Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas: Photography and Modernism in Early Twentieth-

Century Peru
Author(s): Deborah Poole
Source: Representations, No. 38 (Spring, 1992), pp. 39-75
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928684 .
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Representations.

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DEBORAH POOLE

Figueroa Aznar
and the Cusco Indigenistas:
Photographyand Modernism
in Early Twentieth-Century Peru

SOMETIME IN THE EARLY 1900s, the Peruvian artist Juan Manuel

Figueroa Aznar arranged his easel, paints,stool,palette,two open photo maga-
zines, and two portraitcanvases in frontof a studio backdrop. On the backdrop,
which he also used for occasional work as a commercialphotographer,he had
painted on one side a Spanish colonial archwayand, on the other,one half of a
traditionalAndean religiousaltar.Having arranged his utensilsand easel in front
of thisscene, Figueroa then set up his camera, prepared the plate,composed the
image, and arranged for another person to release the shutter.He straightened
his suit,adjusted the floweron his lapel, and posed, cigarettein hand and one leg
crossed casuallyover the other,to contemplatehis workof art (fig.1).
But where,exactly,do we situatethe object of thiscarefullyframedand con-
templativegaze? Is it the not yetfinishedpainting?The thematicspace uniting
artist,easel, and paints? Or the stillbroader frameof an anticipatedimage that
has just been composed on a chemicallycoated, and industriallyproduced, plate
of glass? How, in short,are we to understandthe relationshipof thisturn-of-the-
centuryPeruviandandy,photographer,and painterto the representationaltech-
nologies he so skillfullywields?
A glance at the embedded pictorialframesof thisparticularself-portrait sug-
geststhatFigueroa was himselfsuggestingsuch questions about the relationship
between photography,painting,and art. The stretchedand painted canvas is
framedbyan easel. The easel is in turnframedbya stretchedand painted back-
drop. This entirescene is then framedbythe awkwardlyvisibleand slightlyrum-
pled upper edge of the canvas backdrop. This interiorframe-which could easily
have been edited fromthe plate-dismantles the illusiona backdrop is intended
to convey.Juxtaposednextto the even sharperline leftbythenegativeedge itself,
the void leftvisible by this painted backdrop's edge reveals the photographer's
awarenessof the technologicaland artisticartificesenablinghisown romanticized
and introspectivegaze into the world of easel, palette,and disguise.
In what followsI suggest that Figueroa did indeed have a very particular

REPRESENTATIONS 38 * Spring 1992 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 39

 FIGURE1. Figueroa
Aznar,self-portrait with
easel. Photos: Figueroa
Aznar Archive,Cusco,
Peru.

interestin understandingand, to a certain extent,dismantlingthe artificesof

both photography and art. Like the dandified self-image he assumed, his
approaches to these problems borrowed heavilyfromthe literatureand art of
European romanticism.Yet,contraryto the conceptof an amusingcolonial mim-
icrythatour own firstviewingof thisprovincialPeruviandandy mightevoke, his
reappropriationsand reworkingsof these borrowed European elements were
neither innocent nor misconstrued.Rather, Figueroa created an approach to
both photographyand modernitythatintentionally departed fromthe dominant
mold of European modernism.In the followingdiscussionof his life, I will be
particularlyinterestedin exploringthe waysin whichthistangentiallymodernist
stylewas shaped by Peruvian understandingsof photographyand art, and by a
provincialintellectualand regionalistmovementknownas indigenismo.

Photographyand Artin Peru

Juan Manuel Figueroa Aznar was born in 1878 in the small town of
Caras in the Andean highlands of the Peruvian Department of Ancash. His

40 REPRESENTATIONS
father,Juan Manuel Figueroa y Pozo, was fromthe coastal Peruviancityof Lam-
bayeque, and his mother,Maria Presentaci6nAznar de Usua, was fromZaragoza,
Spain. Although his fathercontinuedworkinguntilhis death in 1910 in mining
venturesin the centralhighlands,soon afterJuan Manuel's birththe familyset
up residence in Lima. It was in the turbulentand war-tornLima of the 1880s that
the young Juan Manuel spent his youth and completed his primaryand high-
school education at the Colegio N.S. de Guadalupe.' He thenwenton to studyat
the Academia Concha, a privatelyendowed municipal fine arts institutionin
Lima. Followinghis studies at the Academia, Figueroa worked his way through
Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama as a portraitpainter.While in Colombia, Figue-
roa may well have learned of such developmentsin art photographyas acade-
micismand naturalism,both of whichwere practicedquite earlyin Colombia by
Antioquefiophotographerssuch as Melit6nRodriguez.2
The Peru to whichJuan Manuel returnedsometimein 1899 or 1900, how-
ever, was strikinglydifferentin many respects from both Colombia and the
WesternEuropean countrieswhere art photographiesfirstemerged. The vast
majority of the country's population consisted of Quechua- and Aymara-
speaking peasants employedin small-scalecommunityagricultureor as peons on
semifeudal agrarian estates.The small elite of rural landlords who owned these
estateslived in provincialcitiesthat,withfewexceptions,were isolated fromthe
modernizingcurrentsof industrialcapitalistdevelopment.
Lima, the capital of this predominantlyrural country,was home to a small
but prosperous oligarchywhose wealthwas based on sugar and cottonplantations
builtfromthe accumulated profitsof theprewarguano (birdmanure) and nitrate
trade. Productionin both the guano fieldsand the plantationstheyengendered
was based on indentured contractlabor fromChina and on sharecroppingby
coastal and highland peasantries.Littleor none of the income fromthese prop-
erties was invested in industrialdevelopment.3As a consequence, Lima lacked
the bourgeois and emergingmiddle classeswho servedas boththe European and
Colombian audiences for pictorialistand amateur photographies.4In these dif-
ferentsocial and class settings,"art photography"had emerged to fulfillan his-
toricallyspecificset of representationaltasks.These taskswere related to the split
betweenan aestheticdiscoursebased on notionsof artisticcreativity, manual pro-
duction, and the author; and the forms of epistemology,mechanized
scientific
technology, and commodityproductioninformingbourgeois industrialsociety.5
Pictorialistphotographiesresolvedthisproblembytransforming the scientific(or
industrial)qualities of photographyinto "art"throughthe photographer-artist's
personal (i.e., manual) interventioninto the mechanical technologyof focus,
tone, framing,angle, and texture.The photographicprintwas in thisrespectno
longer a mass-reproduciblecommoditybut a unique "workof art."
In early-twentieth-century Lima, by comparison, the ruling class was still

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 41
 firmlyentrenchedin its traditionalmodes of dominationand had not yet been
confrontedby the challenge of industrialformsof commodityproduction or
mass-marketedart (kitsch).In thissocietyof patronage and family,success as an
artistdepended on access to both familyresourcesand the prestigiousallure that
artistictrainingin Europe, particularlyParis,acquired for those artistswiththe
means to study abroad.6 More specifically, with respect to Figueroa's personal
situation,sucess as a visual artistmeant success as a painter,and paintershad not
yet been forced to confrontthe artisticmarketplacewhose traumas had paved
the way forboth pictorialmodernismand art photographyin Europe.
The failure of aestheticizedand pictorialistphotographies to take hold in
Lima must,then,be understoodwithrespectto the specificclass and social struc-
tures that defined contemporaryPeruvian reality.This fact has two important
consequences for how we read Figueroa's photographs. First,it suggests that
Figueroa's photographicworkwas never considered,or perhaps intended,to be
"art." Second, it suggeststhat Figueroa's early decision to turn to photography
was not so much an artisticchoice as a practicalsolutionto the dilemma created
byhis relativelymarginalsocial positionin the closed and highlystratifiedsociety
of oligarchicLima. For an artistwithneitherupper-classfamilytiesnor European
training,apprenticeshipin a successfulphotographystudio was one of the few
available routesthroughwhichto pursue a viablecareer in portraiture,the genre
of artisticrepresentationin whichFigueroa had so farspecialized.
By 1900, the business of photographic portraiturewas a thriving-even
somewhatsaturated-industry in Lima withlittleroom foreitherartisticexperi-
mentationor the bohemian aestheticthat Figueroa had cultivatedin his travels
abroad. Some fortyto fifty studios competed to serve a marketmade up of the
relatively stable population Lima's oligarchyand merchantclass.7These fash-
of
ionable studios,whichwere ranked in accordance withthe prestigeand class posi-
tion of theirrespectiveclienteles,defineda dominantportraitstylebased on the
rigid poses and stylizedtheatricality of the nineteenth-century cartede visite.8
Given the formulaicnature of theircompositionand content,the "artistic"
qualities of such photographswere ascribed to the varyingqualities of theirsur-
face effects.In the early years of Peruvian photography,when the prestigious
French studios of Courret, Garreaud, and Manoury dominated Lima's portrait
trade, thisaestheticqualitywas explained in termsof the technicaland lighting
effectsproduced withinthe printitselfbythe (European-trained)photographer.9
As photographybecame more widespread and national,however,the Peruvian
photographers-who oftencould not count on European pedigrees to authorize
an artisticstatus for their machine-made images-began to look toward other
means of differentiating the aestheticvalue of theircommercialproducts. The
favored solution was to transformtotallythe machine-produced image into a
hand-produced "workof art."This was accomplished throughretouchingtech-

42 REPRESENTATIONS
niques by which faces and figureswere altered in the negativeand color added
to the finalprint.
Of these retouchingtechniques,the mostradical was thatknownas fotografia
iluminada(illuminatedphotography)orfoto-oleo oil-
(oil photo; fig.2). Infoto-oleo,
based paint was used to idealize the subject'sfeatures,add color,and even create
backdrops and special effectsnot presentin the originalnegative.Because of its
painterlyqualities,thefoto-oleoprovidedboth the aura of an originalworkof art
and the allure of modernityascribed to photographyas an industrialand, above
all, importedtechnology.More importantly, fromthe pointof viewof the upper
and merchantclasses who at firstmonopolized the market,foto-oleos retainedthis
allure while simultaneouslydenyingthe democraticnature of photographyas a
mechanically reproducible portrait technology that threatened to become
increasinglyaccessibleto Lima's workingand servantclasses. Preciselybecause of
its contradictorycombination of exclusivityand availability,foto-oleorapidly
became one of the most popular art formsin Lima. During the firstdecades of
the twentiethcentury,well-attendedexhibitionsof fotografia iluminadawere reg-
ularly held in the major photography studios and reviewed in the nationalpress.
The popularityof thefoto-6leo speaks for the extentto which Lima's photo-
graphic culture differed from the contemporary Colombian and European art
photographies with which Figueroa may also have been familiar.Whereas the

.
?zs_
f:.::~! .:;:.~,~, . . : ?
d.~:~i!:~m't.~]~,":.>'~, . i~'~
.. . :'
::a:~':~,::~:~.~'~:~c:~':m~...
".

.:'.j~iiE3
'..,.i
Adtl2.
siiss

FIGURE 2. Figueroa Aznar's atelierwithpaintingsand

worktable withfoto-oleos.

