Role of the urban coalition

Latin American perspectives a program of comment and analysis about

current Latin American problems and their historical setting. The

commentator for these programs is Dr. C. Harvey Gardner research professor of history at

Southern Illinois University. Here now is Dr. Gardner.

Have you defined art lately. To some it's simply get

that stuff. To others it is painting or sculpture

or architecture or. And so the list grows say

Mexican art to most individuals and you evoke modern

murals by Rivera and his contemporaries say Mexican

art to Manuel to sun. And you have much more

far to send spelled t o u s s

a i n t stands as the finest historian

of Mexican art.. It is a volume of his today to which I

would refer you. This is untitled colonial art in

Mexico published by the University of Texas press.

The translation from a work originally in the Spanish in 1909

has been by art historian Elizabeth Wilder Weissman who is

in her own right an authority on Mexican sculpture. The

three hundred years between conquest by Spain and the winning of Independence

saw a special and characteristic culture developed in Mexico.

This was a frontier society but a rich one with all the resources

of Imperial Spain and the Roman church to develop and support the

natural wealth of the lact public and private buildings were ornamented with

rich sculpture and embellished with colorful paintings depicting

religious scenes and views of daily life a wealth of

minor arts supply jewelry for the nobility and

liturgical objects for the churches. The vice royalty of

New Spain as Mexico was known in Colonial use stretched from

Guatemala to California and embraced Indian cultures of

considerable variety. In this period the preponderantly Indian

population was converted to Christian new and introduced to the

civilization of post Renaissance Europe. Artists came to

Mexico from the old world and brought with them the current styles.

But most of the practicing artisans had never seen Europe

natives of New Spain of both Indian and Spanish blood. They

developed the imported styles in to new modes appropriate to the new

country that was to become Mexico. This art

has a visual record of acculturation is of utmost

sociological interest. It is this great corpus of art

ranging from primitive and medieval through Renaissance and Baroque

to the 19th century neo classic and popular art which

concerns to sound. In this book on Colonial Mexican art.

It is the cornerstone of the study of Mexican colonial art and this volume is the

first attempt to consider the whole panorama of one of the most

interesting varied and significant of the American cultures

in its colonial phase. A word about money well two sons

born in 1890 and Mexico City he died there in

1955. But in the intervening 65 years he

more than anyone else was responsible for the world growing

appreciation of the totality of Mexican art.

He traveled in Spain and he arouse some interest in Mexican vice regal

heritage and for 40 years he with an unrivaled

acquaintance with Mexican art explored and wrote about

commented upon the monuments of his native land. Scholars

accustomed to the well cultivated fields of European art can have no notion

what it was like when the Trailblazer Manuel Toussaint set about it

in the early 1920s. Don't Manuel set out with a

handful of companions usually on horseback to visit places that

no one had noticed for centuries. There were no secondary texts to

use no photographs no paved roads a few maps.

In fact he often fell back upon the writings of a 16th century friar.

Like Father Ponce for a guide book and travels much as that 16th

century church men had. In the 1920s when two cent began to publish his

findings and interest in the colonial period was

downright unfashionable. Indeed on Mexican those were

years in the 1920s when Mexico increasingly conscious of the social

fact that its population was a mixture of

Indian and Spaniard was predominantly a mestizo population was coming to

emphasize its Indian heritage was tending to play down. In

fact in some circles the NA way the Spanish factor in the background and

so at a moment when the Spanish factor was in Eclipse you have

this man to sign emphasizing the Spanish

contribution to Mexican art to scent nonetheless

argued and rightly so that 16th century sculpture for example was

already an integration of Indian and European styles. But in

essence that the 16th century sculpture was a Mexican

not a crude failure to import and duplicate the ideas

of Europe.

The significance of Tucson's work was recognized and he

occupied a chair of history of Mexican art at the National

University for many years. He headed the first laboratory of art at the

university and later headed the Institute of

aesthetic investigations.

