Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art (Routledge Research in Art History) [1 ed.] 1032150203, 9781032150208

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HISTORICAL NARRATIVES OF GLOBAL MODERN ART

Diversifying the current art historical scholarship, this edited volume presents the untold story of modern art by exposing global voices and perspectives excluded from the privileged and uncontested narrative of “isms.” This volume tells a worldwide story of art with expanded historical narratives of modernism. The chapters reflect on a wide range of issues, topics, and themes that have been marginalized or outright excluded from the canon of modern art. The goal of this book is to be a starting point for understanding modern art as a broad and inclusive field of study. The topics examine diverse formal expressions, innovative conceptual approaches, and various media used by artists around the world and forcefully acknowledge the connections between art, historical circumstances, political environments, and social issues such as gender, race, and social justice. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, imperial and colonial history, modernism, and globalization. Irina D. Costache is Professor of Art History at California State University Channel Islands. The books she published include The Art of Understanding Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), translated into Chinese in 2015, Venezia, Italia/Venice, California (Sestante Edizioni, 2015), co-authored, and the anthology Academics, Artists and Museums (Routledge, 2018), co-editor. Her current research examines issues related to modern art, digital media, and museums. She is also working on a digital project on futurist art theory and another on nature and culture in the Anthropocene. Dr. Costache has also curated numerous exhibitions including recently The Long Struggle for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Icons, Moments, and Voices Selections from the Santi Visalli Collection at CSUCI, (2022–2023). Dr. Costache was elected to and served on the Board of Directors of College Art Association. She also served as Vice-president and later President of the Art Historians of Southern California. Clare Kunny, Educator and Arts Administrator, is an art historian and museum professional with extensive experience working in and with art museums. Clare is founding director of Art Muse Los Angeles. She leads a team of educators, artists, and art historians to develop educational programs and offer professionally guided tours of art museums and galleries in greater Los Angeles and beyond. From 2014 to 2022, Art Muse Los Angeles has worked with Paris Photo LA and Frieze LA, providing private tours of the art fair for corporate sponsors. Art Muse also works with LA Opera and the Hammer Museum on special projects to unite the fine and performing arts. In 2003, Clare joined The J. Paul Getty Museum’s Education Department as Manager of Public Education and Teaching. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Clare served as Associate Director of General Programs for 17 years in the Department of Education at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Routledge Research in Art History

Routledge Research in Art History is our home for the latest scholarship in the field of art history. The series publishes research monographs and edited collections, covering areas including art history, theory, and visual culture. These high-level books focus on art and artists from around the world and from a multitude of time periods. By making these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote quality art history research. Erasures and Eradication in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design Edited by Megan Brandow-Faller and Laura Morowitz Egon Schiele and the Art of Popular Illustration Claude Cernuschi State Construction and Art in East Central Europe, 1918–2018 Edited by Agnieszka Chmielewska, Irena Kossowska, and Marcin Lachowski Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà and its Afterlives Lisa Rafanelli The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies Katharine D. Scherff Whistler and Artistic Exchange between Japan and the West After Japonisme in Britain Ayako Ono The Pictures Generation at Hallwalls Traces of the Body, Gender, and History Vera Dika American Artists Engage the Built Environment, 1960–1979 Susanneh Bieber

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-Art-History/ book-series/RRAH

Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art Edited by Irina D. Costache and Clare Kunny

Designed cover image: Map “Voyage autour du monde”, engraved by “Erhard” and printed by “Moncrocq” Paris, in Jacques Siegfried, Seize mois autour du monde, 1867–1869, et particulièrement aux Indes, en Chine et au Japon (Paris: J Hetzel, 1869) First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Irina D. Costache and Clare Kunny; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Irina D. Costache and Clare Kunny to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-15020-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-16238-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-24767-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678 Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figures List of Contributors Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction: Modern Art: A Global Story

viii x xv xvi 1

IRINA D. COSTACHE AND CLARE KUNNY

Prequel. Helen Gardner and Art Through the Ages, 1948: A World Panorama of Art

6

BARBARA JAFFEE

PART I

1870–1920 1 Impressionism and Globalization

17 19

ANDRÉ DOMBROWSKI

2 Picturing the Dead: Posthumous Portraits of Infants and Children in Turn-of-the-Century Mexican Photography

31

ELISA C. MANDELL

3 Art and Revival in Ireland, 1830–1930

44

KAYLA ROSE

4 The “Marbelous” Movement: 1871–1922 Victorian England

56

ALEXANDER KUSZTYK

5 “On or About 1910,” London’s New Bond Street, and the Global Art Market ANNE HELMREICH

68

vi

Contents

6 Modernism, Transnational networks and Pan-Africanist Thought in Early Twentieth Century African American Art

80

CATHERINE BERNARD

PART II

1920–1940 7 Berlin, Bauhaus, Bucharest: Re-Making Modernism in the Global Peripheries

93 95

ALEXANDRA CHIRIAC

8 Chinese Photography Criticism and Theory in Republican China: The Cases of Lu Xun and Liu Bannong

108

BRUNO LESSARD

9 Primitive Surfaces: Elena Izcue, Peruvian Indigenism, and the Racial Politics of Modernist Ornament

117

GRACE KUIPERS

10 The Black Legend of Mexican Painting

130

FABIOLA MARTÍNEZ RODRÍGUEZ

11 Neo-Baroque Architecture and Sculpture in the Portuguese Estado Novo (1926–1974): The Genealogy of a Marginalized Concept

141

ANA LOURENÇO PINTO

PART III

1940–1970

153

12 Inter-Asian Cultural Dialogues

155

TANYA SINGH

13 Thomaz Farkas and Mid-Century Brazilian Photographic Networks

167

DANIELLE STEWART

14 Modern Islamicate Painting, 1940–1970

180

ALEX DIKA SEGGERMAN

15 Two Pioneering Women Bring Abstraction to the Andes MICHELE GREET

192

Contents 16 The Global Contexts of Modern African Art: Negotiating Blackness, Modern Art, and African Identities in Paris

vii 204

SYLVESTER OKWUNODU OGBECHIE

17 A Full Embrace of the Global in Modern Art: International Exhibitions and the Re-writing of Art History

217

CLARE KUNNY

Conclusion Index

222 223

Figures

0.1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2

Table of Contents, Gardner, 1948, iii–viii Kuroda Seiki, Under the Shade of a Tree, 1898 Édouard Manet, View of the 1867 Exposition Universelle Claude Monet, Port of Le Havre, 1874 Map “Voyage autour du monde,” engraved by “Erhard” and printed

by “Monrocq,” Paris, in Jacques Siegfried, Seize mois autour du

monde, 1867–1869, et particulièrement aux Indes, en Chine et au

Japon, Paris: J. Hetzel, 1869 Unknown, Portrait of a Seated Woman in a Shawl Holding a Dead

Child ca. 1850s–1870s Juan de Dios Machain, Relatives Posing Next to an Angelito Dressed

as Jesus with His Sacred Heart, ca. 1920 Juan de Dios Machain, Female Relatives Posing Next to an Angelito

Dressed as the Virgin Mary, ca. 1920 Juan de Dios Machain, Three Women and an Angelito as the Virgin

Mary, ca. 1920 Margaret Stokes, Title Page from Samuel Ferguson’s The Cromlech on

Howth: A Poem, 1861 (London: Day) John Vinycomb, Oxidized Silver Shrine Casket to contain Illuminated

Address to the Earl of Shaftesbury, 1890 Art O’Murnaghan, Éire Page from Leabhar na hAiséirghe (Book of

Resurrection), 1922 Art O’Murnaghan, Éire Page, Designs for Celtic Symbols (with

handwritten annotations), 1922 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, An Apodyterium, opus CCLXXIV, 1886 Sir John Edward Poynter, The Ides of March, 1883 John William Godward, A Fair Reflection, 1915 Bedford and Lemere, Exterior view from the north-east of the front

of 127 New Bond Street, the premises of Yamanaka & Co, dealers in

Japanese fine arts, July 18, 1911 Loïs Mailou Jones, Jeanne, Martiniquaise, 1938 William Johnson, Going to Church, ca. 1940–1941 Staff and apprentices of the Academy of Decorative Arts, October 1926 An exhibition organized by Mela Brun-Maxy at the Academy of

Decorative Arts, 1926

11

22

23

24

25

33

35

37

37

47

50

51

52

57

61 63

69

86

87

96 97

Figures 7.3 Andrei Vespremie, Metal openwork radiator cover with a Tree of Life

motif probably inspired by wood-carved Torah arks, 1926 7.4 Andrei Vespremie, Multi-functional “lamp-construction” illustrated in the avant-garde periodical Contimporanul, July 1926 9.1 Elena Izcue, Textile Design ca. 1928–1936 9.2 Elena Izcue, page from El Arte Peruano en la Escuela, 1925 9.3 Elena Izcue, Indienne Péruvienne, 1928 10.1 Siqueiros, Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth, 1944 10.2 Siqueiros, The Apotheosis of Cuauhtémoc (Resurrection of

Cuauhtémoc), 1950–51 11.1 Commemorative piece in polychrome plaster, representing the Pavilion

of Portugal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, in 1889 11.2 The facade of the São Clemente Palace, in Rio de Janeiro 11.3 Partial view of the Monumental Fountain, in Lisbon 12.1 Nandalal Bose, Dolan Champa, 1952 12.2 Rusli, Pasar, 1965 12.3 Bagyi Aung Soe, [Title unknown] (I DRAW FOR YOU SOLAR

ENERGY No. 9), 1989 12.4 Fua Haribhitak, Face, ca. 1956 13.1 Fotoptica ad from the back cover of Boletim 10, February 1949 13.2 Thomaz Farkas, Fachada lateral do Ministério da Educação e Saúde

[Lateral façade of the Ministry of Education], ca. 1945 13.3 Thomaz Farkas, Ensaio de Ballet [Ballet rehearsal], 1947 13.4 Thomaz Farkas, Apartamentos ou Fachada interior do Edifício São

Borja [Apartments or Facade Inside the Building São Borja], verso, ca. 1945 14.1 Mahmoud Mukhtar, Nahdat Misr (Egypt’s Reawakening), 1920–1928 14.2 Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, The Story of Zulaikha, 1949 14.3 Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, The Green Man, 1951 15.1 Cover of Araceli Gilbert’s exhibition catalogue: Ritmos de Color,

Museo de Arte Colonial, Quito, 1955 15.2 Installation view of Araceli Gilbert’s exhibition Ritmos de Color at the

Museo de Arte Colonial 15.3 María Luisa Pacheco, Composition, 1960 16.1 Aina Onabolu, Adam & Eve, 1954 16.2 Gerard Sekoto, Portrait of a Youth, n.d. (ca. 1950s)

ix 102

103 118

120

124

134

136

143

146

148

158

160

162

164

168 170

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185

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210

Contributors

Catherine Bernard is Professor of art history at SUNY Old Westbury. She obtained a Doc­ torat d’Etat from Sorbonne University. Her research focuses on transcultural phenom­ ena and pluri-cultural identities in contemporary art. She has written extensively on Diaspora, postcolonial and contemporary art. Her work has been published in African Arts (UCLA); Parkett Magazine; The Art Journal (College Art Association); Documents of Contemporary Art (Whitechapel Art Gallery and MIT Press); Nka Journal (Duke and Cornell Universities); Les Carnets du Bal, Paris; the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston. Her curatorial work includes more than 20 exhibitions and several catalogues on contempo­ rary artists for the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Neuberger Museum of Art; Hunter College Galleries, CUNY; the Katonah Museum of Art; Museo Gurvich, Montevideo, and the Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin. Her most recent exhibition: Trees Also Speak, in 2018, showcased the work of contemporary indigenous American artists and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is currently working on a book about the politics of extraction on indigenous lands to be published in 2023. Alexandra Chiriac is an art historian specializing in marginalized histories of 20th­ century modernism, with a focus on design and performance. During 2020–2022, she was a Leonard A. Lauder Fellow in the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews. Chiriac’s peer-reviewed publications examine aspects of Romanian, Soviet, and Jewish design and performance history, and her first mono­ graph, entitled Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-garde in Bucharest, was pub­ lished open access by De Gruyter in 2022. André Dombrowski is Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Associate Professor of 19th-Century European Art at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in the arts and material cultures of France, Britain, and Germany in the late 19th century. He is the author of Cézanne, Murder, and Modern Life (University of California Press, 2013), a book about the artist’s early work that is the winner of the Phillips Book Prize, and he has written essays on Manet, Monet, Degas, Pissarro, and Menzel, among other artists, and on Second Empire decorative arts as well. As editor of the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Impressionism, he brought together 34 new essays on Impressionism (2021). He is cur­ rently finalizing his next book, rooting the rise of the impressionist instant – and 19th­ century painting’s presumed new “quickness” more broadly – in the period’s innovative time technologies and forms of time management. The book’s title is Monet’s Minutes, to appear with Yale University Press in late 2023.

Contributors

xi

Michele Greet is Professor of Latin American art history at George Mason University. She is author of Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars, 1918–1939 (Yale University Press: 2018) and Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920–1960 (Penn State University Press: 2009). She co-edited Art Museums of Latin America: Structuring Representation (Routledge: 2018). She has written catalogue essays for MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and El Museo del Barrio (New York). She is currently working on a book Abstraction in the Andes, 1950–1970. Anne Helmreich is Director, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, and for­ merly Associate Director, Getty Foundation, and Associate Director, Digital Initiatives, Getty Research Institute, both of the J. Paul Getty Trust. She has also served as Dean, TCU College of Fine Arts; Senior Program Officer, The Getty Foundation; and Associ­ ate Professor of Art History and Director, Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, Case Western Reserve University. Her current research focuses on the history of the art market and the productive intersection of the digital humanities and art history. Her essay “The Art Market as a System, Florence Levy’s Statistics” appeared in American Art in Fall 2020. “Purpose-built: Duveen and the commercial art gallery,” co-authored with Edward Sterrett and Sandra van Ginhoven, was published by Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide in Summer 2021. She and Pamela Fletcher recently co-authored “Digital Methods and the Study of the Art Market,” for The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History (Routledge, 2020) and the epilogue to Art Crossing Borders: The Birth of an Integrated Art Market in the Age of Nation States (Europe, ca. 1780–1914) (Brill, 2019). Barbara Jaffee is Associate Professor emerita of modern and American art history at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb. She earned her PhD in art history at the Univer­ sity of Chicago and holds BFA and MFA degrees in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Professor Jaffee’s research interests focus on the critical discourse and institutional framework within which modern art developed, particularly in the United States. Her work on the relationship between the fine and the applied arts in the first-half of the 20th century has been published in a number of journals and anthologies, including Partisan Canons (Duke University Press), Open-Set, Panorama, Art Journal, Design Issues, and Art Criticism. Her current project, a book-length study documenting the use of diagrams in art pedagogy in the United States, is a topic that provides not only a framework for understanding the popularization and diffusion of modernist aesthetics in the United States, but also an alternative origin story for the modernizing of American painting. Grace Kuipers is a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studies 20th­ century art of the Americas. Grace’s interests converge around issues of race, capi­ tal, and the uneven geographies of modernism. She has worked on diverse projects surrounding institutional histories of museums, the labor of nude modeling, and the lives of commissioned portraiture, with geographical focuses that span Europe, the United States, and Latin America. She is currently working on her dissertation, entitled Mineral Modernism: The Mexican Subsoil and the Remapping of American Form in the 1930s, which theorizes an aesthetics of extraction in the transnational dialogue between U.S. and Mexican art in the 1930s- date of expected PhD- summer 2023.

xii

Contributors In 2022–2023, she is a predoctoral fellow at the Crystal Bridges Museum of Ameri­ can Art and at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2023-2024, she will be a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s High Meadows Environmental Institute.

Alexander Kusztyk is an Art History PhD candidate at St  John’s College, University of Cambridge. His PhD dissertation examines the history of marbling in art from the Victorian’s marbelous craze to marble’s re-emergence in the 20th and 21st centu­ ries as a de-classicized, de-colonized, and de-materialized material phenomenon. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016 and his Master of Philosophy from St John’s College, University of Cambridge in 2018. Alexander’s research interests are geological aesthetics, conceptual art, and global per­ spectives and material narratives in modern art. His recent publications include “ ‘Cov­ ered with Thick Marble’: Uncovering Yoko Ono’s Marble Works from 1961 to 1966” (Source: Notes in the History of Art, 2022), “ ‘In-within-inner-non-un-insane-crazed’: The ‘Insound’ and ‘Instructure’ of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit ‘Room Pieces’ ” (Cambridge Journal of Visual Culture, 2022), and “Nicolas Poussin’s Hunt of Meleager and Atal­ anta and the Spanish Court of King Philip IV” (Artibus et Historiae, 2021). Bruno Lessard is Associate Professor in the School of Image Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of The Art of Subtraction: Digital Adaptation and the Object Image (University of Toronto Press) and co-editor of Critical Distance in Documentary Media (Palgrave). He has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies devoted to documentary pedagogy. Lessard’s writing has appeared in numerous collections such as The Iconology of Abstraction: Non-Figurative Images and the Mod­ ern World (Routledge) and The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Cinema (Oxford Uni­ versity Press). His forthcoming monograph on Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Bing will be published by Hong Kong University Press. Lessard is currently writing a monograph on Franco-Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh. As an exhibiting photobased artist, Lessard’s visual work can be found at www.brunolessard.com. Elisa C. Mandell is Professor of Art History in the Department of Visual Arts at Califor­ nia State University, Fullerton. Trained as a specialist in the art history of the Ancient Americas, her interests and expertise span a range of topics on the visual culture of the Americas, from death and gender to the Jewish contributions to the built landscape of colonial Dutch Brazil. Professor Mandell has published on the posthumous portraits of infants and children in Early Modern and Modern Spanish and Mexican art, as well as on the gender attribution of the so-called Great Goddess of the ancient site of Teotihuacan. In 2012 she was a Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellow, and she was a fellow for two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes: Central America (2006) and India (2013). From 2014 to 2017 she served as president of the Association for Latin American Art. Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie is Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the Uni­ versity of California Santa Barbara and a 2022 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow. He is an art historian, artist, and curator whose research focuses on African and African Diaspora arts, modern and contemporary art, cultural informatics, and African cul­ tural patrimony. Ogbechie is the author of Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (2008), and Making History: African Collectors and the Canon of African

Contributors

xiii

Art Collection (2011). He is co-author and editor of Artists of Nigeria (2012), and founder/editor of Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. Ogbechie organized the first conference in the USA to explore the Nigerian Video Film Industry (First International Nollywood Convention and Symposium, Los Angeles, June 2005), and received the inaugural Teshome H. Gabriel Distinguished Africanist Award of the University of California San Diego for his work on Nollywood and new African cinema. Ogbechie has been awarded many fellowships and grants for his work, including Fellow/Consortium Professor of the Getty Research Institute, Daimler Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, Senior Fellow of the Smithsonian Institution, Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Fellow of the Institute for Inter­ national Education. He is currently working on his Guggenheim project, a book titled The Curator as Culture Broker: Representing Africa in Global Contemporary Art. Ana Lourenço Pinto is a PhD candidate in Fine-Arts/Art and Heritage Sciences at the Fac­ ulty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. Her dissertation is entitled “Between Traditional and Modern: Portuguese Neo-Baroque Art, from Romanticism to the Estado Novo regime (1889–1962).” Her research addresses Baroque revival, re-interpretation, and integration in Portuguese art, specifically architecture and sculpture between the end of the 19th century and throughout the regime of the Portuguese Estado Novo. Her publications include “The Portuguese Neo-Baroque Sculpture” published in 2020 in CAP – Public Art Journal, and her master’s thesis Realizações e Utopias: o património arquitectónico e artístico das Caldas de Monchique na cenografia da paisagem termal (Achievements and Utopias: The Architectural and Artistic Heritage of Caldas De Monchique in a Thermal Landscape Setting) published by Fundação Oriente in 2015. Her work on the art, architecture, and urbanism of the industrial complex in Bar­ reiro (1907–1975) as an independent researcher was published in 2021 by Principia Editora. Between 2017 and 2020, she developed the brand Outra História-Turismo e Património, through which she carried out guided tours in historical-artistic heritage and museums, carried out training and heritage awareness actions. Fabiola Martínez Rodríguez received her PhD from Camberwell College of Arts, Uni­ versity of the Arts London, in 2005, and since 2007 has been the director of the Art History program at Saint Louis University Madrid. Her current research centers on the study of Inter-American and Transatlantic cultural diplomacy, artistic networks, and the role that Mexican art played in the Cultural Cold War. She has been awarded aca­ demic grants by the Terra Foundation for American Art and has been a fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. More recently, she has been granted a Research Residency at the Institut Giacometti where she will be investigating the artistic recep­ tion of Rufino Tamayo in Paris in the 1950s. Fabiola is a member of the research group Decentralized Modernities. Art, Politics and Counterculture in the Transatlan­ tic Axis During the Cold War; her most current publications include: “Mexico’s Inter­ american Biennials and the Hemispheric Cold War” and “Mexican Art in the Eastern Front 1955: Poland and Bulgaria.” Kayla Rose is an independent researcher and Partnerships Manager at Bath Spa Univer­ sity in Bath, United Kingdom. She completed an interdisciplinary PhD in art history and history at Ulster University, Belfast, an MPhil in Irish Art History at Trinity Col­ lege Dublin, and a BA in Art History and Criticism at SUNY Stony Brook University.

xiv

Contributors

Over the course of her career, Kayla has taught courses in art history, history, Irish Studies, design history, and arts management in both the United States and United Kingdom, most recently at CUNY Queens College and Queensborough Community College in New York. She carries out research across the fields of history, art history, visual and material culture, knowledge exchange, and cultural policy, exploring the things (objects, art, experiences, memories) that people create, commemorate, carry, and conserve. Her current research focuses on collective memory and identity for­ mation in art and material culture, with particular emphasis on the 19th- and 20th­ century Celtic Revival in Ireland. Alex Dika Seggerman is Associate Professor of Islamic art history at Rutgers UniversityNewark. Her scholarship investigates the intersection of Islam and modernism in art history. She is author of Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) and co-editor of Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean (Indiana University Press, 2022). She received her doctorate in the history of art from Yale University in 2014. Prior to joining the Rutgers-Newark faculty in 2018, she held postdoctoral fellowships at Smith College, Hampshire College, and Yale University. In 2022, she was the Leonard A. Lauder Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC. Her next book project will cover the art history of American Islam. Tanya Singh is a researcher and historian interested in the intersection of history and artis­ tic movements across the Asian region, particularly relating to the modern art period. She obtained her MA in Asian Art Histories at the LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore and also holds a BA (Hons.) degree from the same. During her postgraduate tenure, she worked on exploring a cross-cultural dialogue between the development of modern art in India and in Indonesia. She was awarded a travel research grant to further the research and extend it to other countries within the region, namely Sri Lanka. She has presented her papers at a number of conferences, including the Annual Postgradu­ ate Workshop & Conference organized by the Indonesia Institute (Australian National University). Her postgraduation thesis, “An Inter-Asian Dialogue – Modernity in India and Indonesia” was published in the International Journal of Arts Theory and History. Danielle Stewart is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Latin American art at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. Her research on mid-century Brazil­ ian photography and visual culture considers the capacity of mass-distributed artistic, documentary, journalistic, and advertising photographs to shape urban spaces and construct urban imaginaries. Danielle completed her MPhil and PhD in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and her BA and MA degrees at Brigham Young Uni­ versity. She has presented her work at conferences hosted by the Universidade de São Paulo, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the College Art Association, and the Latin American Studies Association, among others. Her writing has appeared in publications by the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, the Instituto Moreira Salles, the Fundación Cisneros, and H-ART (Universidad de los Andes). Danielle has also taught Latin American art and photography at Hostos College, Brooklyn College, Lehman College, and The Cooper Union. From 2019 to 2020, Danielle was a fellow in the Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

Foreword

Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art is a much-needed book that will be a key source for scholars in the field, museum curators and educators, and other art experts. This collection of essays will also be widely used in upper-division modern art courses, at the undergraduate as well as graduate levels, as well as in more specialized seminars. The anthology comprises unpublished essays that reveal a new, global perspective on modernism and opens beyond the Western story of art and its makers to present a worldview of the history of art created between 1850 and 1970. The essays are written by authors from Asia, the Americas, and Europe, who reveal the “untold story” of modern art by exposing idiosyncratic developments outside and beyond the westernized cannon. Topics discussed in the book include Pan-Africanist thought in the early 20th century, portraits of children in Mexico, theory and criticism in mid-20th-century Chinese pho­ tography, women artists and abstraction in South America, Inter Asian artistic dialogues, and modern Islamic art, to mention only a few. Historical Narrative of Global Modern Art is written for contemporary audiences concerned with and aware of global views and values and presents a more diverse and inclusive representation of modern art and its history. This book is an important start­ ing point for a continued discussion on this topic that would fill the enormous gaps in a global understanding of modern art.

Acknowledgments

Any book is the product and result of a group effort in which participants have different roles at different times, and each visible or less visible contribution is key to the success of the book. This is the case with this project. We would like to thank first Isabella Vitti, Editor, Art History and Visual studies, for her interest in the topic of the anthology and her continuous support for this project. We would also like to thank the Routledge editorial board for the enthusiastic approval of the proposal for this anthology. Our deepest gratitude goes to the authors, whose meticulously researched and elo­ quently written essays have been key to the value of this book. Each author has brought forth new research on topics either understudied or forgotten over the march of time. Their current research offers new narratives with broad, global perspectives that expand the history and understanding of modern art and its makers. We are also profoundly grateful to Pam Moffat whose extraordinary expertise in copy­ right, permissions, digital picture formats, and other editorial and technical matters, was critical to successfully finalize the manuscript files for submission to the publisher. Special thanks to Dr. Mitch Avila, Provost; Dr. Vandana Kohli, Dean of Arts; and Marianne McGrath, Chair of Art Program, California State University Channel Islands, for their support. This is the second time we, the editors, have collaborated on a book project and, as in the past, our collaboration has been seamless. Irina D. Costache and Clare Kunny

Introduction Modern Art: A Global Story Irina D. Costache and Clare Kunny

Until recently art was defined and analyzed within Western norms and values. While global views have penetrated many areas and topics of art history, modern art continues to be frequently perceived as an isolated Western development. This uncontested identity is principally defined by the succession of European, mostly French, avant-garde move­ ments responsible for the rapid rise and equally swift decline of multiple “isms.” The linear trajectory, validated by a small cultural milieu and suspended in a geographical vacuum, celebrates the privileged gaze of selected artists and commends their heroic ges­ tures. Modern art, modernism, and modernity, terms intimately intertwined, continue to be defined with and within Eurocentric standards and values. Famous works such as Pablo Picasso’s Demoiselles d’ Avignon (1907) or Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night (1889) are perfect symbols of this modern art canon. Hierarchic global dialogues, visible here in the appropriation of, respectively, African and Japanese art, among other sources, reinforce a discourse in which Western art and artists were perceived having a superior, dominant position. The term “primitive” used until recently to refer condescendingly to traditions outside the West, further reinforces these views. These two paintings are among multiple examples that reveal other key elements of the modern art narrative such as the prioritization of traditional Western media (painting and sculpture), gender exclu­ sions, and the focus on a small geographical area of Europe. Numerous developments, works of art, and artists, lacking these characteristics have been marginalized, forgotten, and ignored for decades. A comprehensive global story of modern art and modernism has yet to be written. For more than ten years, discussions of global art history have entered into scholarship and have been at the forefront of curricular changes in academia. The recent modifica­ tions to the art history survey at Yale, to use only one example, publicized by College Art Association in its newsletter, have called attention to the need to open the discipline to global-oriented approaches. The emphasis on an inclusive art history has accelerated in the past few years. In the second decade of the 21st century, the Art Bulletin published a series entitled Whither Art History? which questioned the Western, Eurocentric biases of art history as a field of study. The articles published by Claudia Mattos, Griselda Pollock, and Parul Dave Mukherji, to name only three authors, exposed the isolation in which art history, and in particular modern art history, has been examined. This concern is also visible in numerous articles considering the need for global approaches to art history within a broader interdisciplinary context. Examples include “Art History and the Global Challenge” by Jonathan Harris, published in 2017, in Artl@s Bulletin and “Art History and the Global: Deconstructing the Latest Canonical Narrative,” written

DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-1

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by Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel and published in 2019 in The Journal of Global History. John Onians’ 2008 book Art Atlas exposed more than a decade ago the need to more broadly explore art history. Recent books such as Circulation in the Global History of Art, edited by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Routledge (2015), Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illumi­ nated Manuscripts, by Bryan C. Keene, Getty Publications (2019) and Art History in a Global Context: Methods, Themes, and Approaches, edited by Ann Albritton and Gwen Farrelly, Wiley-Blackwell (2020), reveal the growing interest in global art history. This is clearly confirmed by Manchester University Press which has recently established a series entitled Art and its Global Histories. Several recently published books reflect more specifically on modern global art. This includes the anthology entitled Modern Art in Africa, Asia and Latin America, published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2013, a compilation of texts from other publications and, more recently, Global Abstract Art by Pepe Karmal, Thames and Hudson (2020) and Global Art, by Jessica Lack, part of the new Art Essentials series, also published by Thames and Hudson in 2020. Other publications include The Modernist World, edited by Allana Lindgren and Stephen Ross, Routledge (2017), a book focused on various aspects of modernist culture from around the world ranging from cinema and art to dance and from literature and architecture to music; Global Modernists on Modernism, edited by Alys Moody, Stephen J. Ross, Bloomsbury (2020), an anthology of writings on modernism by 20th century international scholars and artists, complemented by contemporary scholar­ ship; and New Histories of Art in the Global Postwar Era, Multiple Modernisms, edited by Flavia Frigeri and Kristian Handberg, Routledge (2021), which includes essays about global modernism in the post–World War II era, 1945–1970. Recent exhibitions, in par­ ticular international fairs, as discussed by Clare Kunny in the closing essay of this anthol­ ogy, and the texts and numerous projects that accompany these shows, have effectively opened up the contemporary art stage to profound and meaningful global dialogues. Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art is adding new research to the rapidly growing literature on this topic with a focus on the period 1870–1970, an era less exam­ ined from a global perspective. The rich and eclectic topics, diverse voices, and novel per­ spectives from around the world excluded from the privileged and uncontested narrative of “isms” reveal the immense lacunae in the history of modern art. The issues addressed are closely linked to the current processes of self-reflection in the arts and higher education that have exposed the need for inclusiveness, equity, and diversity. The essays, all original and written for this publication, discuss a wide range of issues, artists, and themes that have been marginalized or outright excluded from the canon of modern art. The topics disclose diverse formal expressions, innovative conceptual approaches, and various media used by international artists and forcefully acknowledge the connections between art, his­ torical circumstances, political environments, and social issues such as gender, race, and social justice. This book is an important starting point for a continued discussion on this topic that would fill the enormous gaps in a global understanding of modern art. The book is organized into several sections. It starts with an Introduction, followed by a Prequel, and three parts presented chronologically, and concludes with an Afterthought and a very concise Conclusion. Chronology, as the principle for arranging the essays, aims to avoid subjective criteria that may create the appearances of privileged topics, styles, or geographical areas. The placement of the essays is based on the earliest date discussed by the author even if the period analyzed may extend beyond the time frame of that section. The essays address very different topics, analyzed with various methodologies and varied

Introduction

3

analytical and interpretative formats. Diversity is a key element not only of the themes addressed but also of the art historical perspectives and approaches used. The Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art challenges the modern art canon and shifts from the center to acknowledge marginalized and ignored topics, and by doing so it also rejects the monolithic, trajectorial path to replace it with a rich layered, multi-perspective narrative. The first essay in Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art is Barbara Jaffe’s analy­ sis of the all too familiar Gardner’s art history survey book, first published a century ago. On the surface Helen Gardner’s Art Through the Ages may appear to contradict the very theme and purpose of this publication. The analysis, however, is not focused on the impact of the textbook on art history education. Rather, the author investigates the changes Gardner proposed for the third edition to present a “world panorama of art” where “Medieval Chinese artifacts commingle with the Renaissance art of Northwest Coast Indians.” The essay explores the implications of Gardner’s new approach and reflects on the rejection of her world view in the subsequent edition. Part I covers the late 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. This section includes essays that reveal marginalized topics but also revisit the familiar mod­ ern art themes from a new perspective. This is the case with André Dombrowski’s essay Impressionism and Globalization in which the author proposes a reading of impression­ ism from a global perspective, based not on geography but on conceptual and visual elements that exemplified and were linked to “an increasingly transnational world.” The next essay in this section Picturing the Dead: Posthumous Portraits of Infants and Chil­ dren in Turn-of-the Century Mexican Photography presents a subject absent from mod­ ern art narratives. Elisa C. Mandell analyzes this “overlooked genre of photography,” and reflects on the urgency to recognize the key role of “the Indigenous and mestizo indi­ viduals who played such prominent roles in the creation” of these works. A lesser-known topic, the Celtic revival rarely included in the modern art narrative, is the focus of Kayla Rose’s analysis in Art and Revival in Ireland, 1830-1930. The author presents a powerful argument for the Celtic revival in Irish art and the overall understanding of the past as “a means of proclaiming [the] present” and a “fundamental cultural” element “within the modern art canon.” Similarly, The ‘Marbelous’ Movement: 1871–1922 Victorian England, by Alexander Kusztyk discusses a neglected topic, the marbelous paintings. With a “materiality-centric approach” and a meticulous art and historical analysis, the author argues for placing “the marbelous painters within global modern art” and in con­ nection to “the development of marble’s abstraction and eventual dematerialization as the twentieth century progressed.” The following essay, “On or About 1910,” London’s New Bond Street and the Global Art Market by Anne Helmreich presents an innovative perspective and methodological approach: the art market as an effective – yet ignored – tool for global artistic dialogues in the modern era. The author effectively argues for “an expansive definition of modernism” that includes galleries and dealers as part of the “practices of global encounters” and contributors to defining the artistic discourse. Catherine Bernard presents, in the last essay of Part I, Modernism, Transnational net­ works and Pan-Africanist Thought in Early Twentieth Century African American Art an analysis of the dialogues within the African Diaspora and their impact on modernism and African American artists. The author discusses the political circumstances in which the Pan-African networks were established and exposes their contribution to the “develop­ ment of a transnational, multilocated modernism.” Part II of the Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art is concerned with the period between the wars. The first essay Berlin, Bauhaus, Bucharest: Re-Making Modernism in

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The Global Peripheries by Alexandra Chiriac expands the story of modernism beyond the limits of Western Europe to examine the little-known connections between the Bauhaus and Romanian art and art education. The author uses this case study to highlight the role of these dialogues to “unsettle the relationship between ‘peripheral’ modernities . . . and the ‘center.’ ” In the next essay, Chinese Photography Criticism and Theory in Republi­ can China: The Cases of Lu Xun and Liu Bannong, Bruno Lessard focuses on the role of criticism and theory within the national as well as global contexts of modern art as he “interrogate[s] Eurocentric assumptions about photography theory, China, and the . . . medium itself.” His analysis underlines the connections to the specific political, cultural, and social circumstances that confirm the need to evaluate photography beyond Western paradigms, from a comprehensive global perspective. The next essay Primitive Surfaces: Elena Izcue, Peruvian Indigenism, and the Racial Politics of Modernist Ornament takes the reader in a new direction of visual dialogues. Grace Kuipers investigates “the racial politics of ornament in the pattern books, prints, and haute-couture” across continents and at the intersections of modernism with “multiple geographies.” The author uses Elena Izcue’s art to make a strong case for the complexity in which indigenism, race, gender, and identity are defined and perceived within a global context of modern art. Dialogues between culture, politics, and the modern art canon are at the core of the next essay in this section, The Black Legend of Mexican Painting. Fabiola Martínez Rodríguez examines the cultural paradigms and political motivations that marginalized the Mexi­ can muralists from the mainstream of modernist narratives. The essay aims to “highlight the transnational and decolonial outreach of this revolutionary avant-garde” to and re­ position it within an international context. Neo-Baroque Architecture and Sculpture in the Portuguese Estado Novo (1926–1974): The Genealogy of a Marginalized Concept reflects on the role of historical revivals, in this case the Baroque, within modernism. Ana Lourenço Pinto explores a lesser-known development in European modern art which, as other essays also point out, makes a strong argument for a more comprehensive under­ standing of the past in a global reading of modern art. Part III of the anthology focuses on the period 1940–1970. The essays in this section present topics that further expand the story of modern art and confirm its global impor­ tance. Inter-Asian Cultural Dialogues discusses the work of four artists from this conti­ nent. Tanya Singh proposes a compelling argument using “the ideology of universalism, as advocated by Rabindranath Tagore” and the role of the Santiniketan school to expose international cultural connections and position artistic developments in this region within global modernism. Similarly, Danielle Steward discusses in her essay Thomaz Farkas and Mid-century Brazilian Photographic Networks the role of this photographer as “one of Brazilian photography’s greatest champions.” The essay reveals Farkas’ numerous activi­ ties in addition to producing art, such as writing articles, organizing exhibitions, and developing a museum photo lab, that had a significant contribution to the “international photographic community.” Modern Islamicate Painting, 1940–1970 by Alex Dika Seg­ german analyzes the specificity of modern art developments within the Muslim world. The author reflects on the “Islamic artistic heritage [which] had been primarily abstract for centuries” in relationship and contrast to the European avant-garde visual concerns and within the context of colonialism, and intertwined with multiple cultural, politi­ cal, and religious elements of the region. The next essay, Two Pioneering Women Bring Abstraction to the Andes, presents the growing interest in abstraction in South America after World War II. Michele Greet analyzes the art and role of two “pioneering” women artists who “paved the way for further explorations of abstraction” in the Andes and

Introduction

5

reveals the gender implications that affected and surrounded the creation, as well as the reception of their art. The last essay in Part III, The Global Contexts of Modern Afri­ can Art: Negotiating Blackness, Modern Art and African Identities in Paris by Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie discusses how modern African artists “negotiated blackness and African identities within global contexts of modern art.” The author outlines the cosmo­ politan roots of African art and reveals the complex dialogues the artists had with the Parisian cultural and political milieu and within a global reading of modern art. The book concludes with A Full Embrace of the Global in Modern Art, an analysis of global art in contemporary culture viewed through the prism of international art fairs. The work of the late Okwei Enwezor (1963–2019) provides a fitting example of mov­ ing beyond Western “internationalism” toward a historically engaged worldview of art. For Enwezor the exhibition served as a theoretical tool to address social awareness and critical engagement. His work as a writer, curator, and art historian essentially reshaped the curatorial practice and invigorated the discipline of art history to reflect the interna­ tionalization of art. The essays in Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art convincingly present the need for establishing a new meaning for modern art beyond the limitations created by the boundaries of European “isms.” This global analysis does not dismiss the value of European avant-gardes and modernism. Rather, it reveals unprecedented connections, new developments, and unknown or forgotten dialogues across countries and continents and exposes ignored artists, marginalized topics, and overlooked works of art. This book expands the framework in which modern art has been defined and analyzed by recog­ nizing artists and art made in Asian, African, and Latin American countries, outside the familiar Western centers. This new narrative contests the limited boundaries of the modern art cannon and discloses the novel global paradigms of a multilayered, open, and diverse story.

Prequel. Helen Gardner and Art Through the Ages, 1948 A World Panorama of Art Barbara Jaffee

The perennially popular art history text, Art Through the Ages [ATTA] is not noted today for its innovative methodology. Better known as Gardner’s Art Through the Ages (the proprietary retitling begins with the first posthumous edition in 1959), the book probably enters the collective memory of American art history students around 1970. According to the new editors that year, Horst de la Croix and Richard G. Tansey, Gard­ ner’s offered a “balanced introduction to the art of the world” – and in that, presumably, an appealing alternative to the much narrower focus of its rival, History of Art, by H.W. Janson and Dora Jane Janson, the book that had dominated the collegiate market since its publication by Prentice-Hall and Harry N. Abrams in 1962. But the early history of ATTA is far more curious than the modest claim by de la Croix and Tansey would lead one to believe. At the death in 1946 of the original author, the University of Chicagotrained art historian Helen Gardner, ATTA, first published by Harcourt, Brace and Com­ pany, New York in 1926, had already secured a wide and loyal readership.1 Gardner’s inaugural edition included not only the ancient civilizations that were understood at the time as formative of the contemporary West, but also what she described as the more “independent” traditions of the ancient Americas and of Asia. For the 1936, second edi­ tion, Gardner expanded her already broad scope to include Africa, Oceania, and even the manufactured products of modernized mass culture. The third edition, published two years after the author’s death, brought an even bigger surprise: an unprecedented – and today virtually unknown – volume, in which Gardner made good on her announced intention: to survey the world horizontally, thereby avoiding “our Europocentric [sic] attitude towards art.”2 This essay is an attempt to account for both Gardner’s breathtak­ ing ambition and for the social forces at work in the mid-20th century that ultimately undermined her efforts. The inspiration for ATTA was the survey of art history course created by Gardner for her students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago [SAIC] beginning in 1920. Despite assumptions today about the conservative, Beaux Arts-style origins of the SAIC, the school was a pioneer in the early 20th century of integrated, industrial, and fine arts education.3 Founded in 1878 as the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts out of the ashes of an older, artist-run organization, the Art Institute of Chicago [AIC] and its School (as the organization was renamed in 1882) was the project of a group of businessmen convinced that arts education was vital to the commercial success of their city. The founders sig­ naled their goals quite effectively through their choice of name: neither “Academy,” with its connotations of old-world elitism, nor “Museum,” with its emphasis on preserving the past, but “Institute” – a modern organization conducting practical work and serving as an advocate for specialized research and professional education. As promised, their DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-2

Prequel. Helen Gardner and Art Through the Ages, 1948

7

school was eclectic in its offerings, featuring an academic, life drawing course during the day coupled with vigorous technical training, including classes in ornamental design, wood-carving, frescoing, mosaic, and stained glass, on Saturdays and in the evenings. Attended throughout the 1880s–1890s mainly by men engaged in decorative arts and design and in Chicago’s vast commercial lithography industry, these applied arts courses would be fully integrated with the academic day program by 1897, the year that pro­ grams in what were described as the “modern arts” of illustration and advertising were introduced as well.4 The AIC confirmed its commitment to the industrial arts when it hired a progressive educator, George William Eggers, as acting director in August  1916. Eggers, only the second-ever director in AIC’s history, was formerly Head of the Graphic Arts Division at Chicago Normal, a teacher-training school. He moved quickly to make the SAIC a center for the latest in scientific art pedagogy – part of a national, patriotic drive to reform the tastes of working-class families. Eggers’ vision emerged in full force in SAIC’s catalogue for 1918–1919, with a new program based on a division into three parts: an introductory program called the Lower School, which offered basic courses in drawing and design to all untrained students; a Middle School in which design, normal, and commercial art, illustration, and crafts were pursued side by side with elementary painting and sculpture; and an Upper School, in which advanced students pursued painting and sculpture in an Atelier system with recognized masters. “This reorganization,” Eggers wrote, “recog­ nizes not only the responsibility which the art school owes to American industry, but takes full cognizance of the responsibility of the school to the individual whose vocation must render him a livelihood.”5 Art history enters SAIC in 1920 as part of these efforts by Eggers to rationalize the curriculum and was required of all students in the foundation year. By 1926, Gardner’s survey class is described in the school’s catalogue in unabash­ edly compensatory terms, as “an intensive study of certain phases of art so presented as to be of particular value to students as their training becomes more specialized.”6 Gardner, whose formative educational experiences at the University of Chicago were a close encounter with both the elite and the popular practices of art history, was more than prepared to meet this challenge. Although the university had offered neither practical courses in art nor courses in art history when it first opened in 1892, the reform-minded charge of its first president, William Rainey Harper, was to focus on the relationship between industrialism and democracy in the urban setting. This attracted a faculty of scholars interested in the sociological dimension of art and aesthetics. In 1915, the year Gardner was accepted as a graduate fellow in the art history department, the university hired its first professional art historian, Richard Offner, a specialist in Florentine paint­ ing (Offner would spend the next five years at Chicago, two at Harvard, and, after that, the majority of his long and distinguished academic career on the faculty of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University). Another, recent addition to Chicago’s art history department faculty was Walter Sargent, artist, progressive educator, and former director of drawing and manual training (i.e., supervisor of mechanical drawing, home econom­ ics, and industrial arts in the public schools) for the city of Boston. Although Gardner completed her master’s thesis, a timeline of speculative attributions of Florentine painting under the direction of Offner, her significant connection with Sargent is clear from her acknowledgment of him in the early editions of ATTA. Offner was steeped in the tradition of psychological aesthetics and formalism that had marked the birth of art history as a modern academic discipline in Germany during the 1880s and 1890s. The effort to link human physiology and culture was first prompted

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by the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder’s theory of expression, introduced around 1800. Herder assumed that a subjective and animate relationship exists between humans and all forms of sensuous appearance. Empathy, as Herder’s elaborated theory came subsequently to be known, is an aesthetics of content, but one that relies on effects that are primarily formal and psychological.7 At least three scholarly positions emerged from this insight, according to historian Ulrich Pfisterer: “evolutionists” (Hegelians opposed to functionalist materialism, who formulated histories of ornamentation that demon­ strated the “degeneration” of art from the naturalistic to the abstract); “nationalists” (closely related to the evolutionists, their concept of ever more perfect stages of human development reinforced nationalist and racist ideologies); and “relativists,” who pro­ moted research into the art of all cultures without any comparative evaluation.8 The last group, among whom Gardner should be counted, marshaled the insights of human psychology to argue for generally valid laws of artistic creation. Gardner even required her students to create diagrams based on canonical artworks, as a means of demonstrat­ ing their understanding of transhistorical principles of design. These diagrams were an essential part of Gardner’s pedagogy – many appear in ATTA as critical supplements to the artworks featured in her text. Gardner’s debt to Sargent was likewise profound, as much ideological as methodologi­ cal. As was the case with his colleagues at the SAIC, Sargent had seen World War I as an opportunity. In an essay written for the federal government’s biennial study of art educa­ tion in 1918, Sargent observed: Art education related to industries has been prominent in America for many years. It is receiving fresh impetus at present from the prospect that, after the war, the United States will have to depend upon its own resources more than in the past, not only for designers but also for styles of design. A kind of originality must be developed that can produce things which are not only new but fine in quality.9 His ideas were put to real test in 1924, when he was named professor and chair of the university’s newly reformed and renamed Department of Art. As chair of a department in which history, theory, and practice commingled, Sargent presided, in the three years before his death in 1927, over a program that reflected the most progressive factions of modernism in Chicago – a remarkably diverse collection of designers, artists, and art historians.10 Implicit in the name Sargent gave his new department was his belief that the values and order of art were independent of and separate from any particular instance. On April 17, 1927, the following notice appeared in the Chicago Tribune: Plans to establish the University of Chicago as a center of artistic influence . . . will be presented on Thursday by Walter Sargent, chairman of the art department, to mem­ bers of two women’s organizations which have been leaders in furthering an apprecia­ tion of the fine arts . . . Mr. Sargent . . . has four main objectives in his program: to offer all students an opportunity to develop an intelligent enjoyment of the world’s artistic inheritance; to reach a much wider sphere by training teachers in the history, theory, and practice of the arts who will be able to present art in such a way that it will enter into the daily life of students; to offer some experience with the materials of art; and to forward appreciation of industrial art and to cooperate with the rapidly grow­ ing interest in giving to possessions and surroundings greater charm and distinction.11

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9

Although plans for Sargent’s Institute foundered with his death, a commitment to “pre­ sent art in such a way that it will enter into . . . daily life” is what Gardner learned from Sargent; it is the lesson of ATTA as well. Gardner insisted in 1926 that art – all art – be understood as the skilled manipulation of materials for socially useful and/or decorative purposes. In her words, The statue may be a decoration of a building, an integral part of the structure and determined by it. The painting frequently decorates a great wall surface or the page of a manuscript and much of its composition and color is determined by its use and its technique. The stained-glass plays its part in the whole interior ensemble and is not merely an example of the minor arts.12 Describing hers as a “transitional age,” Gardner lamented that such utility seemed to have eluded the contemporary period: Art has become segregated from the affairs of life as something to be treated with indifference, or disregarded, or as a luxury, something to be indulged in, upon occa­ sions, or as a means of ostentation. It is the age of the museum and the exhibition – both unnatural.13 This critique of contemporary art, as something produced explicitly for the purpose of exhibition – privatized, in Gardner’s term – was, for her, a stinging indictment of its irrel­ evance. She did, however, note two exceptions: contemporary Russian art, by which she meant the ensemble work of the Ballets Russes; and the collective activity associated with the creation of the modern skyscraper (Gardner praised architects in general for their “logical constructive thinking”). Never for its own sake, according to Gardner, art must always (at least ought to) be fully integrated into society. Gardner’s 1936, second edition continued to explore these themes in a completely new section entitled “Modern Art: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” In this revised text, comprising chapters on France, the United States, and “The Art of Today,” Gardner found the true modernism of American architecture in such unabashedly anonymous, industrial forms as grain elevators. She also mentions the public face of contemporary painting as represented by Thomas Hart Benton’s 1931 murals, “America Today” for the New School for Social Research and John W. Norton’s “Gathering the News, Print­ ing the News, Transporting the News,” for the 1929 Chicago Daily News Building. As Gardner endorsed, these mural cycles, a boisterous celebration of modern American life in Benton’s case and a mechanistic idealization of mass communications in the case of Norton, were executed as enhancements of modernistic building programs – Joseph Urban’s 66 West 12th Street, New York, and Holabird and Root’s art deco complex at 2 North Riverside Plaza, Chicago, respectively.14 But Gardner reserved her highest praise for painters who revived archaic or traditional forms – contemporary indigenous artists of the American Southwest, and those engaged in the Mexican mural movement. What links these otherwise opposed impulses – industrialized functionalism in architecture with “primitivizing” or ethnic styles in painting – is Gardner’s celebration of these activi­ ties as instances of contemporary artists operating successfully within mainstream social and economic systems. The book closes in 1936 with an enthusiastic discussion of developments in the industrial arts (textiles, glass, typography, etc.), which, according to Gardner, were an

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indication that contemporary art was in the process of being “reintegrated into the cul­ tural fabric.” She cites examples of mass culture as well, including advertising, but also anonymously designed industrial tools and equipment, which, she argues, are products of the commercial patronage that had supplanted the king and church. Gardner was not alone in making such claims. She cites both British curator Herbert Read’s acclaimed book, Art and Industry, and the 1934 exhibition, “Machine Art” at the Museum of Modern Art [MoMA], New York. Unlike MoMA, but in common with Read and, espe­ cially, with the director of the Newark (NJ) Museum of Art, John Cotton Dana (who, apparently unknown to Gardner, began to feature factory-made products as part of his program for the democratization of the museum in the 1910s), Gardner’s ATTA was on its way by 1936 to creating a canon of modern art that decentered European paint­ ing in favor of the “beauty of a gauge and a seaplane.”15 When Gardner’s faith in the transcendent powers of form met the political realities of World War II, the result was something well beyond the conventions that Read, MoMA – or anyone else, for that matter – were challenging at the same time. Gardner wrote in 1946, Because today and only today, the concept of one total world inescapably thrusts itself forward, I have been motivated in preparing this third edition . . . both in the incor­ poration of new material and in the reorganization of the old, by a desire to present a world panorama of art. As outlined in her brief preface: Part One presents a panorama of the arts in ancient times and shows how great cultures arose and evolved on all the continents, largely in isolation yet with some vital contacts that affected the forms of expression. Part Two continues the panorama through the Middle Ages when the contacts between Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe became more pronounced and a lively intercourse brought about mutual exchanges of ideas, motifs, and forms. Part Three shows the Renaissance as the period when the world began to shrink at an ever accelerating rate. This was the age of discovery, exploration, and colonization. It witnessed the transplanting of European arts to large sections of the world, most important of which was the hitherto unknown western hemisphere, where the conflict or assimilation of European arts with the indigenous American arts transformed them into American-European styles. Part Four reveals the world, through unbelievable advances in transportation and communication, as one world in which the nations are becoming acquainted with each other, are learning from each other, and are to a considerable extent producing works of art which, despite national divergences, come within an international framework.16 It is no coincidence that the “one world” of which Gardner spoke was the resonant title of corporate lawyer and progressive Republican Wendell L. Willkie’s memoir of his 1942 travels to the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and China. Willkie had challenged Franklin D. Roosevelt unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1940, a liberal internationalist running as the candidate of a conservative, isolationist party. His vision of international cooperation became a shibboleth of liberal internationalism in the immediate postwar era, as the nuclear devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan deepened the urgency with which liberals called for global unity. Two weeks after the atomic bombing, editor Freda Kirchwey was insisting in The Nation, an independent journal of politics and cul­ ture, that a world government to control nuclear weapons was the only means of saving

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civilization from annihilation. Gardner’s hometown, Chicago, became a center for the world government movement with the formation of the Committee to Frame a World Constitution at her alma mater, the University of Chicago in November 1945.18 Gardner’s method was, for its time, ingenious: she took the four, great chronological periods that have dominated the writing of Western history, Ancient, Medieval, Renais­ sance, and Modern, and used them against their narrative grain – presenting hefty crosssections of the simultaneous rather than the relentless forward march of the sequential. Gardner provided her readers with an ecstatic vision in which “Medieval” Chinese arti­ facts commingled with the “Renaissance” art of Northwest Coast Indians, the whole cul­ minating optimistically in a chapter devoted to the international “Arts of the Machine.” Here, Gardner rehearses in spectacular fashion Willkie’s utopian vision of coming world fusion, evoking the thrill of “a streamlined railroad car” or airplane, and the delights of “the mechanized kitchen” and “simple, gaily colored gadget from the five-and-ten.” Even some painters are applauded for “designing machine-made articles as well as balletsettings” and “reaching out into the fields of weaving, ceramics, and glass,” though the exclusive practices of the majority Gardner continued to dismiss as “devoid of func­ tion.”19 Gardner concluded, unequivocally, that the present age would bear witness to the emergence of a new, unified style based on science and technology. 17

Figure 0.1 Table of Contents, Gardner, 1948, iii–viii. Source: Photograph by the author.

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Clearly, the stakes for Gardner were as much political as they were humanist. It is therefore unsurprising that little of Gardner’s utopian scheme survives the 1959 revision of her text by the Yale Art History Department under the direction of Sumner McKnight Crosby. The imperialistic universalism of the Yale revision knowingly recapitulates the divisions of the new, Cold War world order, and represents a return to “normalcy” in its rejection of globalism, reinstatement of traditional hierarchies, and reinforcement of temporal and spatial boundaries. As Crosby writes in his preface: Although Miss Gardner’s organization of the Third Edition provided many opportu­ nities for interesting comparisons and made it possible to study in adjacent chapters what was occurring in different parts of the world during more or less the same his­ toric periods, this organization often obscured the intrinsic qualities and especially the development of the different styles. As our table of contents indicates, we have presented the arts of different periods and countries in a more normal order.20 “Normal,” for the Yale historians, meant not only the reimposition of the standard tem­ poral division between “Ancient” and “Modern,” but also the introduction of a geo­ political distinction between “European” and “Non-European.” In this way, the editors argued, the presumably distinctive stylistic coherence of European art was preserved, but at a considerable expense: not only would the anonymously produced objects so important to Gardner’s discussion no longer appear side by side with works bespeaking individual genius, as traditional, canonical works were re-inscribed into the realm of pure art, but the modern, industrial design that had been the goal of Gardner’s insistent teleol­ ogy simply disappeared (a new chapter on the “artistic history” of photography took the place of Gardner’s discussion of the industrial arts). Despite the passion of its author, the world panorama of ATTA 1948 is simply not the model on which postwar art history built its narratives; it has even less to do with the tri­ umphalist terms by which American abstract expressionist painting emerged eventually (though not inevitably) as the paradigmatic postwar avant-garde. Any explanation must acknowledge the political reality that the severing of “high” and “low” (the so-called “Great Divide” of the 20th-century culture) was the product of arguments in the 1940s and 1950s that painting and sculpture were privileged forms, ideally suited to furthering the progress of human spirit – and thus the focus of the American project of “saving” Western civilization from itself. A generation of art historians writing in the aftermath of World War II assumed that it was the responsibility of the United States to continue the pursuit of artistic progress that had characterized European art in the first half of the 20th century. This ambition helps also to explain the success in the 1960s of H.W. Janson’s purposefully elitist tome (Dora Janson ceases to be credited as co-author after the first edition). Gardner’s scheme might have become a model for today’s global histories; instead, in its near invisibility, the book is a cautionary tale. The unequal power relations that produced the deeply Eurocentric concept of “Art” also produced such seemingly irrecon­ cilable divisions as that between “high” and “low” art, between architectural or design history and the history of fine art (including photography), and even between a global history of modern art and a history of modernism based on developments in New York. It would take the end of the Cold War to produce as inclusive a canon as the one pro­ posed by Helen Gardner again. Although the revisions by de la Croix and Tansey provide the core of the text celebrated today for its “objectivity” and breadth, those authors

Prequel. Helen Gardner and Art Through the Ages, 1948

13

made no pretext of disrupting, as Gardner did in 1948, the traditional art historical story of stylistic development or of extending their evenhandedness into the 19th and 20th cen­ turies (the discussion of which in their text is dominated by individual artists presented within the narrative as visionaries and innovators). New survey texts introduced in the 1970s reflected methodological changes in the discipline, particularly those associated with Marxist or social history, yet their interference with the traditional canon was mini­ mal. It was not until the multicultural approach of Marilyn Stokstad’s 1995 Art History (New York, Harry N. Abrams) that the canon would be seriously, though respectfully, challenged. Of course, Gardner’s atomic-age liberal internationalism is not today’s multicultural­ ism. Gardner’s final chapter in 1948, “The Arts of the Machine,” represents above all a collectivist apotheosis. For Gardner, contemporary art would be global art, without geographic borders and universal in its social utility and accessibility. In this, she appears remarkably prescient. But as she posits an art without boundaries that is only today beginning to take shape, Gardner defies easy categorization: her 1948 edition of ATTA both makes good on the utopian promise of modernist historiography – and is thus a thoroughly modernist document – and, in its eccentric refusals of modernist orthodoxies, represents a practice that challenges our understanding of the past. Notes 1. Art Through the Ages went through three editions and thirty-nine printings between 1926 and 1948 for a total of 446,479 copies, of which 97,196 were sold in bookstores and the rest, 349,283 as textbooks. 2. Helen Gardner, Art Through the Ages, 3rd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948), ix. “Eurocentric,” a term that emerges out of Marxist debate in the 1970s, was not yet in common usage. 3. See Barbara Jaffee, “Before the New Bauhaus: From Industrial Drawing to Art and Design Education in Chicago,” Design Issues 21 (Winter 2005): 41–62. 4. The Art Institute of Chicago, School of Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Designing, Architecture, Circular of Instruction for 1898–1899 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1898). 5. George Eggers, “Plan of the School,” The Art Institute of Chicago, School of Drawing, Paint­ ing, Modeling, Decorative Designing, Normal Instruction, Illustration and Architecture, Cir­ cular of Instruction for 1918–1919 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1918), 10–11. 6. Catalogue of the Art School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1926–1927 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1926). 7. The scientific psychological theory of empathy was proposed by Theodor Lipps between 1893 and 1897. H.F. Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou, Empathy, Form and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893 (Santa Monica, CA: The Getty Center for the History of the Arts and the Humanities, 1994), 17–29. 8. The respected art historian Alois Reigl became a relativist when, in his Late Roman Art Indus­ try, 1901, he introduced a psychological term, artistic “volition” and, at the same time, aban­ doned normative aesthetics. In 1907, August Schmarsow underscored the relevance of human psychology and anthropology for art historical investigation, initiating a new science of art that would refuse to differentiate between “art” and other cultural artifacts. Ulrich Pfisterer, “Ori­ gins and Principles of World Art History – 1900 (and 2000),” in World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches, Kitty Zijlmans and Willfried Van Damme, eds. (Amsterdam: Valdiz, 2008), 69–89. 9. Walter Sargent, “Instruction in Art in the United States,” in Biennial Survey of Education in the United States, 1916–1918 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), 29–30. 10. See, for example, The University of Chicago Annual Register for 1924–1925 (Chicago: Uni­ versity of Chicago Press, 1924), 179–181. The varied careers of many of Sargent’s art faculty

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are discussed in the anthology, Sue Ann Prince, ed., The Old Guard and the Avant-Garde: Modernism in Chicago, 1910–1940 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 11. Clipping in University of Chicago, Office of the President, Mason Administration Records, Box 16, Folder 20. Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. 12. Helen Gardner, Art Through the Ages (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926), iii–iv. 13. Gardner 1926, 467. 14. Both buildings are extant, though only 66 West 12th Street continues to serve the purpose for which it was built. Neither building retains its murals. Benton’s cycle, while intact, is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (available at www.metmuseum.org/art/ collection/search/499559); Norton’s mural was placed in storage in 1995, where it remains (parts of this enormous work may be viewed at www.illinoisart.org/john-warner-norton). 15. Helen Gardner, Art Through the Ages, rev. ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936), 742. Gardner is paraphrasing Read, Art and Industry (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935), 108. Dana’s work at the Newark Museum is discussed in Carol G. Duncan, A Matter of Class: John Cotton Dana, Progressive Reform, and the Newark Museum (Pitts­ burgh: Periscope Publishing, 2009). 16. Gardner 1936, ix. 17. Freda Kirchwey, “One World or None,” The Nation 161 (August 18, 1945): 149. 18. See “Writing a World Constitution: The Chicago Committee and the New World Order,” in Or Rosenboim, The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 168–208. 19. Gardner, 1948, 782. 20. Sumner McKnight Crosby, ed., Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 4th ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959), xi.

Bibliography Art Institute of Chicago, School of Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Designing, Architecture, Circular of Instruction for 1898–1899. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1898. Catalogue of the Art School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1926–1927. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1926. Cheney, Sheldon. Expressionism in Art. New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1934. Duncan, Carol G. A Matter of Class: John Cotton Dana, Progressive Reform, and the Newark Museum. Pittsburgh: Periscope Publishing, 2009. Eggers, George. Art Institute of Chicago, School of Drawing, Painting, Modeling, Decorative Designing, Normal Instruction, Illustration and Architecture, Circular of Instruction for 1918– 1919. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1918. Gardner, Helen. Art Through the Ages. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1926. Gardner, Helen. Art Through the Ages. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936. Gardner, Helen. Art Through the Ages. 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948. Jaffee, Barbara. “Before the New Bauhaus: From Industrial Drawing to Art and Design Education in Chicago,” Design Issues 21 (Winter 2005): 41–62. Kirchwey, Freda. “One World or None,” The Nation 161 (August 18, 1945): 149. Mallgrave, H.F. and E. Ikonomou. Empathy, Form and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of the Arts and the Humanities, 1994. Pfisterer, Ulrich. “Origins and Principles of World Art History – 1900 (and 2000).” In World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches, Kitty Zijlmans and Willfried Van Damme, eds., 69–89. Amsterdam: Valdiz, 2008. Read, Herbert. Art and Industry. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935. Rosenboim, Or. “Writing a World Constitution: The Chicago Committee and the New World Order.” In The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950, 168–208. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

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Sargent, Walter. “Instruction in Art in the United States.” In Biennial Survey of Education in the United States, 1916–1918, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, ed., 29–30. Wash­ ington: Government Printing Office, 1919. Sue Ann Prince, ed. The Old Guard and the Avant-Garde: Modernism in Chicago, 1910–1940. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Sumner McKnight Crosby, ed. Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. 4th ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959. University of Chicago Annual Register for 1924–1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924. University of Chicago, Office of the President. Mason Administration Records, Box  16, Folder 20. Chicago: Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Part I

1870–1920

1

Impressionism and Globalization André Dombrowski

By the year 1900, Impressionism could be considered a truly “global” phenomenon. Artists and patrons from the Americas, Asia, and elsewhere flocked to Claude Monet’s Giverny estate to learn and to purchase, thereby seeding an impressionist aesthetic in their practices and collections upon their return to home turf. By the turn of the last century, when avant-garde French art had turned toward a post-impressionist paradigm and Impressionism proper had already been maligned by a new school of artists purport­ edly more invested in structural form than surface texture, prominent schools of the style could be found in almost all corners of the world. There were impressionist painters – broadly defined – in all of Western Europe (especially in Spain, Scandinavia, Britain, and Germany, to name but a few), in North America (both in the United States and Canada), as well as Australia. The style quickly spread to Eastern Europe as well, frequently mix­ ing with symbolist tendencies. Some of the last generations of painters in the Ottoman Empire were Impressionists. A prominent school of impressionist painting developed in Japan around 1900, and variants of the style arrived in Southeast Asia as well, including the Philippines and Indonesia, in the first decades of the 20th century. Central and South America developed their own brand of the style, foremost in Argentina; and both North and South Africa produced several prominent impressionist painters at the time, too. The global reach of the impressionist phenomenon by World War I is therefore almost complete (China, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa are the main exceptions), prompt­ ing a full accounting of what had brought this vast international development about, as one expansive cultural phenomenon rather than a set of regional occurrences. Even if often mixing with other styles in becoming global like Naturalism, Symbolism, and other tendencies, at minimum an impressionist painting tends to focus on a specific, brief encounter with a modern landscape or scene of contemporary life, often in the open air. It renders such views as if through the lens of a mobile visual frame conditioned to assess the most fleeting atmospheric changes, favoring a sketchy, performative application of paint. To be sure, this recipe was not always followed perfectly, not even in France or by the original core group of Impressionists (among whom we count more realist-oriented painters like Edgar Degas, Gustave Caillebotte, and Mary Cassatt). But the interest in these emblematic features of an atmospheric Impressionism practiced by Monet, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, and Alfred Sisley, to name but a few, became heightened when their kind of artistic rule-breaking encountered a set of polities less built on secular and democratic ideals than post-1870s France, no matter how fragile that vision turned out to be. By 1900, this is to say, Impressionism had shed its concrete socio-political ties to the French Third Republic and transformed into a more international set of mobile signifiers DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-4

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able to accommodate a diverse set of stylistic and social norms. But how did the style manage to do this, to combine its French origins, which it was never able to fully shed as it traveled, with the particular features it encountered in its various destinations – Japanese Impressionism, Argentinian Impressionism, Canadian Impressionism, and so forth – without losing its overall aesthetic charge? This essay answers this prompt by placing traditionally political and economic notions of imperialism against a Francocentric version of cultural imperialism and asks what it was about the impressionist culti­ vation of the instant that was especially appealing to a near-global polity then consumed with innovation, speed, and freedom from tradition. After the publication of Norma Broude’s 1990 volume, World Impressionism, the question of Impressionism’s full geographic span has recently been taken up again by a slew of conferences and edited volumes, as part of the global expansion and de-colonization of art history currently underway.1 In the process, what we typically mean by “Impressionism” has been enlarged, as a style, a concept, and even a mental habit, becoming a more mobile and fluctuating entity than the one conceived in Paris during the first impressionist exhibition in 1874, when the critic Louis Leroy first used the word l’impressionnisme in French, a term that quickly came to supersede a host of other options, like the School of the Eye (l’école des yeux), then being considered.2 These new academic publications, however, have largely treated “global Impression­ ism” as the sum of its parts, providing example after example of different national impressionist traditions, often quite different stylistically and politically, but in many ways similar in overall artistic outlook as well. The result of this increased scholarly activity has been a welcome expansion beyond the Francophone canon of Impression­ ism, opening up the style not only toward the rest of Europe and North America – geographic areas already well-charted in past exhibitions and publications – but now toward nearly all other continents as well. These case studies, favoring biographical and institutional analysis, however, are almost always tied to a specific, nationally circumscribed group of artists, hardly ever traversing borders themselves or arguing cross-culturally. Often leaving questions of chronology unaddressed, a highly spatial­ ized, rhizomatic patchwork account of Impressionism has been the result, as if the style had emerged globally all at once and moved around the world in unison over a span of fifty-odd years – a timeline that the historic record does not corroborate.3 To broaden these tendencies, timely as they are, this short and polemical essay offers a different account of how Impressionism came to be embedded within the global. Instead of asking for a “World Impressionism” in an attempt to move our studies of the move­ ment beyond France, where, after all, the style originated decades before its wider spread, this text studies the particular forms and ideas surrounding globalization that underwrote the invention of Impressionism in the first place, making its subsequent dissemination possible. My title, “Impressionism and Globalization,” is therefore strategic, despite the seemingly small difference compared to speaking of “global Impressionism” or the schol­ arly endeavor to “globalize Impressionism.” While “globalizing Impressionism” has its eyes set on the style itself as it traverses borders away from France, “Impressionism and Globalization” enquires into the terms of global mobility and territorial expansion that fed Impressionism from the start. “Impressionism and Globalization” studies the very conceptions of globality and globalization inherent within the style no matter where its occurrence, but especially at its French birth. The drawback of such an approach is the loss of local specificity, with its inherent aesthetic and ideological particularities, and also a partial return to France, but the

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gain – I propose – will be a better understanding of how Impressionism, in its early French formation and subsequent dissemination, embodied and embellished the ideals of globalization already widely on offer by the 1870s. Impressionism, this is to say, should be understood as cultivating a set of tropes affiliated with 19th-century globali­ zation well before it itself grew to be global; or, put differently, Impressionism became a widespread global phenomenon precisely because it always already contained specific and internationally appealing paradigms about world-making and modern worldly subjectivity. Of course, those ideals were never fixed but expanded in the process of the style’s global diffusion, yet they did not emerge, or become influential for Impression­ ism, only once the style left the French hexagon for other shores and nations. In short, Impressionism should be seen as easing its own worldwide spread, because it synced broadly with the period terms and aesthetics of globalization itself. *** Impressionism outside France is by necessity a deeply bifurcated form of artistic expres­ sion, blending a specific local taste with a foreign stylistic paradigm. It is nonetheless striking to observe the degree to which such an admixture fulfilled politically rather dis­ parate visions of national identity around 1900. On the one hand, Impressionism was at times connected to France’s imperial and capitalist expansionism, spreading its message of visual pleasure, modern style, and individual freedom to its colonial holdings in North Africa, Southeast Asia, and the South-Pacific as a tool of domination in the name of mod­ ernization (with its implicit bias toward Western culture). On the other, Impressionism could also be enlisted, as the style was in the late Ottoman Empire and parts of the Car­ ibbean, as an artistic form of expression suitable to counter-hegemonic and anti-colonial forms of modern painting.4 Significantly, Impressionism flourished in other regions of the world not controlled politically by France or other European powers in the late 19th century, such as Japan or Argentina, and even took root in a nation like Germany which, after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, was France’s most evident national enemy.5 Global Impressionism’s political spectrum is therefore broad and varied, and its local variants too diverse ideologically to be easily bundled. One reason why Impressionism offered such latitude in its socio-political outlook was the fact that, by focusing on the ephemeral and everyday, the style tended to down­ play the political fabric of the landscapes and lives it brought into focus. Hovering on the surface of things implied a willingness to look away from underlying structures of power. This of course does not mean that Impressionism was, as a style, by and large apolitical, far from it; it was, rather, a highly strategic way to naturalize (and neutral­ ize) ideological attitudes and diplomatic realities within an idiom centered on visual pleasure. Such an aesthetic position was in itself a powerful tool of imperial domination and global capital, one that elevated the purely experiential, cultural, and artistic as the primary means of political persuasion.6 In recent accounts of global Impressionism, it has not been made sufficiently clear that it was precisely this cleansed, pleasurable vision of artistic independence – an invention of French modernism – which elevated a puri­ fied and depoliticized form of art and culture as the apogee of global transmission and international exchange. In fact, as Frederic Jameson has argued in his study on “Modernism and Imperialism,” the favoring of the purely experiential and formal (in modern literature, but applicable to Impressionism in all its variants as well) is a way to reorder and schematize the unbridge­ able and unknowable distances, as well as the manifold unpicturable cruelties, intrinsic

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to imperial conquest and the global spread of capital, making them more coherent and orderly, even if only for the instant depicted. He explains: [A] new spatial language, therefore – modernist “style” – now becomes the marker and the substitute . . . of the unrepresentable totality [of empire] . . . . Because in the imperial world system this last is now radically incomplete, it must by compensation be formed into a self-subsisting totality: something [E.M.] Forster uniquely attempts to achieve by way of his providential ideology, which transforms chance contacts, coincidence, the contingent and random encounters between isolated subjects, into a Utopian glimpse of achieved community. This glimpse is both moral and aesthetic all at once, for it is the achievement of something like an aesthetic pattern of relationships that confirms it as a social reality, however ephemeral.7 Jameson’s propositions about British modernist fiction can be extended to the realm of Impressionism, a style in which ephemerality and contingency compensate, too, for “the representational dilemmas of the new imperial world system.”8 More than that, Impressionism produced an especially seductive fiction, namely that a disjointed and asymmetrical imperial world system could be held together, and establish consistency, as a succession of light-hearted and inconsequential “mere” moments of representation masquerading as wholistic representation. In Impressionism, an emphasis on sensory introspection often came to stand in for the world at large. Accordingly, Takanori Nagaï has recently proposed that Impressionism arrived in Japan precisely as an overall “awak­ ening of the senses” in representation – a statement true for various other global Impres­ sionisms as well (Figure  1.1).9 But such sensual hyper-saturation in, and of, art also

Figure 1.1 Kuroda Seiki, Under the Shade of a Tree, 1898, oil on canvas, 78 × 93.7 cm. Woodone Museum of Art, Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima. Source: Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

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23

Figure 1.2 Édouard Manet, View of the 1867 Exposition Universelle, 1867, oil on canvas, 108 × 196 cm. Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo. Source: Photo: Nasjonalmuseet. CC-BY

implied a visual triumph of the individual and interiority over any structures of power that might in fact propel them into (and also out of) visibility. Such an aesthetic, rather than political stance was the fantasy that Paris sold to the world around 1900 – an avenue for mercantile exchanges, tourist pleasures, and dream imagery, on which Impressionism traveled around the world among many other French cultural exports. Paris was, after all, the city that produced the most emulated blueprint for modernization spreading globally soon after its own processes of urban renewal, Haussmannization, had largely concluded. Among all the world’s fairs of the decades before World War I, the Paris ones were reliably the most frequented of all, with the fair of 1900 the most visited until well after World War II. Architect Gustave Eiffel’s cast-iron architecture became an emblem of modern construction in many corners of the world – including Asia and Latin America – well before Impressionism moved around the world along similar trade routes. Many artists came to Paris from most other con­ tinents to study the fine arts because of the global fame of Parisian artistic instruction. They oftentimes learned about Impressionism only once there (and precisely because they were there, and not elsewhere), finding and seeding the style more by accident than prior intent. All this is to say that Impressionism had company while globalizing, and its global rise was, at least in part, due to well-established perceptions around French cultural superiority that were formative for many countries’ emergence into modernity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, no matter the nature of those countries’ diplomatic ties with France. Impressionism was therefore more than just Impressionism when it traveled abroad; it embodied specific ideas about the pull French art had on art in general. Much of early Impressionism is rather knowing of this fact: consider the many dis­ plays of East Asian arts in impressionist paintings, for instance, or the fact that their formal logic was so overtly trained on Ukiyo-e prints. Édouard Manet’s depiction of the View of the 1867 Exposition Universelle (Figure 1.2), with its sprinkling of interna­ tional visitors to Paris on the hill opposite the Champ de Mars, or his The Battle of the

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Figure 1.3 Claude Monet, Port of Le Havre, 1874, oil on canvas, 60.3 × 101.9 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs. Frank Graham Thomson, 1961, 1961-48-3. Source: Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art.

