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New Publication from Dr. Eduardo Douglas
UPDATE: Contested Visions in the Spanish American World has received the 2012 Eleanor Tufts Award from the Association for Spanish Art Historical Studies "for a distinguished book in English on the history of art and architecture in Iberia." The award committee chose this book "for providing an innovative and nuanced account of the dynamics of artistic exchange and recognition in the colonial world. Overcoming the genre limitations of an exhibition catalogue, it also succeeds in moving beyond the models of transculturation and hybridity by making visible the agency of native artists who crafted for their own traditions a space in the colonial imagination. A major step forward in our understanding of how the colonial experience was made representable, this book maps a new cultural territory that was both Iberian and Hispanic." This is the second year in a row in which an exhibition catalog with an essay by an Art History faculty member has received an award from the College Art Association or one of its affiliates; it is also the second consecutive publication in which Eduardo was the sole or a contributing author to win a national award. Congratulations again Eduardo!
Congratulations to Eduardo on the publication of "Our Fathers, Our Mothers: Painting an Indian Geneology in New Spain" as part of the catalog published by Yale University Press to accompany the exhibition Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, opening 6 November 2011 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and then traveling to the Museo Nacional de Historia in Mexico City in July 2012.
Contested Visions offers a comparative view of the two principal viceroyalties of Spanish America: Mexico and Peru. Spanning developments from the 15th to the 19th century, this ambitious book looks at the many ways and contexts in which indigenous peoples were represented in art of the early modern period—by colonial artists, European artists, and themselves. More than two hundred works of art, including paintings, sculptures, illustrated books, maps, codices, manuscripts, and other materials such as textiles, keros, and feather works, are reproduced in full-color illustrations, demonstrating the rich variety of these artistic approaches.
A collection of essays by an international team of distinguished scholars in the field uncovers the different meanings and purposes behind these depictions of native populations of the Americas. These experts explore the role of the visual arts in negotiating a sense of place in late pre-Columbian and colonial Latin America. They address a range of important topics, such as the construct of the Indian as a good Christian; how Amerindians drew on their pre-Columbian past to stake out a place within the Spanish body politic; their participation in festive rites; and their role as artists. Lavishly illustrated, this ambitious book provides a compelling and original framework by which to understand the intersection of vision and power in the Spanish colonial world.