An eulogy for pots [1]

Deborah Dorotinsky Alperstein [2]

DOROTINSKY ALPERSTEIN, Deborah. An eulogy for pots. 19&20, Rio de Janeiro, v. X, n. 2, jul./dez. 2015. https://www.doi.org/10.52913/19e20.X2.08b [Español]

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1. On May 11th, 1910, the Board of the National School of Arts and Crafts for Men (ENAOH) in Mexico City received a letter signed by the Undersecretary of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, Ezequiel A. Chavez, notifying that the minister of that department, Justo Sierra, had already approved the sketches for the oil paintings commissioned to Mr. Saturnino Herrán and that they should be placed in the School’s Auditorium: “This Secretariat is pleased to authorize Mr. Saturnino Herrán to decorate the panneaux of the Auditorium of the School under your direction, once the sketches of the respective compositions have been already approved by this same Secretariat” [Figure 1 and Figure 2].[3] Three months later, on August 12th, 1910, the Board of the School notified the Secretary of Education and Fine Arts that Herrán’s commission was concluded, to the Board’s satisfaction. The painter himself valued both works at $1,500 pesos.[4] They were two mural oil paintings, executed directly on a plastered wall, symmetrically decorating the ends of the Auditorium’s front wall.[5] The works which finally came to be executed [Figure 3 and Figure 4] differ from the preparatory sketches, the spaces painted in its base are absent - maybe allowing a possible inclusion of some text or sign - as well as other minor changes, as discussed below.

2. Herrán delivered the works a few months before the outbreak of the Revolution and, apparently, he was paid only a third of what had been promised. If we follow Fausto Ramirez’s interpretation on Herrán’s work - as surpassing the academic realism in which the painter was trained, connected with the Symbolist movement consolidated in Mexico by Julio Ruelas, and understanding such Symbolism in an original way, adapting his themes according to experience of that which is “national” - we suggest that the frequent presence of local ceramic in his production goes beyond a decorative aim. By translating experiences and individual views of what is one’s own, it acquires the value of being deeply rooted in the land, preceding the assessment traditional art gained during the post-revolutionary period, after 1920.[6] The predominating principle in the historiographical discourse of Modern Mexican art is that popular art suddenly “seemed to have been reassessed” at the time of the so-called cultural renaissance. However, as shown by the two works by Herrán we will examine herein - as well as other works by the same artist or by artists like Félix Parra and German Gedovius - the local contemporary pottery was not a discovery of the post-revolutionary vanguards, neither as local objects, nor as objects with formal qualities worth considering as imaginative creation.

3. Historiography has long ago acknowledged the presence of pre-Columbian indigenous art in the 19th century’s Fine Arts in Mexico as an appropriation of the material culture of the past, and as a way to build a national identity rooted in its own “tradition”. Art historians such as Fausto Ramirez, Angelica Velazquez, Esther Acevedo and Elena Estrada Gerlero have approached historical painting and landscape painting in their “antiquarian” aspect.[7] A glance at the catalogue raissonné of the National Museum of Art (MUNAL) and the third volume of the catalogue of the exhibition Los pinceles de la Historia (“History’s paintbrushes”) presented in the museum reveals the depth with which they have dealt with the presence of historical indigenous characters, monoliths, sculptures, reliefs, pseudo-prehispanic architectural structures and figurines of varied nature as these, which are also depicted in the 19th century painting. Pre-Hispanic art appears also in the plates of different Atlases, such as in those by Garcia Cubas, and in monumental publications such as México a través de los siglos.[8] But to account for certain visual habits of the 19th century concerning appropriation, incorporation, citation or relying on the traditional arts - with which they possibly tried to make sense of the otherness of the indigenous worlds, contemporary both to the artists and to the Mexican society undergoing modernization - we have to look at minor genres in painting such as still life, documentary photographs in albums and isolated episodes in historical and landscape paintings, as well as in some allegoriesin if we are to find references to those objects of indigenous origin. The works of Saturnino Herrán here at issue witness the encounter between an emerging modernity seen through the building of a new city, a still present handicraft tradition, and social values such as the family and the physical health of the male body which, despite existing since the Porfiriato, acquired other dimensions during the post-revolution. 

Herrán, the Allegory of Construction, and the Allegory of Labour

4. To improve the industry’s condition after independence, various efforts were made to offer workers a more specialized training in the use of the rapidly changing technologies. The ENAOH’s closest direct precedent can be dated as January 14th, 1856, when President Comonfort decreed the establishment of an Industrial School of Arts and Crafts, allocating to it a lot of land in San Jacinto. The School founded by Comonfort was a reference in 1867 during the Restored Republic and, by order of President Benito Juarez, the building of the former convent of San Lorenzo was allotted to the National School of Arts and Crafts for Men. Dr. Miguel Hurtado was the ENOAH’s first headmaster, in office until 1877. Also, in 1867, a new Law of Education was enacted aspiring to offer education to the most disadvantaged social sectors. The new academic proposals that emerged from that law aimed at preparing children and youngsters for their inclusion in an economically active life. In 1877, the engineer Manuel Alvarez was appointed director of the ENAOH; he was replaced in 1905 by engineer Gonzalo Garita, who made the reform of the school’s study plan in 1907. According to Humberto Monteón, between 1889 and 1905, the arrival of modern machinery and industrial production processes augmented, increasing the demand for skilled industrial workers. At the end of 1890, the Escuela Práctica de Maquinistas (EPM, Practical School of Machinists) was established, with the aim of creating specialized technical staff, in particular for handling equipment such as steam engines. In 1892, the EPM was transferred to the ENAOH, where a large part of locomotive drivers and several metalworkers were trained. Consequently, the call for training craftsmen gradually gave space to the training of workers qualified in handling modern machinery. Finally, towards 1915, the ENAOH was transformed into the Escuela Práctica de Ingenieros Mecánicos y Electricistas (Practical School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers), and later into the Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Electrica (ESIME, Superior Mechanical and Electrical Engineering School).[9] Herrán painted these two works at the time of this particular transition at the ENAOH, so the tension between the two allegories, between an image of a craftsman and that of an industrial worker is not accidental.

5. As mentioned above, it was the Minister of Education and Fine Arts of the government of Porfirio Diaz, Justo Sierra, who directly commissioned both “panneaux” to Saturnino Herrán in order to decorate the Auditorium and who also approved the preparatory sketches.

6. Regarding the document the Secretariat under your worthy assignment, reference number 516, dated last May 11th, I have the honour to inform you that, to the satisfaction of this Board, Mr. Saturnino Herrán has concluded the oil paintings for decorating the panneaux of this School’s Auditorium, in accordance with the sketches of the respective compositions approved by that Superior service.

