by Hope MacLean
A relatively recent innovation is the twisting or respinning of different colored yarns together. I have not seen respun yarn in paintings of the 1960s and 1970s; it first appears in paintings of the 1980s. According to Kiva Arts (1992), this procedure was invented by the yarn painter Tucarima (Elena Carrillo), who began unplying two-ply or three-ply yarns and then respinning two colors together. Respinning takes time and affects profitability, so few artists use it. It is mainly used by painters who can count on a good price for their work. The process gives a variety of effects, such as that of a two-tone cord or the mottled texture of an animal’s fur.
The greatest change in yarn-painting materials over time has been the yarn itself. According to Lupe, in the 1960s, she and Ramón used a comparatively thick yarn sold under the brand name Indio. In the 1970s, the artists used a thinner yarn called El Gato para Todo (about the weight of a double knitting yarn). By the 1990s, the artists changed to even thinner, threadlike yarns, sold under the brand names Cristal, Diamante, Acrilan, and Estilo.
Changes in yarn thickness affect the design of paintings. Paintings made with thin yarn may have many more figures as well as more detail and more colors within each figure. When thick yarn was used, only a few figures could be fitted onto a standard-size yarn painting (for example, one that is 24” x 24” [60 x 60 cm]), and each figure had relatively few colors. A small yarn painting (for example, one that is 12” x 12” [30 x 30 cm]) might contain only one figure, as Mariano Valadez explained:
HOPE: How has your art changed since you began?
Mariano: The paintings I first did were 60 x 60 cm. The designs were very simple. It was possible to finish a painting in one day. We also did 30 x 30 cm, with designs of a single object, like an arrow, a ceremonial feather [Hui.: muwieri], and with that little bit, the painting was almost finished. We did a lot of 5 x 10 cm [paintings] also. . . .
HOPE: Did you do them illustrating just a small peyote?
Mariano: We did small designs, and only two types, such as a corn that had been picked or a peyote flower or some flowers that we used in ceremonies. Therefore, there wasn’t much need to tell the legend or the explanation.
The change to thinner yarn has also affected the amount of labor required to make a painting. It now takes artists longer to complete a painting because many more strands of yarn are required to cover a given surface area. In the 1960s, a 24” x 24” (60 x 60 cm) painting could be completed in one or two days. Now a painting of this size may require four to eight days to complete. The longer production time affects the profitability of making yarn paintings. Even if the artists charge four times the price that they did twenty or thirty years ago, they may not be making much more for their labor, because the paintings take four times as long to make.
In fact, unless artists manage to sell at the upper levels of the market, they may not make much more than the Mexican minimum wage. As a result, yarn painting is not highly profitable for many artists. They may abandon it for other crafts, such as beadwork, if the return drops much below the minimum-wage level. The low profitability of yarn painting threatens the survival of the art. The Huichol, who are still acutely impoverished, cannot afford to make art for art’s sake.
One aspect of yarn painting that favors its survival is that the work is done “sitting, in the shade,” as one artist told me, rather than by working twelve hours a day in the blistering sun as an agricultural laborer. Thus, making art is preferable to field labor as long as the financial return is equal.
The techniques and materials for making yarn paintings have proved remarkably stable over time. Change has come slowly. From time to time there have been experiments with new materials, such as plywood instead of wood, or thinner yarns. If an experiment is successful—which ultimately means that buyers approve of the innovation and buy it—then the artists incorporate the change into their repertoires.
Boards and Sizes
Most artists cut their boards in standard sizes and shapes out of a sheet of plywood. A square that is 24” (60 cm) on each side is a standard size. This may be divided into four smaller squares of 12” x 12” (30 x 30 cm) or nine squares of 8” x 8” (20 x 20 cm). The most common shapes are squares, each of whose sides is 6”(15 cm), 8” (20 cm), 12”, (30 cm), 17 ¾” (45 cm), 24” (60 cm), or 48” (120 cm). Another common shape is a rectangle, which can be 24” x 48” (60 x 120 cm) or 12” x 17 ¾” (30 x 45 cm). A large yarn painting can be as much as three or five yards (meters) long, but this is rare. Such large paintings, most often found in museums or governmental offices, may have been commissioned for exhibition or an institutional sale.
