> The word carries the implication that there is such a thing as "race," and
> that premise is central to racism. There is and should be a stigma attached
> to the word. It's racist.
>
> Carrol
Yup. And paintings helped:
http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/features/ramirez/ramirez12-02-96.asp
Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America
by Yasmin Ramirez
Walter Benjamin's dictum that every work of
art is also a work of barbarism comes to
mind with "New World Orders," an exhibition
of Spanish colonial casta paintings
currently on display at the Americas
Society. "Casta" is Spanish for caste and
these "casta paintings" are incredibly
frank documents--unparalleled by anything
in our time--of the race-based social
hierarchy that existed in colonial Latin
America during the 17th and 18th century.
However much these paintings can be seen
today to suggest harmonious coexistence of
Indian, Spaniard and Black, in 18th-century
Mexico they also elaborated relations of
social power and control.
Bearing titles such as Espanol con India
sale Mulato (Spaniard with Black makes
Mulatto), casta paintings display male and
female couples of varying ethnicities with
their mixed-raced children. The works
follow an order premised on the idea that
each race carries a distinct kind of blood
(with Spanish blood linked to civilization--
no surprise--and Black blood associated
with slavery and degeneracy). Casta
painting cycles therefore typically begin
with a depiction of a "pure" Spaniard with
a "pure" African or Indian mate that
respectively bear a mulatto or a mestizo
child. From that progeny onwards, however,
the further racial/ethnic mixtures take on
Byzantine dimensions. Casta-painting series
usually identify 16 racial taxonomies,
including zoologically inspired terms such
as "coyote and "wolf"--in one bizarrely
named racial classification, children born
of mulatto and mestiza couples are called
"lobo tente en el ayre" (Wolf-Hold-
Yourself-in-Mid-Air).
In the weird melting pot forged from New
World colonialism and Spanish Catholicism,
racial mixing was depicted with an intimacy
that is absent from British and North
American art of that (or any other) era.
According to the racialist notions of the
day, "purity of blood" was considered a
virtue; consequently, Africans and Indians
are nobly rendered. Curiously, the mixed-
race people in casta paintings tend to have
southern European features: slim noses,
curly hair, almond-shaped eyes. Backgrounds
similarly blend European and indigenous
taste. New world fruits and vegetables such
as pineapples, avocados and chili peppers
are displayed in kitchens and dining rooms
furnished with European wares. Landscapes
are dotted by fanciful neo-classic
fountains and urns. It is with these
settings and props that the elitist
intentions of this art reveal themselves.
Third- and fourth-generation mixed-race
couples are clearly poorer, wearing
shabbier clothes in more straitened
circumstances, than their purer-blooded
ancestors. Spaniards and their Indian or
African brides sport rich European costumes
while Lobo- Mestizo couples wear plain or
ragged dress.
Curator Ilona Katzew, an art historian at
NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, notes in the
catalogue that Spanish colonists
commissioned casta paintings and sent them
abroad, usually as gifts, to display their
wealth and to demonstrate that a noble
class system prevailed in the New World.
Because the colonists wanted to make a good
impression, some of New Spain's finest
artists were hired to paint casta cycles.
However, Europeans did not regard casta
paintings as art objects but as
ethnographic illustrations. In fact, some
paintings entered Spain's first natural
history museum, the Real Gabinete de
Historia Natural.
Although practically all the works on view
are marvelous examples of colonial
painting, it is still difficult to admire
them simply and "purely" for their formal
virtues as works of art. Rather, casta
painting is an interesting study precisely
because the marginal position the genre
occupies in art history can be linked to
the marginal position that mixed-raced
people have held in western culture. The
affirmation of casta painting as an early
form of identity art--which this exhibition
tacitly reinforces--represents a real
paradigm shift. Multicultural advocacy has
liberated casta painting from the curio
cabinet, but the genre's problematic
content may later land it in another
closet.
"New World Orders: Casta Painting and
Colonial Latin America" at the Americas
Society, Sept. 26-Dec. 22, 1996, 680 Park
Avenue, New York, NY 10021.
YASMIN RAMIREZ is a New York art historian
and critic.