7. At the same time, I allow myself to express that Mr. Herrán has priced the paintings in question at the sum of $1,500.00¢, a thousand and five hundred pesos, so that the same Secretariat can designate to which expenditure budget item the payment of the aforementioned amount should be charged.[10]

8. The details of the restoration of these works that received little attention by art criticism are quite particular. According to the record preserved in the National Registration Centre for Conservation and Artistic Heritage of the National Institute of Fine Arts (CENCROPAM), the then National Centre for Conservation of Artistic Works (CNCOA) Thomas Zurián Ugarte, its director, began in 1973 the proceedings to retrieve and restore two mural paintings by Saturnino Herrán. These were in very poor condition in the semi-destroyed Auditorium of the former National School of Arts and Crafts for Men (ENAOH), then Superior Mechanical and Electrical Engineering School (ESIME), dependent on the National Polytechnic Institute.[11] In another document, dated June 28th, 1974, the director of CNCOA notified the head of the Department of Visual Arts of the National Institute of Fine Arts, the architect Felipe Lacoture Fornell, that they had returned to inspect the condition of the mural paintings and that they had found them even more damaged. He therefore requested urgent support so as to pressure the authorities of the Board of the National Polytechnic Institute into allowing the CNCOA staff to proceed with the repair and restoration of these murals. Unfortunately, Prof. Zurián received no answer and in another letter addressed to the architect Lacouture in January 1975, he reported that nothing had been done concerning the conditions of Herrán’s mural paintings, and that due to an overt and irreversible deterioration process, the removal of those paintings was extremely urgent. Consequently, it was imperative to contact the representatives of the Board of the Department of Planning and Programming Works of the IPN, because as far as they had been informed, the responsibility for covering the cost of removal, retrieval and restoration was the aforementioned IPN unit.

9. In February 1975, the architect Juan Antonio Vargas Garcia of the IPN Board finally replied to architect Lacouture saying that the CNCOA staff would take care of preparing the budget for the repair. This detailed budget should be sent to the architect Reynaldo Perez Rayon, General Director of the IPN’s Works and Facilities Board.

10. On June 2nd, 1975, Prof. Zurián sends to IPN’s architect Reynaldo Perez Rayon the CNCOA document nº 671, with appendixes detailing the procedures to be followed for the mural’s removal from the walls. The document was stamped when it was received at the IPN on June 3rd, 1975. The budget for the black and white photographic documentation, consolidation and restoration for 1975 was $27.819 Mexican pesos: $6469.50 concerning material and $21.819 for the wages of two technicians.

11. By October 1975, the works had not yet begun and, according to what Prof. Zurián, from the CNCOA, informed the architect Reynaldo Perez Rayon, from the IPN, the cost had risen to $100,000 pesos. In 1976, cheques were issued for the beginning of the removal, transportation to CNCOA and restoration of the murals. Unfortunately, the restorers faced an obstacle again, as they were now denied access to the auditorium by the ESIME authorities. According to other documents in the file, the contract concerning the tasks of removal, transfer to CNCOA and restoration had been signed in January 1976, although it was not until February 1977 that the transfer to the CNCOA of the already removed murals was finally authorized. The records of the arrival of the murals details them as Albañiles (“Builders”) and Albores (“Dawn”), being the latter probably a typing error in the transcription of the title Labores (“Labours”).

12. While the murals were being restored at the CNCOA, the Government of the state of Aguascalientes and the INBA requested them on loan for an exhibition in 1978. Apparently, this is the reason why the works travelled to Aguascalientes, the birthplace of Saturnino Herrán, were exhibited, and presumably remained there until 1992.[12] In the course of the proceedings for the loan of the murals to the government of the state of Aguascalientes, these works were registered with the titles of “Allegory of Construction” and “Allegory of Labour”, as they are known today. These murals were wrongly dated as between 1911 and 1914, an error corrected herein with the discovery of the documents signed by Justo Sierra, commissioning Herrán to decorate the auditorium of what, in 1910, was still the National School of Arts and Crafts for Men.

13. Let us look at both paintings in order to to begin to understand the way in which tradition and modernization are tensioned [Figure 3 and Figure 4].[13]

14. In the foreground of both “panneaux”, Herrán disposed three figures. On the left panel, “Allegory of Construction”, we see a stocky man with the strap of his denim overall hanging from his semi-naked torso. In his right hand he is holding a brush, while in the left one he is holding a large green-glazed ceramic pot, which he is presumably about to decorate. On the right panel, “Allegory of Labour”, there is an upside-down pot and a woman with two toddlers. These figures in the foreground of both works might represent the nuclear family. The woman’s bare shoulder emphasizes the fact that she was breastfeeding. The backgrounds in both panels depict naked-torso workers with an agile and slender musculature, carrying stones and lifting pots or barrels with sand. In “Allegory of Construction”, an Ionic capital on a column replaces the pilaster in the preliminary sketch.[14] In the middleground, towards the left side, the figures of five labourers at work are set in an upward sequence so as to indicate the rising of the construction. In “Allegory of Labour”, towards the left edge, an open-air oven evokes the one used for the firing pieces of pottery like the ones dominating the foreground of both paintings. Behind the woman with the infants, in the middleground, crowded to the right, there is also a compact group of workers. One of them is wearing a hat and a bushy moustache, possibly the engineer or the foreman. Three figures are seen behind him; two are clearly young workers with bare torsos, and the third one, with a hardly distinguishable outline, also seems to be nude from the waist up. Finally, in both paintings, the yellow, green and violet-coloured blurred backgrounds reveal the ambiguous spaces where construction and labour take place.

15. In the background of “Allegory of Construction”, at the right and bathed by a yellow-purplish light, stands a building with the skeleton of a wooden scaffold. In “Allegory of Labour”, almost at the centre of the painting, we can distinguish two more men toiling under the sun, exposing their arms and backs. Herrán has treated both paintings like a chiaroscuro; he has left the foreground in the shadow, clarifying and illuminating the work as we move towards the background.

16. The structure of the composition is similar on both of their sides, although the rhythm of ascent and descent is inverted so as to emphasize a unity and maybe to suggest the complementarity of the works. At the outer edges of both panels the figures of humans, buildings and construction elements almost split the work vertically from the top corners towards the centre, and turning the midpoint of the mural into the apex of an inverted and truncated triangle. The background of “Allegory of Construction” is filled by the structures of two scaffolded buildings; one is smaller, closer to the workers and in backlight, while the other one is bathed in a bluish glow. In “Allegory of Labour”, in the background landscape, where the labour takes place, there is a cart with big wheels; further back, smoke curling from the chimney of a factory closes the background view. The presence of pottery in both foregrounds, together with the yellow, green, violet and bluish coloured backgrounds, unify and give continuity to the pair of paintings.[15] Both foreground and background compress the figures of the sensual workers, framing and highlighting them, celebrating work as a human labour.