Some artists work on circular boards. This is a less economical shape to cut out of a sheet of plywood, since there is more waste, and it is harder to cut. Therefore, circles tend to be used more at the upper end of the art market. If particular buyers request circular paintings, artists will make them because they know the price they will bring.
The circle, square, and rectangle are the only shapes I have seen sold commercially. The artists do not seem to make commercial paintings in other shapes, such as ovals or irregular shapes. In contrast, the sacred offerings may be made in irregular shapes, such as the oval and bottle-shaped forms collected by Lumholtz and Zingg (Berrin 1978, 152–153).
There has been little change in the backing material since Soto Soria’s early experiments with wooden planks. Most artists use three-ply plywood, fiberboard, or Masonite board. Older paintings in museums were made on the same materials. In general, the better artists work almost exclusively on plywood. It is artists selling in the souvenir market who use cheaper or poorer-quality backings, such as Masonite.
Most artists sell their paintings unframed. Some artists put a rough frame on the back, one consisting of long, thin strips of wood nailed onto the backing. The roughly square strips measure from half an inch to an inch (one to two centimeters) on each side. The strips strengthen the plywood and keep it from warping. However, they add to the weight and cost of the painting, so few artists use them. Artists who take their paintings to market themselves may have to carry them on a bus and from store to store to sell them. These artists are not inclined to increase the paintings’ weight by adding a frame.
Mixed Media
Occasionally, the Huichol use other materials in their paintings, such as a small round commercial mirror set into the wax. The mirrors can be purchased cheaply in Mexican markets. They are the same as the mirrors used by the shamans for divination. An embedded mirror emphasizes the nierika concept of the yarn painting as an image seen in a shaman’s mirror.
Some artists fill in small sections of their paintings with beads. Mixing beads and yarn is an old practice, also found in sacred offerings (Lumholtz 1900, fig. 8). In 2000, I saw some experimental paintings that included feathers and snakeskins. The dealer told me they had been made by a Huichol from Zitacua. If so, the mixed media could reflect the influence of José Benĺtez and his contacts within the art world. It is quite possible that a visiting artist or dealer suggested using these materials.
Fig. 8.2. Unknown artist, wooden log drum with yarn-painted decoration, c. 1994. Wooden drum, yarn, beeswax, deer-hide cover, feathers, huastecomate gourd, wooden sticks (possibly brazilwood). The yarn cross or god’s eye (tsikürü), a rattle, and a shaman’s plume are all used in the Drum Ceremony. The shaman plays the drum and symbolically flies the spirits of the young children to Wirikuta. Photo credit: Hope MacLean.
Yarn painting is also used on other bases, such as gourd bowls, masks, drums, and animal sculptures made of wood or papier-mâché. This is partly due to the explosion of interest in Huichol beaded sculpture since the 1990s. The art market values novelty, so dealers and the Huichol are constantly searching for new objects to bead. Sometimes these objects are yarn-painted instead. However, the beads are far more popular with tourists, so the yarn-painted versions are less common.
Texts and Signatures
Yarn paintings often have the text of a legend or s
tory written in Spanish on the back. Some have text written in Huichol. In paintings I examined in the 1990s, only those by a few artists—mainly, Cresencio Pérez Robles and José Benĺtez Sánchez—had text routinely written in Huichol. Occasionally, one also sees paintings with text written in English. Very rarely will the person who wrote the text sign his or her own name.
Most Huichol born before 1950 had little or no schooling and are illiterate. Artists born after 1950 are more likely to have at least some basic literacy, while artists who reached school age by the 1970s or later are more likely to have at least some elementary school. (It should be remembered that in Mexico, especially in rural areas, illiteracy is still widespread and that few adults have more than a sixth-grade education.) A few Huichol have completed secondaria (ninth grade) or even preparatoria (equivalent to a high school diploma). Only since the 1990s has it become possible for Huichol to attend college.
