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Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic. By PETER MASON. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii + 255. $39.95 (cloth).
Peter Mason's Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic surveys a variety of European visual representations of the Americas from 1500 to 1920. This eight chapter study examines the idea of the exotic as it has been defined, interpreted, and employed by predominantly aristocratic European artists and collectors. It reviews an eclectic array of Spanish, French, Dutch, and to a lesser degree, British, individuals whose representations of Amerindians provide ample insight into the historical development of the exotic genre in the Americas. Mason reviews the aesthetic and ethnographic influences of contributions by Jan Mostaert, Eckhout Zacharias Wagener, and Andre Thevet, to name a few.
Mason treats the exotic as an imaginary construct "produced by a process of decontextualization" (p. 3). He asserts that an object is rendered exotic when it is "taken from a setting elsewhere" and then "transferred to a different setting, or recontextualized... to assume new meanings in a new context" (p. 3). Applying this working definition of the exotic, Mason raises two general questions which he addresses through case-by-case critiques of paintings, portraits, Renaissance collections, and frontispieces. He explores not only the degree to which exotic objects represent their original contexts, but also the...