17. Herrán had already addressed the issue of labour in an earlier work, signed in 1908 and awarded with the ENBA grant to Europe the following year, which he declined in order to be able to stay in Mexico. The work was entitled “Labour” [Figure 5], a large format landscape painting in which the three figures of a nuclear family stand out, the mother, breastfeeding, with her chest uncovered, the father, tenderly stroking the infant’s head; behind them, a compact group of men moving a big boulder. This painting was well-received by the critics, and in the words of a columnist of El Imparcial,

18. This young painter is only 21 years old, but he is already one of the Academy’s most advanced and talented [students], one could not judge him too harshly in this painting as it’s his first serious work [...] The distinctive qualities of his work are a good composition and fairness in the masses of chiaroscuro, which adjust to an essentially decorative criteria.[16]

19. As revealed by the title of the article in El Imparcial, “The Department of Education has acquired a painting by S. Herrán. Honourable distinction to a student of Fine Arts”, the “Labour” painting was acquired by Justo Sierra, Secretary of Education and Fine Arts, for the San Carlos Academy. Almost a year later, the Secretary had commissioned the decorative panels on labour for the ENAOH. The newspaper El Mundo Ilustrado insisted that Saturnino Herrán was “much more than a promise. He is already an artist, and as an artist he works and studies, in such a way that every effort of his reveals an improvement...”.[17] This painting, like the one we are analysing herein, structurally combines the theme of the nuclear family and the one of heavy labour. In 1910, Herrán handed the “panneaux” to the National School of Arts and Crafts for Men (ENAOH), a few months before the outbreak of the Revolution and around the date when the students of the National School of Fine Arts (San Carlos Academy) exhibited their works during the School’s celebrations for the centennial of Independence. We know that, in this event, the painter exhibited the triptych “The Legend of Volcanoes” [see Image], as narrated by art critiques, as well as a disturbing piece showing the weariness of labour - and not its heroic exaltation - “Women selling pots”.[18] Both “Labour” and the triptych “The Legend of Volcanoes” received positive media attention. However, the press clippings do not refer to the preparatory studies commissioned by Justo Sierra, probably not exhibited at the time. Fausto Ramirez reminds us that towards 1909, while still attending Composition in Painting lessons, Herrán was appointed as temporary professor in the day-course of drawing from plaster.[19]

20. There is an important connection between “Labour” and the two allegories we are here working with. At first glance, Herrán has treated the different planes in the three pieces with a similar chiaroscuro; the foreground is darker, while the middle and background progressively gain light and colour, becoming more luminous. But that is not all. Possibly the same sketches and the same models were used in the three paintings. For example, in “Labour” the workers are dragging a block of marble, and in “Allegory of Construction” one of the workers is carrying a more manageable piece while further down we find the result of the already worked material, the Ionic capital of the pillar. Also, in “Labour”, the position of one of the workers seems to be inverted in the centre of the background of “Allegory of Labour”. However, there are also clear differences. Besides being more naturalist, “Labour” seems more finished, while the two allegories that here concern us are much more sketchy. In addition, it is remarkable how in the two allegories the painter experiments with complementary colours, yellow and violet, red and green, and with the outline of certain parts in red and black forms, that he almost delineates against the background [Figure 3, details]. The colouring draws much attention, and it should be noted that the reproductions of these two allegories do not do justice to the original colours, because in most of them they have been reproduced closer to ochre tones, losing their intensity and brightness, dulling the strange optical effect achieved by complementary colours. Another work exhibited in 1910 at the Academy which also presents this problem is Lavando las ollas (“Washing the pots”), also known as Las vendedoras de ollas (“The pot sellers”) or Vendedoras de ollas (“Women selling pots”) [Figure 6], today in the Museum of Aguascalientes collection; as well as the painting La Cosecha (“Harvest”), today in Andrés Blaistein’s collection.[20]

21. The study plan of academic activities of the School of Arts and Crafts for Men, published in 1907, recommends three weekly lectures on Moral and Health for all students in the fourth year, and physical education exercises in every year in school.[21] So, apparently, Herrán responds with the good physical health of the men in his paintings to the desire to provide the disadvantaged population with healthy bodies, which, in turn, would produce healthy minds. The visual elaboration of the hygienist premises founded in the Porfiriato and strengthened and expanded by the education programs of the revolutionary governments is, therefore, already visible in this work.[22] We also see, as Raquel Tibol asserts, that Herrán approves of labour, that the “good worker” is simultaneously a good father and good husband, and “with his strong arms the Mexican family will develop healthily”.[23]

22. The first article of the 1907 School’s study plan specifies that “carpentry, ironworks, turnery, stone masonry, foundry, industrial and decorative painting and industrial decorative sculpture, electricity applied to industry and mechanics applied to the industry” would be taught there.[24] Pottery, whose presence is so prominent in Herrán’s mural, was not among the subjects offered in the programs. However, industrial decorative painting was included and it may be synthetized in the figure of the worker holding the green-glazed pot in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. So was stone masonry, which in these works is represented by the stone block carried by the worker in “Allegory of Construction”, as well as by the Ionic capital of the pillar at his feet. The same can be said about the marble block carried by the workers in “Labour”. What Herrán shows us in these works is possibly related to a previous School’s Study plan, the one of 1875, when the ENAOH opened a pottery workshop.[25]

23. Perhaps the closest antecedent to this type of decorative allegorical images within educational facilities is the mural in the National Preparatory School made by Juan Cordero in 1874.[26] Since it was destroyed around 1900, according to some sources, it is doubtful that Herrán would have known it since he was still living in Aguascalientes at that time.[27] In his allegory, Cordero pairs Science to Fine Arts, and presents them with the Classicism required by the visual canon current in 1870. Herrán addressed the issue in a more experimental and decorative way, although his approach is more pragmatic and naturalist. As far as the theme is concerned, there are no general allusions to the ideological relationship between science and art aiming at overcoming envy and ignorance in the works of Herrán, as there are in Cordero’s work. Herrán addresses the performance of the subject-worker straightforwardly and in action; in the work that edifies one’s soul and builds the city brings improvement, development and progress, as proclaimed and certainly experienced in different aspects in Mexico during the Porfiriato.

24. Some of the buildings rising in Mexico City during those years, such as the National Theatre (nowadays Palace of Fine Arts) [Figure 7] and the Legislative Palace (nowadays the Monument to the Revolution), are to be seen in the photos of both building processes preserved in different collections such as the one of the Palace of Fine Arts. In them we see the wooden scaffolding listed at the bottom of the composition “Allegory of Construction”. By this I am putting forward that rather than reporting the construction of this or that specific property, the painter records the city’s extensive construction labour.

