ARTS . Art Review

T3: Judgment Day


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Published: Dec 13, 2006

"Tesoros/Treasures/Tesouros" at the PMA is encyclopedic: With more than three centuries of art culled from 13 conquered countries, it's filled with fantastical material wealth and the works of skilled native craftsmen — making museum-goers feel like Spanish kids in a candy store. T3 is gorgeous but its vast program of information does not generate simple factoids. The title alone can't confine itself to one or even two languages. Incidentally, many guards in the exhibition are bilingual.

All this complexity seems to demand intellectual commitment. I know regular museum rats who have resisted the persuasions of Luis NiÃƒÆ’Ã†â€™Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â±o's Virgin of the Rosary, official spokesMadonna of T3. The Bolivian charmer drips with lace, jewels and roses, as she displays the infant Jesus, dressed like a miniature 17th-century gentleman and clutching a tiny basket of posies.

Such religious images remain vital for many people today and this suggests a second level of complexity in the show's content. Most of the work directly or obliquely references Roman Catholicism. The church was so profoundly, frighteningly central to Spanish culture during the colonial period that even the lowliest objects often bore religious symbols. Ritual items like reliquaries, tabernacles, monstrances, chalices, censers and candlesticks were lavished with jewels, gold and silver.

Enormous gemstones set between fanglike prongs of gold lend a Peruvian crown of thorns barbaric intensity. In the tremendous catalog — but not in the exhibition itself — we find occasional acknowledgement of relationships between the bloodied and tortured Christ or other martyrs and blood sacrifices practiced by indigenous religious traditions. The T3 catalog selectively calls upon postcolonial scholars, but still sometimes asks too few questions and omits too many unpalatable facts.

But enough with ideas: See the show. With exceptions, the painting tends to be more quaint than wondrous. However, José de Alcibar's diptych, Conditions of a Good Confession, entertainingly features a grinning, tail-lashing devil. The museum cleverly installed the painting across from a real contemporaneous confessional.

Did servants and slaves, who slept on the floor, delight in polishing those massive silver picture frames, writhing baroque chairs and desks elaborately painted or inlaid with tortoise, abalone or ivory? We have the leisurely privilege of enjoying these tesoros for a couple more weeks.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Tesoros/Treasures/TesourosThe Arts in Latin America: 1494-1820 Through Dec. 31, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and the Parkway, 215-763-8100