USS “Kearsarge” and the CSS “Alabama” (1864; Philadelphia Museum of Art), with its internationally warring and trading ships (as Tamar Garb has convincingly shown), are only the most obvious examples of the painting of modern life’s self-awareness concern­ ing its global reach.10 Finally, as Ségolène Le Men has argued, even paintings as central to the story of Impressionism, and as France-focused, as Monet’s depictions of the port of Le Havre of the early 1870s (Figure 1.3) show one of the busiest international harbors of Europe at the time, famous for its trade with East Asia.11 For all its emphasis on the national landscape, French Impressionism was therefore hardly exclusively French, but already punctuated by various facts and fictions of globality. As an extension of such an international outlook, global Impressionism, instead of taking a close and direct look at the regions it came to inhabit, created a powerful fan­ tasy around the mobility of vision and the easy exchange of information, making its forms of painterly instantaneity appear like the conflict-free circulation of capital, peo­ ples, and goods. This is to say that Impressionism was a style that not only paralleled and chronicled the age of globalization that was the late 19th century, but also helped promulgate a narrative of easy and harmonious (as opposed to frictious) cross-border movement, transmission, and translation. The style’s abbreviated and seemingly rapid brushmarks could be easily annexed to the period’s infatuation with speed, travel, and a global commodity exchange, as in the invention of the telegraph, the telephone, and mass international transit, among others – including the complete reorganization of time and space (and the world map) these developments set in motion. Impressionism’s high-keyed restlessness produced a vision of transfer that appeared immanent and effortless and was, for that very reason, perfectly in tune with the ideals motivating a globalizing commercial

Impressionism and Globalization

25

Figure 1.4 Map “Voyage autour du monde,” engraved by “Erhard” and printed by “Monrocq,” Paris, in Jacques Siegfried, Seize mois autour du monde, 1867–1869, et particulière­ ment aux Indes, en Chine et au Japon, Paris: J. Hetzel, 1869. Source: Photograph by the author.

sphere overall. Modernization and globalization were processes, and Impressionism the energetic and processual style that stood ready to promote them. Impressionism embodied the technological and logistical innovations of the Second Industrial Revolution rather perfectly, starting roughly in the 1860s – so named for its emphasis on electricity, new technologies of communication, and regular opportunities in intercontinental railways and shipping, as opposed to the mechanical innovations like the steam engine and industrial loom that exemplified the advances of the First Industrial Revolution. With the greater global connectivity and simultaneous exchange of informa­ tion in real time that the various trans-oceanic telegraph cables permitted, a growing web increased the circulation of information globally.12 Add to this increasingly regular ocean passages and long-distance trade routes (Figure 1.4), and this second phase in the history of industrialization is marked by a pronounced time-space compression, as famously detailed by Wolfgang Schivelbusch and other historians.13 This new vision of interna­ tional connectedness also included a variety of newly-minted transnational organiza­ tions, such as the International Telegraph Union of 1865 and the General Postal Union of 1874, which became the Universal Postal Union in 1878, to name only a few. Already in the early 20th century, the German economic historian Werner Sombart described such agencies of international cooperation as the networks of universalization.14 In the process, a new vision of the world came into being, one that placed a borderless vision of global citizenry next to the vision of the single nation-state.15 The advent of a unified uni­ versal time grid from the 1880s on, with its new account of modern time as immaterial, smooth, and uniform in its global application, is perhaps that age’s best expression of what literary historian Adam Barrows has called a “fantasy of a world without temporal barriers,” or any barriers at all.16 Many, if not most, of Impressionism’s prominent features resonated profoundly with the world that the Second Industrial Revolution was then in the process of creating. And nothing made the impressionist picture more dynamic than its performative brushwork. Indeed, Impressionism was the first style to understand painting as a set of reduced and redacted manual signs, and therefore as pictures more easily translatable and transmis­ sible than other art (from eye to eye, but also from culture to culture, language to lan­ guage). Central to the specific look of most impressionist paintings, the separate, largely unblended, demonstratively single brushstroke established a poetics – and a semantics – of the isolated unit of expression. As the impressionist brush appeared to move easily

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across the surfaces of representation – no matter how hard-fought and time-consuming the creation of this look was, which of course could never be done in a few minutes, but took many hours, weeks, or even months to achieve – the fantasies around the fluidity and mobility of applied paint that emerged in the process signified more than their own material presence, namely an ease of exchange across borders and oceans, a fictitious network of frictionless transmission between self and world, self and things, things and world. Art historians have even called paintings like those made by Monet in the late 1860s and 1870s the first truly “pixelated” paintings in history – visual fields disassem­ bled into a web of interconnected yet separate strokes – even if they were not yet stand­ ardized and made uniform as in Georges Seurat’s dots or Paul Cézanne’s “constructive strokes,” something Richard Shiff has claimed on more than one occasion.17 Already in 1879, Louis-Edmond Duranty referred to Monet’s “small detached plaques,” grasping the informational potential each mark contained.18 Impressionist criticism of the late 19th century was not shy in recognizing these fea­ tures of the style, speaking at times of the fact that Impressionism seemed to capture impressions truthfully as well as immediately in a quasi-technological sense: “True, [the brushwork] is summary, but how just the indications are!,” marveled Jules-Antoine Castagnary in 1874 after visiting the Monets at the first impressionist exhibition, link­ ing the capturing of sensory truth to standardized, abbreviated signs.19 “Indication” is an unusual word for delineating Monet’s marks (my translation is literal, and Cast­ agnary used the term indications in French, meaning sign or clue), giving a scientific tone to impressionist paint application. In 1876, moreover, the critic Arthur Baignères called Impressionism “a kind of telegraphic mechanism” that fixed impressions like “the characters of a dispatch on azure-colored paper,” the most common hue of early telegrams.20 Baignères went on to say, “The painter is traversed by a current of impres­ sions; and it serves as a unifying principle between his canvas and the external objects.” Linking impressionist art to the newest communication technologies and electricity, both Castagnary and Baignères highlight the conductive nature of the isolated impres­ sionist brushmark, as if paint, too, could be transmitted in codes, signals, and separate characters. In his 1916 book Expressionism, the Austrian writer Hermann Bahr speaks of Impres­ sionism as if it were a faint sound recording or a sentence barely audible through an early telephone followed by silence: Impressionism is man lowered to the position of a gramophone record of the outer world. . . . The eye of the Impressionist only beholds, it does not speak; it hears the question, but makes no response. Instead of eyes, Impressionists have another set of ears, but no mouth, for a man of the bourgeois period is nothing but an ear, he listens to the world, but does not breathe upon it.21 In short, Bahr’s accusation goes, the Impressionists do nothing but receive information; they do not transmute it. For him, Impressionism is less than a mere sensory recording – it is, rather, the diminishing of human communication and imagination via technological transmission. Underlying such a harsh judgment, however, is the idea that an impression­ ist painting is a set of technical codes more beholden to its own system of sensory regis­ tration than to the emotive expression and transformation true artistic freedom demands. This is but one of many such instances in which Impressionism was equated with period communication technologies.

Impressionism and Globalization

27

Through such figures of speech, Impressionism was made to fit, even better than it already did, the global age of instant communication that started in the 1860s. On an even broader scale, Impressionism came to embody and materialize, in its seemingly open yet translatable and adaptable forms, the ideals inherent in the various new networks of a global scale. This does not mean that there was no sense of the local and regionally specific in Impressionism, but that its emphasis on a direct and engaged sense of the here and now could emerge only because it also spoke in immediately understandable dialects that were multinational in outlook. Another way of putting this is that each impression­ ist instant appeared novel and unique wherever it turned up – and appeared uniquely suited to the open-air locale where it was captured – precisely because instantaneity and ease of messaging had been elevated to the new norm of international capital and the heights of modern painting together. An impressionist painting, and this is true both for its initial French formulation and subsequent global spread, shows a particular moment only insofar as it imagines that moment to be communally, and globally, legible. Since Impressionism reduced representation to the lowest common denominator – a brief, sin­ gular, individual apprehension of wind, light, and weather – its terms were already meant to read as transsubjective and transnational. *** Criticism around the year 1900 was explicit about Impressionism’s transnational aspira­ tions. In the last decades of the 19th and the first few of the 20th century, critics empha­ sized over and over again that whole worlds, even entire universes, were contained within an impressionist instant. This powerful rhetorical construct, however, implied that each instant was collective in turn and that French was supposed to be the universal language of art. In his catalogue preface to the 1891 Durand-Ruel exhibition in which Monet’s Haystacks series was first shown, Gustave Geffroy portrayed the paintings more as cos­ mic and universal than specific and regional. In doing so, he began to see the mutual implications between local motif and world-at-large in Impressionism. Monet “evoked,” he said, “in each of his canvases, the curve of the horizon, the roundness of the globe, the course of the earth through space,” adding that the paintings showed the “poetry of the universe in the restricted space of a field.”22 Geffroy’s carefully chosen expressions reveal that it was possible to see in one of Monet’s moments, as if monadically, the unfolding of a totalizing, global system – a rhetorical construction imaginable only once a fully connected and well-networked globe had been constructed. When, in 1927, the critic Louis Gillet said of Monet’s Waterlilies that this small pond is “where the specta­ cle of the universe reflects itself,” he made by and large the same point.23 Many other critics followed suit. What they pointed to was that, through Impressionism’s overall intoxication with experiential speed and artistic rapidity, the style had already cleared away, if only imaginatively, the material and ideological resistances inherent in globali­ zation and colonialization well before it even got to its various destinations around the world. In Impressionism, the modern world, with all its inconsistencies, cruelties, and political imbalances, looked at ease with itself; momentarily, pleasure took precedence over power. Not precisely a “tool” in the arsenal of empire, Impressionism nonetheless became an important artistic device that rendered global encounters legible to them­ selves, not as the instances of imperial subordination they tended to be, but as fantasies of open, instantaneous access and a ceaseless incentive to roam on seemingly equal if exceedingly short-lived terms.

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Acknowledgments I would like to thank the editors for selecting my essay for this volume, as well as my partner, Jonathan D. Katz, for the careful guidance throughout the writing of this essay. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine. Notes 1. Broude, 1990. Two recent volumes on the global spread of Impressionism around 1900 stand out: Clark and Fowle, 2020; Burns and Price, 2021. See also the essays in the section “World Impres­ sionism” in Dombrowski, 2021, 415–515. These publications are partly based on the following conferences and panels, among others: “Writing Impressionism Into and Out of Art History, 1874 to Today” (Courtauld Institute of Art, London, November  3–4, 2017); “Impressionism Around the World: Art and Globalization at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” (Philadelphia Museum of Art and University of Pennsylvania, April 12, 2019); and “Provincialising Impression­ ism” (Association for Art History conference panel, University of Birmingham, April 16, 2021). 2. The term appeared in English (Impressionism, the Impressionists) in spring 1874 and was soon translated into other languages: Young, 2021a, “Impressionism and Criticism;” and “Introduc­ tion: ‘What Is Impressionism?,’ ” in Clark and Fowle, 2020, who speak interestingly of Impres­ sionism as a “polysemous term.” 3. See “Mapping Impressionist Constellations,” in Burns and Price, 2021, 1–21. 4. See Antmen, 2020, 2021a, “Turkish Impressionism;” and Antmen, 2021b, “Jeune Turc.” 5. Potts, 2021. 6. See “Introduction,” in Clayson and Dombrowski, 2016, 1–11. 7. Jameson, 1988, 18. See the recent discussion of this text in Young, 2021b, “Impressionism and Imperialism.” 8. Jameson, 1988, 19. 9. Nagaï, 2021. 10. Garb, 2016. 11. Le Men, 2016. 12. Wenzlhuemer, 2013. On the relationship between telegraphy and painting in the 19th century, see Roberts, 2014; and Taws, 2014. 13. Schivelbusch, 1979. 14. Mattelart, 2000, 6–8. 15. The scholarship on 19th-century globalization is vast; see especially Osterhammel, 2014; and Singaravélou and Venayre, 2017; also Rosenberg, 2012. 16. Barrows, 2018, 245. Hollis Clayson has recently investigated Mary Cassatt’s binational artistic existence in relationship to issues of nationalism and cosmopolitanism: Clayson, 2021. 17. Shiff, 2003, 2016. 18. Louis-Edmond Duranty, “La Quatrième exposition faite par un groupe d’artistes indépendants,” La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (April 19, 1879), in Berson, 1996, 218. 19. Jules-Antoine Castagnary, “Exposition du boulevard des Capucines: Les Impressionnistes,” Le Siècle (April 29, 1874), in Berson, 1996, 16. 20. Arthur Baignères, “Exposition de peinture par un groupe d’artistes, rue Le Peletier, 11,” L’Echo universel (April 13, 1876), in Berson, 1996, 54. 21. Hermann Bahr, Expressionismus (Munich: Delphin, 1916), 124, trans. in Harrison and Wood, 1992, 120. 22. Gustave Geffroy, preface to Exposition d’oeuvres récentes de Claude Monet (Paris: Galeries Durand-Ruel, May 1891), cited in Brettell, 1984, 12–14, 20. 23. Gillet, 1927, 110.

References Antmen, Ahu, “Nazmi Ziya Güran and Turkish Impressionism,” in Globalizing Impression­ ism: Reception, Translation, and Transnationalism, eds. Alexis Clark and Frances Fowle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020, A&AePortal, www.aaeportal.com/?id=-20009.

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Antmen, Ahu, “Turkish Impressionism: Interplays of Culture and Form,” in A Companion to Impressionism, ed. André Dombrowski. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2021a, 484–98. Antmen, Ahu, “Jeune Turc, Jeune Femme: Impressions of a New “Beauté Orientale,” in Mapping Impressionist Painting in Transnational Contexts, eds. Emily C. Burns and Alice M. Rudy Price. New York: Routledge, 2021b, 103–16. Barrows, Adam, “Time and the Literature of Globalization,” in Time and Literature, ed. Thomas M. Allen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 242–56. Berson, Ruth, ed., The New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886, Documentation, vol. 1: Reviews. San Francisco, CA: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1996. Brettell, Richard R., “Monet’s Haystacks Reconsidered,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 11, no. 1 (Autumn 1984): 4–21. Broude, Norma, World Impressionism: The International Movement, 1860–1920. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990. Burns, Emily C., and Alice M. Rudy Price, eds., Mapping Impressionist Painting in Transnational Contexts. New York: Routledge, 2021. Clark, Alexis, and Frances Fowle, eds., Globalizing Impressionism: Reception, Translation, and Transnationalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020, A&AePortal, www.aaeportal. com/?id=-19999. Clayson, Hollis, and André Dombrowski, eds., Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century? Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850–1900. New York: Routledge, 2016. Clayson, Hollis, “Cassatt’s Alterity,” in A Companion to Impressionism, ed. André Dombrowski. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2021, 253–70. Dombrowski, André, ed., A Companion to Impressionism. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2021. Garb, Tamar, “Revisiting the 1860s: Race and Place in Cape Town and Paris,” in Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century? Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850–1900, eds. Hollis Clay­ son and André Dombrowski. New York: Routledge, 2016, 115–29. Gillet, Louis, “Sur la terrasse au bord de l’eau,” in Trois variations sur Claude Monet. Paris: Plon, 1927, 99–114. Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds., Art in Theory, 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Jameson, Frederic, “Modernism and Imperialism,” in Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature: Modernism and Imperialism. Lawrence Hill: Field Day, 1988, 5–23. Le Men, Ségolène, “Monet et le Japon vu du Havre,” in Monet: Les Années décisives au Havre, ed. Géraldine Lefebvre. Paris: Hazan, 2016, 152–69. Mattelart, Armand, Networking the World, 1794–2000, trans. Liz Carey-Libbrecht and James A. Cohen. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Nagaï, Takanori, “Impressionism in Japan: The Awakening of the Senses,” in A Companion to Impressionism, ed. André Dombrowski. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2021, 452–65. Osterhammel, Jürgen, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Cen­ tury, trans. Patrick Camiller. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Potts, Alex, “Impressionism and Naturalism in Germany: The Competing Aesthetic and Ideologi­ cal Imperative of a Modern Art,” in A Companion to Impressionism, ed. André Dombrowski. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2021, 499–515. Roberts, Jennifer L., Transporting Visions: The Movement of Images in Early America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014. Rosenberg, Emily S., ed., A World Connecting, 1870–1945. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Anselm Hollo. New York: Urizen, 1979. Shiff, Richard, “Monet and the Mark,” in Monet: Atti del convegno, eds. Rodolphe Rapetti, MaryAnne Stevens, Michael Zimmermann, and Marco Goldin. Conegliano: Linea d’ombra, 2003, 164–69.

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Shiff, Richard, “Paraph Painter,” in Monet: The Early Years, ed. George T.M. Shackelford. Fort Worth, TX: Kimbell Art Museum. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016, 58–67. Singaravélou, Pierre, and Sylvain Venayre, Histoire du monde au XIXe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 2017. Taws, Richard, “When I Was a Telegrapher,” Nonsite 14 (December 15, 2014), https://nonsite.org/ when-i-was-a-telegrapher/. Wenzlhuemer, Roland, Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World: The Telegraph and Globaliza­ tion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Young, Marnin, “Impressionism and Criticism,” in A Companion to Impressionism, ed. André Dombrowski. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2021a, 11–26. Young, Marnin, “Impressionism and Imperialism in Maurice Cullen’s African River,” RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review 46, no. 1 (2021b): 75–94.

2

Picturing the Dead Posthumous Portraits of Infants and

Children in Turn-of-the-Century Mexican

Photography

Elisa C. Mandell

Posthumous Portraits of Angelitos Photographs of deceased infants and young children elicit a range of emotions in view­ ers, from tenderness and sadness to shock and repulsion.1  To the 21st-century viewer, whose experience with death may be removed and sanitized, such photos may seem to be a morbid display. They also stand in stark contrast to the use and reception of pho­ tography today, when our smartphones capture unlimited selfies and candid snapshots, the digital images of which can be instantly replicated, emailed, and posted to social media sites. Today, photography is ubiquitous, and lacking in formality – worlds away from a precious, singular daguerreotype or ambrotype encased in red velvet and leather. Nonetheless, from its inception in the early 19th century, the new medium of photogra­ phy became widespread, and nowhere more so than in Mexico, where an abundance of turn-of-the-century photographs of deceased children exists. These images depict lifeless children cradled in their parents’ arms, or atop altars or tiny caskets. In Mexico, deceased children were often dressed for burial in religious costumes as angels or figures from the Catholic pantheon, including Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or saints. Children who died after baptism, and before the age of reason – usually when a child receives their first communion, around eight years old – are considered pure, and thus will go directly to Heaven upon dying.2 They were known as angelitos, or “little angels” because it was believed that in death they take on the characteristics of the holy being whose clothes and attributes they wear, and are destined for a privileged place in the hereafter.3 Parents were consoled by their belief that as an angel, their deceased child could act as a messenger and mediate between the Almighty and their surviving family members. Angelito photographs depict scenes of death and rebirth in a theatrical manner. First and foremost, the child wears a costume that functions as a mask, transforming the sub­ ject into a new entity and reenacting a drama that is further embellished by the staged presence of a makeshift altar or coffin upon which the body rests. In Mexico, a child’s death was reconceptualized as a jubilant event, a joyous birth into the empyrean, and as such it was often accompanied by funerary rituals that included singing festive songs, set­ ting off firecrackers, and playing children’s games. These festive angelito funerary rituals and staged reenactment of the child’s apotheosis had several functions. They heightened the theatricality of an angelito wake and the celebration of the child’s rebirth, reassuring the family that it was a fait accompli and offering comfort to grieving parents.4 Catholicism was, of course, introduced to Mexico by the Spanish in the early 16th century with brutal, forced conversions. Over the centuries, Catholic beliefs and practices DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-5

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often mixed with Indigenous ones, resulting in complex and provocative artworks, of which the angelito genre is but one example. In locating the Mexica (Aztec) roots of angelito portraiture, we can recognize that Indigenous views of child death, and the paradisiacal afterlife known as Tonacatecuhtli, “Place of the Nursemaid Tree,” are not dissimilar from the Catholic belief that young children who die after baptism are destined to go directly to Heaven where they will enjoy a pleasant afterlife. And, illustrations in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (ca. 1563, fol. 2r, 2v.) record the Mexica practice of deco­ rating mummy bundles with the attributes of deities, a striking equivalence to dressing deceased children as Catholic holy figures.5 Photography, Death, and Ritual How best to understand the integration of media and Mexican cultural and artistic tra­ jectories related to death and transformation? Walter Benjamin’s work on the relation­ ship between portraiture and photography, and what he calls the “cult of remembrance of loved ones,” emphasizes the significance of the triangular relationship between por­ traiture, photography, and ritual.6 Susan Sontag also wrote about the strong ties pho­ tography has to death: “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.”7 Thus, the process of making these photographic portraits became an important part of other participatory funerary rituals for deceased children – such as those described earlier – that were performed by grieving parents and family members. Generating a photographic artifact contributes to the discourse of bereavement rites and traditions in that it cre­ ates a visual representation of the transmutation from a mortal child to a divine entity with intermediary capabilities. This process includes the participation of the photogra­ pher and the grieving family members, who join in other funerary rites at the home and gravesite. Angelito portraits attested to the fact that the child’s death and heavenly rebirth had occurred. As such, they shed light on how Catholic families in Mexico accepted the untimely death of a child, revealing viewpoints regarding human mortality, and specifi­ cally, existentialist perspectives about the meaning of life and death. Angelito portraiture is testimony to how a child’s death is “celebrated” in the belief that the decedent will go directly to God’s side to act as intercessor between God and their family. Photography in 19th-Century Mexico Photography is arguably more modern and more global in its inception and develop­ ment than any other artistic medium. Just months after the French government made daguerreotypes available to the public in 1839, French engraver Louis Prélier traveled to Mexico, bringing with him two cameras and offering demonstrations of daguerreotypes in Veracruz and Mexico City.8 In Mexican Suite, Oliver Debroise describes the impact of photography in Mexico: “Above all, photography touched the private lives of people. The insertion of photography into Mexican culture was not only widespread, but pro­ found.”9 The millions of negatives and prints in the photo archives in Mexico – a quan­ tity that excludes the unknown numbers in private family homes – is a demonstration of the widespread popularity of photography in that country.10 As early as 1839, the daguerreotype’s potential for portrait-making was clear, and the medium became highly desirable almost immediately. Indeed, portraiture was the one of the most popular photographic genres to become widespread, due to the daguerreotype,

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33

to which it has been inextricably linked from the start. Very shortly thereafter photo­ graphic portraits dominated globally, including in Mexico: “[photography]became the vehicle for an idea of civilization, through images that surreptitiously implanted in the consciousness of viewers [sic] ways of being, dressing, posing, and presenting oneself.”12 The process of ordering a daguerreotype or ambrotype was costly, thus owning these luxury items, was not as ubiquitous as later types of photography. Well-to-do Mexi­ cans could show off their modernity and sophistication by commissioning a one-of-a­ kind photograph in lieu of an oil painting. The similarity to painting contributed to the popularity of early photographic portraiture. Like painting, both daguerreotypes (ca. 1839–1860s), which are very reflective, highly defined images on copper plates coated in silver,13 and ambrotypes (ca. 1854–1880s), which are made by fixing liquid collodion onto a glass plate,14 are unique images; no negatives are made in these processes. That these early photographs were sometimes hand-colored, further blurred the line between these two mediums. In fact, the angelito photographs that are the focus of this study were preceded in Mexico by oil paintings, such as the Portrait of Don Tomás María Joaquín Villaseñor y Gómez (1760), attributed to Manuel Montes y Balcázar.15 Interestingly, these photographs were both modeled after paintings, and they also served as models for painters in the 20th century, including Frida Kahlo and Davíd Alfaro Siqueiros.16 More recently, Arturo Elizondo (b. 1956) and Arturo Rivera (1945–2020), created paintings based on angelito photographs they saw in the 1992 issue of Artes de México, which was reissued in 1998 to include their artworks.17 An early example of a posthumous portrait of a young child can be seen in a 19th­ century Mexican ambrotype, featuring an elegantly dressed woman holding the body of a lifeless baby on her lap (Figure 2.1). Since the baby is not dressed in a costume of a 11

Figure 2.1 Unknown, Portrait of a Seated Woman in a Shawl Holding a Dead Child, ca. 1850s–1870s, Ambrotype, 10.8 × 8.3 cm (4 1/4 × 3 1/4 in.); 1/4 plate. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

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Elisa C. Mandell

religious figure, I would not consider portraits such as this secular one to be an angelito; however, it is nonetheless an important example of early posthumous photography in Mexico, and it serves as a contrast to religious compositions. The impeccably coiffed woman sits in a wooden chair. The photographer has added touches of yellow and white paint to her earrings, wedding band, and a brooch at her high-necked, elegant modern dress. These small details serve not just as visual accents, they also draw the viewer’s attention to the woman’s marital and upper-class socio-economic status. The practice of hand-painting photographs in imitation of oil-painted miniatures reinforces the rela­ tionship between painting and early photography.18 The woman, or someone close to her, carried her baby to the photographer’s studio to have this portrait made before the burial. This was not an uncommon practice; there would have been an urgency to take what would be a baby’s only portrait before its interment. We can see the tenderness with which the woman cradles and lifts the head of the child with her left hand for the benefit of the camera, and how with her right hand she grasps the lifeless hand of the baby, who appears to be about one year old. This portrait reflects what Geoffrey Batchen describes as the ritual formality and importance of making what was often the only record of one’s image: Such [dignified] formality is fitting for a procedure that may have occurred only once in a person’s lifetime. Indeed, these otherwise humble portraits declare “do not forget me” with as much intensity of purpose as any pharaoh’s tomb, a declaration made all the more poignant by the present anonymity of the sitters in most examples.19

Angelito Photographs in Mexico With the technological advancement of the gelatin silver process, developed at the end of the 19th century, light-sensitive silver salts were used to fix images to paper, instead of glass, tin, or copper.20 Nearly all black-and-white photography of the 20th century was made using this technology.21 Not only did the manufacture become easier, but for many Mexicans, this type of photography was now more affordable, which in turn contributed to a proliferation of commissioned photography featuring children dressed for burial in religious costumes. One such image is a photograph whose blindstamp indicates it was made by Mexican photographer, Juan de Dios Machain (b. 1866), who worked out of Ameca, Jalisco, and who was active from the turn of the century to the 1930s (Figure 2.2).22 As in many such portraits, relatives, several of whom hold bouquets of flowers, are arranged around the corpse of the young child. One can imagine that in some cases, fam­ ily may have had to travel in order to reunite for the funeral and to mourn with the dece­ dent’s parents. Thus, the tragedy of the death of an infant or child was also an unexpected opportunity to make a portrait of the larger kin group, a permanent visual record of those who were present. As in other portraits, the women often have their heads covered with a rebozo, a long shawl, signaling sacrality of the moment. The practice of women cover­ ing their heads in church can be traced to the biblical passage in 1 Corinthians 11:2–10, which has been interpreted to mean that because women were in the presence of angels during worship, they should cover their heads. That the women in this portrait cover their heads in an otherwise secular outdoor space is a poignant reminder that they are behold­ ing a significant religious act – the transformation of a mortal child to immortal angel. The deceased child in Machain’s photograph is dressed as Jesus with his Sacred Heart. In addition to the colored robe and paper buskins, we can just make out the paper heart

Picturing the Dead

35

Figure 2.2 Juan de Dios Machain, Relatives Posing Next to an Angelito Dressed as Jesus with His Sacred Heart, ca. 1920. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (95.R.17).

that rests upon the child’s chest. Someone has placed a floral wreath on his head, a rosary is looped around the boy’s left wrist, and a small bouquet of flowers has been placed in his hands. Indeed, he is surrounded by a plethora of flowers, a meaningful symbol of ephemerality and fragility. Before the altar on which the boy has been laid out, there is a white coffin. The boy’s eyes are closed, and, reminiscent of scenes of the Lamentation, such as the one by leading Mexican artist Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez (1667–1734), family members pose alongside him, all but three gazing at him.23 Those who look at the camera include a woman in the upper left, and a woman in the upper right, the latter holding the top corner of the black blanket with her right hand. Close to the center of this group portrait, a little girl – perhaps the angelito’s younger sister – gazes directly at the camera. She is held in the arms of one of the women. The dark complexions of the bereaved sug­ gest that they are Indigenous or mestizo (“mixed race” people of Spanish and Indigenous parentage). The simple, country attire of the people and the placement of the photograph out of doors with a blanket used as an improvised backdrop, signal that the working class family probably lived in a home without electricity, and they likely did not have the finan­ cial means to transport the body of their little boy to the photographer’s studio or funeral parlor. The absence of wealth in this photograph is striking in its contrast to the fashion­ ably bejeweled, elegant woman featured in the ambrotype discussed earlier (Figure 2.1). While it can be difficult to determine the race of deceased infants and young children in these photographs, those that include family members, adults, and older children, offer clues about race, socio-economic background, and time period. Angelito photo­ graphs reveal that Indigenous and mestizo individuals were active participants in the production of the image in the sense that, in addition to commissioning the photograph, they would have decided how to dress the child, which decorative elements to use, and where family members – if any – should be placed. Many of the angelito photographs

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were made during the years leading up to the Mexican Revolution – whose goals focused on social and economic reform. It should therefore come as no surprise that the work­ ing classes, represented by mestizo and Indigenous Mexicans, were joining upper-class Creole patrons – those of Spanish ancestry born in the Americas – in the practice of com­ missioning and creating angelito portraits. Indeed, photography, the graphic arts, and print culture more broadly, presented opportunities for upwardly mobile mestizos. In Death and the Idea of Mexico, Claudio Lomnitz notes that at the end of the 19th century, mestizos were elevated to the status of national heroes; mestizo engraver José Guadalupe Posada was credited by André Breton, José Clemente Orozco, and Jean Charlot, among others, as being a key founding figure of Mexican modern art.24 Within the angelito portrait photography, we see the representation of a range of socio-economic status. For example, while the three angelito photographs illustrated in Figs  2.2–2.4 show unprosperous mestizo families, other photographs reveal mestizos who had the means to have portraits made in a photographer’s studio with professional lighting, backdrops, and sometimes elaborate wooden chairs, as in the case of some of the portraits by photographer Romualdo Garciá Torres (1852–1930).25 Not only did angelito photography served as a vehicle to democratize portraiture in Mexico on the eve of the Revolution, but it also depicted the upward mobility of Indigenous and mestizo families who could afford to transport their child’s body to a photographer’s studio with electric lighting and a professional backdrop. It is important to reclaim this past at this particular historical moment when enduring legacies of colonial histories are being inter­ rogated and when valuing Indigenous and other non-white identities are at the forefront of political debates in the United States and worldwide. The photographs discussed here, attributed to Machain, represent Indigenous and mestizo people from lower socio-economic means, and the compositions generally under­ score the family’s piety. In one such photograph, we see six women and girls posed behind the body of a little girl who wears a floral crown, echoing the colorful flowers between her body and her white casket (Figure 2.3). Dressed as the Virgin Mary, she wears paper buskins, her body blanketed with paper stars. Compositions such as these are reminiscent of the 18th-century narrative scenes of the Death of the Virgin, where mourners gather around Mary’s body.26 Perhaps in decid­ ing to pose alongside the body of their daughter, families had in mind this biblical scene, reinforcing the idea that in death the child embodies the characteristics of the Catholic figure whose clothes and attributes they wear, and, that like the Virgin Mary, their transformative death serves a greater purpose: to become God’s divine messenger. As in the previous photograph by Machain (Figure 2.2), the contrast between the mother and child in the ambrotype (Figure 2.1) and this photograph of an angelito dressed as the Virgin Mary are striking. Here, the sole man stands in profile on the far left; only his chin, and right hand, placed in his pants pocket, are visible (Figure 2.3). He must be holding up one side of the dark, fringed blanket that serves as the somber backdrop for this composition. The details of this portrait are similar to Machain’s “Relatives Posing Next to an Angelito Dressed as Jesus with His Sacred Heart” (Figure 2.2); the exterior location, adobe wall, the man’s cloth­ ing, the blanket used as a backdrop reinforce the working class niche this family occupies. As in Figure 2.2, we see that they are Indigenous or mestizo. This family may have had to pool their resources to hire the photographer to travel to them to make this portrait of their little girl. In a third photo, three women pose alongside a baby or toddler who lies on a tiny coffin decorated with a tin head of a winged angel (Figure  2.4). The modern bobbed

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37

Figure 2.3 Juan de Dios Machain, Female Relatives Posing Next to an Angelito Dressed as the Virgin Mary, ca. 1920. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (95.R.17).

Figure 2.4 Juan de Dios Machain, Three Women and an Angelito as the Virgin Mary, ca. 1920. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (95.R.17).

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hairstyle of the two women who stand at the head and foot of the child places this photo in the early 20th century. While the women on the left and right look down at the baby, the woman at the center looks directly at the camera, her head and shoulders covered in a black mantle. She has a piercing gaze and a set mouth. Her heartache is evident, yet she is composed. The covered head of this woman distinguishes her from her companions, suggesting that it is she who is the grieving mother of this small child. The women on either side – perhaps her sisters – wear wrinkled aprons and we can just make out the bar­ rettes that hold their hair in place and pulled away from their faces. Each looks down at the body of a tiny baby girl with interlaced fingers resting on her chest. Here, too, we see buskins, a floral crown, and paper stars covering her little body, signaling she is costumed as a miniature Virgin Mary. Death and Vernacular Photography Angelito photographs belong to what Geoffrey Batchen calls vernacular photography; they are the photographs that are destined for the domestic sphere rather than the museum or gallery, and are often taken by untrained or self-taught photographers. Such photographs have, with few exceptions, been excluded from photography’s history. They are the photographs and snapshots that can be found in family photo albums of events and rites of passage, such as births, first communions, weddings, and, funerals. Like many vernacular photographs, those of angelitos are evidentiary; they document the death of an infant or child and its spiritual rebirth. The importance of photography as a documentary tool has been discussed by John Tagg and Susan Sontag, the latter of whom wrote that the act of making a photograph defines an important event and that in the 20th century we have come to our knowledge of the world through photographic images: “In the modern way of knowing, there have to be images for something to become ‘real.’ Photographs confer importance on events and make them memorable.”27 I have argued here and elsewhere that angelito photographs certify the metamorphosis of the human infant or child into an angel, authenticating the child’s biological death and its spiritual reawakening as an angel. Photography supports the truth of the religious belief, making it “real.” Important events are now identified by the presence of a photographer and the records made of the event. Photographing an angelito funeral was of such signifi­ cance that the creation of the portrait would have been an important moment during the child’s wake. Regardless of the family’s socio-economic status, these portraits may have constituted the sole image of the child, particularly in the case of very young children. The surviving family members were witnesses to the event, validating and confirming the radical change from child to angel. As Tagg has said, “the portrait is therefore a sign whose purpose is both the description of an individual and the inscription of social identity.”28 In this case, the social identity is a mystical one, and the portrait gives parents a permanent image of their baby and a reminder that their child gained a new religious social identity when it ascended to a higher plane of existence. Acclaimed Mexican photographer, Graciela Iturbide (b. 1942), is known for her powerful photographs of Mexican daily life, including wakes and burials of children. Although her photographs were intended for art galleries and museums, rather than the family album, they confirm the significance and persistence of angelito funerary tradi­ tions into the late 20th century.29 In her black and white photograph, Dolores Hidalgo (1978), a newborn appears in her miniature casket dressed as the Virgin Mary; she wears a cloak studded with shiny, paper stars, a large silvery crescent moon made of foil lies

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at her feet, and over her tiny body there are several white paper flowers, reminiscent of Easter lilies.30 In another photograph of the same baby, Cemetery of Dolores Hidalgo, the paper lilies have been removed, giving us a better view of her costume.31 The inclusion of a container of flowers to the right of the newborn offers an improved sense of just how small this baby – this miniature Virgin Mary – is. On Photography, Death, and Resurrection In his famous Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes describes what he calls the noeme as the “that has been” of the photograph.32 What he means by this is that a photograph veri­ fies that the person did at one point exist. In contrast to painting, Barthes writes that “in Photography I  can never deny that the thing has been there.”33 Angelito photographs functioned to document three noemes: first, that the child existed as a living human being; second, that the child has died; and third, that the child subsequently became an angel. Written shortly after his mother’s death, Barthes’ Camera Lucida deals in large part with the relationship between photography and death. Barthes notes the paradox of photography simultaneously foretells death while attempting to preserve life through the creation of a permanent image that subsequently “embalms” and immortalizes the individual; the paper, and the fixed image that is imbedded in its fibers and pores, will outlive the flesh and bone of the referent.34 Barthes argues that the inevitability of death is contained within each and every photograph. Barthes follows this line of thought in a brief discussion of photographs of corpses in which he proposes that, unlike photographs of living beings, the photograph of a corpse is metaphoric. In addition, a posthumous photographic portrait combines photography’s ability to document the real and its ability to immortalize the subject: the photograph . . . certifies . . . that the corpse is alive, as corpse: it is the living image of a dead thing. For the photograph’s immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolutely superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past (“this-has-been”), the photograph suggests that it is already dead.35 Angelito portraits contain this very paradox: the photograph documents the death of the child while simultaneously preserving the child’s likeness. Reflecting Barthes’ senti­ ment, angelito photographs reveal the seeming contradiction that these images contain death – they capture the image of the deceased yet, the dead subject is resurrected in the photograph that immortalizes him or her. The idea that photography has the power to regenerate is especially apropos when considering the angelito genre, since its composi­ tion crystallizes the deceased’s renascence as a heavenly figure. Conclusion Angelito photography is invaluable for its contributions to modern art, as it pushes against traditional, narrow definitions of art and patronage. Revealing influences from local and European visual and religious traditions, angelito photographs create picto­ rial narratives that depict the exaltation of the deceased child to a divine intercessor.

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They do so through mechanical reproduction, employing the most modern medium, to create a pictorial narrative predicated on religious beliefs. The working class patrons, who would, in a Eurocentric worldview, hardly be considered agents of modernity, suc­ ceed in bridging the modern and traditional. That Mexican families of a wide range of socio-economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds found agency in photography – an ideal medium to record the death and rebirth of their children – deserves celebration. Whereas art patronage was once limited to an erudite, elite sector of society, angelito photography compels art historians to reconsider who can be considered a patron of art, while also challenging the limits of what we understand by “art.” In acknowledging the significance of a previously overlooked genre of photography, we give overdue credit to the Indigenous and mestizo individuals who played such prominent roles in the creation and development of this unique Mexican genre of photography, and its contributions to global modern art history. Notes 1. With gratitude to Irina D. Costache and Clare Kunny for their suggestions and their tireless devotion to this anthology project, and to Tatiana Flores, Margaret Jackson, and Patricia Sarro for their feedback on a draft of this essay. 2. Elisa C. Mandell, “The Birth of Angels: Posthumous Portraits of Infants and Children in Mexi­ can Art.” Diss. U.C.L.A., 2004 and Elisa C. Mandell, “Posthumous Portraits of Children in Early Modern Spain and Mexico,” in Death and Afterlife in the Early Modern Hispanic World, John Beusterien and Constance Cortez, eds. Hispanic Issues Online (HIOL): Vol. 7 (Fall 2010). https://cla.umn.edu/hispanic-issues/online/death-and-afterlife-early-modern-hispanic-world (accessed February 3, 2022). 3. Mandell, “The Birth of Angels,” 3–5; Gutierre Aceves Piña, “La muerte niña,” in La muerte niña 29: 51. 4. Mandell, “The Birth of Angels,” 13, 39–40, 66. 5. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8458267s/f29.item (accessed August 20, 2022). 6. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 228. 7. Sontag, On Photography, 15. 8. Debroise, Mexican Suite, 20, 248, n. 8, 9. 9. Ibid., 20. 10. Ibid., 13. 11. Erika Billeter, A Song to Reality: Latin-American Photography 1860–1993, 13. 12. Ibid. 13. George Eastman Museum, “The Daguerreotype (2 of 12),” in Smarthistory, May  7, 2019, https://smarthistory.org/the-daguerreotype-2-of-12/ (accessed June 2, 2022). 14. Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, “Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge,” in Smarthis­ tory, August 9, 2015, https://smarthistory.org/early-photography-niepce-talbot-and-muybridge (accessed June 2, 2022). 15. www.denverartmuseum.org/en/object/2013.316 (accessed January 25, 2022). 16. Mandell, “The Birth of Angels,” 50–51, 66. 17. Artes de México, “El Arte Ritual de la Muerte Niña,” 15 (1998), frontispiece; Mandell, “The Birth of Angels,” 50–51, Figs 54–56 (246–278). 18. Debroise, Mexican Suite, 22. 19. Geoffrey Batchen, “Vernacular Photographies,” History of Photography 24, no. 2 (2000): 3. 20. Sarah S. Wagner, “Gelatin Silver Prints,” in National Gallery of Art, www.nga.gov/research/ online-editions/alfred-stieglitz-key-set/practices-and-processes/gelatin-silver-prints.html (accessed August 6, 2022). 21. George Eastman Museum, “The Gelatin Silver Process (10 of 12),” in Smarthistory, May 1, 2019, https://smarthistory.org/the-gelatin-silver-process-10-of-12/ (accessed August 6, 2022). 22. Other known photographers who were commissioned to make angelito photographs are Rutilo Patiño (1880–1962), Romualdo Juan García Torres (1852–1930), and José Antonio Busta­ mante Martínez (active, 1930–1973). Mandell, “The Birth of Angels,” 32–34.

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23. https://lugares.inah.gob.mx/en/museos-inah/museo/museo-piezas/8036-8036-10-113606­ llanto-sobre-cristo-muerto-o-lamentaci%C3%B3n.html?lugar_id=475&seccion=lugar. 24. Claudio Lomnitz, Death and the Idea of Mexico, 48, 66. 25. Mandell, “The Birth of Angels,” Figs 6–10, 198–202; Fig 12, 204. Romualdo García’s pho­ tographs often show middle class mestizos posing for photographs in his studio with their deceased children. www.deochonews.com/el-fotografo-de-los-muertos/ (accessed August  20, 2022). 26. See 18th-century viceregal Mexican paintings of the Death of the Virgin by Antonio de Tor­ res and Miguel Cabrera (Museo de Guadalupe), and anonymous artists (Museo Blaisten and Museo Nacional del Virreinato). Tránsito de la Virgen, anonymous, ca. 1780, oil on can­ vas, 57 × 46.1 cm. Museo Blaisten, https://lugares.inah.gob.mx/es/museos-inah/museo/museo­ piezas/6305-6305-tr%C3%A1nsito-de-la-virgen-mar%C3%ADa.html (accessed August  20, 2022). Gutierre Aceves Piña, Tránsito de angelitos, 48–53. 27. John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories, 1; Susan Sontag, At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches, 125. 28. Tagg, The Burden of Representation, 37. 29. The tradition of dressing deceased infants and children as Catholic holy figures continued into the turn of this last millennium, and perhaps even to this day. Mexican anthropologist Araceli Colín Cabrera interviewed a couple whose infant son, Nicolás, died in October 2000. They dressed him in red and white as Jesus with His Sacred Heart, and that they played games dur­ ing the wake. The question of whether photographs were taken remains unanswered. Mandell, “The Birth of Angels,” 62–63; Araceli Colín Cabrera, “Duelo por angelitos en Malinalco,” 10–11. 30. www.gracielaiturbide.org/muerte/attachment/05/ (accessed August 20, 2022). 31. https://artblart.com/tag/graciela-iturbide-cementerio-de-dolores-hidalgo/ (accessed August 21, 2022). 32. Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 76, 95, 115. 33. Ibid., 76. 34. Ibid., 97. 35. Ibid., 78–79.

References Aceves Piña, Gutierre. Tránsito de angelitos: Iconografía funeraria infantil. Mexico: Museo de San Carlos, 1988. _____. “La muerte niña.” In La muerte niña. Mexico: Museo Poblano de Arte Virreinal, 1999. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Batchen, Geoffrey. “Vernacular Photographies.” History of Photography 24, no. 2 (2000): 1–10. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968. Billeter, Erika. A Song to Reality: Latin-American Photography 1860–1993. Barcelona: Lunwerg Editores, 1998. Colín Cabrera, Araceli. Duelo por angelitos en Malinalco (rito de duelo y duelo subjetivo), 1–15. Paper delivered at the 5th Congreso Internacional de las Americas, Universidad de las Americas, 2001. Debroise, Olivier. Mexican Suite: A History of Photography in Mexico. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2001. Denver Art Museum. “Death Portrait of Don Thomas Maria Joachin Villaseñor y Gomez.” Accessed August 20, 2022, www.denverartmuseum.org/en/object/2013.316. Easby, Rebecca Jeffrey. “Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge.” In Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, https://smarthistory.org/early-photography-niepce-talbot-and-muybridge/. George Eastman Museum, “The Gelatin Silver Process (10 of 12),” In Smarthistory, May 1, 2019. Accessed August 6, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/the-gelatin-silver-process-10-of-12/. Lomnitz, Claudio. Death and the Idea of Mexico. New York: Zone Books, 2008.

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Mandell, Elisa C. “The Birth of Angels: Posthumous Portraits of Infants and Children in Mexican Art.” Diss. U.C.L.A., 2004. _____. “ ‘Posthumous Portraits of Children in Early Modern Spain and Mexico.’ In Death and Afterlife in the Early Modern Hispanic World. Ed. John Beusterien and Constance Cortez.” Hispanic Issues on Line 7 (Fall 2010): 68–88, https://cla.umn.edu/hispanic-issues/online/ death-and-afterlife-early-modern-hispanic-world. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador USA, 2002. _____. At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches. Edited by Paolo Dilonardo and Anne Jump. New York: Picador, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Wagner, Sarah S. “Gelatin Silver Prints.” In National Gallery of Art, August 6, 2022, www.nga. gov/research/online-editions/alfred-stieglitz-key-set/practices-and-processes/gelatin-silver-prints. html. Websites Artes de México. Accessed August  20, 2022. https://catalogo.artesdemexico.com/productos/ el-arte-ritual-de-la-muerte-nina/. Barber, Karen. “Honoré Daumier, Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of an Art.” In Smarthistory, January 23, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/daumier-nadar-elevating-photography/. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Gallica, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/btv1b8458267s/f29.item. Bunyan, Marcus. “Exhibition: ‘Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.” Accessed August  21, 2022, https://artblart.com/tag/graciela-iturbide-cementerio-de-dolores­ hidalgo/. Death of the Virgin (See Tránsito de la Virgen below). “Early Mexican Photography” published online in 2021 via Goggle Arts  & Culture, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/ early-mexican-photography-part-i-the-j-paul-getty-museum/cAWx5E8vE43-Dg?hl=en. Easby, Rebecca Jeffrey. “Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge.” In Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, https://smarthistory.org/early-photography-niepce-talbot-and-muybridge/. George Eastman Museum, “The Gelatin Silver Process (10 of 12).” In Smarthistory, May 1, 2019. Accessed August 6, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/the-gelatin-silver-process-10-of-12/. Graciela Iturbide. Dolores Hidalgo, www.gracielaiturbide.org/muerte/attachment/05/; Cemente­ rio de Dolores Hidalgo. Accessed August  20, 2022, https://artblart.com/tag/graciela-iturbide­ cementerio-de-dolores-hidalgo/. Hooks, Margaret. “Recuerdos de inocencia.” Luna cornea 9 (1996): 90–93, 151–152, https://issuu. com/c_imagen/docs/lunacornea_9. _____“ ‘Posthumous Portraits of Children in Early Modern Spain and Mexico.’ Death and Afterlife in the Early Modern Hispanic World. Ed. John Beusterien and Constance Cortez.” Hispanic Issues On Line 7 (Fall 2010): 68–88, https://cla.umn.edu/hispanic-issues/online/death­ and-afterlife-early-modern-hispanic-world. Museo Nacional del Virreinato (National Museum of the Viceroyalty). Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez, Lamentation. Accessed August  20, 2022, https://lugares.inah.gob.mx/en/museos-inah/museo/ museo-piezas/8036-8036-10-113606-llanto-sobre-cristo-muerto-o-lamentaci%C3%B3n. html?lugar_id=475&seccion=lugar. “The Niépce Heliograph.” Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas. Accessed January 23, 2022, www.hrc.utexas.edu/niepce-heliograph/. Tránsito de la Virgen, anonymous, 18th c., Museo Nac. Del Virreinato, Oil on canvas, 183 x 125  cm. Accessed August  20, 2022, https://lugares.inah.gob.mx/en/museos-inah/colecciones/ piezas/8497-8497-10-96373-tránsito-de-la-virgen.html?lugar_id=475.

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Transito de la Virgen, anonymous, ca. 1780, oil on canvas, 57x46.1 cm. Museo Blaisten, Colección Andrés Blaisten. Accessed August  20, 2022, https://museoblaisten.com/Obra/8884/Transito­ de-la-Virgen. Transito de la Virgen (1719), Antonio de Torres. Accessed August 20, 2022, https://lugares.inah. gob.mx/en/museos-inah/colecciones/piezas/6305-6305-tránsito-de-la-virgen-maría.html?lugar_ id=405 Museo de Guadalupe, Zacatecas. Tránsito de la Virgen María, (No. 13 in the series), ca. 18th c., Miguel Cabrera. Museo de Gua­ dalupe, Zacatecas. Accessed August  20, 2022, https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/repositorio/ islandora/object/pintura%3A3464. Wagner, Sarah S. “Gelatin Silver Prints.” In National Gallery of Art, August 6, 2022, www.nga. gov/research/online-editions/alfred-stieglitz-key-set/practices-and-processes/gelatin-silver-prints. html.

3

Art and Revival in Ireland, 1830–1930 Kayla Rose

Introduction In 1901 Charles James McCarthy, then newly elected President of the Architectural Asso­ ciation of Ireland, called in his inaugural address for the establishment of a national type of Irish architecture, arguing that art should be “instinct with the spirit of the country which has produced it, and, therefore, in the true meaning of the word, national.”1 That same year, the writer and poet T.W. Rolleston recommended that young Irish artists be trained to create art with “national individuality,” focusing on “the past art life of their country.”2 Their calls came at the height of the Celtic Revival in Ireland, which began in the 19th century with a resurgence of interest in ancient Celtic and medieval Irish history, language, mythology, and art driven by the increase in cultural nationalism that followed the 1800 Acts of Union.3 Ini­ tially a cultural movement coinciding with the discovery and public display of Irish artifacts dating to the period before the Norman Conquest and subsequent centuries of British rule; over the next century the Celtic Revival saw both the resurgence of the Irish language and the transformation of recognizably national artistic and literary styles and motifs into politi­ cal symbols, thereby laying the groundwork for the country’s partition and partial inde­ pendence from the United Kingdom following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. The term “Celtic Revival” describes a variety of cultural, linguistic, literary, and artis­ tic expressions of national identity by Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man from the mid-19th to early 20th century, roughly 1830–1930, many of which were reactions against the dominant British identity of the time.4 Defining national identity is itself a complex task, but within the context of this discussion, Ernest Gellner defines it as “primarily a principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.”5 As Eric Hobsbawm has argued, “nationalism comes before nations,” and revival movements were most often led by cultural nationalism rather than political nationalism.6 However, cultural nationalism is often used to create a specific identity via what Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger called the “invention of tradition” to legitimize the modern development of a sovereign state.7 Douglas Hyde, a linguist and scholar who would go on to become the first president of independent Ireland, wrote about cultivat­ ing Irishness to ensure the island remained “Celtic at the core.”8 Although Hyde’s efforts centered on language and literature, his statement echoed the sentiments held by many of his cultural and political contemporaries – that Celtic art was essential to the world’s rec­ ognition of Irish as a nationality separate from British. Within this framework, Ireland’s Celtic Revival (1830–1930) is arguably the most significant and, from a political per­ spective, enduring of catalysts for the nation-building activities that would occur across Europe over the first few decades of the 20th century. DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-6

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Within an international framework, this romanticized revival of native art was not solely focused on Celtic nations. Many countries on the peripheries of Europe saw a renewed interest in folk art and craft and, from a political standpoint, it is of interest to note that some of these countries – Hungary, Poland, Norway, and Finland in particular, and Germany to a certain extent – were, like Ireland, under the political control of a larger colonial power. Coupled with their revivals, all of which were inspired by ancient mythology and native imagery, all of these peripheral countries expressed nationalist tendencies and achieved either full or partial independence in the 20th century.9 How­ ever, despite the far-reaching impact of 19th-century cultural revivalism in shaping 20th­ century Europe, as this examination of the Irish context shows, the Celtic Revival and simultaneous revival movements exist as footnotes in the art historical canon if they exist at all. Surveys of western art tend to touch upon the Gothic Revival and English Arts and Crafts Movement (the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement, though smaller, is wholly absent), but barely, and even those present but a cursory introduction. These cultural revivals can be viewed as forward-looking attempts at rebuilding the nation from within, using recognizable styles and symbols from an imagined, ideal, and romanticized past to assert the identity of that country. In the Irish context, this was through reconstructing a particular point in history, before British rule, that was physi­ cally manifested in art, material culture, and literature. This analysis explores this rela­ tionship between cultural revivalism in art and identity construction in late-19th- and early-20th-century Ireland, looking at examples ranging from early replications of Irish illuminated manuscripts in the 19th-century work of the antiquary Margaret Stokes and authentic approach to modern illumination by the artist John Vinycomb, to what can arguably be called a renaissance of Celtic design by the artist Art O’Murnaghan in the 20th century. Defined as the art of decorating the written word, illumination is most often seen in medieval manuscripts, literally shedding light on important religious text via the application of gold or silver adornment.10 Illumination was used frequently throughout the Celtic Revival, namely in illuminated addresses – a modern take on medieval manu­ scripts that turned a written speech or presentation into a ceremonial object. All three artists discussed in this case study used illumination in their work. The Celtic Revival: Antiquarianism, Revivalism, and Cultural Nationalism Colum Hourihane defines the concept of revival as “an appreciation of antiquity and the value of past history,” suggesting “the renewal or regeneration of elements from the past that had been lost but which was at one time prized and valued.”11 A revival is, within this context, a return to a chosen past, and the ways in which it was expressed in Celtic Revival art provide a framework for understanding how identity could be constructed in both a romantic and historically legitimate way. The artistic manifestation of the Celtic Revival reflected a deep-seated awareness of and pride in Irish art from a chosen moment in time, the Early Christian period, evidenced by the revival of the “Celtic” ornament. The work of Irish antiquarians was, alongside this growing cultural nationalism, the driving force of the Celtic Revival in Ireland, and their publications contributed to his­ torical narratives that further defined national cultural identity by providing empirical evidence of the artifacts of ancient, medieval, and pre-modern Ireland. Antiquarians were interested in the physical remnants of the past and studied both artifacts and text, often focusing on local history and publishing their findings with a detailed set of illustrations. They were particularly interested in Celtic and Early Christian art and their illustrations

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brought to light indigenous design, like interlace, knotwork, triskeles, spirals, zoomor­ phic figures, and pelters. According to David Brett, the Celtic Revival was grounded by the continued existence into the present of a decorative art considered “authenti­ cally national,” including illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, stone crosses, and Irish Romanesque churches, thereby legitimizing its later application to the nationalists’ cause as Ireland sought and achieved its independence.12 Many of the objects that form the basis of museum collections in Ireland can be credited to the work of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, whose aim was to “preserve and examine all ancient monuments and memorials of the arts, manners and customs of the past, as connected with the antiquities, language, literature and history of Ireland.”13 By the middle of the 19th century the Book of Kells, Ireland’s most revered example of medieval illumination, was on display in the Trinity College Library in Dub­ lin.14 The Book of Kells and other early illuminated manuscripts in the Celtic style gradu­ ally assumed an identity as a recognizably Irish material culture, thus providing a solid base upon which to build the argument for Irish cultural, and later, political nationalism. With this recognition, Ireland’s past became a means of asserting its contemporary artis­ tic potential, while preoccupations with defining an artistic identity led to an increased interest in the form, decoration, ornament, and allegory associated with the Book of Kells and other Irish objects of the same period. As early as 1857, the Irish nationalist Henry O’Neill said “the value of Irish art lies in the expression of a ‘national character’,” and since most of the antiquarians’ publi­ cations were illustrated, their drawings made the ornament and design of native Irish artifacts accessible to artists and designers alike.15 Working mainly from Dublin, the Irish antiquarians, which included Margaret Stokes (1832–1900), were active research­ ers who collected and presented the visual aspects of Ireland’s past culture to the public through their publications, illustrations, and lectures. George Petrie’s The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland (1845) and Stokes’ Early Christian Art in Ireland (1887) remain, to this day, two of the major publications on Ireland’s art and architecture; however, it is essential to note that from the beginning, this revival was not necessarily tied to politics, rather it stemmed from a genuine interest in the material remains of Ireland’s history. Marie Bourke has discussed Stokes’ important contributions to Irish cultural heritage as the most notable woman antiquary in this country of the 19th century. She wrote and illustrated two seminal books on early Christian architecture and art in Ireland, both of which were used as handbooks for ornament by Celtic Revival artists in the later years of the 19th century.16 Early Christian Art in Ireland, in particular, contains over one hundred woodcuts showing a vast array of Irish Medieval art, many of which formed the basis of the Royal Irish Academy and later the National Museum of Ireland collections. Stokes’ overall role in the revival was the promotion of Ireland’s past from the perspective of a historian, providing factual illustrations of objects from the Early Christian and medieval periods that showed Celtic ornament in intricate detail. Stokes’ facsimile of the Book of Kells for the title page of Samuel Ferguson’s 1861 poem The Cromlech on Howth, which itself drew inspiration from early Irish history and mythol­ ogy, contains strongly colored Celtic interlace and a decorative initial. Her near-perfect copy of Ireland’s most famous medieval manuscript is what many expect from the Celtic Revival, with her knowledge allowing for an intricate and authentic replication of these ornaments that conveyed Irishness through a historian’s exploration of the past. Thus, Stokes’ illustrations established a foundation upon which later Celtic Revival artists were able to build as they created objects for nationalistic purposes.

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Figure 3.1 Margaret Stokes, Title Page from Samuel Ferguson’s The Cromlech on Howth: A Poem, 1861 (London: Day). Royal Irish Academy, RR/66/N/4. Source: By permission of the Royal Irish Academy. Copyright: RIA, Dublin.

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Publications by Stokes and her contemporaries eventually led to the development of a native Irish design and the ornamentation found on these objects was replicated often, eventually gaining international popularity through consumerism and public display, for example, in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and in the work of the famous Belfast printing firm, Marcus Ward & Co. By using key styles and forms from these antiquarian drawings, Irish Celtic Revival artists were thus working to the idea expressed by McCarthy, Rolleston, Hyde, and their contemporaries that Irish art should be inextricably tied to Ireland’s past. Reviving the Past: A Political and Cultural Movement A century ago, the artistic side of the Celtic Revival was seen as a modern renaissance by some yet dismissed as a tasteless exploitation of medieval art by others. The latter belief seemingly prevailed in art historical literature for many decades following. However, even though 20th-century Irish artists who worked in more universal modern styles like Jack B. Yeats, John Lavery, Mainie Jellett, and Francis Bacon are recognized, they are often referenced within the context of the wider history of British art. Negative attitudes directed toward the quality of Celtic Revival art have left decorative artists and design­ ers such as John Vinycomb and Art O’Murnaghan virtually unknown outside of Ireland. There have been notable exceptions, for example, the stained-glass artist and illustrator Harry Clarke has been the subject of many recent studies and Sister Concepta Lynch’s work for the Sacred Heart Oratory in Dun Laoghaire has only recently been celebrated in detail.17 Yet even with this slowly growing recognition of individual artists working in Celtic Revival style, the movement itself is still ripe for reassessment. Unfortunately, Celtic art came to imply an outdated form of nationalism from the middle of the 20th century. Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch notes that the emphasis at the time was on establishing connections between Irish fine art painting and that of Europe with a shift from nationalism toward internationalism that led to negative assessments of the Celtic Revival in existing literature.18 S.B. Kennedy looks upon nationalism in the decora­ tive arts as being detrimental to the development of an Irish school of painting, describ­ ing the period as “inward looking,” while modernism is associated with the Renaissance in its “break with tradition” which “saw the forging of a new set of values and critical criteria.”19 However, viewing the Celtic Revival through the lens of romantic nationalism and its engagement with politics demonstrates the value in re-centering cultural revival­ ism and the Irish case study as an essential part of the art historical canon. Not all revivals entail a search for a national identity; however, the 19th century in Ireland saw several attempts to “restore a cultural identity through political freedom” and Ireland became greatly impacted by both its relationship with Great Britain and the influ­ ence and ramifications of international expansion and interaction.20 The Celtic Revival’s biggest impact was in literature, with the movement becoming known as the Irish Literary Renaissance, or the Celtic Twilight. The leaders of the literary arm believed that a dis­ tinctly national culture and literature, one that presented the country for its people using ancient heroes and folk imagery, was an essential part of Irish nationality. The writer George “AE” Russell wrote extensively on asserting Ireland’s national spirit, arguing that for Ireland to establish its identity in the new modern world, its art, language, and litera­ ture ought to be taken from its own past, its own people, and its own land. He argued that drawing these once real, living, and historical antiquities and traditions back from memory imbued them with a symbolic character and “as symbol, are more potent than history.”21

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The Celtic Revival: National Art Versus Nationalist Tool While language and literature were more easily associated with Ireland’s golden past, art was a completely different matter. Initially, and continuing well into the 20th century, Ireland was depicted in art by recognizably national symbols and idealized landscapes of the west of the country, which remained rural and seemingly untouched by outside influence (though it was devastated by the Great Irish Famine, the cause of which can be attributed to the British).22 Ireland had no distinct Irish art style; rather, national subjects were depicted following continental trends of Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism and, eventually, a variety of Modernist styles. In the 19th century, most works of art associated with the Celtic Revival were not overtly or intentionally political in nature, despite being national expressions of Irish identity. The Celtic Revival was especially prevalent in commercial art in the early years and although there remained some insistence on authenticity when it came to the revival of past art forms and motifs, there developed a more creative twist when applied to modern usage. John Vinycomb (1833–1928), the most influential illuminator and heral­ dic artist in turn-of-the-century Belfast and art director for the printing and publishing firm Marcus Ward & Co., made illumination relevant to 19th-century circumstances by developing it from a decorative, mainly ecclesiastical art into a practical commercial art in the form of the illuminated address. Illuminated addresses and their containers, which contained ornament from Irish medieval manuscripts and Irish iconography, became expressions of Belfast’s civic identity, as well as of a larger national pride in Ireland and even, to an extent, the United Kingdom, with Marcus Ward & Co. serving as the official illuminators to Queen Victoria. Vinycomb’s designs were authentically Irish in character, clearly inspired by Celtic art and including decorative initials and interlace borders alongside flowering shamrocks and bright, jewel-like colors. However, his design for the casket to hold an illuminated address to the Earl of Shaftesbury is more an adaptation of Celtic ornament than what we see from Stokes. Rather than copying an existing artifact, Vinycomb’s design is inspired by medieval reliquaries but clearly transformed for modern usage. Vinycomb’s revival of illumination and heraldry are a combination of authenticity and originality, particularly his coat of arms for the city of Belfast and use of both Renaissance and Celtic interlace and initial letters in his illuminated addresses. Though inherently Irish in style and form, Vinycomb’s work was not created for nationalistic purposes, providing evidence that the Celtic Revival could be culturally important and an outward expression of Irishness without a clear political agenda. Celtic Revival art did not become a truly political and nationalistic tool until after 1916, when it transformed from capturing a picture of the past to applying it to political purposes – adapting the art from a golden age to legitimize the identity of a new nation. Working in Dublin within the context of a newly independent Ireland, Art O’Murnaghan’s (1872–1954) work took inspiration from the past alongside current trends in modern design to create a kind of Neo-Celtic art, reviving “the glorious skills of the early Irish illuminators” and combining elements from Art Nouveau and Art Deco. O’Murnaghan created several works driven by political nationalism, namely the Leabhar na hAiséir­ ghe (Book of Resurrection), which was completed in several stages from 1924 to 1951. However, while O’Murnaghan’s decorative scheme had roots in Celtic art and used the language of Kells, namely its calligraphic script, interlaced borders, and stylized figures, he did not merely copy the medieval manuscripts. Instead, as evidenced in his Éire page,

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Figure 3.2 John Vinycomb, Oxidized Silver Shrine Casket to contain Illuminated Address to the Earl of Shaftesbury, 1890, pen and ink with crayon and wash on paper, 67 × 83 cm. Ulster Museum, BELUM.W2012.716. Source: By permission of National Museums Northern Ireland. Copyright: National Museums Northern Ire­ land, Ulster Museum Collection, Belfast.

early Celtic Revival works served as a starting point for O’Murnaghan to create an art both recognizably drawn from the past and perfectly reflective of Ireland’s nationalist political identity.23 Conclusion After 1916, the cultural nationalism that had characterized the Celtic Revival became the face of political nationalism. State-commissioned art, such as memorials and commemo­ rative metalwork, developed as a means of reconstructing a national history. Returning to a specific version of Ireland’s ancient past legitimized a distinctly indigenous identity that embodied the belief, as expressed by the cultural revivalist and musicologist Herbert Hughes in 1905, that “[t]rue inspiration must be drawn from the soil.”24 Celtic Revival artists wholly embraced this idea, using symbols and decorative elements from past arti­ facts alongside other more contemporary, yet still identifiably Irish iconography, such as the shamrock and the harp, to construct an artistic identity that was both distinctly local and inextricably linked to the period, fully engaging with contemporary political circumstances. Alongside O’Murnaghan’s work, Mia Cranwill’s metal casket to hold the vellum scroll containing the names of the First Senate following the formation of the Irish Free State

Art and Revival in Ireland, 1830–1930

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Figure 3.3 Art O’Murnaghan, Éire Page from Leabhar na hAiséirghe (Book of Resurrection), 1922, lithographic print, 33 × 28 cm. National Library of Ireland, PD 4550 TX. Source: By permission of the National Library of Ireland. Courtesy National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

in 1922 fully embraced the revival as essential in creating an inherently Irish art. Alice Stopford Green, a senator as well as historian, said that Cranwill’s casket “carr[ied] in it the faith both of the Old Irish world and of the New,” representing a kind of “spiritual inheritance” in line with the insistence by Hyde, Hughes, and Russell that inspiration for an Irish art should come from Ireland’s past. Cranwill wrote extensively on the meaning behind her work, likening her maker’s mark beneath the feet of a crane, itself a represen­ tation of Green, to “Patronage introducing Art to the people,” with she herself gifting “Art to the nation.”25 As Jeanne Sheehy and Nicola Gordon Bowe have argued in their

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Figure 3.4 Art O’Murnaghan, Éire Page, Designs for Celtic Symbols (with handwritten annota­ tions), 1922, ink on paper, 42.4 × 28.8 cm. National Library of Ireland, PD 4106 TX. Source: By permission of the National Library of Ireland. Courtesy National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

Art and Revival in Ireland, 1830–1930

53

seminal texts on the period, though the revival of Celtic ornament can be first credited to the antiquarians, it was carried into the 20th century by the nationalists. Focusing on the Celtic Revival and the peripheral treatment of Irish art history con­ tributes to larger contemporary discussions about the concept of returning to an invented “golden age” as a means of proclaiming present greatness, arguing in favor of the need to include these fundamental cultural revivals within the modern art canon. In determining which past to revive, questions arise around who decides what to revive and for whom the art is created. Within the wider context of postcolonialism, artistic and cultural reviv­ als, both in Ireland and elsewhere, were not regressions, nor were they merely concerned with looking to the past for inspiration. Rather, these revival movements can be viewed as forward-looking attempts at rebuilding from within in the aftermath of colonial rule, using recognizable styles and symbols from the indigenous past to assert the identity of that nation. Despite the impact of the Celtic Revival on the formation of Irish identity at a key point in Ireland’s national history, the art and material culture created during this period still exist on the boundaries of Irish art history, especially that of Northern Ireland, with much of the history of Irish art itself marginalized from the modern art canon. While it was generally believed that the revival of ancient Irish culture could help create a strong national identity, others argued against the overuse of early Irish symbols and ornament. The Irish case study has ramifications for other cultural revivalist movements that occurred as part of the decolonization process within other nations later in the 20th cen­ tury. Though framed within this European movement, within the postcolonial context there is an additional tie-in to other revivalist movements in other colonized nations, such as Africa and Latin America. As in Ireland during the colonial period, indigenous cultural identity was viewed as something negative that eventually served as both a rallying point and base upon which to establish national unity in the lead-up to independence. As a result, there is a real value in including 19th- and early-20th-century Irish art within the wider art history canon. The Irish example shows that a country trying to establish its identity as an independent nation could not fully reject its rich past in favor of an interna­ tional artistic movement, nor could they reject external influences and still hope to hold a place in the international art world. Notes 1. Paul Larmour, The Arts and Crafts Movement in Ireland (Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1992), 126. 2. Journal for the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland, no. 3 (1901): 232. 3. Officially called “An Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland,” the 1800 Acts of Union saw Great Britain (including England, Scotland, and Wales) and Ireland unite to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. While the Republic of Ireland regained its inde­ pendence in 1922 following the signing of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Acts of Union remained in force between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 4. The Scottish Celtic Revival has been explored recently in Frances Fowle, “Celticism, Interna­ tionalism and Scottish Identity,” in European Revivals: From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange, Anna-Maria Von Bonsdorff and Riitta Ojanpera, eds. (Helsinki: FNG Research, 2020), 49–64 and Michael Shaw, The Fin-de-Siècle Scottish Revival: Romance, Decadence, and Celtic Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), while Car­ lotta Falzone Robinson delved into the Manx Celtic Revival in her unpublished PhD thesis, Archibald Knox and Modern Celtic Design (Riverside, CA: University of California Riverside, 2021). 5. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 1.

