ReVisions - Art in the Americas is a large exhibition of art mainly from Mexico and the Spanish-speaking parts of South America. (There's an exception made for some famous photographs by the Brazilian Sebastien Salgado -- these images are thematically apropos but, otherwise, violate the show's focus on prehistoric, colonial, and modern art produced in Spanish-speaking Latin America.) The objects were assembled by the Denver Art Museum from its notable collection of works of this kind. The general quality of the art on display is very high and, with the exception of some tendentious modern works, the show is very interesting and thought-provoking. The labeling is politically correct and, somewhat, annoying as well as obtuse (more about this below), but the objects in the show are so powerful that they more or less speak for themselves. It's worth traveling some distance to experience this exhibition, on display at the Minnesota Institute of Art through mid-September 2023.
From the very outset, the art in the show is ambitious, even grandiose. In the first gallery, the museum-goer will see three Maya lidded pots, dark huge disks with ornate, mysterious patterns (midway between abstraction and figuration) decorating them in bas relief. I have no idea what these things would have been used-for and they seem to be very heavy and unwieldy. Across the room, there is a man-sized jug, similar to Navajo or Acoma pots, but big enough to conceal a person in its depths. I think this impressive object, certainly a remarkable technological feat with respect to sculpting and firing clay, was made in Columbia -- again, the label tells us nothing about the function of this massive object. The show contains many colonial era religious images as well as portraits. Most of these paintings have a vaguely sinister appearance -- there's something pale and powdery about the faces, as if they were dusted with cocaine. (A ghostly young woman shown with a harpsichord could be an image of the "beautiful Carlotta" in Hitchcock's Vertigo.) A series of sixteen panels covers a wall showing the various racial types that exist in Mexico -- these works date from the mid-18th century and are fascinating. But they depict a discredited social theory -- that is, that the various combinations of Indian, Spaniard, and African people resulted in human hybrids with specific genetic characteristics and cultural traits. Accordingly, the viewer is given no information about the specifics of what is depicted -- we are merely told that the paintings supported an unfair and oppressive caste system. In Colonial Mexico, every combination of racial groups was given a name and assigned certain intrinsic characteristics; if your grandmother was a quadroon, your mother a mulatto, and your father an Indian, there was a specific name for the racial group to which you belonged. The pictures show that a couple of these groups were 18th century "Deplorables" -- a man sprawls on the ground drunk while his wife, it seems, beats him; nearby, another family seems involved in a brawl. But most of the paintings show people dancing, singing, and going about their business -- in general terms, each painting, seemingly diagnostic of a racial and ethnic identity, shows a man, a woman, and a child. These curious pictures rhyme with another series of painting showing the emperors of the Inca people, beginning with legendary figures carrying silver scepters shaped like the moon and sun and ending with Francisco Pizzaro in a murky-looking greyish breastplate. These pictures were made in the 18th century as well in Cuzco. If you want to see spectacular displays of gold and silver, there are cases full of the stuff, much of it from Costa Rica and Panama -- these are virtuoso pieces that glow with supernatural radiance. One modern artist has gilded a skateboard with elaborate repousee silverwork, also an impressive object. Fine Moche and Nazca ceramics are interspersed throughout the galleries -- the organization of the art is thematic as opposed to chronological or ethnic; the purpose of the show is to depict continuities between modern art and ancient traditions. (There's a fine Rufino Tamayo picture of an African family, very sculptural and painted with a strong distinct geometry like a late canvas by Braque -- it's a wonderful work and paired with the 16 racial caste pictures, a superficial connection that doesn't really seem persuasive to me. Better to enjoy the art on its own terms and not be influenced too much by the correspondences imposed on the works by the curators.) All of the prehistoric art is very impressive and the objects are all first-rate: there is fine and expressive Moche bat-deity (the little object is funny and frightening at the same time), a nice Zapotec urn showing Cocijo, a rain god, and a brilliant, hyper-realist silver corn cob with tassel made by some unknown Inca artist. A gory-looking three-quarters size crucifix hangs nearby with abraded bloody knees and rivulets of blood flowing over Christ's lacerated flanks -- the label informs us that the Christ figure is covered in painted corn-paste thus suggesting a connection to the dying