18th Annual Art of Devotion Exhibit at Peyton Wright

Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Dec 31, 2010; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8

Glory AND Piety Exhibition at Peyton Wright shows 300 years of works Art Issues

MALIN WILSON-POWELL

For the Journal

Opening the door at Peyton Wright Gallery to its “18th Annual Art of Devotion” exhibition is a “fall on your knees experience,” especially if — likemyself — you spent 13 years in Catholic school.

The long entry hallway is hung floor-to-ceiling salon style with historic Spanish Colonial Viceregal paintings. After you pick yourself up and beginadjusting to the sheer abundance of material gathered, walking through the rooms of the historic home that is Peyton Wright is a decidedlymind-altering immersion into a vast pan-American world of imagery and sensibility. Every room features astonishing paintings and objects of silver,gold, ivory, jewels and wood made over a 300-year period. It was an era when the visual was dominant and when resources, ideas and luxury goodswere being exchanged via ocean-going galleons between Asia, the New World and Europe.

The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of one-third of the earth’s surface created an enormous need for images. Just as Roman Catholicism in Europerelied on images in the practice of their faith, images were essential in converting every soul from Mesoamerican metropolitan centers to humble,remote villages. It is said that while marching from the east coast of Mexico in 1519, Conquistador Hernan Cortes replaced native “idols” with crossesand images of the Virgin Mary on his way to destroy Tenochtitlan (today’s Mexico City).

The vast, countless quantities of paintings, sculptures, and objects of this historic period has at last been coming into focus. As hard as it is to believe,there was no history of art in Latin American countries in the late 1940s.

Scholarship and connoisseurship has been accelerating in the last two decades, and Joseph J. Rishel, coordinating curator for the Philadelphia Museumof Art’s major 2006 traveling exhibition “The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820,” characterized his role in this pioneering and ground-breaking projectas a celebratory “Grand Tourist.” Rishel noted that national revolutions from 1820 onward forced much of this art off the stage, and that now arthistory is running to catch up with anthropology, history and literary studies. As contributing scholar Clara Bargellini wrote, “the dependence oncomparison to European works is self-defeating, with colonial artists always on the receiving lower end.” Whatever biases future generations mayidentify in current scholarship, at least it is free from a Eurocentric point of view that finds indigenous artistic creations subordinate and wanting.

Looking at the wealth of Spanish Colonial art that has found its way to a gallery in Santa Fe is truly daunting. There is a lot to look at and a lot to thinkabout. So much of it is eye-opening. This is not a collection of musty old religious art, but a wonderful opportunity to reorient our eyes and minds tomaterial that has long been considered outré. For example, a common observation has been that New World painters were more conservative in theirhandling of space, in contrast to the elaborate, flamboyant infinitudes of curved space found in European Baroque architecture, painting and sculpture.

But consider a different point of view. What if New World artists were not quickened by perspectival inventions meant to approximate deep andimaginary space? What if the artists intended to concentrate on the surface and foreground the encounter with the physical properties of the materials?What if they were simply more modern, more interested in the material at hand, and not so interested in the imposition of an optical system?

The perception that European Baroque was about space and that Spanish Colonial Baroque was about surface first came to my attention through thework of Christopher Knight, a critic with the Los Angeles Times. Knight also proposed it as one of the reasons this work has been coming to the fore inrecent decades. In this light, Peyton Wright’s concurrent longtime concentration on both modern art and Spanish Colonial art makes a fundamentalkind of sense. Not only are there political, social and economic forces framing the current re-emergence of Spanish Colonial art of Latin America, butits emphasis on the surface is similar to painting by 20th-century artists like Jackson Pollock, Raymond Jonson and Andy Warhol.

A number of very important pieces are on view from Cuzco, a major metropolitan center in the viceroyalty of Peru. Among those pieces are one of thefew attributed paintings. A magnificent large canvas, “La Virgen Inmaculada,” circa 1675, almost 8 feet high, is aglow with an orange palettehighlighted by gold. Although much research is still needed on how workshops functioned and what materials were used, it is safe to surmise thatdesignated artist Diego Quispe Tito would have painted the sweet face of the red-haired Virgin, the dimpled Christ child, and the two flanking clerics ather feet. An assistant would have painted the robes, and a lesser talent filled in the background. The final coup de grace was left to a master whoapplied gold in intricate patterns, especially the extravagant crown to create a surface that sparkled in candlelight.

In at least three Peruvian paintings, native figures wear Nazca-style textiles, among the most refined textile traditions the world has ever seen. One ofthese canvasses is a modest-scale composition depicting a serene conversion narrative; another is a grand image of the sword-wielding “SantiagoMatamoros,” circa 1750. Rather than “killing Moors” a la Matamoros, this Santiago is slicing up natives bestride a horse whose face registers morealarm and guilt than his rider. The sentience of the horse, a figure that would have been painted by a lesser member of the studio, is intriguing andwholly un-European.

A wonderful head of the “Virgin of the Annunciation” circa 1650, identified as School of Melchor de Holguin, is an emotional, Flemish-influenced naturalrendition in sync with then-current style practiced in Seville and Rome. Also, don’t miss the first canonized New World saint, Lima’s Santa Rosa, paintedhere as she stands atop burning branches.

Thankfully, this collection is hanging through March 25. There is so much more to look at and investigate. If you go

WHAT: 18th Annual Art of Devotion

Glory AND Piety http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol...

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WHERE: Peyton Wright Gallery, 237 E. Palace Ave.

WHEN: Through March 25

HOURS: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday

CONTACT: 505-989-9888 or [email protected]


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COURTESY PEYTON WRIGHT GALLERY

“Santa Rosa de Lima,” an oil on canvas, circa 1750, from Cuzco, Peru, depicts the first canonized New World saint.

“Virgi of the Annunciation,” circa 1650, is an oil on canvas attributed to the School of Melchor Perez de Holguin.


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“Santiago Matamoros” is an oil on canbas, circa 1750, from Peru.


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18th Annual Art of Devotion Exhibit at Peyton Wright