Friday, May 24, 2013

The Laughing Emperor

Pilcrow Designs brings us brings us these inhuman remains. Just imagine the intellectual gymnastics finding something like this inside a tomb would generate.

1 comment:

CoastConFan said...

I really like that piece! It shows links to real archeological pieces and yet is so disturbing a tangent. I have to wonder the material that molded so badly. I know some people make bread sculpture and sugar sculpture and it can really get nasty.

You just can’t take the abstraction and the religious iconography at face value with Incan and Aztec items. These early cultures had a very advanced system of abstract understanding and sense of dualism. Sacred juxtaposition, multiple renditions, and changing perspective were important elements, so a so-called, simple figure is in fact highly complex with layers of meanings.

Check out the below link and view Figure #11 Gold pectoral of figure with buccal mask and elaborate headdress. http://arky.ucalgary.ca/mccafferty/gender-research/tomb-7-monte-alban

You can spin a prop into a story that it is the original figure that the priests were mimicking when they made the gold figure pictured. Using existing facts and items to prop up your prop makes it more believable. H. P. Lovecraft used existing references to imbed his stories to make them more plausible. It adds a lot to a prop to show it is an evolutionary step in art. Here’s another figure much like the last, but more abstract. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/lost-inca-empire.html