Could there be a Cupid for people and objects? If there is, the arrows of the one that targeted me were surely marked “Made in Mexico.” The thought comes to mind when I look around my house and realize how many decorative objects I own are examples of Mexican arte popular, or folk art. In my kitchen are Talavera plates, vintage examples of the tin-glazed ceramics or majolica from Puebla, a parade of pepita glass, goblets and drinking glasses, handblown from recycled glass and etched with a floral pattern, modeled after fancy etched French crystal, and a large painted brown clay pot, turkey-shaped, in a genre called “Mexican tourist pottery.” Hand-loomed, fringed cotton napkins, painted tin Christmas ornaments, Taxco silver bracelets and earrings, and a charro belt of braided horsehair are other treasures.
What is it about Mexico’s folk art that is so seductive to me? It’s not just that I lived there for 10 years in my younger days. Much of my collection came later. Even after being exposed to the folk art of many other cultures, I remain passionate about my first love. My introspection was provoked because, while I once thought my taste rather esoteric, it is becoming clear that, increasingly, others worldwide have the same attraction. This month, Chicagoans will be treated to a special overview of Mexico’s prodigious production of folk art in a show called “Grandes Maestros del Arte Popular Mexicano” (or Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art), the largest exhibit of its kind outside Mexico.
Presented at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Pilsen Saturday through May 26, the show displays 500 pieces by more than 175 living artists working in wood, ceramics, vegetable fibers, metal, textiles, copper, silver, stone and a variety of other media from many regions of Mexico.
The catalog for the show, “Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art, From the Collection of Fomento Cultural Banamex” ($85), is one of the most beautiful and complete books on the subject and one of the most complete in covering the range, which in Mexico is astonishing. John Venator of Chicago, who has been collecting Mexican crafts and folk art for many years, uses the book cataloging the show “as a Bible for collecting.”
“Arte popular covers a huge area,” says Norma Garcia, a mental health therapist and Chicago collector, who will speak at the Museum’s Collectors’ Forum on April 20.
Difficult to define, folk art is generally associated with handcraftsmanship and originally with rural or working-class producers and consumers. In Mexico, often it is connected to the indigenous or Indian, although this, too, may be unreliable as a definition–there have been various “gringos” brilliant at restoring lost native craft traditions.
Folk art may be utilitarian or merely decorative, may serve local or commercial markets, may have been made by artisans who embraced or avoided outside influences that accept or reject ethnic labels, but one thing for certain, it opposes the machine-made goods of international capitalism.
Garcia’s talk will cover the seductive quality arte popular has for her as a Mexican. “I feel it is the love of my own culture” that motivates her to collect. “I try to blend it with my life,” adds Garcia, who has served on the museum’s board for 14 years.
Non-natives have their own impetus for collecting. Collector Venator, president and CEO of the Computing Technology Industry Association, a not-for-profit trade association, says, “It is challenging, it is strong, it is raw, it is vital. It just gets us, it grabs us.”
Rick Bayless, chef and one of Chicago’s most visible collectors of Mexican folk art, with many pieces displayed in his restaurants Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, says he loves the stuff, “pure and simple, because of the whimsy and the spontaneity that you find in it. It really captures something special about the human experience that you just don’t find in a lot of other art. It’s never predictable and it always brings out positive, fun emotion.”
Susan Danly, editor of a new book, “Casa Manana, The Morrow Collection of Mexican Popular Arts” (University of New Mexico Press, $32.95), the catalog for another exhibition of early 20th Century arte popular that opened Friday at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., believes “there is a basic kind of truthfulness in these objects” that attracts growing numbers of collectors worldwide today.
“The objects lack pretentiousness and … express the diversity of life in Mexico. The only thing they have in common is that they all come from Mexico; they look like they were created worlds apart.”
Much of Mexican folk art, such as the ceramics and lacquer ware, has pre-Hispanic roots. The Spanish Conquest in the 16th Century brought a European influence and created a forced production for Spanish consumers.
