Introduction: Learning to look and think critically
A brief introduction to art history, and what it means to learn to look and think critically.
Joaquin Torres-García, América Invertida (Inverted America), 1943, ink on paper, 22 x 16 cm (Fundación Torres García, Montevideo)
Look closely at this drawing: what do you notice? Do you recognize any specific forms?
In his 1943 drawing América Invertida (Inverted America), Joaquín Torres-García shows the continent of South America turned upside down, with his home country of Uruguay positioned near the center in the top and middle third, and marked with a + and a horizontal line running through it. A prominent ‘Polo S’ at the top of the drawing refers to the South Pole. Why did Torres-García create this inverted map? At first glance, it might appear simple—a minimalistic ink drawing—but with close looking and a deeper understanding of how it relates to other maps and ideas, it becomes clear that the map is anything but simple. In a nutshell, Torres-García was aware of the power of images in constructing worlds and ideas. Let’s consider the map more closely.
Torres-García’s inversion of the South American continent might initially seem jarring—and that is intentional. We are accustomed to seeing maps in which the Northern hemisphere is positioned at the top, and the Southern hemisphere (including South America) is at the bottom. With his drawing, Torres-García wanted people to question why mapmakers defaulted to placing the Northern hemisphere at the top of maps, when in reality the universe is not structured this way—there is no up or down in space. By cleverly rotating the continent 180 degrees, Torres-García highlights the way that maps create meaning and hierarchies, even if we are led to believe that they are objective and free from bias. When he drew this inverted map, Torres-García had for years been trying to transform and overturn the idea that the so-called global north is more significant—that its art is more important and culturally relevant, its histories more complex, and its power greater. Torres-García directly challenged the hierarchy that North is better than South, and he called for South American artists to define art on their own terms rather than in relation to the United States and Europe in the North.
Perhaps you are wondering: why did Torres-García need to challenge the hierarchy of North-South in the first place? His image creatively engages with other maps that are deeply familiar to most of us—so familiar in fact that the view of the world they present has become deeply ingrained in our minds.
Mercator projection (map: Strebe, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The most common map in the world today is the one you see here (above), called the Mercator projection.
Gerardus Mercator, World Map, 1569
It is based on a map made in 1569 by the Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator. Mercator’s earlier map transformed space in a way that would help western European navigators during the so-called “Age of Discovery,” as they explored lands for resources. These travels also led to invasions of lands beyond Europe (such as the Americas) and the eventual establishment of even more global trade routes, colonial settlements, and the transatlantic slave trade.
It was at this moment that Europeans oriented maps to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean was “centered” in world maps (a turn away from earlier European maps that were centered around Jerusalem, a city considered holy by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). As normal as it might appear to us today, the Mercator projection—both the 16th-century original and the map we often see today—is actually heavily distorted, and does not represent the size of landmasses accurately. Take a look at South America on the Mercator projection (again, based on Gerardus Mercator’s earlier map) and compare it to Europe—they look similar in size. Likewise, Africa and Greenland are the same size.
Gall-Peters projection (map: Strebe, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Gall-Peters projection is a more accurate representation of the size of landmasses—South America is double the size of Europe, and Africa is about fourteen times the size of Antarctica. [1] Torres-García’s Inverted Map calls attention to the problems and biases with mapmaking, and the values attached to places by their perceived size and location.
Torres-García’s map doesn’t just draw our attention to issues with mapmaking though. His drawing also critiques art history: His inversion prompts us to reflect on what is called the art historical canon—the set of art and architecture that over time has received the most attention and prioritization from art historians (and beyond!) and that has been codified as the most important to study and learn about.
We might ask though: who made these decisions? How and why did they make them, and even when were they making them? Whose stories are told, and who gets to tell them?
Rock-cut linga shrine in Cave 29, c. mid-6th century, Ellora, India (photo: Ronakshah1990, CC BY-SA 4.0)
For a long time, the canon privileged white, male, European and Euro-American art and artists; while that has started to shift, there is much more work to be done to create a more balanced, equitable history of art.
And it has not just been certain types of artists and places that have been privileged, but even certain types of media. For instance, while the canon has often celebrated bronze and marble sculpture, painted wood, alabaster, stucco, and even living rock-cut sculptures have proliferated among peoples throughout time in regions across the world.
Lola Álvarez Bravo, Anarquía Arquitectónica en la Ciudad de México (Architectural Anarchy in Mexico City), 1954, gelatin silver print, 21.4 x 17.7 cm (© Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona Foundation)
Ideally, we could have an art history that not only highlights the marble sculptures of Roman emperors, Michelangelo’s David, or Picasso’s cubist paintings—but also bronze Shang dynasty ewers, the rock-cut churches of Lalibela and the caves of Ellora, the city of Cahokia, the modernist photographs of Lola Álvarez Bravo, and the contemporary Northwest Coast carvings of knowledge bearer and artist Nathan Jackson.
Torres-García’s reframing in América Invertida encourages us to not only look closely at what we see, but also think critically. It prompts us to pause and reflect on how certain geographic regions, art, and artists have been upheld as more important—and how those choices can exclude and marginalize people, or even distort how and what we think about the histories of art. The first time I saw Torres-García’s inversion as an undergraduate student I felt disturbed and even a bit uncomfortable, yet intrigued and reflective. For me, these varied reactions suggested that the image achieved its goal, and still today they remind me of why art and art history matters in the 21st century.
