Gayle Brennan Spencer – sending random thoughts to and from South Austin
Above: A mock wedding is always part of the pre-Lenten Carnaval in San Martin Tilcajete, Mexico
Is everyone on a diet? I think this is the first time that there is not one food post represented in the top 12 posts that you have frequented during the past year.
The following list represents the biannual results of the most-read postcards, with the numbers in parentheses indicating rankings from six months ago when applicable.
Continue reading “Biannual Roundup: What posts you’ve traveled most”
Above: “Virgin of the Tailors,” Cusco, Peru, circa 1750, on loan from Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima
Late-colonial New Spain was awash with conflicting energies: American-born Spaniards (Creoles), like their North American counterparts, felt a growing desire for independence, yet needed their identification with Europe to cement their sense of superiority over the racialized indigenous, African, and mixed-race lower classes….”
“Casta Painting and the Rhetorical Body,” Christa Olson, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Fall 2009
And 18th-century fashion statements as recorded in paintings and sculpture became a tool to exhibit the claimed superiority of those with pure, or at least high, percentages of Spanish blood flowing through their veins. On display at the Blanton Museum of Art through January 8, Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America focuses on the societal role of textiles in conveying class distinctions.
Continue reading “Caste discrimination woven into Spanish Colonial art of the Americas”
Postcards from Barton Springs 