Aztec aesthetics

Thu Aug 8 00:09:09 UTC 2013

Many thanks to Craig and Seth for articulating what I felt all day as I 
thought about these posts but couldn't find the key to open the door to 
say what I felt. It reminds me of how, when I talk to my students about 
the great artistic achievements of Hopewellian ceremonial pottery, they 
often stare at me with this "Yeah?" kind of look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_pottery

There is so much I have seen in Aztec art that makes me--I like Craig's 
adjective--*slack-jawed* when I look at it. I find myself looking at 
something like the famous statue of Xochipilli that pretty much just 
like the La Giaconda. Stopped in my tracks:

http://ec-dejavu.ru/t/Tattoo_1.html

Michael

Quoting Craig Berry <cdberry at gmail.com>:

> There's an old Roman saying, "De gustibus non est disputandum" -- "There is
> no arguing about taste." Whether a piece of art is beautiful or hideous is
> a subjective judgment. Being a specialist in a given field may provide the
> opportunity to learn to see beauty in a style of art, or it may not.
>
> Speaking entirely for myself, and as a reasonably competent amateur in the
> study of Mesoamerican cultures, I find the Aztec aesthetic beautiful,
> powerful, and spiritually rich. I recently visited the British Museum,
> which has a large room permanently dedicated to Mesoamerican artefacts, and
> I spent a good ten minutes standing slack-jawed in awe before a stone
> carving of Xiuhcoatl:
>
>
> http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/s/stone_figure_of_xiuhcoatl.aspx
>
> But other museum visitors around me were happily denigrating the style of
> that carving, and of everything else in the room.
>
> Turning to one of the articles you cite, the author expresses a fondness
> for Moghal art, which I find painfully busy, inharmoniously colored, and
> generally childish. But I will be the first to acknowledge that this is
> *my* view, and I will not attempt to argue with someone who finds in Mughal
> art sublimity and beauty.
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Richard Durkan <rdurkan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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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>
>
>
> --
> Craig Berry (http://gplus.to/isomeme)
> "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake
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