O.C. ART / CATHY CURTIS : South American Cultures From the Wrong Angle

About midway through the Bowers Museum’s small and serious-minded exhibition “Peru Before the Inca” (through Jan. 17) is a posted quote from a 16th-Century observer, Garcilaso de la Vega, that suddenly makes a remote culture seem as vivid as the day before yesterday.

Writing about Peruvian women’s passion for yarn-spinning, he noted that when they traveled, they brought their spindles out on the street where class difference manifested itself in an interesting way: Noblewomen out on the street had their servants continue spinning, and resumed doing their own work “once they were settled with friends.”

Such glimpses of daily life are precious--and all too rare--in this show of 100 museum-owned ceramics, textiles and body adornments made by Peruvian cultures between 1400 BC and AD 1500.

The objects are grouped by medium and region, a strategy that comes across as dry and pedantic, particularly with awkward labels that (once again at the Bowers) seem to have been written simply to display chunks of knowledge rather than to present compelling information in a coherent fashion.

Curator Armand Labbe writes in the free brochure that the oldest cultures represented in the show lived in small urban centers whose stable economies were “based on agriculture, fishing and increasingly complex trading networks. Complex social, political and commercial institutions (unfortunately, Labbe doesn’t describe these further) were held together by powerful religious ideas . . . rooted in Peru’s shamanistic past . . . .”

The shaman, or priestly intercessor with the gods, was depicted in three different levels of hallucinogenic enlightenment: As a seated figure chewing on a mind-altering coca leaf; in the company of mythic animals he sees in his other-worldly state; and as a birdlike disembodied spirit.

In the latter state, the shaman might be experiencing psychic visions, or he might be transformed into a doctor figure, working to heal someone who is ill or bereft of his “spirit force.” Or he might become a heroic type, beating up on one of the spirit forces of evil.

Various animals and plants were associated with shamanism. Serpents symbolized the “vital force” that keeps the universe ticking, the cat family conveyed untamed energy, owls were linked to the powers of darkness, and, of course, hallucinogenic plants were evocative of the shamanistic trance.

The look of the cloaked seated figure on a stirrup-spout vessel from the Moche culture (AD 500-700) aptly conveys the trance state of shamanism. Another vessel figure from a slightly earlier period has a bulging cheek--a tip-off to the initiated that the shaman has a plug of coca leaf in his mouth.

Before-and-after views of the mythic-animal stage appear on a black ware vessel from the Chimu culture of North Coast Peru (AD 1000-1400). In one image, the shaman holds feathered staffs in each hand, as if ready for flight. On the other side of the vessel (visible to viewers in a mirror) two animals assist the little figure as he springs up and his body appears to uncoil.

A cartoon-like depiction of the “out-of-body experience” of shamanistic enlightenment, on a stirrup-spout vessel from the Moche culture (AD 100-700), shows a warrior in the guise of a bird armed with a shield, spears and an animal-head club.

Fragments of the ancient art of weaving--already sophisticated by AD 100 in Peruvian cultures--are the other major feature of the exhibition. Two-tone stepped patterns in a mantle of alpaca wool and cotton from the Chimu culture of North Coast Peru (AD 1200-1500) represent the harmony of “feminine” Earth and “masculine” sky, as do the paired “crook” shapes in light pink and rose on the lower border of the material.

Other weavings seem to demonstrate the duality of hunter and prey. The Chancay culture seemed to specialize in angular cats with curled tails stalking birds and birds dangling lizards from their mouths.

Many of these works have a piquant charm for the contemporary viewer, and it’s heartening to know that the Bowers has so many of them. If only the exhibition had been conceived in a more forceful way as an illustration of the ways ancient Peruvian objects reflected aspects of cultural beliefs, the net effect would be much clearer and more inviting.

When the topic is remote and unfamiliar, bogging the viewer down in arcane stylistic matters can be more off-putting than useful. For example, only a specialist could concur that, as one label proposes, “it is interesting that neither the stepped vessel nor the double spouted bridge . . . vessel forms were found on the central coast.” Why is that interesting? What does it say about the culture?

No matter how small or large they are, exhibitions are most successful when they stick to a clear central theme. They also can use an editor’s touch. If someone waved a wand and turned the choppy, pedantic label copy into graceful, jargon-free prose, a show like this could be a real sleeper.