25. This theme of building the modern city can be appreciated in several works of Latin American and European artists, in which efforts are combined to provide a high-spirited image of work. The case of Pio Collivadino in Argentina is exemplary. As Claudia Shmidt explains, Collivadino “accompanied throughout his life the processes of dramatic transformation experienced by the city”,[28] intensely appreciated in his two brief trips of 1898 and 1905 during his journey around Italy that began in 1890 and was concluded sixteen years later. The art historian Laura Malosetti says that Collivadino was responsible for conveying urban landscape to Easel Painting and turning the subject into a “commendable subject to be honoured by painting”[29]. In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition “Collivadino: Buenos Aires in Construction” curated by Malosetti in 2013 there are several works of other artists who not by chance maintain an interesting connection with that mixture of practices seen as more traditional and less industrialized (the use of horses to pull the load, as in the cart of Herran’s work) and the booming construction of the city. A case in point is Alberto Maria Rossi’s work “The city emerges” (1930) or Collivadino’s “The bank of Boston or the Northern Diagonal” (1926), where the skeleton of a building in progress can be clearly seen.

26. Meanwhile, the preliminary studies conducted by Henrique Bernardelli around 1923 to decorate the Club of Engineers and the Ministry of Aviation are of significant value; sheltered in Mariano Procopio’s Museum and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, the Brazilian researcher Arthur Valle has recently writte about them in an exhibition catalogue.[30] In these studies, which are also more academically connected to the allegorical genre due to its emblematic characters floating in the cloudscape, we see a man sitting on a steel beam while an airplane crosses the sky and Icarus plunges hopelessly, or a Pegasus running next to a locomotive on a steel bridge.[31]

27. This concern with showing progress was merged with the interest of developing appropriate decorative contents, as well as descriptive, didactic and edifying ones for public spaces such as exhibition halls. Concerning this, five years before Herrán handed over the “panneaux” to the ENAOH, the magazine The Studio: International Art published an article about the England salon at the biennial exhibition in Venice in 1903.[32] The English painter Frank Brangwyn was responsible for the decoration of the space. Two of the works by this English artist which were reproduced in the magazine [Figures 8a and 8b] certainly remind us of Herrán’s work, so it is possible to speculate that the Mexican painter had seen them in that publication. Fausto Ramirez had already indicated that Jorge Useta, Herrán’s colleague at the National School of Fine Arts, had stated that Herrán’s early work showed the influence of Brangwyn, maybe due to Herrán’s liking of this English painter’s trichromatic works in the ENBA’s library.[33]

28. In two of the painted panels reproduced in The Studio, Brangwyn achieves a chiaroscuro that distinguishes the figures in the foreground - which are darker and more naturalistic - from the ones in the background, more diffuse in their definition and more luminous, as the allegories we are herein dealing with. Both of Brangwyn’s paintings depict workers in the foreground: in one they insinuate pottery’s manual work and in the other, industrial work. On the right side of the one dedicated to pottery, craftsmen are carrying earthen pots that function as a kind of “repoussoir”, while on the lower part of the left side, there is smoke venting from chimneys of which are possibly ceramic kilns. In the work dedicated to industrial work, the bodies of the blacksmiths are more massive and nude from the waist upwards, like in the allegories we are reviewing.

Pots in costumbrista painting

29. According to the researcher Leonor Cortina, two different and prevailing traditions can be identified in the Mexican pottery and faience production in the 19th century: one closer to a Hispanic origin, the Puebla earthenware, usually called “Talavera de Puebla”; and the other, closer to an indigenous origin from two locations near the city of Guadalajara, Tlaquepaque and Tonala, important pottery production centres since pre-Hispanic times. This earthenware, including the one known as scented-earthenware, “because of the freshness and delicious taste they provided to the water contained in their demijohn’s”,[34] were used locally and exported to Europe. Gustavo Curiel tells us that to get an idea of the esteem Mexican earthenware had in Europe since the 17th century one should take a look at, for example, the Tlaquepaque pitcher one of the Infants offers to the other in “Las Meninas” by Velázquez.[35] The appreciation of this kind of pottery achieved strange proportions due to the fact that Spanish ladies, and even nuns, used to eat the ceramic. In the 17th century this phenomenon was called bucarophagy.[36]

30. Alexander von Humboldt, who visited the new continent two decades before other Europeans, includes in his Political essay on the kingdom of New Spain a reference to Hernán Cortés; therefore, written records about the admiration caused by Mexican pottery can be found since the 16th century. In a letter from January 30th, 1520, Cortés writes to Emperor Charles V about the objects that were sold in México-Tenochtitlan: “They sell a lot of pottery that is mainly of a good kind; they sell many vessels, large jars and small jars, pots, bricks, and other infinite kinds of vessels, all of a remarkable clay: all or almost all of them glazed and painted...”.[37] As explained by Leonor Cortina, pottery came in different qualities and although the most exquisite pieces were acquired by the wealthy classes who even travelled overseas, pieces of lower quality could be acquired by members of the lower class. An example of this is seen in a casta painting by Spanish painter Francisco Clapera (ca.1790) [Figure 9]; as explained by Gustavo Curiel and Antonio Rubial, along with the local economic activity and racial classification, objects of everyday life are depicted, such as the bundle rolled up in a corner, and the simple wooden cupboard that leans against the wall with a “scented-pot of burnished red clay of Tlaquepaque”, and other faience and glass objects on the wall, “framing the cupboard, hanging, there are more pieces of burnished red clay, two silver flasks, besides indispensable skillet for tortillas”.[38]

31. The presence of the scented vases in these works of the 18th century is extremely important to complete the ceramic typologies of Tlaquepaque, because as the investigators tell us, there are shapes of pieces “documented” in the paintings that do not exist even in the collection of the Countess of Oñate, considered one of the most complete ones, which is now in the Museum of America in Spain.

32. The burnished red ware continues to be acknowledged in many works of costumbrista painting in the 19th century and especially towards the mid-century, at the end of Romanticism. Ceramics appears as part of a daily life represented in certain conditions of what is typical; be it in the hands of one of the “popular types”, as shown in the works by Johann Solomon Heggi, Edouard Pingret and Miguel Mata y Reyes, or in domestic interiors and especially in kitchens, as shown in other works by Pingret, or in scenes of a more overtly nationalistic character, as in the anonymous work attributed to Manuel Serrano known as “Indigenous of the Sierra of Oaxaca”, today in the collection of the Museum of America in Madrid.[39] In the case of costumbrismo, the small pots function as expressions of local colour, just like the baskets, clothes and other body adornments. Although not indigenous in a purist sense, they are quite common objects and often characterize lower-class people. Guillermo Prieto reminds us of the presence of this pottery in places such as the real old-fashioned popular taverns (pulquerias de “rumbo y trueno”).

33. Imagine a shed, fifty yards long by fifteen or twenty wide, with its palm or wooden tiled roof, with no frills or gadgets ... Two yards away from the rear wall, and facing the front of the galley, a proud row of narrow pulque barrels are in display, wide in the base, more than two feet high, painted with gaudy colours on the outside and some rubrics that were really hair-rising, such as the “The do not stretch me” [La no me estires], “The Brave One” [El valiente], “The Currutaca” [La Currutaca], “The Delightful One” [El Bonito], etc.