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6. E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 10, 104. 7. E.J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1983). 8. Douglas Hyde, “On the Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland,” in The Revival of Irish Litera­ ture and Other Addresses, Charles Gavan Duffy, George Sigerson, and Douglas Hyde, eds. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1894), 159. 9. Nicola Gordon Bowe, “National Romanticism: Vernacular Expression in Turn-of-the-Century Design,” in Art and the National Dream: A Search for Vernacular Expression in Turn-of-theCentury Design (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), 7–14. 10. Marguerite Helmers and Kayla Rose, “The Spirit of Ireland’s Past: Illumination, Ornament, and National Identity in Public Art,” in The Arts and Crafts Movement: Making It Irish, Vera Kreilkamp, ed. (Boston, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2016), 27. 11. Colum Hourihane, Gothic Art in Ireland, 1169–1550: Enduring Vitality (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 139. 12. David Brett, The Construction of Heritage (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996), 28. 13. Aideen Ireland, “The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 1849–1900,”  Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 112 (1982): 72–92. 14. “Book of Kells,” Digital Collections, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, https://doi. org/10.48495/hm50tr726 (accessed May 15, 2022). 15. Henry O’Neill, Illustrations of the Most Interesting of the Sculptured Crosses of Ancient Ire­ land (Dublin, 1857), i. See also his political pamphlet Ireland for the Irish: A Practical, Peace­ able, and Just Solution of the Irish Land Question (London, 1868). 16. Marie Bourke, “Margaret Stokes,” Archaeology Ireland 34, no. 2 (2020): 35–38. 17. Nicola Gordon Bowe, Harry Clarke: The Life and Work (Cheltenham: The History Press Ltd., 2012); Angela Griffith, Marguerite Helmers, and Róisín Kennedy, eds., Harry Clarke and Artistic Visions of the New Irish State (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2018); Marguerite Helm­ ers, Harry Clarke’s War: Illustrations for Ireland’s Memorial Records 1914–1918 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2015); and David Gunning, Nigel Curtin, and Marian Thérèse Keyes, eds., Divine Illumination: The Oratory of the Sacred Heart, Dún Laoghaire (Dublin: New Island Books, 2019). 18. Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, “Sister Concepta Lynch OP (1874–1939): A Unique Contribution to Irish Art,” in Familiar But Unknown – Irish Women Artists, Éiméar O’Connor, ed. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), 119. 19. S.B. Kennedy, Irish Art and Modernism, 1880–1950 (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, 1991), 3–4. 20. Hourihane, Gothic Art in Ireland, 140. 21. George ‘AE’ Russell, “Nationality or Cosmopolitanism,” in Imaginations and Reveries (Lon­ don: Maunsel, 1899), www.gutenberg.org/files/8105/8105-h/8105-h.htm#link2H_4_0012. 22. Nicola Gordon Bowe, “National Romanticism: Vernacular Expression in Turn-of-the-Century Design,” in Art and the National Dream: A Search for Vernacular Expression in Turn-of-theCentury Design (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), 7–14 and Jeanne Sheehy, The Redis­ covery of Ireland’s Past: The Celtic Revival, 1830–1930 (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1980), 9. 23. Kayla Rose, A Closer Look at Inspiring Ireland 1916: Art O’Murnaghan’s Leabhar na hAiséirghe (The Book of Resurrection) (Dublin: Digital Repository of Ireland, 2016), https://inspiring-ireland. ie/art-omurnaghans-leabhar-na-haiséirighe-book-of-resurrection. 24. Herbert Hughes, “The Celtic Leit-motif,” Uladh 1, no. 2 (1905): 16, https://digital-library.qub. ac.uk/digital/collection/p15979coll13/id/48. 25. Senator Alice Stopford Green’s Speech Upon Acceptance of the First Irish Free State Senate Casket, Journal Proceedings of the Irish Senate (1924): 297–299. Mia Cranwill’s Senate Casket has been held by the Royal Irish Academy since 1936, www.ria.ie/senate-casket.

Bibliography Bhreathnach-Lynch, Síghle. “Sister Concepta Lynch OP (1874–1939): A Unique Contribution to Irish Art.” In Familiar but Unknown – Irish Women Artists, edited by Éiméar O’Connor. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010.

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Bourke, Marie. “Margaret Stokes.” Archaeology Ireland 34, no. 2 (2020): 35–38.

Bowe, Nicola Gordon. Art and the National Dream: A Search for Vernacular Expression in Turn­ of-the-Century Design. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993. Brett, David. The Construction of Heritage. Cork: Cork University Press, 1996. Fowle, Frances. “Celticism, Internationalism and Scottish Identity.” In European Revivals: From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange, edited by Anna-Maria Von Bonsdorff and Riitta Ojanpera, 49–64. Helsinki: FNG Research, 2020. Available from: https://research. fng.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/fngr_2020-1_er_04_fowle.pdf. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Helmers, Marguerite and Kayla Rose. “The Spirit of Ireland’s Past: Illumination, Ornament, and National Identity in Public Art.” In The Arts and Crafts Movement: Making it Irish, edited by Vera Kreilkamp, 27–44. Boston, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2016. Hobsbawm, E.J. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Hobsbawm, E.J. and Terence Ranger. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 1983. Hourihane, Colum. Gothic Art in Ireland, 1169–1550: Enduring Vitality. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2003. Hyde, Douglas. “On the Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland.” In The Revival of Irish Literature and Other Addresses, edited by Charles Gavan Duffy, George Sigerson, and Douglas Hyde. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1894. Ireland, Aideen. “The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 1849–1900.” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 112 (1982): 72–92. Kennedy, S.B. Irish Art and Modernism, 1880–1950. Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, 1991. Larmour, Paul. The Arts and Crafts Movement in Ireland. Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1992. O’Neill, Henry. Illustrations of the Most Interesting of the Sculptured Crosses of Ancient Ireland. London: Trubner & Company, 1857. Rose, Kayla. “A Closer Look at Inspiring Ireland 1916: “Art O’Murnaghan’s Leabhar na hAiséir­ ghe (The Book of Resurrection).” Dublin: Digital Repository of Ireland, 2016. Available from: https://inspiring-ireland.ie/art-omurnaghans-leabhar-na-haiséirighe-book-of-resurrection. Russell, George ‘AE’. “Nationality or Cosmopolitanism.” In Imaginations and Reveries. London: Maunsel, 1899. Shaw, Michael. The Fin-de-Siècle Scottish Revival: Romance, Decadence, and Celtic Identity. Edin­ burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Sheehy, Jeanne. The Rediscovery of Ireland’s Past: The Celtic Revival 1830–1930. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1980. Trinity College Dublin. “Book of Kells.” In Digital Collections. The Library of Trinity College Dublin. Accessed May 15, 2022. https://doi.org/10.48495/hm50tr726.

4

The “Marbelous” Movement 1871–1922 Victorian England Alexander Kusztyk

Since antiquity faux marbling has appeared in countless decorative contexts across Europe including instances within the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (14th century), the Palace of Versailles (17th–19th centuries), and the Swedish Palace of Drottningholm (17th–18th centuries). Although some of art history’s greatest exponents such as Giotto and Raphael were themselves adept marblers, the prejudice of high art elitism has histori­ cally marginalized the art of marbling, regarding it as an imitative artisanal trade. John Ruskin, for one, wrote that “the most ignorant beginner” of landscape painting has “as much intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has in marbling a wainscot.”1 Sig­ nificant pioneering efforts were nevertheless made in 19th-century Britain under the aegis of the Worshipful Company of Painters-Stainers to support and promote the profession of graining and marbling. Traveling scholarships were awarded to students from 1880 at the West London School of Art. The first school of “Technical Instruction for paint­ ers and other tradesmen” was established in 1894 on Great Tichfield Street in London. Additionally, the Institute of British Decorators was formed in 1897.2 These educational opportunities sprang from an already growing national enthusiasm for the art of mar­ bling, which was particularly stoked by the popularity of Thomas Kershaw, an interna­ tionally celebrated Victorian practitioner. Considered the “Prince of Grainers and Marblers,” Kershaw won medals at the Lon­ don Great Exhibition of 1851, the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855, and the London International Exhibition of 1862 for his marbled panels. His talents led to many impor­ tant and lucrative commissions including marbling the Emperor’s Room at Buckingham Palace, the Coffee Room of the Great Western Hotel at Paddington Station, as well as rooms at Dorchester House in London and Osborne House on the Isle of Wright. The Russian Ambassador had even invited Kershaw to marble the interior of St. Petersburg’s Imperial Palace after admiring his work displayed at the 1851 Great Exhibition, though the artist declined this offer. In the latter years of his immensely successful career, Kershaw proudly wrote, “I never studied another man’s work or his method of working. I went direct to nature. She has been my only schoolmaster . . . in the shape of woods and marbles this side of Heaven or the other place.”3 Exploring his subject exclusively at its material source guided the artist to visually redefine bland woods and stones. Pigments became silicates, brushstrokes became veins, varnish became shimmer, and thus, Kershaw’s marble was born. As such, his art did not merely reproduce but had the capacity to create marble. It was a material genesis that, although inherently an epidermic layer of deceit, commu­ nicated a visual identity by reconceiving the art of nature. Although Kershaw was by no means the sole precursor of the Marbelous Movement, his famous faux marbles may in some measure be seen as a prelude to the subsequent Victorian mania for marble painting. DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-7

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Marble-Tadema Marbelous was a popular pun coined in 1881 by the magazine Punch to reference Sir Law­ rence Alma-Tadema’s Sappho and Alcaeus, a painting that features a stunning expanse of white marble almost at the expense of the figures.4 Later in 1886, Punch would again employ the term to describe Alma-Tadema’s An Apodyterium (see Figure 4.1).5 This painting imaginatively reconstructs the undressing room of an ancient Roman public bath. As the title suggests, the artist depicts two women disrobing in a chamber punctuated by cubicles in which bath-goers could deposit their clothing and other belong­ ings. The nearest woman, possibly modeled by Alma-Tadema’s wife, gazes calmly at the viewer as she loosens the gold-colored ribbon girdling her tunica. The other woman is already nude, save for her silver footwear that she unties whilst seated on a low marble bench. Beyond this apodyterium scene lies an anteroom with a number of bathers transi­ tioning to the tepidarium or frigidarium, as well as a distant atrium rimmed with fluted Corinthian columns and Roman Third Style wall paintings. Critics at the time praised this composition for its archaeological authenticity, but more importantly, were stunned by the painter’s expert articulation of marble. Following its successful debut in London, An Apodyterium was shipped to Australia for display at the 1888–1889 Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne, where one writer would quip that viewers “doubted that the marble pavement . . . is merely

Figure 4.1 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, An Apodyterium, opus CCLXXIV, 1886, 45 × 61 cm, oil on panel, private collection. Source: Artefact/Alamy Stock Photo.

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colour on canvas.”6 The entire composition indeed appears to glow with lithological specificity, as Alma-Tadema paints at least three convincingly distinct marbles treated to variable lighting and surface effects. Divided, the foreground stands out as a battle­ ground for attention between the marbles and undressing figures. The pavement is com­ posed of marbles brilliantly white and warmly veined accompanied by a vibrant course of speckled green and grey verde antico (ancient green serpentinite breccia). Serving as a compositional response to the richly clothed woman, the verde antico is perhaps the most visually alluring among the depicted marbles as it captures rather than guides the eye to the anteroom beyond. A sheen highlighting the marble step’s bullnose and the general luminosity of the Carrara further enlivens the material’s presence within the space. Also noteworthy is Alma-Tadema’s command of marble’s inevitable discoloration caused by environmental moisture and dirt, which can be observed in the browns and greys realisti­ cally accentuating the joins of the paneling along the walls. This picture certainly earns its marbelous praise, and it is of no surprise that Punch would playfully suggest that AlmaTadema “should be made a K.C.M.B., or Knight of the Cool Marble Bath.” An Apodyterium is in fact only one among nearly one hundred paintings by AlmaTadema that we may term marbelous. The story of the artist’s interest in marble goes back to 1863, when he and his first wife journeyed to Italy for their honeymoon. While in Rome, he painted an interior view of San Clemente al Laterano, privileging both the church’s apse mosaic and famous Cosmatesque floor composed of numerous ancient stones including Spartan serpentine, imperial porphyry, and giallo antico (antique yel­ low marble). Later in Pompeii he meticulously studied ancient art and architecture, as seen for example in an often cited photograph in the Birmingham University’s Cadbury Research Library that documents the artist carefully measuring the First Style faux-marble stuccowork within the House of Sallust. It has been suggested that this 1863 visit helped arouse Alma-Tadema’s interest in the art of painting marble and would ignite a careerlong study of “marble in every form, type and condition: glistening buildings and carefully worked marble statues, Pentelic and Carrara marbles, marble still in the quarry and the weather-beaten marble of ancient tombs.”7 This trip directly inspired what has become known as the artist’s “Pompeian Period” (1865–1870), which was dominated by ancient domestic scenes set within archaeologically informed interiors adorned with Roman-style wall paintings and marble columns. Critics like John Ruskin found the depicted marbles from this period plagued by an undesirable “superficial lustre and veining” at the expense of their “translucency and glow,” which was “seen, not in the strength of southern sun, but in the cool twilight of luxurious chambers.”8 In 1871 Alma-Tadema moved to Townshend House in London, where, as Edmund Grosse would write, “a great improvement in the colour . . . was noticeable at once, and from this time he threw off the last remains of his conventional Belgian tones.”9 Improv­ ing substantially then as well was his marble, which soon boasted greater lithological complexity and a range of surface effects better attuned to the peculiarities of their envi­ ronmental surrounds. As the decade progressed, marble would take center stage and his reputation as the “Artist in Marble” consequently grew among his contemporaries.10 In 1879 Alma-Tadema proudly wrote that “Marble will remain the main subject!” of his paintings.11 Perhaps best illustrating the material’s meteoric rise to prominence are a pair of paintings titled, An Audience of Agrippa’s (1875) and After the Audience (1879). The first painting is predominantly white marble while the second introduces a slab of giallo antico as well as a marble floor accented with imperial porphyry. In both works, Roman general and statesman Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (ca. 63 BCE–12 BCE) and his

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large retinue travel through a Carrara marble archway that frames an atrium beyond with gleaming cipollino marble columns. To the right of the arch stands the imposing Augustus of Prima Porta, a Parian marble statue carved ca. 15 AD and discovered during the 1863 excavation at the Villa of Livia. Alma-Tadema precisely renders the folds of the military dress, articulated limbs, and particularities of the emperor’s visage, all the while ensuring that the statue’s white Parian marble remains visually distinct from the arch­ way’s white Carrara marble. This statue’s clear projection of power leads one to recall the famous material boast of Augustus, who, as history tells us, brought dignity and beauty to a Rome of brick by recasting the city in marble (Suetonius, Augustus, 28.3). When considered within the larger marble-rich composition, this sculpture becomes an example of Parian marble and thereby allows for a visual comparison with the Carrara, giallo, and verde antico marbles also included in Alma-Tadema’s work. From the 1880s until his death in 1912, his paintings became less archaeologically specific and tended toward sunny outdoor scenes with figures lazing along white marble exedras and terraces sparkling above the Mediterranean Sea. Though these later works rarely featured polychromatic marbles, they were undeniably marbelous. Take, for exam­ ple, Alma-Tadema’s Women of Amphissa, a painting completed in 1887 that depicts a mid-4th-century BC historical event in which a Dionysian group of Delphic women known as the Thyiades waken in the foreign Amphissian agora after a fatiguing night of frenzying in the Phocian countryside (Plutarch, Moralia, 249E-F). Flushed faces have turned pale, lips are no longer purpled with spilt wine and leopard skins now serve as bedding to soften the hard marble floor. Carrara marble is employed throughout the agora: it shimmers beneath the drowsy Thyiades, flickers along the fluted Doric order colonnade, and gently glows from the far building crowned with 5th-century BC metopes derived from Temple E at Selinunte.12 One critic viewing the work at the 1887 Royal Academy Exhibition in London praised the artist for “resisting the temptation to revel in brilliant colour,” noting that the Thyiades are “left powerless now that the frenzy, against which to strive is vain, has died away.”13 More recently, Rosemary Barrow would find that “the pale tones of marble, skin and drapery are chosen to complement a clear and cool early morning light.”14 Such impressions seem to recall the duality of ancient Dionysian expression where cult practice, among other aspects, contains the “fire” of frenzy as well as the peaceful “dew” of the following morning.15 The garish colors of the ancients that the artist knew and boldly displayed in his controversial Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends (1868) fade into the secret bacchic night past as the Thyiades rise with the pale morning rays. To Challenge Alma-Tadema “on His Own Ground” While the staggering quantity and success of Alma-Tadema’s marbelous works would place him largely in a league of his own, several painters by the 1880s had begun incor­ porating the fashionable material into their visual narratives. By the century’s end, com­ mentators would often write phrases such as “Alma-Tadema has a host of imitators” and his “followers in England form a long procession.”16 There is little hope of wading through the many derivative painters and paintings à la Alma-Tadema in this brief space. Rather, the remainder of this chapter will focus on a select few artists who, after an inevi­ table period under the “Marble-Tadema” influence, found their own voices and pushed the Marbelous Movement forward. The earliest and perhaps most distinguished among these is Sir Edward John Poynter.

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Though nowhere near as prolific as Alma-Tadema, Poynter painted around a dozen marbelous works from the late 1870s to the mid-1890s that enjoyed critical praise for their exhibition of technical skill and artistic vision. Poynter served as Univer­ sity College London’s first Slade Professor from 1871 to 1875 and then as the South Kensington National Art Training School’s director until 1881. He was the director of the London National Gallery from 1894 to 1904 and the President of the Royal Academy of Arts from 1896 to 1918. In addition to his prestigious posts were honors and accolades including a knighthood in 1898 and a baronetcy in 1902. Considering these remarkable accomplishments during his life, it is surprising that Poynter’s art and intellect has aroused so little scholarly interest following his death in 1919. We are left with biographical accounts written by the artist’s contemporaries as well as brief and mostly unfavorable commentaries penned by art historians. It is the present author’s hope that the future will hold fresh and fair assessments of this undeniably gifted painter of marble. The magic of Poynter’s work lies chiefly in his ability to unite “human flesh and mar­ ble,” which, as one early biographer would put it, “may be said to be the primary motives of nearly all of” his classical narrative paintings.17 Perhaps the most captivating expres­ sion of this sort is found in his Ides of March (see Figure 4.2). Painted in 1883, this dramatic work illustrates the familiar tale of Julius Caesar and Calpurnia beholding the ill-omened comet’s glare in the night sky before the dictator’s brutal assassination (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene II). The two fig­ ures face away from the viewer and are enveloped in deep shadow while the polished marble revetments, sectile floor, and columns glow and shine to the dancing flame of a single lamp. With highly reflective surfaces and well-defined swirls and veins emphasized by strong lighting effects, Poynter gives a visual prominence to the colorful marbles at the expense of the painting’s principal figures, whose small and silhouetted forms seemingly melt into the formidable darkness. Perhaps most intriguing is Poynter’s handling of the ominous sky beyond this marbelous loggia. Framed by two columns, the white streak of the comet cuts across the gray cloudy sky like a white vein through a slab of breccia marble. The complete effect would lead critics to find that it “is a veritable tour de force of realism and careful strength” and “not unsuccessfully challenges Mr. Tadema on his own ground.”18 Poynter would receive even greater praise with The Ionian Dance (1895). Mirror­ ing Poynter’s own disappearance from academic discourse, this painting was last seen in 1915 before briefly reappearing at a Bonhams auction in 2013. Known for nearly a century by only a wood engraving by Robert Paterson that was unable to convey the rich coloring due to the limits of the medium,19 its return to the public spotlight as a color digital image led to a renewed, albeit fleeting interest in the artist. The Ionian Dance is certainly one of Poynter’s finest and impressively marbelous works. The painting’s subject was drawn from Horace’s Odes (3.6.21–22) in which a Roman virgin learns the steps of an Ionian dance from a Grecian exile. Poynter’s elaborate vision of this scene features a girl in a gauzy pink dress dancing before a Roman audience to a tune piped by a double aulos player. Her feet trace a graceful path along the tessellated marble floor of boldly veined Pavonazzo marble, red and green porphyry, giallo antico and rosa (pink) mar­ ble. Columns of Egyptian alabaster and cipollino verde (wavy green and white) marble, paneled wall decoration of Albarese alabaster, and a semi-circular white marble bench of Proconnesian marble together round out the marbelous setting. Critics were rightly mesmerized at the harmonious display of flesh and stone, finding “the texture of flesh,

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Figure 4.2 Sir John Edward Poynter, The Ides of March, 1883, 153 × 112.6 cm, oil on canvas. Source: Manchester Art Gallery/Bridgeman Images.

drapery, and marble is as distinguished as the balance of the composition,” though one would inevitably write that it “almost equals Mr. Tadema’s.”20 No matter how inventive, for Poynter, it seems there would always be that one critic who would, justly or unjustly, make such a comparison.

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The Marbler Artist A unique union of marbling and figurative painting is found within the artistic produc­ tion of John William Godward. Born in 1861 in southwest London, Godward was the eldest son of a respectable middle-class family of seven. Though from an early age he had displayed a degree of artistic aptitude, he initially followed his father as an insur­ ance clerk working for the Law Life Assurance Society on Fleet Street. He did not take to this profession, however, and from 1879 to 1881 received his first informal artistic instruction from architect and family acquaintance, William Hoff Wontner. This was a particularly formative period for Godward as it introduced the art of rendering architec­ ture in perspective as well as painting faux wood graining and marble veining. Studying alongside Godward at this time was William Clarke Wontner, the son of William Hoff. Following his father’s death in 1881, Wontner inherited the role of Godward’s instructor, as he was over four years older and at the time more advanced in his artistic training. Godward eventually surpassed his friend both creatively and artistically and, as some have suggested, “influenced” Wontner’s later artistic production.21 Godward’s earliest oils reveal dabbling experiments with landscape, portraiture, and history painting, but by 1886 the artist began to introduce his marbling proficiency into his compositions. From around this time until his death in 1922, Godward executed a number of bust-length portraits of lone female figures situated against unbroken marble backgrounds. These works are perhaps his clearest examples of the marbler within the artist, as their immaculately finished surfaces enlivened with the mineral impurities of marbled stone are arranged in vertical format like Thomas Kershaw’s aforementioned panels. Godward’s obsessive specificity of surface establishes the marble within the paint, encouraging the viewer to accept the stone as real and perhaps even question the pres­ ence of the “ideal head” before the slab. This phenomenon may be noted in works with generically “classical” titles such as An Italian Girl’s Head (1902), A Classical Beauty (1909), and A Roman Beauty (1912). In these paintings, both the shadows rounding the sitters’ forms and their cast shadows, seemingly detach the flesh, hair, and crinkly diapha­ nous fabrics from the veins and colors of their marbled panel backgrounds. Casting marble as an active presence rather than a mere object within another story is a hallmark of the Marbelous Movement. Although Godward achieved this perhaps more than any other artist, critics would consistently lower his work to “being of the Alma Tadema style, with plenty of marble and a beautiful girl.”22 But in truth, God­ ward’s mature works are profound essays of material consciousness and are perhaps more sophisticated in their lithological articulations than even Alma-Tadema’s most notable paintings. Among his greatest works to showcase marble as the visual protago­ nist of the composition is Godward’s A Fair Reflection (see Figure 4.3). Painted in 1915 when the artist was in Italy, this work depicts a three-quarter-length portrait of a woman in profile adjusting her hair within an extravagant marble setting. The title of this paint­ ing urges the eye to examine the silver mirror on a rosa marble console table. There, one is surprised to find the mirror disk reflecting the marble wall rather than the woman’s face. By placing this mirror at just the right angle, Godward ensures the breccia, not the woman, is the subject to reflect upon. The fair marble reflections do not stop here, for the red marble dado rail is also reflected onto the table’s edge. Even more stunning is the Nuvolato Etrusco (a gold and pearl colored marble from Tuscany) dado’s reflection on the red marble bracket supporting the table. This effect creates an intriguing mingling of the two highly specific marbles. It is indeed ironic that none of these polished or mirrored

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Figure 4.3 John William Godward, A Fair Reflection, 1915, 116.8 × 80 cm, oil on canvas, private collection. Source: HIP, Art Resource.

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surfaces even remotely reflect the woman’s face or figure. Godward’s painting thereby not only privileges the display of five visually different and lithologically specific marbles, but most importantly, places the figure in a peripheral role to the narrative of reflected marble. *** The marbelous Victorians fell spectacularly out of fashion as the 20th century developed, for artists were becoming increasingly interested in the media and means of representa­ tion rather than what was being represented. The repetitive sameness of their paintings, however skillfully crafted, inevitably failed to impress a rapidly changing art world eager for innovation and imagination. Not long after Alma-Tadema’s death in 1912, Roger Fry accused the artist of a “dead mechanical evenness,” a mass-produced marble antiquity of “highly-scented soap.”23 In 1918 Poynter resigned as the Royal Academy’s president following widespread criticism that “He stood out bitterly against reform of any kind” and “his art had become very repetitive.”24 The movement, finally, met its bitter end in 1922 with Godward’s tragic suicide. Godward had deeply resented the rise of Picasso and his suicide note perhaps best captures the collective lament of the old guard: “the world is not big enough for myself and a Picasso.”25 Although this may serve as an endpoint for the traditionally Classic and Academic expressions of marble discussed within this chapter, it marks a significant rebirth of marble depictions in art history. Sifting through the ashes, one can indeed uncover a marbling phoenix rising ironically in paintings by Picasso and his close friend, Georges Braque. Braque was born into a family of house painters and from an early age had learned the art of faux marbling and wood grain­ ing. In a fascinating twist after initially rejecting his family’s trade for new art forms, Braque began to revisit marbling during his and Picasso’s experimentations with Synthetic Cubism in 1912. In subsequent decades, marble renderings would become more abstract and non­ representational, as seen for example in works by Henri Matisse (Still Life with a Marble Table, 1941) and Dame Barbara Hepworth (Two Marble Forms – Mykonos, 1969). Artists such as Yoko Ono and Xie Rong have since explored the visual and physical limits of mar­ bling in their conceptual and performance art pieces.26 While these 20th- and 21st-century instances of marbling toward dematerialization are admittedly beyond the scope of this chapter, it may be said that the marbelous lives on in global modern and contemporary art. Links to Images Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends, opus LX, 1868, 72 × 110.5 cm, oil on panel, Birmingham Museums Trust: www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/explore-art/items/1923P118/pheidias-and-the­ frieze-of-the-parthenon Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, After the Audience, opus CXCVI, 1879, 91.4 × 66 cm, oil on panel, private collection: www.artrenewal.org/artworks/after-the-audience/lawrence­ alma-tadema/73 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sappho and Alcaeus, opus CCXXII, 1881, 66 × 122 cm, oil on panel, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore: https://art.thewalters.org/detail/10245/ sappho-and-alcaeus/ Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Women of Amphissa, opus CCLXXVIII, 1887, 121.8 × 182.8  cm, oil on canvas, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown: www.clarkart.edu/ artpiece/detail/the-women-of-amphissa

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Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, A Priestess of Apollo, ca. 1891, 34.9 × 29.8 cm, oil on can­ vas, Tate Gallery, London: www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/alma-tadema-a-priestess-of­ apollo-n04949 John William Godward, Mischief and Repose, 1895, 60.6 × 133  cm, oil on canvas, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles: www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/690/ john-william-godward-mischief-and-repose-british-1895 John William Godward, A Classical Beauty, 1909, 35.6 × 30.5 cm, oil on canvas, private collection: www.artrenewal.org/artworks/a-classical-beauty/john-william-godward/ 11660 John William Godward, Contemplation, 1922, 76 × 39.4 cm, oil on canvas, private col­ lection: www.artrenewal.org/artworks/contemplation/john-william-godward/11084 Thomas Kershaw, Graining and marbling specimen panels, ca. 1860: www.flickr.com/ photos/carltonhobbsllc/4482406297/ Sir John Edward Poynter, Corner of the Marketplace, 1887, 53 × 53 cm, oil on canvas, private collection: www.artrenewal.org/artworks/corner-of-the-marketplace/edward-john­ poynter/47541 Sir John Edward Poynter, The Ionian Dance, 1895, 38.5 × 51 cm, oil on canvas, private col­ lection: www.artrenewal.org/artworks/the-ionian-dance/edward-john-poynter/42849 Sir Edward John Poynter, Zenobia Captive, 1878, 72 × 54.5 cm, oil on canvas, private collection: www.artrenewal.org/Artwork/Index/47540 John William Waterhouse, Diogenes, 1882, 208.3 × 134.6 cm, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/720 William Clarke Wontner, The Turquoise Necklace, 1914, 127 × 49.5  cm, oil on can­ vas, private collection: www.artrenewal.org/artworks/the-turquoise-necklace/william­ clarke-wontner/62606 William Clarke Wontner, Valeria, 1916, 63.5 × 53.5 cm, oil on canvas, private collection: www.artrenewal.org/artworks/valeria/william-clarke-wontner/17670

Notes 1. John Ruskin, Modern Painters: Their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, vol. 1 (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1843), 393; see also Arthur Seymour Jennings and Guy Cadogan Rothery, The Modern Painter and Decorator: A Practical Work on House Painting and Decorating, vol. 2 (London: Caxton Publishing Company, 1921), 52; the numerous home improvement, crafts, and how-to books published in the past century have done little to elevate marbleizing beyond a mere hobbyist pursuit. 2. Alan Borg, The History of the Worshipful Company of Painters, Otherwise Painter-Stainers (Lindley: Jeremy Mills Publishing, 2005), 141–166. 3. Thomas Kershaw to William Edmund Wall, 1893, published in Wall, Graining: Ancient and Modern (London: Charles Griffin and Company, 1988), 9. 4. Punch included a caricature titled, “Sap-pho-tography” and joked, “The picture is a little puz­ zling at a distance, as it seems to represent a first attempt at Photography . . . Look closely at the Marble! Marbellous!” see “Our Guide to the Academy,” Punch 80 (May 14, 1881): 217. 5. Punch quipped, “Marblelous! No doubt whose hand executed this. Evidently Alma Mater – no, we mean ALMA TADEMA,” see Punch 90 (May 8, 1886): 225; note that there was no standardized spelling for this portmanteau word, marble + marvelous. For this chapter I have chosen to use, marbelous, as it is a blend of Punch’s “Marbellous” and “Marblelous.” 6. “The Fine Arts Galleries: The British Loan Collection,” in Official Record of the Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne, 1888–1889 (Melbourne: Sands & McDougall Limited, 1890), 219.

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7. Vern Grosvenor Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema: The Painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World (London: Ash & Grant, 1977), 13–14. 8. John Ruskin, The Art of England: Lectures Given in Oxford (John Wiley, 1884), 67–69. 9. Edmund William Grosse, “Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R.A.,” in Illustrated Biographies of Mod­ ern Artists, François Guillaume Dumas, ed. (Paris: Librairie d’Art, Ludovic Baschet, 1882), 75–96 (p. 90). 10. “Royal Academy 1877: Pictures Prophesied,” Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 5, no. 121 (June 10, 1876): 268. 11. Carel Vosmaer, diary entry, January 9, 1883, cited in Vern G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Garton & Co., 1990), 50. 12. Guy Hedreen, “Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Women of Amphissa,” The Journal of the Wal­ ters Art Gallery 52/53 (1994): 79–92 (p. 79). 13. Claude Phillips, “Fine Art, the Royal Academy,” The Academy, no. 783, new series, (May 7, 1887): 330–332 (p. 331). 14. Barrow, “Catalogue,” in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edwin Becker, et al., eds. (New York: Rizzoli, 1997), 234. 15. Walter H. Pater, “A Study of Dionysus: The Spiritual Form of Fire and Dew,” The Fortnightly Review 20 (July 1 to December 1, 1876): 752–772. 16. “Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of Their Lives,” The Strand Magazine 12, no. 55 (1896): 433; H.S.N. Van Wickevoort Crommelin, “Laurens Alma Tadema, R.A.,” in Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century, Max Rooses, ed., trans. F. Knowles (London: Sampson Low, 1898), 141–164 (p. 161). 17. William Cosmo Monkhouse, British Contemporary Artists (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899), 259. 18. “Current Art” The Magazine of Art 6 (January 1883): 428–434 (pp. 430–431); “Art Chroni­ cle,” The Portfolio 14 (January 1883): 123–126 (p. 124). 19. For example, one critic complained that “The Art Journal has accustomed us to beautiful plates, but . . . ‘The Ionian Dance,’ is, however, much less successful,” see “June Magazines and Reviews,” The Publishers’ Circular and Booksellers’ Record of British and Foreign Literature 62, no. 1510 (June 8, 1895): 636. 20. R. Jope Slade, “The Royal Academy of Arts, 1895,” The Art Journal (1895): 161–181 (p. 174); “Fine Arts: The Royal Academy,” The Athenæum 3523 (May 4, 1895): 574–579 (p. 576). 21. Vern Grosvenor Swanson, J.W. Godward, 1861–1922: The Eclipse of Classicism (Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2018), 19–20, 24. 22. “Trade Notes,” The Chemist and Druggist 88, no. 1925 (December 16, 1916): 40. 23. Roger Fry, “The Case of the Late Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, O.M.,” The Nation 12, no. 16 (January 18, 1913): 666–667. 24. “Our London Correspondence: Sir Edward Poynter’s Resignation,” The Manchester Guardian (December 14, 1918): 6. 25. Godward’s nephew, Peter John Godward echoed this statement in an interview in 1979: “The world wasn’t big enough for Picasso and John William Godward,” see Swanson, J.W. Godward, op. cit., 226. 26. Alexander Kusztyk, “ ‘Covered with Thick Marble’: Uncovering Yoko Ono’s Marble Works from 1961 to 1966,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 41, no. 3 (Spring 2022): 220–229.

References Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence and W. Brindley. “Marbles: Their Ancient and Modern Applica­ tion,” Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects 16, third series (26 January  1907), pp. 169–180. Barrow, Rosemary J. Lawrence Alma-Tadema. London: Phaidon Press, 2001. Barry, Fabio. Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2020. Becker, Edwin, Elizabeth Prettejohn, Edward Morris, and Julian Treuherz. (eds.). Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. New York: Rizzoli, 1997.

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Ebers, Georg Moritz. Lorenz Alma-Tadema: His Life and Works. Mary J. Safford (trans.). New York: William S. Gottsberger, 1886. Jenkyns, Richard. Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Jervis, Simon. “Prince of Grainers and Marblers: Thomas Kershaw (1819–98),” Country Life (10 April 1986), pp. 939–941. Lippincott, Louise. Lawrence Alma Tadema: Spring. Malibu: Getty Museum Studies on Art, 1990. Liversidge, Michael and Catharine Edwards (eds.). Imagining Rome: British Artists and Rome in the Nineteenth Century. London: Merrell Holberton, 1996. Monkhouse, William Cosmo. The Life and Work of Sir Edward J. Poynter, President of the Royal Academy. London: The Art Journal Office, 1897. Moser, Stephanie. Painting Antiquity: Ancient Egypt in the Art of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter and Edwin Long. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Prettejohn, Elizabeth. “Lawrence Alma-Tadema and the Modern City of Ancient Rome,” The Art Bulletin 84, no. 1 (March 2002), pp. 115–129. Prettejohn, Elizabeth and Peter Trippi (eds.). Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity. Mark Poysden and Steven Lindberg (trans.). Munich: Prestel, 2016. Querci, Eugenia and Stefano De Caro (eds.). Alma Tadema e la Nostalgia dell’Antico. Milan: Electa, 2007. Swanson, Vern Grosvenor. Alma-Tadema: The Painter of the Victorian Vision of the Ancient World. London: Ash & Grant Limited, 1977. Swanson, Vern Grosvenor. The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Law­ rence Alma-Tadema. London: Garton & Co., 1990. Swanson, Vern Grosvenor. J.W. Godward, 1861–1922: The Eclipse of Classicism. Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2018. Tomlinson, Richard. The Athens of Alma Tadema. Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991. Wood, Christopher. Olympian Dreamers: Victorian Classical Painters, 1860–1914. London: Con­ stable, 1983. Wood, Christopher. Victorian Painters: Historical Survey and Plates. Woodbridge: Antique Collec­ tors’ Club, 1995.

5

“On or About 1910,” London’s New Bond Street, and the Global Art Market Anne Helmreich

In 1911, the photographic firm Bedford and Lemere, best known for documenting Brit­ ish architecture, captured a set of store fronts on Bond Street, centering on Yamanaka and Co. Presumably the photograph was taken to commemorate Yamanaka and Co.’s new premises, designed by E. K. Purchase; the gallery had just moved there, at 127, from 68 New Bond Street the previous year. The business’ choice of location is significant; Bond Street, as Herbert Fry asserted in 1887, “has long enjoyed the highest reputation as a fashionable street, containing elegant shops stored with the most costly articles,” a repu­ tation perpetuated in the photograph with its attention to the display of goods in shop windows.1 Ceramics, including tall vases, as well as small statuettes occupy the window alcove of Yamanaka’s facade. Vases and cylindrical pots also occupy the windows of the adjacent gallery, The Persian Art Gallery, on the second floor of the neighboring build­ ing. By moving to their new location, Yamanaka and Co. came closer to other fine art dealers clustered at the upper end of the street, distancing themselves from antique and bric-a-brac dealers of Wardour Street with its associations of duplicity and inauthentic­ ity.2 This photograph draws our attention to proximities – of Yamanaka and Co., a com­ mercial firm dedicated to the arts of Asia, primarily Japan, to The Persian Art Gallery, which showcased objects drawn from South Asia and the Middle East, variously labelled as Indian, Persian, or Mohammedan, within the densely occupied space of London’s fashionable Mayfair district, not far from Westminster and the halls of the British gov­ ernment and the machinations of overseeing a far-flung Empire. This essay takes up this proximity to consider the global modern through the lens of the art market as it played out in early-20th-century London, when, in the famous phrase of Virginia Wolf, “on or about December  1910 human nature changed.” This phrase, understood as marking the dawn of modernism and drawing to a close the long 19th century, heralded, for Woolf, a change in all human relations that would, in turn, cause “a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.”3 While much ink has been spilled in exegesis of Woolf’s assertion, this essay accepts its pinpointing of the year 1910 as significant for the course of the visual arts. Indeed, Woolf’s decision to cite the specific month of December 1910 has generally been understood to point to Roger Fry’s exhi­ bition Manet and the Post-Impressionists, which was decisive for the course of British modernism.4 Yet, if we attend to Pamela Fletcher’s insight that Bond Street constituted a Grand Tour, that is, that Victorian exhibition culture, as manifested in commercial art galleries, was deeply embedded in and reflective of Britain’s global trade networks and attendant culture of cosmopolitanism, we are invited to reflect upon what else was on view in London’s commercial arts district marking modernism.5 DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-8

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Figure 5.1 Bedford and Lemere, Exterior view from the north-east of the front of 127 New Bond Street, the premises of Yamanaka & Co, dealers in Japanese fine arts, July 18, 1911. Source: Historic England Archive, BL21309.

As Woolf recognized, this change in human relations did not take place overnight but nonetheless became visible and describable by 1910. This phenomenon is also true for London’s art market, which did not transform overnight but whose global nature took on a newly recognizable presence with the advent of shops such as Yamanaka and Co. and The Persian Art Gallery. These activities align with Partha Mitter’s observation that 1910 also marked a decisive turn in the reception of Indian art in Britain, an argu­ ment that Sarah Turner has developed further by demonstrating how the encounter with

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Indian art shaped the production of such modernist sculptors as Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill, and Henri Gaudier-Breska.6 Building on these arguments, this essay points to the need for an expansive defini­ tion of modernism, one that includes not only breaking with the past but also global encounters. Rather than positioning modernism in works of art themselves, this essay locates modernism in conditions for the production and reception of art, specifically, the art market. In Great Britain, embedded in a world system of connections (commercial, imperial, diplomatic, political, cultural, etc.), those conditions cannot be separated from global exchange – the network of relations that constituted and enabled objects to trav­ erse borders and contexts.7 Moreover, the local – the commercial art gallery in London – can be a valuable and innovative lens through which to examine the global. Put another way, the commercial art gallery can be conceived as a contact zone, adopting the phrase coined by Mary Louise Pratt to describe “the space and time where subjects previously separated by geography and history are co-present, the point at which their trajectories now intersect,” typically characterized by “radically asymmetrical relations of power” associated with imperialism and colonialism.8 Bedford and Lemere’s photograph points to geographies beyond the confines of the gallery walls, to the mobility and portability of the objects found within – spaces traversed by these objects, pathways utilized, networks forged, and acts of cultural transmission engendered. This essay begins with the shop, the frame or context for the portable objects traf­ ficked in by Yamanaka and Co. and The Persian Art Gallery, and then considers the forms of knowledge associated with these contexts, namely the exhibition catalogue and art criticism, before returning to the question of proximities and its implications for understanding these objects and spaces within the context and framework of modernism. The Shop The phenomenon of a shop or commercial art gallery dedicated to the retail trade in art objects, antiquities, or curiosities, and concomitantly serving as a space for display and social exchange and a distribution point for knowledge can be traced back via several different paths of formation. Perhaps the most obvious is that of the retail trade; in Great Britain, the concept of a shop, as a permanent fixture for the exchange of goods and a distinguishing feature of urban centers gained considerable momentum over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. By the second half of the 19th century, the purpose-built commercial art gallery became distinguishable as an urban structural type. Borrowing from the vocabulary of artist-run societies and other exhibition venues, these galleries typically included at least one large hall or space that could support rotating exhibitions as well as adjoining spaces for display, storage, and office functions. Like retail shops, these galleries often used street-facing windows as advertising opportunities. Another origin story is the cabinet of curiosity, which arose in western Europe in the early modern period with the drive to understand, represent, and systematize the natural world and to collect the rare, unique, or virtuosic. The cabinet of curiosity also helped foster the birth of museums, as in the case of Sir Hans Sloane’s bequest that spawned the British Museum. Coming alongside the cabinet of curiosity was a fascination with historical objects, variously labeled antiques or curiosities, which was intimately bound up in the rise of the antique and curiosity dealer in the 19th century. The antique and curiosity shop was the site for the commodification of historical objects, a mechanism for transforming potential rubbish into, as Mark Westgarth explains, “markers of wealth

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and status.” This transformation relied on various strategies developed by dealers, not least of which was producing “classificatory texts” that helped organize and stratify objects, distancing them from the pejorative connotation of “curiosities.”9 Another contiguous and even overlapping space to the museum and the shop was the international exhibition or World’s Fair, launched in 1851 with the Great Exhibition held in London, which brought together a dazzling array of objects and peoples. As Julie Codell argues, the fair offered a unifying umbrella of visual spectacle and commerce while also mapping, classifying, and even hierarchizing the world in a microcosm, fueling both nationalism and imperialist competition. Over the course of the 19th century, world fairs increasingly offered more prominence to the fine arts, distinguishing them from ethnographic displays, where African and Asian art was typically situated. Craft was another lens through which the artifacts of colonial subjects were viewed.10 When the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria  & Albert Museum) was formed for the purposes of improving contemporary British design, shortly following the Great Exhibi­ tion, extensive purchases were made of objects from India, building on the market for luxury goods stimulated by the British East India Company.11 When the commercial art gallery arose in London in the 1850s and 1860s as a distinct type of business, its success depended greatly on its cosmopolitan appeal, emblematized by the names of these spaces (e.g., the French Gallery, the Continental Gallery, or the Japanese Gallery). In turn, the sensibility of cosmopolitanism helped the commercial art gallery to convey, as Pamela Fletcher explains, “an aura of exclusivity and . . . orientate viewers to the values of originality, distinction and sophistication.”12 Fletcher’s argument aligns with that of Charlotte Guichard and Bénédict Savoy, who have called attention to those episodes that allow investigation of “shifting regimes of value through artifacts may pass in a social context,” changing or adopting new identities – curio, artifact, fine art object, commodity, treasure, etc.13 A Brief History of Yamanaka and the Market for Japanese Art Yamanaka and Co. emerged in the 19th century when Kichibei Yamanaka became an antiquities and curiosities dealer, establishing a business passed down through the fam­ ily.14 In the 1890s, the business began to expand internationally, with branches first in New York (1894) and Boston (1899), followed by London in 1900. Trade, particularly that of the East India Company, and missionary activities had long connected Britain with Japan, albeit with varying conditions of access or “privilege.” Mid-century trea­ ties between Great Britain and Japan established commercial relations between the two countries, quickly following on the opening of Japanese ports for U.S. trade. The AngloJapanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce (1859) also established diplomatic relations, with Sir Rutherford Alcock serving as the first British ambassador to reside in Japan. Alcock helped to fuel the phenomenon of “Japonisme,” a term reportedly coined by French critic and collector Philippe Burty in 1872 and taken up to refer to “the study of the art and genius of Japan.”15 In Britain, interest in Japanese art and culture by the literate and monied classes was spurred by the 1862 International Exhibition in London, where Alcock displayed artifacts he had collected during his tenure as ambassador. While Alcock sourced his collection directly in Japan, in the 1870s dealers such as Londos & Co. and eventually Yamanaka and other shops such as Liberty & Co’s East India House and The Japanese Gallery, a collaboration between telegraph engineer Thomas Larkin and art dealer Ikeda Seisuke, were established in Britain to cater to the emerging taste for Japanese objects.

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Around the same time, nascent art historical knowledge of Japanese art began to cir­ culate in Britain. James Jackson Jarves, born in Boston and who spent his early career in Hawaii, where he served as a newspaper editor amongst other projects, published five essays on Japanese art, between 1869 and 1871, in the specialist periodical Art Journal, in advance of his book A Glimpse at the Art of Japan, issued in 1876. Alcock, in his essays on Japanese art also printed in the Art Journal, referred back to Jarves’ publica­ tions, racializing Japanese art and situating it within a Hegelian model of progress while also praising the imitative and naturalistic powers of Japanese artists.16 Jarves and Alcock frequently attributed the beauty of Japanese art to a connection to nature, describing Japan as a preindustrial harmonious idyll, an implicit critique of industrial Britain and the United States. Such a discourse might seem at odds with the rampant materialism that underlay Japonisme, as manifested in exhibitions and shops. But as Christopher Bush has argued, Japanese objects were so successful because they were both commodities and, in the hands of writers such as Jarves, anti-commodities as well as concomitantly icons of national characteristics and cosmopolitanism.17 This paradox informed the British recep­ tion of the Japanese Native Village, essentialized as primitive and quaint, that Tannaker Buhicrosan installed at Humphry’s Hall in Knightsbridge in 1885.18 Japanese objects also connoted, as Grace Lavery has persuasively argued, “exquisite . . . the later Victorian period’s favorite word for Japanese culture.”19 Conditions in Japan, namely the Meiji Restoration, the rapid push for industriali­ zation, differences between prices and exchange rates, and the national promotion of exports under the Meiji government, encouraged the flow of objects, primarily craft products, to Western markets. This allowed art dealers such as Yamanaka to flourish.20 These conditions also stimulated the formation of collections by oyatoi gaikokujin, for­ eign experts who had been invited to Japan to offer their services and during their time acquired Japanese art. For example, Dr. William Anderson, who had been Director of the Naval Medical College, Tokyo, acquired over three thousand Japanese and Chinese paintings that were eventually acquired by the British Museum in 1881–1882 and pub­ lished in A Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum (1886) and The Pictorial Arts of Japan (1886).21 The 1910 JapaneseBritish Exhibition, with the display of major historic works brought from Japan, includ­ ing national treasures; Japanese modern art; installations by individual Japanese compa­ nies; and gardens, further stimulated the market as well as knowledge and criticism about Japanese art.22 Yamanaka made available a wide range of objects, including furniture and decorative objects reflecting traditional art forms, produced in the company’s factory in Japan, as well as those produced by other firms. They eventually established a horticulture depart­ ment, serving a taste for bonsai and Japanese gardens.23 They also handled historic mate­ rials, such as porcelain, scrolls, screens, masks, and bronzes, and addressed the growing market for Ukiyo-e prints. In addition to individual collectors, museums were clients; the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum were significant buyers. Yamanaka increasingly positioned themselves as dealers of “fine art,” adopting the rhetorical strategies used by their peers selling European art, as Constance Chen has explained.24 In 1901, for example, when consigning a collection of ivories and embroi­ deries to auction by Robinson & Fisher, Yamanaka and Co. described the works as “mas­ terpieces.”25 In 1910, they borrowed the galleries of the Royal Society of British Artists to display an “Exhibition of Japanese Screens Painted by the Old Masters,” accompanied

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by a catalogue with a historical overview by Arthur Morrison, a novelist and collector of Japanese paintings. The short entries describing the objects helped readers better under­ stand and appreciate Japanese art; in the case of an early-17th-century six-leaved gold screen “painted in the Tosa style,” viewers were directed to The green double slope of the great hill falls from the left, and clumps of the famous cherry trees of Yoshino are seen dotting the view. To the right a great sea of mist in the valley has been represented in silver, which has turned a rich black by age and expo­ sure. The gold of the background has a beautiful tone.26 In short, Yamanaka and Co. situated themselves as interlocuters between their home country and British audiences, interpreting notions of quality. In 1912, they issued a handbook on the “Arts and Crafts of Japan and China” explaining that their firm has for some years dealt with the arts of Japan and China on an extensive scale, collecting with care and expert knowledge the relics of our ancient arts, catering both for the antiquary and for the collector animated merely by the love of line, composi­ tion and colour; but at the same time introducing to our European friends that which is best amongst the artistic productions of the newer generations and of the modern schools.27 During the first decades of the 20th century, the tastes of Western buyers began to shift from Japanese to Chinese art and Yamanaka and Co. met this shift, which arguably culminated in the International Exhibition of Chinese Art (1935) they organized at the Royal Academy.28 The firm did not survive World War II; the London branch closed in November  1940 and the property of the branches in the United States was seized by decree of the U.S. government.29 A Brief History of the Persian Art Gallery and the Market for Persian Art In contrast to Yamanaka and Co., a long-standing corporate enterprise with branches and a production factory, The Persian Art Gallery was relatively short-lived and the vision of an individual, Hagop Kevorkian. Born in Kayseri in Antolia, Turkey, Kevork­ ian was an archaeologist who undertook a series of notable digs in Iran in the early 20th century and through this work assembled a significant collection which he parlayed into exhibition and commercial opportunities. He also acted as an agent and an expert, work­ ing with collectors such as J. P. Morgan as well as institutions, including the Metropoli­ tan Museum of Art. The Persian Art Gallery, for which Kevorkian served as Managing Director, was established by 1911, initially located at 128 New Bond Street and then moving to 28 New Bond Street in 1913. It advertised objects from “recent excavations in Central Persia” as well as Persian and Indian paintings, manuscripts and textiles, high­ lighting “Rare Specimens for Collectors.” The gallery opening featured a number of objects previously shown at the Munich Exhibition of Mahommedan art, including Persian and Indo-Persian ceramics and draw­ ings.30 The Munich exhibition was a highly significant comprehensive display of Islamic art, establishing a corpus of masterworks and a body of knowledge regarding Islamic art.31 Its twinned scholarly and artistic approach made clear that these artworks should be viewed as comparable to Western counterparts.32 The British newspaper The Observer,

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in its notice of the opening of The Persian Art Gallery, pointed to the Munich exhibition for helping to reverse popular opinions about “art of the Mohemetan East,” previously regarded “of little account,” explaining that the bazaars of the great centres of India, Persia, and Asia Minor are filled with cheap rubbishy wares, manufactured for the foreign visitor and for exportation, and often passed off as antique, but throughout of no real artistic significance. This trashy stuff has seriously prejudiced European collectors against Oriental art, and has made them forget that the Mohametan east and its products have been an important influence in the evolution of European art.33 Kevorkian took a page from the Munich exhibition, using his gallery as a platform from which to organize Exhibition of Mohammedan Art, displayed at the Galerie Bar­ bazanges, Paris, and the Folsom Galleries, New York, in 1912. In the catalogue to the exhibition, Kevorkian explained that “Mohammedan Art” referred to, on the one hand, “artistic achievements of all times by nationalities professing Mohammedan faith” and, on the other hand, “a new form of art, a new freedom of expression.”34 Kevorkian chose to focus, as had the Munich exhibition, on Persian art, showcasing examples of ceramics, metalwork, and paintings; but unlike Munich, he excluded textiles and carpets (due to a lack of space). The catalogue included descriptive entries for each object, giving readers terms by which to evaluate the works. Kevorkian’s offerings provided a counter-narrative to the histories of Indian art associ­ ated with Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy and Ernest Benfield Havell then dominant in British circles that focused on Hindu culture and largely excluded Mughal art.35 None­ theless, appreciation for Islamic art was well established by the close of the 19th century, embedded in a dualistic discourse that, as David Roxburgh explains, both pointed to the art form as a means by which to restore and revitalize modern European arts and crafts and evidence of “a past glory, relics of a now diminished and corrupted ‘Oriental’ culture.”36 The groundwork for Kevorkian’s project had already been laid in the 19th century with growing British influence in Persia, following the Anglo-Persian war of 1856–1857. Ensuing financial instability led, as Moya Carey explains, to the treatment of art objects as “cashable assets” with European and American collectors privileging ceramics, par­ ticularly lusterware.37 Several notable private collections eventually made their way to London museums as in the case of John Henderson’s assemblage of Persian pottery and metalwork, given to the British Museum upon his death in 1878. The South Kensington Museum opened the “Persian Court” in 1876, building on acquisitions they had been making in the preceding years from Tehran art dealers. Beginning in 1873, the South Kensington Museum enlisted Robert Murdoch Smith, an officer in the Royal Engineers, to act as an agent in the region; in the 1870s his purchases focused heavily on ceramics and then, in the mid-1880s, he increasingly focused on drawings and illuminated manu­ scripts. Over this period, the museum also embarked on a campaign to acquire significant carpets, eventually enlisting the assistance of William Morris to evaluate the Ardabil Carpet, which they acquired via dealer Vincent Robinson in 1893.38 Another key moment in the reception of Persian art in Britain was the exhibition “Persian and Arab Art” (1885) organized by the Burlington Fine Arts Club, a gentle­ man’s club for art collectors. The display drew on loans from collectors such as C. D. E. Fortnum, of the Fortnum & Mason family, Alexander Constantine Ionides, and George

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Salting and artists William Holman Hunt and Frederick Leighton, whose contempo­ rary paintings and homes featured Islamic objects. Painter Henry Wallis, regarded as an expert in Islamic ceramics, authored the catalogue, arguing that the modern collector of Persian art was “no longer alone content with the acquisition of rare or precious objects; he seeks to comprehend their artistic intention and to become acquainted with their rela­ tions and affinities,” which he went on to describe.39 Thus, when The Persian Art Gallery opened, critics were primed to welcome the space as a corrective of sorts. As The Observer explained, “not so many years ago, an exhibi­ tion of Eastern art would have been synonymous with an exhibition of Japanese and Chi­ nese art.”40 Art critic Lawrence Binyon, who also worked at the British Museum, hinged the interest in Persian art on that of the art of Japan and China, insisting that Only now, when the whole range of the art of Japan is accessible in reproductions to the student, and when the art of China has begun to be explored, is Indian art awaken­ ing a wider interest. And with Indian paintings and drawings it is natural to range the Persian miniatures, not only because of their historical connection, but because both are the art of an Aryan race, and in certain aspects are more akin to Western painting than to the art of the races of the Further East. Binyon’s racialist hierarchies continued to inform his subsequent discussion of the Persian paintings on view. While he described the work as exemplifying the “intoxicating .  .  . sensuous charm of Persian painting,” celebrating the “rich glow” of the pigments enhanced by the “absence of shadows, common to all Asiatic painting,” he was also dismissive, com­ plaining that Persian art, when compared to that of the Chinese, never attained “maturity” and was “nourished by no intellectual energies,” which he attributed to “the paralysing effect of Mohammedan influence and tradition” which, thankfully, Indian painters had been able to counter due to their “native element.”41 Such opinions may help to explain why The Persian Art Gallery closed in 1915 and Kevorkian relocated to New York City, presumably seeking better market conditions given his outstanding debts.42 Doubtless the Persian campaign of World War I, when the Ottoman, British, and Russian empires clashed in Persia, also disrupted Kevorkian’s business. Conclusion How do we understand the nature of global modernism with respect to the art market as sketched out by these two case studies? The typical argument is one of influence and appropriation; that these businesses helped to stimulate the birth of modernist artistic practices whereby Western artists rethought the vocabulary and strategies of art making and visual expression through the inspiration of global sources. But here, I am deliber­ ately offering an alternative narrative that attends to the market as subject rather than instrument. Yamanaka and Co. and The Persian Art Gallery speak to the intensification in global exchanges of artifacts – the capaciousness and rapaciousness of the art market – that took place by the turn of the last century enabled by macroprocesses of imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism, and such microprocesses as mediating agents, packing, ship­ ping, ports of call, financial and legal services, and fluctuating currencies. These galleries are evidence and facilitators of transculturation: sites visited as part of the spectacle of

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New Bond Street, sources for museums and collectors as well as contemporary artists, and contributors to knowledge about other cultures – filtered through Western eyes and voices – at the moment art history was emerging as an academic and even quasi-scientific discipline and modernism’s visual and conceptual languages were being shaped and defined. These galleries speak to the cosmopolitanism of London and how the city and its art market was situated within tentacles of trade. These practices – an increasingly global market and systemic knowledge shaped by and through the volatile power dynamics of colonialism, imperialism, and racism – are distinctly modern. Within the space of the commercial gallery, objects were marked as art while signify­ ing and participating in discursive formations as curios, crafts, ethnographic artifacts, and art historical evidence. But when part of the experience of a shopping district they are foregrounded, resolutely, as commodities. The visitor to upper Bond Street could pur­ chase a ceramic at Yamanaka and Co. or The Persian Art Gallery, a costume at Usher & Collins next door, bread at the Aerated Bread Company, or jewelry at Hyams Frank Ltd. The global reach of the British trading empire is collapsed to one city block for the London consumer. Notes 1. Herbert Fry, London in 1887, 3rd ed. (London: W. H. Allen, 1887), 108. 2. For a listing of Bond Street dealers see, Post Office London Directory, 1910 (London: Kelly’s Directories, Ltd., 1910), Vol. 1, Part 2: Street Directory, 494, and Pamela Fletcher and David Israel, London Gallery Project, 2007; Revised September  2012. http://learn.bowdoin.edu/ fletcher/london-gallery/. For Wardour street associations, see, Mark Westgarth, “The London Picture Trade ca. 1850,” The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850–1939, Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich, eds. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011), 37–38. 3. Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (London: Hogarth Press, 1924), 4–5. 4. Anna Gruetzner Robins, Modern Art in Britain 1910–1914 (London: Merrell Holberton in Association with Barbican Art Gallery, 1997). 5. Pamela Fletcher, “The Grand Tour on Bond Street: Cosmopolitanism and the Commercial Art Gallery in Victorian London,” Visual Culture in Britain 12, no. 2 (2011): 139–153. 6. Sarah Victoria Turner, “The ‘Essential Quality of Things’: E. B. Havell, Ananda Coomaras­ wamy, Indian Art and Sculpture in Britain, ca. 1910–1914,” Visual Culture in Britain 11, no. 2 (2010): 239–264. 7. John Darwin, The Empire Project, the Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), xi, 1. 8. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2007), 8. 9. Mark Westgarth, The Emergence of the Antique and Curiosity Dealer in Britain 1815–1850, the Commodification of Historical Objects (New York and London: Routledge, 2020), 6, 11, 15. 10. Julie Codell, “International Exhibitions, Linking Culture, Commerce, and Nation,” in Com­ panion to British Art 1600 to the Present, Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett, eds. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 220–240. 11. Clive Wainwright, edited for publication by Charlotte Gere, “The Making of the South Kens­ ington Museum II, Collecting Modern Manufactures: 1851 and the Great Exhibition,” Journal of the History of Collections 14, no. 1 (2002): 38. 12. Fletcher, “The Grand Tour,” 140. See also, Pamela Fletcher, “Shopping for Art: The Rise of the Commercial Art Gallery, 1850s–90s,” in The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850–1939, 47–64. 13. Charlotte Guichard and Bénédict Savoy, “Acquiring Cultures and Trading Value in a Global World,” in Acquiring Cultures, Histories of World Art on Western Markets, Bénédict Savoy, Charlotte Guichard, and Christine Howald, eds. (Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter GmBH, 2018), 1, 3, 7, 5.

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14. Sonoko Monden, “Yamanaka Sadajirō (1866–1936),” in Britain & Japan, Biographical Por­ traits, vol. VIII, compiled and Hugh Cortazzi, ed. (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), 278. New research is underway concerning this firm as indicated by the symposium “Yamanaka and Co., Early Pioneer of the Global Asian Art Trade,” April 15, 2021, co-organized by the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Zentralarchiv and Museum für Asiatische Kunst. 15. Ayako Ono, Japonisme in Britain: Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel, and Nineteenth-Century Japan (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 1. 16. Sir Rutherford Alcock, “Japanese Art,” Art Journal 1 (1875): 197. Alock’s essays were pub­ lished over the course of 1875–1878. 17. Christopher Bush, “The Ethnicity of Things in America’s Lacquered Age,” Representations 99, no 1 (Summer 2007): 74–98. 18. Wendy S. Williams, “ ‘Free-and-Easy,’ ‘Japaneasy’: British Perceptions and the 1885 Japanese Village,” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, Dino Franco Fel­ luga, ed. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. (accessed February 5, 2022), https://branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=wendy-s-williams-free-and-easy-japaneasy-british­ perceptions-and-the-1885-japanese-village. 19. Grace E. Lavery, Quaint, Exquisite, Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 5. 20. Dōshin Satō, trans. Hiroshi Nara, Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State, the Politics of Beauty (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2011), 96, 102, 123. 21. Masako Yamamoto Maezaki, “Innovative Trading Strategies for Japanese Art, Ikdea Seisuke, Yamanaka & Co., and their Overseas Branches (1870s-1930s),” in Acquiring Cultures, Histo­ ries of World Art on Western Markets, eds. Bénédict Savoy, Charlotte Guichard, and Christine Howald (Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmBH, 2018), 224–225. 22. Michiko Hayashi, “Japanese Fine Art in the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition,” in Commerce and Culture at the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition: centenary Perspectives, Ayako Hotta-Lister and Ian Nish, eds. (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), 160. 23. Monden, 283–284. 24. Constance Chen, “Merchants of Asianness: Japanese Art Dealers in the United States in the Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of American Studies 44 (2010): 29, 31. 25. Catalogue of an Important collection of Ivory Carvings comprising Groups, Statuettes, Figures and Ornaments; and Valuable Embroideries . . .. Consigned direct from Japan under direction of messrs Yamanaka and Col, 4th December 1901, n.p. 26. Arthur Morrison, Exhibition of Japanese Screens, Painted by the Old Masters, Held at the Gal­ leries of the Royal Society of British Artists, July, 1910, Illustrated Catalogue with Notes and an Introduction by Arthur Morrison (London: Yamanaka and Co., 1910), 13. 27. Yamanaka and Co., Arts and Crafts of Japan and China (London: Yamanaka and Co., 1910), n.p. 28. Maezaki, 223. 29. Najiba H. Choudhury, “Seizures and Liquidation Sales in the United States During World War II: Tracking the Fate of Japanese Art Dealership, Yamanaka & company, Inc,” Journal for Art Market Studies 2 (2020): 1–18. 30. “Persian Drawings,” The Times (London), February 14, 1911, 14. 31. Andrea Lermer and Avinoam Shalem, “Foreword and Acknowledgements,” in After One Hun­ dred Years, The 1910 Exhibition “Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst” Reconsidered (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2010), vii. 32. Avinoam Shalem, “The 1910 Exhibition ‘Meisterwerke Muhammedansicher kunst’ Revisited,” in After One Hundred Years, 3. 33. [P.G. Konody], “Persian Art Gallery,” Observer, February 19, 1911, 12. 34. H. Kevorkian, Exhibition of Mohammedan Art from the Caliphate Epoch to the XVIII Cen­ tury organized by The Persian Art Gallery, London, Catalogue of Mohammedan Art, Compris­ ing a Collection of Early Objects Excavated under the supervision of H. Kevorkian, exhibited from January 7th to February 10th, inclusive, at the Folsom Galleries, 396 Fifth Avenue, New York), 1. 35. Devika Singh, “Indian Nationalist Art History and the Writing and Exhibiting of Mughal Art, 1910–48,” Art History (November 1913): 1043.

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36. David J. Roxburgh, “Au Bonheur des Amateurs: Collecting and Exhibiting Islamic Art, ca. 1880–1910,” Ars Orientalis 30 (2000): 12. 37. Moya Carey, Persian Art, Collecting the Arts of Iran for the V&A (London: V&A Publishing, 2017), 16, 17. 38. Carey, 13, 154, 90, 92, 97, 178. 39. Henry Wallis, “Introductory Remarks,” in Catalogue of Specimens Illustrative of Persian and Arab Art Exhibited in 1885 (London: Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1885), v. 40. [P.G. Konody], “Persian Art Gallery,” Observer, February 19, 1911, 12. 41. Lawrence Binyon, “Persian and Indian Painting,” The Saturday Review, February 18, 1911, 207. 42. “London Letter: The Kevorkian Sale,” American Art News 14, no. 10 (December 11, 1915): 3.

