by Hope MacLean
7
footprints of the founders
The birth of many indigenous art forms is lost in time, and so we know little about their evolution. This is not so for Huichol yarn paintings. Because the origins of commercial yarn painting are so recent, it is still possible to trace the footprints of its founders. We can ask such questions as who were the innovative artists? How did popular themes and designs originate? How did unique and recognizable styles arise? With some detective work, it is still possible to find and interview the original artists or those who knew them. Through collections of yarn paintings—some published in catalogues, some in museums or in private hands—we can trace the point at which new ideas may have entered the yarn-painting repertoire.1
Little has been written about the evolution of yarn painting, and so my research is a first attempt at reconstructing a history. It is not always possible to be precise. Sometimes one can say only that a particular theme seems to have entered the repertoire during a certain decade, since that theme does not appear in earlier paintings. New information, or the emergence of new collections, could change the chronology and bring into focus other significant artists.
The 1970s and 1980s saw a steady growth in Huichol art. Here, I look at three artists who have been particularly influential for the development of yarn painting: Eligio Carrillo Vicente, José Benĺtez Sánchez, and Mariano Valadez. Their influence is due to several factors. Cumulatively, their careers spanned more than forty years. They taught many family members and apprentices and so passed on their styles and knowledge to others. They developed unique and recognizable styles, which make their own work readily identifiable. And they innovated designs that are creative blends of traditional offerings and modern painting techniques.
Eligio Carrillo Vicente
Eligio Carrillo Vicente began his artistic career in about 1970. He is now considered by some dealers to be one of the best yarn painters because he has been consistently creative and innovative over many years. I introduced Eligio as one of my principal consultants in Chapter 1 and transcribed sections of a long interview with him in Chapter 5. Here I discuss his background, his art, and his influence.
Eligio’s Huichol name is Ruturi, which means a “flower offering” (Lumholtz 1900, 202), such as the paper flower tied to the horns of a bull before it is sacrificed. Eligio’s family came from San Andrés. They left during the Mexican Revolution and settled near the Santiago River. Eligio’s father, Sidoro Carrillo, had one family with his first wife. He then married a second wife, with whom he had six boys and one girl, including Eligio. Eligio was probably born sometime during the 1930s. He grew up in Colorĺn, the community that was also home to the Rĺos family. Eligio spoke only Huichol and never attended school as a child. Both of Eligio’s grandfathers were mara’akate. His family practiced Huichol ceremonies, and his parents made pilgrimages to Wirikuta.
The Carrillo family had a number of boys, and the Rĺos family had many girls, so Eligio and several of his brothers married Rĺos girls. Eligio is married to Jacinta Rĺos, a granddaughter of Don José Rĺos. (Eligio has had other wives as well, but Jacinta insists that she is the only one he married legally in a church.) In about 1970, Eligio moved to Tepic, where he met Ramón Medina and saw his yarn paintings for the first time. Enchanted by Ramón’s paintings, he resolved to become an artist. He bought some boards, started to make little paintings according to his own ideas, and sold them in the shops in Tepic. Ramón Medina then asked Eligio to become his compadre. Eligio had a young son, and Ramón offered to be his godfather. Then Ramón invited Eligio to work with him at his house and offered to pay him as an assistant. A week later, Ramón was killed at a fiesta.
Lupe asked Eligio to stay on with her and help fill an order for eighty yarn paintings. She had photographs of Ramón’s paintings, which she asked him to copy. (This may be the collection that was purchased by the San Diego Museum of Man at about this time.) Eligio lived in Lupe’s house, working with her for about a year. Then he left and worked on his own.
Subsequently, Eligio sold his art through American dealers, including Prem Das and Brant Secunda, who is now a leader of shamanic workshops. Eligio made two gallery tours to the United States and Canada in about 1977 and 1978. He remembers going to San Francisco, Las Vegas, Santa Fe, New York, Chicago, and a city in Canada that may have been Vancouver, since he remembers that there were large snow-capped mountains. Since then, he has stayed in Mexico. Thanks to constant orders from dealers, he is able to sell everything he produces, which is a considerable volume of paintings.
