable water, or clear evidence thereof.
• Evidence of animal and/or bird life—mown grass being a sure sign
of edible grazing mammals.
• Mountains in the distant background rather than foregrounded.
• Most of the scene being traversable on foot.
• The view being from a vantage point from which it would be easy
to see threats or game opportunities.
• A horizon opening up in at least one direction.
In other words, we prefer views of landscapes where it looks like
the weather is mild, and we are well-positioned to get at the ample
supply of drinkable water and various foods and also to detect and
escape whatever threats there may be.
Komar and Melamid did not set out to uncover innate aesthetic
desires that can run deeper than culturally transmitted preferences,
but their findings of stark similarities between Icelandic and Chinese
as well as French and Kenyan artistic fondnesses suggest that this is
exactly what they have done.
Denis Dutton speculates that as with our preference for neotenous
children, attractive celebrities, and well-formed human bodies, there
may be evolutionary reasons for our landscape predilections as well.7
Hundreds of generations of ancestors drawn to safe, lush, food-filled
vistas would have been more likely to produce offspring than those
hypothetical possible ancestors who felt compelled to trek into the
19

tundra or the sand dunes that they found so alluring. Of course,
people have adapted to live in the tundra and the dunes, and often
find them beautiful, but perhaps only because other people already
lived in the places their ancestors might have first preferred.
Notably, Komar and Melamid also painted a series of “least
wanted” paintings for each country. Italy’s least wanted painting
includes St. Sebastian being martyred by arrows, a Japanese-inspired
children’s television show hero, and a black velvet portrait of Elvis.8
Apparently, at least for Italians in this particular case, acquired
bourgeois tastes win out over whatever innate desires they might
have.
20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

Personalities
&Portraits
Few things are more compelling to humans than other humans—
particularly the faces of familiar and famous people. Moises Mariscal
explains, “In my shop, over the years, buyers have always liked
portraits. The people depicted have changed, but buyers have always
liked faces. Matadors, nudes, funny animals have come and gone
but I have always sold faces.”9 We like having pictures of our family
members around, especially when they are not.10 If any of the velvets
in this section are of people you don’t recognize, it may be that they
are commissioned portraits of family members that were special to
someone at some time.
For a species that evolved for thousands of years in small
hunter-gatherer bands of a little more than hundred people, we are
psychologically ill equipped to see images of people we know and
admire from the mass media and not interact with them on a daily
31

basis.11 We are naturally drawn to their wealth, power, beauty, and
skills. Maybe they are someone whose musical talent inspires us, such
as Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, or Selena. Or maybe it is their ideals or
vision for humanity—someone such as Martin Luther King or Ronald
Reagan.
But in societies of millions of people, we can never realistically
expect celebrities to be an actual part of our lives. We deal with this in
several ways. Some of us turn into stalkers. Some buy a subscription
(prescription?) to People magazine and read it for the same reasons
we might gossip over the backyard fence with a neighbor. Some of us
buy a black velvet portrait to take into our home—a vivid reminder
32

of the aspiration we have to connect with those we admire and keep
them close to us. Black velvet portraiture serves as a barometer for
the condensation and evaporation of fame, but also helps tell us who
has made the cut to endure in our memories.
Another reason readers may not recognize the people in this
section is that the depicted celebrity’s star has dipped in the sky since
its zenith of yore. Who but the most dedicated cinephile readers of
this book will remember Laurence Olivier as “the Mahdi” from the
1966 film Khartoum about British colonial exploits in 1880s Sudan?12
The demure Bridget Bardot still has aging fans and a few younger
rediscoverers. The Rat Pack caricature of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis,
Jr., and Frank Sinatra certainly evokes an earlier time but would
only appeal to a select clientele today. But these paintings are ones
33

excavated from the back of Moises
Mariscal’s shop in Tijuana—ones that
are not for sale, ones that he keeps for
nostalgic reasons because his father did.
A similar nostalgia seems at work
with the more modern icons—the
most popular ones from the aughts.
Tupac Shakur’s fame has only risen in
certain circles since the nineties, as has
Scarface’s since the eighties and Bob
Marley’s since the seventies.13 Celebrities
whose “now moment” was the early
twenty-first century—Britney Spears,
Brad Pitt, and the Jonas Brothers—are nowhere to be found. Maybe
they will yet get the velvet treatment in ten or twenty years.
Some portraits don’t need to be someone we know personally
or even be a celebrity, but just to be someone attractive—a kindly
old man, a beautiful girl, or a life-filled boy from Mexico or the South
Pacific or wherever it was we went on vacation (or would like to
imagine that we someday might). Some portraits are of no one in
particular but of a recognizable type we find appealing—a cowboy,
an Indian, a clown, a blues musician.
34