and reviving corn gods worshipped in Mexico and Latin America. Harun Farocki, a German film-maker, is represented by a short film exploring a painting made Gaspar Miguel de Berrio showing the environs of Potosi, "the rich mountain". The painting is not in the exhibition --apparently it is very large and required two years to paint. Farocki moves his camera over the image and points out various items of interest. Although the commentary read in sober terms by an actress is pointedly Marxist, Farocki is intelligent and much of what he shows us is extremely interesting. Farocki is predictably incensed by the fact that some of the workers at the silver mines at Potosi were "forced labor" although many of the workers were volunteer employees in the hellish mines -- we see spidery figures painted in black lines trudging up the mountain with wax candles in their hands, means of illumination that the laborers had to buy from their bosses at premium prices. (The technology of 18th century mining didn't differ much from the way that iron was extracted on the Iron Range in Minnesota in the early part of this century -- at the Soudan Underground Mine near Ely, there are smooth grooves in the adit walls where miners walked to their work sites in pitch-black darkness, guided by the walls so as not to use up the expensive candles that they had to employ in their labor.) Farocki's film is seventeen minutes long and I strongly urge you to sit down on the nearby bench and watch the movie in its entirety. Farocki's movie is paired with black-and-white photographs showing armies of gold miners at the Serra Pelada mine in the Amazon -- famous and terrifying pictures but a little out-of-place in this show.
The absence of meaningful information about the art works is a little annoying but, I thought, reparable if there were a good catalog of the show explaining the iconography in the images. But, alas, the catalog is a series of politically configured harangues and provides no help as to what the objects were supposed to mean in their original context. Of course, we know that "every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism" (Walter Benjamin), but it's not helpful to be simply told over and over again that this image or that proves oppression or originates in genocide -- this is a "meta" way to approach art that in the end can be applied to everything made before the death of George Floyd; but it's not particularly illuminating. An example is an exquisite and wonderfully witty Maya cylindrical pot. The pot is decorated in two registers and shows plump lords presiding over some kind of gathering (a fat scribe seems to be working below them in the pot's bottom register). The picture looks like Hogarth and I assume was intended to be satirical --the painter seems to be making fun of the pretensions of the fantastically pompous and arrogant little men painted on the vessel. The object is covered with glyphs. What do the glyphs say? What exactly (or approximately) does the pot show? Even more confusing are some of the religious images from the colonial period. There's a large somber-looking painting called "The Virgin of Valvanara" made in the early 18th century in Mexico. The picture shows a severe conical Madonna in a stiff brocade in front of a huge spreading tree, probably some kind of Mexican yew like the vast, buttressed trees you see in ancient plazas in Oaxaca. There's a lingam (Shiva's phallus) in front of the tree; the phallus is perforated and a stream of liquid flows from the pillar-like form. Below there seem to be grotesque grottos where there is a city hidden in the grey-brown darkness and a man walking with an angel. The general effect is gloomy, a bit like Leonardo da Vinci's "Virgin of the Rocks". What the hell is this supposed to mean? The label names the piece and its provenance but says nothing more. The catalog is silent about what the picture means. Fortunately, I later found a description of the picture in the Denver Art Museum website. The picture depicts a sacred, wonder-working image of the Virgin painted in the medieval period somewhere in Spain; the faithful claimed that the painting was a true image of the Virgin painted from life by St. Luke. When the Muslims captured Valvanara, the faithful hid the picture inside of a fissure of a tree. Centuries later a brigand turned hermit, inspired by God, approached the tree and was surprised to see it burst open to reveal the sacred image concealed inside. The tree also enclosed a beehive (the lingam-shaped object) and there was a spring flowing from the base of the tree's trunk. (I still don't know what the man and angel strolling through a grotto are supposed to mean; and what is weird ruined city shown at the bottom of the picture?)
You can look at these things with a naive and innocent eye. But I like to know what I am seeing. San Isidro, carved in wood, helps a peasant guide a plow. This is a charming wooden bulto. In a Peruvian painting of the deluge, Quechua Indians hurry to the ark driving before them a pair of armadillos, some turkeys, and two stoic-looking llamas.
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