on Aztec Art

[seth wolitz]

> Brian Sewell is known as a polemicist and critic who seeks to express contrarian views. See his Autobiography in 2 Volumes for the full extent of his witty vitriol. He is a stylist. And he knows nothing about nahuatl culture but the received inheritance that aztecs eat human flesh and are horrid figures. Well the poor man has no time to look at the verse of Nezhualcoyotl to see that his snide remarks concerning 'Aztec culture' are useless verbiage. Here is a poet of first rank in any terms of high cultural achievement. But let Mister Sewall be content with his Italian primitives and early Renaissance painters. He failed to mention that the Dominicans, these forces of civilization, managed to destroy how many monuments of both Aztec and Inca works as demons in stone and burn the entire libraries of the nahautl speakers, a willed act no less horrid than the burning of the Alexandrian Library. De gustibus non est disputandum indeed! I do prefer Mayan sculpture that I have seen but that is indeed only taste and no criteria for quality. We have hardly been able to establish the esthetics of the mesoamerican peoples and each state developed their own so that we are at the beginning of beginning to recognize styles and cultural markers and definitions of particular cultural esthetic traits. The eurocentric remarks posted for us who appreciate and study mesoamerican matters are merely provocations to make us smile with determined patience. Perhaps we should provoke these self-assured snobbish critics that if they provoke us too far, we can start preparing a good Huastecan mole made with delicious spicy cloves and not with Pueblan chocolate and serve it not as a vegan dish but with flesh, theirs!
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