Art: TREASURES OF THE ANDES

• Share

MANHATTAN'S Museum of Modern Art is also a museum of esoteric art, both sophisticated and primitive. Among its most elaborate shows in the past were a survey of North American Indian artifacts, which visitors found hardly more savage than Picasso, and arts of the South Seas, which were no more baffling to the general public than Bali's dreams or Henry Moore's hole-in-the-head idols. Yet "Ancient Arts of the Andes," currently on view at the museum, is perhaps the weirdest show in its 25-year history.

Museum Director Rene d'Harnoncourt had been planning the exhibition for a decade, gathered some 400 objects from museums and private collectors throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The exhibition covers a great deal of ground, roughly the northwestern third of South America, and a vast extent of time—27 centuries ending with the Spanish conquest in 1534. It includes clay pots and statuettes of extraordinarily grotesque vigor, and others that are outstanding for their subtle realism. A hat and a wall-hanging made entirely of feathers brighten the display. There is a poncho with a checkerboard pattern, and many cloths so elaborately embroidered that the eye cannot be brought to unravel their designs. Rock crystal, jade, silver, ivory and turquoise jewelry conjure up court scenes of exotic splendor.

A stone throne supported by a carved, crouching man shows the Andean fondness for working the most stubborn materials. It is further demonstrated by photographs of temples near Cuzco, 11,000 feet up. Built during Europe's Dark Ages, the temples were constructed of granite blocks weighing up to 50 tons each. No one knows how the blocks were heaved into place. Even more impressive is the fact that they were matched and fitted so precisely that a knife blade cannot be slipped between them.

Flashiest items in the show are masses of crowns, earplugs, nose pendants, beakers and breastplates, all done in pure gold but varying in color from silvery to deep yellow. Such treasures lured Pizarro and his conquistadores to Peru, and thereby led to swift and bloody destruction of native culture.

Before Pizarro, the Andes have no recorded history. One tribe, the Mochicas, may have developed a system of hieroglyphics similar to the Mayan, but like the Mayan it has never been deciphered. Having no records to go by, archeologists are necessarily vague in categorizing Andean art, but laymen may find a certain poetic fascination in the mere names of the main civilizations: Chavin, Cupisnique, Salinar, Cavernas, Quimbaya, Chanapata, Chiripa, Mochica, Tiahuanaco, Chimu, Chibcha, Inca.

One of the most surprising things about Andean art is its variety. At various points it seems to relate more to alien cultures than to itself. Shown on the following pages are an early stone puma that resembles nothing so much as an ancient Chinese bronze, a gold figurine that looks like a Javanese puppet, a double-image vessel that prophesies cubism, and a portrait head worthy of Sir Jacob Epstein.

In fact, some of the pieces in the show seem no different from the most modern items on display elsewhere in the museum—and this is hardly surprising, for many pioneers of 20th century art achieved their "revolution" by deliberately, turning back to the jungle, the primitive temple

and the cave dwelling.