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 43
 pictorialistssought to render photographyan art by interveningas artistsin the
chemical and mechanical process of photographic production, the Peruvians
sought to separate completelythe photographer'slabor fromthat of the artist.
Even thisconservativecompromisewas resistedbyLima's foremostcritic,Teofilo
Castillo, who, as late as 1919, attackedfoto-oleosfor their "immoral"effectson
Lima's popular classes. Castilloclaimed thatinsofarasfoto-6leosdisplayed"a value
more industrialthan artistic,"the public should be protectedfromtheir"uncul-
turednessand tackiness"(inculturai cursileria).10
Castillo'svirulentdefense of tra-
ditional aesthetic values in the name of the public good echoes Charles
Baudelaire's much earlier charge in 1859 Paris thatphotographywould spread
"the dislike of historyand paintingamongstthe masses."" The seeming anach-
ronism of the Peruvian critic'sattackson photographysixtyyears later-when
photography was already an accepted artistic form in Europe and North
America-reflects not so much the late arrivalof photographictechnologyand
ideas to Lima as the ways in which analogous class structuresinformedthe two
critics'perceptions of photography.12 For Baudelaire writingin 1850s France,
photographywas a threatto paintingpreciselybecause it confused the functions
of bourgeois industryand the elite art salon. For Castillo,thefoto-6leo
as "indus-
trial" or bourgeois kitschhad similarresonances for the cultural values of an
oligarchicalsocietyfaced withthe prospectsof PresidentAugusto Leguia's mod-
ernizingstate.13
Neitherthe technologyof photographicportraiturenor thetechniqueoffoto-
oleo could, however,be foreverdefended from the demands of Lima's lower
classes. As increasingnumbersof studiosbegan to offera commercialversionof
other criticsintervenedto ensure thatthe "artistic"foto-
the prestigiousfoto-oleo,
oleoremain a perquisiteof the fewfashionablestudioswho used photographers
either trained in, or visitingfrom, Paris, London, and Rome. These in turn
depended on the artistic aura assigned to their work to retain both their
monopoly on prestigeand theirloyal, wealthyclientele.The photographs and
foto-oleosproduced by nationallytrained photographers,or by the more poorly
equipped photo studiosthatservicedLima's workingclass and merchantsectors,
were reciprocallyrelegated bythe criticsto a statusof technologyor "craft."
Althoughitis not knownin whichstudio Figueroa worked,in 1901 he exhib-
ited twofoto-6leos-one of a woman playing the piano, the other of "a young
woman halfcoveredwithvaporous tulles"-in a departmentstoreon Mercaderes
Street, where Lima's most fashionable photography studios were located. A
reviewof the exhibitnotes that Figueroa's work "revealsthe effortto go beyond
the routine,"but itadds thathis figureswere rigidand lacked the polish of Lima's
more accomplishedand European-trainedstudioportraitists. 4 Clearlyentryinto
Lima's exclusivesocial and artisticcircleswould not be easy fora newcomersuch
as Figueroa who lacked the crucialsinequa nonof a European education.

44 REPRESENTATIONS
 Provincial Intellectuals
and the Bohemian Aesthetic

Juan ManuelFigueroaledan elegantand refined

Likeall bornartists, bohemian
life.
-Julio G. Gutierrez'5

In 1902, Juan Manuel Figueroa moved to Arequipa, the urban and

commercialcenter for southernPeru's booming wool export trade. At the time
of Figueroa's arrival,Arequipefa societywas dominated by a small but pros-
perous oligarchywhose wealthwas based on thecommercialexporttrade. Unlike
the Lima oligarchy,theydepended verylittleon the guano trade,and therefore
lost littlein the War of the Pacific.Unlike otherprovincialelitesin Peru, theyhad
relativelyreduced agrarian holdings and bought their wool instead from the
large haciendas of Puno and Cusco. The citywas also home to a relativelylarge
number of foreigners,in particularBritishagentsof the wool exporthouses and
a small Spanish and Arab merchantclass.16 As a result,Arequipa's photographic
and artisticestablishment,thoughsmaller,was bothmore cosmopolitanand more
receptiveto new talentthan thatof Lima.
In this setting,Figueroa found work in the new,yet already nationallyrec-
ognized, photographicstudioof MaximilianoT. Vargas. In Vargas'sstudio Figue-
roa painted backdrops,posters,and foto-oleos forwhatwas to be Arequipa's most
luxurious photographicstudio. It is probable thatFigueroa learned manyof his
techniquesof studio lightingfromVargas,who was also the instructorforMartin
Chambi, another photographerwhom Figueroa would meet in Cusco. Vargas's
influenceon both Figueroa and Chambi can be tracedto his skillsin photographic
portraiture,and, perhaps more importantly, to his earlyinterestin takingstudio
portraits of Indian subjects.
Although these influencesshow up clearlyin Figueroa's laterwork,his early
workdid not immediatelydevelop Vargas'sinsightsintoeitherthe Indian or pho-
tographiccomposition.Instead, Figueroa remainedduringtheseyearsimmersed
within the world of the foto-6leoand therefore within the all-encompassing
dichotomyof photographyversus art. In 1903 an exhibitof Figueroa'sfoto-6leos
and landscape and portraitcanvases was mounted at the Vargas studio and at a
nearbyjewelrystore. It was the "fotografiasiluminadas,"however,thatthe critic
for Arequipa's La bolsanewspaper singled out as most expressiveof Figueroa's
artisticpotential.The young artist,he wrote,"distinguisheshimselfabove all for
his good tastein the selectionof detailswhichgivelifeto his portraits."Figueroa's
"iluminaciones"could compare favorably,he continues, with the paintings of
Carlos Baca Flor, Daniel Hernandez, and Alberto Lynch-three Paris-based
Peruvian artists-were it not for the "small defects [that] originate ... in large
part fromhis lack of schooling."'7 Other reviewsof his Arequipa work likewise

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 45
 focus on thefoto-oleos as a means throughwhichthe undesirable realismof pho-
tographymightbe sentimentalizedand improved. For his growingArequipefo
public, Figueroa was an artist"of the modern school [who] loved reality,albeit
embellishedand invigoratedbyart and sentiment."'8
In 1904 Figueroa moved to Cusco, a smallercitylocated 11,000 feet above,
and several weeks' travelingdistance from,Lima. The Cusco of Figueroa's time
was home to some 19,000 Quechua-speaking Indians, a scatteringof mestizo and
Arab traders,an even smallergroup of whitelandowners,and a halfdozen or so
Italian and Spanish familiesengaged in the wool and alcohol trade, as well as in
a nascenttextileindustry.'9The contrastbetweenthe luxuriantlifestylesof these
land-owningand emergentbourgeois sectorsand the impoverishedIndian peas-
ants upon whose labor and wool the regional economydepended was structured
in wayssimilarto the class and culturaloppositionsfound in othercontemporary
Latin American cities.
Figueroa's early work in Cusco would seem to suggestthat,at least initially,
his sympathiessided with the more prosperous pole of Cusco's cultural life.
Indeed, the warm reception Cusco provided the aspiringyoung photographer
and artistmust have been a welcome contrastto Lima and Arequipa, where Fi-
gueroa had been refused full recognitionas an artist.Figueroa's firstCusco
exhibitin October 1905 was of fotografia iluminada,the ambivalentformof art/
photography with which Figueroa had hoped to appease the taste of Lima's
demanding ruling elite. The work was exhibitedin the studio of Vidal Gonzalez,
a Cusquefio studio photographer with whom Figueroa had worked since his
arrivalin Cusco.20In his reviewof theexhibit,theanonymousartcriticforCusco's
La unionnewspaper presaged Figueroa's futureas one in whichthe artistwould
have to overturnall of his metropolitanambitions.Although Figueroa's work
reflected,he said, a "nobilityof the soul,"itwas restrictedin both scope and spirit
bythe too "powerfulinfluenceof Lima."21
During the next several years,Figueroa establishedhimselfas a prominent
figure in Cusco's small but vital intellectualcircles.22His success reflectedhis
abilityto resolve the distance between his earlier,more metropolitannotions of
art and the locally grounded identitycalled for by his firstCusqueno critic.An
articlebyJose Angel Escalante, a leading Cusco intellectual,describes a visitin
August 1907 to Figueroa's atelieron the hacienda Marabamba outside of Cusco.23
The familiaritywith which Escalante recounts Figueroa's hunting activities,
artisticprogress,and newlygrownbeard revealsFigueroa'sstatusas a well-known
figurein Cusco culturalcircles.The paintingscompleted at Marabamba formed
the core of a lavishlyreviewedbenefitexhibitionheld in late 1907 at the Univer-
sityof Cusco.24Among the 126 paintingsthat Figueroa purportedlyexhibited,
none were of the Indian, Inca, or Andean themesthatwould later characterize
his work.25

46 REPRESENTATIONS
 As a leading local intellectual(and later leader of the indigenistamovement),
Jose Angel Escalante's commentson Figueroa and the 1907 exhibitare of partic-
ular interestforwhat theytellus about Cusqueno attitudestowardphotography
and art. For Escalante,Figueroa'sreturnto paintingwhileat Marabamba signaled
an advance in his artisticformationtoward "worksof greater scope." This was
especiallytruesince,whilein Cusco, "he onlyoccupied himself-it is truethatthe
public so obliged him-in illuminatingphotographs."Only byvisitinghim in the
fullnessof natureat Marabamba, claimed Escalante,was itpossibleto understand
the extent to which this newly bearded artistawith his "Moorish aspect...,
impressionisttendencies,and fieryand frisky[retozona] blood" excelled in his true
vocation as a painter and "quintessential For
colorist."26 thiswriter,as for many
of his contemporariesin Cusco, Figueroa's painting,unlike either his photog-
raphy or hisfoto-oleos, was an artbecause of itsintimateand directrelationto the
three elementsthat togetherwere seen to constitute"art."These elementswere
color,nature,and the human spirit.
Similarassociationsequating the realm of artwiththatof color,paintingwith
its source in nature, and creativesensibilitywithindividualidiosyncracy("frisky
blood" and "Moorish aspect") surface again and again in the Cusco reviewsof
Figueroa's work. They speak of a concept of art and the artistdrawn fromthe
discourse of European romanticism,yettailoredin waysspecificto Cusco.
The resultantnotion of art was to influenceFigueroa's career in two crucial
ways. First,the association between color and art placed criticallimitson the
public acceptabilityof Figueroa's photographicwork.That Figueroa was accep-
ted and even acclaimed as a photographerat all was due to his skillsas a cromatista,
or colorist.In the days prior to color film,such praise referred,of course, to his
manual skillas an oil and pastelpainter.As a result,muchof Figueroa'sbestblack-
and-whitephotographicworkwas developed in a strictly privategenre: ingenious
and experimentalself-portraits, sentimentalizedfamilyportraits,and academic
studiesin both lightingand "type"formthe core of his photographicoeuvre.This
work was done for personal use and limited commercial sales. It was never
intended forpublic exhibitionas "art."
Second, the Cusco intellectuals'rejectionof Lima's highlyacademist artistic
establishmentwas formulatedas a doctrine of spontaneous artisticcreativity.
Figueroa-who was criticizedin Lima for his lack of European training-was
lauded in Cusco preciselybecause his "pictorialmode ... followsnone of the
channeled currentsof any school of art."27Anothercriticreflectedon the spon-
taneityand individualityof Figueroa'spaintingin more philosophicalterms,rem-
iniscentof the European romantics'ideas of art as a cultivatedorganic growth:
Artconsists... in makingtangibletheimpressions
oftheartist,
quality,effervescence,as
theyare felt... in translating
to thecanvastheconceptionsof his fantasy,
just as they
sprout... beforetheyare frozenbythecoldnessofcalculation.28

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 47
 In Cusco, then,itwas the individualper se, and nothisor her social and academic
formation(or "calculation"),thatwas idealized as the source of artisticand gen-
eral intellectualability.Sentimentwas valued overskill,passion overscience,color
over form,and instinctover tradition.In later indigenista philosophy,the source
of this natural talent would be defined as the Andean landscape itself.At this
early period, however,it was expressed primarilythrough certain consciously
contrived bohemian identitiesassociated with the artisticpersonality.On this
frontas well, Figueroa's natural statusas an outsider to Cusco placed him in a
positionof artisticadvantage. For Cusquenos, Figueroa-four yearsaftermoving
to Cusco-was still"our guest,the wellknownLimeno painter. . . throughwhose
veins runs Andalucian blood and in whose spiritMoorishatavismsendure."29An
impedimentto his artisticacceptance in Lima, thisoutsider statusbuttresseda
studied bohemian identitythatwas to be Figueroa's trademarkin Cusco society
(fig.3).
The bohemian identityattributedto Figueroa in 1900s Cusco borrowed its
termsof referencefromtheearliernineteenth-century traditionof bohemianism
that had originatedin the rapidlyexpanding metropolitansettingsof Paris and
other European cities. In these cities,and under the pressures of marketplace

FIGURE in
3. Bohemios
Saqsahuaman (Cusco).

