UCLA

This dissertation project is a monographic study of the artistic, political, and intellectual contributions of Gilbert “Magu” Luján (1940-2011). Luján was a central figure in Los Angeles’ Chicano art community. He was co-founder and member of the artist collective Los Four, comprised of Carlos Almaraz, Judithe Hernández, Roberto “Beto” de la Rocha, Frank Romero, and Gilbert “Magu” Luján. They were the first group of Chicano artists to exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1974. My project intervenes in the study of Chicana/o art by highlighting the political role artists like Luján played through their worldmaking projects. As the first comprehensive analysis of Luján’s body of work, my dissertation is an interdisciplinary project that makes use of art historical visual analysis methods, archival research, and oral histories throughout four chapters. I engage with the literature on indigeneity, rasquachismo, and Chican@ and Latin@ Speculative Production to propose the aesthetic and analytical framework of “Chicanx whimsicality.” This aesthetic concept, defined by visual playfulness, whimsy, futurity, and references to Indigenous culture, makes legible Luján’s departure from Chicano cultural nationalist definitions of Chicano art and his move towards “Magulandia,” a worldmaking project. By analyzing Luján’s alternative world of “Magulandia” in the form of drawings, sculptures, and a train station design, I argue that he actively imagined and realized an inclusive world for Chicanas/os. He did so by strategically deploying whimsicality to engage audiences in imagining a world where Indigenous ancestry is projected into the future, where we have non-exploitative engagements with the land, and where social belonging is possible.