After reading the assigned NPR article on the exhibit on the colonial art in Latin America I went on a quest to find out more about this reflection from the past. Some initial disappointments ultimately made me understand that a compilation of the exhibited art had been published recently. Google even gave a preview of the book (please explore
http://tinyurl.com/cxjh7r for an adventure). As I turned the pages I came across piece after piece that captured my imagination in terms of both the embedded beauty as well as the complexity involved in making these pieces. I do not quite understand how these pieces are in the hidden corners of the surveys of art history. In theory one can go through one's life here in the United States and never come across these creations. Why is that? Why is our education in arts and history so selective and myopic in its scope? We focus on US history from 1650 and onwards and seem to forget about the rest of the world in so many ways in the realms of cultures, art, history, literature, film making and so much more. The pages of "
The Arts in Latin America" are filled with gems: paintings, textiles, feather crafts, woodwork and sculptures. Look at this chalice (13 inches) from the 16th century (1575) made of silver, boxwood, feathers and rock crystal. An amazing piece. Or what about the miter
(below) made of feathers glued onto parchment from the 16th century? The more I read and discover about the artists that used feathers in their creations the more intrigued I become. This is especially true in the pieces that merge the craft of the Aztecs with the colonial suppression and the catholic faith. In terms of faith many of the more religious pieces have a stark and powerful beauty that grabs one's attention. Consider the
Ecco Homo statue from the 16th century below. It is made of the pith of the corn stalk that the indigenous people used to make statues of their deities. Here it is transformed into a symbol of Catholic faith with an unnerving reach into the New Testament. Now I am finding myself in a case of serendipity in my journey to have discovered these pieces of art that have been born in so much pain and terror under the cloak of conquest and oppression and in turn traveled through centuries so we can behold them. Now we can treasure them and attempt to understand the forces that brought them to life.
After reading the assigned NPR article on the exhibit on the colonial art in Latin America I went on a quest to find out more about this reflection from the past. Some initial disappointments ultimately made me understand that a compilation of the exhibited art had been published recently. Google even gave a preview of the book (please explore http://tinyurl.com/cxjh7r for an adventure). As I turned the pages I came across piece after piece that captured my imagination in terms of both the embedded beauty as well as the complexity involved in making these pieces. I do not quite understand how these pieces are in the hidden corners of the surveys of art history. In theory one can go through one's life here in the United States and never come across these creations. Why is that? Why is our education in arts and history so selective and myopic in its scope? We focus on US history from 1650 and onwards and seem to forget about the rest of the world in so many ways in the realms of cultures, art, history, literature, film making and so much more. The pages of "The Arts in Latin America" are filled with gems: paintings, textiles, feather crafts, woodwork and sculptures. Look at this chalice (13 inches) from the 16th century (1575) made of silver, boxwood, feathers and rock crystal. An amazing piece. Or what about the miter 
(below) made of feathers glued onto parchment from the 16th century? The more I read and discover about the artists that used feathers in their creations the more intrigued I become. This is especially true in the pieces that merge the craft of the Aztecs with the colonial suppression and the catholic faith. In terms of faith many of the more religious pieces have a stark and powerful beauty that grabs one's attention. Consider the Ecco Homo statue from the 16th century below. It is made of the pith of the corn stalk that the indigenous people used to make statues of their deities. Here it is transformed into a symbol of Catholic faith with an unnerving reach into the New Testament. Now I am finding myself in a case of serendipity in my journey to have discovered these pieces of art that have been born in so much pain and terror under the cloak of conquest and oppression and in turn traveled through centuries so we can behold them. Now we can treasure them and attempt to understand the forces that brought them to life.
yes...that is so interesting...I often think about myopia and ethnocentrism as it relates to how we see the world and how we construct our knowledge of the world.
ReplyDeleteI truly believe how we've been taught to learn is directly correlated to how we see the world.
As my husband and I "shop" for preschools for our 3 year old , I am starting to discover different ways of teaching children to learn-
I realized that most people have had a conventional educational background where things are taught in a linear manner, one learned out of book, and part of the elementary school structure meant asking questions but not too many where the teacher could start to look inadequate...
As such, we realized we want our daughter to learn: abstractly and conceptually, without desks facing a classroom at a talking head, not merely out of a book: we want her to think creatively, learn through doing/playing/experiencing (with the book as complementary), and we want her to ask as many questions with teachers that could answer her but if not, will be secure enough to help her learn about it and will teach her how to go about finding answers...
I am hoping that these different ways of learning will, from early on, foster a natural curiosity of the world around and cultivate a desire to appreciate its depth, possible incomprehensibility, and non-linearity as merely complements to a deeper understanding of our multifaceted world...rather than a neat, easy conception of the world where everything fits neatly into a box, labeled, categorized and in some type of hierarchy.
As children we all have an inherent, amazing curiosity ...the question I constantly ask myself is at what point we stopped because it was just easier to not be as curious as we were when we were children?