Figueroa Aznar's Photography and Modernism in Early 20th Century Peru

Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas: Photography and Modernism in Early TwentiethCentury 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 . Accessed: 24/08/2011 21:51
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DEBORAH
POOLE
Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas: Photographyand Modernism Peru in Early Twentieth-Century
SOMETIME IN
THE
EARLY
Figueroa Aznar arranged his easel, paints,stool,palette,two open photo magazines, 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 Andean religiousaltar.Having arranged his utensilsand easel in front traditional of thisscene, Figueroa then set up his camera, prepared the plate,composed the He image, and arranged for another person to release the shutter. straightened in on his suit,adjusted the flower his lapel, and posed, cigarette hand and one leg crossed casuallyover the other,to contemplatehis workof art (fig.1). do But where,exactly, we situatethe object of thiscarefully framedand conIs it the not yetfinishedpainting?The thematicspace uniting templativegaze? artist,easel, and paints? Or the stillbroader frameof an anticipatedimage that has just been composed on a chemically coated, and industrially produced, plate of of glass? How, in short,are we to understandthe relationship thisturn-of-thetechand painterto the representational centuryPeruviandandy,photographer, wields? he so skillfully nologies A glance at the embedded pictorialframesof thisparticularself-portrait suggeststhatFigueroa was himselfsuggestingsuch questions about the relationship between photography,painting,and art. The stretchedand painted canvas is and painted backframedbyan easel. The easel is in turnframedbya stretched rumvisibleand slightly This entirescene is then framedbythe awkwardly drop. frame-which could easily pled upper edge of the canvas backdrop. This interior 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 artifices awarenessof the technologicaland artistic enablinghisown romanticized and introspective gaze into the world of easel, palette,and disguise. In what followsI suggest that Figueroa did indeed have a very particular
1900s, the Peruvian artist Juan Manuel
REPRESENTATIONS
38 * Spring 1992 ?
THE REGENTS
OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
39
FIGURE Figueroa 1. with Aznar,self-portrait easel. Photos: Figueroa Aznar Archive,Cusco, Peru.
interestin understandingand, to a certain extent,dismantlingthe artifices of both photography and art. Like the dandified self-image he assumed, his approaches to these problems borrowed heavilyfromthe literatureand art of to Yet,contrary the conceptof an amusingcolonial mimEuropean romanticism. icrythatour own first viewingof thisprovincialPeruviandandy mightevoke, his and reworkingsof these borrowed European elements were reappropriations neither innocent nor misconstrued.Rather, Figueroa created an approach to both photographyand modernity thatintentionally departed fromthe dominant mold of European modernism.In the followingdiscussionof his life, I will be interestedin exploringthe waysin whichthistangentially modernist particularly of was shaped by Peruvian understandings photographyand art, and by a style and regionalist movementknownas indigenismo. provincialintellectual 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 LamMaria Presentaci6nAznar de Usua, was fromZaragoza, bayeque, and his mother, fathercontinuedworkinguntilhis death in 1910 in mining Spain. Although his venturesin the centralhighlands,soon afterJuan Manuel's birththe familyset Lima of the 1880s that and war-torn up residence in Lima. It was in the turbulent the young Juan Manuel spent his youth and completed his primaryand highschool education at the Colegio N.S. de Guadalupe.' He thenwenton to studyat in the Academia Concha, a privatelyendowed municipal fine arts institution Lima. Followinghis studies at the Academia, Figueroa worked his way through Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama as a portrait painter.While in Colombia, Figueroa may well have learned of such developmentsin art photographyas acadeboth of whichwere practicedquite earlyin Colombia by micismand naturalism, Antioquefiophotographerssuch as Melit6nRodriguez.2 The Peru to whichJuan Manuel returnedsometimein 1899 or 1900, howin different many respects from both Colombia and the ever, was strikingly where art photographiesfirst WesternEuropean countries emerged. The vast majority of the country's population consisted of Quechua- and Aymaraor agriculture as peons on speaking peasants employedin small-scalecommunity semifeudal agrarian estates.The small elite of rural landlords who owned these estateslived in provincialcitiesthat,withfewexceptions,were isolated fromthe modernizingcurrentsof industrialcapitalistdevelopment. was home to a small rural country, Lima, the capital of this predominantly whose wealthwas based on sugar and cottonplantations but prosperous oligarchy of builtfromthe accumulated profits 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 properties was invested in industrialdevelopment.3As a consequence, Lima lacked the bourgeois and emergingmiddle classeswho servedas boththe European and In and amateur photographies.4 these difColombian audiences for pictorialist had emerged to fulfill hisan "art photography" ferentsocial and class settings, tasks.These taskswere related to the split torically specificset of representational manual probetweenan aestheticdiscoursebased on notionsof artistic creativity, mechanized and the author; and the formsof scientific duction, epistemology, industrialsociety.5 and commodityproductioninforming bourgeois technology, the Pictorialist (or photographiesresolvedthisproblembytransforming scientific industrial)qualities of photographyinto "art"throughthe photographer-artist's into the mechanical technologyof focus, personal (i.e., manual) intervention and texture.The photographicprintwas in thisrespectno tone, framing, angle, but commodity a unique "workof art." longer a mass-reproducible In early-twentieth-century Lima, by comparison, the ruling class was still
Aznarand theCuscoIndigenistas Figueroa
41
entrenchedin its traditionalmodes of dominationand had not yet been firmly confrontedby the challenge of industrialformsof commodityproduction or success as an art mass-marketed (kitsch).In thissocietyof patronage and family, allure that resourcesand the prestigious on access to both family artistdepended withthe artistic Paris,acquired for those artists trainingin Europe, particularly with respect to Figueroa's personal means to study abroad.6 More specifically, and paintershad not sucess as a visual artistmeant success as a painter, situation, whose traumas had paved been forced to confrontthe artistic marketplace yet in the way forboth pictorialmodernismand art photography Europe. The failure of aestheticizedand pictorialist photographies to take hold in class and social strucLima must,then,be understoodwithrespectto the specific 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 choice as a practicalsolutionto the dilemma created was not so much an artistic social positionin the closed and highlystratified his relatively society marginal by ties withneitherupper-classfamily nor European of oligarchicLima. For an artist training,apprenticeshipin a successfulphotographystudio was one of the few the available routesthroughwhichto pursue a viablecareer in portraiture, genre in whichFigueroa had so farspecialized. of artistic representation By 1900, the business of photographic portraiturewas a thriving-even somewhatsaturated-industry in Lima withlittleroom foreitherartistic experimentationor the bohemian aestheticthat Figueroa had cultivatedin his travels studios competed to serve a marketmade up of the to abroad. Some forty fifty stable population of Lima's oligarchyand merchantclass.7These fashrelatively ionable studios,whichwere ranked in accordance withthe prestigeand class position of theirrespectiveclienteles,defineda dominantportrait stylebased on the carte of theatricality the nineteenth-century de visite.8 rigid poses and stylized Given the formulaicnature of theircompositionand content,the "artistic" qualities of theirsurqualities of such photographswere ascribed to the varying when the prestigious effects.In the early years of Peruvian photography, face French studios of Courret, Garreaud, and Manoury dominated Lima's portrait trade, thisaestheticqualitywas explained in termsof the technicaland lighting the effects by produced within printitself the (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 the means of differentiating aestheticvalue of theircommercialproducts. The favored solution was to transform totallythe machine-produced image into a of art."This was accomplished throughretouchingtechhand-produced "work
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 oil(oil (illuminatedphotography)orfoto-oleo photo; fig.2). Infoto-oleo, add color,and even create based paint was used to idealize the subject'sfeatures, not backdrops and special effects presentin the originalnegative.Because of its providedboth the aura of an originalworkof art painterly qualities,thefoto-oleo ascribed to photographyas an industrialand, above and the allure of modernity More importantly, fromthe pointof viewof the upper all, importedtechnology. and merchantclasses who at first retainedthis monopolized the market,foto-oleos allure while simultaneously denyingthe democraticnature of photographyas a mechanically reproducible portrait technology that threatened to become accessibleto Lima's workingand servantclasses. Precisely because of increasingly its contradictorycombination of exclusivityand availability, foto-oleo rapidly became one of the most popular art formsin Lima. During the first decades of of well-attended exhibitions fotografia iluminada were regthe twentieth century, studiosand reviewedin the nationalpress. held in the major photography ularly The popularityof thefoto-6leo speaks for the extentto which Lima's photofromthe contemporary Colombian and European art graphic culture differed photographies with which Figueroa may also have been familiar.Whereas the
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withpaintingsand 2. Figueroa Aznar's atelier worktable withfoto-oleos.
43
ernizingstate.13 of nor Neitherthe technology photographicportraiture thetechniqueoffotooleo could, however,be foreverdefended from the demands of Lima's lower a classes. As increasingnumbersof studiosbegan to offer commercialversionof other critics intervenedto ensure thatthe "artistic"fotothe prestigious foto-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 produced by nationallytrained photographers,or by the more poorly foto-oleos equipped photo studiosthatservicedLima's workingclass and merchantsectors, to or were reciprocally relegated bythe critics a statusof technology "craft." Althoughitis not knownin whichstudio Figueroa worked,in 1901 he exhibited 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 to reviewof the exhibitnotes that Figueroa's work "revealsthe effort go beyond were rigidand lacked the polish of Lima's the routine,"but itadds thathis figures 4 into more accomplishedand European-trainedstudioportraitists. Clearlyentry circleswould not be easy fora newcomersuch Lima's exclusivesocial and artistic as Figueroa who lacked the crucialsinequa nonof a European education.
as in sought to render photographyan art by intervening artists the pictorialists chemical and mechanical process of photographic production, the Peruvians sought to separate completelythe photographer'slabor fromthat of the artist. Even thisconservative Teofilo critic, compromisewas resistedbyLima's foremost for on Castillo, who, as late as 1919, attackedfoto-oleos their "immoral"effects Lima's popular classes. Castilloclaimed thatinsofarasfoto-6leos "a value displayed the more industrialthan artistic," public should be protectedfromtheir"unculi Castillo'svirulent defense of traturednessand tackiness"(incultura cursileria).10 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 history and paintingamongstthe masses."" The seeming anachronism 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 informedthe two ideas to Lima as the ways in which analogous class structures critics'perceptions of photography.12 For Baudelaire writingin 1850s France, because it confused the functions photographywas a threatto paintingprecisely as of bourgeois industryand the elite art salon. For Castillo,thefoto-6leo "industrial" or bourgeois kitschhad similarresonances for the cultural values of an oligarchicalsocietyfaced withthe prospectsof PresidentAugusto Leguia's mod-
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REPRESENTATIONS
Provincial Intellectuals and the Bohemian Aesthetic

