Shamans, Supernaturals & Animal Spirits: Mythic Figures From the Ancient Andes

182
Corner from a Mantle
Entwined Figures and Snakes
Wari-related style (Huarmey Valley? Chimú-Capac?)
AD 800-1000
Cotton, camelid wool; supplementary weft, selvedged on
one side with tubular finish
14½" x 20"
Published
Anton 1984, fig. 102.
Literature
de Lavalle 1984, 80-81.
This free-form composition is easier to decipher if compared to the figure featured
in cat. 181. Despite its acute stylization, that staff-bearer is still tethered to Wari
artistic precepts for representing the icon. This aberrant interpretation clearly emerges
out of the same late, provincial aesthetic, but has become even more idiosyncratic and
reductive in form.
Meandering lines and serpentine chains wind through the design, linking all components
(faces, bodies, feet, hands) with little regard for the legibility of the original icon. The
staff can barely be differentiated from the head and body. The acrobatically flexed
figure harks back to the tumbling, falling and contorted shamans in Paracas art.
The lyrical repetition of oval, circle and pod shapes in different scales and the rhythmic
color progression are visually cohesive. The looping, elastic qualities of this design
offer a striking contrast to the angular patterning of the outer border, which sets a
whimsical, long-eared creature/manta ray motif within a geometric frieze that recalls
decorative murals in central and north coast architecture.
This fragment, which has the tubular-edge finish typically applied to tunics, may be
associated with a large mantle.
118