The Shaman's Mirror

by Hope MacLean

  » Gallery owners in Mexico. The Mexican galleries are more diverse. Some gallery owners are similar to the expatriate private dealers in their connoisseurship and the quality of the paintings they are interested in. They have longstanding patrón relationships with particular artists. Some gallery owners regard Huichol art as one among many Mexican craft commodities, similar to Talavera pottery or Guerrero masks. These gallery owners move with buyers’ trends, selling whichever crafts and artists are currently popular. Most galleries are owned by businesspeople who are Mexican nationals. A few galleries are owned by expatriates or employ expatriates who can speak tourists’ languages. Some galleries are outlets for governmental agencies, such as the Nayarit or Jalisco state governments, or FONART, the Mexican craft-development agency. The governmental outlets are usually staffed by clerks who know little about the Huichol or their art. The goods are supplied by a central buying agency, and sometimes the central buyers know more about the Huichol than the gallery workers do. The governmental outlets tend to sell the cheapest Huichol art, usually made in volume by “folk art” artists; they also sell cheap Huichol-inspired souvenirs, such as pencils with god’s eyes attached, beaded key rings, or pillows and napkins with coarse cross-stitch embroidery in Huichol designs. Some of the souvenirs may be made by Huichol; others are made by mestizos. In the past, governmental agencies attempted to foster yarn painting through projects such as the INI-sponsored school in Tepic during the 1960s or an instructional program in the Sierra during the 1970s. Now these agencies concentrate more on financing and marketing Huichol crafts rather than on teaching the Huichol what to make.

  » Time-share stores. Time-share is a system whereby buyers purchase the right to use a property for a specified time each year. Like many tourist resorts, Puerto Vallarta is a hotbed of time-share sales, combined with a booming real estate market. Time-share companies try to lure tourists into listening to a realestate sales pitch by offering discounts on tourist merchandise or outings. In Puerto Vallarta, several galleries, including a large “museum” on the Malecon, are actually time-share companies offering discounted Huichol art. The timeshare companies drive down the price of Huichol art because they sell it as a loss leader—a practice that ultimately reduces prices for both Huichol artists and other galleries.

  » Retail stores and galleries outside Mexico. Most of these purchase from wholesalers in Mexico that are either Mexican galleries or private dealers. A few gallery owners travel to Mexico to do their own buying directly from the Huichol.

  The United States is probably the largest market for yarn paintings outside Mexico, particularly in the Southwest and California. Yarn paintings are also sold in Canada, Japan, Germany, Austria, and other European countries. There are scholars from most of these countries working with the Huichol, and these scholars may help facilitate exhibitions and interest. Quite a few artists now go on tours outside Mexico to museums and galleries, and local exhibitions have become relatively common.

  There is a pyramid of sales and revenues, depending on the quality of the art and how well known the artist is. Top artists receive the highest prices by selling directly to buyers from foreign countries. Often, much or all of their production is commissioned in advance. Artists in the middle range sell to wholesale dealers for resale in foreign countries or to the better galleries in Mexico. Artists at the bottom level receive the lowest prices by selling to governmental outlets and lower-paying galleries in Mexico, or by selling directly to tourists on the street.

  To facilitate an understanding of the paintings and their markets, I have divided the market into categories. My categories were originally defined by René d’Harnoncourt in the 1930s for the marketing of Indian arts and crafts during the New Deal (Schrader 1983, 142–145); they were later adapted by Parezo (1991, 164–70) in her study of Navajo sand painting. These categories are useful because they set Huichol art into a historical framework that can be generalized to other Native arts and crafts, and more broadly to ethnic and tourist arts as a whole.

  D’Harnoncourt segmented the market for Native arts and crafts into three groups: fine art, gift and home decoration, and tourist souvenirs. The fine-art market was the high end: objects that were rare or of high aesthetic value, made by highly skilled artists. The main buyers were collectors and museums. The gift and home-decoration market consisted of well-made, useful objects that were constructed of good-quality materials and designed to last. The tourist-souvenir market was the low end: inexpensive, mass-produced objects usually bought by tourists for their emotional associations, such as souvenirs or mementos of a trip.

