Grande Mesa

When I was a sophomore in college, I took a class on Chekhov. Never really heard of Chekhov until then. I was a horrible student and learning bothered me so it came as a surprise to me that I liked the class. It wasn’t so much that I liked Chekhov, but it was the way in which his work was being introduced to me (I love Chekhov now partly because of the class).

I have a deep appreciation for the enthusiasm and commitment that the professor exuded. He was tough and demanded that all the students in the class be present and ready for dialogue about whatever topic was at hand. He was not a passive lecturer type guy. His thick New York accent belied his extreme criticality and connectivity with the human condition. How can you really enjoy Chekhov otherwise?

Recently, I began a seemingly benign dialogue with contemporary artist Daniel J. Martinez. He was in town recently unveiling a piece he did for the Linda Pace Foundation. We struck up a conversation during the reception that has spilled over into a weeks long e-mail dialogue. He has sent me, of his own accord, probably a dozen writings about him and his work seemingly as a primer for an interview that I’d like to do with him for NeoAztlan, but more than that as a primer on his method.

I can’t describe it as anything else, but a “method” by which he lives his life. Included in his method are a number of imperatives that he has described as “discipline,” “criticality,” “generosity,” “agency,” “autonomy,” and, lastly, “respect.”

What Daniel is trying to do with his art and in life is to transcend convention while keeping as objective a perspective on his work as possible. That’s not to say he doesn’t have opinions about things. He’s got very strong opinions about things, but his opinions, if inserted into his work, do a disservice to those who would consume it.

There’s something endearing about him - all 5-foot 4-inches of him - and after reading the material he sent me and doing more research on him, there is also something that truly is transcendent about him as if he’s one of those “vessel” type people like Stevie Ray Vaughn or Basquiat or Curt Cobain.

One day, while in my Chekhov class, I posited something while we discussed Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” I was completely off the mark and my professor let me know it in no uncertain terms. I felt attacked. After class, he called me up to his office and apologized and it was the first time I saw, on a human level, that there really was something to this Chekhov business. If a vetted and tenured man was humble enough to express regret to a kid like me, I wanted to know what exactly why such a respectable man was so passionate about Chekhov because if Chekhov was part of the path to his enlightenment, I wondered if it might be part of my own path.

I’ve come across a handful of people like him since that time and Daniel J. Martinez is one of them - a thoroughly vetted and tenured man who has been generous enough to show me his own path to enlightenment so that I might carve out my own.

Thanks, Daniel.