Artwork Details
- Title
- Charreada Warm Up
- Artist
- Date
- 1981, printed 2015
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- image: 14 3⁄8 × 18 1⁄4 in. (36.5 × 46.4 cm) sheet: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
- Copyright
- © 1981, Al Rendón
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase through the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center
- Mediums Description
- gelatin silver print
- Classifications
- Keywords
- Landscape
- Animal — horse
- Figure male — full length
- Ceremony — festival — rodeo
- Object Number
- 2016.6.1
Artwork Description
In the 1980s, Al Rendón began documenting the elaborate performances and dress of the San Antonio Charro Association in Texas (est. 1947), which was the first established organization of competitive Mexican American horsemen and women in the United States. He captures the traditions of charros and charras, whose equestrian feats are rooted in Spanish and Mexican ranch culture, which emerged in the sixteenth century when the Spanish introduced horses and cattle to the Americas. U.S. cowboy culture is an outgrowth of this history. Hints of our contemporary world creep into Rendón's photographs, suggesting how these traditions live in the present. Some photographs undermine Mexican "bandito" stereotypes common in racist "cowboy and Indian" films. His photographs assert charro customs as fixtures in the U.S.--Mexico borderlands.
Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea, 2023