The wedding party has more glamour and entertainment than a 21st-century millionaire’s celebration.
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Detail from “Folding Screen with Indigenous Wedding, Mitote, and Flying Pole.” Los Angeles County Museum of Art
There are daring acrobats, dancers in Aztec finery and guests from foreign lands. An indigenous couple is married in a Catholic Church while a diverse crowd of attendees celebrate in 17th-century Mexico.
The stunning scene, painted on a four-panel screen that evokes Japanese works and points to global trade between Asia, Europe, Africa and the Spanish-occupied New World, is one of the highlights of a new exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum, “Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500-1800.”
The screen shows a “mixing of cultures,” says Amy Torbert, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation associate curator of American art. There are fashionable Spaniards in 17th-century dress along with a dramatic headdress to denote Moctezuma II, the last great Aztec leader before the conquest by Spain.
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Although St. Louis was once controlled by Spain, residents may be unfamiliar with that history and many of the beautiful paintings, furniture, fabric and altarpieces that it produced. The exhibition comes from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where curator Ilona Katzew worked for almost two decades to build a collection of Spanish colonial art.
The era’s artwork is often absent in collections, Katzew writes in “Archive of the World,” a book about LACMA’s Spanish colonial collection:
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Antonio de Arellano, Mexican, 1638–1714, and Manuel de Arellano, Mexican, 1662–1722, “Virgin of Guadalupe” (“Virgen de Guadalupe”), 1691. Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
“Most mainstream institutions in the United States — save a few notable exceptions — had seldom focused in this area, in part because it was seen as derivative of European traditions or worthier of ethnological and anthropological attention. Now an increasing number of museums in the United States and Europe are turning to this material with a growing awareness of its complexity and beauty.”
Curators in St. Louis acknowledge that they were at first less-than-familiar with Spanish colonial art and have learned much while preparing for the exhibition. Working with Torbert here are Genevieve Cortinovis, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation associate curator of decorative arts and design; Clare Kobasa, associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs; and Judith W. Mann, senior curator of European art to 1800.
They believe that the pieces will surprise many visitors, who will learn about not only the trade and artistry that was taking place in Mexico and Central and South America at the time, but will also be introduced to unusual genres such as casta paintings.
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Attributed to Miguel Cabrera, Mexican, c.1715–1768; or Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, Mexican, 1713–1772; “Morisca Woman and Albino Girl” (“Morisca y albina”), c.1760.
In the gallery called “Fashioning Identity,” visitors will see paintings of people in sumptuous lace, woven European-style textiles along with gold and silver. Casta, Spanish for “caste,” paintings though also convey ideas beyond wealth.
Usually done in sets of 16, the paintings typically show a husband, wife and child. The husband is often Spanish and the wife may be descended from Indigenous, African or mixed-race parents. The paintings are numbered to show preferred combinations and the titles describe the families.
One, which is translated “From Spaniard and Morisca, Albino Girl,” connects albinism with Black ancestry (a Morisca is the offspring of a Spaniard and a person with mixed-race (Black and white) ancestry).
According to “Archive of the World,” such paintings of an albino child with Black ancestry, which fascinated buyers in Spain, also reflected European and Creole “anxieties over the instability of skin color and, by extension, the blurring of racial boundaries that could undermine their ability to rule — including implicit fears relating to the legitimacy of the slave trade.”
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Unidentified artist, Guatemala (for export market, possibly Peru); “Side Table” (“Mesilla”), last third of the 18th century; wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, and silver. Los Angeles County Museum of Art
“It goes without saying that this is pseudoscience,” Torbert says of the racial theories of the casta paintings. But, “one can both appreciate the incredible skill of a painter while not buying into the ideas that these paintings convey.”
Much of the rest of the exhibit combines similar tensions: beautiful artworks alongside an empire that profited from slavery and exploited labor, whether mining silver or diving for pearls. Some of the paintings seem to be showing that Indigenous populations were accepting of the Spanish rulers and the imposition of the Catholic Church. They also convey wealth and the rich bounty of the New World.
The art museum summarizes: “While acknowledging the profound violence that defined the process of conquest and colonization, this exhibition explores the intricate social, economic, and artistic dynamics of (Spanish colonial societies) that resulted in the creation of astounding new artworks.”
The exhibit’s materials and audio tours will be in both English and Spanish, a first for the museum.
Most of the more than 100 works in the exhibition were created in Mexico in the 1700s, the museum says. But objects also represent present-day Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela. Some of the creations feature materials long used by Indigenous artists, such as feathers, rock crystals and precious metals.
“It’s been a wonderful opportunity for us to learn more about these works of art,” Torbert says.