Cosmopolitanism in Mexican visual culture

465 Pages·2013·94.557 MB·English

by  Fernández, María

Cosmopolitanism in Mexican Visual Culture
joe r. and teresa lozano long series
in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture
A
F
Cosmopolitanism in Mexican Visual Culture
By María Fernández
university
of texas press
austin
Copyright © 2014 by the University of Texas Press
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Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2014
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∞ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements
of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fernández, María
Cosmopolitanism in Mexican visual culture / by María Fernández.
pages cm. — (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin
American and Latino art and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-292-74535-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Art, Mexican—Themes, motives. 2. Architecture—Mexico—
Themes, motives. 3. Eclecticism in art—Mexico. 4. Eclecticism
in architecture—Mexico. 5. National characteristics, Mexican.
I. Title.
n6550.f47 2013
709.72—dc23
2013004246
doi:10.7560/745353
To Doña Tele, Lidia, Adela, Zoila, and Josefina
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Vernacular Cosmopolitanism ■ Sigüenza y Góngora’s Teatro de
Virtudes Políticas 26
2. Castas, Monstrous Bodies, and Soft Buildings 68
3. Experiments in the Representation of National Identity ■ The Pavilion
of Mexico in the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris and the Palacio de
Bellas Artes 103
4. Of Ruins and Ghosts ■ The Social Functions of Pre-Hispanic Antiquity
in Nineteenth-Century Mexico 141
5. Traces of the Past ■ Reevaluating Eclecticism in Nineteenth-Century
Mexican Architecture 173
6. Visualizing the Future ■ Estridentismo, Technology, and Art 194
7. Re-creating the Past ■ Ignacio Marquina’s Reconstruction of the Templo
Mayor de Tenochtitlan 221
8. Transnational Culture at the End of the Millennium ■ Rafael Lozano-
Hemmer’s “Relational Architectures” 274
Conclusion 301
Notes 305
References 373
Index 419
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Acknowledgments
I owe thanks to the many individuals and institutions that supported me in
writing this book. I am grateful to Professor Shirley Samuels, chair of the
Department of the History of Art at Cornell University (2006–2012), for rec-
ognizing the ripeness of this moment to publish this work. Had it not been for
her gentle yet firm encouragement, this book would not have materialized.
This book could not have been written without access to numerous archives
and rare book collections. My research was facilitated by the personnel at the
Archivo General de la Nación, the Biblioteca Nacional, the Antiguo Archivo
del Ayuntamiento de la Ciudad de México, and the Archivo Muerto de la
Dirección General de Monumentos Prehispánicos, Coordinación Nacional de
Arqueología; the New York Public Library, the Hispanic Society of America,
the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
the Frick Collection Library, the Benson Library at the University of Texas
at Austin, the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley,
the Latin American Library at Tulane University, the Hillman Library at the
University of Pittsburgh, the Latin American Collection at the University of
Florida at Gainesville, the Resource Collection at the Getty Center for the His-
tory of Art and the Humanities, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the
Kroch Library and Rare Manuscript Collections at Cornell University.
Research for this project was partially funded by a Rudolf Wittkower Fel-
lowship from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia
University (1985–1986), a grant from the American Association of University
Women (1986–1987), and summer research grants from the University of Con-
necticut at Storrs (1995) and the Society of the Humanities at Cornell Univer-
sity (2004).
I thank the architect Israel Katzman for his generous assistance in all mat-
ters related to modern Mexican architecture; the architect Alberto González
Pozo for his guidance and for allowing me to use his library; Debra Nagao for
helping me to obtain research materials in Mexico at various times; Maestro
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