Sachi Yanari-Rizzo, Curator of Prints & Drawings
Education and collaboration are central to the work of Ricardo Xavier Serment. He was teaching art even as an undergraduate student at Columbia College where he specialized in printmaking. This was followed by his Master of Education at Dominican University. Serment was director of education at the National Museum of Mexican Art and has been an art teacher in Chicago’s public schools for eleven years.
Serment is a founding member of the Instituto Gráfico de Chicago (IGC). He and his friends were inspired by Mexico’s legendary activist print workshop, Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People’s Print Workshop), that was active from 1937 to 2010. The Chicago collective uses prints, educational programs, and pop-up events to form a dialogue with the community regarding current social and political issues as well as highlighting their cultural background.
Serment recalled, “When we formed IGC, we just wanted a space to work together and collaborate. . . It started with a few of us from the Education Department of the NMMA (National Museum of Mexican Art), so we would just meet up and draw, share ideas, etc. Then we would propose projects. . . we created an exquisite corpse portfolio, print portfolio exchanges, and we would submit work to local print shows. . . Since most of us in the collective were involved in education, we started to talk about how we can teach people about prints.”i
Mexico and Chicago boast a strong printmaking history. Relief printing using wood and linoleum was a popular medium for the Taller de Gráfica Popular and Chicago artists Carlos Cortéz and Rene Arceo. Serment employs this print technique in both Dethroning the Wicked and Trying to Get Through the Nonsense. Carving additional blocks to add color can be labor intensive. Instead, the artist screen printed and collaged decorative papers (seen in the facial masks and the squirting blood), offering a vibrant spectrum of color.
Dethroning the Wicked focuses on the struggle between a young, heroic masked girl and a pile up of green, horned demons. Their exaggerated, anguished expressions and the strong diagonal stabbing motion escalate the drama. Serment (with the input of an IGC member) infuses humor at the fight’s climax, as the demon’s phone status updates its message confirming that it is the, “worst death ever.”
The dynamic composition, strong graphic quality, and narrative elements are reminiscent of comics. Through the encouragement of IGC members, Serment felt more confident embracing his love of comics and graphic novels in his art. He explains, “Like a highly effective single panel comic, I try to provide the viewer with a lot of information in the artwork that they can read and connect with; help them with a narrative.”ii
In Trying to Get Through the Nonsense, dark red demons surround school children. They harass, tease, and taunt them. A masked angel with large extended wings and arms helps to clear their path. One of the most prolific and influential printmakers from Mexico was José Guadalupe Posada. His illustrations for broadsheets and magazines spanned everyday life, the news, scathing political and moralizing satire, and fanciful monsters. Often representing human vices, Posada’s winged creatures can be menacing and animalistic in their actions and features. Serment’s versions are mischievous at best but still sneakily offer up inappropriate temptations to the kids.
While the youngest girl is absorbed in reading Alice in Wonderland, she is under the watchful eyes of older students who are masked, recalling Lucha Libre, the enormously popular wrestling matches in Mexico. Luchadores wear distinctive masks that conceal their identity and project their persona/character which can be heroic or villainous. This forms the storyline of the good and evil opponents in the ring, adding to the excitement of the event.
Serment, who was a fan of World Wrestling Federation as a child, became enraptured with Lucha Libre during a family visit to Mexico. He commented, “Our family would take us to el mercado (the market) so that we could look at and get lucha libre masks, we would pass by the stables (places) in which they would train, and we would see the matches on TV. Later on we would go and see the lucha libre in person.”iii In Serment’s prints, the children don the masks, suggesting they are the superheroes as they navigate through challenges in life.
If you are interested in seeing Serment at work as a teacher, check out his YouTube channel as he demonstrates and provides instructions for art projects.