....... '
..:.' ... .. .
..

.... ...:.:?:::-X::. .. ? . .

i.

~~~~~~~..48
REPRESENTATIONS....

48 REPRESENTATIONS
competitionand the mass productionof both cultureand art,youngintellectuals
and artistsmade the conscious endeavor to renounce the materialistvalues of
bourgeois industrialsociety.Modeling themselvesupon such modes of otherness
as gypsies or saltimbanques,the bohemians of Paris set the precedent for an
emerging modernism based on fashion,and "artforart's
the cultof individuality,
sake."30
The first,and in many ways most striking,differencebetween this classic
European bohemian settingand rural, seigneurial Cusco is the nearly total
absence of the definingstructuralfeatureof European romanticism-the literary
and artisticmarketplace.31Unlike his nineteenth-century European counterpart,
the early-twentieth-century Cusco artistwas not confrontedbythe challenge of a
large new middle-classreadingand art-consumingpublic.32Whiletherewas some
limitedlocal marketforjournalism,priorto the universityreformof 1909, there
was verylittlepublic at all forliteraryjournalism and even less forthe visual arts.
In fact,the firstpublic purchase of worksexhibitedin Cusco's Centro nacional
de arte e historia'sannual show was not until 1922.33As a result,the image of
marginalizedartisticgenius used to describeFigueroa and otherCusco artistswas
inspirednot,as in Europe, byaversionforbourgeois artconsumersbut ratherby
the Cusquefios' rejectionof the culturaldominance of Lima. Figueroa was seen
byhis Cusco contemporariesas a "bohemian"because he was not fromCusco. He
was seen as a bohemian "genius" because of the natural affinity for nature and
beauty that had drawn him to the Cusco landscape, and because of his personal
and aestheticrejectionof Lima societyand urban life.In thisway,an identityand
discourse that,in Europe, had been structuredby urban artists'emerging aes-
theticand social enmitytowardthe bourgeois consumingclasses was instead tai-
lored in Cusco to fit the quite differentneeds of a provincial discourse of
regionalistdemands.
Although its termswere derived froma vocabularyof European romanti-
cism,in Cusco the image and meaning of the "bohemian"social rebel were thus
reshaped to fitlocal politicalends. The artistas spokesman for Cusco's own cul-
turalprojectstood opposed to a place-Lima-and not,as in Europe, to a class-
the bourgeoisie. This slighttwistin the Cusco bohemian traditionmeant in turn
that it would be nature, in the guise of geographyor place, thatthe firstCusco
bohemians would privilegein theirdefinitionof the sentimentor emotion that
inspiresartisticgenius, and not the gypsiesor othersocial outsidersupon which
the European bohemian ideal was molded. In Cusco, these ideas about nature,
individualism,and the bohemian rebel were perhaps best articulatedin the pop-
ular ideal of the walaychu.In Quechua, walaychurefersto a man who replaces
social or familytieswitha restless,wanderingexistenceyetwho,unlikethe Euro-
pean bohemian, is neitherentirelycarefreenor uprooted. Rather,the walaychu
replaces his familyand communitytraditionwitha deeply sentimentalattach-
ment to the land. This emotionalattachmentto a province,region,or landscape

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 49
 is then credited as the source of the walaychu'sheightened artisticand musical
sensibilities.The Cusqueflo intellectualssaw themselvesas buildingupon thisspa-
tiallygrounded concept of aestheticsensibilityto forma communitybased on
shared artisticsentiment.Because of itsAndean roots,thiscommunitywas seen
to exclude both Lima and the formsof European mimicrythat the Cusqueno
intellectualsbelieved had underminedLima's "spiritual"authenticity.
Figueroa cultivatedthisbohemian identityin a shortbut locallyremarkable
theatricalcareer in which he chose romanticroles, such as that of Luciano in
Joaquin Dicenta's play Luciano o el amorde un artista.34Offstage,as well, he sup-
plemented his artisticpersona with a carefully cultivated image as a "restless
spirit,wanderer, and adventurer" who continued-despite his upper-class in-
laws-to work in the miningventuresthathad also been his father'strade.35In
shaping this public persona of "artistand man of action," Figueroa fused the
more down-to-earthprofession of miner with the loftyvocation of portrait
painter to create a public persona based on the ideal of the artistexistingon the
fringeof society.36

Indigenismo(1910-1930)

Literature, artin all itsmanifestations

poetry, willbeconvertedintospiritualarmsfor
domination... Poets,intellectuals, menofscience
artists, formthegreatindigenista
vanguard.... Theretroguard isformed ofthemillions ofIndianswholivealongthe
Andeanrangesworking theirfieldsand making the fertile.Theyknowthattheir
valleys
vanguardsare marking outthepathwhichtheymust follow.
-Atilio Sivirichi37

The end of Figueroa's publicbohemian career came withhis marriage

in July 1908 to Ubaldina Yabar Almanza. By this time,Figueroa was already a
well-knownfigureabout town. In his wedding announcementhe is described as
"the likeable artist,the inimitablecolorist,the popular bohemian."38Exploiting
the romantic possibilitiesof his public persona, he courted Ubaldina by first
paintingan image of the VirginwithUbaldina's face,and then donating it to the
church of San Franciscowhere,as Juan Manuel well knew,a cousin of Ubaldina
was the priest.It was, perhaps, onlythroughsuch a gesturethatFigueroa could
have met Ubaldina-whom he had before then only admired fromafar-since
the Yabars were one of Cusco's mostdistinguishedfamilies.Ubaldina's uncle, for
example, was bishop of Cusco, and the Yabar family owned several large
haciendas in the provinceof Paucartambo.The bulk of Figueroa's survivingpho-
tographic plates are portraitsof her family,taken in the intimatespace of their
Cusco familyhome, or on one of the Paucartambohaciendas. Figueroa's favorite
space forcreatingthese familyportraitswas the formalsalon where Bishop Yabar
received his guests. Known as the "Blue Salon" forits richlycolored carpet, the

50 REPRESENTATIONS
 '.. L.:
i
jj i;,i i:7

_ ~~~~~~~~~~~~_"

ir
FIGURE 4. Salon azul of MonsefiorYabar,bishop of
*?:
iCuso
Cusco.

_~~~~-. [ 6a Ad~7~

FIGURE in
altr u 5 so

1~~~~~~~~~~1

FIGURE 5. Altar in Cusco.

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 51
 remarkable layered imageryof its walls testifyto the monumentalcentralityof
visual imageryin the social and religiouslifeof Cusco (fig.4). Althoughtheextent
to which such traditionaluse of images affectedFigueroa's photographicworkis
unknown,several survivingplates show evidence that Figueroa did experiment
withrecreatingthe iconographic space of Cusco school colonial religiouspaint-
ings (fig.5).
Other familyportraitsfromthissame period reveal the uncomfortablecon-
tradictionsof an affluentartisticlifein raciallydivided Cusco. In one photograph,
for example, we confronta branch of the Yabar familyoutside theirsheltered
hacienda home in Paucartambo (fig.6). Nestled in luxuriantgrasses,thisfamily
displaysall the fineryof a Cusco Sunday outing.Emergingfromthe darknessof
the eucalyptusgrovebehind them,a peasant who is barelyperceptible-and cer-
tainlyfar fromthe consciousnessof the group thatposes forthe camera-peers
curiouslyat the photographerand his subjects.Was he a houseboy,a servant,or
simplya peasant who happened by? Did he come withthe familyfromCusco;
and in whatcapacitydid Figueroa knowhim?Did the photographerplace him in
the background? Or, more likely,was he excluded fromthe photographonly to
reappear insistentlywithinthe frame,as occurs in so many other Cusco photo-
graphs fromthese times?
At firstan anecdotal, almost accidental,presence in his photographicwork,
thisshadowypresence of Cusco's Indian peasants movesintoan increasinglycen-
tralplace in Figueroa's identity,sentiment,and art. While his experienceson the
Yabar family'sPaucartambo haciendas afforded Figueroa an opportunityto
observe the Indians upon whom Cusco's economydepended, it was the intellec-
tual and politicaldiscourse of indigenismo thatwould determinethewaysin which
Figueroa would paint and photograph the Indian.
Indigenismo was a pan-Latin American intellectualmovementwhose stated
goals were to defend the Indian masses and to constructregionalistand nation-
alistpoliticalcultureson the basis of whatmestizo, and largelyurban, intellectuals
understood to be autochthonous or indigenous cultural forms. Within this
broader vanguard movement,Cusquefio indigenismo occupied a privilegedposi-
tion because of Cusco's historyas capital of the Inca Empire. This historymade
Cusco a particularlycontestedsite in the battleto wresta Peruvian national his-
toryaway fromthe endless scrutinyand historicizinggaze of the European and
North American scientists,archaeologists,and historianswhose expeditionary
itinerariesand reportsconsistentlymapped Peruvianhistoryonto thatof a fallen
Inca Empire. In reclaimingInca historyand geographyas theirown, the Cus-
quefo indigenistas introducedthe previouslyforbiddenfigureof the contemporary
Andean Indian into the Peruvianliteraryand artisticimagination,as well as into
Peruvian nationalistdiscourse,jurisprudence, and domesticpolicy.39
Although the roots of Cusco's indigenista movementcan be traced to colonial
and nineteenth-century literatureabout Indians and the Incas, what has been

52 REPRESENTATIONS
FIGURE 6. Yabar familyin
Paucartambo.

called the "Golden Age" of Cusco indigenismo is more usefullysituated in the

period from 1910 to 1930.40During this period, indigenista writingabout the
Andean countryside,the Inca past, and Indian culture coalesced with, and
responded to, politicaldemands forgreaterregionalautonomyand decentraliza-
tion. These demands in turnresponded to the economic modernizationprojects
and shiftingclass alliances of PresidentAugusto Leguia's "PatriaNueva." Within
this context,the most importantfactormotivatingthe Cusquefio intellectuals'
interestin the Indian was a series of violentpeasant uprisingsin the mid 1920s.
These uprisingsin Cusco's high pastoral provinces,togetherwiththe processes
of economic modernizationoccurringin the department'sagrarian valleyprov-
inces, threatened the cultural and social hegemony of Cusco's agrarian-based
seigneurialclass.41It was in thiscontextthatintellectualsfromCusco's upper and
middle classes began theircampaign to validate an authenticIndian identityfor
all Cusquefios.
Two major worksproduced during thisperiod were to determinethe future
course of Cusquefio thinkingabout the "Indian problem."These were Luis Val-
carcel's Tempestaden losAndes,published in 1927, and Jose Uriel Garcia'sEl nuevo

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 53
 indio,published in 1930 as a rebuttalto Valcarcel'snationallyacclaimed Tempestad.
Whereas Valcarcel saw post-Conquestcolonial historyas a process of racial and
cultural degeneration and advocated a returnto the values and purityof pre-
Conquest Inca society,Garcia saw colonial historyas a process of cultural and
racial improvement.The true Indian, he argued, was not pure (or "Incaic") but
rather the mixed, or mestizo, product of Cusco's colonial past. In conformance
with this historical vision, Garcia's indigenistamission was to create a "New
Indian." He rejectedValcarcel'svisionof Andean cultureas an inheritedconstant
(or received tradition)that could be resurrectedaccording to the historicalor
archaeological methodologiesof empirical descriptionand scientificinduction.
Instead, Garcia's emergentAndean culturewas to be a product of directedmes-
