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The Characteristics of the Visual Arts in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Damián Carlós Bayón

Extract

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Starting from certain intuitions—which I would like to suppose are well founded—I shall try to discover if it is possible to speak of the visual arts characteristic of the American continent throughout the centuries.

“L'intention de 1'œuvre d'art n'est pas 1'œuvre d'art.” (Henri Focillon, La Vie des Formes).

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 11 , Issue 43 , September 1963 , pp. 98 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Sigvald Linné and Hans Dietrich Disselhoff, Amérique précolombienne (Albin Michel, Paris), is generally excellent. I find nevertheless that the choice of illustrations is very arbitrary and the space devoted to architecture insufficient. For the latter aspect, one may, however, consult the notable monographs of Ge neviève Bonnefoi in Les architectes célèbres, a work edited by Pierre Francastel (Mazenod, 2 vols.). The second volume contains a paper by myself which may prove useful on this occasion. A book by J. Alden Mason, The Ancient Civili zation of Peru (Pelican), has always been indispensable to me in connection with Peruvian chronology. For Mexican chronology, I have throughout consulted the admirable catalogue, Chefs-d'œuvre de l'art mexicain, of the 1962 Paris exhibition by its director, Fernando Gamboa.

2 What the image signifies for the ancient potter and what it signifies for Tamayo are things belonging to different mental worlds. One might of course also wield here the enigmatic phrase of the Italian historian De Sanctis: "The content is subject to all the accidents of history: It is born and it dies; only the form is immortal."

3 "The sign signifies, but having become form, it seeks to signify itself; it creates a new sense, searches for a new content…" Henri Focillon, La Vie des Formes.

4 F. Márquez Miranda, Huacos, Cultura Chimú, Cuadernos de Arte Ameri cano, with photographs by G. Stern and H. Coppola, Buenos Aires, 1943.

5 The French archeologist Laurette Séjourné has thoroughly studied one of these palaces in her monumental work Un palacio en la Ciudad de los Dioses, Instituto Nacional de Antropología, Mexico, 1959. One should also consult, by the same author, Pensamiento y religión en el México antiguo, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1957.

6 The Franciscans Jodoco Ricke and Pedro de Gante (both Flemish) worked in Quito and Mexico respectively (cf. Kelemen, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, New York, Macmillan, 1951). Fathers Lemer (Flemish), Kraus (German) and Bianchi (Italian) were church architects in Argentina (cf. Les archi tectes célèbres, cited above).

7 I have developed these points of view in an article, "L'art architecturel de l'Amérique espagnole," Annales, April-June, 1959, and in another, "L'Escorial est-il bien ‘espagnol'?," Annales, Jan.-Feb., 1962.

8 Sebastián de la Cruz (a Jesuit of Potosi) and Juan Tomás Tuyrú Tupac (of San Pedro, Cuzco) were Indians.

9 Most recently in an article, "Arte latinoamericano en Paris : Critica a los criticos de una exposición," Cuadernos, No. 67.