35

36

37

38

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Elison.BlkV.2_FCID.indd 39 10/25/10 11:59 AM

40

41

42

43

44

45

Elvii
Elvis on velvet, or “Velvis,” as the Urban Dictionary calls it,14 first
appeared at the Mariscal Gallery in Tijuana in the late 1950s,
according to Moises Mariscal, the current owner of this third-
generation family enterprise. At first, Elvis was merely one of many
celebrities available. His image was popular but did not dominate or
define the velvet painting throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. This
all changed on August 16, 1977, when The King died from prescription
drug overdose and velvet painters went into Elvis overdrive.15 By
1977, velvet was still popular but in decline from its 1974–1975 peak.
Elvis too had been in decline throughout the 1970s with his poor
health, odd behavior, ballooning girth, much-ridiculed jumpsuits,
widely reported drug abuse, and less-than-vigorous concerts that
fans found disappointingly short.16 Velvet and Elvis
were a perfect match—a celebrity’s decline
and death memorialized by a popular art
fad on the wane. For a brief moment,
medium and subject matter
revitalized each other before
they spiraled down together.
46

47

The profusion of Elvii that came to dominate velvet touched on
all the phases of his career—the young athletic Elvis known for his
on-stage gyrations, the dapper soldier from his 1958–1960 army
service, and the cool black-leather Elvis of his 1968 comeback TV
special. But images of an even later Elvis became the most popular.
Most Velvii depict the high collars, rhinestones, sequins, and mutton-
chop sideburns of his waning years performing in Las Vegas. A
particularly popular velvet showed The King wearing a lei around
his neck—evoking his look on the 1973 Aloha from Hawaii TV special
which remains the most-watched broadcast of a single performer
in television history.17 The confluence of popular celebrity and
Polynesian themes made this event perfect material for the velvet
48

painting tradition. Most Velvii, with their pained and pensive faces,
make their subject a suffering icon of spiritual significance—a larger-
than-life superstar who also feels the tremendous sorrow and agony
known to regular folks.
Velvii are part of a larger phenomenon of religion-like dimensions
that scholars have called “the cult of Elvis.”18 Three hundred and fifty
Elvis fan clubs (churches?) operate worldwide.19 Disciple/performer
Elvis impersonators emulate The King. Pilgrims flock to Graceland on
the anniversary of his death. Sightings of Elvis attesting that he is not
dead peaked in the 1980s but never really completely died out.20 In
this sense, a velvet Elvis can be a kind of religious art, a literal icon.
As Dolly Parton once said, “I don’t think he will ever die down. He’s
considered by many to be like a religious figure, like Jesus. . . . I don’t
know how to explain it, but it’s there, and it’s real, and people love it.”21
Elvis has few challengers for the crown of most significant,
culture-changing popular performer of the twentieth century. Can the
Beatles, Madonna, or Michael Jackson—all of whom honored Elvis as
inspiration and influence—really compare? They all thrived in the pop
music world of revered superstars that Elvis created. However, despite
the firm linkage of Elvis to velvet in American popular consciousness
as the ultimate kitsch, The King has disappeared from border town
velvet galleries to be replaced by the dead heroes of younger
generations.
49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

~
Ninos y
~
Ninas
Paintings of children are velvet at its most sentimental.
On velvet, children dance, play, pray, poop, daydream,
get hurt, and cry. They go for the jugular in evoking
emotional responses and protective instincts. Art
critics might say they do this in a way that is easy and
exploitative. To velvet buyers, subject matter can redeem
most any painting. Human hardwiring to appreciate
what biologists call neoteny—big eyes, round faces,
proportionally big heads, small noses and ears, and
full lips—is on display here.22 One can imagine that
ancestors who did not have powerful positive responses
when seeing happy children, or who did not feel welling purpose
and resolve when confronted with children in pain, did not manage
to raise as many to maturity. Our preferences for children in velvet
may be a matter of which of these hypothetical ancestors we actually
descend from.
57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