References Bush, Christopher. “The Ethnicity of Things in America’s Lacquered Age,” Representations 99:1 (Summer 2007): 74–98. Carey, Moya. Persian Art, Collecting the Arts of Iran for the V&A. London: V&A Publishing, 2017. Chen, Constance. “Merchants of Asianness: Japanese Art Dealers in the United States in the Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of American Studies 44 (2010): 19–46. Choudhury, Najiba H. “Seizures and Liquidation Sales in the United States during World War II: Tracking the Fate of Japanese Art Dealership, Yamanaka  & company, Inc.,” Journal for Art Market Studies 2 (2020): 1–18. Codell, Julie. “International Exhibitions, Linking Culture, Commerce, and Nation,” in Compan­ ion to British Art 1600 to the Present, eds. Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 220–240. Darwin, John. The Empire Project, the Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Fletcher, Pamela. “Shopping for Art: The Rise of the Commercial Art Gallery, 1850s-90s,” in The Rise of the Modern art Market in London, 1850–1939, eds. Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmre­ ich. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011a, 47–64. Fletcher, Pamela. “The Grand Tour on Bond Street: Cosmopolitanism and the Commercial Art Gallery in Victorian London,” Visual Culture in Britain 12:2 (2011b): 139–153. Fletcher, Pamela and David Israel. London Gallery Project, 2007; Revised September 2012. http:// learn.bowdoin.edu/fletcher/london-gallery/. Guichard, Charlotte and Bénédict Savoy. “Acquiring Cultures and Trading Value in a Global World,” in Acquiring Cultures, Histories of World Art on Western Markets, eds. Bénédict Savoy, Charlotte Guichard, and Christine Howald. Boston, MA: Walter de Gruyter GmBH, 2018, 1–7. Hayashi, Michiko. “Japanese Fine Art in the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition,” in Commerce and Culture at the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition: centenary Perspectives, eds. Ayako Hotta-Lister and Ian Nish. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013, 159–176. Lavery, Grace E. Quaint, Exquisite, Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019, 5. Lermer, Andrea and Avinoam Shalem. “Foreword and Acknowledgements,” in After One Hun­ dred Years, the 1910 Exhibition “Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst” Reconsidered. Lei­ den and Boston: Brill, 2010, i–xivi. Maezaki, Masako Yamamoto. “Innovative Trading Strategies for Japanese Art, Ikdea Seisuke, Yamanaka & Co., and their Overseas Branches (1870s-1930s),” in Acquiring Cultures, Histo­ ries of World Art on Western Markets, eds. Bénédict Savoy, Charlotte Guichard, and Christine Howald (Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmBH, 2018), 223–238. Monden, Sonoko. “Yamanaka Sadajirō (1866–1936),” in Britain & Japan, Biographical Portraits, vol. VIII, compiled and eds. Hugh Cortazzi. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2103, 278–292.

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Ono, Ayako. Japonisme in Britain: Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel, and Nineteenth-Century Japan. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2007. Robins, Anna Gruetzner. Modern Art in Britain 1910–1914. London: Merrell Holberton in asso­ ciation with Barbican Art Gallery, 1997. Roxburgh, David J. “Au Bonheur des Amateurs: Collecting and Exhibiting Islamic Art, ca. 1880– 1910,” Ars Orientalis 30 (2000): 9–38. Satō, Dōshin, trans. Hiroshi Nara, Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State, the Politics of Beauty. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2011. Shalem, Avinoam. “The 1910 Exhibition ‘Meisterwerke Muhammedansicher kunst’ Revisited,” in After One Hundred Years, the 1910 Exhibition “Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst” Reconsidered. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2010, 1–15. Singh, Devikah. “Indian Nationalist Art History and the Writing and Exhibiting of Mughal Art, 1910–48,” Art History (November 1913): 1042–1046. Turner, Sarah Victoria. “The ‘Essential Quality of Things’: E. B. Havell, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Indian Art and Sculpture in Britain, ca. 1910–1914,” Visual Culture in Britain 11:2 (2010): 239–264. Wainwright, Clive edited for publication by Charlotte Gere. “The making of the South Kensington Museum II, Collecting Modern Manufactures: 1851 and the Great Exhibition,” Journal of the History of Collections 14:1 (2002): 25–43. Westgarth, Mark. “The London Picture Trade ca. 1850,” in The Rise of the modern art market in London, 1850–1939, eds. Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011, 26–46. Westgarth, Mark. The Emergence of the Antique and Curiosity Dealer in Britain 1815–1850, the Commodification of Historical Objects. New York and London: Routledge, 2020. Williams, Wendy S. “ ‘Free-and-Easy,’ ‘Japaneasy’: British Perceptions and the 1885 Japanese Vil­ lage,” in BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, eds. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Accessed May 2, 2022, https:// branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=wendy-s-williams-free-and-easy-japaneasy-british-perceptions­ and-the-1885-japanese-village.

6

Modernism, Transnational networks and Pan-Africanist Thought in Early Twentieth Century African American Art Catherine Bernard

Introduction By the end of the 19th century, Europe and France in particular were seen as places where American artists would enrich their knowledge and practice. However, only a few Afri­ can American artists had traveled there; the most well-known among them were Henry Ossawa Tanner and Meta Warrick Fuller. France was commonly considered color blind and free of racism, a belief that endured throughout the interwar period. Loïs Mailou Jones, who traveled to France in 1937 stated: “France gave me my first feeling of absolute freedom.”1 Paris was considered a haven for black intellectuals, writers, and artists. The rise of primitivism during the 1920s and the 1930s and the taste for everything black and exotic, of which the success of Joséphine Baker and La Revue Nègre and the popularity of jazz music are the best-known examples, reinforced the vision of France as an open society that welcomed cultural differences.2 World War I was a catalyst that increased the meetings of diverse groups of the African Diaspora. During the war, African soldiers, mostly from Afrique Occidentale Française (French West Africa), fought alongside African Americans. Following the 1919 signing of the Treaty of Versailles that marked the end of the war, tirailleurs sénégalais,3 Dahomeans, Caribbean people, and African Americans soldiers stayed on for a short while, enjoying the reprieve from the war. The Treaty, which marked the beginning of the reconstruc­ tion of France and most importantly the construction of the modern European states, didn’t however question the colonial structure. Paternalism and assimilationism were the prevalent views, and the colonies’ “subjects” were expected to assimilate to the domi­ nant culture.4 The burgeoning African diasporic community believed in an enlightened assimilation, though some of its members guardedly critiqued the colonial policies. Blaise Diagne, a politician from Sénégal, who in 1914 became a member of the French parlia­ ment, and Guadeloupean Gratien Candace, elected in 1912, represented the assimilation­ ist tendencies shared by a majority of Caribbean and African members of the bourgeois black elite that formed in Paris after the war. African Diaspora groups were aware of various cultural and political currents: assimilationism, W.E.B. DuBois double consciousness, Marcus Garvey national­ ist ideas were debated and discussed. The exchanges between these groups fueled a nascent diasporic consciousness that grew into the 1920s’ proto-Négritude move­ ment.5 These early Pan-Africanist debates would ultimately coalesce in the pages of L’Etudiant noir (The Black Student), the short-lived magazine created by Aimé Césaire, Leopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon Damas in 1935 and the subsequent devel­ opment of Négritude. DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-9

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African American artists who traveled to Europe, and particularly France in the early 20th century found themselves at the nexus of these encounters. Their work shows an awareness of the ideas found in the publications of the Harlem Renaissance authors and theorists, the discussions in Parisian salons led by African and Caribbean intellectuals, the emergence of Indigénisme in the Caribbean, and the various journals and newspa­ pers, often short lived, published in Paris. A  significant number of African American artists who traveled to Paris during the interwar period engaged with these networks. Among them were Augusta Savage, Hale Woodruff, William Johnson, and Loïs Mailou Jones whose work collectively came to crystallize some of the ideas promoted and dis­ cussed in the various salons and newspapers.6 Harlem Renaissance writers Alain Locke, Langston Hugues, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Bennett, and others traveled to Paris in the 1920s, establishing a small, vibrant community in Montmartre of which the artists were also a part. They studied at various art academies, looked at European modern paintings and sculptures, as well as African art in the city’s antique and curios shops, museums, and galleries. Ethiopia Awakening Meta Warrick Fuller’s 1921 sculpture Ethiopia Awakening, a bronze of 1921, stands as an early and powerful example of the reclamation of Africa, a critical component of the Harlem Renaissance and early Pan-Africanism. Inspired in part by Ethiopianism, a literary-religious tradition based on a biblical prophecy,7 her sculpture set an example for the search for Black consciousness and identity that would become tropes of the PanAfrican theories developed later by Caribbean and African intellectuals George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, and Léopold Sédar Senghor Warrick Fuller had created a first version of this work, Ethiopia, after DuBois had suggested her participation in the “Americans of Negro Lineage” section of the Amer­ ica’s Making Exposition, held in New York from October to November  1921. It was reproduced in the exhibition catalogue with the caption: “Ethiopia. A Symbolic Statue of the Emancipation of the Negro Race.” With its abstract geometric style and refer­ ences to pharaonic Nemes and dress, the iconography of Ethiopia Awakening is directly inspired from the Egyptian tradition of funerary sculpture. Warrick Fuller read articles in the first two issues of The Crisis magazine edited by DuBois, regarding archeological excavations in Ethiopia.8 The bandages from which Ethiopia emerges served as a meta­ phor for the African American liberation from bondage. The powerful sculpture is an early attempt at articulating the concept of diasporic consciousness heralded by DuBois in his writings and his calls for Pan-African unity. (https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ items/671040d4-2bfa-0930-e040-e00a1806450c#/?rotate=360) DuBois’ landmark book The Souls of Black Folks had been published shortly after he met Warrick Fuller in Paris in 1900. DuBois had invited her to attend a reception for The Exhibit of American Negro, which he co-organized for the 1900 Paris World Fair.9 A  lifelong friendship ensued, and DuBois advised her to focus on subjects of African American relevance. From 1899 until 1903, Warrick Fuller lived in Paris, attending the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Académie Colarossi. She met Rodin and studied with him, as the style of a number of her sculptures such as The Wretched (1901) attests. She also visited Henry Ossawa Tanner, who had moved to France from Atlanta in 1891. A visit to his studio became an essential requirement for all the younger African American artists who came

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to Paris during the interwar years and to whom he provided encouragement, advice, and contacts. While in Paris, Warrick Fuller had many occasions to visit the Louvre and its displays of Egyptian art, perhaps a source for the iconography developed in Ethiopia Awakening. The sculpture set the stage for the interest in the legacy of African arts and the development of a Black subject matter advocated by Alain Locke during the Harlem Renaissance. Years later, Loïs Mailou Jones completed The Ascent of Ethiopia (1932). The painting’s title referenced Warrick Fuller’s work, similarly evoking a common Afri­ can past and heritage and connecting it to the Harlem Renaissance. Transatlantic Exchanges – The Pan-African Congresses The London Pan-African conference in July 1900 had been an important milestone in the emergence of the diasporic community. DuBois played a leading role at the conference, appealing to European leaders to fight racism, grant self-governance in colonies in Africa and the Caribbean, and demanding political and civil rights for African Americans. DuBois and members of the French parliament Blaise Diagne and Gratien Candace10 met in 1919 in Paris at the first Pan-African Congress. The Congress’ final resolution defended assimilation and an enlightened view of colonialism, advocating reforming the colonial system without questioning its premises. The radicalism of DuBois’ internation­ alist theories was received with caution among the French black intellectual and political elite who believed in and promoted the idea of a colonial humanism that would recognize the parity of cultures and the rights of its members through the acquisition of French citizenship. During the second Congress, held again in London in 1921, DuBois sought to estab­ lish a radical international political agenda that would denounce the abuses of colonial powers in Africa and racial inequality in the United States, and argued for diasporic soli­ darity. Candace and Diagne, convinced assimilationists, rejected his radicalism. Marcus Garvey, present during the Congress, hoped to radicalize the debate on identity, but his views were denounced by the moderates. Following the second Congress, Candace established L’Association panafricaine (the Panafrican Association).11 Meant to be an effective social organization for black emanci­ pation and black self-determination, it did not establish any true radical agenda because of the dominance of assimilationist politics in France. Through the 1920s, a belief that France didn’t discriminate on the basis of color was shared by a good number of intellectuals within the Black Diaspora, co-opting the myth of France as a color-blind country. The colonial system was not overtly attacked and assimilationism was considered politically viable, pending the application of the same universal values of equality and freedom to all members of the colonies. A  moderate assimilationist consciousness was developed among black intellectuals in salons and vari­ ous publications, based on the sharing of cultural – rather than political – values, and a far cry from Garvey’s Pan-African vision and DuBois’ radical political views. Harlem Renaissance Artists in Europe – Assimilationism The African American artists who went to France during the interwar period included Augusta Savage, Hale Woodruff, Aaron Douglas, Nancy Prophet, William Johnson, and Palmer Hayden. They attended the Académie Moderne et Scandinave, the Grande Chaumière, and other traditional art schools. Alain Locke joined Langston Hughes in

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Paris in the summer of 1924 and introduces Hughes to the African art collectors Alfred Barnes and Paul Guillaume.12 Savage frequented le Salon de Clamart, the literary salon of Jane and Paulette Nardal, writers from Martinique, and her work caught the attention of Paulette Nardal, who wrote “Une femme sculpteur noire,” published in La Dépêche africaine (The African Dispatch) issue of August-September 1930.13 This essay with photos of Savage’s work included a reproduction of Gamin. During her stay, the artist exhibited her work at several galleries; she received a gold medal from the French government for medallions reproducing African sculptures that she presented at the Colonial Exhibition of 1931,14 inaugurated by Diagne. The editor of La Dépêche africaine, Guadeloupean Maurice Sat­ ineau, harshly denounced the grotesque and racist representations of African people at the Colonial Exhibition and its celebration of the French colonial empire in the 1931 issue of the newspaper.15 In marked contrast, the Colonial Exhibition was enthusiasti­ cally attended by the African American artists then in Paris. Artists in particular were drawn to the visual splendor of the exhibit’s portrayals of black people. Palmer Hayden, for example painted watercolors of African dancers based on performers he had seen at the exhibition. Augusta Savage sculpted an African warrior, entitled Amazon, which won her a gold medal.16 Woodruff came to Paris in 1927, making the requisite visit with Tanner shortly after his arrival. During their conversation, the older painter encouraged Woodruff to look at old master paintings in the Louvre such as Rembrandt’s studies of the human figure,17 which Woodruff did. His first paintings in Paris consisted mostly of landscapes such as Medieval Chartres (1927–28) or Old Farmhouse in the Beauce Valley (1927), representa­ tive of the post-Impressionist style that he decided to follow. Woodruff was well aware of the presence of other artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance: During those years in Paris, I  knew people like Eric Walrond, the writer, Claude McKay, the poet, Augusta Savage, the sculptor, Walter White of the NAACP, Alain Locke, philosopher and art critic. These and many others made up what was known as the “Negro colony” in Paris which included the “whirlwind” Josephine Baker, who had just come from the U.S. with a musical troupe called “the Black Birds.”18 William Johnson’s paintings, after he arrived in Paris in fall 1926, adopted Impression­ ism, as in Vieille Maison (Old House), a work featured in his November 1927 solo exhi­ bition at the Students and Artists Club on the Boulevard Raspail.19 A decade later, Loïs Mailou Jones would paint landscapes also in an impressionist style, for example, Rue Norvins, Montmartre (1937) or Rue St Michel, Paris (1938).20 Indeed, the works of these artists during their stay abroad were indicative of the styles that were taught in the various academies of the time. Schools such as the Académie Julian, the Académie Moderne, or l’Ecole des Beaux Arts were placing emphasis on technique, savoir-faire, and the knowledge of the traditional European masters. Economic factors may also explain some of these artists’ conservative aesthetic choices. While abroad, their works, which were exhibited in the United States through the Harmon Foundation, were more likely to sell if they presented better-known styles as opposed to modernist styles. Overall, their aesthetic choices compare to the assimilationist trend in politics and the mild political tone of the salons and publications of the African Diaspora in 1920s’ Paris.

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La Dépêche Africaine, Les Continents, La Voix des Nègres La Dépêche africaine (February 1928–1932), organ of the Comité de défense des intérêts de la race noire (Committee for the defense of the interests of the black race), followed a reformist agenda while also promoting diasporic cultural solidarity. In its first issue, Jane Nardal published a landmark essay titled: “Internationalisme noir” (Black International­ ism), which introduced the concept of Afro-Latinité and discussed race consciousness in the French-speaking African Diaspora. Afro-Latinité was inspired by DuBois’ concept of double consciousness and for Jane Nardal, Afro-Latinité identity would help recover the African origins and mix them with French Latin culture to establish a synergistic relation between both worlds.21 The writer was well acquainted with Alain Locke’s New Negro (1925) and versed in the ethnographic and sociological literature of her time. Ainsi parla l’oncle (So Spoke the Uncle) the classic 1928 study by Jean Price-Mars and Cynthia Free­ man of Haitian vaudou, a landmark in the development of Indigénisme, recognized the importance of creole culture and of métissage22 as a fundamental part of diasporic cul­ tures.23 Price-Mars frequented the Salon de Clamart, where he met Harlem Renaissance writers and other intellectuals of the African Diaspora. Les Continents was published in 1924 by Kojo Touvalou from Dahomey and René Maran, author of Batouala, veritable roman nègre (Batouala, a true negro novel), that won the Prix Goncourt of 1921. Les Continents was linked to the political organiza­ tion Ligue universelle de défense de la race noire (Universal league for the defense pf the black race). Tovalou had attended the 1924 congress of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in New York, presided over by Marcus Garvey. Although Les Con­ tinents covered the UNIA events and reprinted some of Garvey’s speeches, the magazine did not share its radicalism or the return to Africa platform and developed a reformist vision rather than asking for the dismantling of the colonial empires. Garvey’s ideas influ­ enced, although cautiously, the pan-cultural tone of some articles in La Dépêche africaine. Garvey, sentenced to jail by the U.S. Government on charges of financial fraud in 1924, was deported to Jamaica in 1927. In October 1928, he visited France and opened an office for the UNIA European headquarters in the offices of La Dépêche africaine.24 The maga­ zine reflected then a patchwork of opinions in its articles and editorial pieces: enlightened assimilationism, condemnations of the colonial abuses, cultural Pan-Africanism, all char­ acteristic of the proto-Négritude movement. Some stronger radical voices were heard. In the 1927 novel Banjo, Claude McKay exposed the myth of France as a color-blind country and denounced the racism of French society that he experienced directly and witnessed against the African workers in Mar­ seilles. This critique, along with Maran’s scathing preface of Batouala, openly opposed assimilationism and colonial power. Both Banjo and Batouala were translated and reached readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Palmer Hayden, residing in France in the 1920s reckoned: At first I didn’t want to be known as American. I wanted to be known as being from Martinique or some other French possession. But then I  found that you got better treatment if the French knew you were an American.25 A few black radical political groups linked to the defense of African workers and actively promoting Pan-Africanism were active during the 1920s. The most visible was Le Comité de défense de la race nègre (The Committee for the defense of the negro race). It was

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founded in 1926 by Senegalese Lamine Senghor, an important figure of the revolution­ ary left, whose ideas were reflected in the newspaper: La Voix des nègres (The Voice of the negroes).26 The front page of the first issue featured a radical reclamation of the term nègre: “We want to impose respect for our race, along with equality with all other races in the world, this is our right and our duty, and we call ourselves Nègres.”27 In Febru­ ary 1927, shortly before his death, Lamine Senghor delivered a forceful anti-colonialist speech at the Inaugural Conference of the League Against Imperialism in Brussels.28 Seng­ hor’s Comité de défense de la race nègre was followed by La Ligue de défense de la race nègre (The League for the defense of the negro race), 1928–1931, organized by Garan Kouyaté. Closely associated with the French communist party, it voiced anticolonialism positions. In a letter to DuBois, Kouyaté stressed the importance of Pan-Africanism and internationalism.29 Although the importance of these small radical groups should not be understated in denouncing the racism of French society, the prevalent view of France remained that of a liberal society welcoming members from the African Diaspora. African Art Reclaimed – Proto-Négritude – Alain Locke and The New Negro African art was sought by African American artists in the galleries, museums, antique shops, and flea markets in Paris.30 For the African American artists, it marked a stylistic rupture and became a locus in their engagement and the reclamation of their legacy. Woodruff remembered: I used to see African art in the galleries and shops in Paris. Alain Locke used to come over. He and I  were friends, and we would go to the flea market together. He was buying African art then, and I bought a piece or two . . . Then on seeing the work of Cézanne I got the connection.31 The Card Players, a painting of 1929 marked a decisive transformation in style and sub­ ject from Woodruff’s previous post-Impressionist style. The painting describes two men wearing African masks sitting around a table. The title itself is derived from Cézanne, and the spatial configuration is reminiscent of cubist paintings, but the faces are directly inspired by African masks, possibly from his own collection.32 Woodruff remembered: “Then I saw the work of Picasso and I saw how Cézanne, Picasso and the African had a terrific sense of form.”33 This shift shows Woodruff’s awareness of the connection between European modern artists and African art and his choice of bright colors for The Card Players is distinctly not cubist. In other works done while visiting the South of France, following the path of William Johnson,34 he continued to experiment with a style informed by African sculptural forms, for example, in Provencal Landscape (1930). Loïs Mailou Jones remembered: “When I  arrived in Paris, African art was just the thing. All the galleries, the museums were featuring African sculptures, African designs, and I sketched, sketched everything.”35 She remembered working on Les Fétiches (1938) after numerous visits to the African art galleries on Boulevard Raspail. When she brought the finished work to her professors at the Académie Julian, they criticized the change from her impressionist style and subject to the cubist geometric composition and flat space. I had to remind them of Modigliani and Picasso and of all the French artists using the inspiration of Africa, and that if anybody had the right to use it, I had it, it was my heritage, and so they had to give in.36

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Figure 6.1 Loïs Mailou Jones, Jeanne, Martiniquaise, 1938, oil on canvas, 24 × 281/2 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of the Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre Noël Trust. Source: Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Les Fétiches and the portrait: Jeanne, Martiniquaise (1938) indicate a stylistic shift. With Jeanne, Martiniquaise, Loïs Mailou Jones chose a woman of African descent as sub­ ject (a possible portrait of Jane Nardal), further acknowledging her own background and history.37 Her choice and creative process claimed an agency of representation asserting her African American identity. During the 1930s, Jones frequented the Nardal sisters’ Salon de Clamart, as Augusta Savage did earlier. The literary salon was attended by the intellectuals of the Diaspora and included Aimé Césaire. La Revue du Monde Noir, launched in Fall 1931 by Paulette Nardal, contained articles that articulated Pan-Africanism with concepts of identity and authenticity that began to challenge the French assimilationist model and European racial and cultural hegemony. “L’éveil de la conscience chez les étudiants noirs” (The Awaken­ ing of consciousness among black students) was published in the sixth and final issue of the magazine. The essay discussed the effects of colonialism on the cultural identity of the Black Diaspora, critiqued the French model of education, and advocated for the awaken­ ing of race consciousness, ideas that would soon be developed further in L’Etudiant Noir of 1935 and in the Négritude movement. Jane and Paulette Nardal’s writings and ideas stand as critical to its development as the elements of a proto-Négritude discourse.38

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Figure 6.2 William Johnson, Going to Church, ca. 1940–1941, oil on burlap, 381/8 × 453/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation.

Alain Locke’ The New Negro, an anthology of black writings edited by Locke and published in 1925, served as a manifesto for the young generation of African American artists. It emphasized values of racial pride and social justice, with the necessity to find new sources of inspiration. It marked the engagement of African American intellectuals in claiming the recovery of the African past and an identity based upon historical and political choices that distinctly questioned cultural assimilation and the hegemony of European-based cultural and artistic canons. African art and civilizations were central to Locke’s writings in the 1920s. A Note on African Art published in Opportunity stressed the importance of reclaiming this herit­ age and to recognize its importance in the making of Modernism.39 In The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts Locke claims: “If African art is capable of producing the ferment in mod­ ern art that it has, surely this is not too much to expect of its influence upon the culturally awakened Negro artist of the present generation.”40 For the African American artists during these years, African arts and cultures were part of an ideological reclamation and became a powerful tool in initiating agency of subject, narrative, and style in their works. While doing so they anchored their vision to the diasporic cultural and political discourses of the time.

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The Return After having returned to Europe in the 1930s, the artists discussed in this essay continued prolific artistic careers and acknowledged that their travels abroad had been an impor­ tant step in their creative developments. It is pertinent to review how profound were these transformative experiences, and the degree to which they accounted for further developments and renewal of their creative styles. An interesting example is provided by William Johnson. His travels to different parts of Europe and to North Africa were indeed decisive in his evolution as both a person and an artist, seen in his modernist artworks of that period. When looking at his later works other important clues emerge. Upon his return to New York in 1938, Johnson began to draw African sculptures and to use African American models and subject matter, to give new direction to his painting. The paintings of the 1940s such as Farm Couple at Work (1942–1944), Going to Church (ca.1940–1941), or Mount Calvary (1943–1944) depict African Americans subjects with a radically different visual vocabulary than the one developed during his stay in Europe. Johnson’s characteristic flat abstractions of vibrant colors recollect the patterns in African American quilts. These compositions affirmed a vernacular subject matter and style, rooted in specific aspects of African American lives and cultures that discarded the distant European models. In the Amistad Murals (1939–1940, Talladega College), Art of the Negro (1950–1951, Atlanta University), and Celestial Gate series (Spelman College, 1950s), Woodruff chose to merge African abstract motifs with African American history. In a 1968 interview with writer Albert Murray, the artist recalled: “One thing about my own work, my interest in African art has remained throughout the years. My early works were based on African forms and some of my later works, too.”41 What is claimed by Woodruff echoes what Johnson’s paintings transmit to the viewers in the 1940s: the creation of themes and styles that are not necessarily mediated by the experience of European modernism but establish a visual and conceptual language that directly ascertains the African American historical and cultural experiences. The work of Loïs Mailou Jones fol­ lowed a comparable trajectory. Her 1940s’ paintings clearly engaged with the representation of African American subjects. Mob Victim (Meditation) 1944, a powerful painting describing an elderly man about to be lynched, inscribed her work in a political perspective. The travels and connections with the African diasporic circles in France, their encoun­ ters during the interwar period with central intellectual figures from the Caribbean, the African continent, and the Harlem Renaissance contextualize the practices of African American artists within an emerging Pan-Africanism. The awareness of these diasporic transnational networks was shared by the various pro­ tagonists of these groups. It was critical for the African American artists discussed in this essay who created new cultural and cognitive models, and it triggered the questioning and revaluation of modernism and its sources. The process claiming African American subject matters and narratives was fundamental in developing mature styles after their return. It was at the core of influential practices that illuminate a fundamental plurality of sources and locales and construct the specific visual and historical discourses of global modernism. Notes 1. Author’s interview with the artist, June 1994. 2. There were dissenting voices: In The Big Sea: An Autobiography, Langston Hughes wrote about exoticism and colonialism. In his 1927 novel Banjo, Claude McKay denounced racism as part of the French society.

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3. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais were a corps of colonial infantry in the French army and fought during World War I and World War II. The term Tirailleurs designated the indigenous infantry recruited in the various colonies of the French colonial empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. 4. Caroline Authaler and Stefanie Michels, “Post War Administration (Africa),” International Encyclopedia of the First World War, https://doi.org/10.15463/ie1418.10403 (accessed May 31, 2019). 5. Proto Négritude was a constellation of movements that emerged during the 1920s in Harlem, Haiti, France, and other places in the African Diaspora and preceded Négritude. Proto Négritude synthe­ sized aesthetics, poetry, politics, and social theory, was informed by African and African diaspora histories and cultures and spearheaded the anti-colonial and anti-racism struggles to come. 6. In addition to the artists mentioned in the text, Aaron Douglas, William Emmett Grant, Archibald Motley, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Albert Smith, Laura Wheeler Warring also lived in Paris during the interwar period. 7. René Ater, “Making History: Meta Warrick Fuller’s ‘Ethiopia,” A merican Art 17, no. 3 (Autumn 2003): 12–31. The prophecy in Psalm 68:31 reads: “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” 8. Ibid., 17. 9. An article by Jasmine Weber in Hyperallergic, February 5, 2019, examined how W.E.B. DuBois used infographics picturing black education, employment, literacy, population and other topics to create data portraits that were part of the Exhibit of American Negroes, at the Paris Exposi­ tion in 1900. https://hyperallergic.com/476334/how-w-e-b-du-bois-meticulously-visualized-20th­ century-black-america/ (accessed June 2, 2019). 10. Blaise Diagne was the first black African elected to the France Chamber of Deputies in 1914 as representative for the four Communes of Senegal. He rose to this position through the ranks of the colonial administration. Gratien Candace, politician from Guadeloupe, served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1912 to 1942. 11. Clarence G. Contee, “The ‘Statuts’ of the Pan-African Association of 1921: A  Document,” African Historical Studies 3, no. 2 (1970): 411, https://doi.org/10.2307/216225. 12. Michel Fabre, La rive noire (Paris: Lieu Commun, 1985), 82. 13. T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Negritude Women (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 37. 14. Sonia Recasens, “Augusta Savage,” Dictionnaire universel des créatrices, 2013, https://aware­ womenartists.com/en/artiste/augusta-savage/ (accessed June 15, 2019). 15. Philippe Dewitte, Les mouvements nègres en France, 1919–1939 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985), 253. Another protest came from the surrealists group who wrote a public letter titled: “Ne visitez pas l’Exposition Coloniale” (Do not visit the Colonial Exhibition) signed by André Bre­ ton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, among others. The communist party also denounced the 1931 exhibition and organized a “contre-exposition” to denounce the colonial politics of the French government. 16. Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir, African Americans in the City of Light (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), 102. These depictions of African dancers by Palmer have been criti­ cized as a form of minstrel caricature and internalized racism, although it is also argued to be a satire of the staged performances he witnessed at the Exposition Coloniale. 17. Mary Schmidt Campbell, Winifred Stoelting, Gylbert Coker, and Albert Murray, Hale Wood­ ruff, 50 Years of His Art (New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 1979), 14. 18. Ibid., 71. 19. Richard J. Powell, Homecoming, the Art and Life of William H. Johnson (Washington, DC: The National Museum of American Art, 1991), 30. 20. Author’s interview with the artist, June  1994. Jones’ decision to come study in Paris was prompted by Meta Warrick Fuller, whom she had met in Martha’s Vineyard and had advised her to go abroad if she was serious about becoming an artist and wanted to become successful. 21. Afro-Latinité announced Edouard Glissant’s métissage, créolité, and mondialité, that were fun­ damental concepts in his oeuvre and discussion of Caribbean identity. 22. Métissage and Créolization are terms used by the philosopher and writer from Martinique, Edouard Glissant to characterize the cross-cultural (interwoven) foundations of Caribbean cul­ tures. The term itself comes from the French word: tissage or weaving. 23. Jean Price-Mars influenced many important scholars, including Melville Herskovitz and Kath­ erine Dunham for her 1935 work on Afro-Caribbean dance. For more information on the

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beginning of Indigenism, see: Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, “Anténor Firmin et sa contribution à l’anthropologie haïtienne,” Gradhiva 1 (2005), https://doi.org/10.4000/gradhiva 302 (accessed May 25, 2019). 24. Philippe Dewitte, Les mouvements nègres en France, 1919–1939 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985), 238. 25. Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson, A History of African-American Artistsi (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 162. 26. Only two issues of La voix des nègres will be published, in January and March  1927. The newspaper first issue featured an anti-colonialist article by its founder Lamine Senghor who was previously a soldier in the Tirailleurs Sénégalais. The second issue published a report on the Brussels anti-imperialist congress of February 1927 and reflected the ideas of the international communist movement. 27. Philippe Dewitte, “Le rouge et le nègre,” Hommes et Migrations 1257 (2005): 36. Translation by the author. 28. Senghor’s speech stood as a prophetic message of the African revolutions for independence to come. Following the conference, he is arrested and imprisoned. He is released under strict surveillance at the end of 1927, a few weeks before his death in November of that year. 29. The letter is dated April 29, 1929. J. Ayo Langley, “Pan-Africanism in Paris, 1924–36,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 7, no. 1 (1969): 86. 30. At the end of the 19th century, French colonial expeditions in North, West, and Central Africa and the subsequent looting of African art had led to the establishment of private and public collections such as the one in the Trocadéro Museum that opened in 1878. 31. Mary Schmidt Campbell, et  al., Hale Woodruff, 50  Years of His Art, 30, 77. James Porter, another of the African American artists in Paris at that time, completed his studies at the Institut d’art and et d’archéologie at the Sorbonne in 1935 and received a stipend from the Rockefeller Foundation for extensive travels in Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Italy. Porter stated that the purpose of his trip was “To make a first-hand study of certain collections of Afri­ can Negro arts and crafts housed in important museums of ethnography.” Regenia A. Perry, Free within Ourselves, African American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1992), 151. 32. One may argue that he used the Bembe mask or the Yoruba Shango sculptures that he had bought in 1928 in Paris with Locke, for inspiration. 33. Mary Schmidt Campbell, et al., Hale Woodruff, 50 Years of His Art, 77. 34. William Johnson, in France from 1926 to 1929, adopted a modernist style soon after he trave­ led to the South of France; his provencal landscapes were then inspired by the expressionist painter Chaim Soutine. After Johnson received the Harmon Foundation gold medal during a short stay in New York in 1930, his work obtained critical attention and toured throughout the United States and he became a symbol of the “new negro” artist movement defined by Locke. Johnson and his wife, Danish artist Holcha Krake, visited Tunisia in 1932 and his stay there resulted in watercolors of landscapes and architecture. The couple moved back to New York in October 1938. 35. Author interview with the artist, June 1994. 36. Ibid. 37. After her arrival in the French capital, Loïs Jones was introduced to the Salon de Clamart held by the Nardal sisters; it is possible that Jane Nardal became the model for Jeanne, Martini­ quaise. Rebecca Keegan VanDiver, “Loïs Mailou Jones, Diasporic Art Practice, and Africa in the 20th Century.” PhD diss., Duke University, 2013. 38. For an in-depth study of the contributions of Jane and Paulette Nardal to the diasporic move­ ment during the interwar period, see: T. Deneah Sharpley-Whiting, Negritude Women (Min­ neapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 39. Alain Locke, “A  Note on African Art,” O pportunity II, National Urban League (1924): 134–138. 40. Alain Locke, “The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts,” in The New Negro (New York: Atheneum, 1925), 267. 41. Mary Schmidt Campbell et al., Hale Woodruff, 50 Years of His Art, 76.

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References Bearden Romare, Henderson Harry, A History of African-American Artists, New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. Benjamin, Tritobia Hayes, The Life and Art of Loïs Mailou Jones, San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1994. Campbell Mary Schmidt and al., Hale Woodruff, 50 years of His Art exh.cat. New York: The Stu­ dio Museum in Harlem, 1979. Césaire, Aimé, Discours sur le colonialisme, Paris: Editions Présence Africaine, 1955. Clark Hine, Darlene, Keaton Trica Danielle, Small Stephen, (Eds) Black Europe and the African Diaspora, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Dewitte, Philippe, Les mouvements nègres en France, 1919-1939, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1985. DuBois, W.E.B., The Souls of Black Folks, Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.,1903. Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. Grollemund, Philippe, Fiertés de femme noire: Entretiens, Mémoires de Paulette Nardal, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2018. Locke, Alain, (Ed.) The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance, New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925. Marand, René, Batouala, Paris: Albin Michel, 1921. McKay, Claude, Banjo, New York; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1929. Powell, Richard J., Homecoming, The Art and Life of William H. Johnson, Washington D.C.: The National Museum of American Art, 1992. Price Mars, Jean, Ainsi Parla l’Oncle, Imprimerie de Compiègne 1928. Shapley-Whiting, T. Denean, Negritue Women, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Stovall, Tyler, Paris Noir, African Americans in the City of Light, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Com­ pany, 1996.

Part II

1920–1940

7

Berlin, Bauhaus, Bucharest Re-Making Modernism in the Global Peripheries1 Alexandra Chiriac

The Academy of Decorative Arts (Academia de Arte Decorative), a private institution that functioned in Bucharest between 1924 and 1929, was one of Romania’s first modern design initiatives. In existing scholarship, the Academy’s pedagogical program has been connected to the Bauhaus through M. H. Maxy, a prominent Romanian avant-garde artist. Maxy spent time in Germany in 1921–1922 and was believed to have replicated the ethos of the Bauhaus on his return to Bucharest through the creation of the Acad­ emy and its applied arts workshops. While Bucharest was still perceived to be “periph­ eral” in the narratives of modern design, it was at least shown to be connected to the center through the long reach of the Bauhaus. The Academy’s story thus exemplified what Piotr Piotrowski, one of the most prominent historians of modern art in Eastern Europe, termed as the vertical model of art history whereby “the center provides canons, hierarchy of values, and stylistic norms” that the periphery then adopts “in a process of reception.”2 This vertical model can be challenged through new findings that complicate the story of the Academy, disrupting the apparently straightforward center-periphery relationship. The Academy was not a product of Maxy and the Bauhaus, but of two other entities entirely marginal to current histories of modernism. This essay reflects on what occurs when peripheries circumvent the center, creating alternative “eccentric” encounters.3 A Question of “Influence”: the Bauhaus, the Schule Reimann, and the Academy of Decorative Arts The claim of a Bauhaus influence for Bucharest’s Academy was initiated by M. H. Maxy (1895–1971) and later popularized by scholars writing about the Romanian avant­ garde.4 My research findings dispute this account, demonstrating that the creator of the institution was Andrei Vespremie (1898–1943/1944), a designer and pedagogue with a transnational career, but now a largely unknown figure5 (Figure  7.1). Accounts of the Academy’s activities have relegated him to a supporting role, often describing him as a Latvian émigré merely in passing through Bucharest. Although Vespremie did eventually relocate to Latvia in 1927, he was a Hungarian Jew born in Transylvania during the period when the region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He became a citizen of Romania after World War I, in the aftermath of the country’s territorial gains. In 1920 he traveled to Germany to complete his education at the Schule Reimann, a commercial design school in Berlin. It was during this time that the groundwork for the Academy began, with the Schule Reimann eventually becoming a blueprint for this institution. Vespremie’s transcript from his time at the Schule Reimann has survived in the Latvia DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-11

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Figure 7.1 Staff and apprentices of the Academy of Decorative Arts, October 1926. Middle row, starting with third from left: Mela Brun-Maxy, Andrei Vespremie, and M. H. Maxy. Source: Courtesy of the Romanian National Art Museum.

State Historical Archives alongside a list of the Academy’s courses at its inception in November  1924.6 A  comparison of the two documents clearly reveals that Vespremie based the Academy’s curriculum on the courses he had attended in Berlin, creating a class schedule based on his preferred disciplines. During his time as a student at the Schule Reimann from 15 October  1920 to 30 June 1922, Vespremie was enrolled in eleven different courses. He excelled at bookbind­ ing, ivory carving, metalwork, and ornament, and achieved various levels of proficiency in drawing, painting, color theory, modeling, poster design, printmaking, and typogra­ phy. Nearly all of these disciplines were present in the Academy’s 1924 course catalogue developed by Vespremie, which clearly reflects his training at the Schule Reimann. They included bookbinding, ivory carving, metalwork, typography, and ornament, as well as drawing, painting, and sculpture. When the Academy expanded in 1926, the courses added included printmaking and poster design, once again revealing a link to Vespremie’s training in Germany. The connection to the Schule Reimann was further strengthened by the work that was being produced in the Academy’s workshops. Metal items made by Vespremie included vases, trays, bowls, candelabra, fire screens, and small containers, which are illustrated in promotional images for the Academy (Figure 7.2). Some objects are directly related to metal items that appear in the pages of Farbe und Form, the Schule Reimann’s monthly magazine, in the early 1920s (e.g., the November 1921 and Decem­ ber 1923 issues). Although the individual makers of these objects are not noted in the magazine, the stylistic affinities with Vespremie’s work in Romania are undeniable. The items illustrated in Farbe und Form are probably his work, or in the very least suggest

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Figure 7.2 An exhibition organized by Mela Brun-Maxy at the Academy of Decorative Arts, 1926. Openwork items and metal containers by Andrei Vespremie are visible throughout, as is the multi-functional lamp from Figure 7.4. Source: Courtesy of the Romanian National Art Museum.

some common stylistic preferences among the students of the Schule Reimann’s metal workshop during this period. Overall, Vespremie was instrumental in developing design education in Bucharest and disseminating technical and artistic knowledge of metalwork, bookbinding, typography, and other disciplines. Yet his departure for Latvia in 1927 imperiled his legacy in the history of Romanian art and design. Settling in Riga, he taught in Jewish gymnasia until the end of his life – he was murdered in the Kaiserwald concen­ tration camp during World War II. M. H. Maxy, a prominent member of the Bucharest avant-garde, took over the lead­ ership of the Academy after Vespremie’s departure in June 1927. As the importance of the Bauhaus began to assert itself in European avant-garde circles, Maxy made several claims that consolidated his own connections to international modern art movements and enhanced the status of the Academy. In 1931, the artist published an overview of the past decade of the avant-garde in Romania in the periodical unu.7 In this article he

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associated Vespemie’s work with German expressionism, admiring his technical prow­ ess but decrying his lack of stylistic novelty. In comparison, Maxy highlighted his own preference for “architectonic constructivism,” which he claimed he had developed in his designs after Vespremie’s departure. He further detailed his efforts to create applied arts workshops for the young people of Bucharest and lamented the Academy’s dissolution as the end of an attempt to create “a school similar to that of Gropius in Dessau.” Maxy’s article in unu is his first recorded attempt to overstate his contribution to the Academy and claim an avant-garde lineage for his activities. This is especially egregious in the light of recent findings that demonstrate how Maxy learned metalwork design under Vespre­ mie’s guidance, whose stylistic vocabulary he subsequently appropriated despite his later claims. The Academy’s educational foundation was certainly the work of Vespremie visible in both its curriculum and the pedagogical and artistic vision. Maxy reduced the number of classes offered at the Academy after Vespremie’s departure and then closed the institution altogether, opening his own design studio and commercial space that lacked a pedagogi­ cal component. After World War II, as Romania became a communist state, Maxy was appointed director of the newly created Romanian National Art Museum in Bucharest. From this position, he was able to take advantage of a period of ideological thaw that occurred in the 1960s in order to position the Bucharest avant-garde within narratives of modernism. His retrospective exhibition held at Sala Dalles in Bucharest in 1965 was an important moment of validation from the communist regime for Maxy’s entire artistic career and thus the inclusion of avant-garde works was important.8 In the catalogue of this exhibition, he was described as taking over the directorship of the Academy in 1924, whereas in reality, this did not happen until 1927.9 Maxy also continued to develop the myth of the Academy’s Bauhaus connection. In 1971, the year of his death, he gave an interview about his career to the prominent visual arts magazine Arta. Recalling his involvement with the Academy of Decorative Arts, he declared: In Germany I went to Dessau, I looked, I inquired, I was shown the way they were organized, the possibilities of a modern decorative art emerging from the collabora­ tion between artists and craftsmen. Returning from Germany, I had the idea to pro­ pose a collaboration to the Vespremie family; my first proposal in 1925, with Integral, with those particular workshops, with exhibition spaces, with events.10 Maxy’s choice to emphasize the Bauhaus in Dessau in this interview as well as in his 1931 article offers further proof of his invocation of the Bauhaus as a particular signifier of modernism. This second location of the Bauhaus (1925–1933) became a byword for modernism in art, design, and architecture as the school flourished in the new buildings especially designed by Walter Gropius. The school’s first location in Weimar (1919–1925) contained associations with German expressionism and a stronger spiritual dimension. Maxy’s disproval of Vespremie’s fondness for expressionism and his desire to present his own work as more avant-garde probably led him to position the Dessau Bauhaus as an inspiration for the Academy, even though he never visited this site. Instead, he was acquainted with the institution in its first location in Weimar, having visited there during the time he spent in Berlin (June 1922–June 1923), training in the workshop of Arthur Segal. Maxy included three paintings of Weimar in his exhibition at Der Sturm Gallery in April 1923. His exposure to the ideas of the Bauhaus was certainly not lim­ ited to this visit, and through Segal, he may have come into contact with Kandinsky

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and Moholy-Nagy. Furthermore, members of the Romanian avant-garde were well con­ nected to peers across Europe and knowledgeable about developments in modern art and design. Maxy was no exception, being well aware of the activities of the Bauhaus throughout the years. Nonetheless, the Academy’s pedagogical offering during its first years of existence (1924–1926) does not resemble that of the Bauhaus, especially when considering the curriculum available in 1922–1923 in Weimar, when Maxy visited. Of the core Bauhaus workshops only metalwork and textiles coincided with the Academy, as well as bookbinding which had a very short lifespan at the Bauhaus. Ceramics, car­ pentry, glass-making, and wall painting were not part of the Academy’s curriculum in 1924. The Academy also offered a course in typography and graphic lettering, something that was not formally taught at the Bauhaus until 1925, but had a long tradition at the Schule Reimann as part of its focus on branding and commercial design. Furthermore, the Academy offered a separate curriculum for children from six years of age, where they could “learn to create their own toys and would be taught the decorative arts in an easy and pleasant manner.”11 This initiative probably took its cue from Albert Reimann, the school’s founder, and his interest in early education, with courses for children being offered at the Schule Reimann from the institution’s early days. Being Peripheral in the Center: The Schule Reimann Goes Global The Academy’s connection with the Schule Reimann not only destabilizes the linear nar­ rative of the Bauhaus influence in Romania but also exposes the way in which the center itself is a heterogenous space with its very own peripheries. As the editors of the vol­ ume The Centre as Margin: Eccentric Perspectives on Art suggest, “the margin spreads wherever it finds a gap” so much so that one can “find it at the center, through fissures, migrations, appropriations, inversions, dialogues and usurpations.”12 The Bauhaus is now largely accepted as a short-hand for design modernism hailing from Germany. The contribution of the Schule Reimann on the other hand is largely absent from histories of modern design.13 Run by the Jewish couple Albert and Klara Reimann, the school grew from a sculpture workshop in 1902 to a large and successful institution that trained hun­ dreds of international students and employed forty members of staff. By 1922, the year that Vespremie graduated, it had 754 students and at its peak in 1936 that number had reached 1000; by contrast, the Bauhaus trained around 500 students in total from 1919 to 1933.14 At its peak, the Reimann School offered thirty different subjects, with the over­ all focus on modern commercial design and the ambition to provide students with the skills to work in business and industry. It was innovative in its curriculum and introduced classes for poster design, advertising art, and fashion drawing even before World War I, as well as creating a sound film course in 1932, one of the first in existence in Europe. The Schule Reimann’s aims, as stated in the school’s own magazine Farbe und Form, were “to serve craft . . . , to serve industry . . . , to serve commerce.”15 As design historian Yasuko Suga has pointed out, the Schule Reimann differed from the Bauhaus in its administrative structure, curriculum, and gender relations. The Schule Reimann, like the Academy of Decorative Arts in Bucharest, was a private institution, whereas the Bauhaus benefitted from state support. The Schule Reimann was unasham­ edly focused on commercial aspects of design, preparing students to obtain jobs in com­ merce and industry, and employing teachers who also worked professionally in their chosen fields. It was especially attractive for female teachers and students offering courses related to fashion, textiles, and window display design, and supporting its graduates

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with bursaries and employment opportunities. This perhaps is one of the reasons for Schule Reimann’s absence from canonical histories of modernism. As Natasha Kroll, a Schule Reimann alumna later recalled, “while the Bauhaus gave a ‘hard-working and experimental’ impression, the Reimann . . . was ‘a bit like a finishing school’ with many female students.”16 Fearful of just such an impression of “dilettantism,” Walter Gropius restricted the number of female students from the early days of the Bauhaus in order to preserve the institution’s credibility, as Elizabeth Otto has shown.17 Otto’s work is one of several recent studies that “de-center” the Bauhaus by taking a more critical approach to the institution and its legacies and revealing the “ghosts” that haunt it and linear narra­ tives of modernism. Otto’s account reveals the institution’s dubious gender politics and the presence of Nazi sympathies among the students and teachers. This does not down­ play the institution’s importance and the fate of the Bauhäusler who suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime. Instead, it reveals how a monolithic narrative cannot represent the complexities of the Bauhaus, and by extension of the so-called “center.” The Schule Reimann’s student body was extremely diverse, with Farbe und Form, the school’s monthly magazine, boasting about the school’s truly global reach: students came not just from all over Europe, but also from Turkey, Iran, Bolivia, Chile, or Brazil. Vespre­ mie’s training at the Schule Reimann was reflected in his subsequent career in Romania and Latvia, and Suga has shown the importance of the school’s progressive teaching in Japan, through figures such as the architect Takehiko Mizutani and the textile designer Imai Kazuko.18 It is likely that many more such examples exist, yet it must be emphasized that the Schule Reimann’s approach to teaching was not a reflection of the top-down center-periphery model. The school lacked the unitary aesthetic of the Bauhaus and its alumni adapted the knowledge gained to their own needs and context. “ ‘Executed by the Reimann School Workshops’ has come to be synonymous with a personal interpretation of the modern spirit” observed the New York-based Art Digest in 1930, when the institu­ tion’s innovative commercial design gained a foothold also in the United States.19 But the Schule Reimann’s strongest presence outside Germany was in Britain, where it relocated in 1937 as the political situation in its home country worsened. Its arrival was welcomed by institutions as varied as the Council for Art and Industry and the Board of Trade, concerned about Britain lagging behind in terms of commercial design and display.20 The London branch teaching staff consisted of both local design luminaries, such as E. McKnight Kauffer and Marion Dorn, and many of the school’s Berlin staff. The school kept its cosmopolitan ethos and even organized free English lessons for its international students. Suga has documented the Schule Reimann’s experimental approach through the recollections of some of its students, revealing a place of great creativity that trained Britain’s foremost display and advertising professionals for decades to come, even though the school itself did not survive after 1940. Being Peripheral in the Periphery: Globalizing East European Modernism Maxy’s reluctance to acknowledge the Schule Reimann’s contribution to the creation of the Bucharest Academy highlights the difficulties of breaking away from the canoni­ cal narratives of modernism. This is especially true of East European art history, which occupies a peculiar space in debates about global entanglements and center-periphery relations.21 The region’s geographical position suggests it is a part of the privileged Euro­ pean “center,” yet historical narratives usually relegate Eastern Europe to a position of cultural and intellectual “backwardness” relative to Western Europe. This state of

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“in-betweenness” has been repeatedly discussed by scholars of the region, its position described as the “close Other” or “the shadow, the .  .  . alter ego” of the West.22 As Edit András has observed, this ambiguous position has engendered an ongoing identity crisis within East European art history. Post-1989, scholarship focused on recovering the region’s historic avant-gardes and (re)placing them within European narratives of modernism. This research was underscored by a national dimension, with each country aiming to excavate its own special contribution. The work of recovering local artistic production is still necessary and ongoing, yet it has fallen somewhat out of favor with the advent of the global turn. Art historical research is increasingly shifting away from formerly acknowledged “centers” of artistic production located in Europe and the United States. While this is a welcome development, it raises new questions about the position of Eastern Europe within art historical narratives, as the region both does and does not belong to this “central” space. In the words of András, “East-Central European art his­ tory again finds itself at a crossroads . . ., trapped between the forces of the global and local perspectives.”23 The peculiarity of this situation is exemplified by this research on the Academy of Dec­ orative Arts. The fabricated link between this institution and the Bauhaus was enabled by Maxy and unquestioned for many decades by scholars. It was an appealing premise that connected this peripheral institution to the center and gave legitimacy to Romanian modernism, even if only as a “close Other” of a more prominent avant-garde movement. In truth, the artistic output of the Academy of Decorative Arts, like its curriculum, sel­ dom resembled that of the Bauhaus. Stripped from its Bauhaus connection, the Academy became the most marginal of marginal endeavors: the creation of an unknown nomadic figure trained at an obscure school that was not an instantly recognizable symbol of design modernism. In other words, no longer a “close Other” but simply an “Other.” The closeness to the center was always an illusion, a product of the “hidebound myopia” in our art histories as termed by Jeremy Howard.24 Even Maxy’s attempts to construct an acknowledged avant-garde pedigree for the Academy and for himself were not quite as successful as he had hoped. He remained one of the lesser-known Romanian avant-garde artists, with no significant monographs or exhibitions for several decades. In the Roma­ nian collective imaginary, it is artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Tristan Tzara, or Vic­ tor Brauner who take the limelight, having achieved success in the center, and according to the center’s value system. When endeavoring to put East European art history on the map, it is tempting to respond by legitimizing the existence of the region’s modernisms according to the existing criteria of the canon. Perhaps it is so-called “self-colonization,” perhaps it is misplaced hubris, yet in either case the result is usually falling short.25 As Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel has observed, “one cannot be as ‘good’ as those in the center who decide the rules as to precisely what is ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ or even ‘avant-garde’ and ‘retrograde.’ ”26 Letting go of preconceived ideas about the Academy eventually turned into a much more fruitful scholarly endeavor. It became evident that the Academy was a marginal space. In Romania, the applied arts were an instrument of nation-building during this period, constructing a national artistic lineage through the association with the traditional crafts of Romanian peasants. The Academy did not conform to the trend for a national style, and the works exhibited there did not seek their inspiration in Romanian peasant crafts or historicist styles reflective of Romania’s Orthodox faith and courtly culture. Instead, it carved out a space for those who belonged to marginalized or minority groups. Gravi­ tating around the Academy were artists, designers, and patrons of Hungarian, German,

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Figure 7.3 Andrei Vespremie, Metal openwork radiator cover with a Tree of Life motif probably inspired by wood-carved Torah arks, 1926. Source: Courtesy of the Romanian National Art Museum.

and Russian origin, some of whom were also Jewish, as well as Jewish Romanians, all of whom who were facing an increasingly nationalist and antisemitic political and social climate. While the works exhibited at the Academy did not present the unified aesthetic we have come to associate with design modernism, their eclectic stylistic affinities were a reflection of the group’s diverse interests and the patrons they catered to. For example, Vespremie’s work included both elaborate metal openwork items inspired by East Euro­ pean carved Torah arks and a streamlined multi-functional lamp that could adapt to the needs of its user (Figures 7.3 and 7.4). Furthermore, like the Schule Reimann, the Acad­ emy was a welcoming space for women artists. Female instructors and workshops leaders formed a considerable part of the teaching staff, while the leadership of the children’s section was entrusted to Izabela Sadoveanu, a well-known feminist and pedagogue who advocated for mixed-gender education. Vespremie’s design for a pamphlet about the chil­ dren’s section contained an illustration of both girls and boys attending the Academy’s classes. In 1926, Mela Brun-Maxy, the wife of M. H. Maxy, became the manager of the Academy’s commercial section, funding and directing this venture. She was in charge of selecting and displaying merchandise for sale, creating living spaces that introduced mod­ ern interior design to Bucharest. Her contribution, like that of Vespremie, was subsumed

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Figure 7.4 Andrei Vespremie, Multi-functional “lamp-construction” illustrated in the avant-garde periodical Contimporanul, July 1926.

to that of Maxy in accounts of the Academy, and the institution’s commercial activities downplayed to create a more convincing Bauhaus lineage. Peripheries of the World, Unite! Eccentric Modernisms Refuting the Bauhaus myth and accepting the Academy’s marginal position has resulted in a much more enriching account of its activities than the previous narrative of a topdown center-periphery influence. Furthermore, these findings suggest how a global per­ spective might be within reach in East European art history, even when preserving and excavating the local context. Firstly, the Academy was a microcosm of the ethnically diverse population of interwar Romania – a topic that deserves much more scholarly attention – thus challenging the notion of a local modernism based solely on national characteristics. Secondly, Vespremie’s important contribution became apparent when looking outside national boundaries and forming collaborations to locate and translate

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archival materials. The transnational trajectories of Vespremie could only become vis­ ible through transnational scholarly links. Consequently, Vespremie’s reach, or that of other marginal figures, need not be globally comprehensive to be taken into account, but should instead be construed outside an ethnocentric view of art history. A global perspec­ tive should be more than merely the opposite of a West-centric art history – it should also be the opposite of a collection of individual national narratives.27 This essay focuses on just one example that interrogates the relationship between Eastern Europe and the so-called “centers” of modernism, yet much more is at stake. Before his untimely death in 2015, Piotrowski revised his earlier theoretical model that conceived of a non-hierarchical horizontal art history. Witnessing the slide of the geopolitical landscape toward nationalism, he wished to distance his methodology from the excavation of separate regional narratives, coining the slogan “Peripheries of the World, Unite!”28 To embrace marginality is to find kinship and connection, not only in the present but also in the past. The peripheral worlds of the Schule Reimann in Germany and the Academy of Decorative Arts in Romania converged in the most fruitful way, circumventing the centrality of the Bauhaus. Perhaps expanding thus, the peripheries of the periphery and the peripheries of the center can eventually unite, fill­ ing all spaces. Notes 1. My work on this article was supported by the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Mod­ ern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where I was a postdoctoral fellow in 2020–2022. I am also indebted to Nancy Troy, Adri Kácsor, Jason Mientkiewicz, and Hyewon Yoon for their valuable feedback on an earlier draft. 2. Piotr Piotrowski, “Towards a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde,” in Europa! Europa? The Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent, Sascha Bru et  al., eds. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 49–58 (p. 51). 3. Joana Antunes, Maria de Lurdes Craveiro, and Carla Alexandra Gonçalves, “Introduction. (Re)framing Art History. Art Beyond Boundaries,” in The Centre as Margin. Eccentric Per­ spectives on Art, Joana Antunes, Maria de Lurdes Craveiro, and Carla Alexandra Gonçalves, eds. (Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2019), xiii–xxxii. 4. This claim appears in most scholarly texts on Maxy and the Romanian avant-garde. See, for example, Petre Oprea, M. H. Maxy (Bucureşti: Arta Grafică, 1974); Ioana Vlasiu, “Idei con­ structiviste în arta românească a anilor ’20: Integralismul,” in Bucharest in the 1920s and 1930s: Between Avant-Garde and Modernism, Magda Cârneci, ed. (Bucureşti: Simetria, 1994), 38–46; and many others. 5. I discuss these findings in Alexandra Chiriac, Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022). 6. Latvia State Historical Archives, fond 1632, inv. 1, file 23144. 7. M. H. Maxy, “Contribuţiuni sumare la cunoaşterea mişcării moderne de la noi,” unu, no. 33 (February 1931): 3–4. 8. For a more detailed analysis of Maxy’s postwar career, see Irina Cărăbaş, “Avangarda românească în viaţa de dincolo. M. H. Maxy – pictor comunist,” in Arta în România între anii 1945–2000. O analiză din perspectiva prezentului, Dan Călin, Iosif Király, Anca Oroveanu, and Magda Radu, eds. (Bucureşti: UNArte, 2016), 36–51. 9. Expoziţia retrospectivă M. H. Maxy (Bucureşti: Arta Grafică, 1965). 10. Mihai Driscu, “Retrospective. M. H. Maxy,” Arta, no. 4–5 (1971): 52–54 (p. 53). Integral was an avant-garde periodical that Maxy edited from 1925 to 1928. 11. Latvia State Historical Archives, fond 1632, inv. 1, file 23144. 12. Antunes, Craveiro, and Gonçalves, “Introduction,” xxi. 13. There are two monographs on the Schule Reimann: Yasuko Suga, The Reimann School. A Design Diaspora (London: Artmonsky Arts, 2014) and Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser, Die

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Reimann-Schule in Berlin und London 1902–1943. Ein jüdisches Unternehmen zur Kunstund Designausbildung internationaler Prägung bis zur Vernichtung durch das Hitlerregime (Aachen: Shaker Media, 2009). However, the school is generally absent from scholarship on interwar modernism, with the notable exceptions of Jeremy Aynsley, Graphic Design in Ger­ many: 1890–1945 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000) and Robin Schuldenfrei, Luxury and Modernism. Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900–1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). 14. Yasuko Suga, “Modernism, Commercialism and Display Design in Britain,” Journal of Design History 19, no. 2 (2006): 137–154 (pp. 140, 154). 15. Aynsley, Graphic Design in Germany, 144. 16. Suga, “Modernism, Commercialism,” 140. 17. Elizabeth Otto, Haunted Bauhaus. Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics (Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 2019), 100. 18. Suga, The Reimann School, 21–22. 19. Art Digest, no. 6 (December 15, 1930): 33. The Schule Reimann’s designs for modern metal­ work became available in the United States in the 1930s, thanks to a collaboration with the Chase Brass and Copper Company. 20. The information about the school’s British period comes from Suga, “Modernism, Commercialism.” 21. I use Eastern Europe here as shorthand, based on the recent volume edited by Beáta Hock and Anu Allas, Globalizing East European Art Histories (New York: Routledge, 2018). The terminology for naming the region, and indeed the region’s geographical terrain, have been widely debated. 22. Piotrowski, “Towards a Horizontal History,” 52; Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 17–18. See also Maria Todorova, “The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of East-European Nationalism,” Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 140–164. 23. Edit András, “What Does East-Central European Art History Want? Reflections on the Art History Discourse in the Region since 1989,” in Extending the Dialogue. Essays by Igor Zabel Award Laureates, Grant Recipients, and Jury Members, 2008–2014, Christiane Erharter, Raw­ ley Grau, and Urška Jurman, eds. (Berlin: Archive Books, 2016), 52–77. 24. Jeremy Howard, East European Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1. 25. András, “What Does East-Central European Art History Want?,” 59. 26. Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, “The Uses and Abuses of Peripheries in Art History,” Artl@s Bulletin 3, no. 1 (2014): 1–17 (p. 6). 27. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, “Introduction. Reintroducing Circulations. Historiography and the Project of Global Art History,” in Cir­ culations in the Global History of Art, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, eds. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 1–22 (p. 18). In the case of Vespremie, and many others like him, displacement could even occur while standing in place, as borders shifted, and national territories formed and reformed. 28. Piotr Piotrowski, “Peripheries of the World, Unite!,” in Extending the Dialogue. Essays by Igor Zabel Award Laureates, Grant Recipients, and Jury Members, 2008–2014, Christiane Erharter, Rawley Grau, and Urška Jurman, eds. (Berlin: Archive Books, 2016), 12–27.

