InfoD-Cafe: From abstract to concrete visual representations

[Deborah Taylor-Pearce]

Erratum:

> How -- or even if --
> African Europeans and
> Native Americans and
> even white servants and
> laborers projected
> themselves onto/into
> European art is not
> really known.

I probably should correct this.

It's not true that we don't know anything about this.

It's just that we can't -- or I can't, anyway -- make the same kind of
generalizations about non-elite European audiences as we can about
those who left detailed records of their viewing habits ... and IMHO,
we probably never will be able to.

But that doesn't mean we don't know any particular narratives. We do.
And these are sometimes even more revealing.

E.g., I've done a little bit of work (aided by Mick McAllister of this
list, who located some fantastic facsimile pix for me) on what the C17
English polymath Robert Burton described as "Indian pictures made of
feathers."

These astounding artworks -- including a portrait of the pope which
drew rave reviews about its verisimilitude, the more so because the
Native American artist who produced it had never laid eyes on the
subject -- were painted with hummingbird feathers!

The feather paintings were brought back to Europe from the Americas
(mostly what was then called the West Indies, encompassing the
Caribbean Islands and proximal areas of the north Atlantic coast of
South America, plus Central America) where they captured the European
imagination and captivated audiences from around the world visiting
the museum "cabinets" of curiosities of European princes and collectors.

Unlike many European drawings of natural subjects from the same era,
these feather paintings still have the power to astonish us with their
"realism."

For European audiences, the native artists represented Christian
(mostly Catholic) religious themes, and in so doing, subtly infused
church narratives with varying sensibilities and values ... and I
think we can justly consider this one means by which Native American
artists projected themselves onto/into European iconography.

I expect there are similar stories to be told about artists in the
"East Indies" (plus, Near East and African nations as well), but since
this is ranging too far afield for me, I'm sorry to have to report
that I don't know any....

I'm not really qualified to evaluate the art itself (that's for all
you aesthetes out there ;-) so some of you might be interested in a
2006 art review in the _Los Angeles Times_ of an exhibition then at
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Tesoros/Treasures/Tesouros: The Arts
in Latin America, 1492-1820."

The show traveled to Mexico City in February 2007, and to Los Angeles
in June 2007, which I intended to visit, but missed.

As the review makes clear, there were a couple of feather paintings in
it, done on "priestly garments" (not the more customary copper), and
painted after "European engravings of the Trinity" (of note, "their
color has faded but the intricacy hasn't").

Unfortunately, none of the art objects from the show reproduced as
illustrations for the _LA Times_ review are of feather paintings, but
the images are still really interesting, and surprisingly relevant to
discussion topics.

I've posted copies of the 4 newspaper (hence, low-resolution) images
to a temporary directory at my website for list members to access, and
will leave them there for a few weeks.

http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/TesorosExhibit_image1.jpg
	[w/ caption] APPARITION: "Sacred Heart of Jesus with
	Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Louis Gonzaga," a
	painting on copper by José de Páez.

http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/TesorosExhibit_image2.jpg
	[w/ caption] ASIAN INFLUENCE: "Chinese
	chrysanthemums like those painted on this jar became
	typical of Puebla pottery."

http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/TesorosExhibit_image3.jpg
	[w/ caption] CONQUERING ANGEL: In "Asiel, Fear of
	God," painted by an unknown Bolivian artist, the
	celestial being looks like a European militiaman.

http://www.she-philosopher.com/home/temp/TesorosExhibit_image4.jpg
	[w/ caption] EL NIÑO: This sculpture of the Christ
	child resembles an indigenous Peruvian.

A plain ASCII transcription of the complete text of the _LA Times_
review follows.

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
dtp at she-philosopher.com



:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

from the _Los Angeles Times_, Calendar section
Sunday, Oct. 29, 2006


ART REVIEW
[title] Visions of imperial power

[pull quote] Unhailed Latin American works from the three
centuries after Columbus' arrival reflect a world view
turned upside down.

By CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT
Times Staff Writer

Philadelphia

GETTING a new empire off the ground is never easy. There are
territories to be secured by armies, complicated political
structures to be established, populations to be subjugated,
elaborate trade routes to be forged, cosmologies to be
altered and much more. New ways of thinking need to be
conceived, developed, inculcated and embodied -- especially
about personal and social identity.

And frequently, an awful lot of art needs to be made.

History shows that art can playa central role in embodying
those new ways of thinking. Sometimes it shoots off in
unexpected directions. And sometimes it takes the mundane
but no less intricate form of the decorative accouterments
of daily life: textiles, vessels, furniture, religious
artifacts and such.