  Each category required its own marketing strategy. For example, fine-art objects could be displayed in a gallery setting, on pedestals, with little ethnographic detail. They commanded high prices that fewer buyers were able to pay. Thus, they served mainly to create demand among the general public and to show what indigenous artists were capable of.

  Tourist souvenirs could be sold at low prices to a mass market. They were not to be mixed with better-quality objects in displays, because they would pull down prices and encourage buyers to think of all Native arts as cheap, poorly made, and disposable. The midlevel had the greatest potential for market expansion, which would generate good revenue for the artists while supplying consumers with products they would be proud to own.

  I have adapted D’Harnoncourt’s categories to reflect the design of yarn paintings. I have used price as a rough indicator of value only, quoting all prices in U.S. dollars in order to make them comparable. In reality, there is a considerable range of prices, since paintings are sold in both U.S. dollars and Mexican pesos and at both wholesale and retail prices.

  Fine-art yarn paintings are those made by top artists, who have become famous in their own right. These artists may have had personal gallery exhibitions and toured other countries. Their paintings are usually of very high quality, both in design and workmanship. They exhibit unique and recognizable styles as well as superb color use. Their styles are often copied by their own apprentices and other artists. This category includes very large, elaborate paintings, such as those made for museums or institutions. The paintings in this category can range from 24” x 24” (60 x 60 cm) to several yards (meters) in length. The prices range from about $500 to $10,000 or more.

  Souvenir yarn paintings are small, less than 12” x 12” (30 x 30 cm). Some are as small as 4” x 4” (10 x 10 cm). The paintings are often unsigned, or if they are signed, the artist is not well known. An experienced artist might be able to produce one or two paintings of this type a day. Prices range from about $5 to $50. Parezo described Navajo sand paintings that are made with stencils and produced at a rate of sixty a day; there is nothing comparable to this for yarn paintings. Even the simplest yarn paintings use freehand designs, and the comparatively time-consuming method of pressing the yarn ensures that the artists cannot make more than a few a day.

  The gift and home-decoration paintings are larger, ranging from about 12” x 12” (30 x 30 cm) to 24” x 24” (60 x 60 cm), and the designs are more elaborate than those used for souvenir paintings. Paintings take up to a week to make, depending on yarn thickness and the amount of detail they include. The artist usually signs the painting, and the dealers usually know something about the artists. Some artists are quite well known among dealers, and buyers may request paintings by a particular artist. Other artists are shadowy figures whom dealers know little more about than their names or communities of origin. Paintings in the midrange usually sell from about $50 to $1,000.

  Recent Trends

  Several trends have affected the market for Huichol art since the 1990s. The Tepehuane, another indigenous group, has begun to sell yarn paintings. Huichol beadwork has experienced explosive growth in popularity. There have been abortive efforts to start artist cooperatives. There has been a resurgence of interest in yarn painting among younger Huichol artists, some of whom are testing other media for paintings. Finally, e-commerce is now having a major influ
ence on the price and availability of Huichol art.

  Tepehuane Art

  In 1994, the Tepehuane began making yarn paintings. The Tepehuane speak a Uto-Aztecan language closely related to Pima and Papago. They live north of the Huichol, in northern Nayarit and Durango. They have a different culture from the Huichol, but share some customs, such as shamanic ceremonies and curing. They use macuche (wild tobacco) in their ceremonies rather than peyote, and do not go on peyote pilgrimages. They do not use yarn paintings as offerings in their traditional culture.

  In 1994, Gabriel Bautista Cervantes, a young Tepehuane man whose family had moved to Tepic, observed the success that the Huichol were having as yarn painters. He made several paintings and offered them for sale to the shops run by the Nayarit government. I met him there and photographed his first paintings, which depicted Tepehuane subjects. His color use was very different from that of the Huichol, although the technique and materials were the same.

