Chapter I: Front Matter

Outline _of_ Mexican
Popular Arts and Crafts

_By_ KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

Upon the occasion of the
Traveling Mexican Popular
Arts Exposition in the United
States of North America, under
the auspices of the Ministry of
Industry, Commerce and Labor
of Mexico, Don Xavier Guerrero,
being the Art Director, has
caused this book to be published.
It contains a study by Miss
Katherine Anne Porter, of the
Popular Arts and Crafts of
Mexico.

Cover design by Xav. Gro.
Photographs from the collection of
Roberto A. Turnbull

Copyright, 1922, by S. I. C. y T.

Acknowledgment

My search for the sources and meanings of Mexican folk art has been a richly rewarded adventure among intelligences and devotions. Artists and scientists who have given many years to the work of recreating ancient Mexico from her historical remains, students who have brought enthusiasms as fresh and recent as my own, all have generously given me aid and counsel, have been swift to remove barriers of race and language and tradition that lay between me and the Mexican.

To avoid an accumulation of footnotes in the text, let me here set down that I have read such widely divergent historians as Prescott, Alexander von Humboldt, Bandolier, Madame Calderon de la Barca, Bancroft, Rivas Palacio, Reville, Nicolas Leon; such entirely opposing contemporaneous writers as Dr. Atl, authority on modern popular arts in Mexico; Licenciado Ramon Mena, whose studies of recent archeological excavations have been of much value; and Don Manuel Gamio, whose theories of ethnology are sound and of deep interest.

Thanks to the initiative and energy of Don Miguel Alessio Robles, Minister of Commerce and Industry, the actual work of preparing this exposition has been accomplished, with the personal collaboration of his department.

For invaluable aid in gathering, classifying and interpreting the materials for this outline, I am happy to express my gratitude to Licenciado Jose Vasconcelos, Minister of Education and Fine Arts; to Licenciado Vincente Lombardo Toledano, director of the Preparatory School of the National University; to Señor Jorge Enciso, of the National Museum, collector and restorer of examples of early Colonial art, connoisseur of Mexican jade and Aztec design; to Licenciado Ramon Mena and his associate Mr. William Niven, the indefatigable digger who has brought out of the earth an extraordinary volume of relics from buried cities.

The group of men immediately concerned in organizing this Exposition have been especially generous with their aid, Señor Alfonso Caso, private secretary to the Minister of Commerce and Industry; Dr. J. H. Retinger; and the Mexican painters, Diego Rivera, Adolfo Best-Maugard, and Xavier Guerrero, all have contributed the fruits of their studies to my understanding of Mexican art, have helped me to form my point of view and to place my sympathies.

This simple outline of a profound subject is offered as an introduction to the arts of the Mexican people, on the occasion when they are sending for the first time an exhibition of their work to a foreign country. Virtually no special preparations were made for this exhibit in the way of manufacturing wares. The examples shown here were gathered from the little country villages, from the common shops and street markets, where the native brings his goods to sell them to his own people. They are personal, authentic creations, by the peasant craftsmen of a race that expresses itself simply and inevitably in terms of beauty.

THE AUTHOR.

_Mexico, D. F., May, Nineteen Hundred Twenty-two._