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More than a Decorative Element: Archaeology and the Landscapes of Antonio Tejeda Fonseca in the Formation of a Mid-century Guatemalan Nationalist Aesthetic.

Sat, May 25, 4:00 to 5:30pm, TBA

Abstract

From the 1920s until the 1960s, the art produced and consumed in Guatemala was dominated by an aesthetic that its practitioners called “paisajismo” or “indianismo,” and that others dismissed as folkloric or touristic. Here I examine the evolving role of this aesthetic in securing Guatemalan nationalist claims to the Mayan past by exploring the work of painter Antonio Tejeda Fonseca. A student of Humberto Garavito, Tejeda subsidized his long and successful artistic career with work in archaeology, first as the draftsman for the Carnegie Institution of Washington and later as the first director of the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography. In these capacities, he drew or painted hundreds of detailed copies of Mayan artifacts and paintings, notably the murals of Bonampak. Tejeda’s work, I argue, performed a critical role in detaching Mayan aesthetic motifs and styles from remote archaeological sites and making them available for the smooth and pretty landscapes of paisajismo. By tethering “Mayanness” to imperial archaeology and anthropology, these landscapes authorized a distinctive visual language and affective pull for Guatemalan nationalism even as the terrain they depicted was increasingly roiled by protest of the national project’s subjugation of contemporary Mayans.

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