*

The big-ticket show at the Bowers is “Colors of the Dawn/Invisible People: Arts of the Amazon.” No question about it: On a visual level, this is a stunning exhibition. The intense color schemes of the feathers and the iridescence of massed beetle-wing ornaments are ravishing, the huge costumes are attention-grabbers and the objects are displayed and lighted so as to maximize their dramatic potential. Yet the show seems curiously hollow in a cultural sense.

The objects in question were made by numerous tribes living in the Amazon River basin, a 2.5 million-square-mile tract stretching from Peru to southern Brazil. The brilliance and texture that seem so remarkable to urban eyes derive from the forest environment, chockablock with birds (macaws, parrots, egrets and many others), jaguars and insects, and shielded from the sun by the lush, dense growths of the rain forest.

In an interview in The Times in August, curator Paul Apodaca said he hoped viewers would see the pieces in the show “not as ethnic objects, not as anthropological oddities . . . but as works of art expressive of people’s lives, thoughts and feelings.” Although he has provided some background about the objects in wall texts, Apodaca said, “I don’t want that information to interfere with your ability to look at the art as something beautiful.”

His argument recalls early 20th-Century art critic Roger Fry’s philosophy of “significant form,” the wrong-headed notion that we need only admire an object’s formal components to appreciate it fully. The only way we can hope to understand objects in a culturally sensitive way is to make the anthropological effort--to investigate how and why they are used. Simply seeing harmonious (or “beautiful”) forms or colors or perceiving some vaguely “spiritual” quality is a far cry from understanding the meaning and purpose of an object within its own culture.

It goes without saying that (unlike Western painting and sculpture) masks, costumes and ornaments were not made to be exhibited. They are part of a tradition of theater and personal display, not a museum tradition. They were meant to be used in the course of life, not to be contemplated idly by passersby.

How can viewers be expected to understand another culture’s “lives, thoughts and feelings” when objects are arranged like so many tasteful curios? And since when does knowledge detract from visual experience?

Defending his approach, Apodaca remarked that “when a museum displays a Picasso, there’s no demand to explain the history of Spain, to show a typical Spanish village or to show how a Spanish artist’s studio might look.”

Well, never mind that Spanish-born Picasso spent his career in France. More importantly, we already are familiar with the modern Western tradition in which he worked. It involves beliefs in the essential “uselessness” of art other than fodder for contemplation and analysis, the primacy of individual creativity, the importance of claiming authorship (by signing work) and the value of novelty. There also are certain typical mechanisms of display, dissemination and dialogue (such as galleries, museums, dealers and published criticism).

Other cultures play by different rules. To admire objects made for religious or ritual purposes simply as “beautiful things” is to be imprisoned within a viewpoint too limited to do justice to any art, Western or non-Western. Religious and social implications always count, because art forms (yes, even abstract or decorative ones) reflect the belief systems of their cultures.

Shouldn’t we be given as many visual aids as possible to conjure up the atmosphere and details of the ceremonies in which the objects were used? Wouldn’t it be great to see a video of, say, the Waura festival of Sacuina, in which women cooking fish cakes are badgered by bulkily costumed male dancers who sing for their supper in the high-pitched voices of the Sacuina water spirit?

Apodaca reiterated his belief in the mission of a “cultural art” museum, a phrase that is now part of the Bowers’ formal title. But the concept remains unclear if not downright specious. What sort of animal is this “cultural art”? Is there art that is not cultural? Is cultural a code word for “non-Western”? Or is this a hazy way of appeasing supporters who want to admire “ethnic” stuff without having to learn much about it?

If the Bowers weren’t so peculiarly allergic to ethnography and anthropology, it might consider presenting a global survey of body ornament--the jewelry, hair pieces, hats, fake nails, tattoos and feathers used to attract the opposite sex, show off wealth, ward off evil, give proof of one’s adulthood (or married state), or blend in with one’s surroundings.

Even the occasional show that questioned the holy cows of Western culture might help break down the barriers that exhibitions of work by other cultures unconsciously impose between Them and Us. But the anthropological context is always important, because otherwise we’re reduced to looking at cultural artifacts as little more than attractive doodads.

* “Peru Before the Inca” and “Colors of the Dawn/Invisible People: Arts of the Amazon” continue through Jan. 17 at the Bowers Museum, 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays. $4.50 for adults, $3 for seniors and students, $1.50 for ages 5-12, free for those under five. (714) 567-3600.