  By 1996, Gabriel and his twelve brothers and sisters were making yarn paintings, and his mother and father sold them. By 2002, some of the spouses of the twelve siblings were also making paintings. By 2005, the women in the family were still making yarn paintings, but some of the young men had turned to higher-paying waged jobs.

  The family sold within Mexico and wholesaled to dealers internationally. They were considerably more skilled at commerce than many Huichol artists and learned how to package and ship through international couriers such as DHL. They carried a range of products at different price points, everything from tiny inexpensive paintings to huge murals. They yarn-painted bas-relief plaques with suns or sun-moon eclipses and constantly evolved new products and tested them to see whether they would sell. By 2007, the family had a network of international buyers and were exporting paintings to Guatemala, Japan, and Europe. They were shifting their business model to making paintings to order rather than on speculation, then hoping to sell it.

  The color use and subject matter of Tepehuane paintings have changed over time. Gabriel’s first paintings used earth tones such as greens and browns, highlighted by oranges—which is not a color combination commonly used by Huichol. By 1996, some Tepehuane paintings were direct copies of those by Huichol artists such as José Benĺtez Sánchez. Other paintings had Tepehuane subjects. By 2005, the Tepehuane were turning out repetitive paintings with variations on the eclipse theme, such as suns and moons with human faces. They mixed astrological elements with a repertoire of Tepehuane symbols, such as deer, hummingbirds, prayer arrows, or sacred tobacco, and with depictions of ceremonies or curing. They turned out so many paintings that there was a great deal of repetition. Most were small paintings made for the souvenir market or the low end of the gift market. However, I have seen some large paintings that could be considered fine art and that use original subject matter based in Tepehuane culture.

  Fig. 14.1. Bautista Cervantes family, yarn painting, 2000. 12” x 12” (30 x 30 cm). This group of Tepehuane began to make yarn paintings in the 1990s. Photo credit: Adrienne Herron.

  The Tepehuane have a different color sense than the Huichol. Their colors seem more “acid” and harder edged than the Huichol’s. Huichol colors seem softer and more blended. The Tepehuane told me that they prefer to use only fuerte colors rather than the mix of fuerte and bajito colors preferred by the Huichol. Their mass-produced work relies heavily on bright, primary red, blue, and yellow.

  The Tepehuane art is genuinely indigenous, and interesting in its own right. For this reason, I have followed it since the beginning and will continue to document it. It is a case of an art adopted from another culture that is now becoming integrated into the culture of this particular family. For example, several young Tepehuane women asserted to me that yarn painting was an art form of both the Tepehuane and the Huichol, but that only the Huichol made beadwork. (The Tepehuane have had no interest in beads.) To my knowledge, this one family in Tepic is still the only group of Tepehuanes who make yarn paintings. It will be interesting to see whether, over time, the art spreads to other Tepehuane, such as those still living in northern Nayarit and Durango.

  One concern is the effect of Tepehuane yarn paintings on the market for Huichol art. The Tepehuane have generally priced their work lower than that of the average Huichol artist, and much less than what the best Huichol artists command. Generally, their art is priced at the high end of the souvenir and folk-art market. Some unscrupulous dealers have capitalized on the popularity of Huichol art by selling Tepehuane art as Huichol. At one time, a good deal of the so-called Huichol art sold on the Internet had been made by the Tepehuane, and it is still quite common to see this confusion on eBay.

  I questioned the sale of Tepehuane art as Huichol in a gallery in the United States. The owner told me that the gallery had bought Tepehuane paintings at a gift show from a wholesaler who claimed that the Tepehuane were extensively intermarried with the Huichol and that therefore there was little difference between the two tribes. This was not true, since the only Tepehuane who made yarn paintings were from one family in Tepic, and that family has not intermarried with the Huichol at all. Buyers in the United States who have purchased Tepehuane art represented as Huichol may have recourse under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, which requires art to be truthfully labelled by the tribal affiliation of the producers (Indian Arts and Crafts Association 1999, 116).

