Untitled Document

In 1821, the Santa Fe Trail opened, establishing a trade route to the United States and bringing new printed devotional art to New Mexico. By 1850, when New Mexico became a U.S. territory, increased trade made it even easier to secure commercially printed images, leading to a rapid decline in demand for the handcrafted santos. The skills and techiniques slowly died with the last generation of traditional santeros. Their artwork continued to be passed down within families, decorating small domestic altars, or remained hanging on the walls of the village chapels. With time, more and more of the objects fell into the hands of traders and recenlty-arrived Anglo settelers and tourists. The artists that moved to Taos and Santa Fe in the first decades ot the twentieth century decorated their newly acquired adobe homes with rough-hewn furniture, local weavings, and santos to capture the local atmosphere and creat "authentic" Hispanic-looking homes.

About this same time, the territory of New Mexico began aggressively seeking statehood. In order to attract new residents and outside capital territorial leaders created a Bureau of Immigration that remained active from 1880 until statehood was granted in 1912. While concerned with practical economic matters like surveying mineral and agricultural resources,

the Bureau was also the chief promotional agency for the territory. Bureau officials developed o promotional rhetoric based upon the notion of tri-cultural diversity and harmony (Pueblo, Hispanic, and Anglo's living in peace). They emphasized the region's deep history and dramatic landscape. Adapting their message to the audience, they would present an idealized territory, either a booming marketplace rich in resources or as an exotic destination filled with ancient architechture, mysterious people, and unheard of natural beauty. This effort was enhanced band extended by the Santa Fe Railway, hoping to boost passenger rail traffic.

One outgrowth of these promotional activities, and the people attracted to New Mexico by Bereau and the Railway attracted, was the creation of new cultural institutions like the Museum of New Mexico and the Spanish Colonial Arts Society in the teens and twenties.After almost one hundred years of contact with Anglo America, the very forces that led to the decline of santero art were responsible for preserving the old relics and reviving the traditional techniques amongst a new generation.

Anglo patronage from people like Applegate, Austin, and their friends in the spanish Colonial Arts Society kept a small number of Hispanic artists working, but it was not until the 1970's and 1980's that the contemporary revival truly exploded and become a self-consciously Hispanic activity. Following upon the civil rights advances of the 1960's, Hispanic artists gained new found respect for their ancestry and recognized the important role traditional folk art played in preserving and perpetuating their heritage.

Today, santos are as alive and as vivid a part of the cultural landscape in New mexico as they were in the 1820's. Respectful of tradition, these modern artists allow for their owm artistic innovation and creativity, maintaining an art that is both sincere and faithful to precedent while remaining vital and relevant. The old painted saints are both windows onto New Mexico's past and touchstones for New Mexico's contemporary Hispanic population.

exerpt copyright 2004, Cody James Hartly
Painted faith: Traditional New Mexican Devotional Images
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa226c.html

St. Helen Retablo
Natural Pigments on Pine
Pinon Varnish, Homemade Gesso
12" x 15" created in 2004

For: Private Commission

Gallery 1