Week 10: cultural crossings in Spain and the New World

"Visual cultures can also be 'entangled', so that it is very difficult to trace or interpret the connections or even decide where a feature first appeared."

Provide one feature that exemplifies this mentioned in the text

Horseshoe arch as an entangled feature

-> blurring the line of a nation's art ("It is impossible to speak in terms of a national culture, still less a national art.")

◦ Found in Visigoth churches, Roman buildings, Christian north, early mediaeval buildings

◦ "These arches are also found in Visigothic churches in the far north of Spain - churches that date from between the conversion of the Visigothic rulers of Iberia in 589 and the Islamic conquest of 711."

◦ "Horseshoe arches were also reintroduced to the Christian north of the country by Christian refugees from the Islamic south.

◦ The banded arches associated with Islamic buildings are also found in Roman buildings predating Islamic architecture; this feature also recurs in early medieval European buildings, whether appropriated from Islam or as a survival of the Roman past

What reasons does Woods give for the appearance of cultural hybridity, translation, and appropriation in ceramic lustreware?

• judged to have been made in Manises in the early years of the fifteenth century, but follows traditional Islamic formulas"

• "On its interior it has a motif characteristic of Islamic visual culture - the eight-pointed star made of two superimposed squares."

• "The decoration around the stars recalls Arabic letter forms. "

• "bull painted in the more traditional gold on white and distributed to fit the circular shape as if moving around the rim in a clockwise direction, a strategy again typical of Islamic lustreware"

What reasons does Woods give for the appearance of cultural hybridity, translation, and appropriation in the Alhambra?

• The painting style is reminiscent of European fourteenth-century wall paintings such as those at the papal palace at Avignon, but the technique of tempera on leather is an Islamic one"

• the legends depicted in the Alhambra can be interpreted as 'frontier' narratives, representing the interface between Christian and Muslim, even if the narrative is weighted to make it clear that it is the Muslim who triumphs.

What reasons does Woods give for the appearance of cultural hybridity, translation, and appropriation in the Alcazar of Seville?

• "The typical Islamic horseshoe arches are found in the most important room attached to this courtyard"

• "The palace is literally as well as culturally bilingual, for it includes Arabic as well as Spanish inscriptions"

◦ "completion date of the palace use the Islamic rather than the Christian calendar"

-> Christian domination/appropriation of Islamic features

What is mudejar art? Where does this term come from?

• The term 'mudejar' describes Muslims living in Christian territories, and was first used in the nineteenth century to describe art and architecture built by mudejar craftsmen for Christian patrons. "

◦ "In modern scholarship it is used broadly to describe objects and buildings outside Islamic territories that draw on Islamic artistic traditions."

What role did feather mosaics play in the cultures of the Nahua people during the Aztec Empire, and how were these artworks associated with social status and identity?

• With their distant origin adding to their allure, these stunning materials included in Nahua feather attire powerfully reflected an ability to secure feathers from the other side of the Mesoamerican world.

◦ Traditionally, central Mexican communities obtained these neotropical feathers through either imperial tribute or long-distance trade by professional merchants known as pochtecah and oztomecah.

◦Both forms of exchange marked the feathers as coming from afar and contributed to the feathers' value and association with the prowess of the traders and rulers who successfully procured them.

How did the arrival of European colonizers impact the featherworking tradition and the trade networks that supplied these materials?

• colonial featherworks with Catholic imagery, many made by amantecah in mendicant schools in central Mexico and Michoacán

— These mosaics feature feathers glued on rectangular wood or copper backings, in the manner of European paintings, and many have compositions based on imported European prints. Such featherworks were used in Catholic churches or exported to Europe, Asia, or Africa

• In contrast to the wide variety of feathers used before colonization, most colonial featherworks feature a far narrower array: plain white and brown feathers (typically duck) and diminutive hummingbird feathers in neon pink, orange, purple, blue, and green.

How does analysing atypically produced early colonial feather works which still include long distance feathers challenge notions about European colonisation and its effect on Native American communities?

• they provide evidence of the persistence of an Indigenous-controlled feather trade through the late 16th century, contemporary with intensive colonization and economic reformulation.

What are some suggested explanations of the shift from brightly coloured feathers to muted colours?

• may have emerged from Europeans' lack of appreciation for the greater desirability of the southern feathers and amantecah's awareness of such.

— For European consumers, the distinction between regional Mesoamerican feather types seems to have been overly subtle, with neotropical species appearing in biological treatises, but not in artistic writings on featherworks.

• shifts in trade access to neotropical feathers, with decreased imports perhaps incentivizing the reuse of feathers already at hand.

How do the Inka tapestries from the 14th-16th centuries serve as a bridge between pre-Columbian and colonial artistic practices?

- Stanfield-Mazzi argues that Inka tapestries served as a foundational artistic language that endured into the colonial period.

- The grid-like structure of these tapestries—characteristic of Inka and SAIS (Southern Andean Iconographic Series) visual culture—was retained in colonial-era tapestry strips that depicted Christian iconography like angels.

- Angelic imagery was woven into these traditional visual frameworks, suggesting that local artists adapted new religious themes without abandoning ancestral aesthetic logics.

- a culturally negotiated process, in which Christianity was filtered through an Andean lens, retaining Indigenous visual and spiritual codes.

Two main differences between early feather works and post colonial feather works

- iconography

-> indigenous to Christian

- types of feather s

-> e.g lovely cotinga to hummingbird

What does the legal document about the Virgin & child of Huexotzinco tell us about the value of feathers?

Feathers were being exchanged for slaves, showing their high and precious value

Four features of Andean iconography found in the sun gate? What does this show?

- running

- two dimensionality

- panels above and next to each other

- smaller figures around a bigger central figure

-> shows a pre-existing tradition in tapestry of depicting winged figures which did not get entirely erased by European influence