I think Pasadena’s Norton Simon is by far the best art museum in Southern California. Its combination of exquisite curation and broad accessibility make it unparalleled. My dad took me there often when I was a little boy. And I loved it. In fact, two of the three images I had in my childhood bedroom were from the Norton Simon–a wild jungle scene with monkeys by Henri Rousseau and a playful Rembrandt portrait of a young boy who may or may not have been the Dutchman’s son Titus. (The third image was a properly framed reproduction of El Greco’s gloomy View of Toledo, but that’s a horse of a different–and darker–color.) But my thoughts turned to the Norton Simon today because one of its treasures–Francisco de Zurbarán’s Still Life with Lemons, Oranges, and a Rose–is on loan at the Prado Museum until June 30. Just this one extraordinarily simple, but precise and meditative painting was brought to Spain to hang with other Zurbarán masterpieces from the 17th Century. My dad had a poster of this work in the bedroom where he died. He bought it at the Norton Simon decades ago. So I came to the Prado as quickly as I could to see it, and I was so moved and grateful to see and feel my worlds converge so seamlessly.
Spain has the longest life expectancy of any country in the developed world with the exception of Japan. There are many theories as to why. The diet. The walking. The custom of complaining and cursing to let off steam. Those may all be factors. But I think it’s also because even the old folks routinely get out to meet their friends, gossip, have a drink or a snack. Two women in their eighties just entered the café where I’m spending this late afternoon to an affectionate chorus of “¡Hola chicas!”
April has been a busy month. I finished an 8,500-word essay I started researching way back in September, 2020. I took detours up to Paris and Frankfurt. Most importantly, I’ve been enjoying the beginnings of spring here in the Spanish capital. Sunday was a spectacularly beautiful day. The whole city seemed to be out and about. I felt like that was the first time I was able to exhale all month.
I’m particularly pleased that I’ve already begun to order books for my next essay. The optimistic part of me thinks I can write this in a year, but, heck, what’s the rush? That said, I’m finding that some of my most productive times intellectually are the lulls between my focused reading, those weeks and months that I’m able to veer off a particular project and just read whatever strikes my interest. My reading over the last six months has been particularly rich and varied. I started the year reading Malcolm Gaskill’s fascinating study of a 17th-century witch hunt in Springfield, Massachusetts, called The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World. Before that, I absolutely loved Zena Hitz’s wonderful Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. I’ve found a new hero in the late political theorist Judith Shklar. I particularly enjoyed her essays in Ordinary Vices and Redeeming American Political Thought. I very much look forwarding to tackling all her work in the next few years. Other favorites include Forrest McDonald’s Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution, Robin Corey’s The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, Jamal Greene’s How Rights Went Wrong, and Timur Kuran’s Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. I also read two popular books on the history and legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Todd Purdum’s An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Christopher Caldwell’s The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.
I will publish the new essay after it’s edited and I process feedback from some folks who are giving it a pre-read. Meantime, blue skies are luring me out into the streets and it’s about time to find a café table where I can watch the rest of the afternoon go by.
Los Tres Mulatos de Esmeraldas by Andrés Sánchez Galque, 1599
Madrid
On a gloomy afternoon a few days before Christmas, I snuck up to the Museo del Prado to catch another glimpse of an exquisite exhibition of Latin American art that was shipped to Spain during the glory days of the viceroyalties between the 16th and 18th centuries.
Tornaviaje (Return Journey)— a collection of a little more than 100 paintings, devotional objects, and furniture—has a subtle story to tell about the forgotten legacy of mestizaje in Spain. While the story of the mixing of cultures and peoples in the New World has been widely told—including by me—there’s been little attention paid to its influence at the center of the Spanish Empire itself. The exhibition, which closes on February 13, is perfectly timed. Two hundred years after it lost most of its overseas colonies, Spain is now coming to grips with the influx of hundreds of thousands racially mixed, Spanish-speaking, mostly Catholic Latin Americans over the past few decades. Not simply a part of its colonial past, mestizaje is now a firm part of Spain’s present and future. And not only in the big cities but in small towns throughout the country, you’ll meet dark-skinned Spanish citizens who were born in Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic.
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The return journey is not new, however. If you’ve ever been to Asturias in the north of Spain, you’ve seen those gorgeous old mansions built by Indianos. For centuries, Indiano was the term Spaniards used to refer to those lucky few who set off for the Indies, made their fortunes, and returned to flaunt it to all those who remained at home. The mansions standing today, some in better shape than others, were generally built in the 19th and early 20th century. Almost all of them still have a palm tree standing tall somewhere on the property. As if the size and ostentatious architectural style of these casonas were not enough to show off the owner’s status, the tree they planted on their grounds was a symbol of his worldliness.
Many of the items in the Prado exhibition were art works sent back to Spain by Indianos of earlier centuries. Some were shipped to Spain to decorate stately homes or were gifts to religious communities back home. They were commissioned by prominent Indianos in part to draw attention to the prestige they had attained abroad as well as to showcase the wonders of America. Many depict religious themes and iconography that had arrived from Spain and were painted or handcrafted by indigenous or mixed-race Americans using techniques and materials unknown in Spain such as feathers and corn stalk in figurative art. Others document distinctly American events and themes—post-conquest Mexico City, mulattos from Ecuador’s coastal Esmeraldas province, or the Virgen de Copacabana, the patron saint of Bolivia.
With the exception of their American themes, the art works could be mistaken as Spanish. And that’s the point of the exhibition. If you look closely, the items speak not only of conquest but of coexistence, adaptation, and hybridization.
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Two weeks ago, I met a man named Elkin at a park down my street. We talked as his two pre-teen daughters ran off to play with their friends. An Afro-Colombian who’s been in Spain for 12 years, he told me about his experience as an immigrant. Has he experienced racism in Spain? Absolutely. He gave me examples of the insults he’s endured. But then on reflection, he said it wasn’t so much different in Colombia. So what is different in Spain? Well, the language, the religion, so much of what he’s come to know here is not so foreign at all than what he knew back home. When pressed, he said he guesses the castellanos are a little “drier” and less friendly than Colombians. Otherwise, he’s completely at home here. I guess you could say that he, too, has made a return journey.
Before I head out to the market this morning, I thought I’d check in. I spend most of my days reading early American history–colonial Pennsylvania, the settlement of the Ohio River Valley, the cultural patterns in U.S. party politics. I now see what a huge advantage it is to think about America without having to ingest all of its nonsense daily. Meantime, my morning visits to the market here in Madrid have opened up a whole new world to me. Mostly, I enjoy meeting and learning from all the vendors. That reminds me, I promised to go see María the cheesemonger today. I’ll soon get around to posting a 5,000-word essay on New England cultural imperialism that I wrote a while back. Until, then, Cheers!