34. On the border of the barrels and on the wall’s side, on the wide planks forming a ledge, there are porous clay bowls, small vessels made of the same material, green glass pitchers of more than a third of a foot, showing a screw in its relief; small and handy barrels and casks with their padlock for the distribution to the masters’ house.[40]

35. Still life and dining-room paintings which show an eclecticism or “miscegenation” that were much more manifest together with European-made, westernized, orientalist and indigenous items, deserve a special mention. Jose Agustin Arrieta, a 19th-century painter from Puebla, is perhaps the best-known exponent of this genre. In his paintings we find examples of a harmonious coexistence between faience of European and Tlaquepaque, Tonala and Puebla origin, together with local natural products such as mangoes, pumpkins, prickly pears, avocados, bananas, tomatoes and baskets. Even artists like Eulalia Lucio, noted for her still life paintings, emphasize the local character that the most indigenous pottery connoted.[41]

The urge for decorativism

36. Going back to our mural and to the large clay pots painted by Herrán, however, it must be clarified that their presence is not an isolated and unique case in his work. Examples abound in his painting, such as in “Labour”, “Women selling pots”, “Herlinda”, “The one from San Luis”, and “Estefania”, in which the artist has given pottery a significant place in order to characterize, in my opinion, the spirit “of the land” of his models. Other works by the painter, such as some still lifes with small pots, refer to products of a more local character; cempasúchil flowers, pumpkin flowers, corn. These works also tell us about the education he received in the ornamental painting classes at the Academy, as a student of German Gedovius, and other teachers such as Felix Parra, whose flower arrangements are also preserved in the collection of the National Bank Mexico.

37. Ethnographic photography is also concerned with the recording of pottery production, such as some photographs taken by Nicolas Leon,[42] one of the founders of the Department of Physical Anthropology and Ethnography of the National Museum in the 20th century, during his stay among the Popolocas Indians in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, or others gathered by Constantine Rickards - British consul in Mexico and the state of Oaxaca - in an unpublished album on the Oaxacan Indians.[43] In photographs published in the Annals of the National Museum album, Nicolas Leon includes the usual photograph, taken frontwards and with a neutral wall in the background, a substitute for the anthropometric identification photography. But he also registers indigenous women at work, as in this image of a potter [Figura 10].

38. He also took photographs of archaeological pieces, displayed against backgrounds that isolate them and thus, enhancing their formal qualities and some of its details, such as sgrafitto. Meanwhile, Rickards obtained a lot of pictures taken among the Oaxacan Indians for a book which had been devised and typed, but never published. Several of them include pots and small pots as part of the characterization of ethnicity [Figures 11a and 11b]. Comparing the proportion of the pottery production in these images taken in Atzompa, Oaxaca, probably dated between 1900 and 1930, we realize that Rickards’s album records a more industrial process, or a more considerable production than that recorded by Nicolas Leon. The green-glazed earthenware identified in Herrán’s mural probably comes from this Oaxacan village.

39. Let us now try to close our argument with a historiographical reflection. Fausto Ramirez, who has given us the best development of the arts in Mexico in the long 19th century and who best knows Herrán’s work, notes in his Chronicle of the visual arts in the Lopez Velarde years 1914-1921 that, prior to the Muralist movement and the so-called Cultural Renaissance, “the concern of the education authorities with rethinking the place and objectives of artistic work in the Mexican society, and with opening new paths for it” was being discussed in the capital’s press.[44] Examples of this are the aforementioned changes in the ENAOH study plan and in the laws of Public Education. This concern with popular production was clearly shown at the Exhibition of Handicraft Labours and Fine Arts, in the Spanish Pavilion, opened in the second half of April 1914.[45] According to Ramirez, José Juan Tablada was the one who best understood the “conceptual novelty of the exhibition” that showed works of art together with production of decorative arts and other manual labours. But even before 1914, Herrán had assimilated colonial art as well as the typical industries and pre-Columbian indigenous images, particularly since 1910, when he started to participate as a draftsman in the excavations at Teotihuacan. As proposed by Fausto Ramirez, Herrán, guided by a Symbolist inspiration, passed from an external and anecdotal interpretation of both the figures and the pre-Hispanic vestiges, to an interpretation from within. The same happened with objects of the indigenous material culture, such as the pots praised by Herrán in the allegories discussed herein, and elsewhere in his work. Ramirez clearly states that concerning the colonial and pre-Hispanic elements in Herrán’s work, “they serve as receptacles, as the trigger of unique experiences, of creative subjectivism. The ancient sculptures eventually become”, as happened with the Coatlicue in the mural project To Our Gods, “a figurative system capable of supporting an interpretation of the historical experience from within, a symbol of profound reality that was at the same time national and personal”.[46] Local pottery plays the role deeply linked to an “origin in these lands” and, thus, transcends its purely decorative function. Of almost a religious feeling, this intuition of being men made of the clay of this land can also be glimpsed in the “Ex-voto to Lopez Velarde”, a poem José Juan Tablada dedicated to the poet - also a close friend of Herrán’s - at his death in 1921,

40. Y tu poesía que dijeron rara,

41. Rezumando emoción es agua clara

42. En botellones de Guadalajara.

43. (Pues con sudor de su barro mortal

44. cuaja el poeta prismas de cristal

45. para que el vulgo vea el triste mundo

46. irisado, misterioso y profundo.)

47. Fue tu barro también un incensario

48. Ante Xochiquetzal; más tu fervor

49. católico, ciñó el escapulario

50. y a la par desgranabas un rosario

51. perfumado con ámbares de amor ...

52. Tus júbilos ingenuos sobre la pena están

53. Cual sobre negro lucen, ardientes y sencillas,

54. Azules amapolas y rojas “maravillas”

55. Las jícaras que bruñe Michoacán.

56. Así en la laca nítida y brillante

57. De tus cóncavos versos turbadores

58. Bebiendo el agua zarca, entre flores,

59. ¡mira su propio rostro el caminante![47]

60. To evoke the missing poet, Tablada uses the same images of local, popular, colourful objects used by Herrán in his paintings; demijohns of Guadalajara, the clay of the censer, scapulars and the Rosary, blue poppies and the red “wonders”, the burnished lacquer gourds of Michoacan. A visual culture shared by members of this modernist generation (or of the Athenaeum), who certainly left the table set for the artists of the next generation, the revolutionary one.