Creatures
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Animals can scare us and also
comfort us. Sometimes they are comforting because they are scary,
because we imagine that scare directed at someone else. Sometimes
animals embody ideals of confidence, capability, and dignity we
aspire to. A young boy in the Mariscals’ shop calls out, “Mom! Mom!
Look at this tiger! It is so cool!”; he is deeply drawn to its menace. In
bald eagles, many American buyers see the living representation of
their national spirit. We identify with animals so much that sometimes
the boundary separating them from us breaks down.23 We play as
them on sports teams, and in black velvet a cat merges with a woman
and dogs play poker as men.
When animals play pool or poker, we are amused. When they have
big liquid goo-goo eyes or neotenous features of little kids, we melt. It
seems there is an animal for every human emotion or desire. Perhaps
this should not be surprising as humans have coevolved with animals
for eons.24 We have been both predator and prey. Our relationships
with “domestic” animals have been even more intimate than those
with wild ones. When we organize our lives to be devoted to animal
67

care and well-being, it sometimes becomes unclear who is the
dominant species.25 Black velvet paintings depict horses and chickens
displaying traits of alertness, health, and vigor that are the results
of generations of careful breeding and attention. Even our mystical
fancies take animal forms—native spirits and rainbowed unicorns.
68

69

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

Religious
People from Protestant countries often flinch from Catholic depictions
of an agony-wracked Jesus on the cross dripping blood from his
crown of thorns and the nails in his feet and hands. A common
Catholic response to this is “What’s the matter, don’t you believe in
Jesus?” Catholics marvel at the depths to which God would go to save
us mortals and have traditionally sought to plumb those depths in
their art to acknowledge the magnitude of the Savior’s sacrifice.26
Sometimes they wonder if Protestants really get what the crucifixion
was all about in their sanitized chapels with their Jesusless crosses.
But since the customer is always right in the velvet tradition, plenty of
blood-free Protestant Jesuses such as Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ
have been sold to Americans visiting Mexico.
One of the most common portraits in Tijuana today is Joseph
Smith—the founding prophet of Mormonism. When asked if the
prevalence of Joseph Smith portraits is a reflection of the success
of LDS missionary work in Mexico, which has gleaned over a million
Mormon converts,27 gallery owners smile and say, “No, of course we
know who he is, but it is the consumers who drive what we sell, not
the painters.”
81

That Mexico since the revolution is an officially secular country
with anticlerical laws—the France of Latin America—can easily be
lost on any visitor.28 More than the images of revolutionary leaders
Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, it is the ubiquitous Virgin of
Guadalupe images on churches and cathedrals, wall murals, truck
window stickers, and tattooed bodies that seem to show where most
Mexicans’ deepest affinities lie. But it would be a mistake to see the
Virgin of Guadalupe as only a religious image. She is national icon
as well. According to sacred legend, she appeared to indigenous
Mexican St. Juan Diego on 12 December 1531, the anniversary of
which has become Mexico’s most important state holiday.29
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83

84

85

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Ladies
The earliest known art of any form are small, carved figurines with
highly exaggerated feminine features. Their creators obscured faces,
hands, and feet, but ballooned out breasts, buttocks, and thighs.
There are hundreds of these carvings covering tens of thousands
of years of prehistory collected in museums throughout Europe.
But they are indecipherable anachronisms that come to us with no
cultural context. The forty-thousand-year-old mammoth-ivory Venus
of Hohle Fels pushed back the earliest date for any known artwork by
several millennia when found in a cave in southern Germany in 2008.
But archeologists and art historians can only speculate whether she
was an icon of sublime significance in an ancient fertility-mother
religion or simply personally portable Paleolithic pornography.30
Similar questions might be asked about nudes in the black velvet
tradition. Are they more like the nudes of classical and renaissance
art, a celebration of form and symbolic of higher ideals, or are they
more like the Playboy centerfold images they often copied? That there
was at least some ambiguity on this point may have allowed some
1970s newly married ex-bachelors to box up their velvet nudes in
87

the attic while their stash of men’s magazines went into the nearest
dumpster, though the dumpster fate undoubtedly swallowed up
many velvet nudes as well, leaving those displayed in this section a
rare remnant.
Edgar Leeteg, the father of modern black velvet, painted a few
craggy old island fellows and ukulele-playing boys but mostly native
maidens. Were these chaste depictions of Edenic island innocence or a
sly infiltration of smut with the veneer of art into places nudity would
not otherwise be accepted in 1950s America? Determinations of what
is art and what is pornography often seem suspiciously time and
class biased. The older a painting is and the more people of taste and
sophistication like it, the less likely it is to be considered illicit. Rubens
and Renoir are probably safe, but what hope does anything on black
velvet have? Only time will tell.
Of all of the once-popular velvet themes, nudes are the most
diminished in the twenty-first century. Is this because they were
outcompeted by slicker, more abundant, and less bulky material
available on the Internet for free? Or is it that with their obscure
inexplicit depictions and possibly redeeming cultural context they
never really were pornographic and are out of place in our more
graphic age? Whatever the reasons, velvet nudes demonstrate this
artistic tradition’s place along the borderlands—not just between
nations and cultures, but also between art and something else.
88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

