The pre-Hispanic tradition in Ricardo
Rojas’ Americanist proposal: an analysis of El Silabario de la Decoración
americana (The
Syllabary of American Decoration) [1]
María Alba Bovisio [2]
BOVISIO, María Alba. The pre-Hispanic
tradition in Ricardo Rojas’ Americanist
proposal: an analysis of El Silabario de la Decoración americana (The Syllabary of American Decoration).
19&20, Rio de Janeiro, v. X,
n. 1, jan./jun. 2015. https://www.doi.org/10.52913/19e20.X1.01b
[Español]
* * *
1.
In
this paper we present some aspects of the discussion developed during the
seminar Unfolding Art History in Latin America, in the “non-Western
traditions” section, on the role of pre-Hispanic Amerindian
traditions in the Americanist proposal of the writer and theorist Ricardo
Rojas. We focus our analysis on a work specifically devoted to Amerindian art: The
Syllabary of the American Decoration.
2.
When
does the history of the Argentine nation begin? Who were their founding
fathers? What is the cultural identity that defines it? Rojas plays a key role
among the nationalist intellectuals who provided answers to these questions by
assigning the indigenous people and the Spaniards the role of architects of our
homeland; a position which responds to a dominant trend in redefining the Latin
American political map in the early 19th century triggered by Spain having lost
its former colonies. Spain, commonly referred to as “la
Madre Patria”, emerges as a possible ally against the country
which, from that moment on, would be seen as the really
powerful potential enemy: the United States. In this context, the idea
of nation is founded not only on the acceptance, but also in the exaltation of
the virtues of the miscegenation between Spaniards and indigenous peoples. In this
regard, in Eurindia, published in 1924, Rojas
proclaims:
3.
Exoticism is necessary for our political
growth as Indigenism is necessary for our aesthetic
culture. We do not want gaucho savagery or cosmopolitan barbarism. We want a
national culture, as a source of a national civilization, an art that is the
expression of both. Eurindia is the name of this
ambition.[3]
4.
These ideas
had already been present in his thoughts since the beginning of the century; La
Restauración Nacionalista,
a report on the teaching of History written in 1909 at the Ministry of Justice
and Public Instruction’s request, highlights the need for an “American
aesthetic education”, where “American” can be understood as the result of this miscegenation.
Accordingly, only a systematic educational program aimed at the formation of a
national consciousness conjugating tradition (Spanish-indigenous heritage) and
modernity, would allow the development of an “American
aesthetic sensibility”. Based on these goals, around 1914, Rojas plans the
foundation of a School of Indigenous Arts for the University of Tucumán,
where students would be trained in the stylization of regional models and
images of indigenous archaeology, adapting them to the needs of industries and
modern life.[4] Since
the Spanish heritage is the one learned and apprehended by all (language,
religion, customs), it is urgent that the forgotten heritage - the
indigenous past - be rescued. In that sense, Rojas aims to encourage
both the “aesthetic”
and the historical knowledge of the
indigenous cultures. The former, by means of the analysis of their art
(techniques, design, composition, symbology), and the latter, through
archaeological research.
5.
A
connoisseur of both archeology and local and American folklore, Rojas reclaims
the importance of researchers, not only in the specific field of these
disciplines, but of culture in general. In his
Historia de la literatura argentina. Ensayos
filosóficos sobre la evolución
de la cultura en el Plata[5] (History of Argentinian literature. Philosophical
essays on the evolution of culture in the Plata) he includes, in the volume
dedicated to “The Modern”, Juan Ambrosetti, Adán Quiroga, and Samuel Lafone
Quevedo.[6]
Pioneers in studies on calchaqui archaeology and folklore as from the last third
of the 19th century, they understood the pre-Columbian images as ideograms
conveying messages to be deciphered, a task that they undertook transcending
the exclusively local context and inserting the Argentine Northwest in the
Andean and American cultural tradition in general[7].
6.
On the
other hand, it is Rojas who, as the head of the University of Buenos Aires,
promotes, in 1929, the publication of the posthumous work of Adán Quiroga, Folklore Calchaquí
(Calchaqui Folklore), in which archaeological pieces of the Argentine Northwest
are analysed in the light of myths, rites, and
beliefs prevailing at the end of the previous century. In the preface he
emphasizes the originality of Quiroga’s methodology: “[For
his] idea of confronting Andean icons with local folklore. Here, archaeology,
chronicles and the vernacular provide mutual assistance, and some ethnographic
and historical problems are cleverly clarified, if not definitively resolved”.[8]
7.
