Reshaping an Ancient Legacy

Artists discover other artists even when separated by centuries. Picasso’s fascination with African art led to an enhanced appreciation of what was called “primitive art” among collectors and scholars. Similarly, in the 1930s, Mexican artists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Rufino Tamayo collected the charming clay sculptures produced in western Mexico between 200 BC and AD 800. Their interest led to a reevaluation of what had been considered the minor crafts of farming villages in what are now the states of Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco. Although a handful of collectors developed a keen interest in the rare figures as early as the 1940s and ‘50s, for the most part, scholars of Mexican art have mostly devoted themselves to grander and more evolved monuments and temples, such as the Aztec city of Tenochitlan or the Mayan pyramids.

“Ancient West Mexico: Art of the Unknown Past” is the first exhibition to survey the figures, vessels and architectural models of the area in a comprehensive manner, with more than 225 pieces drawn from collections around the U.S. and Europe, many of them never shown publicly. Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Richard Townsend, curator of that museum’s Department of African and Amerindian Art, the exhibition is on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from next Sunday through March 29.

Townsend, speaking by telephone from Chicago, was quick to point out that LACMA was the first museum to show the ancient art of west Mexico by exhibiting the extensive holdings of L.A. businessman Proctor Stafford in 1972. (The museum purchased the collection in 1989.) “It is the largest and most important collection of that field in the United States, but it is just one person’s collection,” he says. A subsequent show was held at UCLA’s Fowler Museum in 1983. “All of these were restricted in scope, but they did an admirable job of interpreting materials according to what was known at that time,” Townsend says. “I’ve attempted to take a broader census from the diaspora of materials across the U.S. and Europe to bring context to what has been recently revealed by excavations.”

That body of knowledge was altered in the late 1970s by the discovery and mapping of a series of circular ceremonial centers in the mountains and marshy landscape west of Guadalajara and at Teuchitlan in Jalisco. The 1993 excavation of a shaft tomb at Huitzilapa in the Magdalena basin of upland Jalisco led to an understanding that these early communities had developed religious and social organizations with complex systems of symbolism. “It has emerged with the discovery of monumental architecture that there was a more complex and developed society than was dreamed of before,” Townsend says.

British artist Adela Breton had uncovered similar sites some 100 years ago, but they were dismissed as undeveloped villages, not cultures. The recent excavations have put to rest that notion. Townsend says, “Compared to the Aztecs or Mayas, west Mexico may be of the third rank, but it emerges as a distinct cultural zone not derived from other cultures to the south and center of Mexico.”

The popularity of the clay figures among collectors has made tomb looting a problem for archeologists studying west Mexico. The discovery of an undisturbed major tomb provided new revelations about the area’s indigenous aesthetic. The endearing poses and individualized facial features appreciated by Rivera and Kahlo turned out to be portraits of important people in the community. Drinking from cups, eating various foods, dancing, hugging, preparing for war or for sexual acts, the figures are engaged in the mundane but valued acts of the living. Although ornamented with jewelry and headdresses, they are otherwise nude, with curved limbs and active postures. In the Huitzilapa tomb, there were ball players posed as though ready for a game.

“It’s an intensely warm and expressive art,” Townsend says. “The figures are not encumbered by the layers of paraphernalia that one finds in more elaborate cultures in Mesoamerica, but they are plausibly human even though they were made 2,000 years ago.” Created to be companions for the dead, they reflect every aspect of life to be carried over to the afterlife. “They express the kinds of sentiments that everyone has when they want to give their loved ones something to accompany them in the afterlife, that reflect the realities of their life on Earth,” Townsend says.

The execution of such sculptures was as pragmatic as it was sentimental, however. The recurrence of certain groups of figures led Townsend to surmise that many are acting out rites of passage, especially the young warriors carrying strings of heads taken from enemies after a battle. Unclothed, kneeling women are enacting fertility rituals. Couples with children commemorate marriage and the first born. Animals, shamans and foods of the feast accompany scenes of death and burial. All of these figures commemorate the deceased’s passage through the various stages of life.

“They represent the status and the office of the deceased, so they would be recognized as high-ranking in the world of the ancestral spirits,” Townsend says. “These objects would be like certificates so the deceased would be recognized as mature and elite people to be charged in the afterlife with the ongoing duties as intermediaries between the living community and the forces of nature, the rain, the sun and the Earth. Ancestral spirits were the intermediaries between the living people and the deified forces of nature. For the west Mexico communities, this ancestor worship was very important.” Yet Townsend warns, “this interpretation is just an approach, however, an effort to draw closer to the meaning of the pieces because they are so charged with life.”

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Townsend considers certain pieces in the show to be exceptional, such as the 1500 BC figurine of a delicate woman from El Open~o, a work that by far predates most of the works in the show. “It is magical, aesthetically extraordinary,” he says.

From the Comala region in Colima, there are round vessels stamped with the shapes of squash or with legs in the shapes of parrots. These objects of considerable decorative charm indicate a strong concern with drinking and storing the alcoholic beverage mescal produced in the region. Other vessels prove the existence of a highly developed cuisine of squash, maguey leaves, crawfish, even dog, using items that were gathered or hunted rather than grown, like maize.

There are clay models of houses and the circular places of worship as well as articulated games in ball courts. Entire scenes are reenacted in clay. “They depict with great humor and vivacity what everyone is doing, so that it is like looking at a fiesta in a small town in Mexico today. There are pets roaming around, people passed out from too much drink, men and women embracing, indicating that feasting was important in the life cycle,” Townsend says.

He cites the clay portrait of a seated chieftain as an especially fearsome character with his scarred broad shoulders, stony gaze and frontal nudity. A standing warrior from LACMA’s own collection is the largest ever to come out of west Mexico. There are numerous depictions of dwarfs and hunchbacks. “In that culture, the idea that you are abnormal moved you far from the village and more toward the world of the supernatural, the world of the shamans,” he explains.

Townsend organized the exhibition with the pragmatic aim of attracting the attention and support of Mexican government officials in the states of Jalisco, Colima and Nayarit. “We hope to raise money to translate this catalog into Spanish,” he says. “So far we have about $10,000, but we need $60,000. Volunteers are welcome. This is a project that hopes in a pragmatic sense to deepen knowledge of the region and to educate the country townspeople so that they will understand the significance of what they have.

“The problematic question of looting has to be addressed,” Townsend adds. “Someone at the local level might be able to exert a moral force, or a force of law, to arrest the looting that has always plagued the area,” he says. “It was not until 1972 that a treaty was signed to control the illegal export of antiquities. In this exhibition, we have museum people, collectors and field archeologists doing something pragmatic that has a larger meaning instead of pointing accusatory fingers at one another.”*

* “Ancient West Mexico: Art of the Unknown Past,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Opens next Sunday. Regular schedule: Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, noon-8 p.m.; Fridays, noon-9 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Ends March 29. Adults, $7; students and seniors, $5; children and younger students, $1. (323) 857-6000.

Hunter Drohojowska-Philp is a frequent contributor to Calendar.