Mey-Yen Moriuchi | La Salle University (original) (raw)

Books by Mey-Yen Moriuchi

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The years following Mexican independence in 1821 were critical to the development of social, racial, and national identities. The visual arts played a decisive role in this process of self-definition. My book seeks to reorient current understanding of this crucial, yet often ignored period in the history of Mexican art by focusing on a distinctive artistic and literary genre that emerged between approximately 1821 and 1890 called costumbrismo. This term, costumbrismo, designated a cultural trend in Latin America and Spain for representing local customs, types, and scenes of everyday life in both the visual arts and literature. The various visual and textual modes of costumbrismo offer a powerful statement about the shifting terms of Mexican identity that had lasting impact on Mexican history.

Costumbrista artists captured the ordinary and constructed representations of Mexican life. This endeavor has largely contributed to costumbrismo’s relative obscurity in Mexican art history and subsequent scholarship. The nineteenth-century Mexican Academy favored neo-Classical ideals and conservative academic training. According to academic standards, costumbrista painting was surpassed in prestige by more intellectually stimulating history paintings, portraits, and landscapes. Like seventeenth-century Dutch genre artists or nineteenth-century French Realist painters, costumbrista artists sought to portray the quotidian lives of the lower-to-middle classes, their clothes, dwellings, and occupations. Costumbrista artists were keen on representing what they saw rather than catering to elite academic standards. I argue that their work contributed to the documentation and reification of social and racial types, re-enforcing and re-imagining cultural norms by pictorializing the costumes and comportment of everyday individuals in their surroundings.

Costumbrista images are based on observations of similitude and sameness, essentially constructing stereotypes of behavioral and biological traits associated with different racial and social classes. This very grouping of similarities is consciously dependent on concurrent claims of difference and isolation. This apparent paradox and how it affects nineteenth-century notions of representation and identity formation form the core of this project. Specifically, I investigate the dialectic between universality and difference that characterizes costumbrismo. In the context of the nineteenth century, political leaders and the cultural elite in the West assumed what was universal was European. Frequently, what is interpreted as universal has the characteristics of those who have politically dominant positions and universalism can be considered as a technology of Empire. As a result, the critique of universalism can also be seen as a critique of Eurocentrism. As part of the language of identity construction, costumbrista imagery engaged with this dialectic of universality and difference and transformed the way Mexicans saw themselves, as well as how other nations saw them. Costumbrismo, as a cultural and artistic movement, played a significant role in the construction of racial and social types. In so doing, it played an integral role in the formation of modern notions of Mexican identity.

*Book is forthcoming with Penn State University Press

Book Chapters by Mey-Yen Moriuchi

Afro-Asian Connections in Latin America and the Caribbean, eds. Debra Lee-DiStefano and Luisa Ossa (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 27-60.

The artist Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) is acclaimed for his semi-abstract, polymorphic paintings that... more The artist Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) is acclaimed for his semi-abstract, polymorphic paintings that draw on African motifs and the Santeria religion, in addition to avant-garde movements such as Cubism and Surrealism. Born and raised in Cuba, Lam’s early travels to Europe exposed him to modernist styles, and important friendships with Pablo Picasso and André Breton secured his place among the Parisian avant-garde. The Parisian art world’s fixation with the primitive prompted Lam to explore the possibilities of his identity as an Afro-Cuban. His hybrid animal-human figures and fragmented, flattened compositions are linked to his Afro-Cuban culture, as well as to his experimentation with automatism and surrealist games such as cadavre exquis. Scholarship has focused on Lam’s art as a synthesis of Cubism, Surrealism, and Afro-Cuban traditions.

This project, however, seeks to understand the impact of another aspect of Lam’s background that has not been adequately addressed by scholars: his Chinese heritage. Lam’s father, Yam Lam, was an immigrant from Canton, China, while his Cuban mother, Ana Serafina Castilla, was a descendant of ancestors from Congo and Spain. Why have scholars only emphasized Lam’s black African roots and his encounter with European modernism? How did Lam’s Chinese culture impact his art? Is there a convergence of Asian and Afro-Cuban traditions that has been overlooked? An analysis of the historical, political, and social context of Chinese and African immigration in Cuba will provide a framework for addressing and understanding the multicultural influences at stake in the oeuvre of the Chinese-African-Cuban artist Wifredo Lam.

Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, 2015

In colonial Mexico, the miscegenation of the indigenous, African, and European populations produc... more In colonial Mexico, the miscegenation of the indigenous, African, and European populations produced diverse offspring that challenged racial and ethnic purity and disrupted social stability. During this period, the visual arts played a critical role in depicting to contemporary viewers how race was understood scientifically and culturally and, in turn, fostered racial stereotypes that proliferated into the next century. In this essay, I examine the racialized social spaces, that is, representations of racial and social relationships, in eighteenth-century casta and nineteenth-century costumbrista painting. I argue that there is a continuity of aesthetic and stylistic conventions, as well as underlying preoccupations with socio-racial and socio-familial relationships from casta to costumbrista paintings, a subject that has largely gone unexamined thus far in scholarship of Mexican visual culture.

Both casta and costumbrista genres tended towards an idealization of social and political circumstances. In a sense, casta paintings represented the indeterminable. They attempted to identify and classify the complexities of miscegenation that fundamentally could not be categorized. Costumbrista paintings depicted the implausible. The peaceful commingling of all distinct classes and races was optimistic even in the best of political and economic circumstances. The visual representation of miscegenation continued to be a preoccupation from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries in the traditions of casta and costumbrista painting. Both genres constructed racialized social spaces loosely based on everyday life, weaving the real with the imaginary.

Elizabeth Catlett, an African American sculptor and printmaker, created art that represented the ... more Elizabeth Catlett, an African American sculptor and printmaker, created art that represented the underprivileged, the oppressed and the poor. She strongly believed art should represent the voice of the people, in particular those voices that were repressed due to social, racial, and political injustices. Although Catlett was born and raised in the United States, she spent over fifty years in Mexico, where she became a citizen in 1962. Catlett felt strong ties to both her African American heritage and her adopted fellow Mexican compatriots. Throughout her life, Catlett moved between cultures and created art that transcended national boundaries. Her compelling prints and sculptures represent the lives of everyday people, and the heroines and heroes of African American and Latin American liberation movements. By focusing on the convergence of African American and Mexican cultural and artistic traditions within Catlett’s oeuvre, this essay considers Catlett’s legacy within this intercultural and transnational context.

During the 1930s and 1940s, artists sought to represent the social and economic injustices that h... more During the 1930s and 1940s, artists sought to represent the social and economic injustices that had affected millions of people during the Great Depression. An artistic movement, known as Social Realism, took hold and is a term used to encompass the artists of the period who produced socially conscious art in a realist manner. Despite a lack of true stylistic unity, the artists were joined in their social and political cause to depict class and racial oppression, with a particular focus on the plight of the laborer. Art was viewed as a political tool used to achieve social change. The government had a leading role in this endeavor. The Federal Art Project (FAP), the visual arts division of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA), employed approximately five thousand artists with the purpose of creating prints, murals and paintings detailing American life.

One of the main objectives of Social Realism and the commissioned FAP projects was to make art accessible to the common people. To that end, the projects developed in two main artistic forms: 1) public murals, which enabled art to be directly experienced by the populace, unrestricted by museum entry fees; and 2) graphic media, which was an effective means of inexpensively producing, multiplying and disseminating images to the public. LSUAM’s WPA exhibition demonstrates the range of subject matter, from individual laborers to urban, industrial scenes, that characterized printmaking during this period.

This essay examines Social Realism as an intercultural movement that was impacted by two distinct, but related artistic periods: Mexican muralism and the New Negro movement. Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco’s use of vivid colors, monumental figural forms, and portrayals of social realities inspired many of the WPA artists included in this exhibition, such as Hale Woodruff, Dox Thrash and Thomas Hart Benton. In addition, Alain Locke played a prominent role in nurturing and promoting the race- and class- conscious works of African American artists, such as Woodruff and Thrash, during the New Negro movement. Although these artists created images that sympathized with the plight of American workers, they also spoke to the injustices experienced by Mexican Indian peasants and African slave laborers. The working class types portrayed by these artists, although rooted in cultural specificity, were meant to transcend and speak to a universal condition.

