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| Moche culture, Vessel in the Form of a Warrior Duck, 500-650 CE. Museo Arqueológico "Santiago Uceda Castillo" |
The premise of "Picture Worlds: Greek, Maya, and Moche Pottery" can sound more like a class assignment than an exhibition. "Compare and contrast ceramics from three random cultures…" Though decorated ceramics are near-universal, the three cultures shown—6th and 5th century BC Greece; 550 to 850 CE southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize; 200 to 850 CE Peru—each produced a large body of ceramics with artistically accomplished narrative scenes. Call it "narrative art," if you must. The show brims with unexpected insights.
Greek myths are relatively familiar to U.S. audiences, if only via pop culture adaptations. But the principal Mayan deities and narratives are known to scholars, thanks to a handful of surviving Mayan codexes (a great number were destroyed by European colonizers). That leaves the Moche iconography as the most mysterious of the three. The Moche did not produce written records. Their pictures on pots provide our main window into their worldview. It is as if future archaeologists had to unpack our culture from a few surviving Spiderman sequels.
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| Moche culture, Stirrup-Spout Vessel with Wrinkle Face Fighting Opponents, 500-800 CE. Fowler Museum at UCLA |
As in many a contemporary franchise, the heroes and villains blend human and animal natures. The two main protagonists of Moche art are known only by their modern nicknames, Wrinkle Face and Iguana. They fought such adversaries as a human-sea urchin hybrid.
One of the show's surprises is a Vessel in the Form of a Warrior Duck (top of post). Its clench-billed avian, holding a warclub and shield, anticipates Hollywood angry ducks Donald and Daffy. The dots on the shield and the duck's side are mother-of-pearl inlays, indicating that this was no mere water bottle. No one knows what liquid Moche pots contained.
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| Moche culture, Stirrup-Spout Vessel with Lima Bean Warriors, 650-800 CE. Art Institute of Chicago |
Another pot shows a battle of lima beans. It's not humans x beans but a vegan civil war. Can we assume this was satire? It's hard to be sure, given the lack of documents.
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| Moche culture (found in a tomb at Huaca Cao Viejo, El Brujo), Vessel with a Mother, a Baby, and a Curer, 300-450 CE. Complete Arqueológico El Brujo-Museo Cao |
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| Greek culture, attributed to the Leagros Group, Water Jar with Achilles, Ajax, and Athena (detail), about 510 BC. Metropolitan Museum of Art |
That's not to say we have a complete knowledge of any of the three cultures. Two Greek vessels show Trojan warriors Achilles and Ajax's playing an unknown board game in front of Athena. The incident goes unmentioned in Homer and other surviving texts, yet it must have been well known. Over 150 painted illustrations have survived.
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| Mayan culture, Plate with Hunters Shooting a Supernatural Bird, 600-900 CE. Museo Maya de Cancún |
The side-by-side comparisons foreground the sophisticated color palette of Mayan ceramics—seemingly a thousand shades of red—and the graceful linearity of its plumes, budding vines, and pointing hands.
"Picture Worlds: Greek, Maya, and Moche Pottery" is at the Getty Villa through July 29, 2024. There is a catalog.
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| Mayan culture (made in Peten, Guatemala), Drinking Vessel with Maize God Dancers and a Companion, 650-750 CE. Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
Comments
... Is the Getty "becoming a contemporary museum and not a very good one."
... Ah, the things that hacks will think and write.
If anything, the Getty's current presentation is another reminder that, meanwhile, the museum several miles to the east of Brentwood (no, not the Hammer, but further east) is way more into contemporary/modern themes than ones that focus on older works, older civilizations. But at least that museum's new building will have lots of selfie/Instagram-friendly windows.
The encyclopedic/universal museum is a "contemporary theme."
The concept dates to the 1990's.
The hacks don't read.
However, its new building will admittedly grab the attention of people into flash over substance (ideal for Instagram moments), so maybe your mentality is ideal for LA in the 21st century.
In the meantime, the Getty/Huntington (much less the Louvre, Met, National Gallery, etc) tells LACMA: "Hold my beer."
For example, the Frimkess exhibition panders to a coterie of working LA artists who have incorporated forms/themes from her work. That exhibition talks to them. (See the work of Shio Kusaka.)
It's NOT for you. What's for you are the "gimmicky," "Hollywood-cheesy," and trendy shows, all the shows for people with either no or counterfeit cultural capital.
You don't even read. So you believe anything the hacks at the LA Times write.