Shortly
afterwards, Rojas encourages the head of the University of Tucumán, Juan Teran,
to publish another of Quiroga’s then still unpublished works, Petrografías y Petroglifos
(Petrographies and Petroglyphs), in which Argentine
Northwest specimens still unkown at that time are
described and illustrated.[9]
8.
We
concur with Amigo’s statement[10] that for Rojas images are involved in the formation of
historical meaning, since they contribute to the formation of a national
consciousness from elements of tradition. The “iconologic” direction
in the works of Quiroga, Ambrosetti and Lafone Quevedo, concerned with deciphering the deeper
meanings of images, responded to Rojas’
demand in so far as they
disseminated images charged with the “indigenous spirit”.
These images, integrated into modern life through design, would sustain the
development of an American aesthetic sensibility.
The
American aesthetic sensibility: between tradition and modernity, between the
American and the Universal
9.
In the
foreword of the Silabario, Rojas resumes the
goals proposed decades before:
10.
Folklore
and archaeology are my starting points; education and industry are my means;
nationality and beauty are my ends [...] the main objective of this book [is]
to show the content of the indigenous art and the aspects that can be seized on
by modern industrial arts.[11]
11.
However,
Rojas’ nationalism manifests two basic tensions from the
beginning of the book: tradition versus modernity; Americanism versus
Universalism. On the one hand, he highlights the need of an aesthetics based on
indigenous art; on the other hand, he defends the use of European aesthetic
categories in his analysis. He insists on the need to address the study of all
art from the perspective of a “modern eye”
and at the same time postulates the
universality of the aesthetic dimension. He is interested in highlighting the
specific significance of American symbology but simultaneously sustains that
their designs must be adapted to the industrial manufacturing settings. He
proposes, as a starting point, to consolidate a national identity with an
American consciousness, but he ends up dissolving American history in the
history of humankind.[12]
12.
In his
book, Rojas says that his study combines several intentions, “an
aesthetic and purely descriptive one, and two converging others: to penetrate
into the secret nature of symbols and to incorporate this revived art into
everyday life”.[13] However,
as it will be discussed below, the purely descriptive intention hides a
universalist conception of symbols, while the converging aspects of his
proposal cause a first tension: what happens to the content of the symbols once
they become stylized and adapted to industrial design?
13.
When
interpreting the symbolic meaning of the signs of indigenous art, Rojas turns
to his specialized readings, referring to prestigious americanists,
historians and archaeologists[14], in order to propose that
these signs be adapted to industrial life without losing their original
meaning. This should be maintained in order for
indigenous art to fulfil its function “... [Of being] the aesthetic means for invigorating
our racial consciousness”, where race should be understood as “a
spiritual type, not a physical ethnos”[15]. Further on, he
explicitly states that “[...] I employ the word race not with the
meaning which it has been ascribed by materialist anthropology, but with the
old romantic meaning of collective personality, historical grouping, cultural
awareness”.[16] It is
in this “spiritual type” expressed
in indigenous art that the national consciousness is immersed in the American
one. Rojas solves the evident dichotomy between the original meanings typical
of non-Western cultures and the latent connotations in industrial designs
through an esoteric[17] universalism
which posits that all images of all times and places are archetypal images: “from
nationalism we go to Americanism and then to the universality of human
prehistory. Symbols of our homeland and our world: this is what I am offering
here”.[18]
Analysing pre-Hispanic art aesthetically involves substantiating
everything that is “beautiful and essential” beyond
their historical conjuncture.
14.
But
where does “that which is American” persist
if it is dissolved in the universal soul? The esoteric aspects of Rojas’ thought
leave this question with neither sense nor answer:
through the Native-Americans we are connected with the eternal and universal
human dimension, since it is due to its indigenous past that America belongs to
the “great civilizations of Antiquity”. In
his intention of “rehabilitating the indigenous peoples as the ancestors
of our history and the salt of our civilization [...]”, he
intends to demonstrate “[...] that not all of the indians
were savages and through them America binds us to the oldest lineage of our
species, to the prehistory of the world, to the age of semigods
and deluges, like Israel, Assyria, Egypt, and all the legendary ancient peoples”.[19] Such a statement reveals his observance to
evolutionism, typical of the dominant thought at the time — by
expressing the idea that not all indians were
savages, he means, in other words, that some of them indeed were.