and bohemian Likeall born artists, life. Juan ManuelFigueroaledan elegant refined
-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 proswhose wealthwas based on thecommercialexporttrade. Unlike perous oligarchy 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 large haciendas of Puno and Cusco. The citywas also home to a relatively in number of foreigners, particularBritishagentsof the wool exporthouses and a small Spanish and Arab merchantclass.16 As a result,Arequipa's photographic was bothmore cosmopolitanand more and artistic establishment, thoughsmaller, to new talentthan thatof Lima. receptive In this setting,Figueroa found work in the new,yet already nationallyrecognized, photographicstudioof MaximilianoT. Vargas. In Vargas'sstudio Figuefor roa painted backdrops,posters,and foto-oleos whatwas to be Arequipa's most luxurious photographicstudio. It is probable thatFigueroa learned manyof his fromVargas,who was also the instructor Martin for techniquesof studio lighting Chambi, another photographerwhom Figueroa would meet in Cusco. Vargas's influenceon both Figueroa and Chambi can be tracedto his skillsin photographic to in and, perhaps more importantly, his earlyinterest takingstudio portraiture, of Indian subjects. portraits Although these influencesshow up clearlyin Figueroa's laterwork,his early intoeitherthe Indian or phoworkdid not immediately develop Vargas'sinsights tographiccomposition.Instead, Figueroa remainedduringtheseyearsimmersed and therefore within the all-encompassing within the world of the foto-6leo of photographyversus art. In 1903 an exhibitof Figueroa'sfoto-6leos dichotomy and landscape and portraitcanvases was mounted at the Vargas studio and at a iluminadas,"however,thatthe critic nearbyjewelrystore. It was the "fotografias for Arequipa's La bolsanewspaper singled out as most expressiveof Figueroa's he himselfabove all for artistic potential.The young artist, wrote,"distinguishes his good tastein the selectionof detailswhichgivelifeto his portraits." Figueroa's he "iluminaciones"could compare favorably, 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
45
focus on thefoto-oleos a means throughwhichthe undesirable realismof phoas and improved. For his growingArequipefo tographymightbe sentimentalized was an artist"of the modern school [who] loved reality, albeit public, Figueroa 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 of and was home to some 19,000 Quechua-speaking Indians, a scattering mestizo 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 The contrast betweenthe luxuriantlifestyles these of a nascenttextileindustry.'9 land-owningand emergentbourgeois sectorsand the impoverishedIndian peasants 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 Figueroa had been refused full recognitionas an artist.Figueroa's firstCusco the exhibitin October 1905 was of fotografia iluminada, ambivalentformof art/ with which Figueroa had hoped to appease the taste of Lima's photography demanding rulingelite. The workwas exhibitedin the studio of Vidal Gonzalez, a Cusquefio studio photographer with whom Figueroa had worked since his the for arrivalin Cusco.20In his reviewof theexhibit, anonymousartcritic Cusco's La unionnewspaper presaged Figueroa's futureas one in whichthe artistwould have to overturnall of his metropolitanambitions.Although Figueroa's work in of he reflected, said, a "nobility the soul,"itwas restricted both scope and spirit the too "powerfulinfluenceof Lima."21 by During the next several years,Figueroa establishedhimselfas a prominent His success reflectedhis figure in Cusco's small but vital intellectualcircles.22 to resolve the distance between his earlier,more metropolitannotions of ability called for by his first art and the locally grounded identity Cusqueno critic.An describes a visitin a leading Cusco intellectual, articlebyJose Angel Escalante, on August 1907 to Figueroa's atelier the hacienda Marabamba outside of Cusco.23 with which Escalante recounts Figueroa's hunting activities, The familiarity artistic progress,and newlygrownbeard revealsFigueroa'sstatusas a well-known in Cusco culturalcircles.The paintingscompleted at Marabamba formed figure reviewedbenefitexhibitionheld in late 1907 at the Univerthe core of a lavishly of Cusco.24Among the 126 paintingsthat Figueroa purportedlyexhibited, sity none were of the Indian, Inca, or Andean themesthatwould later characterize his work.25
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REPRESENTATIONS
As a leading local intellectual(and later leader of the indigenista movement), Jose Angel Escalante's commentson Figueroa and the 1907 exhibitare of particular 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 him in the photographs."Only byvisiting public so obliged him-in illuminating fullnessof natureat Marabamba, claimed Escalante,was itpossibleto understand the extent to which this newly bearded artistawith his "Moorish aspect..., blood" excelled in his true and frisky tendencies,and fiery [retozona] impressionist as For colorist."26 thiswriter, for many and "quintessential vocation as a painter of his contemporariesin Cusco, Figueroa's painting,unlike either his photogand directrelationto the was raphy or hisfoto-oleos, an artbecause of itsintimate "art."These elementswere three elementsthat togetherwere seen to constitute color,nature,and the human spirit. Similarassociationsequating the realm of artwiththatof color,paintingwith withindividualidiosyncracy its source in nature, and creativesensibility ("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, tailoredin waysspecificto Cusco. yet The resultantnotion of art was to influenceFigueroa's career in two crucial ways. First,the association between color and art placed criticallimitson the of public acceptability Figueroa's photographicwork.That Figueroa was accepted and even acclaimed as a photographerat all was due to his skillsas a cromatista, of such praise referred, course, to his or colorist.In the days prior to color film, of Figueroa'sbestblackmuch manual skillas an oil and pastelpainter.As a result, and-whitephotographicworkwas developed in a strictly privategenre: ingenious and academic sentimentalized and experimentalself-portraits, familyportraits, This and "type"formthe core of his photographicoeuvre. studiesin both lighting for personal use and limited commercial sales. It was never work was done 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 on Anothercriticreflected the sponchanneled currentsof any school of art."27 remof and individuality Figueroa'spaintingin more philosophicalterms, taneity iniscentof the European romantics'ideas of art as a cultivatedorganic growth: the of as Artconsists in making ... effervescence, tangible impressions theartist, quality, of to are just they felt... in translating thecanvastheconceptions his fantasy, as they of are ... they frozen thecoldness calculation.28 by sprout before
47
In Cusco, then,itwas the individualper se, and nothisor her social and academic formation(or "calculation"),thatwas idealized as the source of artistic and general intellectual Sentiment was valued overskill, ability. passion overscience,color over form,and instinct over tradition.In later indigenista the philosophy, source of this natural talent would be defined as the Andean landscape itself.At this early period, however,it was expressed primarily through 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 artistic advantage. For Cusquenos, Figueroa-four yearsaftermoving to Cusco-was still"our guest,the wellknownLimeno painter. . . throughwhose veins runs Andalucian blood and in whose spiritMoorishatavismsendure."29 An impedimentto his artistic acceptance in Lima, thisoutsider statusbuttresseda thatwas to be Figueroa's trademarkin Cusco society studied bohemian identity (fig.3). The bohemian identity to attributed Figueroa in 1900s Cusco borrowed its termsof referencefromtheearliernineteenth-century tradition bohemianism of that had originatedin the rapidlyexpanding metropolitan of settings Paris and other European cities. In these cities,and under the pressures of marketplace
in 3. Bohemios Saqsahuaman (Cusco).