tizaje (cultural mixture). The "New Indian" intellectualswho would guide this
missionwere to be forgedbymeldingthespiritualor telluric powerof the Andean
landscape withthe intellectualprowess of a mestizoavant-garde.
The indigenistas' notionsof telluricpower derived fromtheirtheorythatthe
characteristicsof Andean culture were determinedby the tremendousgeologic
and organic forces Nature had investedin the Andean landscape. These Cus-
quefo theoriesof telurismo drew upon ideas of the geographicor environmental
determinationof artisticproduction and cultural spirit,particularlythose of
Hippolyte-AdolpheTaine. Taine's method,fromwhichbothValcarceland Garcia
borrowed heavily,explained artisticformsas the scientifically determinedeffects
of environmentand race.42Similarnotionswere borrowedfromOswald Speng-
ler,who saw culturaland racial spiritas rigidlybounded byitsenvironment,and
Henri Bergson, whose concept of intuitionthe indigenistas employed to explain
the causal relation between telluricforces and the Indian art formsthat such
forcesspontaneouslyinduced.43For Valcarcel'sfollowers,such theoriesprovided
the motivationfor theirempiricalstudiesof the historicaland scientificroots of
Andean culturein Inca civilizationand the environment.
The particular interestof Taine's theories for the indigenistafollowersof
Garcia, however,lay in the former'sHegelian elevationof the artistas society's
most representativefigure,and of artisticstyleas the sign of a society'scollec-
tive-and hence undifferentiated-spirit.By combiningthisHegelian mystifica-
tion of artistic creativitywith the environmental determination of artistic
expression,Taine's theoriessuggestedthe existenceof a uniformand empirically
verifiablespiritual connection uniting individuals of all ethnicitiesand social
classes withthe teluricsources of Andean culture.Such theorieswere to provide
mandate to representAndean societyand cultureas
the basis forthe indigenistas'
a whole,and theirconcommitantclaimsto an avant-gardestatusas artisticleaders
of that process of cultural revolution leading to the formationof the "New
Indian."44
These appropriationsof nineteenth-century European aestheticphilosophy
by Peruvian intellectualsin the 1920s, provided the basis fora complex program

54 REPRESENTATIONS
of directed cultural production. The uniqueness of this program derives from
the ways in which the indigenistas combined theirpastiche of philosophical bor-
rowings with a contemporaryinternationaldiscourse of the modernistavant-
garde. Between roughly 1910 and 1930, modernistliteraryjournals such as
Prisma,Claridad,and Proa entered Cusco fromBuenos Aires.45The mostimpor-
tantof thesewas MartinFierro,a futurist- journal thatfirst
and ultraista-influenced
appeared in 1924. The group of intellectualsaffiliatedwithMartinFierrowere
dedicated to attackingestablishmentculturalfiguresin Buenos Airesthroughthe
use of futuristidioms (though not theirformallanguage) and throughthe culti-
vationof an urban populistaesthetic.They advocated the existenceof a "natural"
disposition for art and culture based on the apparentlycontradictoryideas of
criollismoand linguisticpurity.46 These notions,togetherwiththe Martinferristas'
idiosyncratic and highly conservative philosophyof the nature of national iden-
tity,influenced the thinking of those Cusco indigenistas who, like Garcia, were
grappling with the problem of how to ground an Andean nationalismin the
inherentlyromanticrhetoricof natural creativity, cultural purity,and popular
mestizajethatconstitutedCusquefo artisticdiscourse.In addition,because of their
Argentineorigins,the writingsof such Buenos Aires groups as theMartinferristas
offeredan available channel forthe Cusquefios' self-assumedtaskof elaborating
a literaryand aestheticmovementthat mightsuccessfullyoppose the national
culturaldominance of metropolitanLima.47
The New Indians' appropriation of modernistdiscourse was not, however,
uncritical.In accordance withtheirregionalistpoliticalagenda and philosophical
allegiance to the ideal of an autochthonousAndean culture,theyselected only
those components of European (and Argentine)modernismthatcould further
theirpropositionthatculturalsentimentand aestheticcreativityemanated from
the soil. Thus, for example, theyeagerly embraced the Europeans' vision of a
progressive,constantlychanging culture,theirquestioningof institutionaland
aesthetic authority,their insistenceon the internationalizationof culture, and
theircampaign againstboth scientificinductionand naturalizedconceptsof tra-
dition and community.48 Above all theyembraced the idea of a cultural avant-
garde thatdefined itselfas a transientformationexistingoutside or beyond both
history and tradition.In the visionsof both Valcarcel and Garcia, the historical
rootsof Andean culturehad been forgedbythe Indians. Justification of a mestizo
avant-gardethat mightspeak for all membersof Andean society,including the
oppressed and largelyvoiceless Indian masses, required thereforejust this ele-
vation above historyand traditionthat the modernistconception of an avant-
garde offered.In Garcia's vision of indigenismo, this separation of the historical
roles of Indian and indigenista followedthe well-wornmodernistdichotomiesof
traditionalismversus cultural innovation,popular culturesversus high culture,
historicismversus spirituality,and passive communityversus a dynamic and
forward-lookingavant-garde:

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 55
 There are,then,in AmericatwoIndianities:thePrimitive, thatwhichfled,destroyed by
theInca Empire,to themillennarian caverns,and therecrouchesdown;thisis theIndi-
anitywhichsustainsthepopularspiritofourcountryside, fromthemountaineer Indians
ofCuntisuyu totheQolla herders,and fromthemestizos ofourtownstothegauchoon the
Argentinepampas,or thecowboyof theMexicancountryside. This is the Indianityof
youngbarbarism. The rudimentary and formative to thatwhichpre-
Indianity-similar
ceded theformation of thegreatautochthonous empires[ofAmerica].The otherIndi-
anityis thatwhichis encarnatedin thegreatmenrepresentative oftheAmericanspirit-
thinkers, heroes-all thosewhowiththeirgeniushavemadeofour continent
artists, the
ofa high[elevado]
possibility culture.Thesemenwhohavemadeoraremakingthehistory
of Americaare thelegitimate Indiansbeforewhomall ideas of an "Inkario"are mere
traditionalism.
The valueoftheworksoftheIncasresidesonlyintheexampletheysetofan Indianity
alreadyrealized.49

In adopting the language of vanguardismo, however,Garcia and his New Indi-

anistindigenistas were caught at a delicate impasse. From the point of view of the
peasant popular culturesthatValcarcelcelebratedas a romanticcontinuationof
the Inca past, Garcia's Neo-Indianistswere forcedto definethemselvesas a mod-
ernistavant-gardeexistingabove and beyondtheconfinesof whattheysaw as the
traditionalistcul de sac of Inca history.From the point of view of Lima and its
dominantcriolloculture,however,theirlegitimacyas spokesmenforNew Indian
culture rested preciselyon theirnecessarily historicaland geographic ties to the
telluricforcesof the Andes in whichtheylived. It is thiscontradictionthatboth
limitsthe developmentof modernistdiscourse in Cusco and definesthe peculiar
emergentqualities of Cusco indigenismo. Far frombeing a carbon copy (or much
less, imperialistimposition)of European modernism,indigenismo was a deliber-
ately iconoclastic of
pastiche philosophical, aesthetic,and discursiveborrowings.
The result is a "modernism"that mimicsthe European only partiallyand thus
appears, fromthe point of view of European modernism,to have contradictory
structuresand purposes.
The most visiblecontradictionthatemerges fromthisprocess is thatwhich
existsbetween the Cusquefos' enthusiasticsubscriptionto the ideal of an avant-
garde and theirsimultaneousrejectionof the formalistand internationalist lan-
guages of abstractionand modernitythroughwhichthe modernistavant-garde
constituteditselfin European literature,painting,photography,and music. For
Garcia's "New Indians," modernity,and in particularthe rhythmor velocityof
modern life,was perceived as threatsto the verylandscape fromwhichAndean
peoples drew theirspiritualand emotionalstrength.For them,"indigenismo [was]
a returnto the land ... an instinctivebattleagainstthenew conceptsof the Twen-
tiethCentury."50 Similarly,forNew Indianistartistssuch as Figueroa, abstraction,
formalism, and modernityremained taboo.51As a result,in the eyes of a Euro-
pean, North American, or Limefio observer,most of the Cusqueio indigenista

56 REPRESENTATIONS
 paintingsappear to be strikinglynaive, overlystylized,romanticcompositions;
theyappear, in short,to be "bad art."
The Cusquefios' rejectionof modernistpictorialidioms,however,cannot be
quite so summarilydismissed.They were both exposed to and knowledgeableof
modernistpictorialstyles.Most were trained in European art. Cubist and other
abstract formaliststylesof painting were exhibited in Cusco, and summarily
attacked by the Cusco critics.52Rather the Cusquefios' collectivedecision notto
imitatethisstylewas consciouslymade accordingto two politicalcriteria.On the
one hand, it was preciselythe formalismand academicismof European painting
thathad become mostcloselyidentifiedwiththe hegemoniccultureof Lima. On
the other hand, the political and social legitimacyof New Indianist discourse
remained necessarilysituated in a local historyand environment.This political
and historicalgrounding in regionalist,anticoastalpoliticsmade the Cusquefios
justifiablywaryof the European formalistaestheticsthatcelebrateda disconnect-
edness fromsuch historicalconstantsas representationand tradition.
This discrepancyin the sitesfromwhichEuropean and Cusquefo "modern-
isms"developed was to determineas well the Cusquenos' differently articulated
relationship to the other element central to modernist philosophy and romantic
aesthetics:the primitiveor peasant icon. European romanticismdeveloped, in
part, throughthe glorificationor aestheticizationof the peasant and "the land,"
at a timewhen industrialculturethreatenedboth traditionalagrarian economies
and the nature of artisticproduction.53European modernismmade similaruses
of a preindustrialother,throughthe appropriationof the artof peoples who had
been colonized byEurope. The European modernists'abilityto isolateor abstract
elements from Africanand Oceanic art depended on this colonial relation for
both the visibilityof its iconographic references(the colonial and antiquarian
marketplace)and the particularsiteof power fromwhichitwas possible to stand
above the primitiveand dehistoricizeit as a formalistaesthetic.54
For the Cusquefo artists,however,the question of cultural differencewas
conditioned by the artist'sspatial as well as social proximityto the Indian. Many
of the indigenista intellectualswere themselveshacendadoswho controlled,and at
timeslived with,theirIndian peoneson primitiveruralestates.Many of themwere
lawyersor provincialpoliticianswho represented"their"Indians to the state.All
of themhad paternalrelationshipswithIndian servants-including wetnurses-
whom theyhad knownsince childhood. All of themlived in the complex urban-
rural environmentof the cityof Cusco, and all were, as a consequence, aware of
the multitudeof ethnicgradationsexistingbetweentheideal statesof pure mestizo
and pure Indian. This lived familiarity withthecomplexityof culturaland ethnic
in a
identity modernizing Andean societymediatedthewaysin whichCusco intel-
