Word: aztecs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...implacable and bloodthirsty conservatism of Aztec art that forces itself on you first, even in the Met's galleries, so far from the real context of the sacrificial pyramids and the thousands of other effigies that make up its body. Here was an absolutely ordered society whose chief religious rite was human sacrifice -- penitential rituals, on an appalling scale, whose aim was nothing less than to keep reality in motion. The Mesoamericans believed that the world could stop at any moment, that the very cosmos was always on the brink of dissolution, its cycles maintained only by sacrifice...
...Chacmool figures. But the best pieces here, such as the stone figure of a standard-bearer from Chichen Itza with its fierce gaze and crippled foot, are beyond such comparisons. From the delicately modeled stucco glyphs of Palenque, imbued with an almost rococo elegance, to the frightful severity of Aztec pieces such as the cuauhxicalli, or blood receptacle, in the form of a stone eagle, ancient Mexican sculpture is as powerful as any in human history...