Aztec aesthetics

[Richard Durkan]

In 2009 the British Museum staged an exhibition  'Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler' which drew vitriolic criticism from at least two (non-specialist) critics. Brian Sewell in the London Evening Standard.  found the Aztec material pretty feeble stuff, that many of the masks were of utmost hideousness, the quality of Aztec craftsmanship to be poor, no better than common bric-a-brac and that there was no art in the barbarism of the Aztec world, which compared unfavourably with contemporary European artists like Donatello and Ghiberti and that. He refers to the sickly beastliness of that society. We should not be required to see the objects as works of art but rather cultural objects, fetishes with which to terrify and induce irrational reverence in their superstitious society, the gruesome and grotesque curiosities of a barbarous regime.  
Similarly, Philip Hensher  in the Mail on Sunday wrote a review headed 'British Museum Artefacts as Evil as Nazi Lampshades made from Human Skin' which included the following comments: Other civilisations with inhumane customs  still managed to produce objects of light and grace. You can see that in Mughal  culture, or ancient Egyptian sculpture. The darkness of the Aztec mind seems to  permeate everything they made with ugliness...If there is a more revoltingly inhumane and despicable society known to history than the Aztecs, I really don't care to know about it...It is difficult to imagine a museum display that gives off such an overwhelming sense of human evil as this one But, on top of the moral ugliness of the Aztecs, there is the  undeniable fact that almost everything they made was aesthetically hideous, too. The sculpture is brutal, square and blocky.  The decorative styles are coarse, without any obvious expressive power. The jewellery and mosaic styles are vulgar  and showy - there is nothing to be said for the turquoise mosaic masks or the  doubleheaded, wide-jawed snake that Moctezuma gave to the Spanish conquerors,  apart from the expense of labour and material".
It is difficult to argue that it was just this particular exhibition that revolted him as he makes similar comments about another exhibition: "The  Royal Academy's equally repulsive show of Aztec artefacts of two years ago  included a sculpture, the image of which I wish I could get out of my head...I wouldn't care if they left the whole pile of rubbish where it lay  for eternity. The Aztecs perform the singular task of making the Spanish who,  under Cortes, conquered them in 1521, look like beacons of humanity".
  To what are these views shared by academic specialists on the Aztecs? Do the Maya and Incas attract similar comments? Richard Durkan 
    		 	   		  
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