The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 1, Ed. 1 Monday, July 23, 1984 Page: 8 of 16
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THRESHER FINE ARTS
American archeo-astronomy exhibit attracts, informs
Star Gods of the Ancient Americas
Museum of Natural Science
Through September 16
The Museum of Natural Science
has once again put on a really
spectacular show. Not only is it
bodies. There are huge Tlingit (a
northwest coastal tribe) moon-
panel doors (each door
representing a different quarter of
the moon), the elaborate hand
gestures of figures on Mayan
polychrome pottery which recall
Lacquered wooden drinking cup from Peru
well-documented, thought- cosmological
provoking, and equally valuable
both to the novice and the old
hand, but the artifacts selected are
of excellent quality.
origins, Arapaho
leather worked with cosmological
signs, and Hopi kachinas.
The show is arranged in two
sections, which one enters through
The show centers around an
area of rapidiy growing academic
(and other) interest: archeo-
astronomy. Archeo-astronomy is
the study of the cosmology,
astronomy, and astrology of
ancient cultures, all of which are
valuable tools for understanding
hese cultures as a whole. While
today astrology is limited to the
page opposite the comics in the
newspaper, in the pre-Newtonian
world people depended on the
skies for the timetables of their
lives.
The intimacy with which these
people were connected to the
natural world around them (and
especially the natural world above
them) is convincingly demon-
strated by the variety of objects
which bear the signs of heavenly
a darkened antechamber
splattered eerily, if unrealistically,
with glowing stars. The first is
divided into sections devoted to
the sun, moon, stars, and the
planets, with artifacts from
American cultures from the Arctic
to Tierro del Fuego. The second
section of the show explains in
clear terms the complicated
astrologies of five major native
American groups: the Plains
Indians, the Pueblo Indians, the
Mayans, the Andean Indians of
Peru and Bolivia, and other
Central American cultures.
Because one of the major
purposes of the show is to
demonstrate how widely varied are
the artifacts which reflect the
cosmology of a people, the show is
difficult to describe. Perhaps I can
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best give you an idea oi tne exhibit
by describing a few of the
individual pieces.
Many of the Mayan pieces are
spectacular, demonstrating solar,
lunar, astrological, and planetary
interest. Some artifacts are quite
small, like the embossed gold disk
from Cuzco, Peru, dating from
between the eight and eleventh
centuries, which represented either
the solar or lunar disk. Others are
on an immense scale, such as the
ballcourts through out the Mayan
Empire which were always aligned
precisely north-south and whose
limestone walls were covered with
astrological symbols. On an even
grander scale are such astrological
monuments as Chitzenitza, which
contained huge observatories
which allowed easy determination
of the solstices.
Two other Mayan pieces are
worthy of note. An incense burner
from Palenque is in the shape of a
jaguar, the most powerful animal
of the cosmological pantheon. The
Lacandons, a Mayan group still
living in Central America,
produced between the first and
third centuries a stone silhouette
cross emblazoned with a stylized
Mayan star glyph.
Other South Americans are well
represented in the show. Many of
the pieces seem at first glance to be
unrelated to cosmology, but the
point of the exhibit is that in these
holistic societies nothing is
unrelated, and everything is
related to the cosmology.
An Aztec mirror made of
glistening obsidian seems a rather
pedestrian object, until the
curators remind us that such
mirrors were used to see the future.
Another Aztec piece, a stone dish
dating from the last pre-Hispanic
century, is a less ambiguous
artifact of Aztecan cosmology: it is
carved with a scene of a victim
being sacrifced to the sun god.
Zuni corn maiden's headdress
A tiny Colima gold solar disc,
Incan pottery animal effigies
offered to the sun god, and an
Incan lacquered wood drinking
cup of a jaguar with attendant gold
serpents, representing the winter
solstice — the longest day of the
year in the southern hemisphere —
are other superb artifacts from
Central and South America.
North American cultures aren't
slighted in the show, and if the
pieces are in general less
spectacular, the stories behind
them are often more interesting,
perhaps because so much of South
American Indian cosmology was
destroyed by the conquistadors
and is thus unknown to us.