Horrors
Ugliness, like beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder. Some readers
might flinch in offense that some personally appealing thing has been
included in this section, but we doubt it. Most readers will recoil from
the ugly. This section gathers only the most poorly executed, over-
the-top garish, bizarre-looking paintings of the most unappealing
subject matter. Some are terrible because something sweet like a
child or beautiful celebrity is turned into a monster. What should be a
cute-kid nose is a honking piggy snout. Marilyn Monroe looks like her
face has been flattened with a shovel. Elvis ends up looking more like
the Kool-Aid–dispensing cult leader Jim Jones.
Other paintings fail to show even the most rudimentary level
of skill in just about every way lack of skill can be demonstrated.
A bandido’s eyes are different sizes, different shapes, and point in
different directions from asymmetrical places on his face. Others
focus on subjects—such as devils and diarrhea—that are bad enough
considered separately and even worse together.
Nevertheless, it should be remembered that each item here was
probably something that someone, a fellow human being, saw and
99

said, “I want that so much I am willing to spend my money to own it.”
If art’s purpose is to expand our capacity to understand our common
humanity in all its diversity, this section may not help but it will
certainly help show how daunting a task this is.
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Notes
Preface and Acknowledgments 13. Dickinson, That Old Time Religion, 21.
1. Jennifer Heath, Black Velvet: The Art We Love to Hate 14. Heath, Black Velvet, 5.
(San Francisco: Pomegranate Books, 1994), 7. 15. Dickinson, That Old Time Religion, 21.
16. Australia’s and New Zealand’s twentieth-century
The History and Significance of Black Velvet Painting velvet traditions focus on depictions of the “local exotic” of
1. Amy Benson, Stephanie Eliason, Kirsti Ringger, Aboriginal and Maori faces, bodies, and arts.
Leila Salisbury, and anonymous reviewers all carefully read 17. Pete Halverson, interview with the author, 11
and provided suggestions on style and content for this December 2009.
book. John Langston oversaw and had wonderful ideas for 18. Paula Cole, “El Greco,” Courage (Decca/Universal,
the design and image placement. Its successes are theirs, 2007).
and its remaining faults lie squarely with the author. 19. Turner and Escalante, Leeteg, 85. Samoa’s first
2. Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: female filmmaker, Sima Urale, explores how “dusky
Norton, 1997), 521–524. maidens” came to represent all of native Polynesia in her
3. El tercio pello is literally “the third hair.” But tercio, 1997 documentary Velvet Dreams, which looks at the art of
like its fellow English cognate “terciary,” from Latin, also Leeteg-inspired New Zealand painters Geoff Everett and
implies “insignificant” or “small.” So “tiny hairs” probably Charles McPhee. See also Sarina Peterson, “Darkness and
catches the meaning better. Light: Dusky Maidens and Velvet Dreams,” Camera Obscura
4. John Turner and Greg Escalante, A Rascal in 20, no. 1 (2005): 187–207.
Paradise: The Velvet Paintings of Edgar Leeteg (Huntington 20. James Michener, Rascals in Paradise (New York:
Beach: The Huntington Beach Art Center, 1999), 48. Random House, 1957).
5. Rick Smith, interview with the author, 25 21. Martin Smith and Patrick Kiger, Poplorica: A
September 2009. Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore
6. Other authors writing about black velvet have that Shaped Modern America (New York: Collins, 2005),
also lamented this lack of historical information about its 45–46.
emergence. Sam Quinones, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s 22. Ibid., 51.
Dream (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 23. Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 125.
2007), 124. 24. Sven Kirsten and A. Volk, Tiki Style (Berlin: Taschen,
7. Heath, Black Velvet, 5. 2004).
8. Turner and Escalante, Leeteg, 12. 25. Moises Mariscal, interview with the author,
9. Pamela Liflander, Black Velvet Artist (Philadelphia, December 2006.
Running Press, 2003), 5. 26. Smith and Kiger, Poplorica, 53.
10. Heath, Black Velvet, 5. 27. Witnessed by the author while serving on the
11. Katherine V. G. Dickinson, “The Scant History Philippines in January 2007.
of Velvet Painting,” in That Old Time Religion: a catalogue 28. Such art continued the tradition of New York
from the exhibit That Old Time Religion: A Documentation artist Cassius M. Coolidge’s early 1900s novelty paintings.
of Protestant Revivalism by Eleanor Dickinson, ed. Brooks See Curtis F. Brown, Star-Spangled Kitsch: An Astounding
Johnson (Oakland: The Oakland Museum History and Tastelessly Illustrated Exploration of the Bawdy, Gaudy,
Department, 1979), 21. Shoddy Mass-Art Culture in This Grand Land of Ours (New
12. Linda Carter Lefko and Barbara Knickerbocker, York: Universe Books, 1975), 147.
The Art of Theorem Painting (Windermere, Florida: Crafter’s 29. Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 123.
Corner, Inc., 2002). 30. Ibid., 129, 130, 132.
107