FIGURE
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48
REPRESENTATIONS
competitionand the mass productionof both cultureand art,youngintellectuals values of and artistsmade the conscious endeavor to renounce the materialist such modes of otherness themselves industrialsociety. Modeling upon bourgeois the as gypsies or saltimbanques, bohemians of Paris set the precedent for an fashion,and "artforart's emergingmodernismbased on the cultof individuality,
sake."30
difference between this classic and in many ways most striking, The first, bohemian settingand rural, seigneurial Cusco is the nearly total European structural featureof European romanticism-the literary absence of the defining Unlike his nineteenth-century and artistic European counterpart, marketplace.31 was not confronted the challenge of a Cusco artist the early-twentieth-century by Whiletherewas some and art-consuming new middle-class public.32 reading large reformof 1909, there limitedlocal marketforjournalism,priorto the university and even less forthe visual arts. was verylittlepublic at all forliterary journalism In fact,the first public purchase of worksexhibitedin Cusco's Centro nacional de arte e historia'sannual show was not until 1922.33As a result,the image of was marginalizedartistic genius used to describeFigueroa and otherCusco artists as in Europe, byaversionforbourgeois artconsumersbut ratherby inspirednot, the Cusquefios' rejectionof the culturaldominance of Lima. Figueroa was seen byhis Cusco contemporariesas a "bohemian"because he was not fromCusco. He for was seen as a bohemian "genius" because of the natural affinity nature and that had drawn him to the Cusco landscape, and because of his personal beauty and and urban life.In thisway,an identity and aestheticrejectionof Lima society had been structuredby urban artists'emerging aesdiscourse that,in Europe, theticand social enmitytowardthe bourgeois consumingclasses was instead taineeds of a provincial discourse of lored in Cusco to fit the quite different demands. regionalist Although its termswere derived froma vocabularyof European romanticism,in Cusco the image and meaning of the "bohemian"social rebel were thus reshaped to fitlocal politicalends. The artistas spokesman for Cusco's own culturalprojectstood opposed to a place-Lima-and not,as in Europe, to a classin the bourgeoisie. This slighttwist the Cusco bohemian traditionmeant in turn Cusco that it would be nature, in the guise of geographyor place, thatthe first of or bohemians would privilegein theirdefinition the sentiment emotion that and not the gypsiesor othersocial outsidersupon which artistic inspires genius, the European bohemian ideal was molded. In Cusco, these ideas about nature, and the bohemian rebel were perhaps best articulatedin the popindividualism, In refersto a man who replaces ular ideal of the walaychu. Quechua, walaychu ties social or family witha restless, wanderingexistenceyetwho,unlikethe Eurocarefreenor uprooted. Rather,the walaychu pean bohemian, is neitherentirely his familyand communitytraditionwitha deeply sentimentalattachreplaces to ment to the land. This emotionalattachment a province,region,or landscape Aznarand theCuscoIndigenistas Figueroa 49
is then credited as the source of the walaychu's and musical heightened artistic The Cusqueflo intellectuals themselves buildingupon thisspasaw sensibilities. as to tiallygrounded concept of aestheticsensibility forma communitybased on sentiment. Because of itsAndean roots,thiscommunity shared artistic was seen to exclude both Lima and the formsof European mimicry that the Cusqueno believed had underminedLima's "spiritual" intellectuals authenticity. in Figueroa cultivatedthisbohemian identity a shortbut locallyremarkable theatricalcareer in which he chose romanticroles, such as that of Luciano in as Joaquin Dicenta's play Luciano o el amorde un artista.34 Offstage, well, he suphis artisticpersona with a carefullycultivatedimage as a "restless plemented spirit,wanderer, and adventurer" who continued-despite his upper-class inlaws-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
(1910-1930) Indigenismo
art will into arms Literature, poetry, in all itsmanifestations beconverted spiritual for men domination Poets, ... the intellectuals, artists, ofscience form great indigenista is of millions Indianswholivealongthe of vanguard.... Theretroguardformed the and making valleys the know that their Andeanranges fertile. They working theirfields are out pathwhich must they follow. vanguards marking the
-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-known figureabout town. In his wedding announcementhe is described as "the likeable artist,the inimitablecolorist,the popular bohemian."38 Exploiting 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 families.Ubaldina's uncle, for the Yabars were one of Cusco's mostdistinguished was bishop of Cusco, and the Yabar family owned several large example, haciendas in the provinceof Paucartambo.The bulk of Figueroa's surviving phoof taken in the intimatespace of their tographic plates are portraits her family, Cusco family home, or on one of the Paucartambohaciendas. Figueroa's favorite was portraits the formalsalon where Bishop Yabar space forcreatingthese family received his guests. Known as the "Blue Salon" forits richlycolored carpet, the
50 REPRESENTATIONS
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in Cusco.
Aznarand theCuscoIndigenistas 51 Figueroa
ings (fig.5). confromthissame period reveal the uncomfortable Other familyportraits In one photograph, divided Cusco. life artistic in racially of tradictions an affluent for example, we confronta branch of the Yabar familyoutside theirsheltered hacienda home in Paucartambo (fig.6). Nestled in luxuriantgrasses,thisfamily of displaysall the finery a Cusco Sunday outing.Emergingfromthe darknessof the eucalyptusgrovebehind them,a peasant who is barelyperceptible-and certainlyfar 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 was he excluded fromthe photographonly to the background? Or, more likely, withinthe frame,as occurs in so many other Cusco photoreappear insistently fromthese times? graphs an At first anecdotal, almost accidental,presence in his photographicwork, centhisshadowypresence of Cusco's Indian peasants movesintoan increasingly and art. While his experienceson the tralplace in Figueroa's identity, sentiment, Yabar family'sPaucartambo haciendas afforded Figueroa an opportunityto observe the Indians upon whom Cusco's economydepended, it was the intellecthat tual and politicaldiscourse of indigenismo would determinethewaysin which would paint and photograph the Indian. Figueroa was Indigenismo a pan-Latin American intellectualmovementwhose stated and nationwere to defend the Indian masses and to construct regionalist goals and alistpoliticalcultureson the basis of whatmestizo, largelyurban, intellectuals understood to be autochthonous or indigenous cultural forms. Within this broader vanguard movement,Cusquefio indigenismo occupied a privilegedposimade as tion because of Cusco's history capital of the Inca Empire. This history contestedsite in the battleto wresta Peruvian national hisCusco a particularly and historicizing gaze of the European and toryaway fromthe endless scrutiny and historianswhose expeditionary North American scientists, archaeologists, onto thatof a fallen and reportsconsistently itineraries mapped Peruvianhistory and geographyas theirown, the CusInca Empire. In reclaimingInca history forbiddenfigureof the contemporary introducedthe previously quefo indigenistas as and artistic the Peruvianliterary Andean Indian into imagination, well as into Peruvian nationalistdiscourse,jurisprudence, and domesticpolicy.39 movementcan be traced to colonial Although the roots of Cusco's indigenista literatureabout Indians and the Incas, what has been and nineteenth-century
52
REPRESENTATIONS
of to remarkable layered imageryof its walls testify the monumentalcentrality visual imageryin the social and religiouslifeof Cusco (fig.4). Althoughtheextent to which such traditionaluse of images affected Figueroa's photographicworkis unknown,several survivingplates show evidence that Figueroa did experiment withrecreatingthe iconographic space of Cusco school colonial religiouspaint-
FIGURE
in 6. Yabar family Paucartambo.
is called the "Golden Age" of Cusco indigenismo 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 decentralization. These demands in turnresponded to the economic modernizationprojects class alliances of PresidentAugusto Leguia's "PatriaNueva." Within and shifting the Cusquefio intellectuals' this context,the most importantfactormotivating 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's agrarian valleyprovinces, threatened the cultural and social hegemony of Cusco's agrarian-based fromCusco's upper and It seigneurialclass.41 was in thiscontextthatintellectuals middle classes began theircampaign to validate an authenticIndian identity for all Cusquefios. Two major worksproduced during thisperiod were to determinethe future about the "Indian problem."These were Luis Valcourse of Cusquefio thinking en carcel's Tempestad losAndes, published in 1927, and Jose Uriel Garcia'sEl nuevo Aznarand theCuscoIndigenistas Figueroa 53