Family members and apprentices help him, although he says that he draws the designs and directs which colors to use. He has shared his knowledge with a number of younger painters in the Santiago River region. Among those who have been influenced by his style are Modesto Rivera Lemus, Evaristo Dĺaz Benĺtez, Cristóbal González, and David González Sánchez as well as Eligio’s son, Guarencio Carrillo Rĺos.
Eligio has shamanic abilities, developed through pilgrimages with Don José Rĺos Matsuwa (Lupe’s mother’s brother); he regards Don José as one of his main teachers of shamanism. When I first met Eligio, he was circumspect in telling me what he knew. When I asked whether he was a mara’akame, he answered only that he knew “some things.” Later, a Huichol friend who was listening while I transcribed the tape pointed out that he was actually telling me that he knew a great deal when he said that.
A few years afterward, Eligio told me that when he went to Wirikuta, he never asked the gods to make him a shaman, but only to give him the ability to paint well. He became visionary and said that the gods taught him designs. Curing abilities have come to him after many years of making pilgrimages. In Huichol terms, he might be considered a “minor” or “junior” shaman. He told me that his shamanic curing abilities are limited to children’s diseases, which is considered an intermediate stage along a progression of curing abilities.
Manuela de la Cruz Rĺos described to me the stages of curing ability. She said that first one gains the ability to see inside the body and to see what looks like a fly or moth circling around in the belly. Then the gods may tell the novice shaman what to do about it. Curing children’s diseases comes next, and some people spend years at this stage. The final stage is to be able to cure all forms of disease.
Eligio has the character of a natural philosopher, a person who is both curious and articulate about the mystical side of life. His explanations of the deeper meanings of his paintings far exceed those given to me by other painters, as do his explanations of shamanic cosmology. One example is his interpretation of sacred colors as a language that the gods use to communicate. Interestingly, he has none of Ramón Medina’s flair for telling mythological stories, such as the origin myths so well documented by Furst; in fact, Eligio seems somewhat bored by myths and, if asked, usually tells rather truncated versions. What he prefers to discuss is the world as the shaman sees it, and the activities of the gods and spirits.
Eligio has a distinctive drawing style. He draws elongated stick-figure shamans with flat hats and stick-figure deer. His apprentices copy his distinctive drawings, so it is easy to identify those who have worked with him. But what sets Eligio’s paintings apart from others is a diamond-hard sense of color. His paintings have a sharpness of color contrast and a range of color use and invention that are exceptional. This assessment is echoed by some Huichol. When I showed a number of photographs of yarn paintings to some Huichol in San Andrés, they almost unanimously selected Eligio’s work as the best. When I asked why, they said the reason was how he combined his colors.
The Mandala Nierika
Eligio Carrillo may be the originator of a basic yarn painting design that I have called the “mandala” nierika. This design does not appear in any of the collections from the 1960s or 1970s that I examined. The earliest painting I found that uses the design is a painting made by Eligio Carrillo in the late 1970s or early 1980s, now in a private collection.
The modern mandal
a nierika resembles an oriental mandala. It is symmetrical and formal, with a repetitive design. The outside shape is usually round. There is a main central figure, which may also be round. Often there are radiating rays or shapes around one or both circular figures. Around the circumference are repeated designs, which may signify deities or religious concepts.
The mandala nierika is based on a design that is fundamental to traditional Huichol arts, such as the circular stone god disk, with its central hole, or “eye,” surrounded by rays and symbols important to the deity (Lumholtz 1900, 26, 28). Similar designs are found on front-shields (108–134), gourd-shell votive bowls, (161–168), and woven or embroidered bags, such as a large bag with a single large figure in the center and smaller surrounding figures (Berrin 1978, 201, lower left and right).