31. Ibid., 139. 48. Gary Alan Fine, Everyday Genius: Self-Taught Art
32. Henry Glassie, The Spirit of Folk Art (New York: and the Culture of Authenticity (Chicago: University of
Harry N. Abrams, 1989). Chicago Press, 2004), 29.
33. Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 127. 49. Robert Teske, “What is Folk Art? An Opinion on
34. Smith and Kiger, Poplorica, 53–54; Quinones, the Controversy,” El Palacio 88 (1983): 35. Folklorist Dan
Antonio’s Gun, 117–146. Wojcik has found that sometimes the art world’s “outsider
35. Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 144. artists” and the folklorists’ “folk artists” are actually the
36. Ibid., 127. same people. While folklorists tend to focus on the
37. Ibid., 135. traditional, community, and shared aspects of what these
38. Ibid., 142. artists do, art world people focus on the individual genius
39. Ibid., 136. unconnected to other influences. Daniel Wojcik, “Junk, Art,
40. Enrique Felix, interview with the author, and the Politics of Public Display in the Inner City,” paper
December 2006. Artists such as the Morán brothers in presented at the 2006 American Folklore Society Annual
Ciudad Juarez had similar experiences with quick wealth Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
and Corvettes at a young age. Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 50. Dan Ben-Amos, “Toward New Perspectives in
117–118. Folklore,” The Journal of American Folklore 84, no. 331
41. Ibid. (Jan.–Mar. 1971): 3–15.
42. Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 143. 51. See, for example, Tyler Cowen, In Praise of
43. Martin Paetsch, “China’s Art Factories: Van Gogh Commercial Culture (Cambridge and London: Harvard
from the Sweatshop,” Spiegel Online, 23 August 2006, University Press, 1998) and Creative Destruction (Princeton
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,433134,00 and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002). See also Eric
.html (last accessed 31 December 2009). A. Eliason, The Fruit of Her Hands: Saba Lace History and
44. David Morgan, “‘Would Jesus Have Sat for a Patterns (The Netherlands Antilles: OKSNA [Agency for
Portrait?’ The Likeness of Christ in the Popular Reception Cultural Cooperation, Netherlands Antilles] and the Saba
of Sallman’s Art,” in Icons of American Protestantism: The Foundation for Arts, 1997.
Art of Warner Sallman, ed. David Morgan (New Haven: Yale 52. Heath, Black Velvet, 5.
University Press, 1996), 181–206. 53. A whole issue of The Journal of American Folklore
45. Based on an investigation done in the 1980s was devoted to this topic. Deborah Kapchan and Pauline
many art historians no longer consider Man in a Golden Turner Strong, special editors, The Journal of American
Helmet to be a Rembrandt painting. Otto Friedrich, “Essay: Folklore 112, no. 445 (Summer 1999).
The Man with the Golden Helmet,” TIME Magazine, 16 54. Andrew Causey, “The Singasinga Table Lamp and
December 1985, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ the Toba Batak Art of Conflation,” The Journal of American
article/0,9171,960416,00.html (last accessed 2 September Folklore 112, no. 445 (Summer 1999):424–436.
2009). 55. “Duchamp’s urinal tops art survey,”
46. Jesus Helguera’s estate does not release the BBC News Website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
rights to reproduce his prints, and books of Mexican entertainment/4059997.stm.
calendar art do not contain examples of his work even 56. Turner and Escalante, Leeteg, 12.
though he is the most popular artist in this genre. See 57. Francesco Bonami, Jeff Koons (New Haven: Yale
Angela Villalba and Carlos Monsivais, Mexican Calendar University Press, 2008).
Girls: Chicas de calendarios Mexicano (New York: Chronicle 58. Susan Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” in Against
Books, 2006). Scholarly sources on his work are difficult Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Octagon Books,
to come by but some information can be found at http:// 1978), 292.
www.sullivangoss.com/jesus_Helguera/ (last accessed 8 59. Brown, Star-Spangled Kitsch, 13.
October 2008). 60. Odd Nerdrum, On Kitsch (Oslo: Kagge Forlag,
47. Manuel Ortiz Salas, interview with the author, 200), 12.
December 2006.
108