61. Considering that Anthropology and Art History as academic disciplines were consolidated in the 19th century, it is not surprising that some of his objects of study existed in a sort of crossfire, as unstable parts of the dichotomy Art / artefact. In countries like Mexico, the consolidation of both Anthropology and Archaeology in specialized institutions such as the National Museum allowed the collection of these objects as well as their technical and formal analysis. The assessment Mexican artists made of these objects, especially of the wide-ranging pottery, did not happen unexpectedly with the avant-garde of the twenties. As it can be seen in Herrán’s murals, besides being decorative elements, pots acquire a particular symbolic value, a specific localism. Otherwise, Herrán might have been tempted to represent Greek vases, as Frank Brangwyn did in the two works that we have seen, or the Mexican painter Alberto Fuster, with his clear intention of evoking a classical western past.

62. Meanwhile, between two intellectual generations, Gerardo Murillo (best known as Dr. Atl) accomplished this interest in folk art or typical industries in a catalogue of objects from different collections, many of which belonging to the painter Roberto Montenegro. After 1922, the years of Orozco’s so much deplored “jicarismo” would begin. The eulogies for pots were over.

Bibliographic references

CORTINA, Leonor. La loza mexicana del siglo XIX en los museos de los Estados Unidos, In: RAMÍREZ, FAUSTO (cord.). México en el Mundo de las Colecciones de arte, México Moderno, Vol. 4, México: SRE/UNAM/CONACULTA, 1994.

COVEY, Arthur Sinclair. Frank Brangwyn Exhibition room at Venice, The Studio: International art, XXXIV, N. 146, may 1905, pp 285-286. Heidelberger historische Bestände-digital. Available at: <http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/>  Accessed on 10/3/2015. 

CRAVIOTO, Alfonso, Crónica oficial de las Fiestas del Centenario de la Independencia de México. México: 1911. 

CURIEL, Gustavo. El ajuar doméstico tornaviaje, In: VARGAS LUGO, Elisa (cord.). México en el Mundo de las Colecciones de arte, México Moderno, Vol.3, México: SRE/UNAM/CONACULTA, 1994.

DOROTINSKY ALPERSTEIN, Deborah; GONZALEZ MELLO, Renato (cord.), Encauzar la mirada: arquitectura, pedagogía e imágenes en México (1920-1950). México: UNAM Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2010.

FLORES PALAFOX, Jesús; MONTEÓN GONZÁLEZ, Humberto (dirs.). La ESIME en la historia de la enseñanza técnica. México: Instituto Politécnico Nacional, 1993.

GARCÍA SAINZ, María Concepción; ALBERT, María Ángeles. Exotismo y belleza de una cerámica, In: Artes de México, 1991, N. 14.

HUMBOLDT, Alejandro de.  Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva España, Libro tercero, chap. VIII, México, Purrúa, col. "Sepan cuantos...", 1991 (1822).

PÉREZ MONROY, Julieta. La enseñanza del dibujo en la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, In: REYES, Aurelio de los, (cord.). La enseñanza del Arte. México: UNAM, 2010.

Plan de Estudios de la Escuela Nacional de Artes y Oficios para Hombres. México: Talleres de la Escuela de Artes y Oficios, Exconvento de San Lorenzo, 1907.

Prieto, Guillermo. Memorias de mis tiempos. México: Editorial Porrúa, col. “Sepan cuantos…” N. 481, 2004 (1906 París-México).

RAMIREZ, Fausto. Saturnino Herrán: Pintor Mexicano (1887-1987). México: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Programa Cultural de las Fronteras, 1987.

RAMÍREZ, Fausto. Crónica de las artes plásticas en los años de López Velarde 1914-1921. México: UNAM, 1990.

RAMÍREZ, Fausto et. al. Pintura y vida cotidiana en México, 1650-1950. México: Fomento Cultural Banamex, 1999.

REYES, Aurelio de los, (cord.). La enseñanza del Arte. México: UNAM, 2010.

SHMIDT, Claudia. Las Buenos Aires de Pío, In: MALOSETTI COSTA, Laura (ed.). Collivadino. Buenos Aires en construcción. Buenos Aires: Asociación de Amigos del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2013.

TABLADA, José Juan. Exvoto a López Velarde: Retablo a la Memoria de Ramón López Velarde en México A.D. MCMXXI  R.I.P. In: De Coyoacán a la Quinta Avenida. José Juan Tablada, una antología general. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica/UNAM/Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas, 2007.

VALLE, Arthur. A pintura decorativa brasileira no início do século XX, In: CHRISTO, Maraliz et.al.  Coleções em Diálogo: Museu Mariano Procópio e Pinacoteca de São Paulo. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 2014. Avaiable at: <https://www.academia.edu/>.

Descanso, El Mundo Ilustrado, May 30th, 1909.

La Secretaría de instrucción Pública ha adquirido un cuadro de S. Herrán. Honrosa distinción a un alumno de Bellas Artes, El Imparcial, México, June 15th, 1909. In: MOYSSEN, Xavier. La crítica de arte en México 1896-1921. Tomo I, México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1999.

______________________________

[1] Translation by Elena O’Neill

[2] Dr. Deborah Dorotinsky Alperstein, researcher at the Institute of Aesthetic Studies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico  (UNAM). This text is part of the project “Unfolding Art Histories in Latin America”, Getty Research Project UERJ / UNAM / UNSAM 2012-2014.

[3] National School of Arts and Crafts for Men (ENAOH), year 1910-1911. Dossier nº 3, “Auditorium of this School.-Office of the Department of Public Instruction, allowing Mr. Saturnino Herrán’s panneaux to decorate the mentioned hall”. Office of the Secretary of State and  the Office of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, Section of Normal and Special Education, 4th Bureau, nº. 516, File ESIME, fund ENAOH, year 1910-1911, National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico. No folio number.

[4] National School of Arts and Crafts for Men (ENAOH), year 1910 to 1911. Dossier nº 3, “Auditorium of this School.-Office of the Department of Public Instruction, allowing Mr. Saturnino Herrán’s panneaux to decorate the mentioned hall”. Office of the Secretary of State and the Office of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, nº 80. File ESIME, fund ENAOH, year 1910-1911, National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico. No folio number.

[5] The documents of the commission may confuse the reader as to whether or not they were oil paintings on canvas glued to the wall. As indicated by the report on the recovery of both paintings, made around 1980, these were oil paintings on wall, on an even layer of plaster which was rescued by employing the technique “stacco a masselo”, that is, the whole paiting is removed with its entire original substrate or support. The whole procedure of recovery is documented in the archives of the National Center for Conservation and Artistic Heritage Registry (CENCROPAM), Box 126, Dossier 181. See SERVIN VELÁZQUEZ, Javier. Desprendimiento de los murales al óleo del pintor Saturnino Herrán, Cuadernos de Arquitectura y Conservación del patrimonio artístico. Serie: Ensayos, Núm. 13, January 1981. México: Secretaría de Educación Pública e Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, p.54-59; López Orozco, Leticia (ed.). CENCROPAM 50 años de conservación y registro del patrimonio artístico mueble: inicios, retos y desafíos. México: CENCROPAM-INBA, 2014, p.228.

