Los estudios sobre la producción artística americana en épocas virreinales han girado desde sus inicios en torno al problema del estilo, del significado o de las atribuciones, entre otros. En los últimos años,de la mano de una mirada más... more
Los estudios sobre la producción artística americana en épocas virreinales han girado desde sus inicios en torno al problema del estilo, del significado o de las atribuciones, entre otros. En los últimos años,de la mano de una mirada más atenta a cuestiones sociales y culturales, y al cruce interdisciplinar, la pregunta por la materialidad de estos objetos se presenta como insoslayable. En este sentido, Materia Americana es un libro que, por primera vez, reúne las investigaciones de destacados historiadores del arte, químicos, físicos, conservadores y museólogos interesados en el arte hispanoamericano, y pretende convertirse en un libro de referencia para futuros trabajos sobre el tema.
The so-called Hearst Chalice at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is widely regarded as one the most significant works of Mexican silversmithing from the sixteenth century. Its style, technique, and above all its unique combination of materials—including precious metals, feathers, wood carvings, and rock crystal—have led scholars to describe it as the perfect fusion of European and Ancient American (or pre-Columbian) traditions. Surprisingly, despite the consensus about the chalice’s importance, the cultural and artistic conditions that led to the creation of this singular object have not been thoroughly analyzed. By closely examining the different material components of the imposing artifact—which though carefully assembled also stand as independent units—we can better understand its uniqueness and symbolic potential. This essay espouses a synoptic approach by considering a range of agencies, perspectives, and sources—documentary and material—to restore the “Hearst” Chalice to its rightful context, without aspiring to a totalizing view of the past or a definitive decoding of its system of meaning. Categorizing its form and function as purely Indigenous and European poses a distinct set of challenges and limits its hermeneutic possibilities. The work—like many others created during the volatile period following the fall of Tenochtitlan—encodes a new visual language that reveals the highly subtle process of negotiation of these two cultures in a particular space and time. Moving away from the reductive concept of syncretism, the essay offers a fresh look at this impressive contact period work and its shifting values over time.
Essay discussing the mobility of painting in 18th-century Mexico based on the analyses of three groups of works that were produced in Mexico and exported to Europe (particularly Spain): (1) 2 monumental paintings depicting the newly... more
Essay discussing the mobility of painting in 18th-century Mexico based on the analyses of three groups of works that were produced in Mexico and exported to Europe (particularly Spain): (1) 2 monumental paintings depicting the newly established Corpus Christi convent in Mexico City for Indian cacicas (noblewomen) that were shipped to king Philip V; (2) a series of landscape paintings by Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz sent to Malta and Spain; (3) a newly discovered painting by Antonio de Torres commissioned for the Franciscan convent church of San Luis Potosí that was shipped to Spain in the 19th century.
Following the conquest of Islamic Majorca in 1229, the Christian settler-colonizers embraced a purist identity that rejected altogether the island’s Islamic past and its artistic heritage. Visually, this new identity found its expression... more
Following the conquest of Islamic Majorca in 1229, the Christian settler-colonizers embraced a purist identity that rejected altogether the island’s Islamic past and its artistic heritage. Visually, this new identity found its expression in the form of a clean, restrained, and mathematical gothic style. Palma’s towering gothic monuments em- bodied an ideological attempt at cultural erasure that has shaped Mallorquin identity to the present day. However, through the interstices of collective memory and material evidence it becomes clear that Islam and the Islamicate lingered beyond the singular point of the conquest through the continuity of local artistic production, the arrival of new Muslim artisans, imports of Islamicate objects, and the survival of monuments. The result was a hierarchical aesthetic system with two axes: the Arst consisted of the superimposed monumental, public, and oCAcial Gothic, while the second consisted of portable and less durable Islamicate objects that circulated in the gothic halls.
Catalogue of the exhibition mounted at Saint Joseph's University in 1996 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the addition of the Feast of the Holy Family to the liturgical calendar of the Universal Church