  Tepehuane paintings can usually be distinguished from Huichol paintings by the writing on the back or by the drawing style and color use. The Tepehuane often (though not always) write “cultura tepehuane” or “arte tepehuane” on the back of their paintings. Moreover the family’s name is Bautista Cervantes.1 (There are Huichol with the surname Bautista, but not Bautista Cervantes). Any art signed with either of these is almost certainly Tepehuane, not Huichol.

  The Tepehuane produce a large volume of paintings. They may be selling almost as many yarn paintings as the Huichol themselves, particularly smaller paintings (12” x 12” [30 x 30 cm] or smaller). This is because many Huichol artists do not do yarn painting full time and may produce only a limited number of paintings a year. In addition, Huichol paintings are often larger and of better quality. And finally, many Huichol now do beadwork rather than yarn painting, for reasons explored below. Hence, the Tepehuane have become significant suppliers of the market for yarn painting.

  Beadwork

  During the 1990s, there was an explosion of interest in Huichol beadwork, especially beads applied with wax to sculptural shapes. When I first went to Mexico, I saw only a few kinds of beaded items, such as small gourd bowls and carved wooden snakes. Both of these grew out of objects used as religious offerings. More spectacular were carved wooden jaguar heads covered with beads. One dealer told me that the idea of beading jaguar heads had been invented by a dealer in the early 1980s. He bought jaguar heads in Guerrero and asked the Huichol to bead them.

  Fig. 14.2. A Huichol artist using a needle to apply beads to a wooden eclipse plaque while waiting for customers in the plaza of Tepic, 2005. Photo credit: Hope MacLean.

  In the 1990s, beads of all kinds became popular in the North American market, and film stars such as Goldie Hawn were photographed wearing beaded running shoes. Huichol beadwork was pulled along by this market trend, and became enormously popular. There was competitive pressure on dealers to find new and original items that no one else had. Dealers began giving the Huichol exotic items to bead, such as fanciful wooden masks carved in Guerrero, reproductions of pre-Columbian pottery, gigantic wooden jaguar statues, masks a yard (meter) long, and the real skulls of bulls, antelope, and deer. Dealers brought in wooden and papier-mâché animal forms from all over the world, including such non-Mexican animals as giraffes and elephants. Small beaded animals made on an assembly line filled the stores. Some stores even sold beaded dime-store knickknacks, such as beaded ceramic clown figures. Interior designers hired Huichol artists to bead the living room furniture of wealthy clients. Perhaps one of the oddest bead projects was a set of bea
ded carved penises that a homosexual client requested from a dealer for use as Christmas presents.

  The Huichol seem to have no spiritual qualms about beading almost any item a dealer suggests. They cheerfully bead any surface given to them. Perhaps they do not see the underlying object as important unless it is something with religious meaning in Huichol culture, such as snakes or bowls. While beadwork designs such as those of corn, deer, or the nierika do have symbolic meaning, the symbols do not confer sacred status on commercial objects.

  A spin-off from the baroque competition in beadwork has been an increased range of yarn-painted items. Artists and dealers experimented by using yarn painting on items that had been successfully marketed with beads. For example, yarn-painted bowls are somewhat common, as is the occasional yarn-painted mask or Huichol drum. I have seen yarn painting successfully used on papier-mâché deer sculptures, carved wooden jaguar heads, and eclipse (sun-moon) plaques. However, this generally seems to happen more often at the high end of the market, where the products are unique, one-of-a-kind objects sold in galleries. I have seen few Huichol-made, mass-produced, yarn-painted items comparable to the assembly-line beaded animals.2 Nor have I seen yarn painting used on the wide and eccentric assortment of items given to the Huichol to bead.