Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (review)
Perhaps not since the eighteenth century have Mexico’s casta paintings received so much attention. Exhibitions of the paintings are no longer rare, and art historians have now identified over a hundred sets or series. A growing body of literature on the paintings culminated in 2003 with Magali Carrera’s Imagining Identity in New Spain, which was to date the most complex and comprehensive historical study of the images. Now, hot on the heels of Carrera’s monograph, comes Ilona Katzew’s compelling study. Like Carrera’s, Katzew’s book is history as much as art history, with the paintings analyzed firmly in the context of the society that produced them. A beautifully produced, oversized glossy volume with 200 illustrations, half of them in color, Casta Painting accompanied a 2004 exhibition of such paintings in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Far more than an exhibition catalogue, however, the book is a well-researched historical monograph that complement’s Carrera’s book in its use of archival sources and the sophistication of its analysis.