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Modernity, Mestizaje, and Hispano Art: Patrocinio Barela and the Federal Art Project
Abstract
Stephanie Lewthwaite is a lecturer in the School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom.
1. I follow Tey Marianna Nunn in using the term Hispano to refer to Spanish-speaking artists from New Mexico during the 1930s. See Nunn, Sin Nombre: Hispana and Hispano Artists of the New Deal Era (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001). However, I do so from a historical perspective that reflects the term's evolution from a distinctive form of regional identity politics. According to Charles Montgomery and John Nieto-Phillips, Hispano became the preferred “public identity” within the Spanish-speaking community between the 1890s and 1920s over (and in opposition to) the racialized term Mexican. The Spanish-language press and the rico elite adopted the label in a bid to palliate racism, reclaim cultural ground on the basis of a shared regional ethnic identity, and assert their right to American citizenship and statehood. They did so by invoking a Spanish colonial identity in politics and culture through the terms Hispanoamericano or Spanish American, terms that also denied Anglos the right to appropriate the label American (and thus citizenship) solely for themselves. See Charles Montgomery, The Spanish Redemption: Heritage, Power, and Loss on New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 14; and John M. Nieto-Phillips, The Language of Blood: The Making of Spanish-American Identity in New Mexico, 1880s–1930s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004), 81–82. The term Hispano was also used by elite-born contemporaries such as Hispana educator, government official, writer, and folklorist Aurora Lucero-White, who used it to “denote a culture” and “persons of Spanish speech.” See Aurora Lucero-White, Los Hispanos (Denver: Sage Books, 1947), 3.
2. See William Wroth, “The Hispanic Craft Revival in New Mexico,” in Janet Kardon, ed., Revivals! Diverse Traditions: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920–1945 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 84–93; Charles L. Briggs, The Wood Carvers of Córdova, New Mexico: Social Dimensions of an Artistic Revival (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980), and “The Role of Mexicano Artists and the Anglo Elite in the Emergence of a Contemporary Folk Art,” in J. Vlach and S. Bonner, eds., Folk Art and Folk Worlds (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1992), 195–224; Edward Gonzales and David L. Witt, Spirit Ascendant: The Art and Life of Patrociño Barela (Santa Fe: Red Crane Books, 1996); Laurie Kalb, Crafting Devotions: Tradition in Contemporary New Mexico Santos (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994); and Nunn, Sin Nombre.
3. Nunn, Sin Nombre, xi, 33–34.
4. For the use of this term in relation to Barela, see “List of Taos Artists,” quoted in Nunn, Sin Nombre, 23.
5. Nunn, Gonzales and Witt, and Kalb have considered Barela's ambiguous position as a “folk,” “primitive,” and “modern” artist, and his impact on contemporary santeros. However, this debate has not yet been amplified into a full consideration of the variety of modernisms at work during this period, and Barela's reception is framed in terms of European modernism and America's interest in the “Primitive.” See Gonzales and Witt, Spirit Ascendant, xxv, 1, 140, 145; Nunn, Sin Nombre, 146–47, and Kalb, “Primitivism, Modernism, and Patrocinio Barela,” in Crafting Devotions, 89–119.
6. I apply the terms used by Elizabeth Hutchinson, “Modern Native American Art: Angel DeCora's Transcultural Aesthetics,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 4 (2001), 740–56; and Bill Anthes, Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
7. Kalb, Crafting Devotions, 96. For the anthropological “discovery” of New Mexico's ethnic cultures, see Desley Deacon, Elsie Clews Parsons: Inventing Modern Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
8. On the “crisis of modernity” see Robert Dorman, Revolt of the Provinces: The Regionalist Movement in America, 1920–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
9. Wroth, “Hispanic Craft Revival,” 84; Julie Schimmel, “The Hispanic Southwest,” in Charles Eldredge, Julie Schimmel, and William Truettner, eds, Art in New Mexico, 1900–1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987), 101–2.
10. Wroth, “Hispanic Craft Revival...
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Angel DeCora was the best-known Native American artist of her generation but she is generally omitted from histories of “modern” Native American art. Working at a time when United States Indian policy was dedicated to eradicating Native identity, DeCora fought for the participation of Native Americans in modern American cultural and political life. This essay demonstrates the formal and conceptual modernity of DeCora's work. It explores her sophisticated engagement with contemporary social and aesthetic theory and argues that her paintings, illustrations, and designs draw on these ideas to represent the transcultural condition that defines modern Native American experience.
Angel DeCora was the best-known Native American artist of her generation but she is generally omitted from histories of "modern" Native American art. Working at a time when United States Indian policy was dedicated to eradicating Native identity, DeCora fought for the participation of Native Americans in modern American cultural and political life. This essay demonstrates the formal and conceptual modernity of DeCora's work. It explores her sophisticated engagement with contemporary social and aesthetic theory and argues that her paintings, illustrations, and designs draw on these ideas to represent the transcultural condition that defines modern Native American experience.