acclaimed Tempestad. indio, published in 1930 as a rebuttalto Valcarcel'snationally as Whereas Valcarcel saw post-Conquestcolonial history a process of racial and cultural degeneration and advocated a returnto the values and purityof preConquest Inca society,Garcia saw colonial historyas a process of cultural and The true Indian, he argued, was not pure (or "Incaic") but racial improvement. rather the mixed, or mestizo, product of Cusco's colonial past. In conformance mission was to create a "New with this historical vision, Garcia's indigenista Indian." He rejectedValcarcel'svisionof Andean cultureas an inheritedconstant (or received tradition)that could be resurrectedaccording to the historicalor induction. archaeological methodologiesof empirical descriptionand scientific Instead, Garcia's emergentAndean culturewas to be a product of directedmeswho would guide this tizaje (cultural mixture). The "New Indian" intellectuals or missionwere to be forgedbymeldingthespiritual telluric powerof the Andean of a mestizo intellectual avant-garde. prowess landscape withthe notionsof telluricpower derived fromtheirtheorythatthe The indigenistas' of characteristics Andean culture were determinedby the tremendousgeologic and organic forces Nature had investedin the Andean landscape. These Cusdrew upon ideas of the geographicor environmental quefo theoriesof telurismo determinationof artisticproduction and cultural spirit,particularlythose of Hippolyte-AdolpheTaine. Taine's method,fromwhichbothValcarceland Garcia determinedeffects formsas the scientifically borrowed heavily, explained artistic and race.42Similarnotionswere borrowedfromOswald Spengof environment and bounded byitsenvironment, ler,who saw culturaland racial spiritas rigidly to explain Henri Bergson, whose concept of intuitionthe indigenistas employed the causal relation between telluricforces and the Indian art formsthat such such theoriesprovided forcesspontaneouslyinduced.43For Valcarcel'sfollowers, roots of and scientific the motivationfor theirempiricalstudiesof the historical and the environment. Andean culturein Inca civilization followersof The particular interestof Taine's theories for the indigenista Garcia, however,lay in the former'sHegelian elevationof the artistas society's most representative figure,and of artisticstyleas the sign of a society'scollective-and hence undifferentiated-spirit. combiningthisHegelian mystificaBy tion of artistic creativitywith the environmental determination of artistic and empirically expression,Taine's theoriessuggestedthe existenceof a uniform 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' leaders claimsto an avant-gardestatusas artistic a whole,and theirconcommitant of that process of cultural revolution leading to the formationof the "New Indian."44 These appropriationsof nineteenth-century European aestheticphilosophy the basis fora complex program in by Peruvian intellectuals the 1920s, provided
54 REPRESENTATIONS
of directed cultural production. The uniqueness of this program derives from combined theirpastiche of philosophical borthe ways in which the indigenistas rowings with a contemporaryinternationaldiscourse of the modernistavantjournals such as garde. Between roughly 1910 and 1930, modernistliterary The mostimporand Proa entered Cusco fromBuenos Aires.45 Claridad, Prisma, and a futurist- ultraista-influenced of thesewas Martin tant Fierro, journal thatfirst withMartinFierrowere affiliated appeared in 1924. The group of intellectuals in culturalfigures Buenos Airesthroughthe establishment dedicated to attacking idioms (though not theirformallanguage) and throughthe cultiuse of futurist vationof an urban populistaesthetic.They advocated the existenceof a "natural" ideas of disposition for art and culture based on the apparentlycontradictory These notions,togetherwiththe Martinferristas' and criollismo linguistic purity.46 and highlyconservativephilosophyof the nature of national idenidiosyncratic influenced the thinkingof those Cusco indigenistas who, like Garcia, were tity, the problem of how to ground an Andean nationalismin the grappling with and popular cultural purity, romanticrhetoricof natural creativity, inherently discourse.In addition,because of their artistic that mestizaje constituted Cusquefo of Argentineorigins,the writings such Buenos Aires groups as theMartinferristas taskof elaborating offeredan available channel forthe Cusquefios' self-assumed a literaryand aestheticmovementthat mightsuccessfully oppose the national Lima.47 culturaldominance of metropolitan The New Indians' appropriation of modernistdiscourse was not, however, uncritical.In accordance withtheirregionalist politicalagenda and philosophical to the ideal of an autochthonousAndean culture,theyselected only allegiance those components of European (and Argentine)modernismthatcould further emanated from and aestheticcreativity theirpropositionthatculturalsentiment the soil. Thus, for example, theyeagerly embraced the Europeans' vision of a and changing culture,theirquestioningof institutional progressive,constantly of their insistenceon the internationalization culture, and aesthetic authority, inductionand naturalizedconceptsof tratheircampaign againstboth scientific Above all theyembraced the idea of a cultural avantdition and community.48 formation outside or beyond both as thatdefineditself a transient existing garde and tradition.In the visionsof both Valcarcel and Garcia, the historical history of rootsof Andean culturehad been forgedbythe Indians. Justification a mestizo including the avant-gardethat mightspeak for all membersof Andean society, and largelyvoiceless Indian masses, required therefore just this eleoppressed vation above historyand traditionthat the modernistconception of an avantthis garde offered.In Garcia's vision of indigenismo, separation of the historical modernistdichotomiesof followedthe well-worn roles of Indian and indigenista versus cultural innovation,popular culturesversus high culture, traditionalism and passive communityversus a dynamic and historicismversus spirituality, avant-garde: forward-looking Aznarand theCuscoIndigenistas Figueroa 55
realized.49 already
in two the There are,then, America Indianities: Primitive, which that fled, destroyed by theInca Empire, themillennarian to and crouches caverns, there down;thisis theIndiwhich sustains popularspirit ourcountryside, themountaineer the of from Indians anity and the to of to ofCuntisuyu theQolla herders, from mestizosourtowns thegauchoon the of This of pampas,or thecowboy theMexicancountryside. is the Indianity Argentine The and to Indianity-similar thatwhich youngbarbarism. rudimentary formative preof The otherIndiceded theformation thegreatautochthonous [of empires America]. in which encarnated thegreat is menrepresentative theAmerican is of spiritanity that their heroes-all thosewhowith the artists, thinkers, geniushavemadeofour continent culture. Thesemenwhohavemadeoraremaking history of the possibility a high[elevado] Indiansbefore whomall ideas of an "Inkario" mere are of Americaare thelegitimate traditionalism. in of set The valueoftheworks theIncasresides only theexample they ofan Indianity
In adopting the language of vanguardismo, Garcia and his New Indihowever, were caught at a delicate impasse. From the point of view of the anistindigenistas peasant popular culturesthatValcarcelcelebratedas a romanticcontinuationof as the Inca past, Garcia's Neo-Indianistswere forcedto definethemselves a modof ernistavant-gardeexistingabove and beyondtheconfines whattheysaw as the From the point of view of Lima and its cul traditionalist de sac of Inca history. as dominantcriollo culture,however,theirlegitimacy spokesmenforNew Indian historicaland geographic ties to the culture rested preciselyon theirnecessarily thatboth telluricforcesof the Andes in whichtheylived. It is thiscontradiction limitsthe developmentof modernistdiscourse in Cusco and definesthe peculiar Far emergentqualities of Cusco indigenismo. frombeing a carbon copy (or much was less, imperialistimposition)of European modernism,indigenismo a deliberand discursiveborrowings. iconoclasticpasticheof philosophical,aesthetic, ately The result is a "modernism"that mimicsthe European only partiallyand thus appears, fromthe point of view of European modernism,to have contradictory and purposes. structures thatemerges fromthisprocess is thatwhich The most visiblecontradiction to existsbetween the Cusquefos' enthusiastic subscription the ideal of an avantof the formalist lanand internationalist garde and theirsimultaneousrejection throughwhichthe modernistavant-garde guages of abstractionand modernity and music. For constituteditselfin European literature, painting,photography, or and in particularthe rhythm velocityof Garcia's "New Indians," modernity, modern life,was perceived as threatsto the verylandscape fromwhichAndean For [was] peoples drew theirspiritualand emotionalstrength. them,"indigenismo battleagainstthenew conceptsof the Twena returnto the land ... an instinctive for such as Figueroa, abstraction, tiethCentury."50 Similarly, New Indianistartists remained taboo.51As a result,in the eyes of a Euroand modernity formalism, pean, North American, or Limefio observer,most of the Cusqueio indigenista
56
REPRESENTATIONS
romanticcompositions; naive, overlystylized, paintingsappear to be strikingly in short,to be "bad art." theyappear, The Cusquefios' rejectionof modernistpictorialidioms,however,cannot be dismissed.They were both exposed to and knowledgeableof quite so summarily modernistpictorialstyles.Most were trained in European art. Cubist and other abstract formaliststylesof painting were exhibited in Cusco, and summarily Rather the Cusquefios' collectivedecision notto attacked by the Cusco critics.52 imitatethisstylewas consciouslymade accordingto two politicalcriteria.On the and academicismof European painting one hand, it was preciselythe formalism withthe hegemoniccultureof Lima. On thathad become mostcloselyidentified the other hand, the political and social legitimacyof New Indianist discourse This political and environment. remained necessarilysituated in a local history anticoastalpoliticsmade the Cusquefios and historicalgrounding in regionalist, thatcelebrateda disconnectaesthetics waryof the European formalist justifiably and tradition. constantsas representation edness fromsuch historical This discrepancyin the sitesfromwhichEuropean and Cusquefo "modernarticulated isms"developed was to determineas well the Cusquenos' differently to the other elementcentralto modernistphilosophyand romantic relationship or aesthetics:the primitive peasant icon. European romanticism developed, in of or part, throughthe glorification aestheticization the peasant and "the land," at a timewhen industrialculturethreatenedboth traditional agrarian economies modernismmade similaruses and the nature of artistic European production.53 of a preindustrial other,throughthe appropriationof the artof peoples who had to been colonized byEurope. The European modernists' ability isolateor abstract elements from Africanand Oceanic art depended on this colonial relation for of both the visibility its iconographic references(the colonial and antiquarian and the particularsiteof power fromwhichitwas possible to stand marketplace) it aesthetic.54 and dehistoricize as a formalist above the primitive was For the Cusquefo artists,however,the question of cultural difference to conditioned by the artist's spatial as well as social proximity the Indian. Many who controlled,and at were themselveshacendados intellectuals of the indigenista on ruralestates.Many of themwere timeslived with,theirIndian peones primitive or provincialpoliticianswho represented"their"Indians to the state.All lawyers withIndian servants-including wetnursesof themhad paternalrelationships whom theyhad knownsince childhood. All of themlived in the complex urbanof rural environment the cityof Cusco, and all were, as a consequence, aware of betweentheideal statesof pure mestizo the multitudeof ethnicgradationsexisting of withthecomplexity culturaland ethnic and pure Indian. This lived familiarity in a modernizingAndean society mediatedthewaysin whichCusco intelidentity lectuals would formulate their understandingsof cultural difference.These understandingsdifferedfrom those of the Limeno or European modernistin