[6] RAMIREZ, Fausto. Saturnino Herrán: Pintor Mexicano (1887-1987). México: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes/Secretaría de Educación Pública/ Programa Cultural de las Fronteras, 1987, p.52. Ramirez is certainly an authority concerning Herrán’s work. See also RAMIREZ, Fausto. Saturnino Herrán. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Colección de Arte, 1976.

[7] A.A.V.V. Artistas Europeos del siglo XIX en México. México: Fomento Cultural Banamex, 1996; A.A.V.V.. Los Pinceles de la Historia: La Fabricación del Estado, 1864-1910. México: Museo Nacional de Arte, 2003. A.A.V.V. Catálogo comentado del acervo del Museo Nacional de Arte: pintura siglo XIX. México: INBA-Museo Nacional de Arte y UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2002.

[8] GARCIA CUBAS, Antonio. Atlas geográfico estadístico e histórico de la república mexicana. México: J.M. Fernández de Lara, 1858; GARCIA CUBAS, Antonio. Atlas pintoresco e histórico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. México: Debray Sucesores en México, 1885. RIVA PALACIO, Vicente (dir.). México a través de los siglos. 5 volumes, México: Ballescá; Barcelona: Espasa, 1887-1889.

[9] MONTEÓN GONZÁLEZ, Humberto. La historia de la ESIME en los informes de sus directores, 1868-1959. Antología documental. México: Instituto Politécnico Nacional, 2013, p.31-50.

[10] National School of Arts and Crafts for Men (ENAOH), year 1910-1911. Dossier nº 3, “Auditorium of this School.-Office of the Department of Public Instruction, allowing Mr. Saturnino Herrán’s panneaux to decorate the aforementioned hall”. Office of the Secretary of State and the Office of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, nº 80. File ESIME, fund ENAOH, year 1910-1911, National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico. No folio number.

The ENAOH was then housed in the former convent of St. Lazarus, Belisario Dominguez Street, in what is now the centre for Continuing Education Unit Allende of the National Polytechnic Institute. With this document, the date of completion of the murals, previously dated between 1911 and 1914, is clarified.

[11] All the Offices mentioned here are in the National Centre for Conservation and Artistic Heritage Registry of the National Institute of Fine Arts (CENCROPAM) project 181; box 126. I appreciate the kindness of the staff of the Historical Archives of the institution for allowing me to examine the file. Office 53, INBA-National Conservation Centre of Artistic Works, the architect Luis Ortiz Macedo, General Director of the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA). In this file the names of the mural paintings are registered as: Albañiles y Labores (Builders and Labour), Oil on plaster-layered prepared wall, given measures 2.65 x 1.85 m. each.

[12] I was not able to confirm whether the murals remained at the Museum of Aguascalientes between 1978 and 1992. The collection os the Museum counted with the preparatory panels for these murals. In 1980 the IPN authorities request the CNCOA to safeguard the mural paintings during the period of refurbishment of the old ESIME building. In 1988 the IPN authorities wrote to the CNCOA asking the whereabouts of the murals, and in 1992 the CNCOA authorities answered declaring that they were still in Aguascalientes. The murals were returned to IPN.

[13] Today they are on display at the IPN National Library of Science and Technology, in Zacatenco.

[14] Both in “Labour” and “Allegory of Construction” we notice large blocks of uncut stone. The symbolic value of these items as “something yet to be worked”, i.e. raw material, could refer to the emerging national soul as well as the promise of new men, new citizens. Some might see in this a reference to the Masonic allusion of the apprentice or initiated as a “rough stone”; however, I do not have documents of that time saying that this was, without a doubt, the symbolic intent of the author.

[15] It is difficult to make definitive statements about the intonation of both paintings as they were removed after being exposed to weathering for many years, and restored after being removed from the walls.

[16] Unknown author. “The Department of Education has acquired a painting by S. Herrán. Honourable distinction to a student of Fine Arts”, in El Imparcial, Mexico, June 15th, 1909. In: MOYSSEN, Xavier. La crítica de arte en México 1896-1921. Tomo I, México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1999, p. 404.

[17] Unknown author. “Leisure”, El Mundo Ilustrado, May 30th, 1909, p. 117. Curiously, they here changed the name of the work precisely for its opposite - from “Labour” to “Leisure” - disrupting the conceptual focus of the artist and revealing how the Mexican bourgeoisie stereotyped workers, as members of a “lower” social class, as being “lazy”.

[18] CRAVIOTO, Alfonso. Crónica oficial de las Fiestas del Centenario de la Independencia de México. México 1911 pp. 240-259, quoted in MOYSSEN, Xavier. La crítica de arte en México 1896-1921. Tomo I, México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1999, p. 471. We must see what Fausto Ramirez says about “Women selling pots” presenting a “starving mature woman”, with which the artist subverts the edifying value of hard work and presents a less friendly side of it. RAMIREZ, Fausto. Saturnino Herrán: Pintor Mexicano (1887-1987). p.17.

[19] RAMÍREZ, Op. cit., p.18.

[20] See this work at http://www.museoblaisten.com/v2008/hugePainting.asp?numID=191 (Accessed on 9/07/2015).

[21] Unknown author. Plan de Estudios de la Escuela Nacional de Artes y Oficios para Hombres. México: Talleres de la Escuela de Artes y Oficios, Exconvento de San Lorenzo, 1907, p. 9.

[22] DOROTINSKY ALPERSTEIN, Deborah and GONZALEZ MELLO, Renato (org). Encauzar la mirada: arquitectura, pedagogía e imágenes en México (1920-1950). México: UNAM Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2010.

[23] Raquel Tibol, quoted in RAMIREZ, Op. cit., p.16.

[24] Unknown author. Plan de Estudios de la Escuela Nacional de Artes y Oficios para Hombres. México: Talleres de la Escuela de Artes y Oficios, Exconvento de San Lorenzo, 1907, pp. 3-4.

[25] In May 1868, Dr. Miguel Hurtado held conversations for reforming the 1856 and 1857 School rules. In 1872, the first workshop of the School, ironworks, was set in motion. In 1875 followed the workshops of “turning, locksmith, carpentry, masonry, electroplating, printing, lithography, photolithography, photography, pottery, smelting, decorative painting and sculpture and electricity, among others”. FLORES PALAFOX, Jesús y MONTEÓN GONZÁLEZ, Humberto (orgs.). La ESIME en la historia de la enseñanza técnica. México: Instituto Politécnico Nacional, 1993, p. 84.

[26] On similar Schools of Arts and Crafts for Women, see ALVARADO, Ma. de Lourdes. La Escuela de Artes y oficios para Mujeres. In: DE LOS REYES, (coord). La enseñanza del Arte. México: UNAM, 2010, pp.167-188.