References András, Edit. “What Does East-Central European Art History Want? Reflections on the Art His­ tory Discourse in the Region since 1989.” In Extending the Dialogue. Essays by Igor Zabel Award Laureates, Grant Recipients, and Jury Members, 2008–2014, edited by Christiane Erhar­ ter, Rawley Grau, and Urška Jurman, 52–77. Berlin: Archive Books, 2016. Antunes Joana, Maria de Lurdes Craveiro, and Carla Alexandra Gonçalves. “Introduction. (Re) framing Art History. Art Beyond Boundaries.” In The Centre as Margin. Eccentric Perspectives on Art, edited by Joana Antunes, Maria de Lurdes Craveiro, and Carla Alexandra Gonçalves, xiii–xxxii. Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2019. Aynsley, Jeremy. Graphic Design in Germany: 1890–1945. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

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Cărăbaş, Irina. “Avangarda românească în viaţa de dincolo. M. H. Maxy – pictor communist.” In Arta în România între anii 1945–2000. O analiză din perspectiva prezentului, edited by Dan Călin, Iosif Király, Anca Oroveanu, and Magda Radu, 36–51. Bucureşti: UNArte, 2016. Chiriac, Alexandra. Performing Modernism: A  Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022. DaCosta Kaufmann, Thomas, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel. “Introduction. Reintroducing Circulations. Historiography and the Project of Global Art History.” In Circulations in the Global History of Art, edited by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, 1–22. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Driscu, Mihai. “Retrospective. M. H. Maxy.” Arta, no. 4–5 (1971): 52–54. Expoziţia retrospectivă M. H. Maxy, exh. cat. Bucureşti: Arta Grafică, 1965. Hock, Beáta and Anu Allas, eds. Globalizing East European Art Histories. New York: Routledge, 2018. Howard, Jeremy. East European Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Joyeux-Prunel, Béatrice. “The Uses and Abuses of Peripheries in Art History.” Artl@s Bulletin 3, no. 1 (2014): 1–17. Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser, Swantje. Die Reimann-Schule in Berlin und London 1902–1943. Ein jüdisches Unternehmen zur Kunst- und Designausbildung internationaler Prägung bis zur Vernichtung durch das Hitlerregime. Aachen: Shaker Media, 2009. Maxy, M. H. “Contribuţiuni sumare la cunoaşterea mişcării moderne de la noi.” unu, no. 33 (February 1931): 3–4. Oprea, Petre. M. H. Maxy. Bucureşti: Arta Grafică, 1974. Otto, Elizabeth. Haunted Bauhaus. Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics. Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 2019. Piotrowski, Piotr. “Towards a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde.” In Europa! Europa? The Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent, edited by Sascha Bru, Jan Baetens, Benedikt Hjartarson, Peter Nicholls, Tania Ørum, and Hubert van den Berg, 49–58. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. Piotrowski, Piotr. “Peripheries of the World, Unite!.” In Extending the Dialogue. Essays by Igor Zabel Award Laureates, Grant Recipients, and Jury Members, 2008–2014, edited by Christiane Erharter, Rawley Grau, and Urška Jurman, 12–27. Berlin: Archive Books, 2016. Schuldenfrei, Robin. Luxury and Modernism. Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900– 1933. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. Suga, Yasuko. “Modernism, Commercialism and Display Design in Britain.” Journal of Design History 19, no. 2 (2006): 137–154. Suga, Yasuko. The Reimann School. A Design Diaspora. London: Artmonsky Arts, 2014. Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Todorova, Maria. “The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of EastEuropean Nationalism.” Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 140–164. Vlasiu, Ioana. “Idei constructiviste în arta românească a anilor ’20: Integralismul.” In Bucharest in the 1920s and 1930s: Between Avant-Garde and Modernism, edited by Magda Cârneci, 38–46. Bucureşti: Simetria, 1994. Weblinks

• A full account of the Academy of Decorative Arts in Romania available open access in Chiriac Alexandra, Performing Modernism: A  Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022): www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110765687/html • Entry for Mela Brun-Maxy and M. H. Maxy in the Modern Art Index Project: https:// doi.org/10.57011/SDDU7510 • A digitized issue of Farbe und Form, the Schule Reimann magazine: https://iaddb. org/#/query/e1695534-8d94-45ae-b322-75ef23abcec6

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• Photographs of the Schule Reimann from the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek: https://www. archivportal-d.de/objekte?query=%22schule%20reimann%22&offset=0&rows=20 • An example of Schule Reimann metalwork in the British Museum collection: www. britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1989-0106-1 • Resources on the Romanian avant-garde, including links to digitized publications such as avant-garde journals edited by M. H. Maxy and his peers: https://monoskop.org/ Romania

8

Chinese Photography Criticism and Theory in Republican China The Cases of Lu Xun and Liu Bannong Bruno Lessard

Photography’s multifaceted role as the prominent visual medium toward which intellec­ tuals, visual artists, politicians, and literary figures gravitated at a time of national crisis and political turmoil in Republican China (1912–1949) has drawn increasing attention lately. Characterized by openness to the West and the desire to modernize China’s feudal ways, Republican China is the era during which May Fourth intellectuals and artists rallied to modernize the face of the nation, and photography played a central role in their reflections as it provided a unique forum for discussing modernity, cultural iden­ tity, ethnicity, and the very function of images within a changing society. The 1920s and 1930s are the two most crucial decades for studying Republican-era photography, as this twenty-year period offered the first sustained reflections on the medium in Chinese periodicals of the time. Photography was the cornerstone of Republican China’s media ecology because it was the locus where some of the most complex visual experiences occurred in China’s urban cultural modernity. As China historian Joan Judge has argued: “Photographs are central to understanding the early Chinese Republic .  .  . [Photography] not only transformed visual culture but gave rise to new social practices and new modes of sociability.”1 The photographic medium refracted discourses on imperialism, commercialism, colonialism, capitalism, consumerism, and industrialization, and it paved the way for discussions of the medium driving innovation in the Republican era. Critical discussions tended to con­ cern the following three areas: the relationship between traditional Chinese aesthetics and Pictorialism in various magazines, periodicals, and annuals such as Zhonghua shey­ ing zazhi [Chinese Journal of Photography], Chenfeng [Dawn Wind], Tianpeng [China Focus], and Feiying [Flying Eagle]; the rise of photojournalism, documentary, and eth­ nographic photography practices in the wartime context in pictorials such as Liangyou huabao [Young Companion] and Feiying [Flying Eagle]; and the emergence of Chinese photography criticism and theory in Republican-era publications. While a topic such as 19th-century portraiture has received a great deal of critical attention in both English and Chinese, Chinese photography criticism and theory remain largely unexplored. In Chinese, one finds anthologies that disseminate key Republican-era writings by leading intellectuals, literary figures, and photographers such as Cai Yuanpei, Kang Youwei, Chen Wanli, Hu Boxiang, Lu Xun, Sha Fei, and Liu Bannong.2 Some of them were the very same people active in the New Cultural movement who adopted an iconoclastic approach vis-à-vis traditional Chinese culture. Therefore, their approach to photo theory, which subject matters they privileged, and how they conceived photogra­ phy as a genuinely original tool to pursue debates over Chinese modernity constitutes fascinating topics for future research. DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-12

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Revealing the alterity or otherness of Chinese photography criticism and theory remains a fundamental issue, which will in turn serve to interrogate Eurocentric assump­ tions about photo theory, China, and the photographic medium itself. Ideas of photogra­ phy criticism and theory vary in different historical contexts and national traditions, and the unexplored tradition of Chinese photography criticism explored here will cast more light on excluded nations from the photography theory canon. Finally, Chinese criti­ cal and theoretical writings on photography help to counter the Eurocentric tendencies of recent histories of photography criticism and theory in Western languages that have exclusively focused on the contributions of Euro-American photography critics, philoso­ phers, and art historians. Lu Xun’s and Liu Bannong’s fascinating reflections on photography offer unique sites of appropriation and contestation that expand the purview of and lay the foundation for a global history of photography criticism and theory. This chapter examines two landmark publications in the then-emerging field of Chinese photography criticism and theory: Lu Xun’s “Lun zhaoxiang zhi lei” [On Photography and Related Matters, 1925] and Liu Bannong’s Bannong tanying [Bannong on Photography, 1927]. Considered the father of modern Chinese literature in the vernacular, Lu Xun’s thought-provoking, satirical piece on photography is one of the few Chinese publications on the topic to have been trans­ lated into English. A linguist, poet, translator, and amateur photographer, Liu Bannong published the first monograph on photography in China, which remains untranslated to this day. Lu Xun’s and Liu Bannong’s publications address a wide range of topics, includ­ ing the influence of Western Pictorialism, the legacy of the Chinese aesthetic tradition within modern art, gender, and nationalism, all of which were at the heart of debates in the Chinese media sphere in Republican China and laid the foundation for a global dis­ course around photography theory and criticism. There is a pressing need to construct a global canon of writings on photography, and Lu Xun’s and Liu Bannong’s wide-ranging reflections on the medium act as foundational documents within Republican China that put in perspective the writings on photography of their European counterparts. Lu Xun (1881–1936): Photography Between Satire, Witchcraft, and Cross-Dressing Associated with May Fourth radicalism, the New Culture movement, and the birth of modern Chinese literature in the vernacular (baihua), Lu Xun is the author of several collections of poems, polemical essays (zawen), and short stories, including the widely translated “A Madman’s Diary” (Kuangren riji, 1918) and “The True Story of Ah Q” (A Q zhengzhuan, 1922). Probably the most well-known essay on photography from the Republican era, Lu Xun’s “On Photography and Related Matters” (Lun zhaoxiang zhi lei), first published in the periodical Yusi in 1925, offers a satirical reflection on the visual medium and discusses issues of imperialism, propaganda, Orientalism, and gender performance. Lu Xun’s essay is divided into three sections titled “Materials,” “Forms,” and “With­ out Title.” In the first section, the author tells the story of his childhood in “S City” (i.e., Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province), and shares stories heard about foreign devils (i.e., Westerners) plucking out the natives’ eyes. He proceeds to explain that the foreign devils would keep the plucked-out eyes in jars in an elaborate scenario that pits Western inhu­ manity against the resisting Chinese who, puzzled at the sight of the events described, try to figure out what Westerners do with their plucked-out eyes. Lu Xun’s narrative

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construction posits the Western and Chinese ethnicities as quasi-mortal enemies in his account of the reception of photography in 19th-century China. The hermeneutical pro­ cess in which the author engages as he remembers his childhood and the use that “foreign devils” made of the plucked-out eyes may bring a smile to the Western reader who will undoubtedly note the satirical tone in Lu Xun’s writing. What deserves closer attention in the first section of the piece, however, is how the invention of photography is associ­ ated with the foreign invader and what ultimately is a magical invention whose societal repercussions could only be comprehended by the select few, a group to whom the author manifestly belongs. Describing the enjoyment felt as a child looking at portraits of national heroes, Lu Xun makes of witchcraft the major theme of the second section of the essay. The first sen­ tence of this section reads: “Photography was, in short, like witchcraft [yaoshu].”3 The author’s emphasis on witchcraft reflects what Claire Roberts has noted on the subject: “Descriptions of photographers as magicians, and the art of photography as a profound or magical technique (shenfa), derive from early encounters with the new technology, cultural understandings of likeness, and the functions of portraiture.”4 The narrator fur­ ther reflects on the magical powers of photography: At the time I knew only this: the people of S City did not seem very fond of having their photographs taken; since a person’s spirit could be stolen by the camera, it was especially inappropriate to have one’s photograph taken when one’s luck was good (the spirit was also known as the “noble light”).5 Lu Xun’s satirical tone, which targets the Chinese population first and foremost, under­ scores the superstitious reception that photography enjoyed in many parts of the world by native populations who had yet to come to terms with the technical aspects of the new medium. Nationalistic considerations intertwine with essentialism in subsequent passages imbued with satirical content, the author bitingly repeating received ideas on photography: “the Chinese spirit, otherwise known as the noble light or the vital essence [yuanqi], can be stolen by a camera or washed away with water.”6 The third and final section of Lu Xun’s piece offers a puzzling coda to the author’s pioneering remarks on photography, as his narrative establishes relationships between issues that markedly differ from those discussed in photography essays of the 1920s, both Chinese and Western. Indeed, the writings on photography of various Chinese intel­ lectuals and artists addressed more technical and art historical issues, whereas Lu Xun’s approach, as a May Fourth thinker, is much more wide-ranging sociologically and creates a genre of its own in which the roles of media theorist, urban historian, and social critic merge seamlessly. In the last section, Lu Xun turns to a well-explored subfield of Chinese photography studies, portrait photography, and the commercial studios that were quite popular in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong at the time. His focus is on the kind of photographs chosen for enlargement and the pictures of influential men found on the studio front door for display. Lu Xun elaborates on the characteristics of such portraits and associates them with the national aesthetic character: Portraits of him [Peking opera star Mei Lanfang] in the Celestial Maiden Scatters Flowers or Daiyu Buries Flowers (in the style of the fairy Magu) are more elegant indeed than those of men of wealth and power, and this is sufficient to prove that the Chinese do indeed have eyes with aesthetic sensibility.7

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The conclusion uses repetition and comparison with the West to make a point about the type of art that is both truly Chinese and eternal in characteristically satirical fashion. Lu Xun writes: “In China, only the art of this ‘artist’ [Mei Lanfang] is eternal.”8 He adds: Although I have only seen a few photographs of famous foreign actors and beauties, I never saw one of a man playing the part of a woman. I have seen several of other famous people. Tolstoy, Ibsen, Rodin were all old; Nietzsche was fierce, and Scho­ penhauer appeared to be suffering; Oscar Wilde, decked out in his aesthete’s frippery, looked rather doltish; Romain Rolland had an odd air about him, and Gorky simply looked like a hoodlum.9 All of these portraits paled in comparison with the portrait of Mei Lanfang as the Celes­ tial Maiden. The author partially concludes by satirically claiming that “The art that is the most noble [weida], and eternal in China is the art of men impersonating [ban] women.”10 Unpacking the final paragraph of Lu Xun’s genre-bending satirical essay reveals a set of issues that he alone addressed in 1920s Chinese photography criticism and theory. Noteworthy is Lu Xun’s undeniable fixation on performer Mei Lanfang in the final sec­ tion of the piece, which reveals the author’s own troubling aversion toward cross-dressing and female impersonation. What Lu Xun deplored in Mei Lanfang’s performances was, as Eileen J. Cheng has noted, the preconceived ideas about China that the artist con­ veyed: “He [Lu Xun] decried the popular fascination with Mei, whose cross-dressed image, he wrote, was ubiquitous in Beijing photo studios.”11 The problem, for Lu Xun at least, was that Mei Lanfang had become a cultural symbol reinforcing Orientalist stereotypes of China as a “backward” country with strange and exotic practices. He may have had in mind in particular opera’s association with homosexual practices and the stigma of homosexuality as a sign of deviant and barbaric culture that was part of the Western discourse of civility at the time.12 Lu Xun’s distaste for the weak and effeminate Chinese body will no doubt strike most readers as prejudiced based on the author’s clear rejection of popular representations in which gender performativity and cross-dressing, as reproduced in photos at least, would be consumed out of context by Westerners who would assume that Mei Lanfang’s body was the typical Chinese male body. Cheng aptly notes: “Lu Xun was disturbed by the ways in which things foreign were imported superficially to reflect a kind of style and cosmopolitanism and appropriated uncritically to reinforce and legitimize Western domi­ nation rather than to challenge it.”13 While Lu Xun’s prescience about the dangers of self-Orientalist practices demonstrated a forward-looking sensibility in the 1920s, the homophobic undertone of the conclusion casts a long shadow over his essay. Liu Bannong (1891–1934): Photography as Fine Art and Nationalistic Instrument Mostly remembered today for his work as a linguist, translator, literary critic, and realist poet, Liu Bannong was a key figure in the May Fourth Movement, alongside Lu Xun. Liu was a fervent advocate for the writing of poetry in vernacular Chinese (baihua) and

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a regular contributor to the journal Xin Qingnian (New Youth). A passionate photogra­ pher himself, Liu Bannong was a member of the “Beijing Guangshe” (the Beijing Light Society), which included members such as Chen Wanli and Wang Mengshu. As Rich­ ard K. Kent describes it, by the mid-1920s the Beijing Guangshe “had begun to organ­ ize yearly exhibitions that attracted as many as five thousand visitors and in the press occasioned considerable critical discussion about photography’s artistic merits (or lack thereof).”14 In 1927, Liu Bannong published a short monograph on photography, Bannong tany­ ing [Bannong on Photography],15 in which he provides a rare combination of techni­ cal instruction on the visual medium, including recommended shutter speeds and f-stop settings for specific photo genres, the balance in types of lines within the frame, how to frame [qujing] an image, and historical and conceptual reflections on the aesthetics of photography as an artistic medium. Liu’s short treatise is considered the first sus­ tained reflection on photography in China,16 and what makes this book such a pioneering contribution to the then-emerging discourse on photography criticism and theory is the bridge he sought to build between a properly modern approach to the medium, draw­ ing on European models of medium specificity and self-expression, while simultaneously arguing for the continued need to draw on traditional Chinese aesthetics, especially the landscape painting (shanshui) tradition going back to literati practices. In his examina­ tion of photography as both a burgeoning visual medium and a fine art in China, Liu Bannong uses terms derived from traditional Chinese painting to make the case for pho­ tography as an artistic means for self-expression, and he argues that it need not be a mere technical tool to imitate reality. As Timothy J. Shea has argued, for Liu Bannong, art photography would be a creative practice in which the combination of photogra­ pher, camera, and photographic subject together could reveal beauty in the form of a photograph. Rather than devoting nearly all their attention to technique (shu), as Liu believed photojournalists and studio photographers did, art photographers were sup­ posed to become engrossed in their subjects.17 Liu’s approach to photography can thus be described as a model of cultural hybridity between early-20th-century Europe and a modernizing China, an approach that was taken up by the younger generation of photographers such as Lang Jingshan and Hu Boxiang. As Liu Bannong frames it, photography itself should be a creative practice untethered to commercial imperatives, and the emerging critical discourse on photography should implicitly frame the innovative, artistic potential of the visual medium by addressing perennial debates in Chinese aesthetics. Liu writes: Photography can be divided into two main categories: the first category is that which copies [fuxie] [the subject]; the second is that which does not copy [fei fuxie] [the subject] . . . Regarding the first category, one must consider the term “copies” in a way that is alive. For example, to render precisely and without the slightest change a page of ancient calligraphy or a famous painting is to “copy” it. If one photographs an ancient relic or artifact clearly and without distortion, one is copying it . . . The most important goal in copying is clarity . . . Thus, the term “xiezhen” [i.e., to write or depict reality precisely] is quite appropriate to use in reference to this category.18

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Liu then turns to the immediate implications for the second category, which does not copy: Then, should the second category [of photography] that does not merely copy be termed “false” [xiejia]? If you were to make that claim, I would answer the following. My meaning may be encapsulated by the term “xieyi” [expressive] . . . [“Xieyi”] refers to the author [zuozhe] using the camera to reveal their emotions [yijing].19 Addressing the affective reception of the work of art, Liu writes: When we look at this kind of photograph, we often do not care what has been photo­ graphed. Rather, based on our affective response, we experience the author’s emotions. In other words, what we have gained is the author’s rendition of a kind of impression [yinxiang].20 Liu Bannong’s recourse to well-known keywords within Chinese aesthetics such as xiezhen [i.e., to write or depict reality precisely] and xieyi [expressive] not only evokes the poetic, calligraphic, and painting traditions of yesteryear, but it most importantly signals the apparent need to lay the foundation for photography criticism and theory using Chinese critical terms that bridge the gap between the past and the present in Republican China. Liu appropriated artistic notions such as xiezhen and xieyi to pro­ mote the modern medium par excellence, photography, in the face of its detractors who did not consider it an art form, and his discourse also served the purpose of dis­ tinguishing between types of photographic practices, from the more commercial usages of photo studios across the country to the fine art and exhibition practices privileged by the author himself and many of his contemporaries. According to Liu Bannong, the promotion of photography as an expressive medium rooted in artistic expression and emotion did not have to come at the steep price of discarding the past, but in fact uses the Chinese tradition to make the case for the singularity of the medium as rooted in tradition, indexicality, and affect. The postscript [fuyan] to Bannong tanying reminds the reader that, as was the case in the West in the writings on photography by Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, the urge to formulate the ontology of any new medium seems to have been an irresistible one, and it led to debates over medium specificity and the essence of photography in the Chinese case. The postscript advances Liu’s modernist creed: Many people believe that photography imitates [mofang] painting. This truly is erro­ neous. At least I, for one, am unwilling to support such a position, because painting is painting, and photography is photography. Although the two share some similarities, each has its own special characteristics and cannot imitate the other.21 Aligned with the May Fourth Movement’s emphasis on radicalism and self-expression, Liu adopted an avant-garde discourse in which concerns for artistic self-expression are thus indexed to ontological claims about photography.22 In addition to such ontological concerns, Liu Bannong discussed photography as an instrument for instilling nationalistic sentiments in his readers. In the preface to the sec­ ond annual of the Beijing Light Society published in 1928, Liu elaborates on photography

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in a way that reframes the discussion of the new medium in Bannong tanying along nationalistic lines. He writes: [When] I think of photography – this thing – no matter if others respect it as an art or despise it as nothing more than a dog’s fart, as [something] we are already doing. We should never forget that there is a self [involved with it] and, even more so, we should not forget that we are Chinese.23 Framed as an issue of nationalism and pride, the medium of photography, through Liu’s words at least, pits China against other (Western) countries and thus tries to kill two birds with one stone: while playing up the artistic and self-expressive qualities of the photographic medium rather than its mere commercial potential, Liu Bannong advo­ cates for the primordial role that China could play on the international art scene with nationalistic verve. He concludes: “We need to use the camera to express fully our own personalities and the distinctive sentiments and refinements of the Chinese people, thus enabling our works to establish their own kind of character different from that of other countries.”24 Conclusion Just like photography threatened painting in the minds of many, radical Chinese moder­ nity threatened elements of traditional culture even the staunchest of May Fourth reform­ ers would do anything to preserve. Such unbearable tensions within a modernizing China hardly found better expression than in Lu Xun’s essay on photography wherein the satiri­ cal tone employed to ridicule the Chinese and their fear of the medium turns into a con­ servative take on gender performativity, reflecting what may have been Lu Xun’s greatest obsession: modernity “as a fundamentally alienating and traumatic process of cultural disintegration.”25 Lu Xun’s essay unwittingly expresses the tensions and contradictions between a satirical approach to discarding dated cultural traditions and the inability of a conservative voice to frame the challenges of modernity without revealing its own crisis of consciousness, both historical and subjective. Liu Bannong’s monograph on photography and prefaces to the Beijing Light Soci­ ety’s annuals address technical, art historical, and sociocultural issues that paint a vivid portrait of the reception of photography within Republican China. What emerges from Liu’s reflections is the need for the Chinese photographer to draw on the foundation laid by the aesthetic tradition while at the same time remembering what makes a Chinese picture Chinese in the first place. In other words, aesthetic and nationalistic considera­ tions joined forces in his writing to reveal Chinese photography’s unique potential at a time of political uncertainty. Both Lu Xun’s and Liu Bannong’s pathbreaking essays on photography point to the crucial role that photography criticism and theory played in May Fourth debates over the future of the Chinese nation. Their writings on the new medium allow photo historians and visual culture scholars to consider the significance of non-Western reflections in the current expansion of the canon, especially regarding histories of photography criticism and theory that have been overwhelmingly Eurocentric so far. As shown in this chapter, Lu Xun’s and Liu Bannong’s Republican-era writings on photography offer unsuspected insights into the modern medium par excellence while contributing a new chapter to the global understanding of artistic practices.

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Notes 1. Joan Judge, “Portraits of Republican Ladies: Materiality and Representation in Early Twenti­ eth Century Chinese Photographs,” in Visualising China, 1845–1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives, Christian Henriot and Wen-Hsin Yeh, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 131. 2. See Na Risong, ed., Zhongguo sheying piping xuanji [Anthology of Chinese Photography Criticism] (Beijing: Zhongguo minzu sheying yishu chubanshe, 2013), and Gu Zheng and Lin Lu, ed., Zhongguo sheying daxi: lilun juan [Compendium of Chinese Photography: Theory] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2013). 3. Lu Xun, “On Photography and Related Matters,” in Jottings under Lamplight, Eileen J. Cheng and Kirk A. Denton, eds. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 264, emphasis in original. Chinese original: Lu Xun, “Lun zhaoxiang zhi lei,” in Minguo sheying wenlun [Writings on Photography from the Republican Era], Zhu Shuai and Yang Jianru, eds. (Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 2014), 35–40. 4. Claire Roberts, “Chinese Ideas of Likeness: Photography, Painting and Intermediality,” in Por­ traiture and Early Studio Photography in China and Japan, Luke Gartland and Roberta Wue, eds. (London: Routledge, 2017), 100. 5. Lu, “On Photography and Related Matters,” 264. 6. Lu, “On Photography and Related Matters,” 265. 7. Lu, “On Photography and Related Matters,” 267. 8. Lu, “On Photography and Related Matters,” 268. 9. Lu, “On Photography and Related Matters,” 267. 10. Lu, “On Photography and Related Matters,” 267. 11. Eileen J. Cheng, “Performing the Revolutionary: Lu Xun and the Meiji Discourse on Masculin­ ity,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 27, no. 1 (2015): 18. 12. Cheng, “Performing the Revolutionary,” 18. 13. Cheng, “Performing the Revolutionary,” 35. 14. Richard K. Kent, “Early Twentieth-Century Art Photography in China: Adopting, Domesticat­ ing, and Embracing the Foreign,” Trans Asia Photography 3, no. 2 (2013), http://quod.lib. umich.edu/t/tap/7977573.0003.204/–early-twentieth-century-art-photography-in-china-adopt ing?rgn=main;view=fulltext (accessed January 10, 2022). 15. Liu’s book was reedited by Zhongguo sheying chubanshe in 2000. 16. Liu Bannong’s treatise on photography has been reprinted in various photography antholo­ gies in China, but it has not been translated into Western languages, nor have passages been excerpted in Western photography anthologies, to my knowledge. 17. Timothy J. Shea, “Re-framing the Ordinary: The Place and Time of ‘Art Photography’ in Liangyou, 1926–1930,” in Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926–1945, Paul Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, and Yingjin Zhang, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 52. 18. Liu Bannong, “Bannong tanying,” in Minguo sheying wenlun [Writings on Photography from the Republican Era], Zhu Shuai and Yang Jianru, eds. (Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 2014), 47. 19. Liu, “Bannong tanying,” 47. 20. Liu, “Bannong tanying,” 48. 21. Liu, “Bannong tanying,” 64. 22. Chinese photography scholars have speculated on the impact of European publications on Liu Bannong’s Bannong tanying. After all, Bannong had spent several years in England and France as a student, and he could have had access to publications such as Das deutsche Lichtbild and Photograms of the Year, which were available in Shanghai at the time, but may not have been available in Beijing where Liu resided. 23. Liu Bannong, “ ‘Beijing Guangshe nianpu’ di er ji xu (1928 nian 12 yue),” in Zhongguo jindai sheying yishu meixue wenxuan [Collected Essays on Modern Chinese Art Photography and Aesthetics], Long Xizu, ed. (Beijing: Zhongguo minzu sheying yishu chubanshe, 2015), 201. 24. Liu, “ ‘Beijing Guangshe nianpu,’ ” 202. 25. Eileen J. Cheng, Literary Remains: Death, Trauma, and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn (Hono­ lulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013), 4.

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References Cheng, Eileen J., Literary Remains: Death, Trauma, and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013. Cheng, Eileen J., “Performing the Revolutionary: Lu Xun and the Meiji Discourse on Masculin­ ity.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 27, no. 1 (2015): 1–43. Gu, Zheng, and Lin Lu, eds., Zhongguo sheying daxi: lilun juan [Compendium of Chinese Photog­ raphy: Theory]. Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2013. Judge, Joan, “Portraits of Republican Ladies: Materiality and Representation in Early Twentieth Century Chinese Photographs.” In Visualising China, 1845–1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives, edited by Christian Henriot and Wen-Hsin Yeh, 131–170. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Kent, Richard K., “Early Twentieth-Century Art Photography in China: Adopting, Domes­ ticating, and Embracing the Foreign.” Trans Asia Photography 3, no. 2 (2013). Accessed January 10, 2022. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tap/7977573.0003.204/ – early-twentieth-century­ art-photography-in-china-adopting?rgn=main;view=fulltext Liu, Bannong, “Bannong tanying.” In Minguo sheying wenlun [Writings on Photography from the Republican Era], edited by Zhu Shuai and Yang Jianru, 43–64. Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 2014. Liu, Bannong, “ ‘Beijing Guangshe nianpu’ di er ji xu (1928 nian 12 yue).” In Zhongguo jindai sheying yishu meixue wenxuan [Collected Essays on Modern Chinese Art Photography and Aesthetics], edited by Long Xizu, 200–202. Beijing: Zhongguo minzu sheying yishu chubanshe, 2015. Lu, Xun, “Lun zhaoxiang zhi lei.” In Minguo sheying wenlun [Writings on Photography from the Republican Era], edited by Zhu Shuai and Yang Jianru, 35–40. Beijing: Zhongguo sheying chubanshe, 2014. Lu, Xun, “On Photography and Related Matters.” In Jottings under Lamplight, edited by Eileen J. Cheng and Kirk A. Denton, 262–269. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Na, Risong, ed., Zhongguo sheying piping xuanji [Anthology of Chinese Photography Criticism]. Beijing: Zhongguo minzu sheying yishu chubanshe, 2013. Roberts, Claire, “Chinese Ideas of Likeness: Photography, Painting and Intermediality.” In Portrai­ ture and Early Studio Photography in China and Japan, edited by Luke Gartland and Roberta Wue, 97–116. London: Routledge, 2017. Shea, Timothy J., “Re-framing the Ordinary: The Place and Time of ‘Art Photography’ in Liangyou, 1926–1930.” In Liangyou: Kaleidoscopic Modernity and the Shanghai Global Metropolis, 1926–1945, edited by Paul Pickowicz, Kuiyi Shen, and Yingjin Zhang, 45–68. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

9

Primitive Surfaces Elena Izcue, Peruvian Indigenism, and the Racial Politics of Modernist Ornament Grace Kuipers

In 1928, women in Paris began sporting silk scarves with hand-stamped, repeating geo­ metric patterns borrowed from the iconography of Pre-Columbian Peru (see Figure 9.1). Sold at the haute-couture department store The House of Worth, the scarves adapted ancient Nazca, Paracas, and Chavín motifs to the abstract ornamental grammar of Paris­ ian modernist primitivism. The designer of these scarves was Elena Izcue, a Peruvian artist who had relocated from Lima to Paris in 1927 on a pension from the Peruvian gov­ ernment. In Peru, she had been known for a unique visual style which represented native Andean culture in the flat, geometric image of modernist design rather than operating within the figurative traditions of her contemporaries.1 Situated at the convergence of European modernist primitivism and Peruvian indi­ genism, Izcue’s work highlights the complexity of understanding race at the threshold of multiple geographies. Latin American artists operating within European frameworks were, of course, expected to express an intuitive understanding of Indigeneity as an unfil­ tered matter of their geocultural identity, positioned always at the periphery of modern­ ism’s global geography.2 At the same time, however, Izcue’s indigenism in Peru was one which defined her own modernity, as a racially privileged member of the urban elite, against a primitive Andean Other. And while Izcue’s European physical features certainly helped to shield her own body from such primitivizing associations, scholars such as Natalia Majluf remind us that the relationship between the “Indigenous” racial category and the body has long troubled the ways in which we see race.3 Moreover, Izcue’s use of ornament was associated with gendered and raced assump­ tions that are themselves worthy of analysis. As a woman artist, Izcue had been steered toward the domestic field of decorative arts, charged with devising a modernist identity for Peruvian art and craft, perceived to be underdeveloped and derivative of European artistic efforts. Yet ornament, historically, has had an ambivalent relationship to mod­ ernist design, made marginal at the same time as it was celebrated for its superficiality.4 It was, in other words, considered the visual grammar of modernism’s primitive Other, relegated to the gendered domain of cheap shop girls and the racially suspect practices of “savages.” Indeed, Izcue was navigating a global terrain that would associate her use of ornament with the perceived lack of sophistication associated not just with her gender but also her geocultural identity and its connotations of racial Indigeneity. This paper argues that Izcue’s use of ornament articulated her ambivalent identifi­ cation with Indigeneity. Her patterns reveal her complex position as a member of the racially privileged elite in Peru who nevertheless found herself primitivized within the more global geography of modernism. So too do they reveal the ways in which Izcue nav­ igated this cosmopolitan terrain by mobilizing a constructed image of racial indigeneity DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-13

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Figure 9.1 Elena Izcue, Textile Design ca. 1928–1936. Hand printed silk, 40.5 × 25.5 cm, Museo de Arte de Lima, Gift of Elba de Izcue Jordán.

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that was both fixed to the corporeal surfaces of dark skin and, perhaps paradoxically, to the highly mobile, sartorial appendages that could be worn by bourgeois Peruvians and Parisians. Ultimately, she signaled her ability to distance herself from the primitivizing assumptions tied to her Peruvian identity by way of abstract, transferrable designs, which slid between the surfaces of native bodies and textiles that could be worn and shed. The Fungibility of Abstract Design The pursuit of a uniquely Peruvian aesthetic through Pre-Columbian patterns would shape Izcue’s work in Paris, where she remained for over a decade. Before that, how­ ever, she achieved international recognition for a similar effort, when El Arte Peruano en la Escuela (Peruvian Art in the School) was published in Paris in 1926. Developed as a nationalist educational project in Peru, the two-volume set of workbooks coaches its readers to copy simplified, geometric translations of the motifs adorning Peru’s PreColumbian antiquities. Despite their frequent misrepresentation as “Inca art,” the ani­ mals and glyphs printed on their pages were mostly lifted from coastal Paracas, Nazca, Moche, or Chancay visual culture.5 Within El Arte Peruano en la Escuela, these designs appear as flattened, monochrome logotypes, overlaid onto a grid that encouraged stu­ dents to copy with steady precision (see Figure 9.2). Originally intended for use by Peru­ vian schoolchildren, the books were ultimately promoted internationally by their wealthy patron, Rafael Larco Herrera. English and French translations facilitated their purchase across the United States and Europe, where curators and educators saw them as a rich new source of artistic innovation. In addition to scaffolding student transcription, the grid also indicates the universal­ izing logic at the heart of these designs. Extending across each page, it lends each design a systematic uniformity across time and space, all positioned under the sweeping patina of “Peruvian” art. Yet, the grid also suggests an equivalence that can be transferred across the surfaces of different materialities. As two-dimensional logotypes, these designs are dematerialized as they are decontextualized; we are given no information about the ceramic, textile, metal, or wood surface from which they were lifted. In its place, the matrix invites readers to imagine a scalability in which the designs, as neat geometric units on a coordinate plane, can be replicated in various sizes, colors, and any number of materials vectors. Indeed, El Arte Peruano en la Escuela is noteworthy for the clarity with which it communicates the unique flexibility of Izcue’s design practice. The artist herself saw the two-dimensional, geometric quality of her work as something that “can give you access to anything you can imagine.”6 Abstract interchangeability had characterized her designs from the beginning. Her patterns subtended lamps, curtains, carpets, and other interior decors in an “Inca Salon” at the National Museum in 1921. They can be discerned also in her practice as a graphic designer, in illustrated books, magazines, and newspapers. They transcended disciplinary boundaries between art and craft, as well, unfolding on the surfaces of figurative paintings and prints as much as on those of ceramics or tex­ tiles. This sort of adaptability no doubt facilitated the geographic mobility of Izcue’s art: her ornamental designs were legible within the contexts of both Peruvian indigenism and Parisian modernist primitivism, ultimately achieving popularity in France as haute­ couture scarves and handkerchiefs. This design practice was, in some ways, quite typical of the indigenism practiced by Lima’s creole and mestizo elite in the 1920s. Like many Latin American artistic pursuits

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Figure 9.2 Elena Izcue, page from El Arte Peruano en la Escuela, 1925.28 × 22 cm, Museo de Arte de Lima, Gift of Elba de Izcue Jordán.

in the 1920s, Izcue’s work championed native culture as a nationalist symbol of artistic liberation from the European tradition, while simultaneously ignoring the lived reality of Indigenous people. Izcue was born in Lima, a city characterized by the urban, white, elite minority of Peru’s largely Indigenous population. She studied at the capital city’s National School of Fine Arts under the leadership of Jose Sabogal, perhaps the most influential artist within Peruvian pictorial indigenism, known for romantic, figurative

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paintings of Andean peasants. Often depicted in brightly colored and ornate traditional clothing, Sabogal’s figures stare at the viewer with a melancholic, serious gaze. Yet Izcue’s design practice had important differences from Sabogal’s work. For one thing, her designs constructed Indigeneity more as ancient and Pre-Columbian than as contemporary. Moreover, in contrast to Sabogal’s figurative studies of Andean people, she aimed for a more abstract visual grammar by pressing Pre-Columbian patterns and motifs into geometric logotypes that exemplified the modernist proclivity for flat planes. In doing so, however, Izcue’s indigenism fixated less on native bodies and more on the surfaces of their defining ornamental textiles or ceramics. It was not, in other words, an indigenism based on skin or phenotype or racialized physical characteristics, but rather the objects that were associated with Indigeneity. Both the ancient influence and abstract features of Izcue’s work allowed it to be under­ stood as more authentically reflecting an Indigenous race and thus Peruvian culture itself. For one thing, Pre-Columbian art was perceived as untainted by European influence, as opposed to contemporary Indigenous visual culture.8 Critics such as Carlos Solari thus saw the workbooks as a process of “purification” that could connect the “Indian race” to the “racial aesthetic” of their ancestors.9 Likewise, Magda Portal described Izcue’s work as something that could rescue “particles of Indianism” from “the depths of coastal miscegenation.”10 Moreover, the supposed racial authenticity of her work was linked to its decorative form: critics perceived that it was only in an ornamental medium that one could perceive the true essence of native creativity. The Peruvian critic Dora Mayer thus praised the authenticity of Izcue’s work in comparison to the medium of oil paint­ ing, which could “never be as indigenous as decorative art.”11 Such a claim to ideal­ ized, unadulterated Indigeneity served to promote it as therefore “essentially Peruvian,” indicative of a nationalist formal approach that was unsullied by Europe.12 These designs thus signified a nation that defined itself through the image of the “Indian.” Yet it was not a racial identity that was determined through bodies or flesh or people themselves, but rather through ornament. Such a disembodied notion of race underscores intellectual renovations undertaken by Peruvians in the 1920s. As the anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena has written, Indigenists in early-20th-century Cuzco sought to divorce concepts of race from the human body and external phenotype, instead advancing a culturalist paradigm organized around moral hygiene.13 Brown-skinned elites from Cuzco had long found themselves subjugated by a racialized geography which posited a binary distinction between the white, urban inhabitants of Lima, and the native inhabitants of the supposedly “primitive” highlands. Seeing themselves as white, how­ ever, wealthy Cuzqueñans with phenotypically Indigenous traits asserted their equality to European-descended Limeñans by declaring a shared moral superiority over Indigenous peasants. They did so by de-emphasizing bodily features, underscoring matters of sexual and educational propriety, and elevating Cuzco as a center of cultural sophistication and geographic respectability. To reframe the former capital of the Inca empire, the Cuzque­ ñan elites separated Pre-Columbian culture from Indianness. Ultimately, they claimed Inca aesthetic heritage instead as a matter of cultural refinement, which ratified their whiteness and registered their distance from the supposed indecency and ignorance of the Indigenous population. El Arte Peruano en la Escuela advanced a similar schema of racial exclusion. To be sure, the book was marked by a surprising exclusion of highland Inca civilizations. But Izcue did little to discourage its description, by journalists or interlocutors, as “Inca art,” and even occasionally described her own work with such vocabulary. More importantly, the book reinforced the Cuzqueñan proposal of race-as-moral-achievement by stridently 7

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expressing concern about the moral inferiority of Peru’s contemporary Indigenous peas­ ants. The foreword to the first volume, written by the Peruvian diplomat Ventura García Calderón, suggested that a return to Pre-Columbian artistic expression could cure the “racial poisons” and “centuries of alcohol and servitude” responsible for the “noto­ riously unhygienic conditions” of the “present-day stupid, blubbering indian race.”14 Izcue’s project thus echoed Cuzqueñan notions of race that aimed to refute the divide between the coast and highland, celebrating Pre-Columbian culture while nevertheless retaining the historical denigration of Indigenous Peruvians. This alignment is perhaps surprising: within Peru, Izcue’s Limeñan origins and Euro­ pean features would have found the original geography of racial exclusion advanta­ geous. But as a Peruvian artist beginning to engage Parisian modernism, she also would have been familiar with a similar, globally constructed binary between the privileged, white modern center and its derivative, always primitive periphery. Numerous scholars have described the expectations that Latin American artists abroad produce artwork that announced their identification with Indigeneity, often assumed to be an unmediated expression of racial proximity.15 In this context, ornament represented a particularly precarious bind. Ornament’s ambivalent role within high modernist design, as both an exotic object of primitivist admiration and a reviled symbol of regressive tendencies, meant that Izcue’s work risked dismissal as the innate product of her gender or geocul­ tural identity. Modernists such as Adolf Loos or Le Corbusier had, after all, announced the virtue of the clean, modern surface by asserting the moral corruption of ornament, which was confirmed by its popularity with their perceived inferiors. Loos, for instance, famously correlated ornament with criminality, the deficient minds of “women and chil­ dren,” and the proclivities of “negroes, Arabs, [and] rural peasants.”16 If Izcue was constrained by associations between ornament and the primitive, she afforded herself mobility from such a pairing by way of abstraction. How she did so is the subject of the rest of this essay, but here it is worth pointing out that abstraction, that elastic device capable of moving between contexts, was also capable of transcending disciplinary exclusions. Her geometric designs were themselves instantiations of the flat, simplified field so highly prized by architects, painters, or formalist critics alike. Indeed, the artist saw her formal language as one that was best understood in dialogue with more universal and broadly relevant questions about art and representation itself. Her sketchbooks, for instance, assert that while “abstract art is a discipline for the painter, abstraction in paint is a discipline for the artist.”17 Here, she supersedes the narrow, circumscribed field of decorative arts by way of abstraction’s intellectually lofty, interdis­ ciplinary implications. Such disciplinary versatility allowed Izcue’s work to be understood beyond the confines of her gender. While women’s art (in Paris as in Peru) was frequently relegated to the safely domestic and purportedly un-intellectual sphere of decorative design, critics perceived more universal artistic relevance in these designs. The art critic Dora Mayer remarked that in a place such as Peru, which was “accustomed to women painting nothing but glasses, little tables, blinds and fans,” Izcue’s work reflected the ambition to paint “with breadth and with aspirations that, of course, exceed the demands of the home.”18 Mayer’s words suggest not only the possibility that Izcue might transcend disciplinary boundaries, but also that she might confound the limiting expectations placed upon her gender. But what of the primitivizing assumptions that would equate her use of ornament with the artistic inadequacies of her geographic origin? Surely, Izcue was aware of the

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perilous risk of association between a pedigree deemed primitive and the moral failures of ornament. I  argue that Izcue’s decorative aesthetic fixed Primitivism to the skin of native bodies (and women in particular), thus exteriorizing her Latin American identity. She did so by way of what Anne Cheng has referred to as “modernism’s dream of a sec­ ond skin” – a phenomenon which blurred the lines between the modernist preoccupation with flat, bare, undecorated surfaces and ornament, that primitive Other which traded in artificial coverings and sartorial excess.19 Indeed, Izcue’s abstraction allowed for an interchangeability between corporeal and decorative surfaces that ultimately challenged distinctions between skin and clothing. These ornamental patterns assumed their final material form, moreover, as themselves habitable objects of decoration – as carpets and curtains and other fabrics of interior décor but most of all as Parisian haute couture scarves. Ultimately, these wearable veneers of silk, velvet, and other sensuous materials allowed white audiences to not just examine but also to inhabit Indigeneity. And, per­ haps more importantly for an artist like Izcue, these temporary, exotic costumes allowed white bodies to shed that identity as well. Ornament, Race, and the Body As we have seen, Izcue’s work can be situated within a schema which defined the figure of the “Indian” through disembodied markers of culture rather than phenotypic physi­ cal traits. But was race really so easily detached from the body? Scholars of race and ethnicity in the Andes have frequently emphasized the significance of mutable, “cultural” features such as class, dress, and behavior over more “biological” characteristics such as physical appearance and genealogy. Most scholars, however, acknowledge the persis­ tence of racial constructs built around the body.20 Indeed, even in culturalized treatments of race, the body is never far away. Mary Weismantel has pointed to the ways race in Peru might be understood not in a fixed sense of corporeal fact nor a mobile sense of performed culture but rather in the porous space between the two, located in callouses, fingernails, and smells which mark racialized identity.21 The category of ornament, in particular, is one that troubles oppositions within racial discourse between culture and body, object and person.22 One need only examine Loos’ fixation on Papuan tattoos, for instance, to begin to question whether his crusade was more against ornament or the racialized skin in which it was inlaid. It is worth point­ ing out, moreover, that the figure of the “Indian” was one whose external appearance had long been defined by face paint, piercings, feathers, or beads as much as by the heritable traits of foreheads, noses, eyelids, or skin.23 This intimacy between racialized body and ornamental appendage suffused Izcue’s work. A 1927 profile of Izcue in the illustrated weekly Mundial, for instance, fixated on the accuracy with which she sealed in both “the things and types of the aboriginal race.”24 It was accompanied by a full-page reproduction of a figurative portrait by Izcue, which rendered the physiognomy of a “pensive Indian woman” in fine strokes of charcoal.25 In an effort to connect such por­ traiture with Izcue’s ornamental designs, the analysis highlighted her ability to express the “Indians and the sorrowful beauty of their women” through a study of the “entrails of the lineage of the Inca race” as much as through a focus on “the things they wear on their exterior.”26 Using race to bridge Izcue’s figurative and non-figurative work, the author minimizes the distance between the carnal, visceral image of a body’s interior and the constructed, cosmetic realm of worn things. This language thus trains our attention

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Figure 9.3 Elena Izcue, Indienne Péruvienne, 1928. Linoleum print, 20.9 × 14.7  cm. Museo de Arte de Lima, Gift of Elba de Izcue Jordán.

on the tensile location of ornament within schemas of race, situated between embodied essence and exterior accessory. Izcue’s own use of ornament merged the racialized body and thing, substituting flesh for ornaments and vice versa. This feature is perhaps most clear in Peruvienne Indienne (An Indian Peruvian Woman), an image Izcue made several times, first for a children’s book in Peru, and then in Paris as a linoleum woodcut in 1928 (see Figure 9.3). In it, a

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nude woman sits, legs folded against her breasts. Her prominent, hooked nose spotlights the body in the racial type identified by the title. Yet her race is signified as much by her decorative register as by her body: recurring, angular bands of sawtooth waves and geometric spirals have been carved into every expanse of flesh, as if Izcue’s patterns have been tattooed onto yet another surface. The work foregrounds the ontological liminal­ ity at the heart of Izcue’s ornamental indigenism: is the Indienne accessorized, or is she herself an accessory? The Indigenous woman’s flesh itself, it seems, assumes the role of ornamented surface. This sensory confluence between racialized skin and its adornment is a function of the fungible logic of Izcue’s abstract ornamentation, which facilitated movement between body and thing as much as movement between fabrics, paper, and other decorative mate­ rials. Izcue most clearly established the fantasy of inhabiting the native body, however, through surfaces that could be worn. It is telling that the artist’s indigenism frequently fixated on wearable materials that themselves seemed to approximate skin. Reviews, for instance, suggest that she figured an “inca virgin princess” largely through a focus on the “fine embroidered fabrics, vicuña wool or the skin of the bat” that surrounded the prin­ cess.27 If here it was observers who understood fur, animal skin, and other bodily mem­ branes as standing in for the native body, Izcue’s own words evince a similar logic. As she recounted her work for the Peruvian Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1937, she wrote to a friend of her delight in securing a display of objects of bodily adornment used by inhabitants of the mountains of Eastern Peru, declaring that the “civilized imagination could not create such a fantasy.” Her fascination was centered on a group of people who “decorate their bodies with desicated (sic) birds, bot-flies, shells, insects, feathers, seeds, and teeth from animals, fibres (sic) from plants and woods,” among other mortal car­ casses.28 Here, Izcue’s comments highlight her study of ornament as a racialized signifier in which the material drama of the skin was always quietly implied. As with many efforts to imagine and define “primitive” culture at World’s Fairs, her display was motivated by notions of racial difference. While race is displaced from the body onto the more port­ able signifier of bodily adornment, it nevertheless takes the shape of corporeal residue, apparent signs of atavism which were themselves made from the husks of living things. As the critical race theorist Anne Cheng has shown, skin was a seductive concept for modernist semioticians, representing at once a body’s superficial exterior and an inescapable part of its being. Like (and often discursively associated with) skin, the flat modernist surface was also conceived as both an ineluctable indicator of racial essence at the same time as it was the planar field of superficial artifice and extraneous decora­ tion. I would argue that Izcue’s abstract, ornamental designs represented precisely such a collapse between the denuded surface and wearable, exterior dressings. Planar aes­ thetics and racialized ornamentation converge on Izcue’s textiles, themselves intended to be worn as skin-like sheaths. Beginning in 1928, and accelerating with a high-profile collaboration with House of Worth, Izcue began transferring her patterns onto wood blocks, which were then hand-stamped onto brightly colored pieces of fabric and made into handkerchiefs, scarves, handbags, belts, and at least one swimsuit. Often displayed together, Izcue’s patterns traversed and appeared to merge the different surfaces, chal­ lenging the ontological separation between the smooth weave of silk, the soft fiber of velvet, or the soft grain of leather. Izcue was certainly capitalizing on the phenomenon of modernist primitivism. She seemed to understand that her Pre-Columbian patterns could instantiate not only a replacement of Parisian primitivism’s visual grammar, but also the substitution of its

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attendant racial referent, too. In 1927, she illustrated an article written by her friend Enriequeta Larco, entitled “Del Negro al Indio” (From the Black to the Indian), which proposed that “the Indian . . . will soon replace the exotic barbarism of the Negro.”29 Sliding between racial groups and the aesthetic trends of high fashion, the article proposes that a consumer style of “Inca art” will supplant the “fashion of the Negro, launched by the extraordinary Josephine Baker,” a figure to whom the author repeatedly returns.30 It is telling that Izcue’s sartorial blueprint should be expressed through someone known not just for her glistening, nude Black skin but also a racialized, ornamental theater of fur, bananas, and other epidermal doubles.31 In short, this comparison underscores the meaning of skin and race within the framework of modernist primitivism and its sartorial expression. Indeed, Izcue’s indigenist fashion promised to succeed where l’art negre could not, by allowing consumers to inhabit such a racialized identity without recourse to their own epidermal reality. The trouble with “the fashion of the Negro,” Larco suggested, was precisely the intransigent matter of dark skin. Deluded by the vogue for Blackness, Parisians hopelessly struggled to achieve the “dark tone required.”32 As women with “desperately white complexions” longed to “obtain the chocolate color” of Baker or her fashionable contemporaries, “sunbaths became longer,” accompanying the expectation that even “incontestably elegant women had to procure the dark skin of perfect sav­ ages.”33 By contrast, the “Indian” carried no such singularity of bodily referent. Indeed, for Larco, the “Indian” soon becomes the “proud and noble Peruvian nation” which she declares the “renewer of their art and their race!”34 The immutable fact of Blackness is thus replaced by Indigeneity, which in turn is conflated with the far less visually stable category of nationality. The clothing and accessories of “Inca art” thus seized upon the relative fluidity of Indi­ geneity to offer consumers the possibility of inhabiting the racialized body. Larco suggests that Izcue’s scarves were popular because they promised a more adaptable, fashionable version of race for white, European women than the overdetermined corporeal inscrip­ tion of Blackness. By consolidating the fashion of “the Indian” into that of the “Peruvian nation” and their “race,” Larco repurposed geographical constructions of race, which would associate a Peruvian national identity such as Izcue’s with Indigeneity, regardless of physical appearance. This fluidity, Larco intimates, could allow white Parisian women to try on the fashion of “the Indian.” Yet even as it capitalized on a disembodied paradigm of Indigeneity, so too was this racial costume dependent on a specific epidermal reality. Indeed, Larco assumed fixed cultural meanings of skin, asserting the marginality of dark flesh as “savage” and thus wholly incompatible with “incontestably elegant” skin of white Europeans. Moreover, in Izcue’s largest illustration for the article, the consumer style of “Inca art” is exempli­ fied not just by a patterned dress but also by the body of the woman who models it, face turned to the side to emphasize her Andean features. The drawing highlights the enduring importance of external bodily appearance within the phenomenon of trends expressed through objects but named after racial categories. Finally, Larco’s text tells us that Izcue’s clothing registered a fantasy of both preserv­ ing and existing outside the absolute whiteness of one’s European body. The fashion Larco describes (and which Izcue exemplified) was proposed as a solution for consum­ ers in futile pursuit of Baker’s “chocolate color,” despite their “desperately white com­ plexions.” As commodities constructed specifically around the problem of inescapable whiteness, then, Izcue’s textiles train our gaze on the white skin shared by Izcue and her

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consumers. Indeed, the sartorial habits of “the Indian” announce a fundamental binary between the wearer’s body and the racially Indigenous flesh that the ornamental fabric is displacing. More than asserting the mobility of race, then, Izcue’s textiles fix the primitive allure of Peruvian identity to dark skin and render it a portable garment. Izcue’s story inevitably raises questions about the instabilities of race across the multilocational field of global modernism. Her work certainly assumed an aesthetics of mobil­ ity: if abstraction allowed her to bridge Peruvian indigenism with Parisian modernist design, transcend the disciplinary exclusions of high art, and print her patterns on an endless number of material vectors, it also allowed her to represent Indigeneity in dispa­ rate cultural contexts. Ornament, moreover, is a historically racialized category that is typically associated more with portable costumes rather than racialized skin. It is thus tempting to attribute the uniquely non-figurative nature of her indigenism to notions of race which were divorced from the body and tethered only to competing geographic distributions of primitive and modern. Yet as we have seen, in both Paris and Peru, the construction of racial Indigeneity that animated Izcue’s ornament was one which was imagined through bodies as much as things. Ultimately, even as it implied mobile free­ dom from a fixed image of Indigeneity, Izcue’s indigenist, abstract ornament was always bound to the plane of racialized flesh. Notes 1. This analysis of Izcue’s work draws on archival material from Izcue’s archive in Lima, Peru, as well as from information in Natalia Majluf and Luis Edwardo Wuffarden’s authoritative volume, Elena Izcue: El Arte Precolombino en la Vida Moderna. 2. Michele Greet makes this point in Transatlantic Encounters. The concept of a “geocultural identity” comes from Niko Vicario, Hemispheric Integration. 3. In this essay, I refer to a category of “racial” Indigeneity. While this term admittedly generalizes and simplifies a diverse range of heterogeneous cultures, it is useful for describing the construc­ tion of what Natalia Majluf refers to as “The Indian as an ethnoracial concept,” a historically situated identity advanced by Peruvian elites that both was and was not mapped onto a set of specific phenotypic features. I retain the term not because of the accuracy with which it refers to a specific group but rather for the clarity with which it describes such a construct. See Majluf, Inventing Indigenism. 4. For important recent work on ornament, see Anne Cheng’s S econd Skin. Cheng also has expounded upon the racialized meanings of Ornament in Ornamentalism. For an account of the “decorative” expectations placed upon Latin American women in Paris, see “Exhilarating Exile” in Greet, Transatlantic Encounters, 122–144. 5. See Pacheco, “Una Visión Del Perú.” 6. Elvira García y García, “El Arte Peruano,” Mundial 8, no. 368 (July 1, 1927). 7. Michele Greet discusses Sabogal as part of Andean indigenism’s transnational process of iden­ tity formation in Beyond National Identity. 8. See Méndez, “Incas sí, Indios no.” 9. Carlos Solari, “La Obra Docente de Elena Izcue,” El Comercio, March 4, 1927. Quoted in Majluf and Wuffarden, Elena Izcue, 80. 10. Magda Portal, “El Arte Peruano Antiguo Como Elemento de Afirmación Racial: Los Cuader­ nos de Dibujo de Elena Izcue,” El Comercio, June 5, 1927, 4. 11. Dora Mayer de Zulen, “Elena Izcue,” El Comercio, March 11, 1927, 2. 12. Alberto J. Martínez, for instance, praised Izcue for preserving “the primitive purity of our ancestors” to create something that was “genuinely Peruvian.” F.R., “El Arte Popular Indígena de los Antiguos Peruanos,” La Crónica, Lima, March 14, 1927, 12. 13. See de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos. 14. Ventura García Calderón, “Prologue,” in Izcue, El Arte Peruano. 15. See, for instance, Greet, Transatlantic Encounters, Coffey, “Orozco’s Dancing Indians,” or Majluf, “ ‘Ce n’est Pas Le Pérou.’ ”

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16. Loos, Ornament and Crime, 101. Cited in Cheng, Second Skin, 24. 17. Page from Izcue’s sketchbook, Archivo Elena Izcue, Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima, Peru [AEI]. 18. Dora Mayer, “Nuestra portada,” Mundial 6, no. 189 (January 1, 1924), quoted in Majluf and Wuffarden, Elena Izcue, 89. 19. Anne Cheng, Second Skin, 11. 20. See Peter Wade’s helpful overview of the culture/biology debate in “Race in Latin America,” 177–192. Majluf likewise traces the emergence of “The Indian as a cultural paradigm” which “transformed but did not replace older notions of difference” that were “visually configured as and through a body.” Treating the Indian as an “ethnoracial concept,” she “collapses accounts that would simplify and reduce ethnicity to culture, and race to biology.” Majluf, Inventing Indigenism, 20. 21. Weismantel, Cholas and Pishtacos. 22. Anne Cheng, for example, in Ornamentalism, argues that ornament “marks a political prob­ lematic about personhood,” by challenging the boundaries between object and person, laying bare the “perihumanity” of the Asian American woman and making her/it available to inhabit. 23. See, for instance, Antonio de Ulloa’s “Of the Native Indians in the Two Americas,” reprinted in the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for “America” in 1810, 5–7. 24. “India Pensativa,” Mundial 8, no. 239 (April 29, 1927). 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. “Rafael Larco H.: Propagandista del Arte Peruano,” La Cronica, January 30, 1927, 9. cited in Majluf and Wuffarden, Elena Izcue, 39. 28. Letter from Elena Izcue to Malvina Hoffman, 1937, AEI. 29. Jacqueline (pseud.), “Del Negro al Indio,” Mundial 7, no. 354 (March 25, 1927). 30. Ibid. 31. Cheng expands upon this point at length in Second Skin. 32. Jacqueline, “Del Negro al Indio.” 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid.

Works Cited Archival Sources Archivo Elena Izcue, Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima, Peru. Bibliography Cheng, Anne. Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Cheng, Anne. Ornamentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Coffey, Mary. “José Clemente Orozco’s Dancing Indians: Performing Mexicanness for the TransAmerican Market.” The Art Bulletin 102, no. 4 (October 1, 2020): 90–120. De la Cadena, Marisol. Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Greet, Michele. Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920–1960. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2009. Greet, Michele. Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. Izcue, Elena. El Arte Peruano en la Escuela. Paris: Excelsior, 1926. Majluf, Natalia. “ ‘Ce n’est Pas Le Pérou,’ or, the Failure of Authenticity: Marginal Cosmopolitans at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855.” Critical Inquiry 23, no. 4 (1997): 868–893. Majluf, Natalia. Inventing Indigenism: Francisco Laso’s Image of Modern Peru. Austin, TX: Uni­ versity of Texas Press, 2021.

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Majluf, Natalia and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. Elena Izcue: El Arte Precolombino en la Vida Mod­ erna. Lima: Museo de Arte de Lima, 2000. Méndez, Cecilia. “Incas sí, Indios no: Notes on Peruvian Creole Nationalism and Its Contempo­ rary Crisis.” Journal of Latin American Studies 28 (1996): 197–225. Pacheco, Christina Vargas. “Una Visión Del Perú a Través Del Arte Decorativo: El Arte Peruano En La Escuela de Elena Izcue.” Mercurio Peruano no. 524 (2011): 151–173. Vicario, Niko. Hemispheric Integration: Materiality, Mobility, and the Making of Latin American Art. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020. Wade, Peter. “Race in Latin America.” In D. Poole, ed. A Companion to Latin American Anthro­ pology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008, 177–192. Weismantel, Mary. Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes. Chicago: Univer­ sity of Chicago Press, 2001.

10 The Black Legend of Mexican Painting Fabiola Martínez Rodríguez

On January  17, 1961, the cultural supplement of the Mexican newspaper Novedades published an article by Alvar Carrillo Gil titled “La leyenda negra de la pintura mexi­ cana” (“The Black Legend of Mexican Panting”).1 At the time of its publication Sique­ iros was in jail, the Second Interamerican Biennial of Mexico had recently closed its doors, and the Cuban Revolution was celebrating its second anniversary. These events are important to understand the complex dynamics between art and politics in Latin America during the early Cold War.301 This was a period of heightened tensions between the United States and the USSR leading to the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October  1962. In Mexico, pressure was mounting on the government to curtail communist activities and rein in the leftist activism of the Mexican School.2 By choosing The Black Legend for his title, Carrillo Gil is explicitly referring to the campaign of discredit undertaken by Northern Protestant Europe against the Spanish Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. This narrative presented a condescending view of the Spanish as religious fanatics, ignorant and barbaric in order to undermine their impe­ rial power. Thus, in both cases, The Black Legend operates as an ideological discourse aimed to assert cultural superiority, be it religious (Protestants over Catholics), or artistic (art for art’s sake over socially committed art). The biased nature of said Black Legend of Mexican Painting is made evident in the article. With a mix of sarcasm and sagacity, Carrillo Gil synthesizes the formalist exegesis of postwar aesthetes intent on vilifying Mexican realism vis-à-vis Euro-American abstrac­ tion. As an influential art critic and collector in post-revolutionary Mexico, Carrillo Gil was well versed in modern and contemporary art, and hence well suited to present a defense of Mexican muralism.3 His article presents a concise overview of a modernist canon in the making, propelled by the writings of influential art critics like Alfred Barr, Clement Greenberg, Lionello Venturi, and Herbert Read. Carrillo Gil explicitly attacks the Italian and English critics, seeing their works as detrimental to an objective appre­ ciation of the great Mexican muralists: José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera. Read’s aesthetic bias had in fact led him to exclude their work from his influential book A Concise History of Modern Art, published two years earlier. By examining the rise and fall of the Mexican School, in relation to the cultural politics of the Cold War, this study aims to reevaluate its legacy and highlight the transnational and decolonial outreach of this revolutionary avant-garde. The Mexican School emerged from the social, economic, and agrarian reforms of the Revolution (1910–1920), giving visual form to the progressive ideals that spearheaded the revolt against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. Since its inception, artists aligned with the plight of the exploited, placing their lives and aspirations at the center of their DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-14

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public works. While diverse in terms of mediums and forms of expression (though always within the idiom of figuration), the Mexican School was led by the work of “los tres grandes” (“The Big Three”): Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros. From their murals would emerge the iconography of the revolution and the blueprint of the modern mestizo nation envisioned by post-revolutionary regimes. By working to advance the socialist reforms of the Revolution, mainly through the creation of large public murals, the Mexican muralists also incorporated the radical poli­ tics of the avant-gardes. This political vanguardism was observed by Vladimir Maya­ kovski who praised Rivera’s murals, at the Ministry of Education in Mexico City, as the “world’s first communist mural,” and commended his merging of indigenous and prehispanic traditions with visions of a socialist future.4 As one of the leading figures of the Russian avant-garde, Mayakovski’s views on the revolutionary potential of Rivera’s murals are significant as they clash with the canonical view of the avant-garde as modern­ ist rupture. In his book The Ethnic Avant-garde Steven Lee examines how an interest in primitivism and ethnography informed the development of the Soviet avant-garde. Lee’s analysis puts at the center not the aesthetic or formalist influence of non-Western art, but rather the revolutionary potential of the ethnic “other.” This is evident in Mayakovski’s writings and impressions derived from his trips to Cuba and Mexico in 1925. During his three-week stay in Mexico, the constructivist poet spent most of his time with Rivera, from whom, Lee believes, Mayakovski developed an interest in indigenous and prehis­ panic cultures as agents of revolution.5 This would have an important influence on his ideas about art and politics and, as a result, the poet “articulated a new, and progressive kind of exoticism – one undergirded by Cominterm anti-imperialism and that in turn undergirded the Soviet-centered ethnic avant-garde.”6 Lee’s study is important as it fore­ grounds the exotic not as the “other” of Eurocentric modernity, but as the fountainhead of progressive ideas. The Soviet-centered ethnic avant-garde is therefore not dissimilar to the ethnographic surrealism developed by the Parisian avant-garde, something that has been largely overlooked by the historiography of 20th-century art. In the case of Mexico, the “primitive’ was absorbed by the mestizo nation but indig­ enous cultures and traditions endured, preserving the subversive elements that Maya­ kovski observed. In this way, the Mexican muralist movement was from the start part of a national and transnational avant-garde that challenged the bourgeois order and its assumed racial and cultural superiority. Their avant-garde tactics, however, relied on the stylistic language of realism rather than the formalist abstractions of the constructivists. Yet, in the 1930s, in Europe and the Americas, the debate was open as to which was the best medium and form of revolutionary art. The stakes were high in a context of rising fascism, antisemitism, and imperialist aggression. At the center of these debates was the communist schism brought about by the rise of Joseph Stalin and the exile of Leon Trot­ sky, killed in Mexico in the summer of 1940. This resulted in fractures that weakened the communist Left giving rise to two camps: one that followed the dogmatic and program­ matic aesthetics of socialist realism, or Zhdanov Doctrine, enforced by Stalin through the Communist Party; and another that defended the autonomy of art and artistic expres­ sion – as promulgated in the manifesto “Towards a Free Revolutionary Art,” written in Mexico by André Breton and Trotsky in 1938. At the same time, artistic and intellectual debates regarding the politics of realism and abstraction took center stage, each camp arguing for the political agency of these seemingly incompatible styles. In England, Read became a vocal advocate of abstraction stating that this style would help to construct a communist society. In his 1935 essay “What is Revolutionary Art?,”

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Read criticized communist art that relied on depicting factories, red flags, and revolution­ ary iconography. In his view, this only produced partisan adulation giving as an example the work of Rivera, whom he dismissed as a “competent but essentially second-rate artist.”7 Read described the realist art promoted by some sectors of the communist Left, especially in Germany, as propaganda lacking in artistic merit and therefore inferior to the formalist pursuits of abstraction. Read’s essay is important as it lays the ground for the aesthetic and conceptual framework of his book A Concise History of Modern Art. In New York, Rivera – a “second-rate artist” according to Read – was given a solo exhibition at MoMA in 1931. This was the second solo exhibition dedicated to an artist by the recently inaugurated Museum of Modern Art in New York – the first being a ret­ rospective of Henri Matisse. Rivera’s exhibition was organized by Barr, then a proponent of the Mexican muralists who were in great demand amongst art patrons and collectors in the United States. This was the time of the Great Depression and a more open political sphere, when U.S. artists and critics revered the work of the Mexican muralists for its aesthetic qualities and originality. While its social commitment appealed to the US Left, Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros were making significant contributions as artists leaving an indelible mark in the history of modernism in the United States – Rivera’s exhibition at MoMA being a significant case in point. Throughout the course of the 20th century, however, realism would become the black sheep of modernist theory. Shaped by the writ­ ings of influential critics like Barr, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and Read, this Anglo-American historiography has established a stylistic hierarchy that values formalist experimentation over content, thereby imposing value judgments that belittle the aesthetic qualities of realist and socially committed art. In this dominant narrative of modernism, a tempo­ ral division operates whereby abstraction is conceived of as modern and progressive, while realism is viewed as backwards, traditional, and reactionary. Because an emphasis on formalism became a convenient tactic for the cultural propaganda of the capitalist “West” during the Cold War, we need to question the canonical narratives that became institutionalized during the second half of the 20th century, and which have relegated social realism to the backdoor of modernist theory. As Serge Guilbaut explains, the depolitization of modern art in the United States can be traced back to the mid-1930s.8 During this period artists from the Left were respond­ ing to the rise of fascism in Europe and the increasing dictatorial and brutal policies of Stalin. As a result, many communists abandoned the Party and became Trotskyists. Rejecting the partisan art demanded by Stalin, artists were drawn to the possibility of merging a political and artistic avant-garde, as advocated in Breton’s and Trotsky’s mani­ festo. For many, including Meyer Schapiro, this provided a way out of communist dogma allowing for a middle ground between political commitment and artistic freedom. It was Greenberg’s engagement with Trotskyism, however, that would distill political intent from artistic experimentation: Greenberg carried Trotsky’s defense of a critical art that remained “faithful to itself” one step further, maintaining that while the avant-garde did indeed critical work, it was criticism directed within, toward the work of art itself, toward the very medium of art, and intended solely to guarantee the quality of production.9 In this way, anti-Stalinism turned into Trotskyism and this, in turn, into art for art’s sake.10 In the postwar years, the debates between art and politics, realism and abstraction intensified becoming entangled with the hegemonic battles of the Cold War. In this polarized atmosphere,

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social realism became associated with the Communist Bloc, whilst abstraction was con­ scripted by the capitalist “West.” With no room for external referents or socio-political intent, abstraction became the sanitized expression of Western modernity and an emblem of its “uni­ versality.” This coincided with the rise of abstract expressionism in the United States, and its promotion as the flagship of American democracy and freedom during the Cold War. Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth The postwar period, and especially the 1950s, is a crucial period in the history of the Mexican School, as it tried to reassert its revolutionary agency through the artistic and political activism of its members. This was necessary to defend the social reforms of the Mexican Revolution which sought to alleviate the plight of the working classes. These were the Mexicans that populated the iconography of the Mexican muralists, and for whom the Revolution had been fought ending years of colonialism and exploitation. Alongside the populist reforms of the 1920s and 1930s, however, a new political elite began to emerge, whose power increased as a result of the postwar economic boom of the 1950s. With modernization came new technologies that were transforming the social and urban fabric of the nation, and with industrial capitalism a growing urban bourgeoisie demanding the latest in consumer products. Besides the overtly political content of their work, the Mexican muralists were criti­ cized for being too nationalistic and creating a chauvinistic and intransigent movement that constrained artistic freedom. This situation created a division among artists in the country: one led by Rufino Tamayo and artists of the so-called Ruptura (Rupture), whose work was described by Rivera and Siqueiros as arte purismo (art for art’s sake); and another led by Siqueiros whose brand of realism remained committed to the communist cause.11 For Siqueiros, there was no option but to continue the aesthetic and political pro­ gram laid out in the “Manifesto of the Union of Mexican Workers, Technicians, Painters and sculptors,” published in 1923 in El Machete – the organ of the Mexican Communist Party. Addressed to “the proletariat of the world,” and signed by “los tres grandes,” amongst others, this manifesto came to represent the core values of the Mexican School: a public art directed to the masses that will advance the progressive reforms of the Revo­ lution, while partaking in the World Revolution to come. In July 1944 an article in El Nacional announced the opening of the Centro de Arte Realista Moderno (Centre of Modern Realist Art).12 In this text, Siqueiros made an urgent plea to continue the revolutionary project stating that the Mexican muralist movement had proven to be the most effective means to achieve this. In his defense of Pintura Mexi­ cana Moderna13 (Modern Mexican Painting), Siqueiros highlighted the belligerent ethos of their work, its national and international outreach, arguing that it was the only pos­ sible path to overcome oppression, both in Mexico and abroad. In his view, Pablo Picasso and the School of Paris had fallen prey to formalist aestheticism and become decadent, hence unable to lead the revolutionary struggle through art. Furthermore, Siqueiros noted that, unlike other modern art movements in Latin America, Modern Mexican Painting was not a pastiche of French art, but rather “the first Latin American artistic drive that is non-colonial, non-dependent.”14 This claim by Siqueiros is important as it highlights the decolonial impulse of the Mexican School. As an example of what his Center of Modern Realist Art hoped to achieve, Siqueiros referred to his recently completed mural Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth (see Figure 10.1), made in collaboration with Luis Arenal.

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Figure 10.1 Siqueiros, Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth, 1944. Original location at Calle de Sonora No. 9, Mexico City. Unidentified photographer. Archive INBA-Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros/Archive Irene Herner. © David Alfaro Siqueiros, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022. Source: My gratitude to Professor Irene Herner for providing me with the photographs of Siqueiro’s murals.

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This work encapsulates the form and content of Modern Mexican Painting, as promoted by the artist, namely public murals that merged experimental techniques with socially engaged realism. The formal and iconographical aspects of Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth are meant to enhance the anticolonial message of the mural, and it is significant that Siquei­ ros chose this subject for the inaugural piece of his Centre of Modern Realist Art. Cuauhté­ moc is one of Mexico’s most revered national icons. He was the last Aztec king who valiantly resisted the military conquest of Hernan Cortés and was tortured by his men looking to find the gold and treasures of his empire. In this mural, Cuauhtémoc is facing the invading Span­ ish forces represented by a white-bearded man holding a cross/dagger on top of an abstract horse-like shape. This figure stands for the myth of Quetzalcóatl, which, according to Mexi­ can historiography, foretold the arrival of the Spaniards. Cuauhtémoc appears in the com­ position twice: in the middle ground with open arms and in the foreground attacking the brutal force of colonial conquest. The subversive message of the painting is reinforced by the title which challenges the legitimizing force of myths. In this case that of Quetzalcóatl as a mythical figure that justified the arrival of the Spaniards, but also, and most poignantly, the myth of European superiority that vindicated colonial expansion. If placed in the context of 1944, when Europe was ravaged by war, this mural can be seen to convey the views of many anticolonial writers and intellectuals who decried the hypocrisy of colonial discourse and understood the war as a manifestation of European degeneracy.15 Siqueiros advocated for a modern realist art that combined formal experimentation with political intent, hence departing from the academicism of Soviet socialist realism.16 These ideas were at odds with his political allegiances, since Siqueiros was involved in the first attempt to kill Trotsky and remained loyal to the Stalinist Left. His work, however, was closer to the formalist experimentation of the avant-gardes which Stalin decried as deca­ dent and bourgeois. In Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth Siqueiros applied the technique of polyangular perspectives with which he transformed two-dimensional walls and ceilings into dynamic and expansive spaces. The composition is based on the principle of “poli­ plástica,” which means the combination of painting, sculpture, and architecture using mod­ ern materials and tools. As Irene Herner has shown, Siqueiros’ interest in the revolutionary potential of industrial materials and techniques had been developing since the 1930s.17 During this time, he created Plastic Exercise (1933) in Don Torcuato, a province of Buenos Aires, where he experimented for the first time with the technique of polyangular perspec­ tives. The mural was made with the assistance of Antonio Berni, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Juan Castagnino, and Enrique Lázaro, using innovative techniques such as overhead pro­ jection, airbrush, and stencils.18 Three years later, Siqueiros opened the Experimental Work­ shop in New York, a Laboratory of Modern Techniques in Art, where he encouraged artists to experiment with spray guns, nitrocellulose paint, and pyroxylin, all used in industrial manufacturing.19 One of the participants was a young Jackson Pollock whose work will be influenced by Siqueiros’ technique of “controlled accidents,” and large mural-size works.20 In 1951 Siqueiros was commissioned by the Mexican government to paint a mural cycle for the Palacio de Bellas Artes, choosing once more the theme of Cuauhtémoc. This time he created a diptych: The Torture of Cuauhtémoc (1950–51), and The Resurrection of Cuauhtémoc (1950–1951) (see Figure 10.2). These works are emblematic of Siqueiros’ vanguard realism and steadfast commitment to a revolutionary art made with industrial materials and techniques. The diptych depicts a contrasting view of Cuauhtémoc: one defeated and overpowered by the Spanish conquistadores; and the other resurrected, strong and defiant. Clad with the armor of his victimizers, the resuscitated Tlatoani (Nahuatl term for ruler) faces once more the abstract centaur figure that stands for colonial invasion, only this time it has

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Figure 10.2 Siqueiros, The Apotheosis of Cuauhtémoc (Resurrection of Cuauhtémoc), 1950–51. Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City. Photograph by Grecia Pérez for the documentary “Who was David Alfaro Siqueiros” (2022). Archive Irene Herner. © David Alfaro Siqueiros, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022. Source: My gratitude to Professor Irene Herner for providing me with the photographs of Siqueiro’s murals.

been defeated and fatally wounded. Cuauhtémoc has overcome the myth. Hence, the anti-colonial message of his 1944 mural is here replaced with a more explicit decolonial stance. While permanently on display at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, it is important to note that the government commissioned Siqueiros to make a portable mural so that it could be included in Fernando Gamboa’s exhibition of Mexican art – scheduled to open in Paris in 1952. In her analysis of the diptych, Mary Coffey argues that the subversive message of the resurrected Cuauhtémoc needs to be understood in the context of this exhibition and the cultural politics of the Cold War. Coffey explains that since the mural was also commissioned for Paris, Siqueiros was consciously addressing his European audience with a figure that represents “a subaltern ‘third worldism’ aligned against the first-world standoff between the cold war superpowers.”21 Given Siqueiros’ unremitting support of Stalinist Russia, however, it seems unlikely that his intention would have been to present a non-aligned “third worldism.” Rather, we could perhaps read Cuauhtémoc as Siqueiros’ alter-ego – a militant artist who, having appropriated the knowledge and technologies of his oppressors, is now ready to fight against U.S. imperialism and its attendant arte purismo (art for art’s sake). Coffey’s analysis points to this interpreta­ tion as she explains that, within the context of the Paris exhibition: “Siqueiros’ national theme was a defense of Mexican muralism against the anti-communist attacks on socially engaged realism and the muralists’ contribution to the international avant-garde.”22 Siqueiros’ confidence that the battle against U.S. imperialism could be won may be attributed to the prize that he received during the 25th Venice Biennial, held in 1950. This was Mexico’s first appearance in the prestigious Biennale; Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco, and Tamayo were chosen to represent the country. To many people’s surprise, no doubt, Siquei­ ros was given the second prize in painting, after Matisse. This was an overdue recognition of Siqueiros’ skills and contributions to modern art, but it will be the last major international accolade granted to “los tres grandes.” From then on, Tamayo’s fame would increase becom­ ing the preferred emissary of Mexican art both in his country and abroad. His cosmopolitan

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and non-political renditions of mexicanidad (mexicaness or Mexican identity) were wel­ comed by the wealthy post-revolutionary elites and Euro-American art critics. The Black Legend of Mexican Painting By the time Carrillo Gil’s article was published, in January 1961, Siqueiros – the only sur­ viving member of the triad – was in jail. He was arrested on August 9, 1960, in the house of Carrillo Gil, where he had gone to seek refuge.23 His arrest was a clear warning from the government that communist activities in the country would not be tolerated. Mean­ while, Tamayo was living in Paris where he had gone to paint a mural for the opening of UNESCO’s headquarters in 1958. This commission reflects the outstanding international prestige attained by Tamayo in the 1950s, but also the way in which Euro-American art critics orchestrated a campaign to marginalize the work of “los tres grandes.” This aes­ thetic bias was clearly exposed by Carrillo Gil: The aim of presenting the work of Diego, Orozco and Siqueiros as “inferior political painting” (typical of art critics at the service of gallery owners) has been galvanizing in Europe for some time. For those European critics accustomed to passing judgement on things they do not understand, the legibility of Mexican painting is an inferior art. And they attack it for that: because people understand the virile message of Diego, Orozco and Siqueiros. Not for nothing do they speak wonders about Mr. Tamayo and his watermelons.24 “The Black Legend of Mexican Painting” begins with a recent visit to Mexico by Alfred Werner, who Carrillo Gil says: “arrived with prejudiced ideas based on stereotypes and views derived from the writings of other art critics from his country and abroad, opinions which in our thinking constitute a ‘Black Legend’ against Mexican art.”25 Werner was born in Poland but moved to New York in 1940, where he spent the rest of his life and began his career as an art historian and critic. It is hence no surprise that his views on art would be shaped by the formalist aesthetics promoted by Barr and MoMA. Carrillo Gil then refers to Lionello Venturi, who also visited Mexico where he gave a series of lectures on modern art. Venturi, he says, was one of the first to deride the work of the muralists writing that their paintings were merely illustrative and lacking in aesthetic value. These views were repeated by Read who had excluded their work from his A Concise History of Modern Art (1959). In his article, Carrillo Gil included a quote from the introduction of Read’s book where the English critic justified his decision: More open to criticism, no doubt, is my omission of the contemporary Mexican school – Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco and Alfaro Siqueiros. Like some of their Russian contemporaries, they have adopted a propagandist program for their art which seems to me to place it outside the stylistic revolution which is my exclusive concern.26 This statement reflects the willful ignorance of critics to which Carrillo Gil referred, and a prevalent homogenizing view of “los tres grandes” that overlooks important stylistic differences in their work and politics. Orozco’s murals, for one, are far from the propa­ gandistic style of socialist realism, his work being that of a self-proclaimed anarchist who decried dogmatic politics and religion. And Siqueiros’ vanguard realism was certainly part of the stylistic revolution which Read purports to map in his history of modern art.

