Dallas Museum of Art Bulletin, Spring 1984 Page: 11
29 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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NEW ACQUISITION
An Olmec Man
Among the works of art acquired specifically in connec-
tion with the opening of the new Museum, the oldest is
an Olmec stone sculpture of a Seated Mlan. While its 800
to 500 B.C. time of origin is far in the past, the image
itself projects the timelessness of any' great work. Three
sources made possible the acquisition of this important
sculpture: Mrs. Eugene McDermott, The Roberta Coke
Camp Fund, and The Art Museum League Fund.
The figure was found in the late 1940s by a farmer in
the Mexican state of Puebla. It has an unusually complete
history of previous ownership, which includes two noted
private collections, those of Wolfgang Paalen and Jay C.
Leff While it was still in Mexico the figure was drawn by
the noted artist-connoisseur Miguel Covarrubias.
The serene monumentality of the Seated Man belies its
relatively small physical size, slightly over seven inches. It
is an ideal exemplar of Olmec style, in which a viewpoint
of simplified naturalism is realized through smoothly
flowing forms which make even so complex a pose as
that of this figure appear effortless. Working only with
stone tools, Olmec sculptors were able to achieve such
beautifully finished small-sized hard stone pieces as this.
They were equally masterful at a monumental scale, of
which the colossal heads, which range from three to nine
feet in height, are the best known examples. All Olmec
sculptures project a controlled inner animation, which is
more muted in the larger-sized works, while in more
intimately scaled pieces such as this the face virtually
glows with inner life.
The narrow face of the subject, with well-defined,
somewhat aquiline features, appears also on an Olmec
jadeite mask with a double scroll pattern on the right
cheek. This has led Olmec scholar David Joralemon to
give this individual the name Lord of the Double Scroll.
When seen under a strong raking light, the Museum's
figure does show traces of a double scroll pattern on the
right cheek. This and the close resemblance to the mask
lead one to conclude that the Seated Man also portrays
the Lord of the Double Scroll.
A considerable amount of cinnabar (mercury ore) re-
mains on the figure, producing a dramatic visual contrast
with the deep bluish-green of the serpentine from which
the figure was sculpted. Red was a color associated withSeated Man
Olmec, 800-500 B.C.
Mexico: Puebla
burial, probably with implications of regeneration of new
blood from bones and more generally of blood sacrifice.
Both concepts appear in the mythologies of most later
pre-Columbian groups, though no verbal tradition sur-
vives from Olmec times. It is thus likely that the cinnabar
was rubbed over the figure ceremonially at the time it
was buried. Whether this was with the subject himself or
in some other context will never be known.
From about 1150 B.C. onward until roughly 400 B.C.,
the Olmec developed the first complex civilization in
Middle America. This gives their cultural remains special
importance, since the origins of a number of later Middle
American image complexes - with their related belief
systems - can be seen in Olmec art. The Dallas collec-
tion is already strong in Olmec works, both in hard,
green stones such as jadeite and serpentine and in ce-
ramic. The acquisition of such a stellar example of the
Seated Man serves to crown an already important aspect
of the Museum's notable pre-Columbian collection.
John Lunsford
Senior Curator
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Dallas Museum of Art. Dallas Museum of Art Bulletin, Spring 1984, periodical, Spring 1984; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth224954/m1/13/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Dallas Museum of Art.