Making Up for Lost Time

So...it's been a while since I've posted. But that doesn't mean I haven't been researching and planning, "finding" that ever-elusive baroque! Time has really slipped away from me, and now it's almost the end of the semester and I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog.

Where to begin?

A few nights ago, I gave a presentation during Edgar's Artist Talk about Garcilaso de la Vega, who has been my research topic since the beginning of the semester. I chose de la Vega because I have a personal connection to him; this past summer while living in Cusco, I visited his house, which now functions as a museum, and walked past a statue of him in Wanchaq nearly every day on my way to school. I find de la Vega's character very intriguing in relation to the baroque and neo-baroque. As a mestizo--half Spanish, half indigenous, earning him the nickname of "El Inca"--de la Vega simultaneously represented "Otherness" while participating in hegemonic, colonial discourse. This duality is perhaps best represented in his work La Florida del Inca, which recounts Hernando de Soto's journey through the Floridian peninsula. As I mentioned in my speech, de la Vega does not shy away from depicting the harsh realities of conquest and colonialism, but embraces these consequences, for they help make evident "the ability and capacity for action of the indigenous populations, whether they are from La Florida or the Andes" (Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, Beyond Books and Borders: Garcilaso de la Vega and La Florida del Inca). He subverts our expectations in his presentation of the "victors" and the "vanquished," which is, in and of itself, very baroque.

On the way out of de la Vega's house in Cusco, there is a large quote from Mario Vargas Llosa, another famous Peruvian writer, painted on the wall. The English translation was a bit faulty and the paint was peeling in places, but its sentiment was still quite beautiful:

   Museums are as necessary for countries as are schools and hospitals. They also heal, not bodies, but minds of darkness that hold ignorance, prejudice, superstition, and all the defects that isolate human beings from one another, and make them fester and push them to kill one another. Museums sharpen sensibility, stimulate the imagination, refine one’s sentiments, and wake up in people the critical and self-critical spirit. Progress does not only mean many schools, hospitals, and roads. Also, and maybe above all, progress is found in that wisdom that makes us capable of differentiating the ugly from the beautiful, the intelligent from the stupid, the good from the bad, and the tolerable from the intolerable…that which we call culture.

When thinking about this quote in relation to de la Vega's legacy and our class in general, I realized just how important our research and show has been and will be. We couldn't be "finding the baroque" at a better time. Right now, with the city's 450th celebrations upon us, words like "discovery" and "glory" are being thrown around; but they are but buzz words to pique tourists' interest. In many ways, the rich history of St. Augustine has been whitewashed for mass consumption. The information that makes its way into the glossy pamphlets in hotel lobbies--that's what we know, because that's what is marketed. By reappropriating figures like Maria de la Leche and the term "pardo," and reintroducing forgotten voices like de la Vega's, perhaps we can enrich and enliven the conversation during this great moment of celebration for our city.
 

With my study abroad group and a traditional woman in the courtyard of de la Vega's house

The Beginning

I was first notified about the special "Finding the Baroque" class by my painting professor, Sara, who I'm sure thought I'd be interested in this class in no small part due to the piece I made for our "1+1+1 = 1" project last semester. The concept behind said project was to bring together three disparate sources (two art movements/artists and one pop culture reference) in order to create a final, unified work.

Still Life with Mate, Chocolate, Refresco, Takis, and Frijoles Negros  (2014)

After reading myriad critical sources on the baroque and neo-baroque, my statement for the above work seems to pale in comparison, acutely lacking in technical terminology--but I was on to something: 

The idea behind my project came to me while I was eating a quesadilla de nopales with salsa verde at La Tienda, an authentic Mexican restaurant in Gainesville. I have long been fascinated with Latin American history and its culture, especially in the tension between the “Old World” and “New World” and that which was there before either of these terms even existed. I am also a lover of food and believe it is one of the best ways to get to the heart of other cultures. These two interests fused together that afternoon at La Tienda as I chowed down on my quesadilla and looked around at the brightly painted walls, traditional Mexican muñecas, and cellophane-wrapped candies behind the counter. The restaurant has such a “new oldness” to it, which is what I realized I wanted to capture in my 1+1+1 fusion. 

The base of my painting is Juan Sánchez Cotán’s famous painting Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber (c. 1602). I chose this piece not only because it was created during Spain’s Golden Age, but also because Cotán was one of the pioneers of the European still life genre, not unlike the intrepid men who first laid foot in the New World. Cotán’s still life is boxed in by the second component of my project, an indigenous-style border that blends Aztec, Mayan, and Inca patterns–all cultures that existed, in different capacities, in Central and South America when the Europeans arrived. The red of the border is both a technical and symbolic color choice; it creates contrast with my raw umber, monochromatic rendering of Cotán’s painting while also alluding to the extremely bloody history of Latin America. The third component of my project, the “pop culture reference,” is contemporary Hispanic food. From the popular Mexican soda Jarritos, which features such flavors as mango, tamarind, and hibiscus, to mate de coca, a popular Peruvian tea made from the coca leaf (which is processed into cocaine), these packaged, often preservative-laden foods contrast sharply with the perishability of the fruits and vegetables in Cotán’s still life. I initially planned on completely replacing the foods in the original still life with the processed ones, but then I realized it was more appropriate–and powerful–to layer the latter on top. This juxtaposition reveals the complicated ways in which nothing is ever really replaced but simply accumulated and transformed when disparate cultures collide. 

Besides my moment at La Tienda, I also drew inspiration for this project from my trip to Peru this past summer. I spent a month in Cusco, which the Inca considered the “ombligo del mundo” (bellybutton of the world), and was constantly in awe of the reunion between the ancient and the modern. Everywhere I went was imbued with so much precious history…and yet the city was filled with cars emitting black exhaust, vendors selling colorful candy and soda and hair accessories, and chicharronerias whose gaudy signs glowed into the night. And so I wrote: “I turned the yellowed pages, / so thin against the sharp blueness of the day, / read between lines of / graffiti on new buildings and / old buildings and abandoned buildings / pressed together defiantly, / smiling tersely / in the cold.” Negotiations between the past and present are in constant suspension, which is why the objects in my painting spatially communicate with one another from a place of strange, careless deliberation. 

I hope my project, through its blending of three different sources and its employment of the simple motif of food/consumption, captures the amazing, heartbreaking, and often garish intersection of cultures in Latin America.