Indeed in the last decade of his life he was director of the division

of colonial monuments of the National Institute of

anthropology. We have then in the work of Manuel to

sign a survey of Mexican art over a

300 year period. I might add that this bug

him is richly illustrated having no fewer than three

hundred ninety five reproductions of the

subjects about which he is otherwise writing. Many of these incidentally

are black and white and many are also rich in color.

It's a rather commonplace approach for him in the style in which he

casts his account of colonial Mexican art to deal first with

architecture in a sizeable segment of a chapter and then with

sculpture and then with painting. And many might conclude

that well that has covered the artistic front as he has dealt

with the great three architecture sculpture painting. But

this is not the view that 2 cent has because invariably

there is a fourth call it a miscellany if you like. He calls it

the minor arts in which he deals with many many activities of Mexican

life that take on a quality of product that

indeed becomes a measure of Mexican artistic expression. For example he

will have this treatment of part of the 16th century. The consideration of the

goldsmith of the silversmith of the lapidary is in their work

of the jewelry of the household silver. Indeed of the finer pieces of

furniture the embroidery the weaving the iron work the

ceramics the bronze the glass.

How many of these things kind of course. Be equated with

items that were rather routinely and roughly made simply for a

utilitarian world. But we have in to sense

treatment of them the finer achievements in all of these areas of life

where in the artisan so proud of his ability so concerned about the

quality of his materials and his workmanship that he is indeed

proud of the artistic nature of the product of it. And so we have as

Toussaint would group them the minor arts. Nothing

amazed the Europeans more in the conquest of New Spain back in

16th century years and the great quantity of splendid jewels

which they found there the Indians indeed were masters in the

art of working in precious metals. The lists of valuable pieces which the

Spaniards dispatched to the crown in Europe have been published as well as

the tribute lists. But the Indian chieftains had to pay into the Spanish conquerors.

From those documents which we still have available we see that it was not

simply the intrinsic value of the metal which attracted the

Conqueror's But the fact that they were overwhelmed by the beauty of the

objects. In fact early conquerers turned satyrs

soon commissioned more of these artistic works to be made by the Indian

artisans. It was in Europe that these Indian artifacts were

considered merely in terms of the value of the metal.

Everything was melted down when it arrived from New Spain. So that

while today in museums in Spain and elsewhere in Europe there are

numerous examples of the fine feather work of the Aztecs.

There is not a single piece of gold work to be found.

Well we here on our own day of gold being melted down and shipped in bars from one side of the Atlantic to the

other in those days they shipped it over in fine artistic pieces and then

with a desire for the metal to become a part of the currency of Europe. We have

a ruination as it were a desecration of these artistic works as

the gold and silver products were melted down. One great achievement of course

in the art history of colonial Mexico has to do with the larger

than life equestrian statue produced by Manuel told

t o l s a. The sculptures name this great

monument to Charles the fourth one of the ne'er do well kings of Spain

stands at a busy on a busy thoroughfare in Mexico City and is

admired today 175 years after it was

first cast and put before the public gaze.

We have in the work.

President every day a reminder of the greatness of colonial art. There

are those who have wandered down the main streets of Mexico City

past the resk style of the SAA Gratiano the building

adjacent to the cathedral.

And those who have looked at the cathedral itself and have been aware of

architectural patterns of the colonial period there have been those

who in Mexico as tourists have noted the house of

tiles and have the judge did a thing of beauty indeed

an artistic creation. We have then for those who think

only of Rivera of mural art of modern Mexico

something new a grand volume to be put on the table

top of volume for browsing a volume for the nightstand something

that you will want to refer to time and time again.

And that is the volume of colonial art in Mexico

authored by money well Tucson. Published in lush fashion

by the University of Texas press.

This was a Latin American perspectives with Dr. C. Harvey Gardner research

professor of history at Southern Illinois University. Join us for our next

program on Dr. Gardner We'll examine another aspect of life in Latin America

Latin American perspectives is produced and recorded by station ws

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