For instance, a wooden raven
rattle of the Haida, a Northwest
coastal culture, symbolizes a belief
about the origins of the world. The
Haida believe that the world was in
darkness until the raven stole the
sun from the king of heaven and
gave it to the earth. In the art of the
region, the raven is most
commonly shown with the sun
balanced on its back or safely
stowed under a wing.
Other intriguing North
American pieces include a
Delaware Indian (from Okla-
rattle made out of turtle shells, the
segmented scales representing the
lunations of the year, and the
kachinas of the Hopis, each
representing a complex of
individual, social, and cosmologi-
cal significance. A 10-foot
mechanical mask from the
Kwakiutl, from the area around
Vancouver in British Columbia,
opens and closes by a dancer inside
to show two different faces,
representing either the sun and the
moon or day and night.
After walking through the show,
see Starfods, page nine
CAM presents amusing photo-murals
Gilbert and George
Contemporary Arts Museum
Through August 19
The mid-summer show at the
CAM is a real eye-grabber, a
collection of huge photographs
covering the barn-like interior
from floor to ceiling. Painted in
near-fluorescent primary colors,
these images make for an amusing
and visually striking show.
The artists are Gilbert and
George (no last names), a pair of
British performance artists who
have made their lives their art.
Known for their stoic behavior and
conservative dress, Gilbert and
George are out to parody the staid
British upper class. They figure
prominently in the photographs,
often as two huge heads in profile,
and the world they witness is full of
broken symbols and repressed
sexual tensions.
Several romantic stereotypes are
given the G & G treatment. One
1982 work, entitled Deatho
Knocko, shows two armored
knights doing battle with a couple
of enormous houseflies. A work
from 1980, simply called Hero,
shows a minuteman silhouetted
against a stark yellow and white
background, playing on the
simplicity of patriotism and the
weakness involved in stereotypes.
A dream-like quality results
from the juxtaposition of these
time-worn themes and the unusual
medium of gigantic photos.
Television, billboards and the Pop
Art movement are all obvious
influences on the style of these
artists. The stark, surrealistic
Forgiveness parodies centuries of
art with a man kneeling before
another who is sneering down at
him. Another work from the same
year, Youth Faith, pictures black
and white youths juggling brightly
colored crosses.
Fruit God Fear has a mari
crouching in front of a giant,
multi-colored fetish. A preoccupa-
tion with fetishistic objects and the
recurrent image of young males
reveals the underlying sexual
significance of the stereotypes
George and Gilbert are employing.
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Two pieces from 1977, Queer
and Communism explore with
huge panels of red the violence of
sterotypes. Despite their their
apparent simplicity, they confront
us with the complexity in society's
attitudes toward the taboo.
Other works in the show are
more purely whimsical, like the
1982 Outspoken Lick, which
features two huge tongues raised to
meet fruit slices; some are self-
referential to their position as
artists and intellectuals, like Living
with Madness, which shows two
men crouching in the darkness
below a gargoyle.
Gilbert and George pull together
such diverse traditions as the artist
as social observer and the tongue-
in-cheek self-consciousness of the
sixties Pep Art. A 1982 work,
Naked Love, portrays two naked
men staring at each other while
Gilbert and George look on and
Icarus and Daedalus fall to earth
behind them. The artists aren't out
to explode these romantic myths;
rather, they seem to fondle them
with nervous affection,
demonstrating the continuing
psychological influence of naive
symbolism in our sophisticated
society.
Once inside the CAM, you
might want to check out the
extensive collection of art from the
1960s Fluxus movement in the
Lower Gallery. Artists such as
Yoko Ono are seen at the start of
the movements in art from which
people like Gilbert and George
sprang. It is an interesting pairing
of shows, providing a good history
lesson in recent art.
—Daniel Borden
The Rice Thresher, July 23, 1984, pafe 8
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Havlak, Paul. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 72, No. 1, Ed. 1 Monday, July 23, 1984, newspaper, July 23, 1984; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245563/m1/8/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.