Art: 35 Centuries of Mexican Art

Only in Mexico did the colonizers of the New World find an art as deeply rooted as Europe’s. It was an art that had had 3,000 years to grow, nourished in settled, rich and leisurely societies comparable in many ways to the ancient Egyptians. In the course of raising seasonal crops, worshiping a panoply of local gods to honor bountiful harvests, building huge pyramids to exalt these gods, the Mayas, Olmecs, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Toltecs and Aztecs developed an artistic tradition unmatched elsewhere in the Americas.

Upon the conquest, the art of Mexico stumbled for a while, then swallowed up the onslaught of Spanish artistry and went on to spawn a new nationalistic and individual tradition. To show the whole sweeping story, the Mexican government prepared an encyclopedic exhibit of more than 2,000 works of art from pre-Columbian times to the present (see next two pages). After five years in Europe, where 9,000,000 people saw it, the show has come to the U.S., and now is on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Toppled Titans. At the earliest gateways of Mexican art are the giant stone heads of the Olmecs—sphinxlike basalt monoliths, some weighing more than 15 tons, whose eyes seem to stare without cognizance of the centuries that have passed since they toppled into the jungle. But most of Mexico’s ancient art is less monumental and more familiar: everyday household utensils and ritual objects decorated with leaves and tendrils; pots, statuary, and tools in the shape of animals; terra-cotta fertility idols whose swollen thighs and exaggerated pubic regions are pocket guarantees of good crops. Perhaps the highest point of pre-conquest art—and the most exciting part of the Los Angeles show—was the painted room of the temple at Bonampak, a pyramid whose corbel vaults—arches made by stepping stones inward—display 8th century Mayan frescoes strangely linked in style with the flat, frontal reliefs of the ancient Egyptians. Their bold, sophisticated expressionism is so compatible with modern art that they suggest the eternal life of forms in art.

When the Conquistadors came in 1519, they hoped to found not just a colony but a New Spain. Instead, the Mexicans absorbed the Spaniards. The viceroy took the place of Montezuma; Christ became the altar ego of the god Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent and savior who can both soar like a bird and slither like a snake. In 17th century crucifixes by Indian artisans, Christ’s body does not hang upon the Cross, but becomes part of it, styled after pre-Columbian pieces in which animals and human figures became part of the pottery. In one oil, a viceroy’s horse becomes an intricate tattoo symbol of itself, and the European painter’s tradition sinks in a jungle of design.

A Circular Calendar. But in transforming, or even sabotaging, the imported Spanish tradition, Mexico’s artists were in retrospect only staging a holding operation. With the arrival of true independence, after the 1910 revolution, Mexico’s artists suddenly turned rebel, somersaulted over European impressionism straight into a violent native expressionism. Jose Clemente Orozco tore apart his society in a howl of complaint. Diego Rivera’s solemn, linear murals lent dignity to the poor. David Alfaro Siqueiros attacked the industrial world with a futurist’s flurry of movement, using such brute materials as Duco on burlap. Rufino Tamayo looked poetically backward into his ancestors’ blood passions and, as if once again ripping the living hearts from Aztec human sacrifices, reincarnated them in the stillness of his stark cubism.

When viewed in its richly hued entirety, the art of Mexico is a flowing history of forms that never die. European methods take over, but the serpent Quetzalcoatl triumphs in spirit. Throughout 3,500 years, his plumage seems hardly ruffled. The forms seem to change, but, like the circular calendars of the Aztecs, they are always turning back into themselves.