"This is the largest collection of Moche portraits that has ever been published. As one of the most remarkable groups of portraits produced by any ancient people, it will be of interest to all connoisseurs and scholars of the world's great art traditions, as well as to students of the Moche and prehistoric Andean peoples."--BOOK JACKET.
This volume accompanies a major international loan exhibition featuring more than three hundred works of art, many rarely or never before seen in the United States. It traces the development of gold working and other luxury arts in the Americas from antiquity until the arrival of Europeans in the early sixteenth century. Presenting spectacular works from recent excavations in Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, this exhibition focuses on specific places and times—crucibles of innovation—where artistic exchange, rivalry, and creativity led to the production of some of the greatest works of art known from the ancient Americas. The book and exhibition explore not only artistic practices but also the historical, cultural, social, and political conditions in which luxury arts were produced and circulated, alongside their religious meanings and ritual functions. Golden Kingdoms creates new understandings of ancient American art through a thematic exploration of indigenous ideas of value and luxury. Central to the book is the idea of the exchange of materials and ideas across regions and across time: works of great value would often be transported over long distances, or passed down over generations, in both cases attracting new audiences and inspiring new artists. The idea of exchange is at the intellectual heart of this volume, researched and written by twenty scholars based in the United States and Latin America.
Quilter utilizes the Peabody's collection as a means to investigate how the Moche used various media, particularly ceramics, to convey messages about their lives and beliefs. His presentation provides a critical examination and rethinking of many of the commonly held interpretations of Moche artifacts and their imagery. It also raises important questions about art production and its role in this and other ancient and modern cultures. --
This volume explores the art and archaeology of the Moche, who created impressive monuments and metal objects centuries before the rise of the Inca. A major theme of the volume is how the visual arts and political representation are connected.
Raises the analysis of Moche iconography to a new level through an in-depth study of visual representations of rituals involving sex, death, and sacrifice.
This title provides an in-depth and authoritative review of feeatherworking traditions in ancient Peru. The book includes a discussion of important recent discoveries, considerations of iconography, and basic technical characteristics of feather works.
02 Retratos2,000 Years of Latin American PortraitsMarion Oettinger, Jr., Miguel A. Bretos, Carolyn Kinder Carr et al.A landmark survey of Latin American portraiture and its powerful significance throughout historyThe tradition of portraiture in Latin America is astonishingly long and rich. For over 2,000 years, portraits have been used to preserve the memory of the deceased, bolster the social standing of the aristocracy, mark the deeds of the mighty, advance the careers of politicians, record rites of passage, and mock symbols of the status quo. This beautiful and wide-ranging book—the first to explore the tradition of portraiture in Latin America from pre-Columbian times to the present day—features some 200 works from fifteen countries. Retratos (Portraits) presents an engaging variety of works by such well-known figures as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Fernando Botero, and José Campeche as well as stunning examples by anonymous and obscure artists. Distinguished contributors discuss the significance of portraits in ancient Mayan civilizations, in the world of colonial Iberians, in the political struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in a remarkable range of other times and locations. With a wealth of informative details and exquisite color illustrations, Retratos invites readers to appreciate Latin American portraits and their many meanings as never before.F This book is the catalogue for the first exhibition of Latin American portraiture ever organized in the United States. The exhibition is on view at El Museo del Barrio, New York (December 3, 2004 to March 20, 2005); the San Diego Museum of Art (April 16 to June 12, 2005); the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (July 23 to October 2, 2005); the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. (October 21, 2005, to January 8, 2006; and the San Antonio Museum of Art (February 4 to April 30, 2006).Marion Oettinger, Jr., is senior curator and curator of Latin American art at the San Antonio Museum of Art; Miguel A. Bretos is senior scholar at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington; Caroline Kinder Karr is deputy and chief curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington. Contributors to the book include Elizabeth P. Benson; Christopher B. Donnan; Kirsten Hammer; María Concepción García Sáiz; Renato Gonzáles Mello; Luis Pérez Oramos; Luis-Martin Lozano; and Teodoro Vidal. Retratos2,000 Years of Latin American PortraitsMarion Oettinger, Jr., Miguel A. Bretos, Carolyn Kinder Carr et al.A landmark survey of Latin American portraiture and its powerful significance throughout historyThe tradition of portraiture in Latin America is astonishingly long and rich. For over 2,000 years, portraits have been used to preserve the memory of the deceased, bolster the social standing of the aristocracy, mark the deeds of the mighty, advance the careers of politicians, record rites of passage, and mock symbols of the status quo. This beautiful and wide-ranging book—the first to explore the tradition of portraiture in Latin America from pre-Columbian times to the present day—features some 200 works from fifteen countries. Retratos (Portraits) presents an engaging variety of works by such well-known figures as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Fernando Botero, and José Campeche as well as stunning examples by anonymous and obscure artists. Distinguished contributors discuss the significance of portraits in ancient Mayan civilizations, in the world of colonial Iberians, in the political struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in a remarkable range of other times and locations. With a wealth of informative details and exquisite color illustrations, Retratos invites readers to appreciate Latin American portraits and their many meanings as never before.F This book is the catalogue for the first exhibition of Latin American portraiture ever organized in the United States. The exhibition is on view at El Museo del Barrio, New York (December 3, 2004 to March 20, 2005); the San Diego Museum of Art (April 16 to June 12, 2005); the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (July 23 to October 2, 2005); the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. (October 21, 2005, to January 8, 2006; and the San Antonio Museum of Art (February 4 to April 30, 2006).Marion Oettinger, Jr., is senior curator and curator of Latin American art at the San Antonio Museum of Art; Miguel A. Bretos is senior scholar at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington; Caroline Kinder Karr is deputy and chief curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington. Contributors to the book include Elizabeth P. Benson; Christopher B. Donnan; Kirsten Hammer; María Concepción García Sáiz; Renato Gonzáles Mello; Luis Pérez Oramos; Luis-Martin Lozano; and Teodoro Vidal.
More than a thousand years ago on the north coast of Peru, Indigenous Moche artists created a large and significant corpus of sexually explicit ceramic works of art. They depicted a diversity of sex organs and sex acts, and an array of solitary and interconnected human and nonhuman bodies. To the modern eye, these Moche “sex pots,” as Mary Weismantel calls them, are lively and provocative but also enigmatic creations whose import to their original owners seems impossible to grasp. In Playing with Things, Weismantel shows that there is much to be learned from these ancient artifacts, not merely as inert objects from a long-dead past but as vibrant Indigenous things, alive in their own human temporality. From a new materialist perspective, she fills the gaps left by other analyses of the sex pots in pre-Columbian studies, where sexuality remains marginalized, and in sexuality studies, where non-Western art is largely absent. Taking a decolonial approach toward an archaeology of sexuality and breaking with long-dominant iconographic traditions, this book explores how the “pots play jokes, make babies, give power, and hold water,” considering the sex pots as actual ceramic bodies that interact with fleshly bodies, now and in the ancient past. A beautifully written study that will be welcomed by students as well as specialists, Playing with Things is a model for archaeological and art historical engagement with the liberating power of queer theory and Indigenous studies.