57
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58
REPRESENTATIONS
Indian "other."In Valtheirrefusal to acknowledge the coevalityof a primitive could be located for example, absolute culturaldifference carcel's formulations, cultureof a only in the Inca past and in what was seen as the residual surviving few existingIndians. Once isolated throughempiricalstudy,Valcarcel believed resurrected could thenbe consciously thatthispast or residual culturaldifference 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 fourand century-old productof colonialismand racialmestizaje, therewere,as a result, no cultural "others"to be found in present-dayCusco. If, therefore,a future it Andean culturewas to be constructed, could be done onlybybuildinga united alike. For Garcia thatwould encompass peasant and intellectual highlandidentity and his followers,this collectiveculture of the "New Indians" was to be built around the politicalrealitiesof an already existingnational context:Cusco's collective"other"was to be found,in otherwords,on the coast and in Lima and not thatValcarcelsoughtto revive.55 in the residual survivalsof the Inca tradition onto PeruIt was thisconscious geopoliticalmapping of culturaldifference vian political geography that led Cusco's New Indianist artiststo privilegethe culturalotheror environment landscape-rather thantheidea ofan "authentic" of as the source of theirspiritualand aestheticintuition.This construction the telluricAndean landscape was both preceded and informedbya local bohemian aestheticthat,as we have seen, defined individual rebelliousnessand creativity privileged emotional ties to nature. through reference to the walaychu/artist's thisprovincialdiscourseof bohemianismdrewon a European romantic Although tradition,it differeddramaticallyfrom the European bohemian traditionthat and other made explicit iconographic use of gypsies,saltimbanques, primitives, its and individual crea"social outcasts"to construct idioms of both authenticity In Cusco, bycomparison,neitherthe 1900s bohemians nor the 1920s neotivity. individualto the Indian per indianistssought to link theirnotionsof the artistic se. Rather,the Indian, as part of nature,was invoked as evidence of the genercircumscribedcultural intuitionthat separated all alized and environmentally peoples fromtheircoastal compatriots. highland This synthetizing-and leveling-function of the landscape withrespect to was cultural,racial,and class differences bestexpressedin Garcia'snotionof "synThis cretictellurism" (telurismo sincretizante). conceptwas used byGarcia and other to of neo-indianists describe the historical process throughwhichall inhabitants the Andes-intellectual and Indian alike-would eventuallyacquire a homogeformof 'emotion'thatemanated fromthe neous identity centeredon the specific or Andean landscape. However, to escape the dangers of pasadismo, traditionand culturally conscious identity, alism, and to assume the formof a politically would requirean enlightenedand visionary Andean emotivity intuition and lead-
59
ership. It is this contradictionthat provided an entrypoint for modernistconcepts 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 discourses of Valcarcel and Garcia shaped an understandingof art, indigenista to and ethnicity, the intellectual avant-gardethatwas in manywaysspecific Cusco. in ferment Cusco, 1910 to 1930, correspondto the The twodecades of indigenista period when Figueroa was most active in photographyand, although Figueroa concernsclearlyinformedhis studio photos of leftno written records,indigenista idealized Indian "types"(figs. 7 and 8), stylizedtheatricalgroups (fig. 9), and combohemian self-portraits (figs.10 and 11). In these and othersuch carefully of scenes, Figueroa uses photographyto document a constructedartifice posed withbackdrops painted by FiEach photograph is carefully composed identity. gueroa for his theatricaland/orportraitwork. In frontof these backdrops, an "Indian" model is made to recline,or the artisthimselfposes as stalkinghunter, In meditative monk,or pensiveartist. anotherexperiment, minstrel, Figuegypsy and composes his negativeso as to renderthe narrative roa skillfully manipulates flowof a sentiment gained and lost (fig.12). withthe malleability stagingof social idenThis photographicfascination and
FIGURE FIGURES
9 (below). Figueroa Aznar and friendsin 10, 11, and 12 (opposite). Self-portraits.
Cusco.
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60
REPRESENTATIONS
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tities reflectsa broadening of Figueroa's bohemian or walaychuaesthetic to culturalidentities. Like encompass the New Indianists'philosophyof constructed various bohemian selves,the New Indianists'culturalidentity, "ethor Figueroa's was discovered identity nicity," not a naturalor historical waitingto be empirically and described, as in Valcarcel's indigenismo. Rather,identitieswere to be conelaborated criteria a politicaland artistic of structedaccording to the consciously intothisphilosophyof identity selfas a means to fit or avant-garde.Photography not as a medium to representor to express them. new identities, though imagine Figueroa, forexample, oftenmade studio photographsof subjectsto be used in futurepaintings(figs.7, 8, and 13), yethe never exhibitedany photographs"as of art."As a result,despite the polishand technicalsophistication his work,Figueroa never developed whatwe mightcall a "photographicvision"capable of transformingthe realityof what the camera recorded into the artificeof illusion achieved bysuch devicesas framing, angle, focus,tone,and composition.Identity in and artifice insteadconstructed Figueroa's photographsthroughtheatrical are 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. the betweenFigueroa and his conThis absent Indian highlights differences Martin Chambi, the only Cusquefo photographerto achieve recogtemporary, The differences nitionfromEuropean and American photographichistorians.57 between the work of Figueroa and Chambi reveal how photographywas approA point of compriated by the two divergentstrandsof Cusco indigenismo. first of the effects class positionon the uses of photographyin parison has to do with in As Cusquefio society. the son of a ruralpeasant family 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 providedbycommercialphoon of tography.The effect these dissimilarclass identities the photographicand in was articulatedprimarily terms of the two men, however, artistic philosophies taken by Cusco of their intellectualallegiances to the two quite different paths The firstof these paths led to Valcarcel's empirical sociology and indigenismo. archaeology for the Andes; the other to Garcia's questioning of scientific and the concomitantdevelopmentof a cultural,aestheticavant-garde. authority of MartinChambi followedcloselythe first these two options. For him, phowas conceived as a medium in whichto record the existenceof whathe tography saw to be a rapidlydisappearing historicalor "authentic"Andean Indian. This of to conscious effort constructa photographicinventory "ethnictypes"correand of scientific ethnologicalstudyof to Valcarcel'spositivist promotion sponded the Inca past. As in otherpartsof theworld,itwas the camera thatwas to provide for and the mostappropriate technology thisscientific quest to inventory, classify, 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 of as photographsas a "collection" ethnic"types," well as bythe factthatmanyof his photographsof Indians approximatethe anthropometric poses developed by of French anthropologyand taughtat the University Cusco by such earlyindigenistasas 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 Eurobeen mountedof Chambi's work. pean and Americanexhibitsthathave recently Because of its fascinationwithreconstructing idealized cultural linkage an betweenthe Incas and contemporary Indians, Valcarcel'sprogramalso, however, contained withinit a theatricalemphasis more akin to Figueroa's bohemianism than to Chambi'sdocumentary surfaces (yetstill idealizing)concerns.This affinity
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FIGURE 13 (left). Study foroil paintingEl viejo artista. FIGURE 14 (right). Study for Luis Valcarcel's Misi6n de arte
incaico, 1923.
63
FIGURE 15. Self-portrait with painting
andinos(1923).
Amores celos y
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.58 Figueroa did the sketchesforthe Misi6n'sstage productionof the colonial Quechua drama Ollantay. also photographedthe rehearsals,cosHe tumes,and settings 14). The highlystylized poses used in these Mision pho(fig. of of and are reminiscent those used in his personal portfolio portraits tographs This same theatrical style also distinguishesFigueroa's photoself-portraits. and costumed Indian "types"-many of whichused the graphs of well-scrubbed same model (figs. 7 and 8)-from the more clearly documentary gesture of Chambi's inventory culturaland racial types.59 informing thus made competing claims on the work of Figueroa and Indigenismo and idealized Indian Chambi. While Chambi soughtto givelifeto a romanticized the illusoryrealism of his documentarywork,Figueroa's theatritype through cality eschewed realism and stressed the constructednessof social identity. Throughout his life,Figueroa reservedspecificmedia fordifferent representational 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 whichtheyactively or rethought imaginednew formsor perspectives
64 REPRESENTATIONS