And once in a while art takes on many of those tasks at
once. Consider the painting "Asiel, Fear of God," a
three-quarters life-size figure of an amazing angel made by
an unidentified artist in La Paz, Bolivia, sometime at the
start of the 1700s.

[p. F1]

It's one among about 250 objects in an astounding exhibition
at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the fIrst show to focus
on the rise and transformation of empires in the three
centuries following Christopher Columbus' arrival in the
Americas.

Dressed in the fine raiment and plumed hat of a Spanish or
Flemish militiaman, all stamped in rich gold patterns
representing embroidery on purple and crimson silk, the
celestial spirit sports powerful wings nearly as detailed as
an Audubon painting. The angel, Asiel, takes delicate aim
with a long gun of the type employed by the conquering
Europeans. Called a harquebus, the silver-trimmed weapon
features a golden cord used to sling it over a shoulder.

Asiel's pale face is youthful and serene, his figure sleek
and regal. The space he occupies is virtually abstract -- a
chestnut-colored field, where the military angel's body
casts an elusive shadow.

There is nothing quite like this marvelous, magical image in
all of European art. The exhibition's catalog explains that
such works were common in South American villages. Asiel
derives from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which says an
army of angels led by the Archangel Michael controlled the
stars in the sky. In Andean towns around Lake Titicaca,
Catholic teaching faced indigenous cults dedicated to
celestial phenomena. Spellbinding images of conquering
angels helped change their minds.

Michael turns up all over Latin American art -- almost as
often as the Virgin and Christ. San Miguel wasn't only a
Biblical warrtor who slew devils for God. He also virtually
personified the Iberian Catholic monarchy in the Americas,
in splendid triumph over New World pagans.

By the time Spain and Portugal were done, a landmass
stretching from the Pacific Northwest to Tierra del Fuego
had dramatically changed -- for better and for worse. The
Spanish viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, which today
comprise Mexico, Central America and most of South America,
and the Portuguese territory of Brazil produced an abundance
of richly imaginative art.

Most of that art has been underappreciated -- or even
unknown, since the 19th century political independence
movements and 20th century Modern art together pushed
Colonial work into the realm of virtual taboo. The art of
conquerors had no place in the world those revolutions forged.

[sub-head] *A sense of discovery*

ONE result of that suppression, which began to wane only in
the 1980s, is that the Philadelphia show is jam-packed with
surprises. The paintings, sculptures and decorative objects
in "Tesoros / Treasures / Tesouros: The Airts in Latin
America, 1492-1820" have been drawn from public and private
collections all over the region.

Several works come from the Philadelphia Museum, which
organized the show in collaboration with Mexico City's
Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso and the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, aided by a Getty Foundation research grant.
(Mark your calendar: The show travels to Mexico City in
February and to L.A. in June.) And they come from excellent
if sometimes unheralded museum collections in the U.S.,
including Denver and San Antonio, as well as European museums.

Wisely, the show is not divided into national categories --
Brazilian, Guatemalan, etc. Those states are modern. The
older, transnational colonial view allows three striking
aspects to emerge.

One is this art's opulence. Veritable mountains of gold and
silver made Portugal's king the world's richest man and
Mexico the Spanish Empire's economic fulcrum. That wealth
also funded an extraordinary quantity of art, much of it
produced under church guidance. Sumptuous theatricality
everywhere awes and seduces. Among the more conventional
floral motifs on a silk-and-gilt priestly vestment from
Quito, Ecuador, flocks of brightly colored parrots seem
inevitable.

The second characteristic is cross-cultural mixing. Latin
American art was global before globalism became fashionable.
Europeans conquered indigenous civilizations and introduced
African slaves, while the region became the crossroads for
trade with Asia and the Pacific. It all shows up in Colonial
art.

Indigenous artists who used exotic feathers to make
intricate pictures turned those talents to making new
priestly garments. Based on European engravings of the
Trinity, their color has faded but the intricacy hasn't.

Blue-and-white jars painted with robust Chinese
chrysanthemums -- symbols of nobility and death -- became a
staple of the great pottery works in Puebla. In a muscular
painted sculpture from Brazil, the Abyssinian Carmelite
brother St. Elesbão -- shown holding a church aloft while
trampling a white king -- assumes a pose that transforms him
into an African Archangel Michael slaying a devil.

It's also often bloody. Imagine the Spanish Inquisition
merging with Aztec sacrifices.

