Art: Saints from the Southwest

A stooping effigy of Jesus, with jointed arms hanging from a green cotton dress, had human hair on its head. A small naked statue, honored as a protector against syphilis, sat in a shrine made from an old oilcan. A portable sepulcher held a recumbent Christ, whose bloodstained jaw and neck could be moved puppetwise by strings. These crude but striking effigies formed part of an exhibition of Religious Folk Art of the Southwest which opened last week at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art.

Made from pine and cottonwood, decorated with paper flowers and covered with a crude gesso,* these bultos (figures carved in the round) and retablos (painted panels) of the Saints and Holy Family were vaguely reminiscent of medieval European art, utterly unlike anything else the U.S. has produced. They were done between 1725 and 1875 by humble priests and lay members of tiny churches in the poverty-stricken regions of Southern Colorado and New Mexico.

Most striking example shown last week was the Carreta de la Muerte—a “death cart” (see cut) in which a grinning skeleton with elongated wooden limbs sits upright with a bow & arrow poised for shooting. The cart was used in the Holy Week ceremonies of the Penitentes, a sect of zealots who flagellated and crucified themselves and each other, and which, although modified in ceremony, still exists in remote regions of New Mexico.

* A plaster made of native gypsum and animalglue on which colors are applied.