61. Greg Rugoff, “Velvet Painting Gets No Respect,” in approximately equal native and European heritage, which
Turner and Escalante, Leeteg, 37. makes Mexicans a genetically distinct population group
62. Brown, Star-Spangled Kitsch, 14. in the world. Irma Silva-Zolezzi, Alfredo Hidalgo-Miranda,
63. Sontag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” 279, 280. Jesus Estrada-Gil, Juan Carlos Fernandez-Lopez, Laura
64. Wayne Hemingway, Twentieth Century Icons: Uribe-Figueroa, Alejandra Contreras, Eros Balam-Ortiz,
Kitsch (Bath, England: Absolute Press, 1999), 13. Laura del Bosque-Plata, David Velazquez-Fernandez,
65. Brown, Star-Spangled Kitsch, 9. Cesar Lara, Rodrigo Goya, Enrique Hernandez-Lemus,
66. Lee Konstantinou, “Post-Ironic Sentiment,” Carlos Davila, Eduardo Barrientos, Santiago March, and
infinitetasks.wordpress.com 27 August 2009, last viewed Gerardo Jimenez-Sanchez, “Analysis of Genomic Diversity
29 July 2010. in Mexican Mestizo Populations to Develop Genomic
67. Gianni Versace and Lady Julia Trevelyan Oman, Medicine in Mexico,” Proceedings of the National Academy
Vanitas: Designs (New York: Abbeville Press, 1994). of Sciences, 2009; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0903045106.
68. Patricia Parejad and Angelika Taschen, eds. Miami 3. Paige Penland, Lowrider (Osceola, WI: Motor-
Interiors (Koln: Taschen, 2003); Laura Cerwinske, South books, 2003); Eva Sperling Cockcroft and Holly Barnet-
Beach Style (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003). Sanchez, Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals
69. Visual copying is the oldest reproduction (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993);
technology. It is in and of itself not a reason to Guisella Latorre, Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o
categorically reject a piece as not art. Priceless illuminated Indigenist Murals of California (Austin: University of Texas
manuscripts of the Middle Ages were invariably copies Press, 2008).
that deviated from an “original” in ways not unlike 4. Komar & Melamid: The Most Wanted Paintings on
black velvet homages. Owning a high quality ink-jet the Web, http://awp.diaart.org/km/homepage.html (last
reproduction of an important work is, of course, not the accessed 16 November 2009).
same as owning the original, but it is an accepted form of 5. Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure,
art appreciation. & Human Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009),
70. Smith and Kiger, Poplorica, 53. 15–18.
6. Ibid., 19.
Black Velvet People 7. Ibid., 23.
1. Felix’s comments here reflect his participation 8. “Italy’s Least Wanted Painting,” http://awp.diaart.
in the Tijuana tradition, which is known for light brush org/km/ita/least.html (last accessed 16 November 2009).
strokes and lots of negative space. In Juarez, thick paint is 9. Moises Mariscal, interview with the author,
the style and not necessarily seen as bad craftsmanship. December 2006.
Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 132, 138. 10. Many popular books attest to the interest in
2. The name of this painter has been changed making and preserving family pictures: Maureen A. Taylor,
considering the circumstances. Preserving Your Family Photographs (Iola, WI: Betterway
3. Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 135. Books, 2001); Bill Hurter, The Best of Family Portrait
Photography: Professional Techniques and Images (Buffalo,
Black Velvet Paintings NY: Amherst Media, 2005).
1. See Carrie C. Chorba, Mexico, from Mestizo to 11. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recovering the
Multicultural: National Identity and Recent Representations Lost History of Our Ancestors (New York: Penguin, 2007).
of the Conquest (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 12. Thanks to James D’Arc of the Brigham Young
2007); William H. Beezley, Mexican National Identity: University Special Collections library for this identification,
Memory, Innuendo, and Popular Culture (Tucson: University 5 May 2008.
of Arizona Press, 2008). 13. Jamal Joseph, Tupac Shakur Legacy (New York:
2. A 2004 Mexican government study found that 80 Atria, 2006); Ken Tucker, Scarface Nation: The Ultimate
percent of the population is mestizo, meaning they have Gangster Movie and How it Changed America (New York: St.
109

