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Indepth Arts News:
"Dress Codes: Abstraction in Wari Textiles of
Peru"
2001-07-27 until 2001-10-15
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, CA,
USA
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art - LACMA - opens Dress
Codes: Abstraction in Wari Textiles of Peru
Thursday, July 26. The masterpiece upon
which the exhibition will focus is an ancient
Peruvian tunic -- recently purchased with
funds provided by Camilla Chandler Frost
and Robert and Mary Looker through
LACMA’s 2000 Collectors
Committee -- woven about 1200 years ago.
The tunic is an excellent example of the
artistry and technical virtuosity of early
Andean weavers and serves to highlight
LACMA's important collection of textiles
from this area of South America. The
exhibition will display two additional tunics,
several large tunic fragments of similar
design, as well as examples of headwear
and bags.
Textiles in the exhibition were woven by
artists of the Wari civilization; people from
the high Andes of central Peru who created
an empire that encompassed much of the
territory from Ecuador to the border of
Chile. The period from 600–900 was
particularly rich in the textile history of that
Andean region. Garments produced in the
labor-intensive weave of tapestry
demanded an extraordinary amount of
material and human resources, and the
complexity of patterns, colors, and images
that characterize textile design suggests
that weavers were allowed wide latitude for
independent thinking and creativity.
LACMA’s newly acquired Peruvian tunic’s
grid format, serial imagery, and regular
pattern permutations reveal an intense and
sophisticated exploration of abstraction—an
aesthetic inquiry usually associated only
with the fine arts of the 20th century.
Dress Codes provides a unique opportunity
to view the museum’s collection of Wari
textiles that illustrate the weavers'
manipulation of natural forms and iconic
images in a spectrum from simple
stylization to nearly illegible abstraction.
Since a written language from that region
has yet to be discovered, it is believed that
much information was encoded in the
design and imagery on textiles. Extensive
research suggests that varying
combinations of patterns with meanings
and associations universally understood by
the culture may have acted in the same
way as a language, and therefore that
levels of literacy may have been
dependent upon knowledge of reciprocal
relationships between abstract patterns.
Chromatic relationships were also essential
to the fragmentation and reconstruction of
form; pattern analysis of textiles from this
period indicates that color almost certainly
had symbolic as well as formal significance,
although no written record exists to explain
its complex system of consistence and
anomaly. Considering the antiquity of
LACMA's textiles, the intensity and vibrancy
of their colors are remarkable, attesting to
the skill of the dyers as well as to the
artistry of the weavers.
The exhibition will include some graphic
material used as an aid in deciphering the
iconographic elements on textiles with
intricate abstract patterning.
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