Pigments and Power in the Andes.

SIRACUSANO, GABRIELA

ARCHETYPE

Lugar: LONDON; Año: 2011 p. 256

9781904982562

This book shows a research developed on the study of cultural practices related to the uses of color materials in the South American Andean region during the Colonial period (XVI to XVIII centuries) and their ?powerful? presence in the images of the Conquest. From a cultural history point of view (Chartier, Marin, Gruzinski, Ginzburg, Warburg), and what the author understands as an ?archeology of pictorial practices?, the book offers to the reader a new sight on Andean Colonial painting?s praxis as well as on those cultural features where color -in its material and chromatic dimensions- had a main protagonism, something that has remained unexplored by historiographic studies.In this sense, this tale goes from a material history of color in Andean workshops (the ?making?), the exchanges of knowledge about uses of pigments and dyes between different circles -painters, boticarians, physicians, alchemists, etc- (the ?knowledge?), to the symbolic and powerful dimension of these color powders as present in sacred and political gestures through the images that hosted them (the ?power?).Starting with an analysis of the problem of images and the concept of representation during the evangelization/domination process, the book shows the discursive and iconographic strategies used by different social actors in order to achieve several goals through the uses of colors. According to this, the book?s main hypothesis sustains that colors were silent protagonists in the Andean ritual system, a fact that was identified only by certain ?idolatries extirpators?, who tried to find solutions to this problem by giving them a Christian and Divine category. The text ends by going back to the images involved in the story, now charged with new significations and a new iconological value.It´s worth saying that the text is the English translation of the book El poder de los colores (Buenos Aires, 2005), with some corrections. It has received a grant by the Reed Foundation, supported by New York University.