Martin’s, 2008); Hank Bordowitz, Every Little Thing Gonna America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009),
Be Alright: The Bob Marley Reader (Cambridge, MA: De Capo ix–xxi.
Press, 2004). 24. Stephen Budainsky, The Covenant of the Wild: Why
14. Velvis, http://www.urbandictionary.com/author Animals Chose Domestication (New Haven: Yale University
.php?author=David+B.+Knechel. Press, 1999).
15. Quinones, Antonio’s Gun, 124. 25. Ibid., 6–7.
16. T. Scherman, “Elvis Dies,” American Heritage, 26. David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of
August 16, 2006. Popular Religious Images (Berkeley: University of California
17. Adam Victor, The Elvis Encyclopedia (New York: Press, 1999).
Overlook Press, 2008), 10. 27. Jason Swenson, “A million in Mexico on Aug. 1,
18. Gilbert Rodman, Elvis after Elvis: The Posthumous after 128 years,” Church News: The Church of Jesus Christ
Career of a Living Legend (New York: Routledge, 1996). of Latter-day Saints, http://www.ldschurchnews.com/
19. Elvis Fan Club Web site, http://www.elvis.com/ articles/45820/A-million-in-Mexico-on-Aug-1-after-128-
fan-relations/join/ (last accessed 4 September 2009). years.html (last accessed 18 November 2009).
20. See Web sites http://elvis-lives.8m.com/ 28. Michael Gonzales, The Mexican Revolution, 1910–
iselvisalive.html and http://www.honorelvis.com/ 1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002).
sightings.htm (last accessed 4 September 2009). 29. D. A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of
21. “How Big Was The King? Elvis Presley’s Legacy, 25 Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries
Years After His Death,” CBS News, August 7, 2002. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
22. Nancy Ectoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science 30. On Venus figurines, see Douglass Bailey,
of Beauty (New York: Anchor Books, 1999), 34–38. Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the
23. Dennis Cutchins and Eric A. Eliason, introduction Neolithic (New York: Routledge, 2005).
to Wild Games: Hunting and Fishing Traditions in North
110

Index
animals, 67–68 El Greco, xiii–xv

antiart, x, xxx el tercio pelo negro, xi, xxx
Avenida Revolución, xx Elvii. See Elvis
Aztec mythology, xxi–xxii, 5 Elvis, x, xvi, xviii, xx, xxv, 20, 46; as icon, 3, 48–49
bandidos, 3, 99 factories, xviii

Bardot, Bridget, 33 famous people, 31–34, 48, 99
Beatles, The, 49 Felix, Enrique, xix
Bierstadt, Albert, 17 folk art, xviii, xxiv
black velvet: border factories, xviii; characteristics of, xi–xii;
contemporary significance of, x, xx; cultural context Gutierrez, Jesus “Chuy,” ix
of, x, 88; export of, xiii; as folk art, xxiii; history of, x,
xii–xiii, xvii; making of, x–xi; market, xvi–xix; and pop Halverson, Pete, xiii
art, xxv; popularity of, xxx; status of, xxx; subjects, x, Harden, Doyle, xviii–xix
xvii; trends, xxi, xxiii; wholesale, xviii–xix Head of Christ, The, xx
Bouguereau, William-Adolphe, xxix Helguera, Jesus, xxi
Hendrix, Jimi, 32
camp, x, xxii, xxvii horrors of black velvet, 99
Catholic sentiments, 81 hybridity of traditions, xxv
Causey, Andrew, xxv
celebrities, 31–34, 48, 99 imagery, Aztec, 5
children, 57 Iztaccíhuatl, xxi–xxii, 5
Church, Frederick, 17
Ciudad Juárez, xviii Jackson, Michael, xxvi, 49
Cole, Paula, xiii Jesus Christ, 81
Cole, Thomas, 17 Jonas Brothers, 34
commodification of art, xxiv Jones, Jim, 99
conflation of art, xxv
conquistadors, xxi, 5 Kahlo, Frida, xxxii
creatures, 67–68 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 32
critics, xi King, The. See Elvis
kitsch, x, xxii, xxvii–xxix, xxxii, 49
Dada, xxv Komar, Vitaly, 17, 19–20
Davis, “Aloha” Barney, xv Konstantinou, Lee, xxix
Davis, Sammy, Jr., 33 Koons, Jeff, xxvi, xxix
Decker, Wayne, xv
desi diaspora, xiii ladies, 87
detail in landscapes, 17 landscapes, 17–20
Duchamp, Marcel, xxv least wanted paintings, 20
Dutton, Denis, 19 Leeteg, Edgar, vii, xiii–xvi, 88
Lennon, John, 32
Lewinsky, Monica, xxvi
111