But how do we reconcile this proposal with the idea of a single, universal and eternal human essence? Do both the savage and
the civilized participate in this essence? The truth is that Rojas does not
even mention the need to produce some kind of answer.
In several passages of the book we come upon
expressions such as “rudimentary tribes” with a
“schematic art”
according to their “degree
of evolution”. In this line of thought (which he shares with many
of his contemporaries) he compares the “primitive
man” to a child, equating the intellectual and creative
processes of the indigenous peoples with those corresponding to an earlier
stage of human development.[20]
In a similar sense, he interprets
as a deficiency the lack of conformity with the anatomical reality in the
treatment indigenous artists gave the human figure: “unlike
Europeans, they did not attain what we might call the fulfilled aesthetic
autonomy of the human form”.[21]
15.
Resuming
Rojas esoteric answer to the issue of the dissolution of that which is American
in that which is Universal, it is interesting to note that in the fourth part
of the book, dedicated to Symbols,[22] lies the key to his foundations: a belief in the
existence of Atlantis. In the seventh chapter, he states:
16.
If the internal analogies among several
continental cultures surprise the scholar in the New World, imposing the
necessary hypothesis of prehistoric contacts or references to a common
primordial source, then no less surprising is the abundance of analogies
between these archaeological sites in America and those in Chaldea, Egypt,
Mycenae, Etruria, Persia, India, China, Ireland and even primitive Spain,
imposing the geological hypotheses of a former continent - the fabulous Atlantis - increasingly necessary for
explaining similarities among those antique civilizations.[23]
17.
In the
epilogue, “From Atlantis to Eurindia”, he
presents this thesis, insisting on the intercontinental analogies which become
manifest in art: scenes of the Great Deluge, Prometheus devoured by vultures,
two-headed eagles and snakes, crosses and frets. He
also appeals to their scientific, philosophical and esoteric sources: he
highlights the references to the lost continent in Plato’s Timaeus,[24] resorting then to “modern
occultists” such as Scott Elliot, who in his The Story of
Atlantis studies the disappearance of the continent due to successive
floods.[25] In the
theosophist Mme. Blavatsky’s predictions he finds a privileged place for America.
In her book Secret Doctrine, she maintains that: “The
humankind of the New World, in many ways much older than the Old World [...] is
the one with the mission and karma of sowing the seeds of a future race, more
glorious than all those ever known so far”.[26]
18.
Knowing
that esotericism is labelled as non-scientific, Rojas turns to the voice of “a man
of science”, Florentino Ameghino, who
suggests in his book Antigüedad del hombre en el Plata the pre-diluvium
existence of submerged continents in the Atlantic Ocean.[27] Therefore, legitimized by positive science and
Platonic philosophy, he advances his boldest hypothesis: “[...]
if humankind, according to Ameghino, may have been
born in America, then America may have been the cradle of civilization”.[28] Rojas, who acknowledges the existence of “[...]
mutual misunderstanding and centuries-long antipathies [between native indians and Europeans] which we need to suppress”[29], assigns “autochthonous
art” a key role in this mission because it would be useful
in rebuilding the unity of our America, affirming its participation in the “concert
of human civilization”, including its birth.
19.
However,
although he conceives autochthonous art as a way to
put an end to the conflicts between indigenous peoples and Europeans, thanks to
the development of an American aesthetic sensibility, he is not at all
interested in the art produced by the living indigenous peoples or the living
mestizos, nor does he consider that this may contribute to the construction of
such a “sensibility”. In fact, for Rojas the national value does not
reside in the contemporary indigenous culture but in that of a distant past.
Rojas subscribes to the historical reconstruction proposed by Quiroga, Lafone Quevedo, and Ambrosetti,
who argue that the indians the Spaniards met (who are
the ancestors of today’s indigenous peoples) were “barbarian
tribes” which ravaged the great civilizations of the Argentine
Northwest:
20.
