Latin America Article Update
Art review: 'The Aztec Pantheon and
the Art of Empire' @ Getty Villa
The first gallery introduces Spain's conquest of Mexico. A second gallery charts an array of Aztec deities. The third room considers imperial power. In each section, a few European objects are also included.
Here's the premise: Spain's adventure abroad coincided with the Renaissance, which elevated Europe's Greco-Roman history to a position of prominence. In the European mind, circa 1520, the Aztec empire resonated with the ancient Roman empire. What better place to ponder the connection than the Getty Villa, with its European antiquities housed in a Roman-style building?
To do so effectively required getting major loans -- and the Getty got them. Extraordinary objects have been borrowed from Mexico City's two preeminent Aztec collections: the National Museum of Anthropology and the Templo Mayor Museum. (In part the exhibition celebrates the bicentennial of Mexican independence.) And a remarkable Mexican document from the Michelangelo-designed Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy, returns to the Americas for the first time since it was drawn and painted 400 years ago.
That work is Volume 1 of a three-volume manuscript produced under the direction of Bernardino de Sahagún, a Spanish-born Franciscan friar who came to Mexico to evangelize for the Catholic Church. Conquistador Hernán Cortés, who defeated the rich and powerful Aztec civilization, had a particular exchange in mind: Spain would take Mexico's deep deposits of gold and silver and in return would bring the ostensibly greater prize of Christianity to its people.
Sahagún's manuscript, compiled a half-century after Cortés' slaughter of the Aztecs,
records their primary gods and goddesses in both Spanish and Nahuatl, the native tongue, as well as in simple, watercolor line-drawings. Each figure, almost childlike in its simplicity, is shown in profile wearing appropriate dress, often carrying a shield and holding an attribute -- a sheaf of wheat, for example, or a thunderbolt-style scepter.
Most important, many are identified with their equivalent gods and goddesses in the Roman pantheon, such as Juno (matrimony), Ceres (agriculture) and Venus (love). The Aztecs were as superstitious as the Romans, which may or may not be a mindset common to empires. And the evangelist Sahagún of course took liberties. Consider Tlaculteutl, the supposed Aztec version of Venus, who was actually associated with a concept of sexual sin.
But the manuscript had a job to do, and respectful accuracy in describing the folkways of perceived barbarians was not it. Cultural assimilation was. The fudging of identity in slight misrepresentations of Aztec theology corresponds to the cartoon-like nature of the drawings. They abandon realistic illusion and refinement for the congenial malleability of generalization.
The Florentine Codex is a trove of fascinating information, but the book can be displayed to show only two pages at a time. So engrossing context is also provided through lots of relevant engravings, maps, calendars and other documents from the Getty Research Institute, plus a dramatic 10-panel folding screen painted by an unidentified Baroque artist. The screen chronicles -- and in many respects fabricates -- an extravagant panoramic history of Cortés' conquest.
Just over 6 inches high, it features the Lord of Death carved in high relief. The skull-like head and body are frontal, its arms held up and against the vessel as if it were being carried on the deity's back. The carving, marked by simplified forms and bilateral symmetry, is direct and polished. Ornate detail is kept to a minimum; where it does appear -- on the fan-like headdress and other adornment -- the relief is shallow. The result is visual solidity, which makes the small vessel feel monumental.
Monumentality is essential to an art of empire, given the need to be imposing in the face of diverse crowds. Unsurprisingly it is a trait shared by Aztec and Roman sculpture.
An astonishing, life-size terra cotta and stucco figure of a skeletal demon leans forward, his liver suspended from his rib cage like an exotic orchid hanging from a tree. A massive, decapitated greenstone head of a sacrificed goddess is embellished with low-relief bells and sea shells, which celebrate her role in Aztec society's founding mythology. A bulky clay water vessel adorned with the mask of the rain god, Tlaloc, is painted almost entirely blue, interrupted only by bands of earthen red and unadorned terra cotta, as befits his life-giving role.
A lavishly embellished stone figure of a flower prince, seated cross-legged on a base, appears caught in a moment of chanting. His head is tossed back, the mouth of his mask open and right arm raised. Despite this extraordinary animation, the figure is entirely confined within a vertical shaft of space established by the rectangular base. Powerful, sturdy and meant to be viewed face to face, this chanting prince sings an eternal song.