[27] It is an allegory titled “Triumph of Science and Labour over Envy and Ignorance”, commissioned for the top of the stairs of the Colegio Grande, with which we are familiar thanks to a copy made by Juan de Mata Pacheco, today found in the National Art Museum (MUNAL). In Mata Pacheco’s copy, Labour and Science are represented by two muses engaged in their work; while Science manipulates a scientific instrument, the muse of Labour touches or even mixes or handles a liquid inside a spherical glass container with what looks like a stripe, or a brush. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, reigns in the scene and a small cherub in the centre, sitting in the very foreground between the two muses and at the foot of the goddess’ shield, with his index finger on his lips, signalling silence. As Julieta Perez Monroy explains, this sign is a proposal to silence words and dissenting voices raised between factions in the National Preparatory School (ENP) during the general student strike that year. PEREZ MONROY, Julieta. La enseñanza del dibujo en la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. In: DE LOS REYES, Aurelio (coord.). La enseñanza del Arte. México: UNAM, 2010, pp.144-145. The researcher ponders on the possibility of Mata Pacheco altering the composition and that it is not exactly a true copy.

[28] SHMIDT, Claudia. Las Buenos Aires de Pío. In: MALOSETTI COSTA, Laura (ed.). Collivadino. Buenos Aires en construcción. Buenos Aires: Asociación de Amigos del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2013, p.21.

[29] MALOSETTI, Op. cit., p.17.

[30] I thank Fernanda Pitta for her generosity of bringing me pictures of the studies by Henrique Bernardelli; and also Arthur Valle for sharing a digital version of the exhibition catalogue CHRISTO, Maraliz (et.al.).  Coleções em Diálogo: Museu Mariano Procópio e Pinacoteca de São Paulo. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 2014; see the article of VALLE, Arthur. A pintura decorativa brasileira no início do século XX, pp.180-194. Avaiable at: <https://www.academia.edu/>.

[31] CHRISTO, Op. cit., p.127.

[32] COVEY, A.S. Frank Brangwyn Exhibition room at Venice, The Studio: International art, XXXIV, No. 146, May 1905, pp. 285-286. Available at: Heidelberger historische Bestände - digital http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de  (Accessed on 10/02/2015).

[33] RAMIREZ, Op. cit., p.15.

[34] CORTINA, LEONOR. La loza mexicana del siglo XIX en los museos de los Estados Unidos. In: RAMÍREZ, FAUSTO (coord.). México en el Mundo de las Colecciones de arte, México Moderno, Vol.4, México: SRE/UNAM/CONACULTA, 1994, p. 89.

[35] See the work in https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/las-meninas/9fdc7800-9ade-48b0-ab8b-edee94ea877f.  Access on 10/03/2015.

[36] CURIEL, Gustavo. El ajuar doméstico tornaviaje. In: VARGASLUGO, Elisa (coord.). México en el Mundo de las Colecciones de arte, México Moderno, Vol.3, México: SRE/UNAM/CONACULTA, 1994, pp.157-209. María  Concepción García Sainz and María Ángeles Albert, Exotismo y belleza de una cerámica. In: Artes de México, 1991, nº 14, p. 51.

[37] DE HUMBOLDT, Alejandro. Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva España, Libro tercero, cap. VIII México, Purrúa, col. “Sepan cuantos...”, 1991 (1822), p. 112. Preliminary study by Juan Ortega y Medina.

[38] CURIEL, Gustavo and RUBIAL, Antonio. Los espejos de lo propio: ritos públicos y usos privados en la pintura virreinal. In: RAMÍREZ, Fausto, RUBIAL, Antonio, CURIEL Gustavo and VELÁZQUEZ, Angélica. Pintura y vida cotidiana en México, 1650-1950, México, Fomento Cultural Banamex, 1999, p.132.

[39] The work is available at http://ceres.mcu.es/pages/Viewer?accion=4&AMuseo=MAM&Museo=MAM&Ninv=00237 Accessed on 10/07/2015.

[40] PRIETO, Guillermo. Memorias de mis tiempos, México, Editorial Porrúa, col. “Sepan cuantos…” nr. 481, 2004 (1906 Paris-Mexico), p. 36.

[41] See figure 3, available at: http://www.dimensionantropologica.inah.gob.mx/?p=5584. Accessed on 10/07/2015.

[42] Nicolas Leon was a native of Michoacan. He is credited with the creation of the Michoacan Museum and the Museum of Oaxaca, and then the Department of Physical Anthropology of the National Museum in Mexico City. He collaborated with the physical anthropologist of the American Museum of Natural History, Ales Hrdlika when he visited Mexico accompanying Carl Lumholtz in his travels in the northwest of the Republic in the end of the 19th century.

[43] Rickards owned a mine in the same state. He managed to publish in life a first work entitled The ruins of Mexico, highlighting the importance of the antiquary theme. However, he left in type format a second work written between 1904 and 1930 on the ethnic groups of the state of Oaxaca, illustrated with photographs taken by him and other authors, which we assume he collected throughout his life in Mexico. I am grateful to Fausto Ramirez for introducing me to the granddaughter of Rickards in 2004, who showed me the part of the family album and of the manuscript that remained in their hands. The researcher died a couple of years ago and the whereabouts of the photographs is unknown, but they have been deposited in digital format at the Manuel Toussaint Photographic Archive of the Institute of Aesthetic Studies at UNAM.

[44] RAMÍREZ, Fausto. Crónica de las artes plásticas en los años de López Velarde 1914-1921. México: UNAM, 1990, p. 21.

[45] In fact, teacher Faust explains, the exhibition was so successful that it was extended until June 6th, well beyond the schedule.

[46] RAMÍREZ, Fausto. Saturnino Herrán: Pintor Mexicano (1887-1987). México: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes/Secretaría de Educación Pública/ Programa Cultural de las Fronteras, 1987, p. 11.

[47] TABLADA, José Juan. Exvoto a López Velarde: Retablo a la Memoria de Ramón López Velarde en México A.D. MCMXXI  R.I.P. In: De Coyoacán ala Quinta Avenida. José Juan Tablada, una antología general. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica/UNAM/Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas, 2007, p.124-125. An approximate and free translation of this poem would be:

And your poetry they called rare,

Emanating emotion is like clear water

In bottles from Guadalajara.

(Since with the sweat from its mortal clay

The poet curdles glass prisms

So the common people can see the sad world

Iridescent, mysterious and profound.)

Your clay was also a censer

Before Xochiquetzal; but your Catholic fervour

Girded the scapular

And recited your rosary

Scented with the amber of love… 

Your naive joys over the grief are

like they were shining on black, burning and simple,

Blue poppies and red “wonders”

The gourds burnished by Michoacan.

So in the clear, bright lacquer

Of your concave disturbing verses

Drinking light blue water, among flowers,

The wayfarer looks at his own face!