lectuals would formulate their understandingsof cultural difference.These
understandingsdifferedfrom those of the Limeno or European modernistin

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 57
 .. _
*vR...~~~~~~~~~~ By~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.i:
* :::::::::
4ii'i" i:??

..
?T~-.. :...:....... .. ..

? i*:~ii
i'..:i:

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ii
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? !~;~'~
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. FIGURE ndgn.

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58 REPRESENTATIONS
theirrefusal to acknowledge the coevalityof a primitiveIndian "other."In Val-
carcel's formulations,for example, absolute culturaldifferencecould be located
only in the Inca past and in what was seen as the residual survivingcultureof a
few existingIndians. Once isolated throughempiricalstudy,Valcarcel believed
thatthispast or residual culturaldifferencecould thenbe consciouslyresurrected
as an archaic revivalin the emergentculturallanguage of neo-Inca indigenismo.
Similarly,for Garcia, an absolute cultural differencebetween Indian and
Spaniard had not existedsince beforethe Conquest. Andean culturewas a four-
century-oldproductof colonialismand racialmestizaje, and therewere,as a result,
no cultural "others"to be found in present-dayCusco. If, therefore,a future
Andean culturewas to be constructed,it could be done onlybybuildinga united
highlandidentitythatwould encompass peasant and intellectualalike. For Garcia
and his followers,this collectiveculture of the "New Indians" was to be built
around the politicalrealitiesof an already existingnational context:Cusco's col-
lective"other"was to be found,in otherwords,on the coast and in Lima and not
in the residual survivalsof the Inca traditionthatValcarcelsoughtto revive.55
It was thisconscious geopoliticalmapping of culturaldifferenceonto Peru-
vian political geography that led Cusco's New Indianist artiststo privilegethe
environmentor landscape-rather thantheidea ofan "authentic"culturalother-
as the source of theirspiritualand aestheticintuition.This constructionof the
telluricAndean landscape was both preceded and informedbya local bohemian
aestheticthat,as we have seen, defined individual rebelliousnessand creativity
through reference to the walaychu/artist's privileged emotional ties to nature.
Although thisprovincial discourse of bohemianism drewon a European romantic
tradition, it differeddramatically from the European bohemian traditionthat
made explicit iconographic use of gypsies,saltimbanques,primitives,and other
"social outcasts"to constructits idioms of both authenticityand individual crea-
tivity.In Cusco, bycomparison,neitherthe 1900s bohemians nor the 1920s neo-
indianistssought to link theirnotionsof the artisticindividualto the Indian per
se. Rather,the Indian, as part of nature,was invoked as evidence of the gener-
alized and environmentallycircumscribedcultural intuitionthat separated all
highland peoples fromtheircoastal compatriots.
This synthetizing-and leveling-function of the landscape withrespect to
cultural,racial,and class differenceswas bestexpressedin Garcia'snotionof "syn-
cretictellurism"(telurismo This conceptwas used byGarcia and other
sincretizante).
neo-indianiststo describe the historicalprocess throughwhichall inhabitantsof
the Andes-intellectual and Indian alike-would eventuallyacquire a homoge-
neous identitycenteredon the specificformof 'emotion'thatemanated fromthe
Andean landscape. However, to escape the dangers of pasadismo,or tradition-
alism, and to assume the formof a politicallyand culturallyconscious identity,
Andean emotivityand intuitionwould requirean enlightenedand visionarylead-

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 59
 ership. It is this contradictionthat provided an entrypoint for modernistcon-
cepts of the avant-gardeelite.56

Figueroa's approach to paintingand photographywas molded both by his

personal experiences in Cusco and Paucartambo,and by the ways in which the
indigenistadiscourses of Valcarcel and Garcia shaped an understandingof art,
ethnicity,and the intellectualavant-gardethatwas in manywaysspecificto Cusco.
The twodecades of indigenista fermentin Cusco, 1910 to 1930, correspondto the
period when Figueroa was most active in photographyand, although Figueroa
leftno writtenrecords,indigenista concernsclearlyinformedhis studio photos of
idealized Indian "types"(figs. 7 and 8), stylizedtheatricalgroups (fig. 9), and
bohemian self-portraits (figs.10 and 11). In these and othersuch carefullycom-
posed scenes, Figueroa uses photographyto document a constructedartificeof
identity.Each photograph carefullycomposed withbackdrops painted by Fi-
is
gueroa for his theatricaland/orportraitwork. In frontof these backdrops, an
"Indian" model is made to recline,or the artisthimselfposes as stalkinghunter,
gypsyminstrel,meditativemonk,or pensiveartist.In anotherexperiment,Figue-
roa skillfullymanipulatesand composes his negativeso as to renderthe narrative
flowof a sentimentgained and lost (fig.12).
This photographicfascinationwiththe malleability and stagingof social iden-

FIGURE 9 (below). Figueroa Aznar and friendsin

Cusco.
FIGURES 10, 11, and 12 (opposite).Self-portraits.

...0.... REPRE ..

60 REPRESENTATIONS
 i. _
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..
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7i.

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-i~~~~~~II~~~I~~~..
L I I~
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=============
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.== .....
.:."... .. :
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Figuro iza an te Cuc Inieits _8Sh

Fi iueroa z and th : I .genis

''.
and Figueroa. . _
 tities reflectsa broadening of Figueroa's bohemian or walaychuaesthetic to
encompass the New Indianists'philosophyof constructedculturalidentities.Like
Figueroa's various bohemian selves,the New Indianists'culturalidentity, or "eth-
nicity," was not a naturalor historicalidentitywaiting to be empiricallydiscovered
and described, as in Valcarcel's indigenismo. Rather,identitieswere to be con-
structedaccording to the consciouslyelaborated criteriaof a politicaland artistic
avant-garde.Photographyfitintothisphilosophyof identityor selfas a means to
imagine new identities,though not as a medium to representor to express them.
Figueroa, forexample, oftenmade studio photographsof subjectsto be used in
futurepaintings(figs.7, 8, and 13), yethe never exhibitedany photographs"as
art."As a result,despite the polishand technicalsophisticationof his work,Figue-
roa never developed whatwe mightcall a "photographicvision"capable of trans-
formingthe realityof what the camera recorded into the artificeof illusion
achieved bysuch devicesas framing,angle, focus,tone,and composition.Identity
and artificeare insteadconstructedin Figueroa's photographsthroughtheatrical
devices and costume. This interestin manipulatingthe subject ratherthan the
medium of photographyis perhaps one reason why "real" Indian or peasant
subjectsnever appear in Figueroa's photographs.
This absent Indian highlightsthe differencesbetweenFigueroa and his con-
temporary,Martin Chambi, the only Cusquefo photographerto achieve recog-
nitionfromEuropean and American photographichistorians.57 The differences
between the work of Figueroa and Chambi reveal how photographywas appro-
priated by the two divergentstrandsof Cusco indigenismo. A firstpoint of com-
parison has to do with the effectsof class positionon the uses of photographyin
Cusquefio society.As the son of a ruralpeasant familyin Puno, Chambi's position
in Cusco societydepended verymuch on his continuingimmersionin the work
of photography.As an in-lawof the landed class, Figueroa, on the other hand,
had the comparativeleisureto abandon theincome providedbycommercialpho-
tography.The effectof these dissimilarclass identitieson the photographicand
artisticphilosophies of the two men, however,was articulatedprimarilyin terms
of their intellectualallegiances to the two quite differentpaths taken by Cusco
indigenismo. The firstof these paths led to Valcarcel's empirical sociology and
archaeology for the Andes; the other to Garcia's questioning of scientific
authorityand the concomitantdevelopmentof a cultural,aestheticavant-garde.
MartinChambi followedcloselythe firstof these two options. For him, pho-
tographywas conceived as a medium in whichto record the existenceof whathe
saw to be a rapidlydisappearing historicalor "authentic"Andean Indian. This
conscious effortto constructa photographicinventoryof "ethnictypes"corre-
sponded to Valcarcel'spositivistpromotionof scientificand ethnologicalstudyof
the Inca past. As in otherpartsof theworld,itwas the camera thatwas to provide
the mostappropriate technologyforthisscientific quest to inventory,classify,and
survey the native world. That Chambi's photographyof Indians and Indian

62 REPRESENTATIONS
fiestaswas motivatedby such a missionis suggested by his own labeling of the
photographsas a "collection"of ethnic"types,"as well as bythe factthatmanyof
his photographsof Indians approximatethe anthropometricposes developed by
French anthropologyand taughtat the Universityof Cusco by such earlyindige-
nistasas Manuel Bueno and Jose Coello. These photographswere marketedto
European and North American tourists.It is notable, however,that they are
never featuredamong the photographsselected forexhibitin the several Euro-
pean and Americanexhibitsthathave recentlybeen mountedof Chambi's work.
Because of its fascinationwithreconstructingan idealized cultural linkage
betweenthe Incas and contemporaryIndians, Valcarcel'sprogramalso, however,
contained withinit a theatricalemphasis more akin to Figueroa's bohemianism
than to Chambi'sdocumentary(yetstillidealizing)concerns.This affinity surfaces

j '
..l g:... .. ..

.... .....
........................................................ I. . . .. .

FIGURE 13 (left). Study foroil paintingEl viejo artista.

FIGURE 14 (right). Study for Luis Valcarcel's Misi6n de arte
incaico, 1923.

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 63
 FIGURE 15. Self-portrait with painting Amores
y celos
andinos(1923).

in Figueroa's work for the Mision peruana de arte incaica, a travelingtheater

group mounted in 1923 byValcarcelto takeexamples of"neo-Inca" art to Bolivia
and Argentina.58Figueroa did the sketchesforthe Misi6n'sstage productionof
the colonial Quechua drama Ollantay.He also photographedthe rehearsals,cos-
tumes,and settings(fig. 14). The highlystylizedposes used in these Mision pho-
tographs are reminiscentof those used in his personal portfolioof portraitsand
self-portraits.This same theatrical style also distinguishesFigueroa's photo-
graphs of well-scrubbedand costumed Indian "types"-many of whichused the
same model (figs. 7 and 8)-from the more clearly documentary gesture
informingChambi's inventoryof culturaland racial types.59
Indigenismothus made competing claims on the work of Figueroa and
Chambi. While Chambi soughtto givelifeto a romanticizedand idealized Indian
type through the illusoryrealism of his documentarywork,Figueroa's theatri-
cality eschewed realism and stressed the constructednessof social identity.
Throughout his life,Figueroa reservedspecificmedia fordifferentrepresenta-
tional tasks: photography for self-portraiture, theater,and type; painting for
Indians, allegories,and landscapes (fig.15).60In the New Indianistconceptionof
