The Lives of Images
Peter MasonIn this work, the author examines the history of European representations of non-European peoples, using as his base four case studies and a wide range of source material, including paintings, medals, murals, frescoes, monuments, engravings and contemporary photographs.
In the Lives of Images, Peter Mason examines four striking case studies involving the production and transmission of visual images of non-European peoples. Beginning with what has been taken to be the earliest three-dimensional European representation of Native Americans, he then focuses on the migration of such images via sixteenth century Meso-American codices to the murals painted by Diego Rivera four centuries later.
Mason also looks at the relationship between drawing and engraving of natives of Formosa by Georges Psalmanaazaar, who never travelled to that country. Finally, he examines representations of the native peoples of Tierra del Fuego, from their first encounters with Europeans in the late 16th century to the present, paying particular attention to their visual traces in the work of such well-known artists as Odilon Redon.
Mason’s fascinating study teases out some of the implications of these particular cases to discover a concept of the image that is both primary and can truly be said to have a life of its own.
In this work, the author examines the history of European representations of non-European peoples, using as his base four case studies and a wide range of source material, including paintings, medals, murals, frescoes, monuments, engravings and contemporary photographs.
In the Lives of Images, Peter Mason examines four striking case studies involving the production and transmission of visual images of non-European peoples. Beginning with what has been taken to be the earliest three-dimensional European representation of Native Americans, he then focuses on the migration of such images via sixteenth century Meso-American codices to the murals painted by Diego Rivera four centuries later.
Mason also looks at the relationship between drawing and engraving of natives of Formosa by Georges Psalmanaazaar, who never travelled to that country. Finally, he examines representations of the native peoples of Tierra del Fuego, from their first encounters with Europeans in the late 16th century to the present, paying particular attention to their visual traces in the work of such well-known artists as Odilon Redon.
Mason’s fascinating study teases out some of the implications of these particular cases to discover a concept of the image that is both primary and can truly be said to have a life of its own.
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This book tells a fascinating series of stories about the travelling of visual representations across time and place . . . The core of the argument is that images acquire a life of their own, as they are recontextualized by different people . . . the truthfulness of images derives not from their documentary accuracy but from their conformity to the rules of ethnographic representation. Mason reviews such discrepancies as meticulously as a forensic pathologist.
'Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
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This is an example of an aspect of the new anthropology: The study of kinship has been replaced by, among other things, the study of images. The images in question in this elegantly produced book are not by, but of, non-Europeans. And it is not so much their nature as their historical peregrinations that are of interest. The material is fascinating and the book well illustrated . . .
'The Key Reporter
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Mason wears his theoretical awareness lightly, yet deploys an intelligent and sophisticated use of recent thinking about meaning and signification. Under his patient scrutiny seemingly slight or undistinguished images are opened up to intertextual analysis. In doing so he challenges those anthropologists and historians who might choose to use any of this material for illustrative purpose. As Mason shows, what these images illustrate is rarely their ostensible subject, but much more frequently that subject's appropriation by European culture.
'Journal of the History of Collections
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Lives (and Deaths) of Fuegians and Their Images
2. Being There
3. From America to Oxfordshire?
4. The Purloined Codex
5. Images and Objects
References
Photographic Acknowledgements
Index
Peter Mason has written and lectured widely in the field of the history of art and visual culture, especially in relation to Latin America. His previous books include The Lives of Images (Reaktion Books, 2001) and Before Disenchantment: Images of Exotic Animals and Plants in the Early Modern World (Reaktion, 2009).