The
issue has been resolved that barbarian nations made a big incursion, not many
centuries ago, which, like the barbarians who overran Europe, defeated the
primitive civilization of the valley [...] the remains of the peoples which are
today beginning to be exhumed, the art objects found day after day, are the precious
remains of a lost civilization, destroyed by barbarians who were probably the calchaquinos.[30]
21.
Thus,
the most remote pre-Hispanic art will be used to develop designs “customized” for
modern times in order to help develop the so-called “American
aesthetic sensibility”. Rojas dedicates the seventh part of his book to
demonstrating that it is possible to adapt the indigenous ornamentation, which is capable of satisfying the “aesthetic
demands of our modern soul” to the needs of “our
cosmopolitan life”. By means of his esoteric and universalist
conception, he understands that the American past provides us with an eternal
and universal sensibility that reconciles its supernatural and mystical content
with the aesthetic and functional needs of modern industry:
22.
It
will be objected that once the Silabario had been
integrated and its industrial adaptation renewed, nothing would remain of its
archaeological character. But yes, its geometric designs, its rhythm, its
spirit and even its intact themes would remain [...] for modern integration
would coincide with ancient symbolism more than what it is believed.[31]
23.
Modern
humans receive from ancient humans the supreme knowledge existing in nature (an
extension of the Divine), which is expressed in the signs of their art. Rojas
supports an American modernity constructed from this inherited wisdom that will
allow us to “rebuild the broken unity between the two continents”.[32]
24.
It is
with this esoteric universalism that he resolves, in his conception of a “national
culture”, the conflicts between Europe and America, latent
since the conquest and re-actualized in the dichotomy between a pre-modern past
and a modern present. The culture clash, the conflictual miscegenation
and the need to reaffirm an identity that inevitably faces difference and
otherness are issues that are invalidated by the existence of that original
moment in which everyone belonged to a single continent, to a single “civilization”.
Moreover, Rojas reserves America the role of being the birthplace of that
civilization, reinforcing a “national pride” built
upon the American consciousness and offering the continent (following Blavatsky’s
predictions) a key role in the future history of humankind.
The
pre-Hispanic images in the Silabario
25.
As
previously observed, in the Silabario, Rojas
proposes an aesthetic description as well as an investigation into the
symbolism of American art in order to incorporate it
to contemporary life. However, he does not address this description or this
investigation by making an analysis of the art produced by the different
cultures defined so far. Instead, he bases his analysis on the many variables
concerning plastic production, establishing general principles for all American
art. Accordingly, he organizes the book into parts that correspond to
descriptive items that he illustrates with examples from pre-Hispanic America,
from Mesoamerica to the Argentine Northwest. In other words, he builds the
category American art[33]: “Nevertheless, I believe that above and beyond all
regional characterizations, all American decoration shares similarities
stemming from the predilection for certain signs, the emphasis with which they
are treated and the rhythm which rules the compositions”.[34] The images included throughout the book operate as “illustrations” with no
spatial-temporal indications whatsoever [Figure 1], or with epigraphs that vaguely locate them in their
original contexts [Figure 2]. At the end of the book, Rojas includes a note
declaring, “The illustrations in this book have been presented as
a stimulus for the reader’s aesthetic emotion and intellectual curiosity”. [35]
26.
In the
first part, Los Signos (Signs), he enumerates
iconographic themes, such as phytomorphic,
zoomorphic, mythomorphic, etc.; in the second, La
Técnica (Technique), different technologies and materials, such as clay,
textiles, stone, etc. are mentioned; in the third, La Composición
(Composition), he systematizes the type of proportions, rhythms,
repetitions, etc. found in this art; in the fourth, Los Símbolos
(Symbols), he lists those archetypal images, such as world, god,
man, race and beauty, that he considers to be the
expression of “an essential nature of human spirit”,
where “mystical sensibility” is one
with “aesthetic sensibility”. In
this chapter, located in the centre of the sevenfold
structure and expressing his adherence to the thesis of the existence of the
lost continent, an inflection takes place from the descriptive to the
interpretative, founded in the idealistic principle of universal archetypes. In
the fifth part of the book, Los Estilos (Styles),
he introduces the historical and social variable, characterizing the “styles
corresponding to cultures developed at different times, in different places”,[36] but always in the light of universalist comparisons.