Lichtenstein, Roy, xxvi religious paintings, 81–82
Little, Steven, xiii Rembrandt, xxi
Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 88
Macdonald, Dwight, xxx Rivera, Diego, xxxii
Madonna, 49 Robison, William Travis, xxvi
Madonna (religious icon), xii Romero, xxxii
Man in a Golden Helmet, xxi Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, xxix
maquiladoras, xviii Rubens, Peter Paul, 88
Mariscal, Moises, xvi, 31, 34, 46, 57 Rugoff, Greg, xxvii
Marley, Bob, xxi, 34
Martin, Dean, 33 Sallman, Walter, xx, 81
matadors, xvii, xx, xxii, 3, 31 Scarface, xxi, 34
Melamid, Alexander, 17, 19–20 Selena, 32
Messier, xxix Shakur, Tupac, xxi, 34
Mexican art tradition, x, xiii, xviii, xxxiii Shawar, Mr., xlii
Mexican image, 3–5 Sinatra, Frank, 33
Michener, James, xiii Smith, Joseph, xxi, 81
Monet, Claude, xxix Smith, Rick, xii, xlii
Monroe, Marilyn, xxvi, 99 Sontag, Susan, xxviii
motifs, x, xxii, 17 Spears, Britney, 34
St. Cyril, xii
Nabut, Mr., xlii stereotypes, xxii
neo-sincerity, xxix
neoteny, 57, 67 Teske, Robert, xxiv
nostalgia, 5, 34 theorem painting, xii
nudes, xiii, xx, xlii, 87–88 Tijuana, xvi, xviii
Townsend, Francis, xii–xiii
Olivier, Laurence, 33 tropes, x
Pacino, Al, xxi Velvii. See Elvis

Pink Panther, xxvi Velvis. See Elvis
Pinker, Steven, ix, xvii Venus of Hohle Fels, 87
Pitt, Brad, 34 Versace, Gianni, xxix
Polo, Marco, xii Villa, Pancho, 3, 82
pop art, xxvi Virgin Mary, xxiii
Popocatépetl, xxi–xxii, 5 Virgin of Guadalupe, 82
portraits, 31, 34, 81
post irony, xxix Warhol, Andy, xxvi, xxviii
Washington, George, 17
Quetzalcoatl Painters’ Union, xix
Quinones, xviii Zapata, Emiliano, 82
Rat Pack, 33
RAVE: “Rick’s Amazing Velvet Experience,” xlii
Reagan, Ronald, vii, 32
112

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Black Velvet Art

Elison.BlkV.1_FCID.indd 1 10/20/10 1:55 PM

University Press of Mississippi Jackson

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The following paintings are reproduced with permission

Edgar Leeteg paintings on page xiv reproduced with per-

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Asso-

Copyright © 2011 by University Press of Mississippi

First printing 2011

Eliason, Eric A. (Eric Alden), 1967–

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication available

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Preface and Acknowledgments vii

The History and Significance of Black Velvet Painting ix

Black Velvet People

Romero, Felix, and Chuy, the Artists xxxii

William Travis Robison, Impresario of Velvet xxxviii

Rick Smith, the Collector xli

Black Velvet Paintings

Matadors and Mexicana 3

Personalities and Portraits 31

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In the movie Entrapment, Sean Connery and

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split coconuts while faux

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painted black velvet Elvis.

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roll heroes of various eras, and naked ladies

Black Velvet as Folk Art:

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hero’s special insight into our nation’s politics.

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