Full Description
2023 ALAA Book Award, Association for Latin American Art/Arvey Foundation
A fascinating account of the modern reinvention of the image of the Indian in nineteenth-century literature and visual culture, seen through the work of Peruvian painter Francisco Laso.
One of the outstanding painters of the nineteenth century, Francisco Laso (1823-1869) set out to give visual form to modern Peru. His solemn and still paintings of indigenous subjects were part of a larger project, spurred by writers and intellectuals actively crafting a nation in the aftermath of independence from Spain. In this book, at once an innovative account of modern indigenism and the first major monograph on Laso, Natalia Majluf explores the rise of the image of the Indian in literature and visual culture. Reading Laso's works through a broad range of sources, Majluf traces a decisive break in a long history of representations of indigenous peoples that began with the Spanish conquest. She ties this transformation to the modern concept of culture, which redefined both the artistic field and the notion of indigeneity. As an abstraction produced through indigenist discourse, an icon of authenticity, and a densely racialized cultural construct, the Indian would emerge as a central symbol of modern Andean nationalisms.
Inventing Indigenism brings the work and influence of this extraordinary painter to the forefront as it offers a broad perspective on the dynamics of art and visual culture in nineteenth-century Latin America.
Contents
A Note on the Text
Preface
Introduction
Francisco Laso: A Republican Biography
Indigenism's National Imaginaries
From Society, into Painting, and Back
Precedents: A Short History of the Indian—Concept and Image
1. The Indian: Image of the Nation
A Local Antiquity
Idealization
Painting's Critical Function
Gonzalo Pizarro: The Scene of Conquest and the Spanish Legacy
The Indian as Cultural Concept
Creole Failures
The Indian as Allegory and Symbol
2. The Scene of Approximation
The Country of Melancholy: The Creole Invention of the Andean World
Melancholy's Modern Transformations
An Andean Legend: The Burial of the Priest
The Inscrutable Indian
The Rhetoric of Approximation: The Pascana Series
A Critical Fortune of Racial Readings
Reading Race: The Role of the Viewer
The Construction of the Indian Image
3. Picturing Race
Impossible Images
The Elusive Indian
Epilogue: Personal Narratives, Public Images
Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Index