art, painterslike Figueroa were to be praised forthe "realism"withwhichthey
translatedthe emotion or beautyinherentto natureonto the canvas and not for
the waysin whichtheyactivelyrethoughtor imaginednew formsor perspectives

64 REPRESENTATIONS
on the "truth"of nature. Photography,on the other hand, was unhampered by
its ties to either nature or art. It could thus be used to document a shiftingand
formallyconstructednotion of identitymore akin to contemporaryforms of
European modernistbohemianism than to the romanticnotions of sentiment,
nature,and artwithwhichthe Cusquenos had inscribedand restrictedthe artist's
relationto paint.
This affinity between photographyand the bohemian selfwas limited,how-
ever,bythe Cusquefios' doctrinalunderstandingsof the telluricqualitiesof art in
itsrelationto the land. Uriel Garcia,along withtheotherCusquefio critics,attrib-
uted both the sentimentand aesthetic success of Figueroa's paintings to his
immersion in the rural Andean landscape of Paucartambo (where his in-laws
owned land).61 They argued thatFigueroa's special bohemian sensibilitiesmade
him a fertilemedium fortranslatingonto canvas thespontaneousorganicpowers
thatNature had investedin the Paucartambolandscape and thatconstitutedthe
essence of Andean culturalidentity.This aestheticizingor sensitizingeffectof the
Andean landscape was restricted,however,to the medium of paintingand could
not pass throughthe modernizingmechanicalmediumof thecamera. As a result,
landscape photography-the firstpictorialistformof photographyto emerge in
Europe and the United States-was never seriously developed in Cusco.
AlthoughCusquefo photographerssuch as MartinChambi,AlbertoOchoa, and
Pablo Verdamendi shotextensivephotographyof archaeologicalsites,these pho-
tographswere meantto documentthe Inca historicalpastcelebratedbyindigenista
writerssuch as Valcarcel.62The taskof expressingthetelluricessence of the land-
scape itselfwas meanwhile reserved for the vanguard of indigenista artists,who
could translatethis sentimentinto the painterlyart of color,emotion,and per-
sonal-as opposed to mechanical-sensibility.
Other Cusco artistsfollowedFigueroa's example in the extentto whichthey
experimentedin both photographyand painting.With the exceptionof Martin
Chambi, however,the indigenista photographersof Figueroa's generationalways
turnedback to paintingas the preferredmedium forexpressingwhattheycalled
"el sentimientoandino." Since, forthe indigenistas, beautywas inherentneitherto
the Indian nor to the landscape per se, it could not be captured by what Euro-
peans considered to be the "magic" of photographic technology.Rather, the
realityof the Andean world had to be transformedand reworked,carefully
framedand skillfullytinted,before it could serve as an instrumentof indigenista
philosophyand aesthetics.As one indigenista criticexpressed it,"The [indigenista]
paintersinterpret the Indian landscape and carrypure Indianityto theobjectivity
of plasticarts."63Figueroa's importancein framingthisaestheticforboth photog-
raphyand paintingis captured in the words of the indigenista writerJose Gabriel
Cosio, whose obituary for Figueroa lauded him as being "among the firstto
employthe indigenista thematicin a purelyaestheticsense withneitherethnologi-
cal nor social preoccupations."64

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 65
 Conclusions

Theworldliness
ofphotographyis theoutcome
... ofa projectofglobaldomination.
Thelanguageoftheimperialcenteris imposed,
both
forcefullyand seductively,
upon
theperipheries.
-Allan Sekula(1984)

Fourhundred yearsofEuropeansciencehas compressed theexpansionoftheoriginal

spiritofourpeople.Forthisreason,thenewideaswhichare circulatingin
contemporary must
thinking serveus onlyas short-term
loansor pointsforthe
reference
affirmationofourownvalues.
-Uriel Garcia(1926)

By wayof conclusion,I would liketo returnbrieflyto myoriginalques-

tions about the universalityof the sociallyconstructeddivide between photog-
raphy and art, and about Figueroa's specific,culturallyand socially situated
understanding of his artisticmodernity.As I hope to have made clear in dis-
cussingthe originsand formationof theindigenista movementin whichhe partic-
ipated, intellectualson the "periphery"consciouslyborrowed and made use of
the philosophical and aestheticphilosophies throughwhich,as theywell knew,
Europe had constructedits hegemonic discourse of art and the artist.They did
not naively learn the "neutral" technologyof photographyand then use it to
record subjects appropriate to theirown "indigenous" agenda. Even in far-off
"pre-industrial"Cusco the media of photographyand paintingwere not neutral
or transparenttechnologies acting simplyto reflectsocial ideas and personal
inspirations. Rather, as social and aesthetic technologies of representation,
paintingand photographyin early-twentieth-century Cusco formedpart of the
complex discursive of
strategies Western art. As the Cusco themselves
indigenistas
knew, they were representationaltechnologiesposited on post-Enlightenment
formsof Westernculturalproductionin whichthe aestheticrepresentation,clas-
sification,and idealization(categorization)of social types,naturallandscapes, and
human formshad come to forman integralpart of the humanisticphilosophies
and scientificknowledge throughwhich the distributionof power in societyis
regulated and controlled.
Because of itsclose associationwithcolonial expansion and the globalization
of bourgeois culturein the late nineteenthand earlytwentiethcenturies,photog-
raphy is a particularlyfascinatingmedium throughwhichto studythe dialogue
through which intellectualson the peripherycontestedthis "controllinggaze."
Photographywas introducedto Cusco throughthe workof expeditionaryscien-
tistsand travelers,all of whom represented governmentalor private business
interests.One of the earliestand mostextensiveuses of photographyin southern
Peru, forexample, was bya Britishexpeditionsentto map theboundarybetween
Peru and Bolivia. Other earlyuses included thearchaeologicalsurveysconducted

66 REPRESENTATIONS
by French,German, Swiss,and U.S. Americanistscholars,and the cartesde visite
of "Indian types"marketedby French photographerssuch as Courret and Ma-
noury in the fashionablecirclesof Paris. These cartesde visiteand surveyphoto-
graphs contributedto a scientifically grounded popular image of Peru as an
emptyland, a Fallen Empire, countryof backward and impoverishedIndians
a
whose futureprogresswould depend on both foreigncapital and Westernprog-
ress. What is of mostinterestabout thisprocess,however,is the factthat,without
exception,the Peruvian photographerslearned theirart fromthese same scien-
tificand studio photographers from Europe. The firstphotographystudio in
Cusco-the one in whichFigueroa workedupon firstarrivingin Cusco in 1904-
was set up by an English missionarysociety.The missionariestook photographs
were used to collect
of ragged Indians that,in the formof captioned cartesdevisite,
monies in England.65Other studios introduceda formof bourgeois studio por-
traiturewhose formalposes and elaborate studio settingshad contributedto the
formationof a certainnotion of the bourgeois individualin nineteenth-century
Europe.66
These uses of photography and their ideological content were neither a
secretfortheCusquefios,norweretheyuncritically admiredas emblemsofmoder-
nity,science, and progress. Rather,as we have seen, the Cusco Neo-Indianists
sought to counter this controllinggaze and positivistinventoryof theirhistory
and geography by constructingan "imagined community"based on the philo-
sophical and aestheticvalues of intuitionand sentimentinformingtheirnotion
of la emocionandina.67Integral to this endeavor was the elaboration of a local
traditionof the walaychu,or Andean-bohemian, as a person who replaces the
bonds of social traditionand scientifichistory(or pasadismo)withan aggressive
philosophyand aestheticof nostalgia,sentiment,and musicgrounded in his close
tiesto the land. Out of thistraditioncame a certainrepertoireof ideas regarding
both the bohemian and paintingas formsof spontaneous sentimentalexpression
enabled by the telluricforcesof Cusco's mountainouslandscape.
At the same time,however,the emergenceof a pictorialand literaryimagery
specificto the Cusco indigenistaswas only enabled byother contemporarydevel-
opments in European art and the Latin American vanguardistmovement. In
Europe, firstromanticism, with its peasants and bohemians, and then mod-
ernism,withits "colonial others,"emerged as part of a broader discursivestruc-
tureconcerned withthe elaborationand reproductionof social (racial) difference
as "a conscious strategyof exclusion."68This "strategyof exclusion"made it pos-
sible for European artistsand writersto engage both industrialculture and the
colonial "other"bytransforming thatencounterintoan aestheticact of bourgeois
culturalproduction.For the Cusco artistas well itwas the exclusionarydiscourse
surrounding both the bohemian aesthetic and its successor, vanguard mod-
ernism-and not their pictorialor representationalideologies, which the indi-
genistasclearly rejected-that enabled the Indian to surface as the subject of

FigueroaAznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 67
 early twentieth-century Peruvian cultural discourse. This discursiveexplosion,
through which "the Indian" entered the national artistic-and, somewhatlater,
political-imagination, was related to debates in Cusco concerning the desir-
abilityof modernizingthe traditional(low technology,unsalaried) formsand rela-
tions of production, and to the increasinglyvisible political organization and
violence of the Indians themselves.It was thiseconomic and social backdrop of
rapid social change initiatedfrom below that provided the institutionalincite-
ment for Peruvian intellectualsto speak, finally,about the previouslyforbidden
subjectof the Indian.
This discursiveshift,however,was also to have specificimplicationsfor the
developmentof photographicculturein Cusco. Once the hegemonicconceptual
divide between photography(technology)and art had been surmounted,and
gone out of style,the directionsin whichFigueroa, and other Cusco
the foto-6leo
artists,would take photographywere determinedby a new, regionallyfocused
discourse on art. As Leguia's "PatriaNueva" (1919-1930) championed modern-
ization and North American capital, Cusco politiciansand philosophers elabo-
rated an oppositional, regionalistdoctrine of sentimentand antimodernity.In
accordance with this new doctrine,indigenistacriticscelebrated the individual
creativityand "sentimentalrealism" of painting for its ties to nature. They
focused on both nature and the Indian as subjectswhose essence or "sentiment"
could not be captured by the technologicalrealism (or "transparency")of pho-
tographicrepresentation.What was needed for the indigenistas' culturalagenda
was a directedrechannelingof sentimentand spiritto formthe newlyimagined
communityof "Cusquefiismo,"and not the unmediatedrealismof eitherphotog-
raphy or the impoverished Indian that photographyrevealed. Photographic
technologyand photographic realism were thereforerestrictedto the private
domain of photographic"studies"forboth theaterand paintingand, in the case
of Figueroa, fora remarkableseriesof self-portraits documentingtheindigenistas'
concern with constructingthe vanguard or bohemian identities that would
someday shape the New Indian cultureof Cusco.

Notes

Research for thisarticlewas carried out in Cusco and Lima between 1986 and 1988