Basically, these comparisons take the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans as a
defining parameter for ancient civilization, namely: societies that had
a written language and a significantly developed material culture based on a
complex socio-political organization. In the sixth part, La Vida (Life),
he summarizes the social, economic, and political conditions of the American
cultures, and in the seventh, El Ideal (Ideal), he develops his proposal
for integrating the American symbols to modern life through their use in the
ornamentation of cities, people, houses, and books. For example, he says, “[...]
the mere contemplation of certain archaeological figures is enough to suggest
its adoption as a motif for utensils”.[37]
The last chapter of this part is
dedicated to “America’s primitive writings and ornaments”:
27.
We finally arrive [...] to the
justification of the title given to this work, Silabario:
the need to decipher American ornaments, to discover any possible concrete
phonetic or ideographic expression in its decorative arts, whose images, being
more than ornaments, usually symbolize ideas and numbers.[38]
28.
The
thesis that there would be ideographic writing systems “concealed” in
ancient “American decoration”,
which is one of the central themes pervading the book, is precisely the
necessary and unavoidable condition for the author to be able to affirm not
only the participation of our continent in the concert of the “Great
Civilizations of Antiquity”, but also its role as the “Cradle
of Civilization”.[39]
In the aforementioned chapter, he
draws comparisons among prehistoric ideographic signs [Figure
3] taken “almost
entirely from books on magic and occultism”,[40] Egyptian hieroglyphs [Figure
4], Mayan alphabet [Figure
5], and motifs taken from
the Tiwanaku [Figure 6] and Calchaquí iconographies [Figura
7], to which he ascribes
the value of ideographic signs.[41]
He goes on to conclude that “American
ornaments [...] express ideas about the mystery of the world, the tradition of
the continent and the destiny of Humankind”.[42]
29.
Although
Rojas’s Americanism is subsumed in an esoteric-universalist
conception which excludes the possibility to account for the aesthetic,
functional and symbolic particularities of the various manifestations of
pre-Hispanic art, there are defendable aspects of his analysis that we consider
absolutely valid: 1) the interaction between means and techniques in the
construction of signs; 2) the mythical-religious function of pre-modern art; 3)
the notion of plastic signs as a particular mode of language; 4) the value of
compositional systems as an expression of the prevailing rules and logic of a
culture; 5) The link between natural referents and modes of representation of
supernatural beings.
30. As a historical document, an aesthetic repertoire, a
theoretical essay, and an academic text, the Silabario
plays a fundamental role when reviewing the historiography of pre-Hispanic art
in Argentina. Undoubtedly, it deserves to be studied and analysed
in depth. The work here presented represents the starting point of this
mission.[43]
References
AMEGHINO, Florentino. Inscripciones
antecolombinas encontradas en
la República Argentina. Obras Completas, vol II: Primeros trabajos científicos. La Plata: Gobierno de la pcia. de Buenos Aires, 1914
(1880), pp. 403-420.
_____.
La
antigüedad del Hombre en el
Plata. Buenos Aires: La Cultura Argentina, 1918
(1881).
AMIGO, Roberto. La pintura de Historia: imágenes
de la República Conservadora. Informe Final de
Investigación, UBACYT. Buenos Aires: mimeo, 1996.
BOTANA, Natalio.
El orden conservador. Buenos Aires: Hyspamerica, 1986.
BOVISIO, María Alba.
¿Qué es esa cosa llamada “arte...primitivo? Acerca del
nacimiento de una categoría.
Epílogos y prólogos para un fin
de siglo: VIII
Jornadas de Teoría e Historia de las Artes.
Buenos Aires: Centro Argentino de Investigadores en
Artes, 1999.
_____. Universalismo
y americanismo en el Silabario de la Decoración Americana de Ricardo Rojas. Terceras
Jornadas de Estudios e Investigaciones.
Instituto de Teoría e Historia
del Arte "Julio E. Payró", Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA), Buenos Aires, 2000, CD-ROM.
_____. Supuestos y conceptos acerca de la
imagen precolombina del noroeste argentino en la obra de Samuel Lafone Quevedo,
Adán Quiroga y Juan Ambrosetti.
Estudios Sociales
del NOA, nº 14, diciembre
2014, Jujuy.
