from Archeology Southwest website
Unlike pottery from other cultural areas in the SW, like Mesa Verde region in SW Colorado and the Hohokam region in the Phoenix Arizona basin, that have a style distinct to the region...
pottery from the Mimbres Culture shows the work of individual artists...
pottery from the Mimbres Culture shows the work of individual artists...
The Mimbres Classic Period was @ 900 AD to 1200 AD and unlike the Mesa Verde region and the Hohokam regions, which ended violent, mass death from starvation or violence, the Mimbres Culture just kind of petered out.
The funniest part of the talk for me, as an artist, was listening to an archeologist and science types trying to put their usual "measurements" to art, doing calculation on how many artist and how long it would take to make the amount of pots discovered or known of, at the different sights. Their big mistake- that artists are consistent in their production......? Have these scientist actually talked to or get to know an artist.
Consistent and artist should never be in the same sentence!
The archeologist did matched up the style of several artist, that drew their rabbit's ears the same, or had the same whimsical style to their antelope, which was corrected in the talk from the audience to "pronghorn". They also identified a style that they called "transitional"where a creature has the attributes of two animals....
A bird or a fish?
We, artists, would call that "metamorphosis" and it is one more of those amazing things where cultures all over the world thought up the same thing, like....drums.
Today, the word "Metamorphosis" calls forward the images of M.C.Escher...
who in the Twentieth Century, was still playing with the ideas the Mimbres pottery artist were pondering in the First Century and those pieces are so simple, but so good...
they could sit in the Metropolitian Museum of Art, that contemporary in their design. It is such a reminder of how all art comes from the soul and transverses not only centuries and but geography.
Another example of how great art comes from the common core of all of us are Gee's Bend Quilts...
created in an isolated community located in a bend of a river in Alabama, an African American community, barley holding on in the late Ninetieth Century and into the Twentieth...
where some amazingly talented women created amazing quilts from rags and worn clothes to keep their families warm and now, those quilts are hanging in museums around the world.
There is much info on Mimbres Pottery online and there is a Data Base, where they can be viewed.
photes noted attached to a linked website from Wikipedia Commons
Nice- the pottery stirred up my vocational archaeological beginnings. Love the bear and his claws. And the quilts from Gee's Bend are exquisite. Authenticity wins over perfection or consistency every time.
ReplyDeleteDo you know the pb "The Quilt Story", written by Tony Johnston, illo'd by Tomie dePaola? Several years old but one of my favs. Your post reminded me of it.