Spreading the word
Americans were largely unfamiliar with Mexican folk art until the early 20th Century. Several figures were instrumental in making it known. One was Dwight Morrow, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico in the late 1920s. Morrow and his wife, Elizabeth, collected a colorful array of handmade ceramic pots, lacquerware trays and bright textiles with which they furnished Casa Manana, their Spanish colonial style retreat in Cuernavaca.
The Morrows entertained Mexico’s leading political and cultural figures at Casa Manana, using popular, indigenous art as a diplomatic tool to show their appreciation for the culture.
The first visual recognition of Mexican folk art in the U.S., which included numerous objects from the Morrow collection, was an exhibit circulated to more than a dozen major American cities in 1930-31.
American interest increased throughout the following years, in part due to the international fame of the Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera, and the comprehensive book, “Idols Behind Altars” (Payson and Clarke Ltd., out of print) written by anthropologist Anita Brenner.
Brenner, born in Aguascalientes and of Jewish ancestry, fled with her parents to San Antonio during the Mexican Revolution. Educated in the U.S., she interpreted Mexican politics and culture for Americans through her articles in the New York Times magazine. Brenner also edited a long-running English-language magazine, “Mexico/this month,” promoting Mexican culture and folk art to tourists.
Celebrating life
Today, while reaching out to a wider audience, Mexican folk art continues to be important to Mexican culture.
“The indigenous culture of Mexico has a view of life that is celebratory, through its rituals, through color, through their creative spontaneity,” says Cesareo Moreno, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum’s visual arts director. “Everyday life, sacred rituals, or family celebrations would be incomplete without the presence of these artistic creations.”
It is a life view appealing to people of other cultures that aren’t able to access this joie de vivre easily. Collectively the folk art offers a look into the alma or soul of a people, and collecting it “is a strange way of appropriating that bit of soul,” says Danly.
Adaptability is one of the strongest lessons these objects have to offer us, and something that distinguishes it from the folk art of other cultures.
“Some things look European, some could easily be in a Native American museum and some are in the middle,” says Moreno of the museum exhibit’s range. “Talavera pottery is a beautiful example of this adaptability because it shows the fusion of various cultures–the Asian influence from the Manila galleons that came to Pacific ports, the Spanish and Middle Eastern influence from the Moors. Then the indigenous artisans put in their own motifs,” he explains. “In one piece of ceramics, there was this fusion from all over the world.”
In search of arte popular
Today, says Danly, the Internet has provided a new market for arte popular. Sources are myriad and can be found by typing in “Mexican folk art” in a search engine. Novica.com’s Web site offers an outstanding variety of Mexican crafts of above-average quality at affordable prices.
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Venator plugs the new museum shop at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum for its “really nice things, reasonably priced,” and for its Collector’s Corner, “carrying high-end stuff–at $150 and up.”
But the best way to collect, says Venator is to make a trip to Mexico City or Oaxaca and tour the workshops of the artisans. He has commissioned special pieces during his tours. “That is the ultimate,” he says.
The artisans not only continue to practice these age-old crafts but adapt to the 21st Century as well, says Moreno.
“Now the role of the artisan has gone international. From supplying local towns with utensils and utilitarian objects, the artesano has moved with the times and gone from local to global. It is part of this adaptive, creative quality that is so intrinsic to the Mexican. The pieces are more like works of art today and they now sell them to collectors.”
Far from being simply utilitarian today, they enhance our lives. “They are a way of celebrating our lives,” says Moreno.
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Mexican Folk Art show
What: “Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art” displays the work of more than 175 living artists working in wood, ceramics, fibers, metal, textiles and other media from many regions of Mexico.
Where: Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1852 W. 19th St.
When: Saturday to May 26; opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday
Admission: free.
Regular museum hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays.
Gallery talks: From 2 to 3 p.m. March 17, April 21, May 26 from 2 to 3 p.m. Conducted by Cesareo Moreno, visual arts director of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum.
Tours: English, noon to 1 p.m. Sundays;Spanish, 1 to 2 p.m. Sundays.
Collector’s Forum: Experts talk about creating, collecting, preserving or promoting works of art such as those in Grandes Maestros from 2:30 to 5 p.m. April 20. Free.
Call: 312-738-1503, ext. 142.
— Mary Daniels