Number 30 - South American Explorers

18 SOUTH AMERICAN EXPLORER
bian display at the Denver Art Museum, the dialogue is
ever the same: "But Teddy, pre-Colombian art is not
beautiful." Whereupon, I marshal my arguments about
symbolism and design until she concedes that some
pieces are more attractive than others. On the other
hand, perhaps I have just worn her down.
Nancy is not alone. Many visitors to the museum
find pre-Colombian art interesting, especially if they are
told something about the people who produced it. But
it's another matter when it comes to appreciating its
artistic merit. "It's just so different." And, indeed, pre-
Colombian art has a perceptibly "other" feeling than
what we're familiar with from our European tradition.
This is especially true with regard to the human body.
We automatically compare everything we see with the
form idealized by the Greeks and perpetuated by the
Romans. It's an ingrained response by now, and not
even the discovery at the turn of the century of African
abstraction has done more than make a dent in our
conditioning. Furthermore, it is hard for people to believe
that artists working 2,000 years ago could have
produced work that qualifies as world-class art.
Pre-Colombian art exhibits have different
objectives than those strived for in
other museums. Standards of compositional
harmony and high levels of design
quality are paramount and govern
the selection. At its best, pre-Colombian art possesses
these qualities in great measure, but they take awhile to
see. Some discernment is required and an effort must
be made to trace the mobilization of elements, the use
of curvilinear or straight-line repetitions, the rhythmical
groupings of shapes and forms which together comprise
the coherence of a piece. We must learn to see it, for the
beauty is there, although couched in a new vocabulary
of forms.
The burial urn discussed previously is an example of
a fine work; so is the exuberant lady in Figure Two with
her mouth open in a round little "O." Notice how this
round form, or parts of this form—small arcs, are repeated
by the artist over and over again, appearing in
the hemisphere of her headdress (one side is broken
off) and echoed in the round of her skirt at the bottom.
Created to be the lid on a burial urn, she's a two-sided
lady, the same figure front and back. She doesn't look a
bit funereal, does she? Could she be singing, chanting,
or perhaps saying a prayer?
The large nose plug worn by the little lady is fre­
quently encountered in pre-Colombian art, an indication
of the enjoyment ancient American peoples took in
all forms of jewelry and ornamentation. Elaborate hairstyles,
large sweeping headdresses, and many different
kinds of jewelry adorn the figurines. Often these diminutive
people wear little clothing, but jewelry they parade
in abundance, fashioned from bone, wood, colored
stones, pearls, shell, antlers, claws, animal teeth, and, of
course, where available, copper, gold, and silver. It's
instructive to walk through a museum, noting the different
ways the artists ornament their figures. Every
type of jewelry we see today, and then some, is used:
jewelry for the nose and lip, cheek ornaments as well as
upper arm and leg bracelets, belts, and every variety of
skin tattooing.
Figure Three is a Popoyan warrior with a monkey on
his back, sitting on a bench. (Only the males sit on
benches in pre-Colombian art; the females sit on the
ground.) The warrior is actually a container. Fie is holding
a shield and wears a stunning necklace cast In gold.
His headdress, a lid, comes off to reveal the hollow
interior. This is a very rare sculptu re: there are only two
or three examples like it in the world. The one at the
Denver Art Museum is in the best condition. Ancient
ceramics suffer greatly from ground pressures, movements
of the earth and corrosive acids in ground water.
It is common for archaeologists to find many broken
pots, all together in heaps at the bottom of their excavations.
The Popoyan warrior evidently emerged unscathed,
something of a wonder in itself.
The monkey on the back of the warrior puts this
sculpture in a distinct class of human figures. These
always have an animal companion or, as some scholars
say, an "alter ago" on their backs. We don't know what
is intended by the imagery, but contemporary Maya
thought might hold a clue. According to Martin Prechtel,
a Guatemalan shaman whom I met some years
ago at a University of Colorado lecture, all humans
have an animal spirit. When a person is out of harmony
with his animal spirit he falls ill. In Guatemala, one may
regain harmony through a shaman who can diagnose
the difficulty and treat it by contacting the animal spirit..
The imagery of the Popoyan warrior may encode
another meaning altogether, of course. It may merely
represent the insignia of a warrior group, but in any
RIGHT, Popoyan effigy vessel, c. A.D. 1200, Middle
Magdalena River Valley, Colombia. Denver Art Museum.