Sainte-Chapelle, Île de la Cité, Paris, 1248 (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Art not only has the ability to provoke and disturb, but also to comfort and soothe, amuse and captivate. Prompting a different type of response than Torres-García’s small hand-drawn map, at least for me, is being enveloped by a space such as the Gothic Sainte-Chappelle in Paris. The physical experience of this space overwhelms me with its kaleidoscopic stained glass windows that soar upwards, showing more than 1,000 scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Why was it built, and what role did it play in the past and does it still play today? It was in fact a royal chapel, built to house precious Christian relics for the French monarchs, yet the gem-colored space is also a testament to the engineering innovations of the 12th and 13th centuries—delicate glass seems to hold up the building.
In part, the codex chronicles the life of Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw. Here, we see figures traversing water and sitting in an I-shaped ballcourt—all dressed in sumptuous clothing. Codex Zouche-Nuttall, 1200–1521, C.E., Mixtec (Ñudzavui), Late Postclassic period, deer skin, 47 leaves, each 19 x 23.5 cm, Mexico (© Trustees of the British Museum)
Being introduced to unfamiliar artworks can also spark our interest and curiosity in learning more about a culture’s art and history. As a sophomore Biology major in college, I took my first art history classes to fulfill General Education requirements. I will never forget the moment one professor displayed an image from the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, made by a Mixtec (Ñudzahui) artist in what is today Mexico about the epic story of the ruler Lord 8 Deer Jaguar-Claw. I had never seen anything like it before (sadly). To begin to understand the complex picture-writing it involved and to dig deeper into stories and histories that were unknown to me, well, it was as thrilling then as it is today.
As you read this introduction, take a moment to see what catches your eye.
Kehinde Wiley, Rumors of War, 2019, bronze, 8.2 m tall x 4.9 m long (Richmond Museum of Fine Arts, Virginia)
In these toxic times art can help us transform and give us a sense of purpose. This story begins with my seeing the Confederate monuments. What does it feel like if you are black and walking beneath this? We come from a beautiful, fractured situation. Let’s take these fractured pieces and put them back together.
— Kehinde Wiley
Why does art and art history matter?
Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War looms above viewers, encouraging them to consider a more inclusive story of American art and history. The enormous sculpture was exhibited in 2019 in Times Square in New York City and now sits in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The bronze equestrian sculpture displays an African American man in Nike shoes, a hoodie, and jeans atop a powerful horse who rears upwards as the rider remains calm. The sculpture provides a counterpoint (and counternarrative) to the once-nearby sculpture of Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart. It also draws on centuries of paintings and sculptures of powerful white men on horses. Wiley’s sculpture, and the sculptures of Confederate leaders displayed in Richmond along Monument Avenue until recently, took on new layers of meaning in 2020 as conversations and public protests turned more pointedly to the question of why Black lives matter and to the role of art in public places. As sculptures of Confederate leaders and other white supremacists were toppled, defaced, or removed, many people continued to ask: what is the role of art in public spaces? Why should we care about art at all? How does art challenge problematic narratives or work to uphold them? Can art facilitate reconciliation? Can learning art’s histories make us more empathetic?
All-T’oqapu Tunic, Inka, 1450–1540, camelid fiber and cotton, 90.2 x 77.15 cm (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C.)
Art, or at least the material objects and built spaces that we today refer to as “art,” has always been important. Still, the meanings attached to things and spaces have not only changed over time, but also are culturally constructed. For example, an Inka textile made of camelid fiber was worth far more (symbolically and materially) to them than objects made of gold or silver, and yet for the Spaniards who would invade and topple the Inka Empire in the 1530s, the metals were more desirable.
Left: Augustus of Primaporta, 1st century C.E., marble, 2.03 meters high (Vatican Museums) (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0); right: possible polychromy of Augustus of Primaporta
Another example would be the 18th- and 19th-century European and Euro-American interest in ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and architecture, prized in part for their supposed creation in white marble, which inspired new buildings and sculpture. Yet we know now that Greek and Roman sculpture used to be brightly painted in color. Still, individuals in the 18th and 19th centuries equated beauty with pure white marble, transforming how Greco-Roman art was understood and appreciated and establishing biased standards of what constituted “good” art and architecture across media.
Studying the histories of art is an engaging and important way to consider issues of identity, power and propaganda, race, gender, cross-cultural contact, discrimination and resiliency, spirituality, and more. As the many examples discussed in this textbook address, art did not and does not merely illustrate ideas, but actively encodes them. Moreover, for cultures that did not have a written language, the material and visual record is all the more important because it is the primary way in which we learn about them.
This chapter benefitted from the critical insight and feedback from Sarahh Scher, Maya Jiménez, Heather Graham, Olivia Chiang, Rachel Zimmerman, Laura Tillery, Jeffrey Becker, Beth Harris, and Steven Zucker.
“Introduction: Learning to look and think critically” is adapted from “Introduction: Learning to look and think critically” by Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, in Smarthistory, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License