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Acutely aware of the influential power of their writings, Carrillo Gil rightly blamed Venturi and Read for the formation and dissemination of a Black Legend of Mexican Panting which marginalized the work of “lost tres grandes.” Conversely, both Venturi and Read keenly promoted the work of Tamayo whose paintings did appear in A Concise History of Modern Art. While not included in Carrillo Gil’s article, Barr should also be added to the list of critics who promoted a depoliticized modernist canon. His writings clearly influenced Read’s aesthetic thinking and the stylistic teleology charted in his his­ tory of modern art: starting with post-impressionism and ending with abstract expres­ sionism. In the introduction, Read acknowledged both MoMA’s publications and Barr’s writings and catalogues as crucial to the theoretical framework of his book. Another prominent example of said Black Legend of Mexican Painting is the exhi­ bition Fifty Years of Modern Art and its accompanying catalogue. This retrospective show was put together by a group of international art critics and curators who were asked to select artworks from the national pavilions sent to the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958. Members of the International Committee of Fine Arts, amongst whom was Read, chose three works from the Mexican section: one by Rivera, Orozco, and Tamayo – leaving Siqueiros out. To add salt to the wound, they placed the paintings of Rivera and Orozco in the section dedicated to socialist realism.27 Carrillo Gil lamented the exclusion of Siqueiros stating that this was due to the “political intolerance of the selection com­ mittee.”28 This seems a fair judgment; otherwise, why exclude the only muralist to have won a prize at the Venice Biennale? It is a central tenet of this essay that the Mexican mural movement was from begin­ ning to end the vanguard of the Revolution, and that it was both a national and a trans­ national avant-garde. The subversive and revolutionary messages of “los tres grandes,” however, presented a challenge to the depoliticized aesthetics promoted by the “Western” world. It is, hence, that in the 1950s a campaign of discredit begins in earnest succeeding in relegating their work to the categories of political art and socialist realism, associated with the Eastern Bloc. What the Black Legend of Mexican Painting willfully downplayed was the aesthetic contributions of “los tres grandes,” and Siqueiros’ experimental tech­ niques which aligned with the radical art and politics of the European avant-gardes. Efforts to undermine the value of engaged realism were justified by a Eurocentric his­ toriography that elevated the aesthetics of pure form and presented abstraction as the crowning achievement of modern art. Behind this narrative, however, were the cultural politics of the Cold War, and the reality of a world divided by the Iron Curtain. This is the context in which the writings of Euro-American art critics, intent on discrediting the Mexican muralists, must be read and understood. Through their writings and curatorial decisions, the once preeminent position of “los tres grandes,” and their contributions to the international avant-garde would be relegated to the margins. Notes 1. Alvar Carrillo Gil, “La leyenda negra de la pintura mexicana,” México en la cultura. Suple­ mento cultural de Novedades, ed., José Gómez Sicre. January 17, 1961. Washington DC: Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States. 2. See Fabiola Martínez Rodríguez, “Mexico’s Interamerican Biennials and the Hemispheric Cold War,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 43, no. 119 (September 2021): 249–285. https://doi.org/10.22201/iie.18703062e.2021.119.2762. 3. The Mexican School is here used mainly to refer to the work of the Mexican muralists led by Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros. 4. See Ana Garduño, El poder del coleccionismo de arte: Alvar Carrillo Gil (Mexico City: UNAM, 2009).

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References Anreus, Alejandro. “Siquerios’ Travels and ‘Alternative Muralisms’ in Argentina and Cuba.” In Mexican Muralism. A Critical History, edited by Alejandro Anreus, Robin Adele Greeley, and Leonard Folgarait, 177–195. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012. Alvar. “La leyenda negra de la pintura mexicana.” Mexico en la cultura. Sumplemento cultural de Novedades. January 17, 1961. Archives Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States. Barker, Emma. “Art in Paris in the 1930s.” In Varieties of Modernism, edited by John Wood, 11–47. London: Open University, 2004. Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.

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Cockcroft, Eva. “Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War.” In Art in Modern Culture: An Anthology of Critical Texts, edited by Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris, 82–90. London: Phaidon, 1993. Coffey, Mary. How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. El Nacional. “Centro de arte realista moderno,” 1–7. July 2, 1944. Garduño, Ana. “Carrillo Gil y Siqueiros. Breve aproximación a una Amistad.” In Siqueiros en la colección del Museo Carrillo Gil. Mexico City: INBA, 1996. Garduño, Ana. El poder del coleccionismo de arte: Alvar Carrillo Gil. Mexico City: UNAM, 2009. Guilbaut, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Herner, Irene. Siqueiros, del paraíso a la utopía. Mexico City: Conaculta, 2004. Indych-López, Anna. Muralism Without Walls. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. Keller, Renata. Mexico’s Cold War. Cuba, the United States, and the Legacy of the Mexican Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Lee, Steven S. The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Martínez Rodríguez, Fabiola. “Mexico’s Interamerican Biennials and the Hemispheric Cold War.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 43, no. 119 (September 2021): 249–285. Read, Herbert. A Concise History of Modern Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1986. Read, Herbert. “What Is Revolutionary Art.” In Art in Theory 1900–2000, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, 510–514. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. Reyes Palma, Francisco. “Polos culturales y escuelas nacionales: el experimento mexicano, 1940– 1953.” In Arte, historia e identidad en América: Visiones Comparativas, edited by Gustavo Curiel, 821–827. Mexico City: UNAM-IIE, 1994. Siqueiros, David Alfaro. “Carta abierta a los pintores, escultores y grabadores soviéticos.” In Palabras de Siqueiros, edited by Raquel Tibol, 397–407. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996. Suárez, Luis. “Cincuenta años de arte moderno.” México en la cultura. Suplemento cultural de Novedades, ed., José Gómez Sicre. August 17, 1958. Washington DC: Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States.

11 Neo-Baroque Architecture and Sculpture in the Portuguese Estado Novo (1926–1974) The Genealogy of a Marginalized Concept Ana Lourenço Pinto Introduction Understood as the revival or reinterpretation of Baroque art from the 17th and 18th cen­ turies, Portuguese Neo-Baroque art was expressed mainly from the late 19th century to the 1970s. This period encompasses works of architecture and sculpture, in a first phase connected to the late-romantic period, and later, starting with the dawn of the 20th cen­ tury, was a fusion between tradition and modernity, inspired by the Baroque. For nearly eighty years, between about the 1890s and the 1970s, the Neo-Baroque intersects with different political regimes. Firstly, with the final stretch of the Monarchy in Portugal, toppled by the First Republic in 1910, which lasted until 1926. And from that year on, along the Military Dictatorship, established by a coup, which would pave the way to the rise, in 1933, of Estado Novo (New State), a civil para-fascist regime, led by António de Oliveira Salazar. Salazar indelibly marked the epoch with his conserva­ tive vision of Portugal as the capital of the oldest European colonial empire, spreading across territories in Asia (Goa, Damão, Diu, Macau and East Timor) and Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe). And despite the grow­ ing anti-colonial liberation movements and the pressure from international community, Salazar did not want to give up the colonies, starting in 1961 the Colonial or Liberation War. After Salazar’s retirement due to illness in 1968, Marcelo Caetano succeeded him and was overthrown by the Revolution of April 25, 1974, opening the way for the demo­ cratic regime of the Third Republic, enduring to this day. The uprising interrupted the war effort, resulting in 1975 at the end of the colonial empire, through the emancipation of the overseas provinces that Portugal still held. Notwithstanding the long spectrum that Neo-Baroque art spans through in Portugal, this chapter aims to unveil the foun­ dations and development of Neo-Baroque aesthetics in Portuguese art history, taking as examples specific works produced to be displayed in Portugal and abroad, during Estado Novo (1926–1974), relating national identity with the international dimensions of tradition and modernity in art. It thus reflects the global artistic trends of this phase of substantial technical and material advances in art, which resulted in a set of works with specificities based on national history. That is why this artistic typology is designated as “Portuguese Neo-Baroque art,” instead of “Neo-Baroque art in Portugal,” since the most significant works were conceived by Portuguese authors to represent national art on foreign soil, and a few others – on the contrary – were formulated by foreign authors, also as a brand image of the Portuguese identity abroad. Despite this fact, most of the works of art defined as Neo-Baroque were, in fact, produced by Portuguese artists, in DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-15

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their home country, but the internationalization of the case studies requires us to use a more comprehensive designation, in order to contain in it all the expressions related to revival inspired by the Portuguese Baroque, regardless of authors’ nationalities and the country their works were destined. On the other hand, it is important to question why the Portuguese Neo-Baroque archi­ tecture and sculpture have not been until now the subject of an exhaustive investigation, and also the scarcity of analysis by national historians, visible in fewer bibliographical references than it deserved. Due to aesthetic prejudice, but also for having been con­ noted with Salazar’s Estado Novo, the concept of Neo-Baroque has been marginalized, or even ignored, until now, in the history of Portuguese art. Its status in modernity has been rejected, due to its Baroque connections and influences, and it is relevant to place it objectively within the midst of 20th-century modern art. The Genealogy of the Portuguese Neo-Baroque Art: Architecture

Still unexplored in the history of modern art as a field of research, the Portuguese NeoBaroque art movement summons, first of all, its own origins, not only in the artistic expressions that it embodied, but in the equally relevant immateriality of the period that encompasses two mutually explainable variants: the one linked to the late-Romantic French academicism of the late 19th century, and the later phase, of a modern feature, which stands out from World War I onwards. To understand the origins of this artistic genealogy, it is necessary to go back in time to the Portuguese pavilion at the 1889 Uni­ versal Exhibition in Paris, the work of architecture that marks the chronological mile­ stone for the beginning of the phenomenon. The description used by Maria Helena Souto to present the Portuguese Pavilion at the Paris Exhibition in 1889 as the genesis of Portuguese Neo-Baroque architecture turns out to be very appropriate: “despite the eclectic character of the ensemble, a new genealogy was inaugurated in the Portuguese revivalist styles, a model that would have descent throughout the following century.”1 The pavilion, an initiative of the Royal Agricul­ ture Association and the Portuguese Industrial Association, was built exclusively with ephemeral materials on the banks of the River Seine, under the responsibility of João Crisóstomo (viscount of Melício and representative of the industrial association), who chose to assign this project to the French architect Jacques-René Hermant (1855–1930), rather than the proposal of another architect, also French, Leidenfrost, that simulated the Manueline style of Belém Tower,2 a synthesis of the flamboyant Late-Gothic, inspired by the reign of King Manuel I (1495–1521) and the Portuguese Age of Discoveries. Although, it is interesting to note that both proposals were anchored in the Portuguese artistic tradition, in accordance with the late-romantic spirit of the time, even though interpreted by a foreign architect. Especially because the Baroque, as a matrix, was itself a global style, which left an influence on practically all European art and thought throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. It was also disseminated by Portuguese and Spanish colonists to the Ameri­ cas and India,3 so its subsequent resurgence also manifested itself on that geographical scale, reflecting the local particularities of their countries of origin. Furthermore, in the context of European Late-Romanticism of the end of the 19th century, the fact that Leidenfrost’s Neo-Manueline proposal was rejected, in view of Hermant’s Neo-Baroque project – which was inspired by the Clérigos Tower, one of the most important works of 18th century in the north of Portugal, created by the Italian artist and architect Nicola Nasoni (1691–1773) marks, in a way, a change in visual and conceptual archetypes.

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Figure 11.1 Commemorative piece in polychrome plaster, representing the Pavilion of Portugal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, in 1889. Source: Courtesy of Cabral Moncada Leilões, Art Auctioneers, Lisbon/Portugal. Vasco Cunha Monteiro, 2013.

The preference for the late-Gothic Manueline aesthetics is here replaced by a later style, the Baroque, also linked to the vast Portuguese colonial empire. In fact, John Ruskin argued in 1849 that “the architecture of a nation is great only when it is as universally established as its language.”4 And the Baroque aesthetics perfectly suited this sense of a national architectural style, established by the Portuguese on different continents.

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Historical circumstances reinforce this need to list national identity characteristics, especially an attitude contemporary of the facts that led to the English Ultimatum of 1890, in which the United Kingdom demanded Portugal to withdraw its military pres­ ence from the lands between its colonial territories – Angola and Mozambique. The Portuguese authorities gave in, seeding the internal turmoil that marked the decline of the Portuguese Monarchy, deposed in 1910. Only about a decade after the Portuguese Pavilion in Paris was erected, the appetite for Neo-Baroque aesthetics arises in the United Kingdom, in the reign of Edward VII (1901–1910), precisely in reaction to Ruskin’s Gothic Revival.5 Strictly speaking, João Crisóstomo, in charge of the Portuguese Industrial Association, pointed to the pavil­ ion’s high cost as a justification for refusing the Neo-Manueline6 style. But, certainly, the design chosen to represent Portugal in the Universal Exhibition was not a minor issue, as Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, responsible for the interior decoration, had publicly defended the first proposal in 1888, considering it the demonstration of the “accentuated stamp of our nationality, giving it the shape of our most severe monuments, in preference to the lacy banners of modern buildings and the paternity of others.”7 Thus, Bordalo Pinheiro’s opposition to the Neo-Baroque option is clear, leading to the belief that Crisóstomo’s will had some weight in the aesthetic language adopted. What is interesting to note is that it was precisely in 1888 that Heinrich Wölfflin taught, for the first time, a systematic approach to Baroque. In effect, “the Baroque style is naturally a construction elaborated a posteriori, . . . forged in the 19th century, debated long and contradictory in the 20th century,”8 and it is in this perspective the German art historian theorizes and crystallizes a concept concerning the artistic production, centu­ ries after its time. We were, then, at a key moment for the rediscovery and resurgence of Baroque aesthetics in Europe, at the dawn of Art History as a discipline, and which also coincides with the creation of the first work of Portuguese Neo-Baroque architecture, inspired by Nasoni’s Baroque Clérigos Tower, erected in the city of Porto between 1754 and 1763. Whether this model was imposed by those responsible for the Portuguese representation at the 1889 Exhibition, or by mere coincidence (unlikely), only because of Hermant’s knowledge of the most recent theories or a combination of factors, the synchrony of the two events stands out. The pavilion raised questions about its features, namely that it represented “a palace in the style of King D. João V, somewhat altered but which at first sight is accepted,” in the words of Cavaleiro e Sousa, linking the pavilion with Portuguese art contemporary to the monarch (1706–1750). In the eyes of French critics and journalists, it presented itself as a “jewel of architecture” in the “Portuguese Louis XV style,”9 using the art of his reign (1715–1774), as the equivalent to the Baroque aesthetics of the Portuguese king. One thing was certain: the work was immediately asso­ ciated by all with the Baroque (as a generic Western artistic style), and above all with its Portuguese variant. The debate about the Portuguese Neo-Baroque resides, incisively, in this conceptual and formal aspect, which approximates and simultaneously distinguishes it from other international Baroque developments. Therefore, it is essential to identify the specific characteristics of Portuguese Neo-Baroque art. The Portuguese Pavilion of the Paris Exhibition already showed elements of an aes­ thetic change, based on international trends. But the affront taken by Portugal with the English Ultimatum and its implications was a political turning point for the growth of a nationalist consciousness in art. Therefore, it was in a troubled context and with a strong nationalist spirit, that a group of ethnographers started in 1893 a quest for the characterization of the traditional Portuguese House (A Casa Portuguesa), based on the

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studies of A.S. Simões and Joaquim de Vasconcelos. This is still a selective and fragmen­ tary research of a comprehensive Portuguese architectural cultural identity, since it only focused on the regions of Trás-os-Montes and Beira Alta, in the continental north and center of the country. It was firstly systematized by Rocha Peixoto, in 1904. The architect Raul Lino (1879–1974) would celebrate that approach in his long career, inspired by the popular constructive tradition of the south of Portugal (with a Manueline, Gothic, and vernacular structure10), rather than by the environment.11 Some of the archi­ tectural aspects that Lino popularized had a Baroque influence, intertwined with ver­ nacular architectural features from the former Islamic occupation (in the Middle Ages) of the south of Portugal that comprised the built ensemble. The eclectic late-romantic taste marks the starting point in the Neo-Baroque, albeit soaked in hybrid compositions, since the 19th century can be considered, in some way, “rather confusing,” as fashions and styles changed at a faster pace than ever before in history, causing them to occur even at the same time.12 Portuguese art historian Paulo Pereira calls Neo-Baroque revival in Portugal “late” and of late influence, suggesting that in the arts, traditionalism and conservatism are so heavy and inertial that one can affirm, without fear of making mistakes, that the traces of the 19th century taste, in terms of education of the arts and consumption, remained until about 1960 . . . The 19th century is, in fact, the longest century in our history.13 However, it must be stressed that artistic styles are not watertight compartments, that there are zones of blending between the end of one and the beginning of the next, in contrast to what is advocated by German theorists, such as Schinkel.14 And even if there were barriers, for Walter Benjamin, “consistently, when modern innovations appeared in modern history, they took the form of historical restitutions. New forms cited the old one out of context.”15 There are also intermittent dynamics, in which, after a phase of resist­ ance to previous paradigms.16 And however mimetically the values are recovered, the historical context, technical knowledge, and the contextual environment are no longer the same, so a revival will be contaminated by later cultural framework. At the turn of the 20th century, the Portuguese engineer Ricardo Severo (1869–1940) designed his own house in the city of Porto, which served to sharpen the discussion around the Portuguese House, because of the selective collage of architectural and deco­ rative elements inspired by the traditional houses from different regions of the country, evidencing an interesting attitude within the late Romantic eclecticism.17 However, it is in Brazil, more specifically in the city of São Paulo, that Severo’s action will be the subject of intense debate, based on his conceptions for the reinvention of the Portuguese-Brazilian colonial tradition18 of Baroque inspiration, particularly in the 1910s and 1920s. His campaign for traditional art, carried out more consistently from 1914 on, in clear opposi­ tion to the “universalism of art without a homeland,”19 is essential in consolidating the bases for neocolonial architecture based on a historicist relationship between Europe and South America, and more precisely between Portugal and Brazil. In Portugal, some architects shared these principles of purification of exogenous ele­ ments, such as the generation of Carlos (1887–1971) and Guilherme Rebelo de Andrade (1891–1969), who particularly rejected French academicism of École des Beaux-Arts.20 Authors of iconic Neo-Baroque works located in Portugal, such as the enlargement of the National Museum of Ancient Art or the Monumental Fountain (both from the 1940s, in Lisbon), became ambassadors of these views abroad as they created the Portuguese

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pavilions in international events. It was the case of the International Exhibition of the Centenary of Independence of Brazil (previous to Estado Novo, in 1922–1923) and the Ibero-American Exhibition of Seville (in 1929), which both became the exponents of this reinterpretation of Baroque art and two notable examples of the concept of “total work of art” through the integration of artistic elements such as sculptures and glazed tiles, to emphasize the stylistic coherence of their works. The Portuguese Neo-Baroque is multifaceted emulating Baroque’s formal mutations, which served as a model for its 19th and 20th centuries modern interpretation. Rebelo de Andrade specialized in the Neojoanino (Neo-Joanine) variant, that is, the revival of the aesthetics of the reign of D. João V, a luxurious period, marked by the exploration of gold in Brazil, then a Portuguese colony. It therefore made sense to recover these artistic forms, designing pavilions that effectively alluded to the wealth and global influence of Portugal in the 18th century, especially in events related to the Ibero-American world. In this particular geographical context, Neo-Baroque was an effective option, immediately understood, seen as a dignifying historical heritage, worth diffusing worldwide. Despite Estado Novo regime (1933–1974) strategy for national monuments based on the valorization of medieval art evoking the nation founded eight centuries ago, the re-visitation of the Baroque best served the purpose of impressing foreigners, not only through visual delight, but also presenting Portugal as a historic global powerhouse. Evidence of this turns out to be the last Portuguese Neo-Baroque work of architecture that so far delimits the chronological spectrum of our study: São Clemente Palace, in Rio de Janeiro, designed by the Rebelo de Andrade brothers, whose late inauguration (in 1962, during Colonial War) expands this type of revival. Designed to host the Portuguese Embassy in the city – by then, the capital of Brazil –, this work of total art brings together various artistic techniques, such as stonework, tile and furniture, and imposes itself against the landscape, in an anachronism that, transversal to the architecture of the 20th century,21 and in a constant tension between Baroque tradition and Modern vanguard.

Figure 11.2 The facade of the São Clemente Palace, in Rio de Janeiro. Source: Courtesy of the Consulate General of Portugal in Rio de Janeiro.

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In terms of architecture, the Neo-Baroque works have a common denominator with other nations with which Portugal maintained historical links, such as Spain – its neigh­ bor in the Iberian Peninsula and former rival in overseas pretensions –, but also with its own former colonies, such as Brazil. Therefore, it is not by chance that the government and even private institutions in Portugal used the aesthetics of Baroque in international fairs held in those two Ibero-American countries, adopted in the Portuguese pavilions of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil, 1922), Seville (1929) and even in the embassy building in the Brazilian capital, in the early 1960s, all created by the Rebelo de Andrade architects. The choice of Neo-Baroque features in architecture fits into a more global trend in the transition to the 20th century, followed by other countries, such as the Baroque Revival or Edwardian Style in the United Kingdom, the Colonial Style emerging in several coun­ tries in the Americas, where the Baroque assumes itself as an expression of modernity.22 In this sense, the attitude of “rooted modernism describes a building unmistakably mod­ ern in terms of function and construction techniques, standard of building services, décor, and comfort, but whose aesthetic design deliberately evokes or implies a ‘usable past,’ real or mythic.”23 The Genealogy of the Portuguese Neo-Baroque Art: Sculpture

Neo-Baroque, as a global movement is also reflected in sculpture, in works clearly inspired by the dramatic expression and gestures typical of Baroque art, a style that was taught and disseminated by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The French capital becomes the epicenter of training sculptors from all over the world, so it is not surpris­ ing to be the destination chosen by several young Portuguese to study between the 1870s and 1914. This was the case of Tomás Costa (1861–1932), a student of Alexandre Fal­ guière (1831–1900) and Antonin Mercier (1845–1916), and the author of Dancer, the first sculpture so far identified as neo-baroque in Portugal, dating from 1888. But it was António Teixeira Lopes (1866–1942) who was the greatest exponent of Portuguese NeoBaroque sculpture. His works are full of patriotic sentimentality and movement, such as the Portuguese National Memorial in La Couture, inaugurated in 1928 and dedicated to soldiers killed in France in the War. Among the Portuguese sculptors who were trained in Paris, who worked in a Neo-Baroque style, are also Diogo de Macedo (1889–1959) and Artur Anjos Teixeira (1880–1935). By the end of the 1920s, the influence of modern art in Portugal was already evident, and influenced new developments in Neo-Baroque sculptures, carried out by a new gen­ eration, notably Maximiano Alves (1888–1954). The new Neo-Baroque shows greater connections to international avant-garde aesthetics as it opposed the narrative character of academic works, as visible in the sculpture Atlanteans at the base of the Monument Great War Dead, in Lisbon (inaugurated in 1931). Its modernity was expressed in the anatomical disproportion, tension, and exaggeration of the scale – influenced by the schematism of Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929). This is also evident in the two colossal 7-meter-high sculptures in reinforced concrete that Alves produced for the Sifon-Bridge in Sacavém, near Lisbon. The adoption of industrial materials reveals an apparent contra­ diction, as technical innovation serves to express characteristics of Baroque sculpture in the midst of the 20th century. This work was inaugurated in 1940, the “Year of the Cen­ tenaries,” in which the Estado Novo regime celebrated significant moments in the history of Portugal: the founding of the nation, in 1140, and the restoration of its independence from Spanish rule in 1640. In the celebratory tone of the regime, there is also the Monu­ mental Fountain, a “total work of art,” which intended to bring together architecture,

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Figure 11.3 Partial view of the Monumental Fountain, in Lisbon. Source: Photograph © Ana Lourenço Pinto, 2019.

sculpture, and ceramics. It was inspired by the architecture and sculpture of Baroque fountains in Rome and the Belvedere and Schönbrunn palaces, in Vienna. Sponsored by the minister of public works, Duarte Pacheco (1899–1943), designed by Carlos Rebelo de Andrade, with the collaboration of the sculptors Diogo de Macedo and Maximiano Alves, and the ceramist Jorge Barradas (1894–1971), this fountain inaugurated in 1948 in Lisbon reveals a dated but modernized Neo-Baroque, since it can easily be related to a specific past era, but with enough creative freedom not to be considered a revival, since Baroque art is just a starting point for these modern artists, who adapt past influences to international tendencies of their time, interpreted it in their own personal style. A Marginalized Concept

The Portuguese Neo-Baroque has been a marginalized aesthetic concept, due to its con­ notation to the Estado Novo regime. The absence of a systematic study of this artistic development in Portuguese architecture or sculpture, contrasts with its role for about eight decades to construct and define a national art, for around eight decades, and reflected in the positive comments abroad, by the critics and the press while rejected by Portuguese scholars who devoted their attention to Portuguese Modernism. The sparse bibliographic references have mostly pejorative descriptions24 of the Portuguese NeoBaroque art. For instance, Rui Afonso Santos describes Neo-Baroque an “an aulic style . . . associated with the tics of architecture “to the old Portuguese style,” fueling “projects

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as ostentatious as caricatures.” Raquel Henriques da Silva prefers to highlight how “oth­ ers claimed that the most specifically national component of our architecture was the ‘D. João V’ manner, understanding for that reason a mere collage of facade elements.” José Manuel Fernandes sums up Neo-Baroque, as a “culturally confused and formally eclectic ‘Traditional Portuguese Style’, or ‘Old Portuguese’ was another important ‘ballast’ to understand the subsequent affirmation of the architecture of the Estado Novo regime” positioning the Pavilion of Honor at the International Exhibition in Rio de Janeiro “in a gaudy Neo-Baroque taste.” In fact, Modernism seems to have reneged on revivalism, as Kandinsky states: Each era of a civilization creates an art that is its own and will never be reborn. Trying to revive the principles of art of the past centuries can only lead to the production of aborted works. . . . the work thus produced will never have a soul.25 However, more recent investigations have begun to demonstrate a link between tradition and modernity in the 20th century, not least because art history has shown us over the centuries the existence of guiding threads in artistic practices as complex links, in which styles function as a “point of departure for impulses that frequently reach extraordinary magnitudes in later transmissions.”26 But for now, it is noted the need to review conven­ tional historiography.27 Conclusions Outlining the genealogy of Portuguese Neo-Baroque art, it is possible to establish a series of chronological and geographical particularities characterizing this artistic development. There are some significant contradictions between the impact of the 17th and 18th cen­ turies global artistic style inserting itself in the international modern era – a style which is simultaneously rooted in a historical context of nationalist inclination, deeply interested in the essence of “being Portuguese.” The literature on Portuguese Neo-Baroque art is still limited. The research is mostly focused on negative opinions about Neo-Baroque aesthetics, but also on its political aspects, in particular the clash between the public works of art commissioned by Salazar and the prosecution of the art critics and research­ ers by his authoritarian regime. Furthermore, the current global debate on colonialism is conducive to shedding new light on art produced with the aim of promoting the former empires of European countries, in this case Portugal. Therefore, it is important to look at the Neo-Baroque as a valuable testimony of the different artistic periods in the history of modern Portugal. This study confirms the need to insert Neo-Baroque in the numer­ ous expressions of modernism and within a global analysis of modern art. The complex adoptions of new forms and materials intertwined with revival elements formed an idi­ osyncratic identity for Neo-Baroque rooted in a global historical context and artistic genealogies with specific meaning in Ibero-American countries and during the Estado Novo regime in particular. Notes 1. Maria Helena Souto, Portugal nas Exposições Universais 1851–1900 (Lisbon: Edições Colibri/ IHA – Estudos de Arte Contemporânea, FCSH/UNL, 2011), 220. 2. Maria Helena Souto, Portugal nas Exposições Universais 1851–1900, 211–212 and 218.

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3. Robert Harbison, Reflections on Baroque (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), vii. 4. Quoted by Adrian Forty, “Foreword,” in A lgarve Building: Modernism, Regionalism and Architecture in the South of Portugal, 1925–1965, Ricardo Agarez, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016), xxvii. 5. Harbison, Reflections on Baroque, 199. 6. Souto, Portugal nas Exposições Universais 1851–1900, 212. 7. Souto, Portugal nas Exposições Universais 1851–1900, 213. 8. José Fernandes Pereira, “Barroco,” in Dicionário da Arte Barroca em Portugal, José Fer­ nandes Pereira, Paulo Pereira, and José Fernandes Pereira, eds. (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1989), 71. 9. Souto, Portugal nas Exposições Universais 1851–1900, 220. 10. José Manuel Fernandes, Português Suave. Arquitecturas do Estado Novo (Lisbon: Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico, 2003), 52. 11. Maria Margarida Marino Ucha, “Português Suave” e “Arquitetura Doce”: Contributos para uma historiografia da Arquitetura Portuguesa. Master’s thesis in Modern and Con­ temporary History/Cities and Heritage (Lisbon: ISCTE Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, 2015), 29. 12. Matthew Rice, Rice’s Architectural Primer (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009), 147. 13. Paulo Pereira, História da Arte Portuguesa: História Essencial (Maia: Círculo de Leitores, Autor e Temas & Debates, 2011), 781 and 786. 14. Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 2. 15. Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Lon­ don: The MIT Press, 1991), 110. 16. José Fernandes Pereira, “Barroco, estilo,” in Dicionário da Arte Barroca em Portugal, José Fernandes Pereira, Paulo Pereira, and José Fernandes Pereira, eds. (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1989), 69. 17. José Manuel Fernandes and Pedro Vieira de Almeida, História da Arte em Portugal – A Arqui­ tectura Moderna, vol. 14 (Lisbon: Alfa, 1986), 14–15. 18. José Tavares Correia de Lira, “Prefácio,” in Ricardo Severo: da arqueologia portuguesa à arquitectura brasileira, Joana Mello, ed. (Coimbra: Press from the University of Coimbra and Annablume, 2012), 12. 19. Joana Mello, Ricardo Severo: da arqueologia portuguesa à arquitectura brasileira (Coimbra: Press from the University of Coimbra and Annablume, 2012), 167. 20. Luís Soares Carneiro, Casas ermas: a arquitetura dos irmãos Rebelo de Andrade e os discursos do moderno (Oporto: Marques da Silva Foundation, 2016), 38. 21. Andrew Leach, “Considering the Baroque,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, University of California Press (on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians) 74, no. 3 (September 2015): 285–288, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jsah.2015.74.3.285, 287. 22. Stephen Calloway, Baroque: The Culture of Excess (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1994), 55. 23. Roger Griffin, “Building the Visible Immortality of the Nation: The Centrality of ‘Rooted Modernism’ to the Third Reich’s Architectural New Order,” Fascism – Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, no. 7 (2018): 9–44, www.brill.com, 32. 24. The quotes were collected from, in this precise order: Rui Afonso Santos, O Design e a Dec­ oração em Portugal: Exposições e Feiras. Os anos vinte e trinta (Lisbon: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1994), 6. Raquel Henriques da Silva, “Neobarroco,” in Dicionário da Arte Barroca em Portugal, José Fernandes Pereira, Paulo Pereira, and José Fernandes Pereira, eds. (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1989), 316. José Manuel Fernandes, Português Suave. Arquitecturas do Estado Novo (Lisbon: Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico, 2003), 46 and 48. 25. Wassily Kandinsky, Do Espiritual na Arte, trans. Maria Helena de Freitas (Lisbon: Dom Quix­ ote, 2006), 21. 26. George Kubler, A Forma do Tempo, trans. José Vieira de Lima (Lisbon: Vega and Author’s Heirs, 2004), 18 and 36. 27. Luís Soares Carneiro, Casas ermas: a arquitetura dos irmãos Rebelo de Andrade e os discursos do moderno, 84.

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References Acciaiuoli, Margarida, Os Anos 40 em Portugal. O País, o Regime e as Artes. “Restauração” e “Celebração”, PhD dissertation in History of Contemporary Art, 2 vols. Lisbon: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1991. Agarez, Ricardo, Algarve Building: Modernism, Regionalism and Architecture in the South of Por­ tugal, 1925–1965. New York: Routledge, 2016. Buck-Morss, Susan, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. London: The MIT Press, 1991. Calloway, Stephen, Baroque: The Culture of Excess. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1994. Carneiro, Luís Soares, Casas ermas: A arquitetura dos irmãos Rebelo de Andrade e os discursos do moderno. Oporto: Marques da Silva Foundation, 2016. Correia de Lira, José Tavares, “Prefácio”, in Ricardo Severo: da arqueologia portuguesa à arquitectura brasileira. Author: Joana Mello. Coimbra: Press from the University of Coimbra and Annablume, 2012. Fernandes, José Manuel, Português Suave. Arquitecturas do Estado Novo. Lisbon: Instituto Portu­ guês do Património Arquitectónico, 2003. Fernandes, José Manuel, and Pedro Vieira de Almeida, História da Arte em Portugal, vol. 14 – A Arquitectura Moderna. Lisbon: Alfa, 1986. Forty, Adrian, “Foreword”, in Algarve Building: Modernism, Regionalism and Architecture in the South of Portugal, 1925–1965. Author: Ricardo Agarez. New York: Routledge, 2016. Giedion, Siegfried, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Griffin, Roger, “Building the Visible Immortality of the Nation: The Centrality of ‘Rooted Modernism’ to the Third Reich’s Architectural New Order”, Fascism. Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, The International Association for Comparative Fascist Studies, no. 7 (2018), 9–44, www.brill.com. Harbison, Robert, Reflections on Baroque. London: Reaktion Books, 2000. Kandinsky, Wassily, Do Espiritual na Arte. Translated by Maria Helena de Freitas. Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 2006. Kubler, George, A Forma do Tempo. Translated by José Vieira de Lima. Lisbon: Vega and Author’s Heirs, 2004. Leach, Andrew, “Considering the Baroque”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, University of California Press (in behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians), vol. 74, no. 3 (September 2015), 285–288, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jsah.2015.74.3.285. Mello, Joana, Ricardo Severo: da arqueologia portuguesa à arquitectura brasileira. Coimbra: Uni­ versity of Coimbra Press and Annablume, 2012. Pereira, José Fernandes, “Barroco”, in Paulo Pereira (coord.) and José Fernandes Pereira (Dir.), Dicionário da Arte Barroca em Portugal. Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1989. Pereira, Paulo, História da Arte Portuguesa: História Essencial. Maia: Círculo de Leitores, Autor e Temas & Debates, 2011. Rice, Matthew, Rice’s Architectural Primer. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009. Santos, Rui Afonso, O Design e a Decoração em Portugal: Exposições e Feiras. Os anos vinte e trinta, Master’s thesis in History of Contemporary Art, 2 vols. Lisbon: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1994. Souto, Maria Helena, Portugal nas Exposições Universais 1851–1900. Lisbon: Edições Colibri/ IHA – Estudos de Arte Contemporânea, FCSH/UNL, 2011. Ucha, Maria Margarida Marino, “Português Suave” e “Arquitetura Doce”: Contributos para uma historiografia da Arquitetura Portuguesa, Master’s thesis in Modern and Contemporary History/ Ctities and Heritage. Lisbon: ISCTE Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, 2015.

The topic of this essay is part of the research for the dissertation in Fine Arts, in the area of Art and Heritage Sciences and is funded by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) – the Portuguese public agency for Science and Technology, through a doctoral grant at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon. Text in English revised by Ricardo Leal Lemos.

Part III

1940–1970

12 Inter-Asian Cultural Dialogues Tanya Singh

The term “Asian Modernism” is often accompanied by a set of glaring questions that art historians have only just begun to answer. When was modernism introduced to the Eastern art world? Did it arrive on a European ship sailing the high seas, or was it birthed in the region itself? What defines it? How does it differ from its Western counterpart? Can specific artistic styles and movements (periods or -isms as in Western modern art) be identified within the broader spectrum of Asian modern art? The recent analyses1 almost always begin with the separation of Euromerican nar­ ratives of modernity from those in Asia. The most apparent reason for this is the role the Industrial Revolution played in affecting the development of modernism in the West. While a pivotal moment in history with regard to the rise of Western Modern­ ism, a revolution of such a scale can hardly be identified in Asia. Industrialization in the Eastern part of the world in the 20th century could be seen as a consequence of colonialism, rather than a dramatic, unified social and political upheaval mimicking the revolution in the West. If this catalyst was absent, or at least not remotely on the same scale, how can Asian Modernism be considered a derivative of its Euromerican counterpart? Moreover, the introduction of industries and modernity in Asian countries was spo­ radic, lacking the momentum any kind of revolution might require. If the starting point is insignificant in the case of Asia, then different points of inception need to be identi­ fied. This results in the unearthing of multiple overlapping discourses on Asian Modern­ ism and the art it produced. “. . . what is most exhilarating about modernisms across the globe is their plurality, heterogeneity, and difference[s], what one may describe as a ‘messy’ quality lacking symmetry which makes them all the more exciting and rich with possibilities,” suggests Partha Mitter in The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922–47.2 While revolutionary in changing the face of modernist discourse, the differentiations in modernisms across the Asian countries that Mitter addresses also act as an obstacle toward the development of a unified art historical vocabulary for modern art in the region. As John Clark says, “Whatever we conclude to be the role of globalizing forces in the late 20th century, an Asian history of modern art would first have to construct what conceptually and pragmatically linked its own discourses.”3 With the course and timing of events leading to modernity in art varying from country to country, an exciting chal­ lenge is before us – leveraging shared histories of colonialism and ideologies to arrive at a definition that encapsulates the essence of Asian modernism and develop a language that may be used to address it as a singular yet limitless entity.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-17

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The task is enormous, and this paper is only a beginning. Utilizing the teachings of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) on universalism – a call to all humankind to unite culturally rather than being divided by political boundaries – this paper aims to reveal similarities between artistic journeys and philosophies of four artists – Nandalal Bose (India), Rusli (Indonesia), Bagyi Aung Soe (Myanmar), and Fua Haribhitak (Thailand), all of whom spent time at Santiniketan, a school or artists’ retreat founded by Tagore. In analyzing works completed by the artists between the early 1950s to late 1980s, the paper confirms the breadth and plurality of modernism in the region while serving as one of the puzzle pieces that make up a response to Clark’s statement about what links mod­ ern art discourses across Asia to each other. It is the beginning of a journey that needs to be replicated and executed several times to arrive at a destination – one where Asian modern art becomes whole. It should be noted, however, that Tagore’s teachings are only used in this discussion as a tool for linking artistic production and endeavors by the four artists. The intention is not to establish the school as the birthplace of Asian modernism. While Santiniketan is a common element in their journeys, all four artists interpreted modernism on their own terms. The aim is to find cultural and artistic links beyond Santiniketan that may serve as a tool for developing an Asian modern art vocabulary. Universalism – A Shared Ideology Rabindranath Tagore had a tumultuous relationship with nationalism, and in his criti­ cism of the concept, he introduces universalism: “There is only one history – the history of man (used here as a gender neutral pronoun). All national histories are merely chapters in the larger one.”4 Despite his associations with leading nationalists in India and beyond, he constantly attempted to disassociate himself from the powerful movement sweeping across Asia. In his lectures delivered during World War I and the Swadeshi movement5 in India, Tagore defines the nation as a “political and economic union of people” which “a whole popula­ tion assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose.” To him, the concept of a nation is very different from that of a community or a society: “When this organization of poli­ tics and commerce, whose other name is nation, becomes all-powerful at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life, then it is an evil day for humanity.”6 Rather than identifying with political unions or nations, Tagore calls on people to see the beauty in humanity and adhere to the united rules of society. He advo­ cates for a simple life based on social cooperation rather than economic exploitation and political conflict.7 “The distinctive feature of Tagore’s universalist approach was that it was wholly cultural, to the exclusion of political means. He wanted the world to look beyond national boundaries to the unity of mankind,” writes Sabyasachi Bhattacharya.8 Tagore’s universalism as a tool for art historical discourse can be understood as a three-part concept – an aversion to cultural bigotry, support for cross-cultural coop­ eration, and the authentic expression of personality. He believed that creativity and culture should transcend political and geographical boundaries in order to become effective, meaningful, and valuable. He understood that cultural amalgamation was not only imperative but necessary to societal development on a global level, and he encouraged the assimilation of the artists’ personality and contact with the world into

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their endeavors. Tagore believed that art functioned both as a reflection and an exten­ sion of the society and environment it was born in. As Geeta Kapur writes in her essay, Contemporary Cultural Practice: Some Polemic Categories, “The Tagorean way is the romantic way, and it deals with immanent energies that are inexhaustible in the mythi­ cal fashion and encourage continual transfigurement of material resources within and beyond a given culture.”9 The teachings on universalism put forth by Tagore reveal a form of modernism – the basis of this particular study – that did not adhere to a particular language, style, or technique but was united in its depiction of local context (or artist’s personality) and exploration of art forms from across the globe and across time periods. Tagore gave life to his ideas at Santiniketan, a small school founded in 1901 mod­ eled after the tapovans or forest schools of ancient India. Therein, he developed an alternate approach to art education where artists, including the four discussed later in this paper (Nandalal Bose from India, Rusli from Indonesia, Bagyi Aung Soe from Myanmar, and Fua Haribhitak from Thailand), were encouraged to exchange cultural ideas, experiment with different styles of artistic expression, and reflect on the environ­ ment surrounding them. Tagore wanted the artists to free themselves from the hoarded patrimony of tradition, both Western and Eastern, and strike out on their own.10 This style of art production to him was true modernity – “a freedom of mind, not slavery of taste.”11 Nandalal Bose Indian modern artist, Nandalal Bose (1882–1966), began his artistic journey when he enrolled himself at the Calcutta School of Art despite the efforts of his family to per­ suade him to pursue a conventional career. At the school, he studied under the tutelage of the nationalist artist, Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore’s nephew and a co-founder of the nationalistic Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta (1907). Bose’s work, Sati (1908), which shows the deep influence of the wash technique his first tutor often employed, was exhibited at the inaugural show of the Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta in 1908. Recognizing his talent, Rabindranath Tagore invited him to Santiniketan in 1914. The artist, in an attempt to develop his own artistic style that was different from his former teacher Abanindranath Tagore’s revivalist approach, eventually moved to the school permanently in 1920 and assumed the role of the Principal of Kala Bhavana, the art faculty at Santiniketan, in 1922. Bose’s approach to art transformed from here onwards. Before he moved to Santini­ ketan, he had been committed to revitalizing traditional Indian art forms – best illustrated in his rendition of mythical creatures in Yudhishthira and His Dog, Ascending (ca. 1913). However, under the guidance of Rabindranath Tagore, he began to realize that art that spoke to the community was a more effective form of expression than reviving traditional art forms. “Nandalal’s own genius lay in synthesizing different nationalistic perspec­ tives into a comprehensive program that went beyond nationalism,” writes Kumar.12 The Haripura Panels (1938) illustrate this unique amalgamation of nationalistic sensibilities he had adopted during his early career and Tagore’s notion of expression of personality in art. Bose was commissioned by Mahatma Gandhi to decorate the pandal or make­ shift enclosure for the Congress session at Haripura in 1938. He responded with over 90 works all tempera on handmade paper of various sizes (now in the collection of the

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Figure 12.1 Nandalal Bose, Dolan Champa, 1952, Tempera on paper, 19 × 22.9 cm, Collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Source: Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

National Modern Art Gallery, New Delhi) representing in a folk style the local people of the time going about their chores, rural performers and craftsmen, as well as familiar animals. In a talk delivered as part of the 5th annual History for Peace conference in July 2019, Kumar said: Done in a style that invoked the simplicity of folk art and yet infused with the refined sensibilities of an individual master, they were the work of a modern artist responding to and harmonizing his sensibilities with that of village India, and, therefore, accessible at once to the informed art connoisseurs and the common man.13

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The cross-cultural cooperation that Tagore advocated can be identified in many of Bose’s works. His oeuvre of artworks is not just comprised of modernized folk art but also reflects a range of other regional and western influences, including Chinese ink paint­ ing, Japanese woodblock work, Western Impressionism, and more. “A lot of artists are recognized for iconic styles or periods. He [Nandalal Bose] was someone who really eschewed that,” said Stephanie Rozman while preparing an installation of Bose’s works in 2016 at the Harvard Art Museums.14 Rozman’s installation included works created in the style of Japanese sumi-e (ink paintings) – Untitled (Picnic on River Bank) (1959) and Untitled (Mountains and Clouds) (1954) among them. The artist was introduced to ink painting while he was a student at the Calcutta School of Art and remained interested in the medium until the end of his artistic career. Dolan Champa (Swinging Magnolias in Bengali), completed in 1952, is a strong example of Bose’s modern work (Figure 12.1). The tempera on paper work is done in a style that blends the simplistic forms of folk art and expressive strokes with traces of the wash technique Bose emulated from Abanindranath Tagore. The subject of the work is “champa” or the magnolia flower common to the Indian subcontinent. The image of the flower is accompanied by a seal similar to those used by Japanese artists as signatures. Next to the seal, the title of the artwork is written in Bengali script. The cross-cultural elements – Abanindranath’s wash approach, and Japanese ink work – and local context – magnolia, a locally grown flower – in the work showcase a translation of Tagore’s uni­ versalism in visual terms by the artist. Rusli Rusli (1916–2005), the Indonesian modern art painter, abandoned a future in medical sciences to actively pursue his interest in art. Deeply interested in Tagore’s teachings, he decided to enroll himself at Santiniketan in 1932. Rusli spent six years (1932– 1938) at Kala Bhavana (the art department at Santiniketan) absorbing the theories of Rabindranath Tagore and learning from Nandalal Bose. He returned to Indonesia, then a Dutch colony, in 1938 and began a career in pedagogy at the Indonesian Fine Art Academy (ASRI) in Yogyakarta. He has also been associated with the Taman Siswa educational movement in Indonesia introduced by Ki Hadjar Dewantara, a key political figure in Indonesia’s fight for freedom who shared Tagore’s views on cultural homogene­ ity and universalism. Like Santiniketan, Taman Siswa, a set of schools across Indonesia, was founded with an aim to shape the thinking of writers, artists, musicians, and subse­ quently, the general masses. Rusli’s portfolio is modest in the early years (1930s to 1950s). Most of his known works are dated in the early 1960s, but even so, he has an impactful oeuvre to his name that played an important role in redirecting Indonesian modern art from the Dutch aes­ thetic Mooi Indie (beautiful Indies) – a term used to define a genre of paintings depicting romantic renditions of the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia) – toward free expres­ sion. Rusli seldom changed artistic styles – most of his artworks present vibrant hues, energetic strokes, and forms stripped down to basic shapes. An abundance of white spaces is also a common occurrence in his works. Rusli’s subject matter was primarily scenes from traditional ceremonies, social gatherings, and landscapes from across Indonesia – a characteristic that resembles Tagore’s thoughts on art as an expression of the artist’s personality. In a review of a group exhibition with Affandi and Popo Iskandar organized by the Djakarta Arts Council in 1972, Baharudin M. S. likens Rusli’s painting style to the

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Figure 12.2 Rusli, Pasar, 1965, Oil on canvas, 100 × 130 cm. Source: Documentation of the Indonesian Visual Art Archive.

“ritual of worship” and finds reflections of “primitive” and “naïve” folk art rendered with a modern brush.15 Rusli and Bose both have the affinity toward folk forms in common – demonstrating a shared aim to reconcile their nationalistic leanings while embracing Tagore’s free expression – although the implementation differs significantly. Pasar, an oil painting from 1965, exemplifies Rusli’s battle against the Mooi Indie romantic landscapes and realistic imagery (Figure  12.2). The work depicts the activi­ ties at a local market or pasar in swift, expressive brushstrokes. The scene is focused primarily toward the center of the canvas with edges of the painting left blank. Each element, while distilled down to its basic form, captures the movement and energy of the atmosphere. The medium of oil has been employed sparingly, almost like ink, with confident urgency. The naïve, folk forms that Baharudin mentions can be seen in some of the hut-like structures as well as the people. The foreground and background have not been established – which is true for most of the artist’s works – although the abstracted rendering of distant objects provides clues. An element that displays a casual kinship to Bose’s seal (perhaps also borrowed from Japanese artists), Rusli’s signature at the bottom left corner is accompanied by a thumbprint, as in all his paintings. While heavily embedded in the local culture, Rusli’s style is unique – dynamic and expressive. Like most of his artist peers in Indonesia and even Bose, he had nationalistic leanings, but he did not believe in isolating his practice from external influences. “Art must be free. Art should not be held back by ties of tradition, nationalism, and so on.

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Because the existence of such ties will only paralyze the artist to the point [that] he cannot create,” says the artist.16 Bagyi Aung Soe The founder of modern Burmese art and Myanmar’s most prolific illustrator,17 Bagyi Aung Soe’s (1923–1990) body of work is perhaps the closest visual interpretation of Tagore’s universalist ideals. A  largely misunderstood modernist, Aung Soe was the first and only one to embark on such a journey in Myanmar – adopting an individu­ alistic approach to art that brought together elements from his personality and social environment – to the point that his works were described as “psychotic painting” at the time.18 In the 1950s, very early in his career, Aung Soe’s journey, like Rusli’s, took him to Santiniketan when he was offered a scholarship by the Indian government in 1951. He spent about a year studying under Nandalal Bose. The short time that he spent in India was enough to significantly impact his artistic endeavors, driven by Tagore’s interpreta­ tion of “true modernism” and Bose’s emphasis on developing traditional arts. In fact, the artist continued to sign “Santiniketan” on his works throughout his career.19 Aung Soe returned to Myanmar and threw himself into research and study of traditional Bur­ mese art forms, Buddhist thought and practice, and “pictorial references beyond modern Western models.”20 The result was a unique artistic voice that the artist termed “manaw maheikdi dat painting” or a sum of “all the traditions in the world.”21 Similar to the journeys of the other artists discussed in this paper, Bagyi Aung Soe also devoted his time to education, taking up positions at the Rangoon Institute of Technology and Rangoon University. The best way to explain the artist’s signature style is with a visual example. The felttip pen illustration from 1989 shows a minimalist portrait of Buddha on a single-color backdrop composed of hastily drawn lines and Burmese script (Figure 12.3). The words “I  DRAW FOR YOU SOLAR ENERGY No.9” are imprinted across the portrait. An unfinished border similar to those seen in traditional Burmese paintings sits at the bot­ tom right corner while a character resembling the “om” symbol is drawn top left. The “swastika” and a few mathematical symbols can also be identified in the artwork. The rendition is urgent yet confident; and abstract yet formative. The artist’s signature is accompanied with a flower shape – a symbol that can be identified in several other art­ works by the artist – establishing a commonality with the two other artists (as well as the Japanese convention of artist seals) discussed earlier. Aung Soe’s body of works, consisting of paintings as well as illustrations, brings together imagery and conventions from different cultures, signs, and symbols borrowed from subjects like physics and language, and a keen understanding of traditional art forms. The cover art for Atway Amyin magazine (September 1987), for instance, displays a mathematical diagram alongside a semi-abstract rendering of a fetus in a womb, while an artwork for Moway magazine (August 1979) interweaves collaged classical Burmese painting with the Indian epic, Ramayana, on a background of vibrant, expressive hues. The artist’s works, while visually very different from his Indian guru (teacher) Bose, pre­ sent a similar interest in experimentation with different styles and pursuit of cultural amalgamation in accordance with Tagore’s universalist vision. Similarly, the inclination toward white spaces, minimalistic forms, energetic strokes, and absence of foreground are common elements between the works of Rusli and Aung Soe.

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Figure 12.3 Bagyi Aung Soe, [Title unknown] (I DRAW FOR YOU SOLAR ENERGY No. 9), 1989, Felt-tip pen on paper, 27 × 18 cm. Source: Collection of the National Gallery Singapore. © Maung Maung Soe, Bagyieain Foundation, Yangon, Myanmar.

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Fua Haribhitak Thai modern artist, Fua Haribhitak’s (1910–1993) portfolio swam from the depths of traditional Thai art to the waves of modernity. Beginning his art training under Cor­ rado Feroci (1892–1962), an Italian sculptor who later adopted the Thai name, Silpa Bhirasri, Haribhitak readily embraced the Western curriculum imparted to him by his teacher. His early works exhibit impressionistic qualities, like open compositions and hasty brushstrokes, although not imitative of the Western style but simply as application of the techniques he had been taught. In a note for an exhibition of Haribhitak’s work, Bhirasari talks about his unique form of impressionism that moved beyond an imitation to an individual style – by being more expressive and depicting local subject matter. He adds that Haribhitak’s work reflects a personal emotion that can be immediately related to and felt by viewers.22 Oil paintings titled Professor C. Feroci (1935) and My Grand­ mother (1938) are examples of his works that adopt subjects personal to the artist and reflect his personality as per Tagore’s universalism. Fua Haribhitak, like the other three artists discussed, also spent some time at Santini­ ketan (1941) although he was already putting into practice the ideas of cultural amalga­ mation and Tagore’s concept of expression of personality. Bhirasri stated that it was in India that Haribhitak realized the value of traditional Thai art forms.23 Studying under Nandalal Bose, the Thai artist also naturally adopted a few of his teacher’s techniques. Petchaburi (the name of a province in Thailand) (1948), a painting on handmade paper demonstrates a predilection for the wash technique in Bose’s early works influenced by Abanindranath Tagore. Haribhitak’s trip to India, however, was cut short due to World War II and he ended up in a Japanese detention camp. He returned to Thailand in 1946 with the same energy that Aung Soe had discovered in India, determined to study the folk art forms of Thailand. He spent the next few years copying murals from heritage sites in a bid to record paintings that would be lost with time. The artist also started teaching at this time. Haribhitak’s art practice took another sharp turn in the 1950s when he was offered a scholarship to study in Italy. The artist became the first in Thailand to employ cubist sensibilities in his works, for instance, the use of geometric shapes to render abstract yet figurative forms. Face, an oil painting completed in 1956, illustrates his interest in the art style (Figure 12.4). While he readily borrowed elements from the formative technique, it must be noted that the execution is unique. Haribhitak’s cubist work does not have three-dimensional qualities and his use of color is varied and washed out. This particular work also shows a high degree of abstraction, especially in the rendition of facial features reduced to outlines and almost indistinguishable from the background. Haribhitak was not averse to borrowing from Western styles – something he had learned during his early training in Western as well as Asian art forms under Bhirasri in Thailand. He constantly changed the style he was working in while continuing to study and copy traditional (or folk) Thai art forms. “Straddling classical Siamese and modern Western painting, it was as if the artist led double lives,” write Sirintorn Haribhitak and Yin Ker.24 Haribhitak was able to oscillate from style to style with ease – a testament to his Tagorean understanding of art as a continually evolving form of expression medium. His art was a constant search for the beauty in the old and the new, across time periods, artistic styles, and geographies. And therein, we see reflections of Tagore’s call for crosscultural cooperation with the aim of growth.

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Figure 12.4 Fua Haribhitak, Face, ca. 1956, Oil on canvas, 65 × 55 cm. Source: Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Image courtesy of the National Gallery Singapore.

Concluding Remarks An inter-Asian cultural dialogue is thus revealed based on the principles of Tagore’s uni­ versalist vision. The four artists discussed above embraced their respective cultures along with art forms from neighboring as well as distant lands – as seen in Bose’s emulation of Indian folk art with Japanese ink painting, Rusli’s minimalistic and expressive renditions of traditional Indonesian ceremonies, Aung Soe’s multi-faceted illustrations that bor­ rowed elements from traditional Burmese art, and Haribhitak’s impressionist and cubist

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works completed alongside studies of Thai traditional art. The artists revitalized folk art from their own countries by employing them in their explorations of the modern while readily borrowing techniques from anyone or anything that inspired them. They made universalism a path and a destination. Bose, Rusli, Aung Soe, and Haribhitak’s artworks – local in context, global in nature, and free in conduct – transcend time and geographical boundaries to communicate with each other and reveal similarities that can become the building blocks for a unified Asian modern art vocabulary. Notes 1. See John Clark, The Asian Modern (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2021) and Simon Soon in Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia. 2. Partha Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922–47 (Lon­ don: Reaktion Books, 2007), 8. 3. John Clark, The Asian Modern (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2021), 21. 4. Tagore, Nationalism, 89. 5. Anti-colonial sentiments in India had already resulted in a series of unorganized nationalistic protests and acts beginning from the Revolt of 1857, the very first mass movement that dem­ onstrated the nation’s strength. The Swadeshi movement was a self-sufficiency movement that advocated the use of locally-made goods and the boycott of foreign commodities. 6. Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism (New Delhi: Fingerprint Classics, 2015), 52–55. 7. Tagore, Nationalism, 116. 8. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, “Rabindranath Tagore in South-East Asia: Connectivity and Bridge Making,” in Rabindranath Tagore in South-East Asia: Culture, Connectivity and Bridge Mak­ ing, Lipi Ghosh, ed. (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2016), 14. 9. Geeta Kapur, “Contemporary Cultural Practice: Some Polemical Categories,” Third Text 4, no. 11 (1990): 111, https://doi.org/10.1080/09528829008576267. 10. R. Siva Kumar, Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism (New Delhi: National Gallery of Modern Art, 1997). 11. Tagore, Nationalism, 30. 12. Kumar, Santiniketan. 13. Talk delivered by R. Siva Kumar at the 5th annual History for Peace conference held in July 2019. Kumar, “From Swadeshi to the Constitution – Nandalal Bose and the Nationalist Project,” Academia, January 1, 2020, www.academia.edu/44047503/From_Swadeshi_to_the_ Constitution_Nandalal_Bose_and_the_Nationalist_Project. 14. Unknown, “Newly Conserved Ink Paintings by Nandalal Bose,” Harvard Art Museums, May 2, 2016, https://harvardartmuseums.org/article/newly-conserved-ink-paintings-by-nandalal-bose. 15. M.S. Baharudin, “Pameran Manifestasi Kreativitas Seni Affandi, Rusli Dan Popo Iskandar,” Ekspres, March 17, 1972. Retrieved from Indonesian Visual Art Archive: http://archive.ivaa­ online.org/files/uploads/texts/2012-06-0091.pdf. Translated by the author. 16. As quoted in Aminudin T.H. Siregar, “Conflict and Denial: The Discourse of Identity in Indo­ nesian Art, 1950s–1980s,” in Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, Low S. Wee and Patrick Flores, eds. (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2017), 182. 17. Yin Ker, “Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar: Bagyi Aung Soe (1923–1990),” in Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, Low S. Wee and Patrick Flores, eds. (Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2017), 278. 18. Yin Ker, Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar, 278. 19. Sirintorn Haribhitak and Yin Ker, “Conjugating Legacies: Fua Haribhitak (1910–1993)  & Bagyi Aung Soe (1923–1990), From Śāntiniketan to Bangkok & Yangon,” Hypotheses, May 4, 2021, https://124revue.hypotheses.org/6131 (accessed July 20, 2022). 20. Yin Ker, “Bagyi Aung Soe: Strategies for an Autonomous & Compassionate Artistic Moder­ nity” (Paper presented at Southeast Asia and Taiwan: Modernity and Postcolonial Manifesta­ tions in Visual Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, November 21, 2015). 21. Yin Ker, Bagyi Aung Soe: Strategies for an Autonomous & Compassionate Artistic Modernity.

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22. Silpa Bhirasri, “Article: Fue Hariphitak by Professor Silpa Bhirasri,” in 100  years of Fua Hariphitak: Life and Work, Sone Simatrang, ed. (Bangkok: Silpakorn University, 2010), 26. 23. Silpa Bhirasri, “Fua Haribhitak,” 26. 24. Sirintorn Haribhitak and Yin Ker, Conjugating Legacies, https://124revue.hypotheses.org/6131.

References Baharudin, M.S. “Pameran Manifestasi Kreativitas Seni Affandi, Rusli Dan Popo Iskandar.” Ekspres, March  17, 1972. Retrieved from Indonesian Visual Art Archive: http://archive. ivaa-online.org/files/uploads/texts/2012-06-0091.pdf. Translated by the author. Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi. “Rabindranath Tagore in South-East Asia: Connectivity and Bridge Making.” In Rabindranath Tagore in South-East Asia: Culture, Connectivity and Bridge Mak­ ing, edited by Lipi Ghosh. New Delhi: Primus Books, 2016. Bhirasri, Silpa. “Article: Fue Hariphitak by Professor Silpa Bhirasri.” In 100 years of Fua Haripi­ tak: Life and Work, edited by Sone Simatrang, 26–27. Bangkok: Silpakorn University, 2010. Clark, John. The Asian Modern. Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2021. Haribhitak, Sirintorn, and Yin Ker. “Conjugating Legacies: Fua Haribhitak (1910–1993) & Bagyi Aung Soe (1923–1990), From Śāntiniketan to Bangkok & Yangon.” Hypotheses (blog), May 4, 2021. Accessed January 7, 2022. https://124revue.hypotheses.org/6131. Kapur, Geeta. “Contemporary Cultural Practice: Some Polemical Categories.” Third Text 4, no. 11 (1990), 109–118. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528829008576267. Ker, Yin. “Bagyi Aung Soe: Strategies for an Autonomous & Compassionate Artistic Modernity.” Paper presented at Southeast Asia and Taiwan: Modernity and Postcolonial Manifestations in Visual Art, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, November 21, 2015. Ker, Yin. “Unpacking the Legacy of an Exceptional Artist from Myanmar: Bagyi Aung Soe (1923– 1990).” In Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, edited by Low S. Wee and Pat­ rick Flores, 278–291. Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2017. Kumar, R. Siva. Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism. New Delhi: National Gal­ lery of Modern Art, 1997. Kumar, R. Siva. “From Swadeshi to the Constitution – Nandalal Bose and the Nationalist Project.” Academia. Last modified January 1, 2020. www.academia.edu/44047503/From_Swadeshi_to_ the_Constitution_Nandalal_Bose_and_the_Nationalist_Project. Mitter, Partha, and Professor of History of Art Partha Mitter. The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922–47. London: Reaktion Books, 2007. Rodboon, Somporn. “The Transition of Thai Traditional Art to Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s.” In Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, edited by Low S. Wee and Pat­ rick Flores, 154–163. Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2017. Singh, Tanya. “An Inter-Asian Dialogue: Modernity in India and Indonesia.” The International Journal of Arts Theory and History 15, no. 1 (2020). https://doi.org/10.18848/2326-9952/CGP/ v15i01/33-48. Siregar, Aminudin T.H. “Conflict and Denial: The Discourse of Identity in Indonesian Art, 1950s-1980s.” In Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia, edited by Low S. Wee and Patrick Flores, 174–187. Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2017. Tagore, Rabindranath. Nationalism. New Delhi: Fingerprint Classics, 2015. Unknown. “Newly Conserved Ink Paintings by Nandalal Bose.” Harvard Art Museums. Last modified May  2, 2016. https://harvardartmuseums.org/article/newly-conserved-ink-paintings­ by-nandalal-bose.

13 Thomaz Farkas and Mid-Century Brazilian Photographic Networks Danielle Stewart

Fotoptica and the Farkas Family In the historical center of São Paulo, at number 359 São Bento Street, a now-empty store­ front marks the space where, in 1924, Hungarian immigrant Desidério Farkas estab­ lished what would become an important hub of São Paulo’s burgeoning photographic scene. As one of the first commercial photo shops in Brazil, the Casa Fotoptica, run by the Farkas family, was at least partially responsible for enabling the country’s pho­ tographic revolution. Advertisements for the shop, which ran regularly in São Paulo’s photography periodicals – including Íris [Iris] (1947–1984) and the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante’s [Bandeirante Photography and Cinema Club, or FCCB] Boletim [Bulle­ tin] (1946–1973) – featured an abstract illustration of lines forming an X across three concentric circles. The composition reflects the local shift toward concretism, an artistic style that photographers helped to promote.1 The design also alludes to the technol­ ogy and practice of camera work: the use of mirrors and lenses to focus an image and convey an idea. Likewise, the ad copy suggests the photo shop’s importance as more than a purveyor of modern technologies. A “meeting place for the discerning hobbyist,” Fotoptica included a laboratory for developing, amplification, and duplication as well as a library of specialist volumes. A combination studio, salon, and commercial retailer, Fotoptica was a central node for Brazil’s mid-century photographic community. Like the crossing point of the X in the advertisement illustration, it was a focal point that drew information, practitioners, and technologies together. This essay considers how Fotop­ tica and the Farkas Family – especially the son Thomaz – helped construct photographic networks that stretched from Brazil through neighboring Latin American countries and into the United States and Europe. Born in Hungary in 1924, Thomaz Farkas arrived in São Paulo in 1930. His father had first traveled to Brazil in 1920, fleeing anti-Semitic violence. By the age of eight, Thomaz’s father had gifted him his first camera which he used to take snapshots of his neighborhood and the large-scale architectural and infrastructural projects that were transforming the landscape. In the 1930s and 1940s, São Paulo underwent a massive urban restructuring that impacted both the form and content of local photography. Images became increasingly geometric as photographers experimented with new per­ spectives and the abstracting properties of light and shadow. Ubiquitous high rises, construction materials, and modern infrastructure made São Paulo a hospitable climate for these visual investigations. It was no mere coincidence that São Paulo’s most impor­ tant photographic club, the FCCB, which Farkas joined as a teenager, was founded by friends and patrons of his family’s shop just around the corner from their store DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-18

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Figure 13.1 Fotoptica ad from the back cover of Boletim 10, February 1949. Source: Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante archive.

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in 1939. Fotoptica imported European, especially German, materials not yet widely available in Brazil in the 1940s. Thomaz’s presence in the shop granted him access to the São Paulo photographic community, then primarily made up of older, hobbyist photographers. Brazilian photography, including Farkas’ production and that of his colleagues in the FCCB, has been largely left out of art historical narratives. Recent exhibitions of Farkas’ work in Brazil, Spain, France, and the United States, have prompted a critical reevalua­ tion of the artist’s impact on international photographic practices. My research into Far­ kas’ production considers both the contents of his digital photo archives at the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) and his contributions to mid-century Brazilian photography peri­ odicals like the Boletim and Íris. Of these, Íris is particularly important but has received little scholarly attention. The texts and images Farkas published in Íris demonstrate that he was thinking broadly and boldly about photographic techniques, aesthetics, and audi­ ences. Furthermore, unlike some of his FCCB colleagues, for whom modern photogra­ phy meant straight photography, Farkas viewed photography as a flexible and evolving medium whose limits were being constantly renegotiated across an international network of artist-innovators. 2

Thomaz Farkas and the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante As Sarah Hermanson Meister has noted, a primary focus of the FCCB was creating mech­ anisms for judging photographs and gauging their artistic merit.3 These included public events, like the club’s annual International Salon first held in 1946, and internal events including day trips, contests, and critiques. Members thought of themselves as modern Bandeirantes, the name given to the 16th-century Portuguese bounty hunters who set out from São Paulo to explore the Brazilian hinterlands. While primarily amateurs, the group included several pioneers of Brazilian advertising photography.4 This heterogene­ ity meant that the club’s output varied enormously in content and quality. Transcripts of critiques published in the Boletim reveal that club leadership favored a crisp photo­ graphic style that included linear views of urban subjects and scenes that emphasized light and shadow. However, they also published pictures of chubby-cheeked babies and misty rural villages in their Salon catalogues.5 Reflecting this heterodoxy, Farkas’ production during his years in the FCCB shows remarkable flexibility and conceptual range. He was still a teenager when he began fre­ quenting the club and, perhaps for this reason, he was one of the most experimental members of the group. As a refugee, Farkas led a peripatetic childhood; this sense of dis­ location and strangeness comes across in his early images. In one indicative photograph made ca. 1945, Farkas shoots the Rio de Janeiro Ministry of Education building at an oblique angle along the building’s unadorned western façade.6 Designed by a team that included Le Corbusier as well as many rising stars of Brazilian architectural Modernism – Lúcio Costa, Affonso Reidy, and Oscar Niemeyer, to name a few – the building is one of the country’s most famous modernist monuments. Already in the 1940s, it was cited as evidence of an oncoming architectural revolution. But none of the structure’s iconic features – its distinctive brise-soleil windows, pilotis, rooftop gardens, and azulejos – are present in Farkas’ photograph. Instead, Farkas gives us a sharply angled worms-eye view of a windowless wall visually pierced by cables that anticipates the patterning of the previously described Fotoptica ad. This photograph became one of Farkas’ most widely

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circulated and was awarded a commendation at the FCCB’s VI International Salon of Photographic Art in 1947. The Salon review in following the Boletim commented, Thomas (sic) J. Farkas, returning to those characteristics that made him one of the most advanced interpreters of photographic synthesis in “Ballet” shot the best play of light and shade in “Composition (Ministry of Education),” he plays with the lines and masses with a mastery that is all his.7 By referencing Farkas’ “Ballet,” the reviewer draws attention to Farkas’ photographic breadth. At the same time he was producing abstracted, urban photographs, Farkas was also creating lyrical depictions of human subjects. Among the most popular of these were his photographs of ballerinas, which were often selected for exhibition in FCCB

Figure 13.2 Thomaz Farkas, Fachada lateral do Ministério da Educação e Saúde [Lateral façade of the Ministry of Education], ca. 1945. Gelatin silver print. Source: Thomaz Farkas/Instituto Moreira Salles Collection.

