Sacudiendo de los espiritus adormecidos [awakening the sleeping spirits] [electronic resource] : the art of Pedro Figari (1861--1938).

9780496726172

2004

1 online resource (329 p.)

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Between 1919 and 1934, Pedro Figari, a first generation Uruguayan of Italian descent, executed over 4,000 paintings in Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Paris, depicting Uruguayan society's various groups: Spanish Creole Elites, Gauchos, Indigenous peoples, Afro-Uruguayans, and Southern Italian immigrants. I argue that Figari examined difference in Uruguayan society through the lens of anthropology to interrogate and comment on his world, as well as upon the discipline itself. This dissertation responds to the prevailing representation of Figari as a painter of Uruguay's folkloric social customs---the picturesque. Figari offers complex, nuanced representations of Afro-Uruguayans, not represented in the fine arts prior to his work, that defy the narrow folkloric type. He figuratively juxtaposed elites and Afro-Uruguayans according to a common activity, progressively making visible Afro-Uruguayans in settings from which they had been excluded in previous representations. In so doing, he critiqued prevailing images of national identity. He represents Spanish Creole elites as stylish and elegant, but superficial and imitative. Gauchos, of mixed ancestry, are depicted as semi-domestic, colorfully attired, country dwellers that exist first and foremost as performers of country dances for wealthy white ranchers within their ranch estates. Figari imagines Uruguay's indigenous peoples as the country's naked potential buried in crude shells waiting to be developed by new immigrant groups like himself. I move beyond many studies of Figari's work by analyzing writings from his tenure as a lawyer, art educator, philosopher, and personal letters for insights into his alienation in society and his atypical relationship with Uruguay's black population. In theory, white elite Uruguayan men like Figari did not acknowledge Afro-Uruguayans, so previous historians have not looked for his references to Afro-Uruguayans in his writings. His role as a Defender of the Poor put him in close contact with Afro-Uruguayans. An examination of Figari's cross cultural representations demonstrates the ways in which his work as a visual artist exceeded his work as a lawyer, politician, art educator to bring Uruguay's cultural heterogeneity into nationalist discourse.

Books / Online / Dissertations & Theses

English

July 12, 2011

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2004.

Yale University.