BOVISIO, María
Alba; PENHOS, Marta. La construcción de “América” en la obra de Ricardo Rojas y Ángel Guido. Actas III Jornadas de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea, (cd). Facultad de Humanidades y Artes, UNR, Rosario, 2002,
pp.25-40.
KUON
ARCE, Elisabeth et al. Cuzco-Buenos Aires, ruta de intelectualidad americana
1900-1950. Lima: Universidad
San Martín de Porres, Fondo Editorial, 2009.
MUÑOZ, Miguel. Nacionalismo y esoterismo en la estética de Ricardo Rojas. Las Artes en el Debate del Quinto Centenario. CAIA/Facultad
de Filosofía y Letras de la
UBA, Buenos Aires, 1992.
PAYA, Carlos; CARDENAS, Eduardo. El
primer nacionalismo argentino en Manuel Gálvez y
Ricardo Rojas. Buenos Aires: Peña Lillo, 1978.
QUIROGA, Adán. Calchaquí y la epopeya de las Cumbres. Revista del Museo
Nacional de La Plata, vol.5, La Plata, 1893.
ROJAS, Ricardo. La Restauración
Nacionalista. Informe sobre educación.
Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Justicia
e Instrucción Pública, 1909.
_____.
La
Universidad de Tucumán. Tres conferencias. Buenos
Aires: Librería Argentina de Enrique García, 1915.
_____. Historia de la
literatura argentina. Ensayos filosóficos
sobre la evolución de la cultura en el
Plata. Vol. VII/VIII: Los modernos, Buenos Aires: 1922.
_____. Eurindia.
Buenos Aires: Losada, 1951 (1924).
_____.
Silabario de
la decoración americana.
Buenos Aires: Losada, 1953 (1930).
_____.
Prólogo a Folklore Calchaquí
de Adán Quiroga. Revista de la
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 1929.
ROMERO, José Luis.
Las ideologías
de la cultura nacional y otros
ensayos. Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1982.
_________________________
[1] English translation by Elena O’Neill.
[2] IDAES/UNSAM.
[3] ROJAS, Ricardo. La Restauración Nacionalista. Informe sobre
educación. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Justicia e Instrucción Pública, 1909, p.
20.
[4] ROJAS,
Ricardo. La Universidad de Tucumán. Tres
conferencias. Buenos Aires: Librería Argentina de Enrique García, 1915.
[5] ROJAS, Ricardo. Historia de la literatura argentina. Ensayos
filosóficos sobre la evolución de la cultura en el Plata. Vol. VII/VIII:
Los modernos. Buenos Aires: Kraft, 1922.
[6] Samuel
Lafone Quevedo (Montevideo, 1835 – La Plata, 1920) graduated
from the University of Cambridge as Magister Artum in
1848. In 1859 he took charge of the exploitation of mines in
Las Capillitas Andalgalá,
Catamarca, which allowed him to develop his research in the region. He was
appointed professor of American Archaeology at the University of Buenos Aires
in 1898 and, in 1906, director of the Museum of Natural Sciences, National
University of La Plata, a position he held until his death. Adán
Quiroga (San Juan 1863 – Buenos Aires, 1904) completed a Law degree from the
University of Cordoba in 1886. He worked as a journalist and lawyer in
Catamarca and Tucumán. In the late 1890s the Argentine Geographic Institute
entrusted him with expeditions around the Calchaquí
Valleys, which will be published by that academic institution. Juan Bautista Ambrosetti (Entre Ríos, 1861 – Buenos Aires, 1917) finished
his secondary education at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires and, in 1886,
joined the Expedition of natural scientists who travelled across the Chaco. In
1890, the Argentine Geographic Institute entrusted him with archaeological and
ethnological explorations in northwestern Argentina and the Rio de La Plata. In
1902 he excavated the Paya site in Salta. He was director of the Ethnographic
Museum of the School of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos
Aires from 1905 until his death.
[7] We have elaborated an
extensive analysis of the contributions of these researchers with developing
the study of prehispanic images in: Supuestos y conceptos acerca de la imagen precolombina
del noroeste argentino en la obra de Samuel Lafone Quevedo, Adán Quiroga y
Juan Ambrosetti. Estudios Sociales
del NOA, nº 14, diciembre
2014, Jujuy.
