The current exhibition at Florida Tech’s Foosaner Art Museum is about a color whose absence from the painter’s palette – or the dyer’s vat – would make civilization a lot less fun.
Organized by the Museum of International Folk Art, “The Red that Colored the World” is a look at the origin, cultivation and world-wide dependence on cochineal red.
The discovery by Columbus of a vast New World beyond the crowded confines of Europe was a bad thing for America’s first residents, but a very good thing for the rest of the world. In Europe, people hailed the arrival of animals, minerals and vegetables whose value soon reached Africa, India and China through trade.
Although potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa, tobacco and the turkey were among the novelties that explorers brought back to the Old World, it was a six-legged American beast that caught the attention of European entrepreneurs.
That animal, the source of one of the most brilliant and permanent dyes in history, is a bug.
A parasitic scale insect, the tiny cochineal infects prickly pear cacti in tropical and subtropical South and North America, from Chile to Columbia and from Mexico to Colorado.
Although a red dye-yielding insect was also known in Poland, the color extracted from those European bugs paled in comparison to the American product.
Cochineal dye is believed to have originated in Mexico, and the earliest use of the bright red juice is thought to have been body paint. Because Mexico’s climate is not conducive to the preservation of textiles, the earliest surviving artifacts to contain cochineal red are 1,800-year-old Andean textiles.
In the Foosaner exhibition the oldest textile on display is a fragment of Peruvian tunic created at least 1,000 years ago by a people known as the Wari culture.
The well-preserved fabric features a vertical band of wool patterned with frets, spirals and stylized faces. In marked contrast to the predominantly brown, ocher and white colors in the design, accents of cochineal-derived pinks and salmon leap to the eye with surprising vigor.
Near it a loincloth from Peru’s Chancay culture is a marvel of sophisticated weaving; here deep pink cochineal is a major element in the textile’s repeating design of stylized human figures.
It is the intricate work of an Incan “ceremonial sling” that truly astonishes. The showy red ornament features cylinders of finely woven designs centered on a braided length of crimson cord; luxuriously long tassels of the same color terminate each end. Nobility and high-ranking military officers wore this badge of distinction.
Long before the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica, indigenous people had developed an industry around the cultivation and propagation of cochineal bugs and their cactus hosts. In pre-Columbian times as well as today, cochineal farmers infest cacti with cochineal larvae and, in about three months’ time, hand-collect the adults, which are then processed by drying.
Dried cochineal was shipped back to Spain to dye the finest wool and silk cloth (cochineal adheres well only to animal-based textiles). The color was also adapted to oil painting, where it was used in putting to canvas the crimson robes of kings and cardinals, the passionate bloom of the rose, and the modest blush on a saintly cheek.
Second only to silver in Spanish imports, cochineal thus became associated with wealth and power. From Spain, cochineal found its way around the world. A commodity to be reckoned with, cochineal was followed on the stock exchanges of London and Amsterdam.
Meanwhile, in the New World, Spanish colonists pressed native artisans, once the creators of their societies’ kingly regalia, codices and sacred objects, to produce things the Spanish valued such as maps, manuscripts and Catholic icons. At the same time European painters arrived in the New World to ply their trade as well to as teach young artists the current painting styles of Europe.
In the Foosaner exhibition, examples of Spanish colonial artworks include a late 17th century Baroque painting of St. Augustine attributed to the Bolivian-born Melchior Pérez Holguín. In that picture the saint holds before him a cochineal-colored flaming heart, symbolic of religious fervor.
In contrast to that academically proficient work, a homely retablo, or devotional picture, “Our Lady of St. John of the Lakes,” is in the untutored style of the folk artist. In this 18th century painting, cochineal can be seen in the red drapery around the saint as well as in the embellishments on her dress. The artwork was created by a New Mexican known only as “The Eighteenth Century Novice.”
Several mid-19th century painted wood santos (religious statues) by various New Mexican carvers are also on exhibit. The labels for each tell exactly where and when cochineal was used on the statue.
Among the contemporary retablos and santos on display is a small wood triptych that depicts the Virgin of Guadalupe flanked by archangels. It was created by Arlene Cisneros Sena in the late 1990s.
An updating of the santos tradition by Arthur López, “Hey Zeus” and “Mary Jane Magdalena,” both from 2009, envision Jesus as a bell bottom-clad, shades-wearing hippie in a befringed cochineal red jacket; Mary Magdalene is a flower child in a peasant-style blouse and skirt. She and Jesus both are flashing a peace sign.
Most of the exhibit is devoted to cochineal’s use as a textile dye. The world-wide appeal of the versatile organic colorant – which can take on hues from pink to blood red to deep purple – is exemplified by such objects as a length of silk velvet from Uzbekistan; a quilted bedcover from Lynchburg, Va.; and a Sonkket brocade from Bali.
There are three centuries of textiles on display from Mexico and the southwestern U.S., including Navajo Nation blankets and serapes, New Mexican Rio Grande Blankets Mexican Saltillo blankets, an Oaxacan huiptil or woman’s tunic, and a Zapotec-inspired wool floor runner.
Contemporary clothing on display that makes use of cochineal dye includes a filmy lavender dress created in 2010 by Canary Islands fashion designer Margarita Pérez Pérez for her Marga Mod brand.
The showstopper may very well be the salmon-red strapless evening gown by Navaho designer Orlando Dugi of New Mexico. Created as one piece of his 2014 “Red Collection,” the dress is composed of hand-dyed silk satin and organza.
The sparking ornamentation on its bodice was inspired by Pueblo pottery designs and executed in cut glass and sterling beads, French coil and Swarovski crystals.
A separate educational gallery in the exhibition allows old and young to try on examples of clothing that would have historically been dyed with cochineal, including a British soldier’s uniform coat and a royal faux ermine-trimmed mantle.
The exhibition is on view through April 15. The Foosaner is at 1463 Highland Avenue in Melbourne’s Eau Gallie Arts District.