Third is an extreme emphasis on surface embellishment. We
think of Baroque art as employing extravagant spatial
elaboration -- dynamic ovals, twisting spirals and the
erasure of horizon lines to embrace infinity. But mostly
that's because we think of European art first.

Colonial Baroque is different. Like its European
counterpart, it harnesses movement, emotional intensity,
irregularity in composition and wild variety of form. The
purpose is also the same -- a Counter-Reformation effort to
secure the people's religious allegiance and assert the
Church's centralized authority. But the look is distinctive.

In this art, surface -- not space -- is everything. Surface
is conceived like an enigmatic membrane separating two
domains -- the worldly and the spiritual -- and partaking of
both.

That describes "Asiel, Fear of God," who is gossamer
personified. Asiel, despite the pounds of silk and heavy
wings, is painted like a thin decal.

It characterizes the exquisite small painting on copper by
Mexican artist José de Páez, showing a sacred heart adored
by saints and angels. They occupy a pastoral landscape, but
it's shallow, shadowy and fictional. All eyes fix on the
enormous floating heart.

With acutely rendered aorta, ventricles and pulmonary veins,
the heart is anatomical. But it's also an utter fabrication,
encircled by a crown of thorns and radiating light. (Think
tattoo.) The Jesuit image reflects the intersection between
patural science and mystical faith.

Even three-dimensional sculpture considers space mostly as a
lateral spread. A carved Brazilian figure of St. Michael
weighing souls in a scale is all chunky muscularity, but the
sinuous undulations describe the frontal figure's profIle
contours. He's nearly 4 feet tall but barely 20 inches deep.

Likewise an Ecce Homo from Quito, Jesus' twisted form, with
breeze-blown hair and loin-cloth, describes agitation and
suffering that is both physical and spiritual. But the
figure fits inside a shallow envelope of space, never
bursting out from its slim visual container.

And perhaps the show's most charming sculpture is a Peruvian
*Niño*, largely contained within the columnar space of the
tree limb from which it was carved. With his hypnotizing
stare and the bobbed hair of an Indian convert, the Christ
child holds a sacred heart in one hand and a split avocado
in the other. He proffers elemental nourishment for the
spirit and the body.

For a long time the emphasis on flat, decorated surfaces has
been regarded as a symptom of Latin American artists'
inability to render complex space. But that interpretation
is mistaken. Far from a quaint colonial backwardness akin to
folk art, it's a conception with uncommon power.

And it's startlingly contemporary. The simple fact is that
these artists didn't need grand illusions of the material
void, so they didn't make them.

Why not? The European Baroque preoccupation with the
mysteries of expansive, unbounded space has several sources.
One was Columbus' encounter with the New World. The Age of
Exploration sent ships sailing over the edges of known
experience -- journeys that helped fuel European artistic
fantasy.

But for artists actually living in those uncharted spaces --
artists working in Mexico City and Cuzco rather than
imagining the great beyond from ateliers in Brussels and
Rome -- what need had they of wallowing in imaginative
worldly space? Most were working for the church, and their
inventive, often innovative labor took them elsewhere -- to
the space of spirituality. Their art represents the interval
between physical and metaphysical worlds.

The familiar tendency to use European art as the measuring
stick for Latin America distorts all kinds of understanding.
Consider bronze and stone, the preferred materials for
European Baroque sculpture. None of this show's sculpture
uses them.

Bronze and marble were culturally important in Europe
because they invoked the classical antiquity of Greece and
Rome, not for some inherent superiority. Polychromed wood,
common in Spain, was Latin America's favored material. Stone
and metal could not compete with wood's unlimited
possibilities for surface embellishment.

Besides, Greece and Rome were remote from Inca, Aztec and
other antique Mesoamerican and South American civilizations.
There, stone and metal sculptures were customary -- but in
colonial Latin America it was culturally important to
suppress, not invoke, that history.

"Tesoros" is a landmark exhibition, its thick catalog a
trove of fascinating insights. A few omissions are
surprising -- most notably, perhaps, a haunting full-Iength
portrait of a young Creole novitiate in Queretero, Mexico,
painted by an unidentified artist. (Some think it's by Páez
or his elder, Miguel Cabrera.) It's arguably the most
beautiful portrait in all New Spain.

But given the abundance of exceptional material that has
been gathered, she is hardly missed. The empires are gone,
but their art is no longer forgotten.

christopher.knight at latimes.com
Knight is _The Times'_ art critic.

[p. F12]

[end]