withthe support of a J. Paul GettyPostdoctoralFellowshipin the Historyof Art and
a Rackham Fellowshipfromthe Universityof MichiganSocietyof Fellows.The work
would not have been possible withoutthe help and encouragementof Juan Manuel
Figueroa's son, Luis Figueroa Yabar, and widow,Ubaldina Yabar de Figueroa. The
glass plate negativesfromwhichthe photographswere reproduced are the property
of the Figueroa family.The modern printsreproduced here are by Fran Antmann,
with whom I share credit for the research in Peruvian photography archives.

68 REPRESENTATIONS
 Adelma Benavente assisted withinterviewsand related research in Cusco. Finally,I
would like to thankJose Luis Renique, Rayna Rapp, Talal Asad, Partha Chatterjee,
Benjamin S. Orlove, and Gustavo Buntinx for theircommentson earlier versionsof
this article. Unless otherwisenoted, all translationsfromSpanish-language sources
are mine.
1. From 1879 to 1883, Peru was at war withChile. During much of thistime,Lima was
eitheroccupied by,or under attackfrom,Chilean troops.
2. Eduardo Serrano, Historiade lafotografiaen Colombia(Bogota, 1983), 200-230; and
Juan Luis Mejia Arango, "La fotografia," inJorgeOrlando Melo, ed., HistoriadeAntio-
quia (Medellin, Col., 1988), 447-53.
3. For a historyand descriptionof early-twentieth-century Peruviansociety,see Alberto
Flores-Galindo and Manuel Burga, Apogeoy crisisde la republicaaristocrdtica, 4th ed.
(Lima, 1987).
4. Regarding the class originsof European pictorialistphotography,see Rune Hassner,
"Amateur Photography,"and Marc Melon, "Beyond Reality: Art Photography,"in
Jean-Claude Lemagny and Andre Rouille, eds., A HistoryofPhotography (Cambridge,
1987), 80-102. Medellin, where the pictorialist-influenced photographers Melit6n
Rodriguez and Benjamin de la Calle lived and worked,was also home to a relatively
progressiveindustrialand commercialbourgeoisiewho distinguishedthemselvescul-
turally,socially,and raciallyfromthe restof Colombia. Medellin'sliteraryand artistic
communityalso had close contactswithboth the United Statesand Europe. See Melo,
Historiade Antioquia.
5. See WalterBenjamin, "The Workof Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"in
Illuminations (New York, 1969), 217-51; Allan Sekula, "PhotographyBetween Labor
and Capital," in H. D. Buchloh and RobertWilkie,eds., MiningPhotographs and Other
Pictures:A Selection fromtheNegativeArchives ofSheddenStudio,Glace Bay, Cape Breton,
1948-1968 (Halifax, N.S., 1983), 183-267; and Sekula, "DismantlingModernism,
ReinventingDocumentary,"in Photography AgainsttheGrain(Halifax, N.S., 1984), 53-
76.
6. See Juan M. Ugarte Elespuru, "Notas sobre la pinturaperuana entre 1890 y 1930," in
Jorge Basadre, Historiade la Repzblicadel Perz, vol. 16 (Lima, 1968), 149-64; and
Mirko Lauer, Introducci6n a la pinturaperuanadelsigloXX (Lima, 1976).
7. See Keith McElroy,EarlyPeruvianPhotography: A CriticalCase Study(Ann Arbor,Mich.,
1985).
8. The cartede visiteformatremained popular in Latin America formuch longer than in
eitherEurope or the United States.Even afterthe introductionof larger formatpor-
traiture,the European elan of the cartede visitedeterminedthat its somewhatstan-
dardized poses, styles,and props would continue to be the norm for studio portraits
of all social classes.
9. Fernando Castro, "Photographersof a Young Republic: Being French in Courret's
Lima," Lima Times,14 December 1990, 6-7.
10. Te6filoCastillo,El comercio (Lima), 1919; reprintedin "Los triunfosartisticosde Figue-
roa Aznar en Lima," El comercio (Cusco), 8 May 1919.
11. Charles Baudelaire, "The Modern Public and Photography"(1859), in Alan Trach-
tenberg,ed., ClassicEssaysonPhotography (New Haven, 1980), 83-89. Like Baudelaire,
Castillo charged as well that art was necessarilyprivate,visionary,and manual, and
thatwhile "photographycan serve as a document to reconstructa lost semblance ...
in no way can it [serve] to transformthe semblance into a basic element of serious
composition"; Castillo, "Los triunfos."Similar debates regarding the foto-oleotook

Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas 69

 place in Colombia (wherefoto-6leos were largelyout of fashionby 1900) in the 1890s.
See Serrano, Historiade lafotografia, 213, 218-19.
12. Photographyappeared in Lima only a fewyears afterDaguerre's announcement in
1839. See McElroy,EarlyPeruvianPhotography.
13. Castillo'sarticlesattackingthefoto-6leos correspondto a period of dramaticchange in
Lima. The year 1918 was markedbya seriesof violentstrikesbyworkersand artisans;
1919 brought economic crisis for the traditionalagriculturalexport economy of
Lima's oligarchy.In Julyof 1919, Augusto Leguia took officepromisingto build a
modern, anti-oligarchicalstatecalled the "Patria nueva"; Flores-Galindoand Burga,
Apogeoy crisis,125-42.
14. El comercio (Lima), 1901.
15. Obituary, 1951 (typescript).A contemporaryof Figueroa, Julio G. Gutierrez is an
indigenistawriterand painterand founderof the PeruvianCommunistPartyin Cusco.
16. Alberto Flores-Galindo,Arequipay el Sur andino(Lima, 1978).
17. "Un artistanacional,"La bolsa(Arequipa), 12 March 1903.
18. "Progresos fotograficos," La bolsa,13 January1904.
19. See Jose Tamayo Herrera,HistoriasocialdelCuscorepublicano (Lima, 1981), 107-8; and
Luis Valcarcel,Memorias(Lima, 1981).
20. This photographystudiowas founded in the 1890s bya congregationof Englishevan-
gelical missionaries,who leftthe studio and all itsequipment to the Gonzalez family
as paymentfor back rent.J.G. Gonzalez retained the name "Fotografiainglesa" for
his business, which was inheritedby his sons and grandsons; interviewwith Wash-
ingtonGonzalez, Cusco, July1986.
21. "Artenacional: Plumadas,"La union(Cusco), 10 May 1905.
22. He was, for example, Associate Director of Cusco's Academia de arte. He was also
close to the circle of scholars who made up the Centro cientificodel Cusco, an orga-
nization devoted to promoting progress through recuperation of Cusco's jungle
resources. Figueroa would later serve as subprefect for one of these lowland
provinces.
23. "Impresiones de Arte,"El sol (Cusco), August 1907 (published anonymously;author-
ship attributedtoJose Angel Escalante in El sol,31 January1908). Escalante was later
directorof the Cusco indigenista newspapersElferrocarril and La sierra.
24. See, for El 28
example, sol, September 1907; El porvenir(Cusco), 23 December 1907;
30
Elferrocarril, January 1908; and El sol, 30 January1908.
25. Figueroa's contributionsincluded several copies of colonial religious paintings, a
"studyof a head ... in impressioniststyle,"severalbeach landscapes,and tworomantic
compositions,one of "an unhappy woman sickwithromanticism"and the otherof "a
voluptuous half nude woman ... witha magneticgaze"; El sol,28 September 1907.
26. Escalante, "Impresiones."
27. "Notas de arte,"Elferrocarril, 30 January1908.
28. J. Castro, "Culto por el arte,"El sol,30 January1908.
29. "Notas de arte,"Elferrocarril, 30 January1908.
30. Cesar Grafa, BohemianVersus Bourgeois:FrenchSociety and theFrenchMan ofLetters in the
Nineteenth Century (New York, 1964); Cesar Grafiaand Marigay Grafia,On Bohemia:
TheCodesoftheSelf-Exiled (New Brunswick,N.J., 1990); MarilynR. Brown,Gypsies and
OtherBohemians:TheMythoftheArtistin Nineteenth-Century France(Ann Arbor,Mich.,
1985).
31. See Raymond Williams, "The Romantic Artist,"in Cultureand Society:1780-1950
(1958; New York, 1983), 30-48; and Grafia,BohemianVersus Bourgeois.

70 REPRESENTATIONS
32. Similar discrepanciesemerge between the European romantictraditionand its con-
temporaryimitatorsin 1840s oligarchicLima. Whereas European bohemiansbecame
associated with a public secular sphere of culturaldiscussion,Lima artistsrelied on
the personal patronage of wealthysponsors such as Don Miguel del Carpio. As one
Peruvian critichas described the period: "Peruvian romanticismgerminates. . . not
in a cafe,nor on the streetcorner,but ratherin an elegant mansion, perfumed and
enriched by an atmosphere of patronage [mecenazgo]and protection"; Maurilio
Arriola Grande,JoseArnaldoMarquezyMartinFierro(1948; Lima, 1967), 19.
33. "La exposici6n de arte,"El comercio (Cusco), 4 October 1922.
34. "Teatro,"La union,October 1907; theaterposter dated Cusco, 30 May 1907, in the
collection of Ubaldina Yabar de Figueroa, Lima. In Dicenta's play,writtenin 1893,
Luciano is an artist"guided byrevery,poetry,and the worldof the muses"who battles
a world of materialismand shallow bourgeois women. Although based on a thickly
romanticconceptionof the sufferingartisticsoul, Dicenta's play touches as well upon
the modernistidea of the artistas alienated social being, pertinentto the incipient
Spanish theatricalvanguard to whichDicenta belonged. See Jaime Mas Ferrer,Vida,
teatro, y mitodeJoaquinDicenta(Alicante,Spain, 1978).
Local reviewspraised Figueroa's performancesforhis mimingtalents,sentimen-
tality,"natural Spirit and correct declamation"; "La funci6n teatral," El sol, 4
November 1907; "Teatro,"El comercio (Cusco), 9 November 1907; "Espectaculos: El
concierto del 19," Elferrocarril, 21 March 1908; "El beneficiodel centro espinar,"El
sol, 20 May 1908; and "La muerte civil,"Elferrocarril,25 May 1908. Figueroa also
painted the backdrops forthe theaterproductionsin whichhe performed.The con-
ditionsfortheaterin Cusco were,however,primitiveat best,as judged bythe factthat
most reviewersaccorded as much space to the performanceas to the chill winds and
even rain thatpenetratedthe theaterhall.
35. Obituary,La prensa(Lima), 20 February1951.
36. "Anteunos cuadros deJ. M. Figueroa Aznar,"El comercio (Lima), April 1951. In a 1937
interview,forexample, Figueroa describeshimselfas an "enemyof publicity"who had
just arrived at his Arequipa exhibitfrommines in "the furthestcorner of the earth
. . . removed fromall contactwiththe civilizedworld"; "Una exposici6nde mis de 40
cuadros ... ," Noticias (Arequipa), 20 January 1937.
37. Atilio Sivirichi,"El contenido espiritualdel movimientoindigenista,"Revistauniversi-
tariadel Cuzco72 (1937): 21-22.
38. "Azares,"El sol,2 July1908.
39. Prior to the 1920s Indians appear in the workof onlyone Peruvianpainter,Franciso
Laso. In 1868, Laso photographed himselfdressed in Indian clothes as a model for
these paintings.Though the similaritiesbetween Laso's and Figueroa's self-portrait
workare suggestive,itis highlydoubtfulthatFigueroa would have knownabout Laso's
photographs, which were never publiclyexhibited. Laso's photographs are repro-
duced in McElroy,EarlyPeruvianPhotography, figs.41 and 42.
More precedents exist for indigenistaliterature.These include the Cusquena
writerClorinda Matto de Turner, whose novel Avessin nido (1889) marks a realist
traditionleading up to twentieth-century as wellasJose Arnaldo Marquez,
indigenismo,
Mariano Melgar, and Manuel Gonzalez Prada. Jose Santos Chocano marksthe entry
of the Indian into modernistpoetry.The indigenistas of the 1920s and 1930s differed
fromthese predecessorsin thattheywere the firstto claim to speak forcontemporary
Indians and the firstto set fortha literaryand artisticaestheticbased on a notion of
authenticIndian culture. See WashingtonDelgado, Historiade la literatura republicana

Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas 71

 (Lima, 1980); and Antonio Cornejo Polar, Literatura y sociedaden el Perz: La novela
indigenista(Lima, 1980). Regarding indigenista jurisprudence, see Deborah Poole,
"Ciencia, peligrosidad,y represi6nen la criminologiaperuana," in C. Walkerand C.
Aguirre,eds., Bandoleros,abigeos,y montoneros: Criminalidad y violenciaen el Peru,siglos
XVIII-XX (Lima, 1990), 335-67.