on on the "truth"of nature. Photography, the other hand, was unhampered by and its ties to either nature or art. It could thus be used to document a shifting notion of identitymore akin to contemporaryforms of formallyconstructed European modernistbohemianism than to the romanticnotions of sentiment, the nature,and artwithwhichthe Cusquenos had inscribedand restricted artist's relationto paint. This affinity between photographyand the bohemian selfwas limited,howof ever,bythe Cusquefios' doctrinalunderstandings the telluric qualitiesof art in attribitsrelationto the land. Uriel Garcia,along withtheotherCusquefio critics, uted both the sentimentand aesthetic success of Figueroa's paintings to his immersion in the rural Andean landscape of Paucartambo (where his in-laws made owned land).61 They argued thatFigueroa's special bohemian sensibilities onto canvas thespontaneousorganicpowers him a fertile medium fortranslating the thatNature had investedin the Paucartambolandscape and thatconstituted effect the of or This aestheticizing sensitizing essence of Andean culturalidentity. to Andean landscape was restricted, however, the medium of paintingand could not pass throughthe modernizingmechanicalmediumof thecamera. As a result, formof photographyto emerge in pictorialist landscape photography-the first and the United States-was never seriously developed in Cusco. Europe AlthoughCusquefo photographerssuch as MartinChambi,AlbertoOchoa, and of Pablo Verdamendi shotextensivephotography archaeologicalsites,these phowere meantto documentthe Inca historical pastcelebratedbyindigenista tographs The taskof expressingthetelluric such as Valcarcel.62 essence of the landwriters who itselfwas meanwhile reserved for the vanguard of indigenista artists, scape art could translatethis sentimentinto the painterly of color,emotion,and personal-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 sentimiento andino." Since, forthe indigenistas, beautywas inherentneitherto the Indian nor to the landscape per se, it could not be captured by what Europeans considered to be the "magic" of photographic technology.Rather, the realityof the Andean world had to be transformedand reworked,carefully of framedand skillfully tinted,before it could serve as an instrument indigenista critic expressed it,"The [indigenista] philosophyand aesthetics.As one indigenista to the Indian landscape and carrypure Indianity theobjectivity paintersinterpret in framing thisaestheticforboth photogof plasticarts."63 Figueroa's importance writer Jose Gabriel raphyand paintingis captured in the words of the indigenista Cosio, whose obituary for Figueroa lauded him as being "among the firstto in thematic a purelyaestheticsense withneitherethnologiemploythe indigenista cal nor social preoccupations."64 Aznarand theCuscoIndigenistas Figueroa 65
Conclusions
is ... Theworldliness photographytheoutcome ofa project globaldomination. of of center imposed, forcefully seductively, Thelanguageoftheimperial is both and upon the peripheries.
-Allan Sekula(1984)
has the Fourhundred years Europeanscience compressed expansion theoriginal of of the For are in reason, newideaswhich circulating of spirit ourpeople. this must serve only short-term orreference us as loans thinking for contemporary points the affirmationourownvalues. of
-Uriel Garcia(1926)
to By wayof conclusion,I would liketo returnbriefly myoriginalquesof tions about the universality the sociallyconstructeddivide between photography and art, and about Figueroa's specific,culturallyand socially situated As understanding of his artisticmodernity. I hope to have made clear in disof in movement whichhe particthe originsand formation theindigenista cussing 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 Cusco the media of photographyand paintingwere not neutral "pre-industrial" or transparenttechnologies acting simplyto reflectsocial ideas and personal inspirations. Rather, as social and aesthetic technologies of representation, Cusco formedpart of the paintingand photographyin early-twentieth-century themselves of discursivestrategies Westernart.As the Cusco indigenistas complex knew, they were representationaltechnologiesposited on post-Enlightenment clasformsof Westernculturalproductionin whichthe aestheticrepresentation, of naturallandscapes, and and sification, idealization(categorization) social types, human formshad come to forman integralpart of the humanisticphilosophies of and scientific knowledge throughwhich the distribution power in societyis and controlled. regulated Because of itsclose associationwithcolonial expansion and the globalization and earlytwentieth of bourgeois culturein the late nineteenth centuries,photogmedium throughwhichto studythe dialogue fascinating raphy is a particularly through which intellectualson the peripherycontestedthis "controllinggaze." Photographywas introducedto Cusco throughthe workof expeditionaryscientistsand travelers,all of whom represented governmentalor private business in interests. One of the earliestand mostextensiveuses of photography southern Peru, forexample, was bya Britishexpeditionsentto map theboundarybetween conducted Peru and Bolivia. Other earlyuses included thearchaeologicalsurveys
66
REPRESENTATIONS
de by French,German, Swiss,and U.S. Americanistscholars,and the cartes visite of "Indian types"marketedby French photographerssuch as Courret and Made and surveyphotonoury in the fashionablecirclesof Paris. These cartes visite contributedto a scientifically grounded popular image of Peru as an graphs Fallen Empire, a countryof backward and impoverishedIndians emptyland, a whose futureprogresswould depend on both foreigncapital and Westernprogis about thisprocess,however, the factthat,without ress. What is of mostinterest the Peruvian photographerslearned theirart fromthese same scienexception, tificand studio photographers from Europe. The firstphotographystudio in in Cusco-the one in whichFigueroa workedupon first arriving Cusco in 1904The missionariestook photographs was set up by an English missionary society. de were used to collect of ragged Indians that,in the formof captioned cartes visite, monies in England.65Other studios introduceda formof bourgeois studio porhad contributedto the traiturewhose formalposes and elaborate studio settings formationof a certainnotion of the bourgeois individualin nineteenth-century Europe.66 These uses of photography and their ideological content were neither a admiredas emblemsofmodersecretfortheCusquefios,norwerethey uncritically nity,science, and progress. Rather,as we have seen, the Cusco Neo-Indianists of inventory theirhistory sought to counter this controllinggaze and positivist based on the philoan and geography by constructing "imagined community" theirnotion informing sophical and aestheticvalues of intuitionand sentiment to this endeavor was the elaboration of a local of la emocion andina.67Integral or traditionof the walaychu, Andean-bohemian, as a person who replaces the withan aggressive bonds of social traditionand scientific history(or pasadismo) and musicgrounded in his close and aestheticof nostalgia,sentiment, philosophy came a certainrepertoireof ideas regarding tiesto the land. Out of thistradition both the bohemian and paintingas formsof spontaneous sentimental expression enabled by the telluricforcesof Cusco's mountainouslandscape. the At the same time,however, emergenceof a pictorialand literary imagery develto the Cusco indigenistas only enabled byother contemporary was specific in European art and the Latin American vanguardistmovement. In opments Europe, firstromanticism,with its peasants and bohemians, and then modernism,withits "colonial others,"emerged as part of a broader discursivestructureconcerned withthe elaborationand reproductionof social (racial) difference This "strategy exclusion"made it posof of as "a conscious strategy exclusion."68 to sible for European artistsand writers engage both industrialculture and the that colonial "other"bytransforming encounterintoan aestheticact of bourgeois as discourse culturalproduction.For the Cusco artist well itwas the exclusionary both the bohemian aesthetic and its successor, vanguard modsurrounding ernism-and not their pictorialor representationalideologies, which the indigenistasclearly rejected-that enabled the Indian to surface as the subject of Aznarand theCuscoIndigenistas Figueroa 67
Peruvian cultural discourse. This discursiveexplosion, early twentieth-century which "the Indian" entered the national artistic-and, somewhatlater, through political-imagination, was related to debates in Cusco concerning the desirand relaof unsalaried) forms (low technology, ability modernizingthe traditional tions of production, and to the increasinglyvisible political organization and violence of the Indians themselves.It was thiseconomic and social backdrop of inciterapid social change initiatedfrom below that provided the institutional about the previouslyforbidden to ment for Peruvian intellectuals speak, finally, of the Indian. subject 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 the the foto-6leo gone out of style, directionsin whichFigueroa, and other Cusco would take photographywere determinedby a new, regionallyfocused artists, discourse on art. As Leguia's "PatriaNueva" (1919-1930) championed modernization and North American capital, Cusco politiciansand philosophers elaboIn rated an oppositional, regionalistdoctrine of sentimentand antimodernity. criticscelebrated the individual accordance with this new doctrine,indigenista and "sentimentalrealism" of painting for its ties to nature. They creativity focused on both nature and the Indian as subjectswhose essence or "sentiment" of could not be captured by the technologicalrealism (or "transparency") phoculturalagenda What was needed for the indigenistas' tographicrepresentation. and spiritto formthe newlyimagined was a directedrechannelingof sentiment and not the unmediatedrealismof eitherphotogof "Cusquefiismo," community 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 of a Rackham Fellowshipfromthe University 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 The modern printsreproduced here are by Fran Antmann, of the Figueroa family. with whom I share credit for the research in Peruvian photography archives.
68
REPRESENTATIONS
1. 2. 3. 4.
5.
6. 7. 8.
9. 10. 11.