It faces you down, as if in a dare.
The Getty show, conceived under former director Michael Brand and beautifully organized by Getty curator Claire L. Lyons and UCLA art historian John Pohl, is admirably restrained in drawing connections between the empires. Occasionally direct, the comparisons are more often implied.
In the last room, a bronze eagle from Imperial Rome (in the Getty Villa's collection) stands with wings spread and one leg raised, almost like a bird-effigy of a conquering general. It couldn't be more different, aesthetically speaking, from the low, heavy, massive stone-carving of an eagle nearby, used in Aztec ritual as a receptacle for the incineration of a captured enemy's heart.
However dissimilar, both sculptures tell you that you're in the presence of an imposing power. They also say that you'd better be paying attention.
-- Christopher Knight
"The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire," Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, (310) 440-7300, through July 5. Admission: Free, tickets required. Parking: $15. www.getty.edu/visit
Photos: Tzitzimitl (Demon), 1440-69; Goblet with Mictlantecuhtli, 1450-1521; Bernardino de Sahagún, "General History of the Things of New Spain," 1499-1599; "Xochipilli," 1450-1521; "Eagle," Roman, 100-300. Credit: Getty Villa.
La Plaza
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Ancient city mapped in Mexico
sheds light on the Purepecha
The Purepecha people of Mexico built a large empire in what is now the western state of Michoacan, beating back the Aztecs at a shared border and resisting Spanish colonization until European diseases ravaged the society. Unique among Mesoamerican peoples in many ways -- their language is said to be most related to Quechua, in far-off Peru -- the Purepecha were skilled in crafting copper and pottery but left few clues otherwise about their history and culture.
Recent work by archeologist Christopher Fisher and a team from Colorado State University, however, is shedding new light on the group's history, The Times' Thomas H. Maugh II reports. Researchers say they have discovered and mapped a previously unknown Purepechan city on Lake Patzcuaro, six miles from the remains of Tzintzuntzan, considered the civilization's last capital. Fisher believes that the recently mapped city could have operated similarly as a modern "suburb" would to the capital before the Purepecha -- or Tarascans -- consolidated their empire and moved their main ceremonial center to Tzintzuntzan.
The new urban center, still not officially named, may be as large as two square miles (five square kilometers) and includes house mounds, small temples, plazas, and a pyramid (depicted above), reports Colorado State. The discovery was made in summer 2009 as part of an ongoing survey of the Lake Patzcuaro basin, Maugh writes:
Because the lake level has been dropping, the Purepecha site now sits a couple of miles east of the lake -- Fisher is vague about the precise location because of fears of looting -- but at its height was probably no more than a quarter mile from the shore.
The site sits on a landform called malpais, a young, rugged volcanic landscape "that looks like gravel dumped into a big pile," he said.
Fisher's team used handheld computers and GPS receivers to map about 1,300 of the center's features. The team's findings were presented last week in St. Louis at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Fisher tells La Plaza that the site is not a government INAH zone, so the risk of looting remains high.
"We are not excavating and are more concerned with the mapping and preservation of the site at the moment," Fisher said.
More images provided by the university are available here.
-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City
Photo: Graphic model of newly discovered pyramid on Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico. Credit: Colorado State University
The third article below was sent to you by: Chuck
Click on the link at bottom:
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The Aztecs, through old-world eyes
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A Getty Villa exhibit explores how Europeans looked to
ancient Rome to understand the Mexican empire.
By Suzanne Muchnic
March 21 2010
A 1,200-pound stone head of an Aztec moon goddess has moved into the Getty Villa. So have life-size statues of a warrior adorned with eagle feathers, a duck-billed wind god and a demon known as the Lord of Death.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-aztecs21-2010mar21,0,6456017.story
Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com
The last, final and most recent article below is sent to you by: Chuck
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Archaeologists kicking up their heels at finding what may be
world's oldest leather shoe
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RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
AP Science Writer
June 9 2010, 6:19 PM PDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — About 5,500 years ago someone in the mountains of Armenia put his best foot forward in what is now the oldest leather shoe ever found.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-us-sci-old-shoe,0,1227152.story
Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com
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