40. In 1910, the American Alberto Giesecke was appointed rectorof the Universityof
Cusco. The new curriculumhe imposed emphasized European philosopherssuch as
Spengler,Ortega y Gasset,Leo Froebenius,Taine, and Georg Simmel. These writers
provided the philosophicalapparatus withwhichthe Cusco indigenistas would autho-
rize theirargumentsabout Andean culturalidentity;Jose Tamayo Herrera, Historia
social, 123-26; and Tamayo Herrera, Historiadel indigenismo cusqueno,(Lima, 1980),
187. At the other end of the "Golden Age," 1930 marksthe end of PresidentAgusto
Leguia's dictatorship.See Tamayo Herrera, Historiadel indigenismo cusquenio; Jose
Deustua and Jose Luis Renique, Intelectuales, indigenismo, y descentralismo en el Peru,
1897-1931 (Cusco, 1984); and Valcarcel,Memorias.
41. By the 1920s, Cusco's land-owningelitewas divided both ideologicallyand geograph-
icallybetweena modernizingexportsectorconcentratedin the maize-producingUru-
bamba Valley to the northeastof the cityof Cusco, and the traditionalgamonales
(agrarian lords) situated,for the most part, in the livestock-producingprovincesto
the south.
42. Hippolyte-AdolpheTaine, LecturesonArt,trans.J. Durand (New York, 1875). Similar
theories regarding national identityand the telluriclandscape were developed by
Bolivian indigenistasduring roughlythe same period; see WaltraudQueiser Morales,
"Philosophers, Ideology, and Social Change in Bolivia," InternationalPhilosophical
Quarterly 24 (March 1984): 21-38.
43. Valcarcel,Memorias,217.
44. See especially Sivirichi,"El contenido espiritual"; and Alfredo Yepez Miranda, "El
proceso culturaldel Peru: La unidad geograficay culturalde la costa,"Revistauniver-
sitaria78 (1940): 27-37.
45. Herrera Tamayo, Historiasocial,102.
46. The Argentines'concern with both linguisticpurityand criollismo came out of the
context of massive state-supportedEuropean immigrationto Buenos Aires in the
early twentiethcentury.MartinFierro'sespousal of criollismo was thus a defense of a
culturaland linguisticpuritythattheysaw as inherentto Argentina'scolonial, though
not non-European, past. See Beatriz Sarlo, "Vanguardia y criollismo:La aventura de
MartinFierro,"Revistade criticaliteraria latinoamericana(1983): 39-69. See alsoJose Luis
Romero,El desarrollo de las ideasen la sociedadargentinadelsigloXX (Mexico City,1965).
47. Their embracingof the Argentineliteraturemayalso reflectthe broader politicaland
aestheticdispute betweenthe futurismespoused by such Argentinegroups as Martin
Fierroand the surrealistmovementchampioned in theory(though not in practice)by
the Peruvian criticJose Carlos Mariategui.Althoughthe Cusquenos rejected the for-
malism of both futurismand surrealism,it is possible thatthe role of the Argentine
literaturein theirsearch foran aestheticand culturalidentitythatcould be effectively
counterposed to thatof Lima also included an implicitantagonismtowardthe surre-
alist position of Mariategui as a successfuland influentialcriticaffiliatedwithLima
and the coast. See Jose Carlos Mariategui,"Arte,revoluci6n,y decadencia" (1926);
and "El balance del suprarrealismo"(1930), in El artistay la epoca (Lima, 1987), 18-
22, 45-52.
48. The Cusco indigenistas insistedthatAndean culturetranscendednationalboundaries.

72 REPRESENTATIONS
 This would later influencethe Apristadoctrineof "Indo-America."See Victor Raul
Haya de la Torre,A d6ndeva Indoamerica?(Santiago de Chile, 1935).
49. Jose Uriel Garcia, El nuevoindio(1930; Cusco, 1986), 90-91, emphasis in original.
Cuntisuyuwas the Inca provincelyingto the southwestof the cityof Cusco. Qollao
was the provinceto the southeast,and included Bolivia. "Inkario" refersto Valcarcel's
notion of Inca traditionas a reservoirof culture that could be used to constructa
futureIndianity.
50. Yepez Miranda, "El proceso cultural,"30. Like other"New Indians," Yepez perceived
modernityto be beneficialinsofaras itsrhythms"awaken"the serranosfromtheircul-
turallydormant state,theirintroversion,and theirlatentpasadismo.It was dangerous
insofaras it threatenedto transformthe verylandscape responsiblefor the distinc-
tivelyAndean emotions and sensibilitiesthat were to be the foundationsof a New
Indian culture.
51. Cusco's Neo-Indianist paintingis best described as costumbrista in both styleand com-
position. Influences came from Spanish localism and the indigenistapainting of
northernArgentina.
52. In one such denouncement, cubism-which the author describes as a "joke" (una
tomadura depelo)and "a craziness[chifladura]of a few"-is derided forportraying"what
appears ratherthan what is"; Fernando Mollinedo, "Notas del dia: Palique," El sol,6
May 1911.
53. Williams,"RomanticArtist."
54. Early-twentieth-century coastal Peruvianartistswere similarlysituatedwithrespectto
theirprimitiveor peasant "other."Criolloartistsbased in Lima such as Jose Sabogal,
Camilo Bias, and Julia Codesido used the Indian to develop a formalpictorialstyle
based on woodcut technology,stylisticborrowings from European expressionist
painting,and imitationof popular iconography.These abstractrepresentationsof
Indians and Andean cultureformedpart of a leftistpoliticalrevindicationof peasant
culture during the 1920s and 1930s. See Jose Carlos Mariategui,"La obra de Jose
Sabogal" (1928) and "Julia Codesido" (1928), in El artistay la epoca,90-93, 97-98.
Regarding the role of the colonial (or primitive)other in European modernism,see
Edward W. Said, Orientalism(New York, 1978); Robert Goldwater,Primitivism in
ModernArt(New York, 1938); and James Clifford,"On EthnographicSurrealism,"in
Predicaments ofCulture(Cambridge, Mass., 1988).
55. The clearlydefined historicaland culturaldichotomyof Inca versus Spaniard in Val-
carcel'sbrand of indigenismo facilitateditsacceptance in Lima and itsinfluenceon such
divergent national frontsas the Socialist Partyof Jose Carlos Mariategui and the
National Museum and Ministryof Education, both of which Valcarcel headed after
moving to Lima in 1931. Garcia meanwhileremained in Cusco as a member of the
CommunistParty.It is partlybecause of his allegiance to the local politicsand region-
alist claims of Cusco thatGarcia's "New Indian" movementwould predominateover
Valcarcel's brand of "Incaism" as the philosophy shaping a distinctivelyCusquefo
discourse of indigenismo during the 1930s and 1940s.
56. Garcia's ideas of spiritualindigenismo were developed into a full-fledgedmodernist
doctrine of the artisticavant-gardeby Atilio Sivirichiand Alfredo Yepez Miranda.
They argue thatall artisticformsin the sierraare a product of the spiritualinfluence
of the landscape, and are manifestedprimarilyin the emotionsof sadness,loneliness,
and tragedy.For Sivirichi,itis thisoverridingsense of tragedythatenables the Andes
and Andean peoples are able to "convertconquerors into conquered through our
artisticsensibilityand emotivity."This emotionallyvalidatedgroundingin the Andean

Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas 73

 landscape is differentiatedfrom what Sivirichicalls "indianidad de pensamiento"
(Indianness of thought),a false form of indigenismo practiced in Lima and "in the
serviceof the Metropolis."The forgingof this"Andean emotion"into a culture that
will define and unite the New Indians is then seen by both Yepez and Sivirichito
require the conscious guidance and interventionof an enlightenedavant-garde.See
Sivirichi,"Contenido espiritual"; and Yepez Miranda, "Indigenismo i serranismo,"
Revistauniversitaria del Cuzco74 (1938): 87-100.
57. Exhibitionsof Chambi's photographshave been mounted in the Museum of Modern
Art in New York as well as in Europe. For criticalanalysisof Chambi's work written
fromthe perspectiveof European photographichistory,see Max Kozloff,"Chambi of
Cuzco," in ThePrivilegedEye (Albuquerque, N.M., 1987), 155-66.
58. Valcarcel,Memorias,218-21. In Valcarcel'sdoctrineof indigenismo, "neo-Inca" art was
to be based on the careful scientificstudyand adoption of authenticInca stylesand
motifs.Through such studyand imitationof Inca iconography,Valcarcelbelieved the
indigenistas could attaina state of spiritual,and eventuallysocial, perfectioncompa-
rable to thatrealized by the Incas.
59. An advertisementforFigueroa's commercialphotographystudio in the 1921 Guia del
surdelPerumentionsthatphotographsof "tiposindigenas"wereavailable forpurchase
and includes reproductionsof twosuch photographs.The onlysurvivingexamples of
thistypeof photographin the Figueroa negativearchiveare reproduced here in figs.
7 and 8.
60. In the early 191Os,a shiftoccurs in Figueroa'sworkfromfoto-oleos, pleinairepaintings,
nudes, and copies of religious themes to paintings focused almost exclusivelyon
themes pertainingto Indian and Inca subjects(fig. 15). This shiftis firstreflectedin
the catalogue for the 1916 exhibit sponsored by the Academia de Pintura of the
Centro Nacional de Arte e Historia,a Cusco academy founded in 1914 by Figueroa
and otherprominentCusco artistsand intellectuals;El sol,3 October 1914. Figueroa's
titlein the Academia was "PermanentDirector."At the Centro's 1916 exhibit,Figue-
roa won a gold medal for his oil paintingInti Raymiand a diplomade clase for his
fotografia iluminada;"El concurso de la n6mina de arte,"El comercio (Cusco), 1 January
1916.
61. Uriel Garcia, El sol,2 July1908. Jose Gabriel Cosio similarlydescribesPaucartambo's
influence on Figueroa's work as a product of "dream and tragedy,because in the
solemnityof its snow-capped mountainsand the plasticityof its forestsis where the
tragedyof emotion resides";Jose Pacheco Andia, El pueblo(Arequipa), 17 February
1957. Another critictraces Figueroa's fame as a landscape artistto "thatexuberant
Paucartambo region,nextto thejungle's domain but also, on the otherhand, encased
in the ruggedness of the Andes"; "La exposici6n de Arte,"El comercio(Cusco), 4
October 1922. Because of its proximityto thejungle, Paucartambowas considered to
have a peculiarlypowerfultelluricpower.Figueroa lived much of his laterlifein Pau-
cartambo and served as subprefectof the provincefrom1913 to 1914.
62. Even in the case of such archaeological landscapes, the New Indianists-who consid-
ered the camera an instrumentof modernitythatwas thereforeanathema to the tel-
uric sentimentsof Cusco-claimed thatit was the landscape itselfand not the camera
that"captured" the scene. Thus, forexample, in a recentfilmabout MartinChambi,
Atilio Sivirichidescribes a process wherebyan (archaeological) landscape "casts a
spell" (hechizo)upon Chambi's film;Sivirichi,interviewedin the filmMartinChambiand
theHeirsoftheIncas,dir. Andy Harris and Paul Yule, 1986.
63. Sivirichi,"El contenido espiritual,"21.

74 REPRESENTATIONS
64. Jose Gabriel Cosio, "Obituario,"El comercio (Cusco), 1951.
65. For examples of such photographs,see Geraldine Guinness,Peru:ItsStory, People,and
Religion(London, 1909).
66. See Andre Rouille, L'Empirede la photographie: Photographie 1839-
etpouvoirbourgeois,
1870 (Paris, 1982).
67. Benedict Anderson,ImaginedCommunities: on theOriginand SpreadofNation-
Reflections
alism(London, 1983). Like Anderson'sconcept of "imaginedcommunity"as the basis
foremergentnationalistprojects,the indigenista's effortsto constructa common iden-
titywere based on sentiment and attachment to place (and history).The indigenista
projectdiffered from the nationalistprojectsdescribed byAnderson,however,in both
the scope and intentof theirregionalistagendas.
68. Andreas Huyssen,After theGreatDivide:Modernism, Postmodernism
Mass Culture, (Bloom-
ington,Ind., 1986), vi.

Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas 75