Architecture, Pottery and Sculpture in Mexico
From Mexico of the Mexicans by Lewis Spence, 1917.
From: Unknown To: 1917 C.E.
Location: Mexico
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Mexico of the Mexicans by Lewis Spence.
Pottery is a branch of art for which the Mexicans have long shown a special aptitude—thus carrying on finely a grand Aztec tradition—and to this day, in a great many of their towns, there is made some given type of faience, quite peculiar to the particular place where it is created.
Zacatecas, for example, is renowned for its lustred ware; Guanajuato for dark green ware highly glazed, and rather similar to the latter are those emanating from Oaxaca; while, on the other hand, a light grey is the favourite colour with the potters at Zacepu, and those working at Cuanhitlan evince a fondness for black. Another important centre of the art is Aguascalientes, and a still more famous one is Patzucars, the potters there mainly producing jars and bowls of an iridescent nature, in appearance somewhat akin to much of the faience of old Persia, which they also resemble in being sadly fragile, alas!
Nor must Puebla be forgotten, this town's artists in pottery having enjoyed a high reputation, throughout many centuries, for majolica, having a brilliance of colour like that associated with the Post-Impressionist painters. As fine as this ware are the Puebla tiles, also, in general, of glittering hue, and still used frequently in the decoration of churches in Latin-America.
Nevertheless, the potters whom the Mexicans themselves regard as their cleverest are those of Guadalajara, who often ornament their handiwork with gold or silver, affixed after the piece is fired, the men of this school having likewise a taste for pictorial decorations.
No account of Mexican pottery would be complete without what are known there as Afarenas: places where the Indians make earthenware for their own use, probably employing exactly the methods of their ancestors in Aztec days. A splendid artistry, a rare technical skill, are displayed in many of these primitive workshops; and even when looking at such of their creations as are intended merely for cooking utensils, seldom or never does the temptation arise to say with the poet—
What did the hand, then, of the potter shake?
In the past, in many lands, pottery and sculpture were closely affiliated; and, as will be shown later, Mexico is one of these places where this affiliation is still in evidence. Moreover, the bulk of her faience is made anonymously; and the gentle art of self-effacement, singularly foreign as a rule to people of any aesthetic predilections, is also practised considerably among Mexican architects. In this matter they form a curious contrast to those of the United States, where egotism is so rife that, to a great many buildings, there are affixed prominently metal plates, bearing the designers’ names. But, while this reticence on the part of the Mexican school may be a thing to be admired, it naturally makes very difficult the giving of an exact and adequate account of that school's activities.
Few countries in Europe, and assuredly none in America, are richer in fine old edifices than Mexico, and they are of various types, the penitentiary of Puebla, for example, recalling some French chateaux, or Scottish castles of the Middle Ages, when building in both France and Scotland was largely carried on by Flemings. Needless to say, architecture of an inherently Spanish character is paramount in Mexico, not merely because of her inheritance, but because, in her early years, many of her great ecclesiastical structures were wrought from designs sent from Spain. Thus the iteredos in the chapel of Los Reyes, in Puebla Cathedral, was designed by Juan Martinez Montanes, whose portrait, as the reader may recall, was painted by Velasquez.
Puebla Cathedral, 1875. Image by Lorenzo Becerril, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
Before the seventeenth century was over, however, there were busy in Mexico many talented architects of native birth, among the best being Fray Diego de Valverde, who built the Palacio Nacional in Mexico city. And these early masters, far from betraying any inclination to depart from the architectural traditions of Spain, manifested in abundance their motherland's fondness for the quaint and the rococo, likewise giving their structures that bizarre glitter which is a striking characteristic of many Iberian churches, thanks to the Spaniard's large strain of Moorish blood. Nor have the Mexican architects of yesterday and of the present time disclosed any marked desire to forsake this course, hitherto accepted by those practising the builder's art throughout their country.
To quote from an article in that highly interesting, but now defunct, American periodical, Modern Mexico: "Architecture, in Cuernavaca to-day, differs so little from that of centuries ago, that it is almost impossible to tell a new building from the oldest . . . "; and these words are hardly more applicable to Cuernavaca than to large sections, at least, of many other towns and villages—Puebla, Guadalajara, Oaxaca, Cohma.
It is true, that in the entrance to the spacious public hall in the last-named town, there has been erected, of late, a rather severe arch which recalls that at the foot of Fifth Avenue, New York, likewise reminding the beholder of the pseudo-classic Arc de Triomphe de L'Etoile at Paris. But this arch is an anomaly in Colima, where, all along one side of the plaza, there is an arcade which is redolent of mediaeval Spain, portales being the name which the Mexicans themselves give to the picturesque archways supporting structures of this description. Scarcely more salient at Colima than at Oaxaca and Cholula, these portales form the very key-note, so to speak, in the majority of Mexican cities, the thing chiefly impressing itself on the visitor's memory, so far as the visible is concerned; while another thing which he or she is bound to remember is the bright colour garnishing the facades of countless houses.
