Majismo, a cultural phenomenon that embodied the popular aesthetic in Spain from the second half of the eighteenth century, served as a vehicle to “regain” Spanish heritage. As expressed in visual representations of popular types participating in traditional customs and wearing garments viewed as historically Spanish, majismoconferred on Spanish “citizens” the pictorial ideal of a shared national character.
In Framing Majismo, Tara Zanardi explores nobles’ fascination with and appropriation of the practices and types associated with majismo, as well as how this connection cultivated the formation of an elite Spanish identity in the late 1700s and aided the Bourbons’ objective to fashion themselves as the legitimate rulers of Spain. In particular, the book considers artistic and literary representations of the majo and the maja, purportedly native types who embodied and performed uniquely Spanish characteristics. Such visual examples of majismo emerge as critical and contentious sites for navigating eighteenth-century conceptions of gender, national character, and noble identity. Zanardi also examines how these bodies were contrasted with those regarded as “foreign,” finding that “foreign” and “national” bodies were frequently described and depicted in similar ways. She isolates and uncovers the nuances of bodily representation, ultimately showing how the body and the emergent nation were mutually constructed at a critical historical moment for both.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Majismo, the Spanish National Character, and the Elite Cultivation of Cultural Patrimony
2 Swaggering Majos: Performing the Masculine Ideal
3 Performing the Bullfight: Spanish Bodies as Noble Spectacle
4 Majas, Elites, and Female Agency
5 Majismoand Elite Identity
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
“Tara Zanardi’s Framing Majismo addresses ambitious questions about the role played by art in the formation of Spanish identity for the Bourbon monarchy during the Enlightenment and in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is a work of admirable erudition and complexity, bringing together a broad range of sources—primary and secondary, historical and theoretical. A model of interdisciplinary research, Zanardi’s book has implications for eighteenth-century studies more generally—for people interested in monarchy, questions of identity, gender studies—and will generate a great deal of additional discussion and research, always the sign of a truly important publication. It stands as a defining study for art history of the period.”