and related research in Cusco. Finally,I Adelma Benavente assisted withinterviews would like to thankJose Luis Renique, Rayna Rapp, Talal Asad, Partha Chatterjee, Benjamin S. Orlove, and Gustavo Buntinx for theircommentson earlier versionsof fromSpanish-language sources this article. Unless otherwisenoted, all translations are mine. From 1879 to 1883, Peru was at war withChile. During much of thistime,Lima was eitheroccupied by,or under attackfrom,Chilean troops. en Eduardo Serrano, Historiade lafotografia Colombia (Bogota, 1983), 200-230; and de in Luis Mejia Arango, "La fotografia," JorgeOrlando Melo, ed., Historia AntioJuan (Medellin, Col., 1988), 447-53. quia Peruviansociety, Alberto see and descriptionof early-twentieth-century For a history 4th de Flores-Galindo and Manuel Burga, Apogeo crisis la republica aristocrdtica, ed. y 1987). (Lima, see photography, Rune Hassner, Regarding the class originsof European pictorialist in "Amateur Photography,"and Marc Melon, "Beyond Reality: Art Photography," and Andre Rouille, eds., A History Photography of (Cambridge, Jean-Claude Lemagny 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 themselves culprogressiveindustrialand commercialbourgeoisiewho distinguished and artistic and raciallyfromthe restof Colombia. Medellin'sliterary socially, turally, also had close contactswithboth the United Statesand Europe. See Melo, community de Historia Antioquia. See WalterBenjamin, "The Workof Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"in Illuminations (New York, 1969), 217-51; Allan Sekula, "PhotographyBetween Labor and and Capital," in H. D. Buchloh and RobertWilkie,eds., MiningPhotographs Other Archives Shedden Glace Bay, Cape Breton, A the Pictures: Selection Studio, of from Negative 1948-1968 (Halifax, N.S., 1983), 183-267; and Sekula, "DismantlingModernism, in the Against Grain(Halifax, N.S., 1984), 53ReinventingDocumentary," Photography 76. 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 a Mirko Lauer, Introducci6nla pintura peruanadelsigloXX (Lima, 1976). A Case Study See Keith McElroy, (Ann Arbor,Mich., EarlyPeruvian Photography:Critical 1985). The carte visite de formatremained popular in Latin America formuch longer than in of eitherEurope or the United States.Even afterthe introduction larger formatpordeterminedthat its somewhatstantraiture,the European elan of the cartede visite and props would continue to be the norm for studio portraits dardized poses, styles, of all social classes. Fernando Castro, "Photographersof a Young Republic: Being French in Courret's Lima," Lima Times,14 December 1990, 6-7. in de artisticos FigueTe6filoCastillo,El comercio (Lima), 1919; reprinted "Los triunfos roa Aznar en Lima," El comercio (Cusco), 8 May 1919. Charles Baudelaire, "The Modern Public and Photography"(1859), in Alan Trach(New Haven, 1980), 83-89. Like Baudelaire, tenberg,ed., ClassicEssaysonPhotography and manual, and Castillo charged as well that art was necessarilyprivate,visionary, a thatwhile "photographycan serve as a document to reconstruct lost semblance ... in no way can it [serve] to transform the semblance into a basic element of serious took Castillo, "Los triunfos."Similar debates regarding the foto-oleo composition";
Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas
69
12. 13.
14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
21. 22.
23. 24. 25.
26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
31.
were largelyout of fashionby 1900) in the 1890s. place in Colombia (wherefoto-6leos de See Serrano, Historia lafotografia, 218-19. 213, Photographyappeared in Lima only a fewyears afterDaguerre's announcement in 1839. See McElroy, Photography. EarlyPeruvian Castillo'sarticlesattackingthefoto-6leos correspondto a period of dramaticchange in Lima. The year 1918 was markedbya seriesof violentstrikes workersand artisans; by 1919 brought economic crisis for the traditionalagriculturalexport economy of Lima's oligarchy.In Julyof 1919, Augusto Leguia took officepromisingto build a statecalled the "Patria nueva"; Flores-Galindoand Burga, modern, anti-oligarchical 125-42. y crisis, Apogeo El comercio (Lima), 1901. A Obituary, 1951 (typescript). contemporaryof Figueroa, Julio G. Gutierrez is an in writer and painterand founderof the PeruvianCommunistParty Cusco. indigenista Alberto Flores-Galindo,Arequipa el Sur andino(Lima, 1978). y "Un artistanacional,"La bolsa(Arequipa), 12 March 1903. La "Progresos fotograficos," bolsa,13 January1904. socialdelCuscorepublicano See Jose Tamayo Herrera,Historia (Lima, 1981), 107-8; and Luis Valcarcel,Memorias (Lima, 1981). This photographystudiowas founded in the 1890s bya congregationof Englishevanwho leftthe studio and all itsequipment to the Gonzalez family gelical missionaries, as paymentfor back rent.J.G. Gonzalez retained the name "Fotografiainglesa" for his business, which was inheritedby his sons and grandsons; interviewwith WashingtonGonzalez, Cusco, July1986. "Artenacional: Plumadas,"La union(Cusco), 10 May 1905. He was, for example, Associate Director of Cusco's Academia de arte. He was also del close to the circle of scholars who made up the Centro cientifico Cusco, an organization devoted to promoting progress through recuperation of Cusco's jungle resources. Figueroa would later serve as subprefect for one of these lowland provinces. "Impresiones de Arte,"El sol (Cusco), August 1907 (published anonymously;authorto ship attributed Jose Angel Escalante in El sol,31 January1908). Escalante was later and directorof the Cusco indigenista newspapersElferrocarril La sierra. forexample, El sol,28 September 1907; El porvenir (Cusco), 23 December 1907; See, 30 January 1908; and El sol,30 January1908. Elferrocarril, Figueroa's contributionsincluded several copies of colonial religious paintings, a severalbeach landscapes,and tworomantic style," "studyof a head ... in impressionist and the otherof "a one of "an unhappy woman sickwithromanticism" compositions, half nude woman ... witha magneticgaze"; El sol,28 September 1907. voluptuous Escalante, "Impresiones." 30 "Notas de arte,"Elferrocarril, January1908. J. Castro, "Culto por el arte,"El sol,30 January1908. 30 "Notas de arte,"Elferrocarril, January1908. in Man ofLetters the and French French Versus Cesar Grafa, Bohemian Society the Bourgeois: Nineteenth (New York, 1964); Cesar Grafiaand Marigay Grafia,On Bohemia: Century and TheCodesoftheSelf-Exiled (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); MarilynR. Brown,Gypsies France in The Bohemians: Myth theArtist Nineteenth-Century (Ann Arbor,Mich., Other of 1985). 1780-1950 See Raymond Williams, "The Romantic Artist,"in Cultureand Society: Versus (1958; New York, 1983), 30-48; and Grafia,Bohemian Bourgeois.
70
REPRESENTATIONS
32. Similar discrepanciesemerge between the European romantictraditionand its conin imitators 1840s oligarchicLima. Whereas European bohemiansbecame temporary 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 romanticism germinates. . . not in a cafe,nor on the streetcorner,but ratherin an elegant mansion, perfumed and and protection"; Maurilio enriched by an atmosphere of patronage [mecenazgo] Fierro Arriola Grande,JoseArnaldo (1948; Lima, 1967), 19. Marquez Martin y 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, and the worldof the muses"who battles Luciano is an artist poetry, "guided byrevery, a world of materialismand shallow bourgeois women. Although based on a thickly artistic romanticconceptionof the suffering soul, 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, Dicenta(Alicante,Spain, 1978). teatro, mito deJoaquin y for Local reviewspraised Figueroa's performances his mimingtalents,sentimen"natural Spirit and correct declamation"; "La funci6n teatral," El sol, 4 tality, November 1907; "Teatro,"El comercio (Cusco), 9 November 1907; "Espectaculos: El 21 concierto del 19," Elferrocarril, March 1908; "El beneficiodel centro espinar,"El 25 sol, 20 May 1908; and "La muerte civil,"Elferrocarril, May 1908. Figueroa also painted the backdrops forthe theaterproductionsin whichhe performed.The conat ditionsfortheaterin Cusco were,however, primitive best,as judged bythe factthat most reviewersaccorded as much space to the performanceas to the chill winds and even rain thatpenetratedthe theaterhall. La 35. Obituary, prensa(Lima), 20 February1951. 36. "Anteunos cuadros deJ. M. Figueroa Aznar,"El comercio (Lima), April 1951. In a 1937 who had as for interview, example, Figueroa describeshimself an "enemyof publicity" corner of the earth just arrived at his Arequipa exhibitfrommines in "the furthest . . . removed fromall contactwiththe civilizedworld"; "Una exposici6nde mis de 40 Revistauniversi"El 37. Atilio Sivirichi, contenido espiritualdel movimiento indigenista," 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 between Laso's and Figueroa's self-portrait these paintings.Though the similarities it doubtfulthatFigueroa would have knownabout Laso's workare suggestive, is highly photographs, which were never publiclyexhibited. Laso's photographs are reproduced in McElroy, figs. Photography, 41 and 42. EarlyPeruvian literature.These include the Cusquena More precedents exist for indigenista writerClorinda Matto de Turner, whose novel Avessin nido (1889) marks a realist as tradition indigenismo, wellasJose Arnaldo Marquez, leading up to twentieth-century Mariano Melgar, and Manuel Gonzalez Prada. Jose Santos Chocano marksthe entry of of the Indian into modernistpoetry.The indigenistas the 1920s and 1930s differed to fromthese predecessorsin thattheywere the first claim to speak forcontemporary and artistic aestheticbased on a notion of to Indians and the first set fortha literary de authenticIndian culture. See WashingtonDelgado, Historia la literatura republicana
cuadros ... ," Noticias (Arequipa), 20 January 1937.
71
40.
41.
42.
43. 44. 45. 46.
47.
48.
(Lima, 1980); and Antonio Cornejo Polar, Literatura sociedaden el Perz: La novela y (Lima, 1980). Regarding indigenista jurisprudence, see Deborah Poole, indigenista "Ciencia, peligrosidad,y represi6nen la criminologiaperuana," in C. Walkerand C. Criminalidad violencia el Peru,siglos en abigeos, montoneros: y Aguirre,eds., Bandoleros, y XVIII-XX (Lima, 1990), 335-67. In 1910, the American Alberto Giesecke was appointed rectorof the University of Cusco. The new curriculumhe imposed emphasized European philosopherssuch as Spengler,Ortega y Gasset,Leo Froebenius,Taine, and Georg Simmel. These writers would authoprovided the philosophicalapparatus withwhichthe Cusco indigenistas rize theirargumentsabout Andean culturalidentity; Herrera, Historia Jose Tamayo del social, 123-26; and Tamayo Herrera, Historia indigenismo (Lima, 1980), cusqueno, 187. At the other end of the "Golden Age," 1930 marksthe end of PresidentAgusto cusquenio; Jose Leguia's dictatorship.See Tamayo Herrera, Historiadel indigenismo Deustua and Jose Luis Renique, Intelectuales, en indigenismo,descentralismo el Peru, y 1897-1931 (Cusco, 1984); and Valcarcel,Memorias. By the 1920s, Cusco's land-owningelitewas divided both ideologicallyand geographin icallybetweena modernizingexportsectorconcentrated the maize-producingUrubamba Valley to the northeastof the cityof Cusco, and the traditionalgamonales (agrarian lords) situated,for the most part, in the livestock-producing provincesto the south. on trans.J. Durand (New York, 1875). Similar Hippolyte-AdolpheTaine, Lectures Art, theories regarding national identityand the telluriclandscape were developed by Bolivian indigenistas during roughlythe same period; see WaltraudQueiser Morales, "Philosophers, Ideology, and Social Change in Bolivia," International Philosophical 24 Quarterly (March 1984): 21-38. 