Mudejar Americano

Abstract

This chapter examines the term “mudejar”–an artistic term that derives from the Arabic mudajjan, a legal designation used during the medieval period to refer to Muslims who remained in Iberia after the Christian conquest–and its application to forms, most notably wooden ceilings, in the Americas. The concept of an American mudejar derives from three historiographic trends from which objects and ideas have been difficult to disentangle. First, that of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish academic establishment, which immediately adopted the idea of mudejar art as a style born out of the success of the Christian conquest. Second, the idea of mudejar art was originally understood as a mirror of the Spanish national character and became quickly adopted as the quintessential Spanish “national style” like the essence of the Iberian self, unchanged for centuries. Third, there is the historical coincidence of 1492: the Fall of Granada and the Discovery of the Americas.

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