Faith and tradition as expressed in the family is part of the artistic style here in the West. Spanish Market in Santa Fe is one of the biggest events of the summer and one of the oldest media forms in western art traditions will be on display. Unlike the European artists who depicted the Catholic saints in three dimensional forms and with baroque folds, the New Mexican Hispanic artists began making retablos with flat, one-dimensional characters and using graphic designs that were indigenous to this area.
The Spanish Colonial Art Museum has a good collection as does the Museum of International Folk Art, both in Santa Fe. The retablo pictured is in the latter museum's Spanish Colonial collection and is typical of the style that is practiced today. The rainbow at the top echoes that element that is used by the Hopis and other Native American tribes. The figures, outlined in black, reflect the black-outline flat figures that Native Americans used in hide paintings. New scholarly thinking is that these art forms were not naive or primitive, but ones that took regional artistic elements that had existed for hundreds of years, if not longer, in combining them with the new European forms in novel interations. The oldest American original art forms were appropriated and reinterpreted with the new influence of the padres and conquistadors.
These art forms and the culture that surrounds the style is one that I've long appreciated. You'll find me today and tomorrow studying and admiring the work of these artists all around Santa Fe's plaza and visiting with my favorite artists.
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