Word: aztecs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...latest paintings of Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. From the Huaxtec mudwork (similar to that of today's Pueblo Indians) Mexico's artists graduated to the only finished stone-carving and temple-building of the Mayas and Toltecs. When, in 1521, the Aztec empire was destroyed by the Spanish Blitzkrieg, Mexico's artists turned from feathered serpents to waxworky saints, from pyramids to tile-walled cathedrals. After the revolution of 1910 had cramped the style of the Church and had given a groping start to socialism, they turned modernistic, swiped an idea here & there from Paris...
Genuine paintings from the thirteenth through the nineteenth centuries are shown side by side with their respective counterfeits. Examples include pieces by Bellini, Raphael, Constable, Corot, Guardi, Ingres, and Durer. Egyptian, Greek, and Italian Renaissance sculpture, together with Chinese and Aztec figures in stone, complete the main body of the exhibit. Forgetting the line of demarcation which can be drawn between the false art and the true, it can be said that many of the examples shown are products of great craftsmanship and skill. The counterfeit Raphael as well as the Constable indicates that the forger can often be placed...
Meanwhile 275 of the school's 800 girls signed a petition demanding private showers. Cried some of their parents: "[The common shower system] is a step towards Communism." An earnest editorial writer in Aztec, student weekly, hotly retorted: "With every advance from filthiness to cleanliness, prudery raised its ugly head. . . ." This week the trial was adjourned for three months to let the Board of Education think the whole thing over...
...term "expressionistic" can be applied to any one of the Aztec pieces entitled "Standing Figure Of A Man" as well as to anything done in this century or the last. But there is a difference: the Aztec and Mayan works have innate expressionism whereas most works produced by contemporary men have a formal expressionism. The former arises from within and is neither a commentary nor judgment upon actual people or events; the latter, that which is prevalent in some circles today, carries with it the personal condemnation or approbation of the artist concerning everything imaginable, and this opinion is imposed...
...genius of the Mayan and Aztec artists cannot be refuted when one brings to mind the finely wrought gold articles, the sensitively constructed miniature animals, and the suitability of the material used for the object created. This early art is sturdy, grotesque, and static. Yet it contains a certain animating power which is so subtly interwoven with the actual material that its effect is tenacious and clinging rather than sudden. There is in it a silent sort of tension which is capable of producing a response within the mind of the spectator, a response which is only communicable by means...