217. Valcarcel,Memorias, See especially Sivirichi,"El contenido espiritual"; and Alfredo Yepez Miranda, "El proceso culturaldel Peru: La unidad geograficay culturalde la costa,"Revistauniversitaria78 (1940): 27-37. Herrera Tamayo, Historia social,102. came out of the The Argentines'concern with both linguisticpurityand criollismo context of massive state-supportedEuropean immigrationto Buenos Aires in the was MartinFierro'sespousal of criollismo thus a defense of a century. early twentieth thattheysaw as inherentto Argentina'scolonial, though culturaland linguistic purity not non-European, past. See Beatriz Sarlo, "Vanguardia y criollismo:La aventura de de literaria latinoamericana Revista critica Martin Fierro," (1983): 39-69. See alsoJose Luis de del Romero,El desarrollo las ideasen la sociedad argentina sigloXX (Mexico City,1965). the Their embracingof the Argentineliterature mayalso reflect broader politicaland such Argentinegroups as Martin aestheticdispute betweenthe futurism espoused by Fierro and the surrealistmovementchampioned in theory(though not in practice)by the Peruvian critic Jose Carlos Mariategui.Althoughthe Cusquenos rejected the forand surrealism,it is possible thatthe role of the Argentine malism of both futurism in thatcould be effectively literature theirsearch foran aestheticand culturalidentity antagonismtowardthe surrecounterposed to thatof Lima also included an implicit withLima criticaffiliated alist position of Mariategui as a successfuland influential and the coast. See Jose Carlos Mariategui,"Arte,revoluci6n,y decadencia" (1926); and "El balance del suprarrealismo"(1930), in El artista la epoca (Lima, 1987), 18y 22, 45-52. insistedthatAndean culturetranscendednationalboundaries. The Cusco indigenistas
72
REPRESENTATIONS
49.
50.
51. 52.
53. 54.
55.
56.
This would later influencethe Apristadoctrineof "Indo-America."See Victor Raul (Santiago de Chile, 1935). Haya de la Torre,A d6ndeva Indoamerica? 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. 30. Yepez Miranda, "El proceso cultural," Like other"New Indians," Yepez perceived fromtheircul"awaken"the serranos to modernity be beneficialinsofaras itsrhythms It and theirlatentpasadismo. was dangerous dormant state,theirintroversion, turally the insofaras it threatenedto transform verylandscape responsiblefor the distincthat were to be the foundationsof a New tivelyAndean emotions and sensibilities Indian culture. in Cusco's Neo-Indianist paintingis best described as costumbristaboth styleand compainting of position. Influences came from Spanish localism and the indigenista northernArgentina. In one such denouncement, cubism-which the author describes as a "joke" (una "what of de tomadura pelo)and "a craziness[chifladura] a few"-is derided forportraying appears ratherthan what is"; Fernando Mollinedo, "Notas del dia: Palique," El sol,6 May 1911. Williams,"RomanticArtist." situatedwithrespectto were similarly coastal Peruvianartists Early-twentieth-century artistsbased in Lima such as Jose Sabogal, or theirprimitive peasant "other."Criollo Camilo Bias, and Julia Codesido used the Indian to develop a formalpictorialstyle based on woodcut technology,stylistic borrowings from European expressionist painting,and imitationof popular iconography.These abstractrepresentationsof of Indians and Andean cultureformedpart of a leftist politicalrevindication peasant culture during the 1920s and 1930s. See Jose Carlos Mariategui,"La obra de Jose y Sabogal" (1928) and "Julia Codesido" (1928), in El artista la epoca,90-93, 97-98. other in European modernism,see Regarding the role of the colonial (or primitive) in Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978); Robert Goldwater,Primitivism "On EthnographicSurrealism,"in Art Modern (New York, 1938); and James Clifford, Predicaments Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1988). of of and culturaldichotomy Inca versus Spaniard in ValThe clearlydefined historical its facilitated acceptance in Lima and itsinfluenceon such carcel'sbrand of indigenismo divergent national frontsas the Socialist Partyof Jose Carlos Mariategui and the of National Museum and Ministry Education, both of which Valcarcel headed after to Lima in 1931. Garcia meanwhileremained in Cusco as a member of the moving because of his allegiance to the local politicsand regionCommunistParty.It is partly alist claims of Cusco thatGarcia's "New Indian" movementwould predominateover Valcarcel's brand of "Incaism" as the philosophy shaping a distinctively Cusquefo discourse of indigenismo during the 1930s and 1940s. modernist were developed into a full-fledged Garcia's ideas of spiritualindigenismo doctrine of the artisticavant-gardeby Atilio Sivirichiand Alfredo Yepez Miranda. formsin the sierraare a product of the spiritualinfluence They argue thatall artistic in of the landscape, and are manifestedprimarily the emotionsof sadness,loneliness, sense of tragedythatenables the Andes it and tragedy.For Sivirichi, is thisoverriding and Andean peoples are able to "convertconquerors into conquered through our validatedgroundingin the Andean This emotionally and artistic sensibility emotivity."
73
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
from what Sivirichicalls "indianidad de pensamiento" landscape is differentiated (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 of require the conscious guidance and intervention an enlightenedavant-garde.See Sivirichi,"Contenido espiritual"; and Yepez Miranda, "Indigenismo i serranismo," del Revistauniversitaria Cuzco74 (1938): 87-100. 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 see "Chambi of fromthe perspectiveof European photographichistory, Max Kozloff, Cuzco," in ThePrivileged (Albuquerque, N.M., 1987), 155-66. Eye "neo-Inca" art was 218-21. In Valcarcel'sdoctrineof indigenismo, Valcarcel,Memorias, to be based on the careful scientific studyand adoption of authenticInca stylesand of Valcarcelbelieved the motifs. Through such studyand imitation Inca iconography, could attaina state of spiritual,and eventuallysocial, perfectioncompaindigenistas rable to thatrealized by the Incas. An advertisement Figueroa's commercialphotographystudio in the 1921 Guia del for surdelPerumentionsthatphotographsof "tiposindigenas"wereavailable forpurchase and includes reproductionsof twosuch photographs.The onlysurviving examples of thistypeof photographin the Figueroa negativearchiveare reproduced here in figs. 7 and 8. In the early 191Os,a shift occurs in Figueroa'sworkfromfoto-oleos, airepaintings, plein and copies of religious themes to paintings focused almost exclusivelyon nudes, is reflectedin themes pertainingto Indian and Inca subjects(fig. 15). This shift first 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 El and intellectuals; sol,3 October 1914. Figueroa's and otherprominentCusco artists titlein the Academia was "PermanentDirector."At the Centro's 1916 exhibit,Figueroa won a gold medal for his oil paintingInti Raymiand a diplomade clase for his "El iluminada; concurso de la n6mina de arte,"El comercio (Cusco), 1 January fotografia 1916. describesPaucartambo's Uriel Garcia, El sol,2 July1908. Jose Gabriel Cosio similarly influence on Figueroa's work as a product of "dream and tragedy,because in the of of solemnity its snow-capped mountainsand the plasticity 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 to October 1922. Because of its proximity thejungle, Paucartambowas considered to have a peculiarlypowerfultelluricpower.Figueroa lived much of his laterlifein Pauof cartambo and served as subprefect the provincefrom1913 to 1914. Even in the case of such archaeological landscapes, the New Indianists-who considthatwas therefore anathema to the telof ered the camera an instrument modernity and not the camera of uric sentiments Cusco-claimed thatit was the landscape itself that"captured" the scene. Thus, forexample, in a recentfilmabout MartinChambi, Atilio Sivirichidescribes a process wherebyan (archaeological) landscape "casts a Martin and in interviewed the film Chambi upon Chambi's film;Sivirichi, spell" (hechizo) the Heirsofthe Incas,dir. Andy Harris and Paul Yule, 1986. "El 21. Sivirichi, contenido espiritual,"
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REPRESENTATIONS
64. Jose Gabriel Cosio, "Obituario,"El comercio (Cusco), 1951. and 65. For examples of such photographs,see Geraldine Guinness,Peru:ItsStory, People, (London, 1909). Religion 1839et de 66. See Andre Rouille, L'Empire la photographie: bourgeois, Photographie pouvoir 1870 (Paris, 1982). and SpreadofNationon Origin Communities: 67. Benedict Anderson,Imagined Reflections the as alism(London, 1983). Like Anderson'sconcept of "imaginedcommunity" the basis a to efforts construct common idenforemergentnationalist projects,the indigenista's titywere based on sentimentand attachmentto place (and history).The indigenista in fromthe nationalist projectsdescribedbyAnderson,however, both projectdiffered the scope and intentof theirregionalist agendas. Postmodernism Mass Divide:Modernism, Culture, the 68. Andreas Huyssen,After Great (Bloomvi. ington,Ind., 1986),
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Figueroa Aznar's Photography and Modernism in Early 20th Century Peru

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Figueroa Aznar's Photography and Modernism in Early 20th Century Peru

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Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas: Photography and Modernism in Early TwentiethCentury Peru Author(s): Deborah Poole

1900s, the Peruvian artist Juan Manuel

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withpaintingsand 2. Figueroa Aznar's atelier worktable withfoto-oleos.

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Provincial Intellectuals and the Bohemian Aesthetic

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in 3. Bohemios Saqsahuaman (Cusco).

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FIGURE 4. Salon azul of MonsefiorYabar,bishop of

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in 6. Yabar family Paucartambo.

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:1~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i.' ii ? ., .:... !~;~'~ i~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FIGURE7. indigena." "Tipo

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FIGURE 15. Self-portrait with painting

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14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas

43. 44. 45. 46.

Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas

Figueroa Aznar and the Cusco Indigenistas

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