To turn from domestic to ecclesiastical architecture, a remarkable illustration of this order is to be seen at Puebla, in the beautiful Cepillo del Rosario; for the interior of this church was completely redecorated so recently as the end of the nineteenth century, the additions withal being wholly in keeping with the venerable edifice containing them. And a great deal of equally tasteful rehabilitation of churches has been done, during the last few years, at Vera Cruz; while a church built as lately as 1908, in the Calle de Orizaba, harmonises most perfectly with all the old edifices in the immediate vicinity, the design in this instance having come from Cessare Novi, one of the best known and cleverest of contemporary Mexican architects.
Again, the rare little Capello de San Antonio, in the environs of Mexico city, a church which formed the subject of one of Miss Florence Westerns many engaging contributions to Modern Mexico, dates only from late in last century, yet looks almost as if it had been erected in the days of Cortes; while, although that arch-enemy of the architectural art—the speculative builder, whose one idea, when at work, is to be economical with time and with materials—has been allowed to ravage much of the business part of Mexico city, even there some imposing buildings have been raised of late, among them the National Bank and several offices in the Calle Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican Wall Street. These last, however, cannot be acclaimed as being among those perpetuating the bygone Spanish styles; but another structure, most certainly to be included in that honoured category, is a small church which, in 1909, the British residents of Mexico City caused to be built there for their own use, the site being in the British Cemetery.
Her large quota of artistic buildings notwithstanding, Mexico shows little bias towards decorating facades with sculpture; and such works in this art as she has produced in the last few decades, such as she is producing just now, are nearly all of the independent kind. As already observed, she is one of those countries where pottery and sculpture are still affiliated; and this holds good, in particular, of the potters working at San Pedro Tlaqueplaque, situate on a high hill near Guadalajara.
For these men are not more preoccupied with making vases, and the like, than with modelling figures and groups, the subjects being invariably chosen from the life of Mexico to-day; indeed, there is hardly anything in that life which these artists do not represent on occasion, nearly all their work, moreover, being done in a finely downright fashion. This village of San Pedro is likewise the home of two brilliant Indian sculptors, Panduro pére and fils, working exclusively with clay, and living almost in the manner of their remote forefathers, their studio being a primitive hut.
Either the father or the son will do, in a matter of half an hour, and for a few dollars, a wonderfully lifelike portrait-bust, so that the services of the Panduros are much courted, alike by their own neighbours and by tourists. Indeed, their clientele has embodied numerous distinguished men, and they are very proud of telling that Porfirio Diaz himself sat to them repeatedly; while they invariably add, when relating this, that their likenesses of the President are far ahead of those by any other artists, whether painters or sculptors, who have received the questionable benefits of scholastic training.
Apropos of such people, it was maintained in a recent article, in the New York Herald, that they engage sadly little official patronage in Mexico. But this statement does not bear scrutiny, because, ever since Mexico city unveiled, in 1803, at a prominent spot in the Plaza de la Reforma, the vast bronze equestrian statue by Manuel Tulsa of Charles IV of Spain, a marked affection for sculptural monuments has been evinced by Mexican municipalities, these having frequently shown fairly good taste. It is true that that self-effacement, mentioned as being practised largely by architects throughout Mexico, has long been rather common also among sculptors active there. And no one at Cuernavaca, for example, appears to remember what hand is responsible for the memorial, erected there in 1891, to the soldier, Carlos Pacheco; no one in Vera Cruz seems to know who wrought, in 1892, the town's statue of the politician, Manuel Gutierrez Zamora; nor is information to be had even concerning the big piece of statuary, set up at Chapultepec in 1881, celebrating the romantic little Thermopylae enacted there during Mexico's first war with the United States.
It is possible, then, that some of these striking works are not by native artists; while it must be owned that the fine Christopher Columbus, placed in 1877 in the first glorieta of the Paseo, Mexico city, must be credited, like the splendid Maximilian portrait in the Museo Nacional, to the French school, the sculptor having been Charles Cordier. Nevertheless, all this does not in the least vitiate the contention that Mexico is singularly rich just now in gifted artists in statuary, among the best being the brothers Yslas, usually working in collaboration, whose finest and most famous work, completed in 1880, is their large monument to the patriot, Benito Pablo
Juarez, author of Los Reyes de la Reforma. This imposing memorial is contained in the Panteon de San Fernando, Mexico city; another very noteworthy piece of sculpture in the capital being the Monumento a la Independencia Nacional, which was unveiled in 1910, and to the making of which various different artists contributed, the chief being Enrique Alciati, a professor in the Academia Nacional de San Carlos.
Two further sculptural monuments of great note, in Mexico city, are one commemorating the Portuguese cosmographer, Enrico Martinez, and that more famous one to the memory of the last prince of the Aztecs, Guatemotzin; the latter work finished in 1887, the former in 1881. It is in the Jardin del Seminario, and was modelled by Miguel Noveña; while as regards the other work, standing in the second glorieta of the Paseo de la Reforma, here once again there were several different artists employed. The general idea apparently came from Francisco Jiminez, but parts of his design seem to have been carried out, not by himself, but by Noveña, who was sole sculptor, furthermore, of certain tablets let into the base, depicting episodes in the Conquest of Mexico; while some neighbouring tablets, of a votive order, are by Gabriel Guerra, one of those comparatively few Mexican masters who are well known in the United States. Sculpture is also well represented by Senores Bringas, Toledo, Goitia, and Rosas.
Spence, Lewis. Mexico of the Mexicans. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917.
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