Modern versions of the mandala nierika often add the concept of multicolored radiating energies, which does not appear in traditional Huichol art or offerings. This image may have its roots in Ramón Medina’s painting of his fire vision (P. Furst 1968–1969, 23). Ramón showed kupuri as multicolored, radiating lines of energy, but did not use the symmetrical circular form. The depiction of multicolored radiating energy was widely adopted by other artists during the 1970s. From there, it was only a step to combine the circle form and the idea of radiating energy. The result is a painting that is very close to abstract art. The mandala nierikate are almost pure color and shape, without the narrative content of the myth-telling yarn paintings.
Even more sophisticated are Eligio’s large compositions. He often still uses the central circular image with repeating figures. However, he spreads a variety of images and figures around it in a way that is reminiscent of the variety of animal figures around the circumference of stone disks. Most characteristic is the sophisticated color interplay, including a different colored background behind each figure. It takes great control to use such a wide range of colors in single composition and have them work harmoniously. Moreover, he seems to have almost endless inventiveness. He can repeat this process of color combining with an entirely new palette of colors in each painting. Few other artists use color with such virtuosity.
José Benĺtez Sánchez
One of the most important artists who emerged during the 1970s is José Benĺtez Sánchez; his Huichol name is Yucauye Kukame, which means “Silent Walker.” Benĺtez began as a young folk artist in the 1960s, but by the 1970s had become an international star, partly because of his own talent, but thanks also to enormous help from his patrón, Juan Negrĺn Fetter. Negrĺn organized exhibitions in Mexico and internationally and published articles and catalogues featuring Benĺtez.
I wanted to interview Benĺtez in 1994. An official of the INI drove me up to Zitacua to introduce us. Night was falling as the government pickup struggled up a potholed road that seemed to go straight up a mountainside. We arrived at a plaza with a large, round, thatched-roof Huichol temple. The lights of Tepic glistened far below. The fiesta of the Virgin of Guadalupe was under way, and people were carrying a large portrait of the Virgin out of the temple. A group of women stood on one side, holding lighted candles. A corps of Huichol violinists began playing their shrill-sounding violins. Quickly, a parade formed, and the women and the violinists escorted the Virgin through the muddy streets of Zitacua. As we followed behind, the INI official urged me to keep well back so as to show respect for the Huichol.
After the ceremony, the INI official introduced me to Benĺtez, who agreed to do an interview and asked me to come back the next morning. When I returned, he wanted a substantial payment for the interview. I was not paying other Huichols for talking to me, and so I was concerned about setting a precedent. In addition, it was more money than I felt I could manage as a graduate student on a limited budget. Regretfully, I decided that I could not afford to pay for the interview; therefore, my accounts of Benĺtez since then have relied on the published record about him and his paintings.
Furst (2003, 12–15) provides a brief biography of Benĺtez based on an account in a Mexican book, Aguamilpas (1994), but cautions that Benĺtez has given different versions of his life story to different people. I have supplemented it with the version given by Juan Negrĺn (1975, 28–29) and Olivia Kindl (2005, 57–59). Benĺtez was born in 1938. His father was a mara’akame from San Sebastián, and his mother came from Santa Catarina. He was raised by his maternal grandfather, Pascal Benĺtez, a mara’akame. As a teenager, he left the Sierra and went to the coast to work in the fields. During the 1960s, Benĺtez got a job with the INI office in Tepic. He started by sweeping floors, and then he was given the responsibility of buying handicrafts. He credited Salomón Nahmad, the director of the INI office, with encouraging him to make yarn paintings and other crafts for sale through the INI. In 1968, he was invited to perform Huichol music and dances at the Olympic Games in Mexico City. For the next three years, he headed a workshop on Huichol dance and tutored artists under the sponsorship of INBA (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, or National Institute of Fine Arts). Then he returned to the INI to run a program to select authentic Huichol crafts.
