If colonial America was the melting pot of modernity, it was because it was also a fabulous laboratory of images. . . . Just as much as speech and writing, the image can be a vehicle for all sorts of power and resistance. So writes Serge Gruzinski in the introduction to "Images at War, "his" "striking reinterpretation of the Spanish colonization of Mexico." "Concentrating on the political meaning of the baroque image and its function within a multicultural society, Gruzinski compares its ubiquity in Mexico to our modern fascination with images and their meaning."
"Although the baroque...