Images at War: Mexico from Columbus to Blade Runner, 1492-2019

by Serge Gruzinski, Heather Maclean (Translation)

“If colonial America was the melting pot of modernity, it was because it was also a fabulous laboratory of images. . . . Just as much as speech and writing, the image can be a vehicle for all sorts of power and resistance.” So writes Serge Gruzinski in the introduction to Images at War, his striking reinterpretation of the Spanish colonization of Mexico. Concentrating on the political meaning of the baroque image and its function within a multicultural society, Gruzinski compares its ubiquity in Mexico to our modern fascination with images and their meaning.
Although the baroque image played a decisive role in many arenas, especially that of conquest and New World colonization, its powerful resonance in the sphere of religion is a focal point of Gruzinski’s study. In his analysis of how images conveyed meaning across linguistic barriers, he uncovers recurring themes of false images, less-than-perfect replicas, the uprooting of peoples and cultural memories, and the violence of iconoclastic destruction. He shows how various ethnic groups—Indians, blacks, Europeans—left their distinct marks on images of colonialism and religion, coopting them into expressions of identity or instruments of rebellion. As Gruzinski’s story unfolds, he tells of Aztec idols, the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, conquistadors, Franciscans, and neoclassical attempts to repress the baroque. In the final chapter he discusses the political and religious implications of contemporary imagery—such as that in Mexican soap operas—and speculates about the future of images in Latin America.
Originally written in French, this work makes available to an English audience a seminal study of Mexico and the role of the image in the New World.

Genres: Art, History, Nonfiction

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 1990

About the author

born in Tourcoing in 1949, studied at the Ecole des Chartres from 1969 to 1973 and received his diploma there as an archivist and paleographer. During the following eleven years, within the framework of various research projects, Gruzinski traveled to a number of Mediterranean countries as well as North and South America. The precolonial history of Mexico was to become one of his major focuses. In 1985 he published his first book, Les Hommes-dieux du Mexique, now also available in Italian, Spanish, and English translations. In 1991 and 1993 the two volumes of his treatise La Découverte du Nouveau Monde appeared and in 1991 the book L’Amérique de la découverte peinte par les Indiens du Mexique described the aesthetic encounter between pre-Columbian art and the European Renaissance. Serge Gruzinski is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the assistant director of the Center of Research on Mexico, Central America and the Andes

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me lo dejaron de tarea y lo disfruté mucho. El enfoque de una historia de la conquista basada en la evolución de las imágenes resulta sumamente enriquecedor. El autor nos lleva de la mano a través de este choque entre dos cultura para ilustrar cómo veían los españoles al mundo prehispánico y cómo veían los nativos americanos a estos invasores Europeos. Al final lo mejor es la manera en que Gruzinski hila un análisis profundo y crítico con ciertas anécdotas y crónicas que dan cuenta de una época llena de contrastes y sincretismos: la clandestinidad de las prácticas religiosas prehispánicas, indigenas que defienden a sus "santos" de españoles borrachos, el verdadero origen del culto a la Virgen de Guadalupe, pueblos acusados de hacer brujería y el mercado negro de pornografía en la durante el virreinato por mencionar algunos ejemplos. Una gran lectura para profundizar sobre los matices y cambios que caracterizaron a una época que hasta ahora veía como una plasta uniforme y aburrida: La Colonia.

[Carlou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dobby est un elfe libre (desolée pour la note)

[Paulina Palacios Herrera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una perspectiva de la historia desde lo actual, desdice de muchas Categorías en apariencia inamovibles. América colonizada por su desasimiento de conceptualizar al ícono, al ídolo. Muy recomendable. La releeré en poco.

[Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nunca podré ver a la virgen de Guadalupe igual

[rebs :v]

voy a suspender el examen

[Marcos Francisco Muñoz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gruzinski no presenta información nueva, pero su enfoque y manera de tratarla me ha maravillado.