Most artists dictate the meaning of their paintings to a person who can write. I have met only a few Huichol artists who can comfortably write the meaning of their paintings legibly and grammatically. Some can sign their name, while others cannot.
It is often difficult to read the text of yarn paintings, even for Spanish speakers. It is quite typical to find little or no punctuation and many run-on sentences. Spelling may be phonetic rather than standard, such as “asea” for “hacia,” or “pellote” for “peyote.” Some words are from rural Mexican dialects, such as “macuche” for “tobacco,” or “ocote” (from the Nahuatl “ocotl”) for “pine.” Others are Spanish terms that have special meanings for Huichol; for example, Huichol use the word “tendedera,” which can be translated as “drying blanket” (Knox and Maud 1980, n.p. [14]), for an itari, the mat that the shaman spreads on the ground as an altar during a ceremony.
Paintings are rarely dated. Some show the place of manufacture. It seems mainly to be several artists from San Andrés, as well as José Benĺtez and his apprentices, who make a point of writing the place and date. A few artists note their communities of origin and write that the paintings were made by a Huichol or indigenous artist.
It is not always straightforward to discover which artist made a painting. Huichol artists often use variations of their names when signing a painting; for example, the following signatures were represented in one collection (Knox and Maud 1980): Guadalupe Barajaz de la Cruz, Lirma Guadalupe Barojo de la Cruz, Guadalupe Baroja del Naranjo, Lirma Guadalupe Baroja del Naranjo. All these signatures refer to the same person.
A related problem is that the person who signs a painting or sells it is not always the person who made it. Sometimes a wife will make a painting, but give it to her husband to sign and sell. Sometimes an artist will ask another Huichol to sell it, and then that vendor is the one who will sign it. Usually, these cases can be sorted out when one has a good collection of a particular artist’s work and can compare painting styles to signers. Often, an artist will have what is almost a recognizable trademark or style when painting a particular item, such as a peyote or a bird; however, it helps to watch while the work is being done or to have some paintings whose provenance is clearly known. The samples can then be compared to other works to determine who the artist might be.
Many Huichol seem to see nothing wrong with the practice of one person making the painting and another signing it. As far as they are concerned, signatures have little meaning. They know little about the Western world’s interest in authorship or copyright. Some artists who are more familiar with the Western art world may understand the importance of signatures in Western eyes. For example, the artist José Benĺtez Sánchez and his apprentices seem to sign their works separately. However, other artists sign the work their wives or apprentices do.
Perhaps unwittingly, some dealers foster the practice of one person making art while another signs it. Some dealers consider Huichol art to be folk art, which, by definition, they consider anonymous. They do not want to buy signed paintings. Therefore, the Huichol take their paintings to market unsigned and ask at the time of sale whether the dealer wants it signed. If the dealer wants a signature, and the seller is not the real artist, the seller’s name may still end up on the work.
Huichol Artists’ Technical Criteria
The Huichol’s aesthetic criteria can be deduced by looking at one of the most basic aspects of a yarn painting: what constitutes skill in making yarn paintings at a technical level. I will rely on comments made by Guadalupe de la Cruz Rĺos and her family when they assessed a yarn painting by an inexperienced artist.
Lupe’s first comment was “Los colores quedan bien” (Sp.: The colors match well). She and her family then launched into a critique of the painter’s basic skills, such as how the yarn and wax were applied. In a well-made yarn painting, the wax is spread smoothly on the board, without lumps or gaps, so that the yarn will adhere well. The yarn should be laid on evenly so that the strands are neat and lie tightly alongside one another. There should be no gaps between the yarn, nor any yarn lifting off the wax. If a yarn painting is well made at this basic level, the Huichol will then go on to assess its other qualities. However, if it is poorly made technically, it will be judged deficient and not fit to sell, no matter how good its design or colors may be.