Articles by Mey-Yen Moriuchi

Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2018

Much has been written about how Frida Kahlo’s artistic production revealed the intense emotional ... more Much has been written about how Frida Kahlo’s artistic production revealed the intense emotional and physical pain that she endured throughout her life. Subjects such as the tragic bus accident that she survived as a teenager, or her troubled relationship with famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, have informed numerous biographical readings of her work. And though her indebtedness to the colonial traditions of ex-voto and retablo paintings has been noted, little has been said of her relationship to other aspects of Mexican visual culture. This article contextualizes Kahlo’s oeuvre within the genres of eighteenth-century casta painting and nineteenth-century costumbrismo, genres that were preoccupied with depicting socio-racial and socio-familial relationships and with representing Mexico’s miscegenation, or racial mixing.

Se ha escrito mucho sobre la producción artística de Frida Kahlo que revela el sufrimiento emocional y físico que perduró durante su vida. El trágico accidente que sobrevivió cuando era joven, y también su relación tormentosa con el famoso muralista mexicano Diego Rivera, han informado varios escritos biográficos sobre el artista. Aunque autores han tomado en cuenta la dedicación de Kahlo a la tradición colonial del ex-voto y pinturas retablo, poco se ha publicado de su relaciones con otros aspectos de la cultura visual mexicana. Este artículo analiza las obras de Kahlo en relación a dos géneros artísticos mexicanos, las pinturas casta del siglo dieciocho y el costumbrismo del siglo diecinueve, categorías que fueron conocidos, tal como las pinturas de Kahlo, por representar las relaciones familiares y raciales y la complejidad del mestizaje.

In 1854, a group of Mexican writers and artists published a collection of articles and illustrati... more In 1854, a group of Mexican writers and artists published a collection of articles and illustrations that portrayed popular racial and social types entitled, Los mexicanos pintados por sí mismos. Produced out of a desire to capture local customs, costumes and occupations, Los mexicanos clearly embraced the principles of the costumbrista genre just as it was also indebted to its European predecessors, such as Heads of the People (1840), Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (1841-2) and Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (1843-4). In its carefully orchestrated selection of representations, Los mexicanos reveals how the Mexican literary elite sought to position themselves vis-à-vis other nations during the post-independence period and demonstrates how images of popular racial and social types were important to the formation of a new national subjectivity.

Traditionally, casta paintings have been interpreted as an isolated colonial Mexican art form and... more Traditionally, casta paintings have been interpreted as an
isolated colonial Mexican art form and examined within the
social historical moment in which they emerged. Casta paintings
visually represented the miscegenation of the Spanish, Indian
and Black African populations that constituted the new world and
embraced a diverse terminology to demarcate the land’s mixed
races. Racial mixing challenged established social and racial
categories, and casta paintings sought to stabilize issues of
race, gender and social status that were present in colonial
Mexico.

Concurrently, halfway across the world, another country’s artists
were striving to find the visual vocabulary to represent its
families, socio-economic class and genealogical lineage. I am
referring to England and its eighteenth-century conversation
pictures. Like casta paintings, English conversation pieces
articulate beliefs about social and familial propriety. It is through
the family unit and the presence of a child that a genealogical
statement is made and an effigy is preserved for subsequent
generations. Utilizing both invention and mimesis, artists of both
genres emphasize costume and accessories in order to cater to
particular stereotypes.

I read casta paintings as conversations like their European
counterparts—both internal conversations among the figures
within the frame, and external ones between the figures, the
artist and the beholder. It is my position that both casta paintings
and conversation pieces demonstrate a similar concern with the
construction of a particular self-image in the midst of societies
that were apprehensive about the varying conflicting notions of
socio-familial and socio-racial categories.

*Book is forthcoming with Penn State University Press

Afro-Asian Connections in Latin America and the Caribbean, eds. Debra Lee-DiStefano and Luisa Ossa (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 27-60.

Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, 2015

Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 2018