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Figure 13.3 Thomaz Farkas, Ensaio de Ballet [Ballet rehearsal], 1947. Gelatin silver print, 32.4 × 28.7 cm. Source: Thomaz Farkas/The Museum of Modern Art. Digital Image © 2023, The Museum of Modern Art/ Scala, Florence.

and international salons. One image in this series, Ensaio de Ballet [Ballet rehearsal], employs similar conventions to his Ministry of Education photograph – dramatic con­ trasts of light and shadow, expressive angles, and a worm’s eye-view perspective – to dif­ ferent ends. Farkas’ Fachada lateral do Ministério da Educação e Saúde [Lateral façade of the Ministry of Education, also called “Composition (Ministry of Education)”], served to flatten and abstract the iconic building, draining it of its humanizing features, like its azulejo-inlaid entrance and rooftop gardens. In contrast, Ensaio de Ballet height­ ens the scene’s drama, imbuing what might otherwise be a mundane exercise with lyrical gravitas. In the foreground, a female dancer extends her arms in a pose that accentuates her curvaceous figure and leads the viewer’s eye toward the dance instructor at the front of the classroom. The lighting and angle exacerbate the instructor’s facial profile, suf­ fusing him with an intensity that contrasts the dancer’s vivacity. The mirror behind the teacher’s back reflects the scene in front, metaphorically inviting reflective comparisons while also providing a grid-like frame for the action in the scene. While the rehearsal must have been full of movement and noise, Farkas’ photograph renders it evocative and mysterious. To their credit, the FCCB leadership was surprisingly supportive of Farkas’ experi­ mentation: his contributions were praised in the club’s Boletim and frequently awarded

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Figure 13.4 Thomaz Farkas,  Apartamentos ou Fachada interior do Edifício São Borja  [Apart­ ments or Facade Inside the Building São Borja], verso, ca. 1945. Black and white analog photography, enlargement on gelatin paper and silver 30.5 × 29 cm. Long-term Loan: MASP FCCB. C.00248. Source: Photo: Eduardo Ortega.

in their salons. In October 1947, the Boletim published a list of club rankings calculated via a points system that took into account awards received in domestic and interna­ tional exhibitions; the then twenty-three-year-old Farkas placed third, just below club president Eduardo Salvatore.8 Farkas’ 600 accrued points meant that in the previous two years, sixteen of his works had been admitted to eight different salons. While we do not know the names and locations of the salons that predated this ranking, in the two years that followed, Boletim recorded Farkas’ participation in the Southgate Salon (Eng­ land, 1948), Mechelen Salon (Belgium, 1949), São Carlos Salon (Brazil, 1949), Zaragoza Salon (Spain, 1947 and 1948), Chilean Salon (1948), and Argentine Foto Club Salon of

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Photographic Art (1947), among others. Stamps, labels, and markings on the backs of his prints served as souvenirs of these voyages and help us trace the photographs’ circula­ tion.10 During the same period, Farkas also carried out a frenetic schedule of travel, pub­ lication, and exhibition that not only launched his career as a professional photographer, but also helped to propel the FCCB into international prominence. 9

Farkas in 48: Íris, MoMA, and the Museu de Arte Moderna The twelve-month period that ran from August  1948 through July  1949 was pivotal within Farkas’ photographic career. In August, Irís magazine ran Farkas’ article “Foto­ grafia – caminhos diversos” [Photography – diverse paths]. At nineteen pages it was one of the longest feature stories ever printed in the publication. A few months later, in Novem­ ber, Farkas left Brazil to spend several months traveling and meeting photographers in the United States. The missives he returned to his FCCB compatriots mention visits with Edward Weston in California and Edward Steichen in New York.11 After returning home to Brazil in January 1949, Farkas sent seven of his photographs taken between 1945 and 1947 – including Fachada lateral do Ministério da Educação e Saúde and Ensaio de Bal­ let – to Steichen who was then Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art. In March, Farkas married his long-time sweetheart, Melanie Rechulski, and soon after became a naturalized Brazilian citizen. Finally, in July, he opened his solo show Estudos fotográficos [Photographic studies] at the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in São Paulo. The museum had opened in January of that year and immediately began engaging with local photographers. Estudos fotográficos was the first photographic exhibition at any Brazilian museum. In this section, I  argue that the events that capped Farkas’ frenetic year – the publication of “Fotografia – caminhos diversos” and the opening of Estudos fotográficos – helped to change the trajectory of Brazilian photography. They were public declarations that manifest Farkas’ purposeful engagement with local and international artistic circles as a means of promoting himself, his club, and modernist photography. Although not directly published by the club, three members of Íris’ five-person “spon­ soring commission” were FCCB members: club president Eduardo Salvatore, Thomaz Farkas, and the Ukrainian-Brazilian architect Gregori Warchavchik. How much these three men influenced the magazine’s content is hard to determine. Neither Salvatore nor Warchavchik authored articles in any of the extant issues. Nor did Salvatore publish any of his photographs in the magazine – he seems to have reserved his work for the Boletim. But Salvatore, Farkas, and Warchavchik’s participation surely increased the magazine’s profile. As FCCB president, Salvatore was at the top of the local photographic com­ munity’s social hierarchy. He was charismatic and ambitious, as was the young Farkas, whom he tasked with facilitating exchanges between the FCCB and other Brazilian photo clubs and magazines, like Íris.12 Reading through Irís one finds plentiful evidence that Farkas carried out his mission: much of the magazine’s content was created by non-FCCB members, including editorials written by foreigners and reprinted from international photography magazines. The first twelve issues of Irís, which ran from February 1947 to January 1948, incorporated essays by Gordon Parks and Canadian filmmaker Arthur Hammond, in addition to less wellknown Brazilian photographers like Jorge Radó and José Pires D’Ávila.13 Many articles also emphasized international exchange within the photographic community. Titles like “Expansão fotográfica dos E.U.A.” [Photography’s expansion in the US] and “Ocupação Norte-Americana e a arte fotográfica Japoneza” [The North American occupation and

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Japanese art photography] suggest that Irís framed the international photographic com­ munity as a network that allowed for the circulation of technical and aesthetic informa­ tion across the globe. FCCB photography was featured in most issues, often on the cover, and club members occasionally contributed texts as well. Published during the magazine’s second year, “Fotografia – caminhos diversos” gives Farkas’ perspective on the photographic “problems of the day” – from the emergence of cinematography to the advent of color film. His article is divided into five subsections: “Fotografia dos movimentos – dansa” [Photography of movement – dance], “Fotografias do Grupo foto-surrealista” [Photographs from the surrealist group], “O problema da côr” [The problem of color], “Um capítulo a parte: o cinema” [An aside: cinema], and “O público, o crítico e o artista” [The public, the critic, and the artist]. The themes convey no internal logic and there is a similar lack of cohesion between the imagery Farkas chose to publish and his written text. His illustrations include both Fachada lateral do Ministério da Educação e Saúde and Ensaio de Ballet, along with thirty-six other images of a wide variety of subjects. Farkas’ introductory section sheds some light on the structure behind his chaotic selec­ tions. His primary interest is the revitalizing process of creative evolution: “In all human activities, vitality expresses itself through evolution. He who does not evolve stagnates; he who stagnates, dies.”14 Farkas suggests that photographers should begin by learning proper camera technique and practicing traditional genres like landscape, still-life, and portraiture. He also suggests that what separates artists from hobbyists is the drive to photograph as a “means of expression.”15 Impatient with those who do little to stretch the limits of photographic practice, Farkas lists the contributions of those for whom pho­ tography is a vocation, rather than a mere distraction: Innumerable new subjects, surprising in their variety, of which we can highlight the following as being of greatest importance: Professional subjects: journalistic – documentary – advertising Non-professional subjects (in the sense of not having people who pay for them): abstract and surreal photographs (photograms) – textures and designs – expressions of movement – dance.16 For Farkas, the defining characteristic of artistic photography, beyond formal experimen­ tation, is that it forces viewers to think, transform, and initiate “social action.”17 Farkas’ artistic openness is at least partially attributable to his research into photo­ graphic practices in Europe and the United States: the imported art books in his family’s shop became his personal research library. Fotoptica carried periodicals like Modern Photography and US Camera, as well as a variety of photography yearbooks from Ger­ many, Italy, France, and Japan. Furthermore, the shop was located within a ten-minute walk of two important institutions: the União Cultural Brasil Estados Unidos [Brazil-US Cultural Union], which opened in 1941, and the new Municipal Library on the Praça Dom José Gaspar, inaugurated in 1942.18 In July 1947, the União Cultural Brasil Estados Unidos hosted the exhibition Foto­ grafía artística [Artistic photography] at the Municipal Library. The exhibition included important works by the U.S. photographers Helen Levitt, Ansel Adams, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston.19 Irís publicized the show in a special edition dedicated to U.S. photography with the Statue of Liberty

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on the cover. Furthermore, the Municipal Library began acquiring international photo books in the early 1940s, including Man Ray’s Photographies, The New Vision: Funda­ mentals of Design, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture by László Moholy-Nagy, and the catalog of the Guggenheim’s 1947 exhibition In Memoriam Lázló Moholy-Nagy.21 In addition to the Municipal Library’s collection, the FCCB also had a library of publica­ tions related to photography and a reading room for members. Farkas’ visits to Weston and Steichen while in the United States imply that he felt a kinship with the global photography community. We see glimpses of Moholy-Nagy’s “new vision” in Farkas’ precipitous viewpoints, radical cropping, and surreal photograms. Likewise, Farkas’ ballet photographs merge realism and abstraction to produce an aesthetic stillness like Weston’s. Two other new cultural organizations also made an impact on the Brazilian pho­ tographic scene: the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP, founded 1947) and MAM (founded 1949). Both institutions were quick to introduce photography into their exhibi­ tion programming; MASP’s founding director, Pietro Maria Bardi, was himself an ama­ teur photographer. As previously mentioned, Farkas’ Estudos fotográficos became the first photography exhibition held in a Brazilian museum when it opened at MAM in July 1949. While MAM was explicitly modeled on MoMA, its exhibition design – espe­ cially in the case of Farkas’ show – was even more experimental. Instead of hanging his photographs on the gallery walls, Farkas devised a constellation of panels and screens to act as the support structure for his work. Painted in white, gray, and black, these panels demarcated Farkas’ space within the galleries. In the middle of the space, two supports shaped like triangular prisms were suspended on wires and anchored to the gallery floor. The geometric arrangement of the space, accented by the free-floating triangles in the center, reflects the artist’s affinity for abstract forms and sharp contrasts of light and dark, heralding the emergence of Brazilian concretism. Farkas’ photograph of the Ministry of Education was afforded a place of prominence in the show anchoring one of the largest panels. On the centrally suspended prisms, Far­ kas also included several photographs from his ballet series, similar to the one he donated to MoMA and published in Irís. Like his article, the exhibition highlighted Farkas’ ver­ satility. In addition to the ballet group, Farkas showcased his architectural photography on a large panel across the room from his Ministry of Education shot. Another nearby panel featured wave studies, including two that Farkas had previously sent to Steichen. A slender screen of parallel slats propped against the gallery wall supported an arrange­ ment of photographs of building materials on the left and various human subjects on the right including two prints of Afro-Brazilian jangadeiros [fishermen]. This combination of avant-garde content and organization seems to have served Farkas well: his show was advertised in São Paulo’s Jornal de Notícias [Daily News] newspaper and the Boletim, the latter calling him “one of the most distinguished photographers in the country, with various prize-winning works in international salons” and representative of the “most modern tendencies.”22 Bold, eclectic, and confrontational, Farkas’ melding of interna­ tional trends and Brazilian content propelled him to a level of public and institutional recognition unparalleled by his FCCB peers. 20

Conclusion In late 1949, MAM’s rival institution, MASP, invited Farkas and fellow FCCB member Geraldo de Barros to establish a photography lab in the museum’s basement for the use

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of students enrolled in the museum’s art and design school.23 Then, in January  1951, MASP hosted a solo show of Barros’s work. Following the success of Farkas and Barros’s shows, photography exhibitions became increasingly common in Brazil – a space was even dedicated to photography at the Second São Paulo Biennial in 1954, with works supplied from the FCCB archives. Farkas’ production also garnered acclaim within international amateur circles. Farkas was invited to represent Brazil at the Photographic Society of America annual confer­ ences in 1951, 1953, and 1963. As Alise Tifentale has shown, in 1950 the FCCB allied itself with the newly formed Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique [Inter­ national Federation of Photographic Art, or FIAP], a global network of hobbyists.24 In addition to becoming the first non-European club to join FIAP, the FCCB also became an ambassador of Brazilian art abroad. Such was the FCCB’s importance within the international photography community that FIAP president Maurice Van de Wyer visited São Paulo in 1956 for the FCCB’s seventeenth anniversary celebrations. This was the first of several visits to Brazil by Van de Wyer hosted by the FCCB. The club also welcomed Argentine photographer Annemarie Heinrich in 1951 and 1960, and pioneering Chinese photographer Lang Jingshan in 1963.25 Irís, while initially a local publication, also circulated internationally. Copies of the magazine entered the New York Public Library system as early as 1950. Domestically, Farkas’ work with Irís spurred his creation of a new photography periodical: Novidades Fotoptica [Fotoptica news], which debuted in 1953. Part shop catalogue, part instruc­ tional guide, and part specialized magazine, Revista Fotoptica [Fotoptica magazine] – as it was called after 1982 – was a major cultural outlet, highlighting the work of Brazilian and international photographers, especially those working in the fields of photojournal­ ism and fashion photography. By mid-1949 Farkas had already begun experimenting with documentary filmmak­ ing, which would eventually become his primary artistic outlet. But the photographic networks Farkas helped to create during the early phases of his career remained in place even after the FCCB’s prominence within international photographic circles waned. Since the IMS’s acquisition of Farkas’ archive in the late 1990s, his photography has garnered increased international attention. From May to September of 2021, his photographs were on display at MoMA as part of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modern­ ist Photography and the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, 1946–1964. The accompanying catalogue marks a promising beginning for English-language writings on Brazilian pho­ tographic modernism. In advance of the show’s opening, the FCCB digitized its library of Boletims and made it publicly accessible online. Additionally, the IMS has made a large selection of Farkas’ photographs available on its website, digitized the entire run of Revista Fotoptica, and has plans in place to digitize Irís as well. Alongside recent exhibi­ tions and publications, these digital materials offer opportunities to rethink the history of midcentury photography through the lens of international exchange.26 Abbreviations FCCB: Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante FIAP: Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique IMS: Instituto Moreira Salles MASP: Museu de Arte de São Paulo MAM: Museu de Arte Moderna

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Notes 1. Danielle Stewart, “Geraldo de Barros: Photography as Construction,” H-ART 2 (January– June 2018): 75. 2. Sarah Hermanson Meister, “Excelente, Bom, Sofrivel, Pobre: Judging Postwar Photogra­ phy in Brazil,” in Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography and the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, 1946–1964, Sarah Hermanson Meister, ed. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2021), 12. 3. Meister, “Excelente,” 34–35. 4. For example, German Lorca and Fransisco Albuquerque, pioneers of Brazilian advertising pho­ tography were both members of the FCCB. 5. Meister, “Excelente,” 13; see also, “V Seminário de Arte Fotográfica,” B oletim 5 (Janu­ ary 1950): 16. 6. Farkas’ exploration of extreme angles was identified by Brazilian photo historian Helouise Costa as his most significant contribution to Modern photography. Helouise Costa and Renato Rodrigues, A fotografia moderna no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 1995), 58. See also Arlindo Machado, A ilusão especular (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense/Funarte, 1984), 112. 7. Compur, “Qualidade – a principal caraterística do VI Salão,” Boletim 20 (December 1947): 5. “Thomas J. Farkas, voltando aquelas características que o tornaram um dos mais avançados interpretantes da síntese fotográfica, em ‘Ballet’ tirou o máximo partido do jogo de luzes e sombras enquanto em ‘Composição (Ministério da Educação)’, joga com a maestria que lhe é peculiar, as linhas e massas.” 8. First place went to now-little-known photographer Angelo F. Nutti, “Os que se destacam,” Boletim 18 (October 1947): 15. 9. “O Bandeirante no exterior,” Boletim 26 (June  1948): 20; B. J. Duarte, “Um aniversario,” Boletim 37 (May 1949): 4; “O Bandeirante no exterior,” Boletim 23 (March 1948): 13; “O Bandeirante no exterior,” Boletim 36 (April 1949): 18; “O Bandeirante no exterior,” Boletim 33 (January  1949): 22; “O Bandeirante no exterior,” Boletim 20 (December  1947): 15; “O Bandeirante no exterior,” Boletim 44 (December 1949): 23. 10. MASP’s 2016 show and catalog MASP FCCB, curated by Helouise Costa and Adriano Pedrosa was the first to highlight the importance of these markings to understanding mid-century Brazilian photograph’s global circulation, see Andriano Pedrosa, ed., MASP FCCB: Coleção Museu de Arte de São Paulo Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (São Paulo: MASP, 2016). 11. Liz Donato, “Boletim Foto-Cine: An Annotated and Illustrated Chronology,” in Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography and the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, 1946–1964, Sarah Hermanson Meister, ed. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2021), 166 and Sergio Burgi, ed., Thomaz Farkas: uma antologia pessoal (São Paulo: IMS, 2011), 290. See also, “Instantaneos,” Boletim 31 (November 1948): 19. 12. Vanessa Sobrino Lenzini, “Noções do moderno no Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante: fotografia em São Paulo (1948–1951).” MA thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2008, 19. 13. Gordon Parks, “Fórmula para o ‘flash’,” Irís 6 (July 1947): 41; Arthur Hammond, “As requisi­ tas de apresentação educacional de filmes,” Irís 10 (November 1947): 30; José Pires D’Ávila, “Importância da revista fotográfica,” Irís 2 (March  1947): 3; Jorge Radó, “Fotografia do eterno,” Irís 9 (October 1947): 15; see “Índice,” Irís 14 (March 1948): 22. 14. Thomaz J. Farkas, “Fotografia – caminhos diversos,” Irís 19 (August 1948): 10. “Em tôdas as atividades humanas a vitalidade expressa-se pela evolução. Quem não evolui, estagna, quem estagna, morre.” 15. Farkas, “Caminhos,” 10. “Fotografia é meio de expressão.” 16. Farkas, “Caminhos,” 10. “Um sem-número de assuntos novos, surpreendentes pela sua varie­ dade, dos quais podemos destacar os seguintes, como de grande importância/Assuntos profis­ sionais: reportagem – documentação – propaganda. /Assuntos não profissionais (no sentido de não haver pessoas que paguem por elas): fotografias abstratas e surrealistas (fotogramas) – texturas e desenhos – expressão do movimento – dansa.” 17. Farkas, “Caminhos,” 10. 18. Andrew Blake Boyd, “A União Cultural Brasil-Estados Unidos e as políticas culturais dos Estados Unidos (1938–1951).” MA thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2003,

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25. The União was founded in 1938 during the height of Good Neighbor politics but moved several times before settling on José Bonifácio street in 1941. 19. Heloisa Espada, “Fotoformas: A máquina lúdica de Geraldo de Barros.” MA thesis, Universi­ dade de São Paulo, 2006, 109–113. 20. “Fala o editor. O nosso número especial,” Íris 1 (June 1947): 10. 21. Heloisa Espada, “Fotoformas: Luz e Artifício,” in Geraldo de Barros e a fotografia, Helouisa Espada, ed. (São Paulo: IMS/SESC, 2014), 23. 22. João Farkas, “Exposição Thomas Farkas,” Irís 30 (July 1949): np; see also João Farkas, ed., Estudos fotográficos, Thomaz Farkas (São Paulo: Instituto Olga Kos de Inclusão Cultural, 2019), np. 23. Espada, “Fotoformas: Luz e artifício,” 25. 24. Alise Tifentale, “The Olympiad of Photography”: FIAP and the Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965.” PhD diss., The City University of New York, 2020, 230. 25. Tifentale, “Olympiad,” 20 and 225–228; see also “A nota do mes,” Boletim 49 (May 1950): 5. 26. See, for example, Surgio Burgi, Thomaz Farkas: uma antologia pessoal (São Paulo: IMS, 2011); Sergio Burgi, Flieg (São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles, 2014); and Ludger Derenthal and Samuel Titian Jr, Modernidades Fotográficas: 1940–1964 (São Paulo: Insituto Moreira Salles/ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2013).

References Burgi, Sergio, ed. Thomaz Farkas: uma antologia pessoal. São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles, 2011. Burgi, Sergio, ed. Flieg. São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles, 2014. Costa, Helouise and Renato Rodrigues. A fotografia moderna no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 1995. Derenthal, Ludger and Samuel Titian Jr, eds. Modernidades fotográficas: 1940–1964. São Paulo: Insituto Moreira Salles, 2013. Espada, Heloisa. “Fotoformas: A máquina lúdica de Geraldo de Barros.” MA thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 2006. Espada, Heloisa. Geraldo de Barros e a fotografia. São Paulo: IMS/SESC, 2014. Farkas, João, ed. Thomaz Farkas, fotógrafo. São Paulo: DBA Artes Gráficas e Companhia Melho­ ramentos de São Paulo, 1997. Machado, Arlindo. A ilusão especular. São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense/Funarte, 1984. Meister, Sarah Hermanson. Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography and the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, 1946–1964. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2021. Pedrosa, Andriano, ed. MASP FCCB: Coleção Museu de Arte de São Paulo Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante. São Paulo: MASP, 2016. Sobrino Lenzini, Vanessa. “Noções do moderno no Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante: fotografia em São Paulo (1948–1951).” MA thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2008. Stewart, Danielle. “Geraldo de Barros: Photography as Construction.” H-ART 2 (Jan. –June 2018): 73–92. Tifentale, Alise. “The Olympiad of Photography”: FIAP and the Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965.” PhD diss., The City University of New York, 2020. Websites “Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946–1964,” The Museum of Modern Art, accessed 30 January 2022, www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5245. “Sobre o acervo,” Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, accessed 30 January 2022, https://fotoclub.art. br/acervo/. “Thomaz Farkas,” Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural, accessed 30 January  2022, https://enciclopedia. itaucultural.org.br/pessoa7520/thomaz-farkas.

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“Thomas Farkas,” Google Arts  & Culture, accessed 30 January  2022, https://artsandculture. google.com/entity/thomas-farkas/m0jxy850?hl=en&categoryid=artist. “Thomaz Farkas,” Instituto Moreira Salles, accessed 30 January  2022, https://ims.com.br/ titular-colecao/thomaz-farkas/.

14 Modern Islamicate Painting, 1940–1970 Alex Dika Seggerman

What happens to the classic narrative of modern art and abstraction when it moves to a culture with a thousand-year history of abstract art and a relative lack of figural representation? In the Islamic tradition, figural representation was frequently, yet not always, avoided in favor of textual, geometric, vegetal, and floral imagery. When modern painting arrived in the Islamic world through colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was often no local tradition of highly representational figure painting to reject. The increasingly abstract approaches of modern painters in Paris were not seen as radical in the context of a long history of abstraction. So, how did modern painting in the region respond to the Islamic cultural heritage of calligraphy and aniconism? The answer is not singular; rather, artists throughout this immense stretch of geography appropri­ ated, adapted, and molded modern approaches to oil painting for the specificities of their societal, political, and religious contexts. Though artists also worked with other media, like sculpture, textile, and print, easel painting became the preeminent mode of modern artistic expression. Even though oil painting had been practiced for centuries in Europe, the figure of the modern painter in the studio, creating artworks for museum or gallery walls, was a novel development in the late-19th-century capitals of Istanbul, Cairo, Teh­ ran, and Beirut. While early-20th-century painters in the region were primarily figurative, from 1940 through 1970, artists around the region selectively referenced Islamic herit­ ages for diverse ends through distinct techniques. However, there was no single unified response across the wide expanse of this faith. In this chapter, I  will discuss several artists and focus on the work of the Egyptian painter Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar. While El-Gazzar is a poignant example, artists in the post­ war period across the Muslim world, from Morocco to Syria to Pakistan to Indonesia, found ways to incorporate references to religion in their paintings. Some artists included these references to express their religious or national identity, while others were more purposefully using the linkages to engage with larger conceptual approaches and artis­ tic movements, such as Surrealism, Return to Order, or Abstract Expressionism. Artists often referenced Islam in a “constellational” way – as part of a finite set of references embedded in their artwork that mapped out the specific education, exhibition, and travel experiences behind its creation.1 While the resulting aesthetics were not cohesive across the region, the constellational approach was analogous among these artists. By the 1940s, artists throughout the Islamic world were highly cognizant of the visual and conceptual narrative of modern art that had been propagated in Paris and other European capitals, and many traveled abroad to learn more. While studying in Paris was most common, artists also went to Rome, London, New York, Beijing, and Moscow, often following diplomatic exchange networks. The widespread rejection of 19th-century DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-19

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French academic techniques allowed artists a wide range of expression, from Impres­ sionist and Expressionist styles to Surrealist approaches and even pure abstraction. The religion of Islam in its many forms – from daily practices to high holy days to artistic heritage – appeared across paintings by many, but not all, Islamic artists in the postwar period that responded to the specificities of artists’ contexts. For this reason, I use the term “Islamicate” in this essay to indicate not just the religion or the art forms, but the “social and historical complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims.”2 I pinpoint specific instances in which references to, what Shahab Ahmed has called “the human and historical phenomenon of Islam,” appeared in postwar painting by artists from predominantly Muslim contexts.3 Overall, it is clear that these Islamic references offered poignant opportunities for artists to explore modernism in painting, but religious symbols were by no means the only references employed by these artists. While Islam remained significant for modern Islamicate painters, it was never the sole defining feature of the work and was never precisely the same across this wide swath of the globe. In the Islamicate context, referencing religion was common, though unique in each artist’s method. Colonialism’s Impact Similar to much of the world outside Europe, the majority of the Islamicate world in the 19th century experienced some degree of colonization. Colonialism in North Africa, West Asia, and South Asia led to rampant orientalist sexualized and exoticized represen­ tations of Muslim peoples by European artists and writers. These works were the basis for Edward Said’s theory of “Orientalism,” which argues that the geopolitical power structure of imperialism is embedded in artistic representations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, local painters often adapted French styles, while subtly shifting the content, like the famous Ottoman Turkish painter, Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), who trained in the French academic style in Paris with Gustave Boulanger. Often called the “good Orientalist,” Hamdi employed Orientalist painterly techniques but portrayed clothed individuals engaged in educated pursuits like reading and music. In the 20th century, nationalist movements arose across the Islamicate world, calling for the end of colonial control and demanding self-rule. Oftentimes, these nationalist movements were linked with secularism, and many visual cultures began to incorporate local ancient art, like imagery from pharaonic Egypt or Sumerian Iraq. These histori­ cal pasts effectively unified populations because they transcended ethnic, linguistic, or religious differences. During the period of secular nationalism, Islamic cultural histories were not as frequent in state-sponsored cultural programming. For instance, in Egypt, a modern sculptor named Mahmoud Moukhtar (1891–1934), the self-proclaimed “first Egyptian sculptor in 1700 years” blended ancient imagery, like the sphinx, with modern skills learned at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. One of his sculptures, Nahdat Misr (Egypt’s Reawakening), was transformed into a public monument through a national fundraising campaign.4 This sculpture actively eschews the Islamic cultural past, instead embracing pharaonic art history through a quintessential ancient Egyptian sphinx hewn in a material ubiquitous in ancient sculpture: pink granite quarried from Aswan. Despite the rise of anti-colonial secular nationalism, Islam as a religion was still prac­ ticed throughout the region, even if most modern artists dressed in European clothes and likely did not adhere closely to the five pillars of Islam, which include praying five times a day and fasting during the month of Ramadan. Nevertheless, artists grew up with the

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Figure 14.1 Mahmoud Mukhtar, Nahdat Misr (Egypt’s Reawakening), 1920–1928, currently installed in Giza, Egypt, photograph by the author.

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customs, holidays, architecture, clothing, history, and artistic heritage of Islam, and as such, these often appeared in their canvases for a variety of reasons. What Is Islamic Art? The term “Islamic Art” refers to a field of study in Euro-American art history, both part of the broader humanities as well as a section of many art museums. This field of study developed in the late 19th century, and the Mohammedan Art exhibit in Munich in 1909 was the first major exhibition of this category of art history. The term “Mohammedean” ultimately gave way to the term “Islamic,” and scholars have long been debating what this word means, because Islamic art often includes art that is either from a different religion (usually Christianity or Judaism) or not religious in content (like the Shahnama, a heroic Persian epic).5 The category of “Islamic art” is a pure invention of the Euro-American academy and is not how local populations in the Muslim world historically categorized their artistic heritage. So, when artists incorporate religious content in their paintings in the 1940s–1960s, they were not necessarily directly referencing the Euro-American category of “Islamic art.” Nevertheless, this taxonomic designation has become legible in some parts of the Muslim world due to the exportation of books, courses, and exhibi­ tions. Thus, modern artists’ visual linkages to Muslim religious practice often look quite different than artworks that respond to the study of Islamic art history. Islamic art collections in museums generally begin around the advent of the religion in the 7th century and taper off at the introduction of colonialism. Indeed, the 19th century saw major shifts in art production: the stylistic choices as well as the media that artists used changed dramatically due to the new world order that colonialism and moderni­ zation wrought in the region. Hand-written and hand-drawn manuscripts gave way to printed books and journals. Photography studios mushroomed in cities and photographic portraits became ubiquitous. A architecture shifted toward French Beaux-Arts as royals and elites aimed to exhibit their wealth and class.6 Oil painting, widely introduced at this time through newly-founded art schools, was an indicator of colonialism as well as modernity. Artists both needed to appeal to the changing tastes of the elite, who desired modern oil painting, but also endeavored to express their identity through these foreignborn forms. While easel painting was not the only art medium produced in the modern era, it became the most commonly exhibited modern art form in museums and galleries across the Islamic world. For artists in Egypt, Syria, Iran, and India, the identity of the modern artist signified modernity, modern society, and participation in a global modern art network. As evidenced by the two artworks by El-Gazzar discussed in this essay, Islam became one of many points of reference for the artists to signal their cultural knowledge and national identity through painting in a colonial and then postcolonial context. Does Islam Prohibit Images of Living Beings? For the average viewer today, the most common question about modern art from the Islamic world is usually about how the assumed religious prohibition on images of living beings impacted the modern artist. Throughout the globe, the presupposed restrictions against figural imagery in Islam is a common misconception. The history of aniconism in the Islamicate world is complex: the religion neither clearly rejects figural imagery, nor does it wholeheartedly endorse it. It is thus important to precisely clarify the religious origins of this prohibition to understand if and how it affected modern painters.

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Islam is a monotheistic religion founded by the prophet Muhammad in 620 C.E. in the city of Mecca, in the modern-day country of Saudi Arabia. Muslims abide by the five pillars of Islam, which include the profession of faith, prayer five times a day, fasting from dawn to dusk during the holy month of Ramadan, almsgiving to the poor, and the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims believe that the prophet Muhammad received revela­ tions of God’s word from the angel Gabriel, which were later transcribed in Arabic as the Qur’an. The Arabic language and script have long been a core component of Muslim belief and visual culture. While Islam shares many traditions with Judaism and Chris­ tianity, the centrality of language is more pronounced in this most recent of the three Abrahamic faiths. There are two main instances in Muslim holy texts that speak negatively about images of living beings. The first, which appears in the Qur’an and the Torah, is when Abraham smashes idols and tells the worshippers that they have made a “grave error” in worship­ ing the statues. This prohibition refers specifically to images created for veneration, not images of living things made for other purposes. The second instance more specifically addresses images of living beings for non-religious purposes and appears in the Hadith, a holy text which records the reported sayings of the prophet Muhammad. One Hadith recommends that a painter paint inanimate objects rather than living beings because the speaker once heard Muhammad say that on the day of judgment, God will punish the painter because only God is able to put life into living beings, and the images will never hold life.7 As this is part of the Hadith, it is not Shariah (core) Islamic law, and these lines have been interpreted in many ways over the centuries. Because of the Qur’an’s direct prohibition of icons, figural representations of religious figures are exceedingly rare in mosques. On the other hand, many Islamicate cultures have produced figural imagery, even including statuary, that are not religious in purpose. There is also a long tradition of depicting the prophet Muhammad and his miraj (Night Journey).8 A prominent Islamicate tradition of figural imagery is Persianate manuscript painting, often referred to as “miniatures” – a style that arose in what is today Afghani­ stan and spread through the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal realms in the early modern period (1500–1750). These intricate and vibrant ink and watercolor compositions were laboriously crafted in scriptoria and illustrated epics, poetry, and histories. By the turn of the 20th century, the traditions of manuscript painting had been sup­ planted by printed lithographic books and increasing elite desires for oil paintings as colonial French and British tastes spread throughout the region. The prohibitions on image-making were famously re-interpreted by the Muslim jurist Sheikh Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905), a leading member of the Islamic modernist theological movement. He wrote that the threat of idol worship had long since passed and that arts education was one of the best methods of instruction for modern society.9 While this text was not read widely when published in 1904, and thus cannot be directly credited with opening up art to figural representation, the majority of modern Islamicate artists of the 20th century were not concerned with the image prohibitions as laid out in the Hadith. With the prolif­ eration of photography, film, and television, it is easy to see that figural painting was no longer a leading cause for concern in the representation of living beings in visual media. Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar The Story of Zulaikha (Figure 14.2), painted by Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar in 1949, depicts a woman in a floor-length dress, her head tilted unnaturally to her shoulder. With an

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Figure 14.2 Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, The Story of Zulaikha, 1949, oil on canvas, private collection, Cairo, Egypt, artwork reproduced courtesy of Laila Effat, photograph by the author.

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oversized hand, she places a flower in an elongated vase. Behind her, a steamship with flags appears above a low wall, which is inscribed with a set of monstrous heads. Near the woman’s feet are a small, forlorn girl and a white rodent. This composition, while figural and representational, does not convey a logical story or message. The space is unnatural, in that a ship could not appear like this in real space. The facial features and body parts of the two female figures are exaggerated and flattened. The title, however, gives the viewer more information to build an interpretation. The “story of Zulaikha” refers to the biblical and Qur’anic tale of the queen Zulaikha who falls in love with her servant, the prophet Yusuf (called Joseph in the Judeo-Christian context). In the mystical Sufi tradition, Zulaikha’s yearning, unrequited love for the prophet is interpreted as a metaphor for the devotee’s unattainable love for God.10 In the Bible, Zulaikha is referred to as Potiphar’s wife, and the story of her spurned seduction of Joseph has been repre­ sented in Christian contexts, ranging from oil paintings by Guido Reni to the pop culture Broadway musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In the Islamic con­ text, the seduction of Yusuf was depicted in Persian manuscript paintings, most famously by the Timurid painter, Bihzad (ca. 1455–1536). El-Gazzar’s painting, however, does not specifically draw from either artistic tradition’s iconography. Instead, he weaves this story of Zulaikha’s mystical love for Yusuf with Surrealism. Inspired by the Surrealists, Gazzar and his young classmates at the art school formed a collective called the Contem­ porary Art Group, which incorporated the lessons of Surrealism with a renewed interest in the local, in particular social justice for the underclasses. El-Gazzar was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1925 but lived most of his life in Cairo, with a brief period of study abroad in Rome, Italy in the 1950s, before his premature death in 1966. Though he was the son of an Islamic religious scholar and a practicing Muslim himself, he did not make overtly religious art or art with devotional functional­ ity. Nevertheless, he incorporated religious references into his paintings and drawings, blending them with Surrealist approaches and social justice motivations. When El-Gazzar was eleven, in 1936, the family moved to the working-class neighbor­ hood of Sayeda Zainab in Cairo. His father worked at Al-Azhar university, the preemi­ nent center of Sunni Muslim learning for over a thousand years. While his parents were quite religious, El-Gazzar himself grew up in the semi-colonial secular nationalist period in which Egypt’s relatively ineffective local monarchy had contractual independence (1922–1952) despite an ongoing British occupation. El-Gazzar attended the Cairo School of Fine Arts, which had been founded in 1908, and he studied a curriculum based on the classic academic Beaux-Arts tradition. From the late 1930s through the mid-1940s, Cairo was home to a robust Surrealist movement, led by the francophone Egyptian poet Georges Henein (1914–1973). Henein introduced Surrealism into Egypt in 1937 and shortly thereafter, a group of artists formed a collective called Art and Liberty. Their manifesto, “Long Live Degener­ ate Art!,” issued in 1938, was a rejection of the fascist condemnation of avant-garde European art, and it called on its members, “We must align ourselves alongside this ‘Degenerate Art,’ for in such art reposes the hopes of the future.”11 The manifesto was signed by a religiously, ethnically, and nationally diverse set of artists and thinkers, and the aims of the group were universalist.12 Ramses Younan (1913–1966) was one of the group’s foremost thinkers and painters. He adopted the automatic drawing techniques of the French surrealists and turned his attention away from nationalist imagery (like sphinxes and peasants), which his Egyptian predecessors lauded. His writings espoused universalist ideas, and he was not overly concerned with the specificities of religion or

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Figure 14.3 Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, The Green Man, 1951, oil on canvas, private collection, Cairo, Egypt, artwork reproduced courtesy of Laila Effat, photograph by the author.

Arab identity. Younan himself was Coptic Christian as was Henein, although this fact was never a major part of their practice, or a factor in their relationship with the Muslim, Jewish, and agnostic members of the group. Younan ultimately broke with Surrealism, accusing it of relying on a bourgeois “mythology” of truth, and instead argued that “falseness” must be embraced.13 Later in his life, Younan turned to pure abstract oil painting. In Younan’s case, Islam in all its forms was absent from his work, primarily because as a Surrealist he was preoccupied with the universal. In The Green Man (Figure 14.3), Gazzar depicts a Qur’anic figure without employing the Islamic iconographic tradition associated with it. The green man refers to the mysti­ cal figure of Al-Khidr (The Green), briefly mentioned in the Qur’an and believed to be a spiritual guide.14 The composition is not logical. Against a white background, a bald, green-skinned male figure appears in profile. He wears a scoop-neck maroon shirt and a long earring dangles from an ear that has a long red flower perched behind it. On the lower left is a small fanous (lantern) a popular symbol of the holy month of Ramadan. Extending from the man’s head is a pair of arms, each hand emblazoned with a glowing

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eye. These hands recall the talismanic image of the Hand of Fatima, a symbol of pro­ tection ubiquitous in the region. El-Gazzar achieves a surrealist effect by the bizarre nature of the composition, as well as the incorporation of the mystical figure of Al-Khidr. Instead of searching for truth through the unconscious, as the Parisian surrealists did, El-Gazzar’s painting depicts a surreal, green-skinned mystical religious figure in order to reject colonial art styles. Global Modern Islamicate Painters The artistic responses to the modern colonial context were diverse and multifaceted. While Islam was often a point of reference, it was rarely the only one that artists made in their “constellational” approach. The four artists discussed in this section exemplify this diversity. Pan-Arab Nationalism arose in the postwar period, and with it, the veneration of the Arabic language. Many artists turned to the Arabic letterform in their canvases, using it to explore abstraction, line, color, and textual meaning in oil painting. The Arabic term for this phenomenon, hurufiyya (letterism), comes from the word huruf (letters).15 The Iraqi Madiha Umar (1908–2005), one of the first to experiment with Arabic letters in oil paint, stretches the curves and dots of the alphabet over the canvas, exploring form through the letters’ contours. In doing so, she obliquely references her identity and herit­ age.16 However, her hurufiyya is not a clear incorporation of Muslim religious practice. Similar to El-Gazzar’s use of mystical Sufism to unlock Surrealism in a more localized way, Umar uses the letter form to explore the abstraction of line and color, detaching the letters from the linguistic or aural referents. While the work of El-Gazzar and Umar look nothing alike, it is clear that they share an analogous process of reckoning between the European legacy of oil painting and conceptions of Islamic heritage. A group of Iranian artists coalesced in the postwar period and dubbed themselves the Saqqakhaneh movement. A “saqqakhaneh” is a neighborhood water fountain, ubiqui­ tous in Iran, and often endowed with spiritual protections. Like the Contemporary Art Group, the Saqqakhaneh artists were interested in harnessing the power of urban spir­ ituality. Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (b. 1937) created large canvases inscribed with cal­ ligraphy and images reminiscent of the alam, a hand-shaped emblem carried aloft in Shia religious processions.17 These artworks are not devotional, but they appropriate these religious symbols for a secular fine art context, though in a more recognizable way than El-Gazzar did. While often Iran and the Arab world are conflated as the “Middle East,” Iran is linguistically and religiously distinct. While the majority of Arab-speaking North Africa and West Asia are Sunni Muslim, Persian-speaking Iran is majority Shia Muslim. The division between Sunni and Shia stems from a theological disagreement of the 7th century, but the two sects have developed different religious customs over the centuries, while both retain the five pillars. Zenderoudi’s calligraphic canvases speak to the specific­ ity of his Iranian heritage and identity, distinct from artists in the Arab world. Ibrahim El-Salahi (b. 1930) is a Sudanese painter who studied at the Slade School in England before returning to his country’s capital, Khartoum, to establish the Khartoum School art group. Sudan, just south of Egypt, has a large Arabic-speaking and Muslim population, but also has sizable Christian and other religious minorities. These divi­ sions have led to intense strife and civil war, but in the immediate postwar period, the country was still united though tensions were beginning to simmer. El-Salahi’s canvases in this period more directly reference Islam than El-Gazzar’s works in that they often

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incorporate Qur’anic excerpts in Arabic calligraphy paired with abstracted forms. Salahi has said that with these works he wants to express his dual Muslim and African iden­ tity.18 Sometimes, a visual reference to a mosque, prayer carpet, or religious person are visible in the largely abstract compositions. Salahi is an example of an artist who very directly incorporates Islamic symbols in his work for personal spiritual ends. In postwar Mumbai, Maqbool Fida Husain (1915–2011) joined the short-lived Bom­ bay Progressive Artists’ Group in 1947. Husain was from a Muslim background, but the other members of the group were not. While the Muslim population of India is a minority in the country, there are nearly as many Muslims in India as in all of West Asia and North Africa combined. The Muslim Mughal Empire ruled over much of the subcon­ tinent from the 16th through the 19th centuries. After India gained independence from British colonial control in 1947, a violent and gruesome partition forced many Muslims north to Pakistan.19 Over his long career, Husain incorporated both Muslim and Hindu religious references. His figural, expressionist canvases depict imagery of Hindu gods like Ganesh as well as Muslim stories like the Battle of Karbala.20 Husain responded to the specificities of the Indian context by referencing its multi-confessional history and iden­ tity, ultimately resulting in his exile from India in 2006. These six artists – El-Gazzar, Younan, Umar, Zenderoudi, El-Salahi, and Husain – represent instances of Global Modern Islamicate painting. Though the aesthetic choices of each artist were distinct, the process of negotiating the materials of oil painting on canvas with references to Islamic heritage was parallel. Some artists overtly referenced Islam, like El-Salahi, while others left it out completely, like Younan. The shared process of reconciliation reveals the larger impact of modern art and the continued significance of Islamic heritage. However, this Islamic heritage was much more multifaceted than a simplistic “Islamic art.” As the work of El-Gazzar shows, often artists referenced mysti­ cal urban religious practice, rather than the “Islamic art” a Euro-American scholar might expect. Easel painting paired with the conception of the modern artist arrived in the broader Islamicate world in the 19th century, often alongside British or French colonialism. As elite tastes shifted and connections to European art centers grew, oil painting on canvas became the preeminent mode of modernist expression in the capitals of Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul, Tehran, and beyond. In the context of secular nationalism and image-rich mod­ ern visual culture, which included photography, lithography, film, and television, artists were not concerned with older image prohibitions from Muslim holy texts. Nevertheless, Islam remained an important reference point for many artists. While El-Salahi inscribed Qur’anic excerpts in crusty oil paint, Umar used Arabic letters to create nearly-abstract compositions, and Younan avoided all signs of religion in pursuit of universalism. In the context of global modernism, Islamicate painters exemplify how artists reworked Islamic imagery and content in order to participate in wider, transnational artistic movements. Notes 1. For an explanation of the concept of “constellational modernism,” see Alex Dika Seggerman, Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 6–8. 2. Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 59. 3. Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 73.

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4. Seggerman, Modernism on the Nile, 86–91. 5. Kishwar Rizvi, “Art,” in Key Themes for the Study of Islam, Jamal J. Elias, ed. (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), 7. 6. Margaret S. Graves and Alex Dika Seggerman, Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterra­ nean (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022). 7. Hadith narrated by Sa`id bin Abu Al-Hasan, “Book of Sales and Trade,” Sahih al-Bukhari. 8. For extensive analysis of images of the Prophet Muhammad and the mirajnama, see Christi­ ane J. Gruber, The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018). 9. Muhammad Abduh, “Images and Statues, Their Benefits and Legality,” trans. Dina Ramadan, in Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers, and Nada M. Shabout, eds. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 42–45. 10. Gayane Karen Merguerian and Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Zulaykha and Yusuf: Whose ‘Best Story’?,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29, no. 4 (1997): 497, https://doi. org/10.1017/S002074380006517X. 11. “Long Live Degenerate Art!” in Lenssen, Rogers, and Shabout, 94–95. 12. For full exploration of the Art and Liberty group, see: Sam Bardaouil, Surrealism in Egypt: Modernism and the Art and Liberty Group (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017). 13. Andrea Flores, “The Myth of the False: Ramses Younan’s Post-Structuralism Avant La Lettre,” The Arab Studies Journal 8/9, no. 2/1 (October 1, 2000): 97–110. 14. A.J. Wensinck, “Al-K _h _ad.ir (Al-K _h _id.r),” Encyclopaedia of Islam, http://dx.doi. org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0483 (accessed February 22, 2022). 15. For more on the hurufiyya movement, see: Nada M. Shabout, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007), 75–96. 16. Suheyla Takesh, “Introduction,” in Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s, Suheyla Takesh and Lynn Gumpert, eds. (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2020), 22. 17. Fereshteh Daftari, “Redefining Modernism: Pluralist Art before the 1979 Revolution,” in Iran Modern, Fereshteh Daftari, Layla S. Diba, and Asia Society, eds. (New York: Asia Society, 2013), 32. 18. Salah Hassan, ed., Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist (Seattle, WA: University of Wash­ ington Press, 2012). 19. For an examination of art of Muslim South Asia before and after partition, see: Iftikhar Dadi, Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 20. Sonal Khullar, Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930–1990 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015), 100–109.

References Ahmed, Shahab. What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni­ versity Press, 2016. Bardaouil, Sam. Surrealism in Egypt: Modernism and the Art and Liberty Group. London: I.B. Tauris, 2017. Dadi, Iftikhar. Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Daftari, Fereshteh and Layla S. Diba, eds. Iran Modern. New York: Asia Society, 2013. Flores, Andrea. “The Myth of the False: Ramses Younan’s Post-Structuralism Avant La Lettre.” The Arab Studies Journal 8/9, no. 2/1 (October 1, 2000): 97–110. Graves, Margaret S., and Alex Dika Seggerman, eds. Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediter­ ranean. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022. Gruber, Christiane J. The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018. Hassan, Salah M., ed. Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist. Seattle, WA: University of Wash­ ington Press, 2012. Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

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Khullar, Sonal. Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930–1990. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Lenssen, Anneka, Sarah Rogers, and Nada M. Shabout, eds. Modern Art in the Arab World: Pri­ mary Documents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Rizvi, Kishwar. “Art.” In Key Themes for the Study of Islam. Edited by Jamal J. Elias. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Seggerman, Alex Dika. Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contem­ porary. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Shabout, Nada M. Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007. Takesh, Suheyla, ed. Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s-1980s. Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2020. Websites and Links to Images https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guido_Reni_-_Joseph_and_Potiphar%27s_Wife.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yusef_Zuleykha.jpg https://goo.gl/maps/pnoR3hYwm9bbuzoE9 www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shnm/hd_shnm.htm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Berlin,_Alte_Nationalgalerie,_Osman_Hamdi_Bey,_ der_Wunderbrunnen.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mahmoud_Mukhtar,_Nahdat_Misr_(Egypt%27s_ Reawakening),_1920-1928.jpg www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/younan-inspiration-from-the-sea-t14881 www.barjeelartfoundation.org/collection/madiha-umar-untitled/ www.moma.org/collection/works/36253 www.moma.org/collection/works/78385 www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/bombay-progressive-artists-group

15 Two Pioneering Women Bring

Abstraction to the Andes

Michele Greet

Abstraction rapidly gained acceptance throughout Latin America in the years follow­ ing World War II. Its acknowledgment as a legitimate form of artistic expression in Ecuador and Bolivia can be attributed in part to the groundbreaking exhibitions of two pioneering women: Araceli Gilbert (Ecuador), whom I will refer to throughout as Araceli because she chose to use her first name only in exhibitions, and María Luisa Pacheco (Bolivia). Class status and financial support played a role in their ability to study, travel, and defy tradition, as did exposure to international networks of artists who were experi­ menting with new ideas. After sojourns abroad – Araceli to Paris and Pacheco to New York – these artists returned to their countries of origin (Pacheco only briefly) to exhibit their work, creating shock waves in an artistic landscape that was still dominated by pictorial indigenism, a figural mode of painting that aimed to expose the exploitation of the Native American population. When Araceli arrived in Quito in 1955 she held a solo exhibition of her abstract paintings at the Museo de Arte Colonial, proclaiming abstrac­ tion’s autonomy as an art form. Six years later Pacheco exhibited her abstract canvases in La Paz at the Instituto Cultural Boliviano-Alemán (Bolivian-German Cultural Institute), breaking new ground in the Bolivian capital. These two artists worked in what have been characterized as opposite poles of abstraction, Araceli embracing the flat planes and hard edges of geometric abstraction, and Pacheco the more flowing forms and blended colors of lyrical abstraction or informalism. This essay will explore the reception of these pioneering exhibitions, looking at the ways in which gender shaped expectations of these artists’ work, and how these two women paved the way for further explorations of abstraction in the Andes in the 1960s. Andean artists who embraced abstract visual languages positioned themselves as forg­ ing a new path that was distinct from indigenism. By the 1940s, indigenism had lost the political clout that had defined it as a vanguard movement in the 1930s. Although indigenism was in decline, the indigenists’ valuation and exploration of native content and aesthetics paved the way for the next generation of Andean artists to develop what became known as precolombinismo or ancestralismo. Non-indigenous artists and intel­ lectuals’ practice of appropriating indigenous culture stems from the concept of “cultural continuity,” which emerged in the modern era as a politically motivated anti-colonial strategy. The indigenists depicted native bodies or native attributes as cultural mark­ ers (as did Pacheco and Araceli in their early work), thereby suggesting that the origi­ nal inhabitants of the region and contemporary native populations shared a continuous uninterrupted history that could supplant the legacies of colonialism and symbolize the modern nation. As artists embraced abstraction and recognizable figures and motifs

DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-20

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disappeared from their compositions, titles that referenced ancient sites, native symbols, and aesthetic attributes, such as patterns, colors, and textures, took on new importance, and came to confer cultural specificity on images that contained little if any visual resem­ blance to a particular location or its people. Araceli’s 1955 solo show in Quito marked one of the first times an exhibition exclu­ sively featuring abstract paintings took place in Ecuador.1 Given the dogmatic cultural environment at the time, critics and audiences did not know how to respond. In 1941, Ecuador had lost more than half of its Amazon territory, and with it extensive petroleum rights, in a disastrous war with Peru, leaving the country demoralized and seeking new direction. In response, writer and intellectual, Benjamín Carrión proposed that Ecuador renew its dignity through cultural projects, and in 1944 enlisted the new government of José María Velasco Ibarra to found the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana (Ecuadorian House of Culture). With the goal of celebrating the peoples of Ecuador, the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana promoted indigenism as a symbol of national renewal, saturat­ ing the artistic environment for more than a decade. Just three years prior to Araceli’s exhibition, Oswaldo Guayasamín, one of the most celebrated artists in Ecuador and an early proponent of indigenism, debuted his Huacayñan (Trail of Tears) series, a group of one hundred and three paintings, divided into three thematic groups: the Indian, the Mestizo, and the Black. Carrión promoted the series, which was on view in an exhibition sponsored by the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, as the ultimate expression of a new unified nation, stating, “The three tributaries flow, each in its own rhythm, toward the integration of the nation: Mestizo, Indian, Black.”2 Others called the series the “authen­ tic artistic vehicle to express the national soul.”3 Critics embraced this type of painting – not abstraction – to promote national renewal. Born to an upper-class family in the coastal city of Guayaquil, Araceli went to art school in Santiago de Chile, and upon her return joined the leftist Society of Independent Writers and Artists, a group that initially promoted indigenism and social realism. But, in 1944, she left for New York where she studied at the Ozenfant School of Fine Arts for two years, exploring the purist aesthetic promoted by the school’s founder. The crisp clean edges and clearly defined areas of flat color set the precedent for what would soon become her signature style. In 1951, she traveled to Paris to study with the French artist Auguste Herbin, taking her exploration of Purism into the realm of the abstract. Herbin, one of the co-founders of the group Abstraction-Création in the 1930s, and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (Salon of New Realities) in 1946, developed a style of painting that consisted of arrangements of flat geometric shapes rendered in vibrant colors. He referred to this approach as “New Reality” because his compositions did not reference existing objects in the physical world. According to Herbin, “a work of art should be conceived and shaped by the soul before it is executed. It should not receive formal data from nature . . . The work should be constructed with purely plastic elements, that is, planes and colors.”4 As Michel Seuphor argued in his 1949 book L’art abstrait, ses origins, ses premiers maîtres (Abstract Art, its origins, its first masters), geometric abstraction was experiencing a post­ war revival in Paris because of its perceived universality, its ability to transcend the very national boundaries that had recently set a devastating armed conflict in motion. This notion of universalism undoubtedly appealed to artists like Araceli who wished to break free from the regionalism dominating the art scene in their home countries.5 Araceli became deeply involved with the Paris group, teaching in Jean Dewasne and Edgar Pillet’s Atelier d’art abstrait (Abstract Art Workshop) and exhibiting with the

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Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1953, 1954, and 1955. During that time, she also held two solo shows at the Arnaud Gallery in Paris. About her experience, she wrote: [Paris] was a revelation for me . . . an upheaval that brought crashing down around me all that was traditional . . . I understood that color, form, and rhythm are a language in themselves, sufficiently expressive to give life to the creative impulse we carry within.6 Her choice to embrace geometric abstraction was a statement on many levels. It was a style that adamantly disavowed figures, ornate details, sentimentality, narrative, and reference to the outside world, all characteristics that defined mid-century iterations of indigenism. Moreover, geometric abstraction’s boldness, clarity, and hard edges are ste­ reotypically masculine traits that counter the softness and muddled color often associated with notions of the feminine. Shapes in Equilibrium (see Figure  15.1), a work made in Paris in 1952 exemplifies the style Araceli would embrace for the rest of her career. Employing only three colors: black, white, and yellow, she creates a pinwheel in alternating colors revolving around a single point. Each shape is precisely delineated as if cut out of paper, and the color is unmodulated. Only two segments in the upper left and lower right corners do not par­ take in the pinwheel and provide balance to the rest of the composition. The canvas is a perfect square, 100 × 100 cm and is a study in asymmetrical equilibrium: curves counter sharp angles, darkness balances light, color punctuates black and white forms. There is an energy and vitality to the composition despite its lack of reference to any real-world object: it exists as a self-contained expression of pure color and form. Araceli returned to Ecuador in June 1955 with a significant body of work, securing her first solo exhibition entitled “Ritmos de color” (color rhythms) at the Museo de Arte Colonial in the nation’s capital. Because the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana spon­ sored the exhibition, its challenge to indigenism was a bold move. Moreover, its loca­ tion in the historic city center in a venue celebrating the baroque exuberance of colonial art presented a jarring contrast with the glaring modernity of her work. The exhibition included twenty-two oil paintings and six lithographs all of which were bold, vibrant, and abstract. Armed with laudatory quotes from Paris reviews, noting her “frank and violent color,” “rational” approach to abstraction, “vivid tones,” and of course her association with Herbin, Araceli unveiled her exhibition to uncomprehending audiences in Quito. The exhibition brochure reproduced a quote by the Belgian art critic Léon Degand writ­ ten for her 1954 exhibition at the Arnaud Gallery in Paris: “Araceli’s art plays a truly audacious role. It is frank, pure, without hesitation, both in form and in spirit. Is it hard? Yes, in the best sense of the word.”7 The selection of this quote emphasized the daring of her artistic choices, but also offered an explanation to audiences unfamiliar with abstract art, demonstrating that viewers should take note of the aesthetic qualities of the painting rather than search for meaning. Two of her former colleagues from Guayaquil, writer José Alfredo Llerena and Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco, Ecuadorian novelist and founding member of the Grupo de Guayaquil, wrote extensive reviews of her exhibition to prepare audiences for view­ ing abstract paintings. Diezcanseco wrote: “It is the first time that someone sufficiently gifted and sufficiently brave has done Abstract art in our country.” He then asked view­ ers to “prepare our hearts and our heads,” explaining: “It is a matter of a small effort: of situating ourselves in an area of boundaries . . . in which pure mathematics and the

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Figure 15.1 Cover of Araceli Gilbert’s exhibition catalogue: Ritmos de Color, Museo de Arte Colonial, Quito, 1955. Source: Archivio Blomberg.

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Figure 15.2 Installation view of Araceli Gilbert’s exhibition Ritmos de Color at the Museo de Arte Colonial. Quito, 1955. Source: Archivio Blomberg.

finest poetry mix into a lyric of elemental and universal essence . . . of simply admiring the elegance of color and line.”8 Llerena too proclaimed the originality of Araceli’s work, and walked audiences through what they would see: In Araceli’s paintings, the spectator does not find human faces, or familiar objects, or monsters, or beings from the animal or vegetable kingdom . . . But then what is there in those paintings? . . . In Araceli’s paintings there are no figures . . . simply colors. Just architectural lines. Pure Rhythms. Flat colors, vast, mathematically equal, like crystallized surfaces. Significantly, he associates Araceli’s work with the Ecuadorian nation, defending it from common accusations that abstract art lacked regional or human connections: “And Araceli’s colors are violent, heightened, stemming from the tropics, from her home coun­ try, Ecuador, where the sky is an intense and pure blue . . . She loves her country deeply: its human elements, its landscape.”9 Llerena’s attempt to align Araceli’s work with place foreshadows the direction Andean artists would take their exploration of abstraction in the 1960s with the invention of precolombinismo and ancestralismo, movements that aimed to combine abstract languages with an evocation of place or cultural heritage. These quotes also reveal that modernism follows distinct timelines in different geographi­ cal locations and that abstraction’s radicalism is dependent on context. Whereas in artis­ tic and intellectual circles abstraction was widely accepted in Paris and had been for

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decades, exhibiting this type of painting in Ecuador was a significant challenge to the status quo. Despite the entreaties of her colleagues, as Lenín Oña writes, “Silence fol­ lowed, a fearful response to the unknown, to the audacity of a woman who dared to defy a cultural environment that already showed signs of rustiness.”10 Although few of her compatriots understood Araceli’s exhibition, she was selected to represent Ecuador at the IV São Paulo Bienal in 1957 and in 1959 returned to Quito to exhibit at the Centro Ecuatoriano – Norteamericano (Ecuadorian-North American Center). This time fellow artist Irene Cárdenas de Arteta reviewed the exhibition, adopt­ ing a defensive tone and asserting the legitimacy of Araceli’s abstraction in no uncertain terms. She declared that Araceli’s work, like all abstract art, does not need an explana­ tion or an “intellectual excuse”; rather the public should “relinquish all prejudices and resistance towards this movement.” She goes on, “they [Araceli’s paintings] are the fruit of an experienced artist . . . Araceli and her paintings have already triumphed; neither she nor her work seek confirmation . . . they are a demonstration of pure abstraction and an artist ahead of her time.”11 From her defensive tone, it is evident that Ecuadorian audiences had not yet been won over. Indeed, the key proponents of indigenism contin­ ued to resist the legitimacy of abstraction as an art form – Eduardo Kingman called it “narrow-minded” and “an irresponsible way of eluding the artist’s true responsibility” and Guayasmin called it “a virus sent from the United States.”12 But by the early 1960s,

Figure 15.3 María Luisa Pacheco, Composition, 1960, oil on canvas, 48” × 61”, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC.

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the landscape began to shift thanks in no small part to Araceli’s pioneering exhibitions. A  few other painters took up geometric abstraction in Ecuador (e.g., Estuardo Mal­ donado, Theo Constante, and Luis Molinari), but most embraced the gestural modes that were beginning to surpass geometric abstraction’s dominance in the international art world, infusing it with veiled references to culture and place. Perhaps because she was the lone woman artist working in an abstract mode, and among the first to debut the trend in Ecuador, Araceli maintained her adherence to geometric abstraction throughout her career as a strategy of distinction from her male peers, both those who still embraced indigenism and the all-male Grupo VAN, whose lyrical abstraction and precolombinismo emerged in opposition to geometric styles. Unlike Araceli, María Luisa Pacheco adopted a gestural mode of abstraction as her signature style.13 Similar to her counterpart, Pacheco came of age as an artist in an environment dominated by indigenism, specifically that of Cecilio Guzman de Rojas, the most important advocate for the trend in Bolivia, and undertook sojourns abroad to expand her horizons. Pacheco studied with Guzman de Rojas at the Academia de Bellas Artes (Academy of Fine Arts) in La Paz in the late 1930s; after working as a journal illustrator in La Paz, with a grant from the Spanish government she traveled to Madrid where she enrolled in the Academía de San Fernando (Academy of San Fer­ nando) from 1951 to 1952 and also took classes with Daniel Vázquez Díaz. Her studies in Madrid did not expose her to Spanish informalists such as Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Saura, or Manolo Millares who were based in Barcelona and just beginning to organ­ ize, however. In 1952, she returned to La Paz, joined the faculty of the Academia de Bellas Artes, and co-founded the group Ocho Contemporáneos (Eight Contemporar­ ies), which sought to foster innovation in Bolivian art and promote abstracted styles. Although Pacheco was not yet painting in a non-objective manner, by assembling a group of artists working in abstracted, and in some cases fully non-figural styles, she led the way in challenging pictorial conventions in Bolivia. With the onset of the Cold War, hemispheric unity and Inter-American cooperation shaped U.S. foreign policy, which led to burgeoning interest in Latin American art in the United States. Several gallery directors traveled to La Paz in the mid-1950s, includ­ ing José Gómez-Sicre, Specialist in Art of the Division of Intellectual Cooperation of the Pan American Union in Washington, DC, and Armando Zegrí, director of the Gale­ ría Sudamericana (South American Gallery) in New York. There they met Pacheco and invited her to exhibit in the United States where she relocated permanently in 1956.14 In New York, she received a Guggenheim Foundation grant (that was renewed twice) and held individual exhibitions at the Pan American Union (1957) and the Galería sudameri­ cana (1956 and 1958). By the end of the 1950s, she was an internationally renowned artist, having participated in four São Paulo Biennials, and shown her work in La Paz, Madrid, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Valencia (Venezuela), Barranquilla, New York, Washington DC, Milwaukee, Dallas, Alabama, and Chicago. Although Pacheco abstracted and distorted the objects in her paintings, her work in the 1950s remained figural, in the vein of artists such as Rufino Tamayo, as can be seen in paintings such as Crepúsculo (1956), or Stoic Figure, the painting included in the exhibition South American Art Today in Dallas in 1959. It wasn’t until around 1960 that she transitioned to painting in an entirely non-objective manner. Her exposure to abstract tendencies in New York and at the São Paulo Biennials, which featured a strong showing of informal­ ist abstraction in 1959, the year Pacheco won a prize for painting there, influenced her decision to move in this direction.

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Pacheco’s transition from figuration to abstraction was gradual and entailed a process quite different from that of Araceli. While Araceli readily embraced the constructivist notion of building a new reality from colors and forms entirely disparate from the real world, Pacheco began with a figure or a landscape and gradually simplified her subject’s multitude of shapes and colors to arrive at its essence, but always maintained at least an oblique correlation to her original theme. It was only around 1960 that she began to transcend the visual link between object and representation, making the connection to observed reality a mere suggestion. In works such as Composition (1961), Pacheco still maintains the distinction between figure and ground, with a vertical shaft transecting the right edge of the composition, and a narrow angular offshoot slashing the image horizon­ tally. While these shapes establish a presence, they do not resemble any real-world object or person. She reduced her color palette to shades of deep blue, with areas of white offset­ ting areas of darkness. Texture also emerged as a significant element in her work around 1960. Whereas Pacheco used the palette knife to scrape and spread her paint in works such as Stoic Figure, now she employs the knife to create ridges and valleys and even to sculpt the paint on certain areas of the composition. Her new works signified entirely by means of their formal elements: color, line, form, and texture. Pacheco held her first exhibition of these abstract paintings, not in New York, but at the experimental Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo (Institute of Contemporary Art) in Lima, Peru in 1961, as if testing the waters before debuting her work in her native Bolivia, where non-objective art was not yet fully accepted as a viable modernist tendency. Unlike Bolivia, Peru had an established history of exhibiting abstract works, beginning with Fer­ nando de Szyszlo’s 1952 exhibition of abstract painting; by 1958, with the foundation of the Salon de arte abstracto (Abstract Art Salon), abstraction became the prevailing mode of expression in Peru and therefore a logical place for Pacheco to exhibit. The catalogue listed twenty-six paintings with titles mostly alluding to the abstract nature of the compo­ sitions such as Gray and Ochre, Construction in Blue, or simply Composition, Painting, or Space. While these titles do not refer to a specific location or subject, others suggest generic places such as Desert, Galaxy, or Cosmos. Accordingly, de Szyszlo wrote the text for Pacheco’s exhibition brochure in Lima, praising her “victorious fight to express herself,” her “absolutely contemporary [visual] language,” and her importance as a Latin American painter.15 Significantly, de Szyszlo did not deem it necessary to explain the fact that her paintings were abstract, and the exhibition was positively reviewed in the press. Critic Carlos Rodríguez Saavedra observed that Pacheco focused entirely on “the problem of painting,” and goes on, “The solutions she seeks are therefore purely picto­ rial, without ever resorting to external recourse, ideological commitment or any affective intention.”16 Rodríguez Saavedra also commented on her gender, however, noting that Femininity is often considered a limiting condition in trades traditionally practiced by men. In the case of María Luisa Pacheco, on the contrary, femininity, with its specific attributes – natural vitality, balance, receptivity, sensitivity – is positively situated in the service of her painting.17 Thus, for Rodríguez Saavedra, Pacheco overcame the limitations of her gender by mak­ ing those traits deemed feminine essential characteristics of her work. How, one might ask, is “sensitivity,” “natural vitality,” or “receptivity” communicated in abstract paint­ ing? Are those traits not present in works made by men? The distinction is quite ludicrous and impossible to corroborate, revealing more about the critic’s engrained bias than about the works themselves. These comments demonstrate quite baldly the gendered

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preconceptions Latin American women artists had to surmount to succeed in their cho­ sen profession. In January 1962 Pacheco traveled to La Paz where she held an individual exhibition at the Instituto Cultural Boliviano-Alemán (Bolivian-German Cultural Institute). The exhi­ bition featured twenty-five paintings and two collages, and while there was significant overlap with the Lima show, Pacheco added at least one figural painting, Palliri (1958 or 1960). This addition may have been an attempt to demonstrate to her Bolivian audi­ ence the process through which figuration becomes abstraction, and to provide a con­ ceptual link with the still prevalent trend of indigenism. Palliri, a word in the Aymara language spoken in the Bolivian Andes, refers to the workers who collect and pulverize rock debris left over from the mining industry in search of residual minerals, a task primarily undertaken by women. Pacheco made at least two paintings with this title. A comparison between the 1958 and 1960 versions, the latter of which was most likely the work in the exhibition, highlights Pacheco’s aesthetic trajectory. In 1958 the figure, while drastically simplified, still exemplifies her Tamayo-esque style of the 1950s. While maintaining the same pose, the 1960 version is more loosely defined. Drips of paint seep along the figure’s back and below her knees and feet as if she were wallowing in mud. Pacheco articulated the body with sweeping gestures of roughly applied paint, likening the figure to the craggy boulders on which she labors. Gone are the moon and sky and instead dark shadows, which ordinarily provide a sense of depth, become flat geometric planes on and around the figure. Texture takes precedence, and jagged ridges of paint become a metaphor for extreme physical exertion. Significantly, as the figure becomes more abstract, the strain of hard labor becomes more viscerally perceptible. For her La Paz exhibition, Pacheco asked José Gómez-Sicre, who organized her 1957 exhibition in Washington, DC, to write a text for the brochure. Dated January 5, 1962, the narrative Gómez-Sicre provided explained for neophyte Bolivian audiences her tran­ sition to abstraction: After her arrival in New York, María Luisa . . . freed herself from all remaining moor­ ings and launched into a search for a higher and deeper sense of the Bolivian. Her themes returned to the formal, internal, indefinable mystery of the ancient deities of Tiahuanacu . . . The further her compositions diverged from all confrontation with the real, the more Bolivian the results of her flight became.18 For Gómez-Sicre, as Pacheco’s work becomes more abstract, it actually becomes more Bolivian, embodying the essence of Bolivian identity without directly conveying it. This argument would appeal to those critics who worried that abstraction precluded the com­ munication of meaning and lacked connection to cultural heritage. Gómez-Sicre’s thus dares audiences to perceive Bolivian identity in a new way, not tethered to representation. Pacheco was probably apprehensive about the reception of her exhibition in La Paz. In addition to Gómez-Sicre’s text, she provided a preview of her work to art critic Javier Ugarte, who wrote a preliminary review, which he published in Última Hora several weeks before the exhibition opened to assure audiences of Pacheco’s legitimacy as an abstract artist: Your next exhibition in this city [La Paz] will be this type of show [abstract]. It has been approved and praised by highly qualified critics. She is not a beginner on a new path; she is aware of diverse perspectives, and has meditated and rehearsed each one of

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them until she found her own direction and advanced securely to the level of “connois­ seur.” This is what the public of La Paz will see in María Luisa Pacheco’s individual exhibition . . . The work of a consecrated painter who is today without a doubt the most important Bolivian painter and one of the best in the arts of America.19 Other articles in the press affirmed the groundbreaking nature of her show, calling her the “leader of modern Bolivian painting,” and the exhibition an “artistic event.”20 This need to justify Pacheco’s exhibition is indicative of the cultural environment in La Paz in the early 1960s, and the need to educate audiences about abstract art. Pacheco was among the first to exhibit non-objective paintings in La Paz, a city where in the early 1960s audiences still expected art to be figural, social, and regionally specific. While she did not return to Bolivia again until 1973 for a second exhibition at the Insti­ tuto Cultural Boliviano-Alemán, her 1962 exhibition and her reputation abroad served as a catalyst for greater acceptance of abstract art in Bolivia. Pacheco’s decision to exhibit her non-objective paintings in Peru and Bolivia prior to showing them in New York was also significant. Whereas abstraction was well established in New York by the 1960s, this was not the case in the Andes, thus her exhibition was radical in context, and would have had a greater impact on the local art scene. Once she returned to New York, she reevalu­ ated her approach once again to find a means to distinguish her work in a crowded field, to be an abstract artist without relinquishing a connection to her cultural identity. She did so by employing color, line, form, and title to evoke place and culture, rather than directly portraying the Bolivian landscape or its inhabitants. Pacheco toed the line between abstraction and figuration, creating imagery that could signify across cultures. Tracing the evolution of Pacheco’s abstraction reveals an artist attuned to the pressures of international criticism, who skillfully negotiated her place in that world. While Pacheco and Araceli embraced two distinct modes of abstraction, it is significant that two women were among the first to bring this bold new trend to Andean countries. Indeed, gender may have enabled these two women to foreground their singularity and to forge a space for others, mostly men, to fully embrace abstraction. The indigenism that saturated the Andes in the years Araceli and Pacheco began delving into abstraction was often associated with constructs of masculinity.21 According to critics, muscular bodies of suffering indigenous workers, and harsh expressionistic brushwork revealed the unwa­ vering ideological conviction of the artist, which they deemed a mark of virility. As I have discussed elsewhere, even when women artists such as Carmen Saco or Julia Codesido, participated in indigenist groups, critics described their work as masculine.22 Abstraction may therefore have been an appealing inroad for women artists excluded from rhetoric of masculinity surrounding indigenism. While this rhetoric was quickly reoriented to refer to abstract works, in this moment of transition, women seized the opportunity to forge new paths and lead the way in bringing abstraction to the Andes. Notes 1. In 1954, Ecuadorian artist Manuel Rendón Seminario held an exhibition that included abstract paintings in Guayaquil at the Salon del Club Salic and then in Quito at the Club Femenino de Cultura Hispanica. 2. Benjamín Carrión, “Oswaldo Guayasamín y sus cien cuadros,” Letras del Ecuador 8, no. 81 (December 1952): 11. 3. Alejandro Carrión, “Charla radiada por ondas de la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana de Quito, el 14 de diciembre de 1952,” December 1952, Archivo de la Fundación Guayasamín, clippings file.

