Peru: from the art of the Chavin to the
Incas
Tuesday, April 04, 2006 (EST). Source:
AFP, Petit Palais Paris.
3,000 years of Peruvian art on show in Paris.
Three thousands years of art and heritage from
Peru - from mysterious heads to precious materials, stunning gold
work and ceramics - go on display on Wednesday in the Petit Palais
museum in Paris.
Peru: from the art of the Chavin to the
Incas featuring some 200 works gathered from 15 Peruvian museums was
due to be inaugurated on Tuesday.
"We wanted to show that pre-Columbus
Peru was far from being just the Incas," said scientific curator
Patrick Lemasson.
"The Incas were just a century in Peru's
history. Here we have more than 3 000 years of history, which starts
some 1 500 years BC," he added.
The exhibition is arranged
chronologically passing through the extraordinary diversity of some
13 cultures with their different art works: Chavin, Viru, Vicus,
Paracas, Nasca, Moche, Tiwanaku, Wari, Recuay,
Lambayeque-Sican, Chimu, Chancay, and Inca.
The first part juxtaposes the dark and
somber ceramics from the northern Cupisnique culture with the
colorful material used to wrap mummies and the ceramics of the
southern Paracas culture.
A large part of the exhibition has been
devoted to the northern Mochica with their realistic
"vases-portraits" and ochre and red ceramics representing
fantastical animals, fruits or erotic scenes.
Four pieces, including three in gold,
have come from the royal tomb of Sipan discovered in 1987.
There are also examples of the works of
the Recuay, the only culture to use stone for sculpture, as well as
golden crowns, necklaces and earrings from the Sican-Lambayeque and
Chimu cultures.
The splendor of the Inca empire is
represented by ceramics and materials which show that "the Incas
were the Romans of pre-Columbus America, they took a lot from the
previous cultures," Lemasson said.
The exhibition runs until July 2 and is
open every day from 10am to 6pm except Mondays, with late nights
until 8pm on Tuesday.
Ponchos, Pampa Cats Star in Paris Show
on Pre-Columbian Peru
May 24, 2006 Source: Bloomberg by Jorg
Uthmann
Pre-Columbian Peru is, for most people,
synonymous with the Incas. The conquest of their vast empire by
fewer than 180 Spaniards under Pizarro in 1532 is one of the most
astounding events in history.
The show at the Petit Palais in Paris,
the first after its reopening, proves that the Incas are only the
last chapter of a much longer story.
More than a dozen civilizations,
beginning in the second millennium B.C., are represented by about
200 objects from 15 Peruvian museums -- pottery, textiles, jewelry,
headdresses, masks. Since none of them had a system of writing,
dates and interpretations vary wildly.
It's a sober, though highly instructive
show.
The earliest was the culture of the
Chavin. Their religious center, Chavin de Huantar, built on the
eastern slopes of the Andes, 3,200 meters above sea level, rivaled
Cuzco, the capital of the Incas, in grandeur and beauty.
With the Cupisnique from the north
coast, they were the first potters in South America.
The Paracas (600 B.C.-300 A.D.) are
admired for their large-size embroidered ponchos. Their weavers
employed more than 200 hues of dyed or natural fiber and a great
variety of endearing motifs -- pampa cats, sharks, snails, parrots.
The Nazca (200 B.C.-600 A.D.), too,
produced textiles and fine, colorful ceramics. Yet their fame is
based on giant desert markings, one of the great mysteries of
archaeology.
Extraterrestrials
Some of these ``geoglyphs'' -- animals,
birds, fish and geometrical designs -- are over 100 meters long and
can be seen without distortion only from the air. Imaginative
amateur archaeologists have suggested that they were made by
extraterrestrials.
The fascination with extraterrestrial
forces is, of course, not new. The Moche, or Mochica, built enormous
adobe pyramids for the sun and the moon.
They are best known for their vessels
with human or animal faces, the most remarkable artifacts of the
so-called classic period (400-700 A.D.). They had an earthy sense of
humor: Some of the vessels depict erotic scenes.
The Moche also were talented goldsmiths.
The Incas arrived late on the historical
scene. Compared with their predecessors, they did not excel in the
arts. They were conquerors, engineers, builders of roads, bridges
and cities, and only second-class artists.
``They were the Romans of South
America,'' says Patrick Le Masson, one of the curators. But while
the Roman Empire lasted for more than 1,000 years, the Inca Empire
endured just about 100 years.
The show, which is supported by Kuoni
Reisen Holding AG, runs through July 2.
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