Word: chacmool
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...official war artist in World War II and was thus partly responsible for the sculptor's best-known early work, the underground-shelter drawings) was a great looker and rememberer. Certain works were fundamental to his art. A stone carving of the Mexican rain-god Chacmool gave him the crankshaft rhythm of shoulders, waist, pelvis and thighs that would surface in his own figures from the late '20s on. Cezanne's ponderous and sculptural Bathers spoke to his own obsessions with the reclining figure. Archaic sculpture of every kind, especially Mayan and Aegean, fortified his lifelong interest in totems...
...counterpoise to these exquisitely delicate objects is the 1,000-year-old, 1,200-lb. limestone Chacmool, the ceremonial figure that is the very emblem of Maya civilization in its later phases. Found at the most celebrated of all Maya sites, Chichen Itza in Yucatan, the semireclining statue is a splendid example of the Chacmools found guarding the entrances of temples. Typically, the male figure leans back on his elbows, pulls up his knees and turns a forbidding gaze on intruders at the sacred gates. A flat plate poised on his belly is believed to have been a receptacle...
| 1 |