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4. Lenin Oña, Araceli (Quito: Banco del Progreso, 1995), 25. 5. Alexander Alberro, Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-TwentiethCentury Latin American Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 75. 6. Araceli Gilbert, undated artist’s manuscript, cited in Oña, Araceli, 45. 7. Museo de Arte Colonial and Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Ritmos de Color (Quito, 1955). 8. Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco, Letras del Ecuador, April–June 1955 cited in Oña, Araceli, 156. No article title provided. 9. José Alfredo Llerena, “Pintar Si, Pero No Objetos,” El Comercio, June 26, 1955, 12. 10. Oña, Araceli, 33. 11. Irene Cárdenas de Arteta, “La Exposición de Araceli,” La Semana, July 11, 1959, reprint of article published in El Comercio, Quito, July 10, 1959. MAAC Archives. 12. “El pintor Kingman nos habla de su arte,” La Nación, source unknown, ca. 1957, Archivo de Eduardo Kingman Riofrío, clipping file. Rubén Astudillo, “Guayasamín,” Syrma 4 (Septem­ ber 1964): 37. 13. Sections of this discussion of María Luisa Pacheco appear in: Michele Greet, “Evoking Place: María Luisa Pacheco’s Abstract Paintings,” Archives of American Art Journal vol. 61, no. 2 Fall 2022, 26–47. 14. Jacqueline Barnitz, “María Luisa Pacheco in the International Art World,” in María Luisa Pacheco (1919–1982), María Luisa Pacheco, ed. (La Paz: Oxígeno Cultura Visual, 2010), 143. 15. Instituto de Arte Contemporaneo and Fernando de Szyszlo, Maria Luisa Pacheco (Lima, 1961). 16. Carlos Rodríguez Saavedra, “María Luisa Pacheco en el Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo,” Expreso (Lima, November  18, 1961). Pacheco file, Art Museum of the Americas (AMA), Washington, DC. 17. Ibid. 18. Instituto Cultural Boliviano-Alemán and José Gómez Sicre, Maria Luisa Pacheco (La Paz, 1962). 19. Javier Ugarte, “María Luisa Pacheco y la Pintura Abstracta,” Última Hora (La Paz, Decem­ ber 27, 1961). Pacheco file, AMA. 20. “Está en La Paz la Primera Figura de la Pintura Boliviana Moderna,” Última Hora (La Paz, November  28, 1961); “Acontecimiento Artístico Constituyó la Exposición de María Luisa Pacheco,” Ultima Hora (La Paz, January 24, 1962). Cited in María Luisa Góngora Pacheco, Tribute to Maria Luisa Pacheco of Bolivia, 1919–1982: Retrospective Exhibition, Novem­ ber 25-December 30 (Washington, DC: Museum of Moderno Art of Latin America, 1986). 21. See Michele Greet, “Manifestations of Masculinity: The Indigenous Body as a Site for Mod­ ernist Experimentation in Andean Art,” Brújula: revista interdisciplinaria sobre estudios lati­ noamericanos. Art and Encounters 6, no. 1 (December 2007): 57–74. 22. Michele Greet, Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920–1960 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 81.

References “Acontecimiento Artístico Constituyó la Exposición de María Luisa Pacheco.” Última Hora, Janu­ ary 24, 1962. Alberro, Alexander. Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-TwentiethCentury Latin American Art. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Astudillo, Rubén. “Guayasamín.” Syrma 4, September 1964. Barnitz, Jacqueline. “María Luisa Pacheco in the International Art World,” in María Luisa Pacheco, ed. María Luisa Pacheco (1919–1982). La Paz: Oxígeno Cultura Visual, 2010, 143–154. Cárdenas de Arteta, Irene. “La Exposición de Araceli.” La Semana, July 11, 1959 (reprint of article published in El Comercio, Quito, July  10, 1959. Guayaquil: Museo Antropológico y de Arte Contemporáneo Archives). Carrión, Alejandro. Charla radiada por ondas de la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana de Quito, el 14 de diciembre de 1952. Archivo de la Fundación Guayasamín, clippings file, December 1952. Carrión, Benjamín. “Oswaldo Guayasamín y sus cien cuadros.” Letras del Ecuador 8, Decem­ ber 1952: 81.

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“El Pintor Kingman nos habla de su arte,” La Nación, source unknown, Archivo de Eduardo Kingman Riofrío, clipping file, ca. 1957. “Está en La Paz la Primera Figura de la Pintura Boliviana Moderna.” Ultima Hora, November 28, 1961. Góngora Pacheco, María Luisa. Tribute to Maria Luisa Pacheco of Bolivia, 1919–1982: Retro­ spective Exhibition, November 25-December 30. Washington, DC: Museum of Moderno Art of Latin America, 1986. Greet, Michele. “Manifestations of Masculinity: The Indigenous Body as a Site for Modernist Experimentation in Andean Art.” Brújula: revista interdisciplinaria sobre estudios latinoameri­ canos. Art and Encounters, 6, no. 1, December 2007: 57–74. Greet, Michele. Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920–1960. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Instituto Cultural Boliviano-Alemán and José Gómez Sicre. Maria Luisa Pacheco. La Paz: Instituto Cultural Boliviano-Alemán, 1962. Instituto de Arte Contemporaneo and Fernando de Szyszlo. Maria Luisa Pacheco. Lima: Instituto de Arte Contemporaneo, 1961. Llerena, José Alfredo. “Pintar Si, Pero No Objetos.” El Comercio, June 26, 1955. Museo de Arte Colonial and Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Ritmos de Color. Quito: Museo de Arte Colonial and Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, 1955. Oña, Lenin. Araceli. Quito: Banco del Progreso, 1995. Pareja Diezcanseco, Alfredo. Letras del Ecuador, April–June 1955. Rodríguez Saavedra, Carlos. “María Luisa Pacheco en el Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo,” in Expreso (Lima). Pacheco file. Washington, DC: Art Museum of the Americas (AMA), Novem­ ber 18, 1961. Ugarte, Javier. “María Luisa Pacheco y la Pintura Abstracta.” Ultima Hora, December 27, 1961. Pacheco file. Washington, DC: Art Museum of the Americas (AMA).

16 The Global Contexts of Modern African Art Negotiating Blackness, Modern Art, and African Identities in Paris Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie In November 1946, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiza­ tion (UNESCO) presented an exhibition of modern art in Paris. Titled the Exposition Internationale d’art Moderne, the event inaugurated an ambitious agenda to promote world peace through international cooperation in education, sciences, and culture.1 In addition to notable European modern artists such as Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, the exhibition also included artworks by the Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu. Julian Hux­ ley, Director General of UNESCO from 1946 to 1948, specifically invited the artist to participate in the exhibition and it launched Enwonwu’s career as an acclaimed modern artist. Right from its inception, UNESCO officials had great ambitions for the role that their organization could play in the art world, given its international reach.2 “These officials were part of a cosmopolitan elite, motivated by the idea that a universal culture shared by all the different peoples of the world was the only real long-term remedy to another World War.”3 The UNESCO exhibition contributed to a polycentric and global art canon through the diversity of artists it represented. Enwonwu’s inclusion in its exhi­ bition highlights a plethora of African artists who studied, lived, or worked in Paris at important points in their careers. These include Aina Onabolu, Gerard Sekoto, Gazbia Sirry, and Iba Ndiaye. Modern African art’s cosmopolitan orientation and its deploy­ ment of visual languages of modernism framed international reception of these artists, all of whom emerged from urban centers in Africa. Their interaction with Paris allows us to examine how they negotiated blackness and African identities within global contexts of modern art. In the years between 1920 and 1970, many pioneer African artists circulated through Paris. Read against a concurrent history of France’s colonial history and jazz-age African American cultural interventions, Paris emerges as an important site in the discourse of blackness and modern African art. I am interested in how the sojourn of African artists in Paris redefines African artists as active agents in narratives of global modernity. The African artists discussed operated in cosmopolitan contexts both in Africa and Europe. They came from Lagos, Cape Town, Cairo, and Dakar, some passing briefly through Paris while others spent longer durations or lived out their lives there. Aina Onabolu (1881–1963) studied at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1922 before returning to Nige­ ria where his practice unfolded for four decades thereafter. Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993) moved from South Africa to live in exile in France, fleeing from what Joshua Cohen described as the burden of representation imposed by patrons upon pioneering black South African artists.4 Considered one of South Africa’s pioneer black modernists, Seko­ to’s paintings chronicled the traumatic changes forced on black South Africans by an emergent apartheid system during the 1940s. Egyptian artist Gazbia Sirry (1925–2021) DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-21

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studied at the Studio of Marcel Gromaire in Paris in 1951 and contributed to a feminist consciousness of “what it meant to be a modern Egyptian in a world of conflicting and complimentary political, cultural and artistic ideologies.”5 Senegalese artist Iba Ndiaye (1928–2008) studied in France from 1948 to 1959 and returned to live in Paris from 1966 until his death. I have listed these artists chronologically to reflect how divergent historical contexts – colonialism, World War II, Cold War politics, nationalist struggles, and postcolonialism – impacted their careers and structured how they negotiated blackness, modern art, and African identities in Paris. From 1946 onwards, the history and global politics of the world was constructed of binary opposites that pitted capitalism against socialism and the unfolding telos of modern art defined European modernism against the assumed primitivism of African and other non-Western artists. Yet Paris at the time was also home to the intense and varied creativity of a diverse group of foreign artists. They had come to the city with different motives and aspirations, and the plurality of their languages and visions defies attempts to categorize their work.6 The sojourn of African artists in Paris unfolded as an overlapping sequence of artistic engagements. The particulars of their individual histories, styles, and artistic orienta­ tions vary and deserve scrutiny. This is necessary because “[w]hereas Euro-American art genealogies tend to be discussed in terms of ideas and imagination, tout court, art from outside that realm still often gets pegged to artists’ identities, and framed as the product of experiences marked as ‘other’.”7 Too often, African modern artists are seen as bearers of ideological platforms rather than individual expression. I argue we need to reevaluate the focus on “African identity” in discussions about their works bearing in mind that their cosmopolitan histories and professional practice linked Paris to various African sites of modernist discourse. I am therefore interested in what their presence in Paris reveals: what kinds of art training did they receive and who did they interact with? How does this help us evaluate their art and involvement in modernist discourses? How did they engage or contest emergent politics of Pan-African identity? What kinds of inter­ pretative frameworks are needed to define their works as platforms for the expression of intent, action, and intellectual engagement? These art historical issues have not been given enough attention and require more analysis. Black Paris: Race and Representation in the City of Light The notion of Black Paris, which identifies the intersection of African Americans, Afri­ cans, and other diaspora blacks in the city, is the subject of serious study in African American history and also in modern African art. African Americans left a lasting mark on Paris, especially during the jazz age when Paris became a haven for those fleeing the repressive policies of Jim Crow segregation in the United States. Starting with Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937) who moved to Paris in 1891 to study at the Académie Julian, black artists have sought in Paris a freedom to create and they were received as bearers of unique creative sensibilities. The European avant-garde fetishized black culture and music, and celebrated performers such as Josephine Baker who was, on November  30, 2021, inducted into the Pantheon, the mausoleum of French heroes often described as the “temple of the French nation.”8 Paris was a key location for the

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emergence of anti-colonial Pan-African ideology that originated with W.E.B. DuBois’ 1919 Pan-African Congress in Paris. It was also the site of the 1956 “First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists, organized at the Sorbonne by Alioune Diop, to bring together West Indians, Americans and Africans in order to discuss Marcus Garvey’s vision of a unified black world.”9 These events bookmark an important history of global black identity activism. Furthermore, Paris looms large in the canonical, albeit contested, histories of modernism as the gathering place of the most prominent Euromodernists and the ur-site of the modern art movement. In his seminal 1993 book, The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy described Europe, Africa, and the African Diaspora as interconnected contexts that produced a distinctively mod­ ern, transatlantic cultural-political space that is not specifically African, American, Car­ ibbean, or British, but rather a hybrid mix of all of these identities at once.10 In this regard, Paris was a charged site for the transcontinental and transatlantic circulation of ideas, texts, and objects. As significant for its imaginary topography as for its actual landscape, the Paris inhabited by black [people] . . . refers as much to the product of such interna­ tional traffic as it does to the real conditions of Parisian life itself.11 The city was both a reality and a myth whose actuality intersects with the imaginary constructed through the close alignment of its social and cultural engagements. France was a colonial empire whose reach and influence remains central to the postcolonial imagination of its former African colonies. For people of African descent who lived in Paris, their “approaches to public self-representation were born, in significant part, of the Atlantic power structure’s attempts to deny them access to cosmopolitan subjectivity.”12 As such, the value of Paris as a special space for black transnational interaction, exchange, and dialogue is remarkable to the extent that such interactions have been instrumental to the broader intellectual, literary, and political projects that fought against the domination of capitals, empires, and colonial forms of subjectivity.13 For Blacks in Paris, the traffic in ideas within the terrain of the Black Atlantic was never merely linear or unidirectional.14 Rather, “African American and Caribbean students learned of Africa, its languages, religions, and customs firsthand from their African class­ mates, and the young Africans gained insight into the perseverance of Africanness and Africanisms within populations long absent from the continent itself.”15 Through this contact, African students found a means of locating their colonial experiences within a larger revolutionary structure, fighting against oppression and discrimination on both sides of the Atlantic. Both groups translated the knowledge gained into powerful pre­ scriptions for political action in nationalist and postcolonial struggles. One might thus conclude that Paris was a city where everything was possible, a land of liberty, fraternity, and equality without the shackles of racial discrimination. However, for many Africans, it was in reality a place of great difficulty as they negotiated their status as colonial citizens within a European social order that regarded them as inferior. Harry C. Alford argues that beyond the rhetoric of freedom and racial integration, blacks in France are essentially invisible.16 Yet, as Maureen Murphy noted, Paris was also home to the intense and varied creativity of blacks and a diverse group of foreign artists. They had come to the city with different motives and aspirations, and the plurality of their lan­ guages and visions defies attempts to categorize their work.17 Locating the African mod­ ernist artists discussed here within the cosmopolitan complexity of their lived experience

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in Paris allows us to begin shaping the theoretical tools capable of dealing with this moment of shared history. Aina Onabolu at the Académie Julian Nigerian artist Aina Onabolu is widely regarded as the pioneer of modern African art. Originally self-taught, Onabolu enrolled at the Académie Julian in 1922 after studying at St. John’s Wood School of Art in London. The famous Académie Julian was estab­ lished in 1868 by painter and administrator Rodolphe Julian (1839–1905) as a private studio school for art students. “Founded at a time when art was about to undergo a long series of crucial mutations, the Académie Julian played host to painters and sculptors of every kind and persuasion and never tried to make them hew to any one particular line.”18 According to John Russell, more than fifty nationalities were represented at the school during its glory years including Turks, Syrians, Peruvians, Chileans, and Japanese students who gave the school its ethnic richness.19 It also admitted female students at a time when they couldn’t study in official French art schools. During its golden age from 1875 to 1925, the school was one of the best art schools of its type. It attracted talented students and teachers, and many of its graduates from that era became notable modern artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They include Diego Rivera (Mexico), Marcel Duchamp (France), Robert Rauschenberg (USA), Henry Moore (UK), Shanu Lahiri (India), and Jean Dubuffet (France). The overall list of its graduates is remarkable but “if the Académie Julian has a unique place among schools of art, it is not simply for big names, no matter how impressive. It is because the school operated as a free city of the spirit [and] a miniature cosmopolis.”20 Onabolu was the only notable black African graduate of the Académie Julian and even if the artists mentioned above were not his contemporaries, his presence at this institu­ tion requires greater investigation to identify its impact on his work. Onabolu’s interest in developing modern art in Africa was a fundamental aspect of his career as an artist. He was obsessed with British history painter Joshua Reynolds and self-published a trea­ tise in which he outlined a history of art that celebrated history painting a la Reynolds as exemplar.21 Onabolu’s British education structured this narrative but his time at the Académie Julian is evident in his predilection for drawing nude female figures. Nudes were an established part of many art school curricula but were particularly favored at the Académie Julian. During his studies, Onabolu also investigated a wide range of con­ tinental European art and studied the works of Renaissance artists in situ. For example, he appropriated imagery from a fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Masaccio titled Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1425).22 Onabolu’s version of this painting, Adam and Eve (1954), adapted Massacio’s artwork with a notable twist: he added fig leaves to the naked figures in deference to his staunch Christian morality. As a member of the Lagos elite in colonial Nigeria, Onabolu emerged from a cosmo­ politan multi-ethnic, multicultural, politically active environment of African intellectu­ als locked in anti-colonial contestations with the British colonial government.23 In that regard, his artworks documented efforts by members of the Nigerian intellectual elite to narrate themselves into being by deploying the visual arts as a counter-narrative to colonial effacement of the African subject. He expressed this aspiration through stately portraits of doctors, lawyers, engineers, chiefs, and local rulers that constituted Lagos upper-class society. Privately, he produced nude and semi-nude studies (mostly drawings) of women, a radical act in a colonial environment in which both Christianity and Yoruba

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Figure 16.1 Aina Onabolu, Adam & Eve, 1954, oil on panel, 41 1/8 × 23 7/16 in. (104.5 × 59.5 cm). Source: Photograph courtesy of Bonhams.

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culture discouraged such imagery. In this regard, Onabolu’s art retained the mode of representation he learned at the Académie Julian, which did not reflect the avant-garde orthodoxy of the sort represented by Picasso and other Euromodernists in Paris. How­ ever, aspects of his paintings, such as his detailed patterning of textiles, shallow pictorial space, elongation of figures, muted tonalities, and color palette, suggest he was quite aware of ongoing modernist experiments and that they influenced his aesthetic choices in subtle ways. There is thus an argument to be made that Onabolu’s formal education at the Aca­ démie Julian, his study of classical painting techniques, and his appropriation of Italian frescoes are less analyzed aspects of his artistic practice. The fact that he studied at the Académie Julian is often mentioned without further comment, as if it is irrelevant to his subsequent development; it might well be, but that awaits serious examination of his oeuvre. In the meantime, reading this experience into Onabolu’s art greatly expands and complicates the historical sites of modern African art. Gerard Sekoto: Songs of Exile Gerard Sekoto was born in the Transvaal in 1913, a year marked by the introduction of the first segregation legislation passed by the Parliament of South Africa – the “Natives Land Act.” “The series of measures taken by the government to exploit, alienate and degrade non-white South Africans that followed the Land Act drove Gerard Sekoto . . . into self-imposed exile [in] Paris where he stayed until his death in 1993.”24 Sekoto arrived in Paris in 1947 but his career was already on an upswing before his exile. He had won second prize for painting in a competition organized by Fort Hare University College in 1938. Encouraged by this achievement he moved to Sophiatown, a suburb of Johannesburg, to pursue a career as a full-time artist. He subsequently relocated to Cape Town in 1942 where he interacted with white South African artists. Up to this point, Sekoto’s art mostly documented black life at the fringes of the urban metropolis. He exhibited his works in a number of galleries in Cape Town and achieved significant recognition but concerns about achieving his full potential under South Africa’s margin­ alization of blacks ultimately caused him to leave the country. As a black artist, Sekoto faced a very limited horizon of opportunity, which makes his overall experiences and self-imposed exile to Paris remarkable. A Christian and the son of a priest and teacher, Sekoto belonged to a new South African black elite.25 His work reflects what John Peffer defined as a “struggle for a nonracial aesthetic practice in South Africa within overlapping contexts of the modernist reception of indigenous approaches to art [and] the draconian racial policies” of the emergent apartheid state.26 Peffer argues that Sekoto’s art presaged the emergence of a nonracial South Africa and his paintings of urban life played a key role in the development of black South African art. They were also experiments with modernist styles and patronage: his audi­ ence and principal collectors were white middle-class patrons, critics, and artists. Sekoto interacted with members of the New Group, a collective of progressive young South African artists who studied in Europe. In the 1930s, they opposed the conservative values championed by the South African Society of Artists.27 According to Peffer, Sekoto “met with Judith Gluckman and Alexis Preller . . . painted alongside Preller . . . and learned the rudiments of working in oil in Gluckman’s studio.”28 These interactions were part of what Peffer defined as “gray areas,” sites and locations where black and white South

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Figure 16.2 Gerard Sekoto, Portrait of a Youth, n.d. (ca. 1950s), oil on canvas, 61 × 50 cm (24 × 19 11/16 in.). Source: Photograph courtesy of Bonhams.

African artists and culture workers mingled during apartheid. These furtive interactions primed Sekoto’s decision to leave South Africa. Sekoto was an already established artist when he arrived in Paris where he retained his figurative style and continued to create art that documented South Africa’s political and social issues, as well as scenes from his life in Paris.29 Sekoto did not speak French when he arrived in Paris and he faced personal and professional challenges in his first two years in the city, fighting depression and poverty. He lived in a tiny apartment, attended

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drawing classes during the day at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, an art school in Paris, and worked in various bars as a piano player to earn additional income. He docu­ mented his experience in paintings of Parisian bars and jazz musicians. South African artist and fellow exile, Ernest Mancoba, noted that it was easy for an artist (and especially a black artist) to feel isolated in Paris and many have died there in loneliness and poverty.30 Sekoto was somewhat lucky in this regard. A chance encounter with Raymond de Cardone and his wife, Else-Clausen, who owned the Galerie ElseClausen afforded him an introduction to the Paris gallery circuit.31 They held a solo exhibition of Sekoto’s work in 1948 which opened to favorable reviews. Although it did not garner adequate sales, it brought him some attention. Sekoto subsequently devel­ oped a rich social life mingling with writers, artists, and academics from all over the world, many of whom lived in Paris as exiles.32 Through these interactions, he became involved with the Pan-African movement, contributing to Présence Africaine, the literary and cultural journal founded by Leopold Sedar Senghor and Aimé Césaire. They invited him to attend the Second Congress of Negro Writers and Artists organized by Présence Africaine in Rome in 1959. His reputation grew steadily and the following years saw him exhibiting fairly extensively both in Paris and further afield in Stockholm, Vichy, Venice, Nemours, Senegal, Denmark, the United States, and in South Africa where his work was exhibited in Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Cape Town. Julie McGee notes that Sekoto poses a dilemma for art history because there is a ten­ dency to essentialize his art by relating it to his ethnicity and nationality.33 Despite living in France from 1947 till he died in 1993, a total of 54 years, he has been recovered for art history as a quintessential South African artist. However, his artworks are yet to be fully integrated into the discourse of modernism or evaluated in terms of his life and sojourn in France. We need to interrogate this insistence on Sekoto’s African identity against the cosmopolitan framework of his life as an exile in Paris. It is vital to narrate Sekoto within this larger social and historical landscape to save the artist from ideological narratives defined solely by nationality, race, or ethnicity. Gazbia Sirry: Race, Gender, and Power The Egyptian artist Gazbia Sirry’s death on November 10, 2021, at the age of 96, brought to a close one of the most extraordinary careers by a modern Egyptian artist. Born in 1925 to an aristocratic Turkish family in Cairo, Sirry spent the least amount of time stud­ ying or living in Paris than any of the artists discussed in this essay. Sirry was raised by her widowed mother and divorced grandmother in a predominantly female household. Both ensured she received a broad international education. She obtained her diploma from the Higher Institute for Young Women in Cairo in 1948 and subsequently studied painting and engraving with Marcel Gromaire in Paris in 1951. Sirry furthered her stud­ ies at the Egyptian Academy in Rome in 1952 and took painting and lithography classes at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1954 to 1955. She returned to Cairo and taught art and art education for two decades before striking out as an independent artist, in protest against a state ban on figure drawing and nude models. The institutions Sirry studied in emphasized figurative imagery and a reliance on canonical modes of academic instruction in art. This makes her progression from figuration to abstraction all the more remarkable. How can we chart the impact of her Paris sojourn on Sirry’s art given the short ten­ ure of her education in the city? We must look to her studies with Marcel Gromaire

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(1892–1971) for answers. Gromaire was immersed in the Parisian art world and gained early recognition after exhibiting at the Salon des Independents in 1911. He received advise on art from Henri Matisse, frequented Parisian art academies, and staked out ground against the avant-garde as a figurative painter whose realist imagery insisted on the importance of the subject. In time, he became associated with Social Realism but was more of an independent artist who refused to be locked into any group or movement. Sirry was an equally independent artist who refused to be bound by pre­ vailing conventions. She developed a feminist consciousness early in life and women of all social classes were recurrent protagonists in her work. Gromaire’s socialist realism style reinforced Sirry’s orientation to social issues but one must caution against claims of direct influence since she was involved in nationalist debates about the struggle for modern identity in Egypt before she left Cairo for Paris. However, elements of Gro­ maire’s style persisted in Sirry’s art from her early focus on quotidian scenes of domes­ ticity to late-stage abstract paintings suffused by primary colors outlined in bold brown and black lines. Sirry was committed to social and political commentary and her art “significantly contributed to the discourse of nationalism, cultural emancipation, gender politics, and individual freedoms within the sovereign modern [Egyptian] state.”34 Her career evinced a feminist consciousness of “what it meant to be a modern Egyptian in a world of conflicting and complimentary political, cultural and artistic ideologies.”35 Sirry also investigated the politics of race in Egyptian culture through divergent representations of “Egyptians” (Arabs) and “Nubians” (Blacks) in her paintings. This reflects Egypt’s own ambivalence about the role of blacks in its history and its own place in Africa. Sirry’s paintings evolved through several distinct phases throughout her career but were grounded by her search for the essence of Egyptian identity in all its facets. Egypt’s herit­ age of Pharaonic, Islamic, and modern identities created multiple polarities; nevertheless, the eclecticism and heterogeneity of modern Egypt provided points of engagement or contestation through her career. Iba N’Diaye: Art, Ideology, and Sacrifice Iba N’Diaye, pioneer Senegalese modern artist, arrived in Paris in 1948 to study art at the École de Beaux Arts in Montpellier. N’Diaye was born in 1928 in Saint-Louis, Senegal, to a Catholic mother and Muslim father. Their unusual union reflected the cosmopolitan ambience of a city long celebrated as a cultural melting pot since the 15th century when the Portuguese established Gorée, an island off the Coast of Senegal, as a principal node of the transatlantic slave trade. Dakar was a major regional port and in 1902, it replaced Saint-Louis as the capital of French West Africa. The French presence remains strong and Dakar’s hybrid mix of indigenous African and French cultures is reflected in its descrip­ tion as the “Paris of Africa.”36 N’Diaye trained as an architect in Senegal before moving to France. From 1949 to 1958, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He subsequently apprenticed in the sculpture studios of the Russian-born avant-garde sculptor Ossip Zadkine (Yossel Aro­ novich Tsadkin) and Pierre Coutin, a painter and engraver. Zadkine, who was friends with Pablo Picasso, reputedly introduced N’Diaye to Cubism’s experiments with Afri­ can sculpture. N’Diaye’s art shows Coutin’s influence in his orientation to expressionist brushwork and an atonal color palette.

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N’Diaye co-founded training programs in Senegal that contributed to one of Africa’s most important sites of modern and contemporary art practice, the École de Dakar. In 1959, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Negritude ideologue and the first president of independ­ ent Senegal, invited N’Diaye to head the Department of Plastic Arts section of the newly formed École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Dakar. N’Diaye worked alongside acclaimed Senegalese artist Papa Ibra Tall who headed the school’s other section for Research in Black Plastic Arts. The artists disagreed about how best to teach art: Tall was a strict proponent of Negritude’s search for “Africanness” and he advocated unlearning Western habits to discover authentic African forms of expression. N’Diaye considered this search for Africanness problematic and insisted that students must adapt African and Western art traditions to create a new and modern African art. For N’Diaye, the idea of essential­ ist African identities – a central tenet of Senghorian Negritude – ran counter to the cos­ mopolitan heritage of African artists who emerged from African cities where indigenous culture and foreign influences combined to birth modern subjects. N’Diaye ultimately became disillusioned with the ideological orientation of the Dakar School and returned to France in 1967. French culture exerted a great influence on N’Diaye. He was particularly intrigued by the vibrant Parisian jazz scene as were numerous African artists in Paris. Nevertheless, his paintings used figurative and sym­ bolic imagery to represent important African cultural ideals. He produced ten paintings featuring rams in a series on the theme of Tabaski, a Senegalese ceremony marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan that was celebrated every year through the sacrifice of rams. His paintings of rams awaiting slaughter or being processed are remi­ niscent of similar images by the Paris-based Belarussian painter Chaim Soutine, and Brit­ ish figurative painter Francis Bacon whose paintings were included in the 1946 UNESCO exhibition. N’Diaye’s fascination with French culture doesn’t imply wholesale acceptance of France’s colonial and imperial history in Africa. He was fully aware of the contradic­ tion between French ideals of liberty and its treatment of both colonized Africans and the African Americans whose culture, especially jazz music, it celebrated. Iba N’Diaye captured this contradiction in his painting Juan de Pareja Menace par les Chiens (1986), which directly references Diego Veláquez’s Portrait of Juan de Pareja (1650). Juan de Pareja (1610–1670) was Velasuqez’s Morisco slave, studio assistant, and artist in his own right. He was manumitted by his master in 1654. In N’Diaye’s interpretation, Juan de Pareja is shown in his studio staring languidly at the viewer while a pack of dogs with bared fangs loom over the artist from the right side of the canvas. Pareja had secretly taught himself to paint even though Spanish law forbade such education for slaves. He thus lived in mortal fear of being discovered and punished by his master. Velasquez’s por­ trait of Juan de Pareja was the first painting to sell for more than £1 million (one million British pounds), an ironic record of how the embodied image of a Morisco slave con­ tinued to reap immense profits for various owners long after his death. N’Diaye likened Juna de Pareja’s situation to the ambivalent and fraught relationship between Europeans and blacks (Africans and African Americans alike) in the Black Atlantic’s history of slav­ ery and colonialism. For African artists and intellectuals under colonialism, the French colonial policy of assimilation provided an impossible ideal since acculturated blacks were confronted with their dark skins as a permanent marker of difference.37 Neverthe­ less, N’Diaye believed in Senghor’s project of a universal humanism and throughout his career, his paintings expressed this ideal even as they critiqued France’s inability to live up to it.

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Conclusion The artists discussed in this essay – Aina Onabolu, Gerard Sekoto, Gazbia Sirry, and Iba N’Diaye – engaged cosmopolitan modernity in Paris. They had diverse education and interacted with the European avant-garde and a wide range of international modern art­ ists and used pan-African and Negritude ideologies to negotiate the politics of race. Do we run a risk of subverting the agency of African modern artists by using their sojourn in Paris as a key marker of their careers? Not necessarily. African artists encountered great constraints in their efforts to engage modernism both in their colonized homelands and in Paris. Colonial governments constrained their practice at home and “when they migrated to the West, they faced institutions that still perceived them as ‘primitives’ or the ‘others’. If they defied this perception, they were ignored and written out of history.”38 I have therefore argued that we need a more complex analysis of the various contexts in which modern African art developed so as not to minimize its international orientation or cosmopolitan origins. Rasheed Araeen notes that mere citation of the international sojourns of these artists is not enough. It must be accompanied by a critical analysis or reading of their work that recognizes its historical importance to the main body of ideas within modernism and through this, claim Africa’s place in its genealogies. Promoting cosmopolitan perspectives does not occlude African artists’ engagement with Pan-Africanism, anti-colonialism, and nationalism, or challenge their identities as African modernists. Rather, their achievement as participants in global modernism flies in the face of all the binaries that are constructed by colonialism – White/Black, Colonizer/Colonized, Self/Other, Modern/Primitive, etc. – and whose legacies continue to undermine the freedom of the postcolonial liberated subject, by denying him/her a place within the genealogy of mainstream modernism.39 The high degree of circulation between France and citizens of African nations that emerged from its former colonies proves that African artists operated in international contexts and invalidates effort to read their work through a primitivist discourse. I also noted the large African American presence in Paris in the 1920s and their pursuit of greater freedom from Jim Crow policies whose oppressive and lethal violence proved an existential threat to black life. The jazz music they created, a veritable soundtrack to the unfolding of global modernism in Paris, was used by African artists such as Sekoto and N’Diaye to forge links with African American intellectuals. Paris therefore represented a greater context of autonomy for modern African artists in general. The paradox is that their freedom contrasts with a history of French colonial subjugation that subjected Afri­ cans to surreal violence in the name of empire. This paradox persists in the contemporary era even as Paris remains a context of symbolic and political importance that continues to attract black artists. Notes 1. Musee d’art moderne, Exposition Internationale d’art Moderne: Peinture, art graphique et decoratif, architecture (Paris: UNESCO, November 18–December 28, 1946). 2. “What Is UNESCO?” www.unesco.org/en/brief (accessed January 16, 2022). 3. Chiara Vitali, “How to Build a World Art: The Strategic Universalism of Colour Reproductions and the UNESCO Prize (1953–1968),” Artl@s Bulletin 10, no. 1 (2021): 74.

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4. Joshua I. Cohen, “Identity and Abstraction: Ernest Mancoba in Paris, 1938–1940,” Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), https://post.moma.org/identity-and-abstraction-ernest-mancoba-in­ london-and-paris-1938-1940/ (accessed December 5, 2021). 5. Chika Okeke-Agulu, “Politics by Other Means: Two Egyptian Artist, Gazbia Sirry and Ghada Amer,” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 6, no. 2 (2006): 122. 6. Serge Guilbaut, Amanda Herold-Marme, Kaira M. Cabañas, Tom McDonough, Maureen Murphy, and Isabel Plante, Let Loose and Loved: Foreign Artists in Paris 1944–1968 (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2018), 4. 7. Cohen, “Identity and Abstraction: Ernest Mancoba in Paris, 1938–1940.” 8. Eleanor Beardsley, “Josephine Baker Is the First Black Woman to Be Inducted into France’s Pantheon,” NPR, November  30, 2021, www.npr.org/2021/11/30/1059776777/josephine­ baker-france-pantheon (accessed December 8, 2021). 9. Simon Njami, “Foreword,” in Black Paris: The African Writers’ Landscape, Bennetta JulesRosette, ed. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), xii. 10. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993). 11. Jeremy Braddock and Jonathan P. Eburne, Paris: Capital of the Black Atlantic: Literature, Modernity, and Diaspora (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2013), 3. 12. Ifeoma Ikide Nwankwo, Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Iden­ tity in Nineteenth-Century America (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 10. 13. Braddock and Eburne, Paris: Capital of the Black Atlantic, 4. 14. Elizabeth Harney, In Senghor’s Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960– 1995 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 27. 15. Harney, In Senghor’s Shadow, 27. 16. Harry C. Alford, “Beyond the Rhetoric: Blacks in France Are Invisible,” www.nationalbcc.org/ news/beyond-the-rhetoric/457-blacks-in-france-are-invisible (accessed April 13, 2022). 17. Maureen Murphy, “Moments of a Shared History: African Artists in Paris 1944–1968,” in Lost, Loose and Loved: Foreign Artists in Paris, 1944–1968 (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2018), 211–219. 18. John Russell, “An Art School That Also Taught Life,” The New York Times, March 19, 1989, Section 2, 33, www.nytimes.com/1989/03/19/arts/art-view-an-art-school-that-also-taught-life. html (accessed January 6, 2021). 19. Russell, “An Art School That Also Taught Life.” 20. Ibid. 21. Aina Onabolu, A Short Discourse on Art (Lagos: Aina Onabolu, 1920). 22. Massacio is the common name of Florentine artist Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Cassai (1401–1428). 23. Nkiru Nzegwu, “Temporality, Oriki, and Nigeria’s Contemporary Art,” in Aesthetic Tempo­ ralities Today: Present, Presentness, Re-Presentation, Gabriele Genge, Ludger Schwarte, and Angela Stercken, eds. (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2020): 87–100. 24. Chloë Reid, “The Artist/Sekoto’s Life,” The Gerard Sekoto Foundation, www.gerardsekoto­ foundation.com/artist-overview.htm (accessed March 8, 2022). 25. The South African Black middle class was the subject of photographer Santu Mofokeng’s Black Photo Album: Look at Me: 1890–1950 (Gottingen: Steidl, 2013). 26. John Peffer, Art and the End of Apartheid (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), x. 27. The New Group artists in South Africa included Louis Marice, Gregoire Boonzaier, Judith Gluckman, Alexis Preller, Solly Disner, and Walter Batiss. 28. Peffer, Art and the End of Apartheid, 3. 29. For an account of Sekoto’s artistic engagements in Paris, see Elizabeth Harney, “Constellations and Coordinates: Repositioning Postwar Paris in Stories of African Modernisms,” in Mapping Modernisms: Art, Indigeneity and Colonialism, Elizabeth Harney and Ruth B. Phillips, eds. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 304–334. 30. Obrist, “An Interview with Ernest Mancoba,” 376. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Julie L. McGee, review of “Within Loving Memory of the Century: An Autobiography by Azaria J. C. Mbatha; Gerard Sekoto: ‘I am an African’ by N. Chabani Manganyi,” African Arts 39, no. 3 (2006): 10, 90–91, 96.

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34. Okeke-Agulu, “Politics by Other Means,” 118. 35. Okeke-Agulu, “Politics by Other Means,” 122. 36. Marilyn Bender, “The Paris of Africa,” New York Times, April 1, 1984; Section 10, 19, https:// www.nytimes.com/1984/04/01/travel/the-paris-of-africa.html (accessed January 11, 2021). 37. For analysis of how the ideology of assimilation affected black intellectuals in the global con­ text of colonialism, see Lilyan Kesteloot, Black Writers in French: A Literary History of Negri­ tude (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1974). 38. Araeen, “Modernity, Modernism, and Africa’s Place in the History of Art of Our Age,” 412. 39. Araeen, “Modernity, Modernism, and Africa’s Place in the History of Art of Our Age,” 417.

References Alford, Harry C. “Beyond the Rhetoric: Blacks in France Are Invisible.” www.nationalbcc.org/ news/beyond-the-rhetoric/457-blacks-in-france-are-invisible (accessed April 13, 2022). Beardsley, Eleanor. “Josephine Baker Is the First Black Woman to Be Inducted into France’s Pan­ theon.” NPR, November  30, 2021, www.npr.org/2021/11/30/1059776777/josephine-baker­ france-pantheon (accessed December 8, 2021). Bender, Marilyn. “The Paris of Africa.” New York Times, April 1, 1984, Section 10, 19, https:// www.nytimes.com/1984/04/01/travel/the-paris-of-africa.html (accessed January 11, 2021). Braddock, Jeremy and Jonathan P. Eburne. Paris: Capital of the Black Atlantic: Literature, Moder­ nity, and Diaspora (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2013). Cohen, Joshua I. “Identity and Abstraction: Ernest Mancoba in Paris, 1938–1940.” Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), https://post.moma.org/identity-and-abstraction-ernest-mancoba-in­ london-and-paris-1938–1940/ (accessed December 5, 2021). Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993). Guilbaut, Serge, Amanda Herold-Marme, Kaira M. Cabañas, Tom McDonough, Maureen Mur­ phy, and Isabel Plante. Let Loose and Loved: Foreign Artists in Paris 1944–1968 (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2018). Harney, Elizabeth. “Constellations and Coordinates: Repositioning Postwar Paris in Stories of African Modernisms,” in Mapping Modernisms: Art, Indigeneity and Colonialism, eds. Eliza­ beth Harney and Ruth B. Phillips (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 304–334. Harney, Elizabeth. In Senghor’s Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960–1995 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). Harney, Elizabeth and Ruth B. Phillips, eds. Mapping Modernisms: Art, Indigeneity and Colonial­ ism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018). Musee d’art moderne. Exposition Internationale d’art Moderne: Peinture, art graphique et deco­ ratif, architecture (Paris: UNESCO, 1946).

17 A Full Embrace of the Global in Modern Art International Exhibitions and the Re-writing of Art History Clare Kunny The International Exhibition The role of exhibitions in presenting modern art from all reaches of the world is noted in numerous essays in this anthology. In the 19th century, international exhibitions and World’s Fairs gathered for a Western audience a wide range of objects and people. Fueled by imperialism, as Anne Helmrich notes, the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851 brought under one umbrella a visual hierarchy that mapped and classified the world in a microcosm. Helmrich notes that the knowledge about other cultures was filtered through Western eyes and voices. Moving to the 20th century, Sylvester Ogbechie’s essay points to the UNESCO exhibition in Paris, presented in November 1946. Ogbechie argues that, through the diversity of artists it represented, this exhibition contributed to the devel­ opment of a polycentric and global art canon. He continues that from World War II onwards, both history and global politics were constructed from binary opposites: capi­ talism against socialism and European modern art, as defined by modernism, against the assumed primitivism of African and other non-Western art. The African modernist artists discussed in Ogbechie’s essay are located by him within the cosmopolitan complexity and shared history of their lived experience in Paris. In the late 1990s, Okwei Enwezor (1963–2019), expanded on the Great Exhibition and the UNESCO exhibition as sharing a pluralistic approach to a worldwide story of art. In so doing, his intention was to reshape the curatorial practice. Enwezor replaced western-centric “internationalism” with a historically engaged view of the whole planet.1 Enlarging World Horizons News of the passing of bell hooks was reported as I  gathered my thoughts to finalize research for this essay. The writing of bell hooks (1952–2021) came to my attention in 1995 when The Art Institute of Chicago organized a new version of their longstanding “American Exhibition.”2 The 1995 exhibition, About Place: Recent Art of the Americas, cast its geographic net farther out than previous editions by bringing together emerging, under-recognized, and established artists from Canada and Latin America as well as the United States. About Place opened the long-established American Exhibition to the field of contemporary American art that took a hemispheric view with multiple narratives and diverse perspectives. The diverse group of sixteen artists from North and South America included: Doris Salcedo, Ann Hamilton, Rodney Graham, Andrea Zittel, Eugenio Ditt­ born, Jac Leirner, Guillermo Kuitca, Vija Celmins, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Kerry James Marshall, Jeff Wall, Brice Marden, Leonardo Drew, Larry Johnson, Barbara Steinman, DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-22

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Clare Kunny

and Anna Deavere Smith. The following quote from bell hooks served as an inspiration for the curator’s title for the exhibition About Place. I have been working . . . to incorporate in the manner of telling a sense of place, of not just who I am in the present but where I am coming from, the multiple voices within me. I  have confronted silence, inarticulateness. When I  say, then, that these works emerge from suffering, I  refer to that personal struggle to name that location from which I come to voice.3 In effect, hooks was honoring multiple voices that express a range of narratives. The pluralist approach of this exhibition of American art addressed the dichotomies that are apparent only when the global range of art is recognized as a dialectic of center versus margin, difference versus uniformity, and mobile arrangements of communication versus ossified systems. The same year About Place opened, hooks published Art on my mind: visual politics.4 In the introduction to Art on my mind, hooks stated her approach: Sadly, conservative white artists and critics who control the cultural production of writing about art seem to have the greatest difficulty accepting that one can be criti­ cally aware of visual politics – the way race, gender, and class shape art practices (who makes art, how it sells, who values it, who writes about it) – without abandoning a fierce commitment to aesthetics.5 Over her four decades of work, hooks took it upon herself to write about the non-white artworld.6 Her work remains a benchmark for new ways to think and write about visual art that moves beyond the centered, established, uniform canon of Western art history. A kindred spirit of hooks, as she focused on issues to expand the canon of American art, Okwui Enwezor’s interventions in the artworld aimed to reshape curatorial practice on an international scale. His practice appealed to social awareness and critical engage­ ment employing the exhibition as a theoretical tool. Enwezor’s curatorial work aimed to invigorate the discipline of art history to reflect the global diversity of the artworld. From the first issue of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art for which he was the found­ ing publisher and served as co-editor from 1994 to the 2021 posthumous installation of his final exhibition Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America at the New Museum, Okwui Enwezor is seen as the initiator and ambassador of the internationaliza­ tion of art.7 A recent article in ARTnews (March 29, 2021) took stock of Okwui Enwezor’s cura­ torial work with a list of the ten most important exhibitions he organized. Below I note three exhibitions that standout with excerpts from the article to note his approach for each exhibition: 1. The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 at Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany (2001) This survey focused on decolonial movements in Africa and their impact on art over the course of nearly 50  years. Its purview was bracketed by the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England, and the election of Nelson Mandela as president

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219

of South Africa in 1994. A memorial for Enwezor stated this exhibition “proposed decolonization as one of the most significant events of the twentieth century, as sig­ nificant as the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth.”8 2. Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002) Named as the exhibition’s artistic director in 1998, Enwezor was the first African, the first non-European, and the first curator of color ever to head up the renowned exhibi­ tion, which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany, and is often seen as the world’s most important showcase of contemporary art. Enwezor sought to decenter the West in his exhibition, and in the year leading up to the opening he presented “platforms.” These were conferences, seminars, and other projects in nearby locales like Berlin and Vienna, as well as ones far away from Germany in Delhi, St. Lucia, and Lagos.9 3. All the World’s Futures, Venice Biennale, Italy (2015) Enwezor was the first African to organize the Biennale. For this exhibition, Enwe­ zor continued the curatorial approach he developed in organizing Documenta 11, a global exhibition that explored the breadth of contemporary art, all the while looking at the ways in which colonialism and capitalism impact the lived realities of people around the world.10 Among the almost 140 artists and collectives included in his Ven­ ice Biennale were John Akomfrah, Huma Bhabha, Ricardo Brey, Teresa Burga, Cao Fei, Melvin Edwards, Coco Fusco, Charles Gaines, Sônia Gomes, Gulf Labor, Hiwa K, Ibrahim Mahama, Kerry James Marshall, and Emeka Ogboh, as well as histori­ cal figures like Marcel Broodthaers, Walker Evans, and Emily Kame Kngwarreye. In titling the show All the World’s Futures, Enwezor was envisioning the ways in which art could initiate new means of living in the future. Key issues that informed Enwezor’s curatorial practice are exemplified in the three exhi­ bitions cited above. By granting prominence to art made in African, Asian, and Latin American countries the exhibitions became global projects that explored the breadth of contemporary art. In Enwezor’s international exhibitions, decentralizing was a key inten­ tion achieved by locating programs in multiple cities that were new artworld venues and engaging new audiences. Additionally, artistic production was located in places beyond the United States and Europe. This strategy brought attention to artists who were work­ ing in nations outside the Western centers and producing important art that required an understanding of the art based on its own historical lineage and cultural context. Thus, audiences were invited to explore these artworks and understand an alternate history of art. These exhibitions challenged and reoriented art historical narratives by presenting a diverse, international array of art. Enwezor considered the exhibition format to be a forum for public discovery of art’s potential in the face of difficulty.11 His intention was to provoke a dialogue between the diverse factions who contributed to and would come to his exhibition. His ambition with the Venice Biennale exhibition All the World’s Futures was to diag­ nose what had come before and anticipate what was yet to come – to get artists and thinkers alike to reflect on the current state of things with “clear historical eyes,”12 his ultimate ambition as to summon the imaginative and cultural agencies of artists and thinkers. The 2015 Venice Biennale took place one hundred and one years after the start of World War I.

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The opening of the first Venice Biennale in 1895 was a milestone in the development of modern formats for international exhibitions and artistic dialogues. The roots of the Biennale can be traced to both the Salon and the International World Fairs. Its pavil­ ions erected in the Giardini, a park setting, created an informal space to introduce the public to contemporary artistic developments during the several summer months it was open. Even though initially focused on western and mostly European art, the Biennale gradually included artists, exhibitions, and works of art from other continents. After the Venice Biennale opened, other such venues were created. For example, in 1896 Carnegie International was the first such exhibition in the United States, followed a few decades later, in 1932, by the Whitney Biennial, placing New York as a helm of global artistic dialogues. After World War II, other influential international venues emerged around the world: the Sao Paolo Biennale (1951), Documenta (1955), and The Biennale of Sydney (1973). It was, however, in the late 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century that the number as well as the cultural significance and popularity of these art exhibitions augmented rapidly. Today there are hundreds of such venues on all continents ranging from Jakarta to Istanbul and from Cairo to Shanghai. It is in this rich and dynamic context that Enwezor’s vision for the 2015 Venice Bien­ nale reaffirmed the role of this international exhibition and others as key producers and facilitators of broad, inclusive global artistic narratives. Against this historic social backdrop, Enwezor was posing a crucial question: “What, then, should a grand exhibition of art such as la Biennale di Venezia tell us about the state of art and of the world in which art is produced today?”13 Discourse was an important aspect and outcome of Enwezor’s exhibitions. In his practice, the exhibition was one node in a constellation of platforms for discussion of issues. This essay is written as our world possesses a similar global landscape as troubled as that found in 1915 and 2015. The immigrant crisis continues as a virulent new pan­ demic has taken lives on an international scale comparable to that created by a war in the past. Moreover, inequalities social as well as economic have been thrown into relief against a background of white suprematism and economic inequality here in America. Nonetheless, Black Lives Matter, founded in 2013 in the United States and dedicated to fighting racism worldwide as well as anti-Black violence, has grown to international importance today. In response to this global landscape, the artworld is faced with two reckonings: the limitations of the Western canon as the foundation of the discipline of art history and the racial biases that are embedded in the structure of art institutions from the collecting practices and exhibitions to the professional staff. To quote bell hooks: “I see that individual white men who entered the art world as rebels have been canonized in such a way that their standards and aesthetic visions are used instrumen­ tally to devalue the works of new rebels in the art world, especially artists from mar­ ginal groups.”14 As we move toward the second quarter of the 21st century, museum leaders and cura­ tors of international exhibitions are highly motivated to recognize the racial biases built into their practices in the past and to correct such limitations by acquiring and show­ casing extraordinary works of art that challenge and reorient art-historical narratives. Both collections and exhibitions must better reflect the diverse communities they serve. Through such efforts, art institutions can engage new audiences and encourage them to formulate new narratives about the art with which they connect personally and cultur­ ally. Enwezor’s insistence on invigorating the discipline of art history through exhibitions is a path toward a full embrace of global diversity in the artworld.

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Notes 1. Jason Fargo, New York Times, March 19, 2019. 2. Begun in 1888, this series of exhibitions brought current developments in contemporary Amer­ ican art to Chicago. 3. Madeleine Grynstejn, About Place: Recent Art of the Americas (Chicago: Publications Depart­ ment of The Art Institute of Chicago, 1995), 12, bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990), 146. 4. bell hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (New York: The New Press, 1995). 5. Ibid., ix. 6. hooks’ essential work, besides writing and teaching, was establishing the bell hooks Institute as an inclusive space where the many and varied expressions of difference could thrive. 7. Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art is published two times a year by Duke Univeristy Press and began with the autumn 1994/winter 1995 issue. Issue 48, May 1, 2021, served as a tribute to Enwezor who was the founding publisher. From 1994 to 2019, Enwezor served as one of three editors for the journal working with Salah M. Hassan and Chika Okeke-Agulu. 8. Statement by Claire Bishop in 2019 memoriam for Enwezor. 9. On April 29, documenta archive launched Platform6, a virtual platform created in honor of Okwui Enwezor. This dynamic and evolving online project is intended as a place for animated discussion about Documenta11 and the current relevance of its discourses. 10. The continued impact of colonialism on lives today is embedded within the narrative of West­ ern art history, and in the structure of curatorial practices and art museums. 11. Okwui Enwezor, All the World’s Futures (Venice: Marsilio Publications, 2015), 17. 12. Ibid., 18. Enwezor quotes Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of a small drawing by Paul Klee, Angelus Novus (1920), to show the perceptive power of the artwork that goes beyond its actual representation. 13. Ibid. 14. bell hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (New York: The New Press, 1995), xii.

References Enwezor, Okwui. All the World’s Futures, Biennale Arte 2015. Venice: Marsilio Publications, 2015. Enwezor, Okwui. Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America. New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2020. Enwezor, Okwui and Chinua Achebe. The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Move­ ments in Africa, 1945–1994. Munich: Prestel Publishing, 2001. Grynstejn, Madeleine. About Place; Recent Art of the Americas. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990. Hassan, Salah M. and Chika Okeke-Agulu. Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, no. 48 (May 1, 2021), https://read.dukeupress.edu/nka/search-results?page=1&q=no.%2048&fl_SiteID=1000061. hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. New York: The New Press, 1995. Platform6. Launched April 29, 2019. www.documenta-platform6.de.

Conclusion

The global story of modern art has only begun.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003247678-23

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers followed by an “n” indicate a note on the corresponding page. abstract design 119–123; Latin America and 192–201 abstract expressionism 12 Académie Julian 207 academies 83–84 Academy of Decorative Arts 95–104, 96, 97 Acts of Union 53n2 Adam & Eve 208 African American art 80–88, 86, 87; see also Proto Négritude African art 3, 5, 90n30, 204–214 After the Audience 58, 58–59 Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius 58–59 Alcock, Sir Rutherford 71–72 Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence 57, 57–58, 62 Alves, Maximiano 147 ambrotypes 36; see also daguerreotypes; photography American art 12 angelito photographs 31–39, 33, 35, 37, 40n22, 41n29 antiquarianism 45–48 antiquities 71 Apodyterium, An 57, 57–58; see also AlmaTadema, Sir Lawrence Apotheosis of Cuauhtémoc, The 136, 136 architecture 9; Irish 44; Neo-Baroque 141–149, 143, 146 Arenal, Luis 134 Art Deco 50 art education 6–13 art fairs 5 art galleries 68–76 Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) 6–7 art markets 3, 68–76 Art Noveau 50 Art Through the Ages (ATTA) 6–13, 11, 13n1 Asian modernism 155–165; see also Burma and Burmese art; China and Chinese

art; Japan and Japanese art; Thailand and Thai art assimilationism 80, 82–83 Audience of Agrippa, An 58–59; see also Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence Aung Soe, Bagyi 156, 161–162, 162, 165 Aztec 32 Baker, Joséphine 80, 205 Ballet Russes 9 Bandeirantes 177n4 Baroque 4; see also Neo-Baroque art Barthes, Roland 39 Bauhaus 95–104 Bedford and Lemere 68–71, 69 Benjamin, Walter 32, 113 Benton, Thomas Hart 9 Berlin 95–104 Black Legend of Mexican Painting 130–138 Black Lives Matter 220 Bolivia 192–201 Bond Street 68–76, 69, 76n2 Book of Kells 46; see also Ireland and Irish art Bose, Nandalal 156–159, 165 Braque, Georges 64 Brazil and Brazilian art 4, 167–177 Breton, André 131 British East India Company 71 British Museum: Japanese art and 72 Brun-Maxy, Mela 95–104, 96, 97, 102–103 Bucharest 95–104 Burma and Burmese art 161–162 cabinets of curiosity 70–71 Cabrera, Miguel 41n26 Caesar, Julius 60 Caetano, Marcelo 141 Candace, Gratien 82 Carribean art 80–88, 89n22, 206 Carrión, Benjamín 193

224

Index

Catholicism 31–32

Celtic Revival 44–53, 47, 50, 51

Césaire, Aimé 86

Cézanne, Paul 26, 85

China and Chinese art 108–114

Christian art 45–46

Cold War 12, 130, 132–133, 198

colonialism 221n10; Islamic art and 181–189;

see also race and racism

communism 131

Continents, Les 84–85

Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish 74

Costa, Tomás 147

Coutin, Pierre 213

Cranwill, Mia 50–51

créolization 89n22

cross-dressing 109–111

Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth 134, 135

cultural nationalism 45–48

daguerreotypes 32–33; see also photography

Dana, John Cotton 10

decorative arts 95–104

Demoiselles d’Avignon 1

Dépêche africaine, La 84–85

de Torres, Antonio 41n26

Diagne, Blaise 82, 89n10

Diezcanseco, Alfredo Pareja 194–195

diversity 3

DuBois, W.E.B. 80–82, 89n9, 206

Dubuffet, Jean 207

Duchamp, Marcel 207

Ecuador 192–201

Eggers, George William 7

Egypt and Egyptian art 180–189, 182, 212

Eiffel, Gustave 23

El-Gazzar, Abdel Hadi 180, 184–188, 185,

187, 189

Elizondo, Arturo 33

El-Salahi, Ibrahim 188–189

empathy 8, 13n7

England and English art 56–64, 61, 63

Ensaio de Ballet 171, 171

Enwezor, Okwei 217–220

Enwonwu, Ben 204

Estado Novo regime 141–149

Ethiopia Awakening 81–82

Eurocentrism 6, 13n2

evolutionists 8

exhibitions 217–220

Fair Reflection, A 62, 63; see also Godward,

John William

Farkas, Thomaz 167–177, 170, 171, 172,

177n6

fascism 132

Ferguson, Samuel 46, 47

fiction 22

Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) 167,

169–175, 177n4

Fotoptica 167–169, 174

France: African art and 204–214;

Impressionism and 19–27; Peruvian art and 117, 119

Franco-Prussian War 21

Fry, Roger 68

funerals 31–39, 33, 35, 37

Gandhi, Mahatma 157

Gardner, Helen 3, 6–13

Garvey, Marcus 80, 83, 84

Germany: Impressionism and 21

Gil, Carrillo 130, 137–138

Gilbert, Araceli 192–201, 195, 196

Glissant, Edouard 89n21, 89n22

globalization 3, 28n15; Impressionism and

19–27

Godward, John William 62–64, 63

Going to Church 87

Green Man, The 187, 187

Gromaire, Marcel 211–212

Hamdi Bey, Osman 181

Haribhitak, Fua 156, 163–165, 164

Harlem Renaissance 82–83

Harper, William Rainey 7

Havell, Ernest Benfield 74

Hepworth, Dame Barbara 64

Herder, Johann Gottfried 8

hooks, bell 217–218, 221n6

Hughes, Herbert 50

Hughes, Langston 82–83, 89n2

Husain, Maqbool Fida 189

Ides of March, The 60, 61; see also Poynter, Sir Edward John

illuminated manuscripts 46

immigration 220

Impressionism 22, 23, 24, 28n1, 28n2;

globalization and 19–27

Incan art 119, 121, 126; see also Peru and

Peruvian art

India and Indian art 74, 155–165, 165n5

Indigeneity 117–126, 192

Indonesia and Indonesian art 159–161

industrial arts 9–10

industrialization 155

Industrial Revolution 25

Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) 169

Ionian Dance; see also Poynter, Sir Edward

John

Ireland and Irish art 3; Acts of Union 53n2;

Celtic Revival and 44–53, 47, 50, 51

Index Íris 173–176

Irish Famine 49

Islamic art 4; painting 180–189

Italy and Italian art 58

Iturbide, Graciela 38

Izcue, Elena 117–127, 118, 120, 124, 127n1

Jameson, Frederic 21–22

Japan and Japanese art 10, 22, 22, 71–76

Japonisme 71–72

Jarves, James Jackson 72

jazz 80, 204–205, 211, 214

Jeanne, Martiniquaise 86

Jews and Jewish art 102

Johnson, William 83, 87, 88, 90n34

Jones, Loïs Mailou 80, 85, 86, 88, 89n20,

90n37

Juárez, Nicolás Rodríguez 35

Kahlo, Frida 33

Kershaw, Thomas 56, 62

Kevorkian, Hagop 73–75

Kracauer, Siegfried 113

Lahiri, Shanu 207

Latin American art 192–201

La voix de nègres 90n26

Le Corbusier 122

Lino, Raul 145

literature: Celtic Revival and 48–49

Liu Bannong 108–109, 112–114, 115n16,

115n22

Llerena, José Alfredo 194–195

Locke, Alain 82–83, 85–87

Loos, Adolf 122, 123

Lu Xun 108–112

Machain, Juan de Dios 34, 35, 36, 37

Manet, Édouard 23, 23

Marbelous Movement 3, 56–64, 57, 61, 63,

65n5

Marxism 13

mass culture 6

Matisse, Henri 64, 132, 212

Maxy, M. H. 95–104, 96

Mayakovski, Vladimir 131

May Fourth Movement 112–114; see also

China and Chinese art

McCarthy, Charles James 44

McKay, Claude 84, 89n2

Mei Lanfang 111

Meiji Restoration 72; see also Japan and

Japanese art

Mercier, Antonin 147

metalwork 95–104

métissage 89n22

Mexican Revolution 36

225

Mexico and Mexican art 4, 130–138; murals and 9; posthumous portraits and 31–39 Mofokeng, Santu 215n25 Monet, Claude 19, 24, 26–27

Montes y Balcázar, Manuel 33

Moore, Henry 207

Morisot, Berthe 19

Morrison, Arthur 73

Moukhtar, Mahmoud 181, 182

Muhammad, Prophet 190n8 murals and muralists 4, 9, 130–138; see also Benton, Thomas Hart Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) 175

Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) 173–176 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 10,

173–176

museums 70–71, 220

N’Diaye, Iba 204, 212–214 Nardal, Jane 84

Nardal, Paulette 86

Nasoni, Nicola 142–143 nationalists and nationalism 8; Celtic Revival

and 44, 48–53; China and 112–114;

pan-Arab 188

Négritude 86, 212–213 Neo-Baroque art 141–149, 143, 146

New Group 209; see also South Africa New Negro, The 85–87 Nutti, Angelo F. 177n8 Nuvolato Etrusco 62; see also Godward, John William O’Murnaghan, Art 45, 48, 49, 51

Offner, Richard 7

Onabolu, Aina 204, 207–209, 208

Ono, Yoko 64

Orientalism 181

ornamentation 4, 127n4, 128n22; Peruvian indigenism and 117–127 Orozco, José Clemente 130–131, 137

Ottoman Empire 21

Pacheco, María 192–201, 197

paintings: Celtic Revival and 48; Impressionist

19, 21, 23, 23–27, 24; Islamicate

180–189; marble 56–64; Mexican

130–138; photography and 33

Palliri 200

Pan-African congresses 82

Pareja, Juan de 213

Paris 23

Pasar 160, 160

paternalism 80

peripheries 95–104 Persian Art Gallery, The 68–69, 73–76 Peru and Peruvian art 117–127, 118, 120, 124

226

Index

Schule Reimann 95–104, 104n13, 105n19

Scotland and Scottish art 53n4

sculpture 147–149, 148

Segal, Arthur 98–99

Seiki, Kuroda 22

Sekoto, Gerard 204, 209–211

Seminario, Manuel Rendón 201n1

Senegal 89n10, 212–214; see also African art

Senghor, Lamine 85, 90n28

Seurat, Georges 26

Severo, Ricardo 145

shops see art galleries

Siqueiros, Davíd 33, 130–138, 134, 136

Sirry, Gazbia 204, 211–212

Sisley, Alfred 19

Sloane, Sir Hans 70

Smith, Robert Murdoch 74

socialism 131

Sontag, Susan 32

South Africa 209–211, 215n25, 215n27

South America 4–5

South Kensington Museum 71, 74

Starry Night 1

Stokes, Margaret 45, 46–48, 47

Qur’an 183–186; see also Islamic art Story of Zulaikha, The 186, 187

race and racism 220; African American art and Sudan 188–189

surrealists and surrealism 89n15

80–88, 89n16; indigeneity and 117,

Swadeshi movement 156, 165n5

121, 127n3, 128n20; ornamentation

Synthetic Cubism 64

and 123–127; Persian art and 75

Rauschenberg, Robert 207

Tagore, Ragindranath 156–157

Rebelo de Andrade, Carlos 148

Tamayo, Rufino 198

Rebelo de Andrade, Guilherme 145–147 Tanner, Henry Ossawa 81, 205

Reigl, Alois 13n8 telegraphs 25

Reimann, Albert 99

Thailand and Thai art 163–165

relativists 8

Tirailleurs Sénégalais 80, 89n3

revivalism 45–53 Torres, Romualdo Garciá 36

Reynolds, Joshua 207

Torture of Cuauhtémoc, The 135

Rivera, Diego 130–133, 207

Trotsky, Leon 131

Rolleston, T.W. 44

Romania and Romanian arts 95–104 Umar, Madiha 188–189 Rong, Xie 64

universalism 4, 156–157 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 10

Ruskin, John 58, 143; on marbling 56

Van Gogh, Vincent 1

Rusli 156, 159–161, 160, 165

Venice Biennale 219–220

Russell, George “AE” 48

Venturi, Lionello 137

vernacular photography 38–39

Saavedra, Carlos Rodríguez 199

Vespremie, Andrei 95–98, 96, 97, 100, 102,

Sabogal, Jose 120–121

103

Salazar, António de Oliveira 141

Vinycomb, John 45, 48–49, 50

Santiniketan school 4

Voix des Nègres, La 84–85 São Clemente Palace 146, 146–147

Sargent, Walter 7–9

Wallis, Henry 75

Savage, Augusta 86

Warrick Fuller, Meta 81–82

Schmarsow, August 13n8

Werner, Alfred 137

School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)

Willkie, Wendell L. 10–11

6–7

witchcraft 109–110

School of the Eye 20

photography 3, 4; Brazilian 167–177; Chinese art and 108–114; posthumous portraits and 31–39, 33; see also ambrotypes; Bedford and Lemere; daguerreotypes Picasso, Pablo 1, 64

Pictoralism 108–109 Pinheiro, Bordalo 144

Pissarro, Camille 19

Porter, James 90n31 portraits: China and 108–114; posthumous 31–39 Portugal and Portuguese art 141–149, 143

Portuguese Pavilion 142–144 postcolonialism 53

Poynter, Sir Edward John 59–60, 61, 64

Prélier, Louis 32

Price-Mars, Jean 89n23 primitive 1

Proto Négritude 84, 85–87, 89n5; see also African American art psychology 8; art and 13n8; empathy and 13n7

Index women: as artists 117, 122, 211–212; Schule

Reimann and 100

Women of Amphissa 59; see also AlmaTadema, Sir Lawrence Wontner, William Hoff 62

Woodruff, Hale 82–83, 85, 88

Woolf, Virginia 68–69 World War I 19; African American art and 80;

Tirailleurs Sénégalais 89n3

World War II 10, 12; Romania and 98;

Tirailleurs Sénégalais 89n3

Yamanaka and Co. 68–73, 75

Yamanaka, Kichibei 71

Younan, Ramses 186–187, 189

Zadkine, Ossip 213

Zenderoudi, Hussain 188

227