Ancient Mexican MirrorsĪuguste Génin, a Mexican collector of French descent, assembled a large collection of Pre-Columbian objects in Mexico City at the turn of the twentieth century.Īncient Mexican mirrors, such as these from Génin's collection, survive today in many shapes and sizes. Yet, as Smithson reminds us, art does not truly reflect life. Smithson's term "mirror-travel" describes how the reflective surfaces of the mirrors highlight the displacement of time and space. His images do not show tangible artifacts rather, they capture the mirrors arranged in the natural elements and as they reflect their surroundings.
Smithson photographed mirrors near Maya ruins, in the jungle, and beside the sea. Yucatan Mirror Displacements, his resulting art piece, exists as three interrelated but discrete works: the physical placement of the mirrors in the landscape photographs of the mirrors and an article in Artforum whose was text modeled after Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (1843). Although Smithson was traveling through Maya country, he believed he was impersonating the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, who he claims spoke to him, urging him to discard his guidebook and to make art that would collapse the gulf of time between the modern day and ancient Maya worlds. In 1969, American artist Robert Smithson retraced the travels of writer John Lloyd Stephens, visiting Maya ruins in Chiapas and Yucatán. Jaguar pelts were reserved solely for their use. Tezcatlipoca is sometimes represented as a jaguar, which was also a symbol of ancient Mexican rules. Tezcatlipoca was the lord of the night and its creatures-above all, the jaguar, a powerful animal believed capable of crossing between the earthly realm and the underworld. The obsidian mirror was the primary accessory of the supreme Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, whose name means "smoking mirror." He is often depicted with an obsidian mirror on his chest, in his headdress, or replacing his right foot. Obsidian mirrors are an apt metaphor for images of ancient Mexican sites and objects: they reflect the viewer as well as the object. By gazing into a mirror's smoky depths, sorcerers traveled to the world of gods and ancestors.
The peoples of ancient Mexico used polished obsidian mirrors, or tezcatl, as instruments of divination.
0 kommentar(er)