According to Lupe, Benĺtez was a cousin of Ramón Medina through relatives in San Sebastián, and he began his career as a yarn painter by working with Ramón. Later, he worked for the INI school of yarn painting in Tepic while Miguel Palafox Vargas was the director, and she said the two were close friends.
Juan Negrĺn first met Benĺtez in Tepic in 1972; they were introduced by Cresencio Pérez Robles (Negrĺn 1975, 26–27). Benĺtez was teaching other artists to make yarn paintings. Benĺtez told Negrĺn that he was not yet a shaman. Although he began the pilgrimages as a child of eight, his practice ended when he was married, at age fourteen. Nonetheless, Negrĺn considered him one of the most inventive and creative of the Huichol artists. Benĺtez’s work had already been exhibited in private galleries in the United States, but Negrĺn helped him by including his work in an important exhibition and the accompanying catalogue, entitled The Huichol Creation of the World. The exhibition featured work by Benĺtez and Tutukila, another important young artist. It was shown at the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento (6 December 1975–18 January 1976), then at the San José Museum of Art (5 May–6 June 1976). Negrĺn organized a series of exhibitions throughout the 1980s, both in Mexico and internationally, and published several catalogues. The later exhibitions featured Guadalupe González Rĺos, Juan Rĺos Martĺnez, and Pablo Taisan as well as Benĺtez and Tutukila (Negrĺn 1986).
By the 1990s, Benĺtez had formed an association with Celso Delgado, the governor of the state of Nayarit. Delgado was very supportive of the Huichol and made Zitacua available to the urban Huichol in Tepic as a place to live and hold their ceremonies. Benĺtez was appointed the first governor of Zitacua. He continued to live there, but by 2006 was no longer the governor. In 2010, I learned that he had recently died, apparently of heart failure (Jill Grady, personal communication).
Benĺtez worked with many apprentices. When I was doing my research in 1993–1994, he produced an enormous output of paintings, many of which were completed by apprentices, although he seems to have managed to control the quality and colors used.2 A number of artists have worked with him and adopted his style, including Maximino Renterĺa de la Cruz, Emilio de la Cruz Benĺtez, Eliseo Benĺtez Flores, Martĺn de la Cruz Dĺaz, and Ceferino Dĺaz Benĺtez.
In 1994, with the encouragement of Peter Furst, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology purchased a collection of paintings by Benĺtez from the collector Mark Lang. The museum exhibited the collection from 8 November 2003 to 31 March 2004, and Furst wrote a catalogue (2003), entitled Visions of a Huichol Shaman. It includes a short biography of Benĺtez and color reproductions of thirty-one paintings by him. According to Lang (personal communication), the paintings were made from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.
The paintings are a valuable addition to the record on this important Huichol artist, but their usefulness for research is limited because their meanings were no
t recorded. The collector, who assumed that Benĺtez was making art for art’s sake, did not insist on being given an interpretation. Furst wrote captions based on the imagery of the paintings, but Benĺtez’s own interpretations are not known (MacLean 2004). The lack of interpretation is unfortunate, since Huichol artists repeatedly told me that the meaning is an important part of a yarn painting and that it is a poor artist who cannot explain the meaning.
Lang also mentioned that he had commissioned Benĺtez to produce five “masterworks”—the best paintings he could do.3 The resulting paintings were surprisingly plain, with less color and less convoluted imagery than much of Benĺtez’s other work at the time. One is featured on the cover of Visions. Benĺtez’s reasons for considering it a masterwork were not recorded.
Benĺtez’s early paintings are in the style of Ramón Medina, with simple figures and clearly outlined images highlighted against solid-colored backgrounds (Berrin 1978, 155, 157, 158; Negrĺn 1979). I photographed one painting in a private collection, dating from the early 1970s, which is a variation on Ramón Medina’s painting of the sexual purification of dead souls. The paintings illustrate stories, and there is a clear relationship between each figure and its meaning.