These comments also suggest that there is a hierarchy of skills in making yarn paintings. The Huichols’ aesthetic judgments may be based on their perception of this feature. The first level is the technical skill of using the materials correctly.
The second level of technical skill is how to use colors well. In Lupe’s words, the colors should “quedan bien.” A yarn painting with poor color use would be judged deficient. This evaluation was echoed by the artist Chavelo González, who told me that it wasn’t hard for someone to learn the physical technique of yarn painting, but that it had taken him years to learn to combine the colors well.
Their comments pointed toward what I had already suspected in looking at yarn paintings, namely, that color played an extremely important role in Huichol aesthetics. In the next chapter, I will begin to explore what color means in Huichol spiritual philosophy and in yarn painting.
9
the colors speak
Yarn painting, embroidery, weaving, beadwork—all Huichol arts use vivid colors. The Huichol use color with a bravado matched by few cultures around the world. Their love of colors is particularly evident in the clothes they wear. A well-dressed Huichol man in fiesta gear wears a rainbow of colors—an embroidered suit and cape, several multicolored woven bags slung over his shoulders, several more woven belts around his waist, a belt of little embroidered pockets with bright red tassels bouncing around his hips, beadwork bracelets and pendants, and a sombrero encircled with beadwork dangles and covered with multicolored feathers.
A love of colorful clothing has deep pan-Mesoamerican roots. Aztec women wore clothing with embroidery and painting of flowers and imperial eagles (Durán 1964, 128–129), designs still used by the Huichol today. According to Vogt (1969, 107), the Maya were extraordinarily interested in clothes, and used them as a marker of social status and community of origin.
For the Huichol, brightly colored clothing is clearly a key aesthetic value. Unlike Westerners, the Huichol do not hang art on their walls; instead, decoration of the person is one of their most beloved art forms. The clothes a person wears are a walking advertisement for personal skill in manipulating color and design. The main manufacturers are often women, who demonstrate their skill in weaving and embroidery in the clothing worn by their husbands and children.1
Yarn paintings too celebrate the Huichol love of color. The artists seem fearless in their use of strong colors in a wide variety of combinations, yet somehow it all works. The paintings do not seem garish or ugly.
I asked the artists how they use color in yarn paintings, whether some theory governs their color use, and whether their use of color has any relationship to shamanism. One theory is that Huichol interest in color is linked to their religion and, in particular, t
o peyote. Many people who eat peyote report seeing brilliant colors and vibrating patterns. This type of peyote experience seems to resemble the shifting geometric shapes and colors seen through a kaleidoscope. According to Eger Valadez (1978, 47, 51) and Schaefer (1990, 127), Huichol artists value these colors and patterns and try to reproduce them in their weaving and embroidery. My own Huichol consultants have told me they saw embroidery patterns while eating peyote.
Nevertheless, despite the antiquity of peyote use in Huichol culture, the use of a rainbow of colors in yarn paintings and other Huichol crafts seems to be recent. Samples of Huichol clothing collected by Lumholtz in the 1890s and Zingg in the 1930s include some dyed colors, such as orange, gold, yellow, blue, green, and navy blue. However, most clothing used red and black for embroidery, and natural white, brown, and black wool for weaving. Lumholtz (1902, 2:219) commented that the Huichol obtained red by unraveling red blankets sold to them by Mexicans.
This limited color use is confirmed by a report from Captain G. F. Lyon, a British traveller who visited Bolaños in the 1820s and who described the clothing of some Huichol he saw selling salt in the marketplace:
The dress of the Indians was principally of a coarse blue or brown woollen of their own manufacture, formed into a short tunic, belted at the waist and hanging a little way down before and behind. Many had no other clothing of any kind; but the breeches of the few who wore them, were of ill-dressed deer-or goat-skin. . . . The men wore round the waist or over their shoulder several large woollen bags, woven into neat and very ornamental patterns . . . [and hats] bound round with a narrow garter-shaped band of prettily woven woollen, of various colors and having long pendant tassels. (1828, 293–294)
