Pre-Columbian Art
Decoding a Cross-Cultural Codex
The year is 1575. Mexico City has been struck by a plague. But behind the walls of a specialized school, painters, artists, and wise men of the Aztec tradition are working to complete a project that takes their minds away from the horror of death around them. Sometimes at night these scribes turn to drink to assuage their sorrows, but by day they meticulously compile the 12 books that comprise “La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España,” more commonly known as the Florentine Codex.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún directed the project from 1545 until his death in 1590. The work, which consists of Spanish text, Aztec Nahuatl text (in Roman script), and pictorial representations, has been an invaluable resource for historians of Mesoamerica. When it was completed, it was smuggled into Spain, where parts of it were denounced as professing idolatry. It eventually made its way to the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence. How exactly the Medici family acquired the codex remains a mystery.
Old Gods' Tales, New Reading
Anthropologists have traditionally considered writing one of the hallmarks of civilization. The development of a body of literature is a crucial aspect of a society’s art history, and this is no less true in the case of Pre-Columbian art than in any other. Both oral and written traditions are art forms that create and record cultural myths; those traditions in turn become ingrained in the collective consciousnesses of the societies to which they belong.
The last time I was in Guadalajara, Mexico, four years ago, my parents and I made our usual stop at one of the Librerías Gandhi in the city. We each gathered a stack of books that interested us and piled them onto a table in the coffee-shop bookstore. I picked up “Cantos y Crónicas del México Antiguo,” edited by Miguel León-Portilla. Today it is one of those books I must always have on my shelf to consult, and to look through from time to time, even if I haven’t ever read it all.
My Jaguar: Nickname and Nahual
Since before I can remember, my father has called me Puki. He always told me it meant jaguar. He said he looked at little baby me and it just came out: Puki. (There was also a period of time when he called me Piolín, Tweety Bird. Go figure.) I have a large t-shirt with an orange jaguar head in profile on the front, but I no longer wear it to sleep for fear that it might fall apart after all these years. Along the bottom it reads: “Ocelotl-Puki-Jaguar-Balam.” Jaguar makes sense; I recognize that word in Spanish and English. Ocelotl makes sense; hence ocelot, a word for another spotted big cat. Balam, too, rings a bell: the Books of Chilam Balam constitute a well-known set of Mayan religious works attributed to a jaguar-priest. But Puki? Where did that come from?
Puki, I decided, had to mean jaguar; otherwise my father’s name for me was nothing more than a misnomer, a mistake. Google search failed me at first; but eventually I found that Puki does mean jaguar in the language of the Purépechas, an indigenous people who live in what is now the state of Michoacán, México. In Pre-Columbian times, they were one of the few groups not devoured by the great Aztec empire.
Sifting the Ashes of an Older American Dream
It is easy to get lost in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). As I wandered through the Americas exhibit on a lazy Saturday morning, my two friends and I made figure eights around each other, one following intricate silver dishes around the room, one scrutinizing each plaque, and I examining the dark wooden drawers and cubbyholes.
When our paths slowed and we converged on the third floor, I consulted my friend’s map and realized that the main entrance to the exhibit did not lead to the art I was primarily interested in: the Pre-Columbian section. The exhibit’s layout privileged post-colonial America. We had to actively seek out the older America, going down into the subterranean part of the museum to find it.