[8] ROJAS,
Ricardo. Prólogo a Folklore
Calchaquí de Adán Quiroga. Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires,
Buenos Aires, 1929, p.4.
[9] The head of the
University of Tucumán entrusted the preparing of the edition to Ernesto
Padilla, which was printed at the University of Buenos Aires Print in 1931.
[10] AMIGO, Roberto. La pintura de Historia: imágenes de la República
Conservadora. Informe Final de Investigación, UBACYT. Buenos Aires: mimeo, 1996.
[11] ROJAS, Ricardo. Silabario de la decoración americana. Buenos Aires:
Losada, 1953 (1930), pp. 20-21.
[12] Although on the one
hand Rojas’ “indigenism” involves the rescue of a local tradition, on the other
hand, it corresponds to the exoticism of modern Europe, eager to find new art
forms for a new society in constant transformation and progress.
[13] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit.,
p. 20.
[14] See ROJAS, 1953, op. cit., 22.
[15] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit, p. 23.
[16] Ibidem, p. 151.
[17] Concerning the esoteric
elements in Rojas’ nationalism, see MUÑOZ, Miguel.
Nacionalismo y esoterismo en la estética de Ricardo Rojas. Las Artes en el
Debate del Quinto Centenario, CAIA/Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la
UBA, Buenos Aires, 1992.
[18] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit., p.20.
[19] Ibidem, p. 23.
[20] Ibidem, p. 59.
[21] Ibidem, p. 48.
[22] In the prologue, Rojas highlights
the sevenfold structure of the Silabario ...
organized in 7 parts with 7 chapters each. “This is a magic number which
results from adding 3, which symbolizes the invisible spirit, and 4, the symbol
of visible matter”. ROJAS, 1953, op cit, p. 19. At
the beginning of the fourth part he refers to the
central location of the chapter of symbols: “by occupying the center of the
sevenfold structure of the book, it functions as the keystone at the apex of an
arch, locking its parts together”. ROJAS, 1953, op cit, p.129.
[23] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit., p.162.
[24] Ibidem, pp. 298-302.
[25] Ibidem, pp. 303-304.
[26] Cited in ROJAS, op. cit., p. 304.
[27] ROJAS, op. cit., p. 308.
[28] Ibidem, p. 312.
[29] Ibidem, p. 204.
[30] QUIROGA, Adán. Calchaquí y la epopeya de las Cumbres. Revista del Museo
Nacional de La Plata, vol.5, La Plata, 1893, p. 191.
[31] ROJAS, op. cit., p.240.
[32] Ibidem, p.
314.
[33] It is significant that
a few years earlier, in 1927, Franz Boas published, with a similar structure,
Primitive Art, a work that in our view constitutes the consolidation of the
category of “primitive art”. In: BOVISIO, María Alba. ¿Qué es esa cosa
llamada “arte...primitivo? Acerca del nacimiento de una categoría. Epílogos
y prólogos para un fin de siglo: VIII Jornadas de Teoría e
Historia de las Artes. Buenos Aires: Centro Argentino de
Investigadores en Artes, 1999.
[34] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit., p. 170.
[35] Ibidem, p. 315.
[36] With the limitations
imposed by the development of knowledge in 1930, he distinguishes five cultural
areas with distinct styles: Tawantisuyu, Tiahuanaco,
Peruvian Coast, Calchaquí, Mexico, and neighbouring regions.
[37] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit.,
p. 265.
[38] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit.,
p. 262.
[39] Ameghino is a pioneer in defending this thesis: in 1878 he presented, at the
International Congress of Americanists in Brussels, his work “Inscripciones antecolombinas
encontradas en la República
Argentina” (Pre-Columbian inscriptions found in the Republic of
Argentina), in which he sustains that the pictographs found in various parts of
the country, to which he attributes a remote antiquity, are of hieroglyphic
character. He takes up the issue in the first part of La
Antigüedad del hombre en el Plata.
[40] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit.,
p. 265.
[41] Rojas needs to prove
that the cultures of Andean America were “literate civilizations” in order to be equate it to those of Mesoamerica,
particularly the Mayans, which by then was known to have developed writing
systems and numeric notation.
[42] ROJAS, 1953, op. cit.,
p. 292.
[43] I would like to thank
teachers, students and seminar organizers for their comments, contributions and presentations, which enriched me as an
academic and as a person.