[Aztlan] Born of Clay Exhibit

[michael ruggeri]

 From the NY Times

July 1, 2006
ART REVIEW
Museum of American Indian's 'Born of Clay' Explores Culture Through  
Ceramics

By GRACE GLUECK
One of the great cultural gifts bestowed by the Indians of North and  
South America is their ceramic tradition, the making of pots that  
express the vitality of the Native American civilizations. Its  
treasures are abundant in "Born of Clay: Ceramics From the National  
Museum of the American Indian," which offers a small but engrossing  
glimpse of the huge collection — some 60,000 works covering more than  
6,000 years — amassed by the museum.

The show's 300 or so examples cover four areas of the hemisphere  
where the practice of pot-making developed particular strength: the  
Andes, Mesoamerica and the Eastern and Southwestern regions of the  
United States. Each, of course, has its own mode of expression, from  
the lively, often playful human and animal figures of the Andes and  
Central America to the striking abstract designs of the Southwestern  
United States.

One thrust of the show is to demonstrate the continuity of works by  
present-day Native American artists with those produced by ancestors.  
An example is "Imprisoned Clown" (about 1999) by Roxanne Swentzell of  
Santa Clara Pueblo, N.M. A seated figure with a horned head and gray  
stripes covering its entire body, except for its huge hands, pulling  
at its face, it represents a Kossa, a being who might teach behavior  
by making fun of others. But it also implies imprisonment by  
stereotype. Its humorous persona is not inconsistent with that of a  
fat, standing singer from Cochiti Pueblo, N.M., made in 1880. His  
arms flung wide, his mouth open to let the melody fly out, the singer  
wears a painted-on black vest composed of corn and water symbols.

The most animated sections of the show are those devoted to the Andes  
and Mesoamerica, a region that includes parts of Mexico and Central  
America. The oldest ceramics known in the Americas — made from 5,000  
to 6,000 years ago — are found in the Andean region, along the  
Pacific coast of Ecuador and in the San Jacinto Valley of Colombia;  
objects from 3,800 to 4,000 years old have been discovered in Peru.  
Some archaeologists believe that ceramics know-how found its way by  
sea to Mesoamerica, the second great cradle of civilization in the  
Americas.

The earliest Andean work here is a tiny female figure (3000-1500  
B.C.) from Valdivia, Ecuador, an armless woman with prominent breasts  
and genital area, but neither arms nor feet. Thought to be an  
offering to Pachamama, or Mother Earth, she might be an equivalent of  
the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf, the fertility figure of Old  
World culture.

A later people, the Paracas (600-100 B.C.) on the southern coast of  
Peru, are noted for their technique of polychroming ceramics after  
firing. Their lively works include a bottle in the shape of a spotted  
feline with ominous teeth, modeled on a cat that lived in the coastal  
rocks and is significant in Andean mythology.

One of the show's most engaging objects is from the Moche culture of  
Peru's northern coast (A.D. 1-800), whose ceramists were known for  
their artistic and technical skills. Among their achievements are  
sharply modeled portrait vases, in which human faces express  
different emotions, like the spouted bottle in the form of a small,  
squatting man, painted a sickly white. He wears a loincloth and a  
hat, and on his face, decoratively scarred with representations of  
birds and abstract motifs, is a very modern expression of anxiety as  
he squints at the viewer.

Mesoamerica was home to advanced cultures like the Olmec, the Maya,  
the Toltec and the Aztec, whose genius is apparent even in their  
small ceramics. Standouts among their immensely varied works are the  
Mayan Jaina-style figures of A.D. 400 to 800.

Mostly made for the tombs of nobles on Jaina, an island necropolis  
off the coast of what is now Campeche, these small, extraordinarily  
lifelike figures of modeled and painted clay depict human beings in  
every kind of activity. Two shown here depict a drunkard and a  
weaver. The weaver sits absorbed in his loom; the drunkard stands,  
head cocked to one side, his mouth open, holding two jugs under his  
left arm.

In North America, ceramic production in the Eastern region — defined  
here as the northern and southern woodlands, from the Great Lakes and  
Oklahoma eastward, reaching up to maritime Canada and down to Florida  
— covers the last 4,500 years, preceding that of the better-known  
Southwest. The earliest documented pottery was produced along the  
coast of what is now Georgia around 2500 B.C., spreading to New York  
and southern Ontario by 600 B.C.

Eventually, basic principles of technology and decoration became  
somewhat fixed: smoothing the clay, mixed with auxiliary materials,  
with a paddle or scraper, to form relatively unassuming pots  
(compared with others in the show) durable enough to be used for  
lengthy cooking. For decoration, the damp clay was pressed with  
textiles or sticks wrapped with cord, or a pattern of lines was cut  
into the clay.

More striking vessels, made after A.D. 900, come from the Caddoan  
tribes who farmed along riverbanks in what is now Oklahoma, Arkansas,  
Louisiana and Texas. Prosperous from their produce, they fostered  
artistic talent, looking to Mexico for new ideas. They are best known  
for Caddoan bottles, with patterns incised into the clay while it was  
still wet, or with fine lines engraved after firing, with red or  
white pigment rubbed into the design. One beauty is a squared bottle  
(A.D. 1000-1300) from Louisiana, its roundness gracefully countered  
by four deeply incised arches that partially cover the bottle's  
bulging belly.

The Pueblo people of the Southwest, devoted to clay as an almost  
sacred material, have for centuries produced pottery whose design  
motifs — stylized rain clouds, feathers, mountains, bird beaks —  
offer prayers for rain in the dry desert habitat. Most of the ceramic  
pieces shown here are of relatively recent vintage, yet their designs  
are not all that different from work made a millennium ago.

Compare the bold, overall geometrically stylized embellishment of  
beaks and feathers in an ancestral Zuni water storage jar (A.D. 1400)  
with one made in 1965 by Lucy M. Lewis of the Acoma people. (She died  
in 1992.) Its stunning overall black-and-white geometric design has  
the same bold thrust and freshness of the earlier piece, yet nearly  
600 years lie between them.

Although the show handsomely displays only a fraction of what the  
museum owns, visitors couldn't ask for a more engaging introduction  
to the seemingly infinite universe of Native American pottery.

"Born of Clay: Ceramics From the National Museum of the American  
Indian" runs through May 30, 2007, at the National Museum of the  
American Indian, at the United States Custom House, 1 Bowling Green,  
Lower Manhattan, (212) 514-3700.


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company



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